say? Maybe Albert had more to hide with that assay report than he let on. So he’s playing sick to avoid everybody.”
“She’s coming,” Macguire reported, in a low growl that I suspected was heavily influenced by Humphrey Bogart. Marla tapped a few keys to bring up another screen.
“Everybody get on the couch,” I begged. . Lena entered looking as if she’d seen the proverbial ghost. “Who just talked?” she demanded. “Who said to get on the couch?”
“I did,” I replied. Heat flamed up my neck. Lena recovered and stared at me. “You have no idea how much you sound like… oh, never mind.”
I didn’t question her, just settled onto the couch by Macguire and Marla, who were earnestly flipping through investment magazines. Lena phoned Albert’s house and left a message on his tape. Fifteen minutes later, she dialed his cellular. No answer. Calls from Eurydice investors continued to pour in; I recognized their names from the Saturday night guest list. At ten o’clock I tried to convince Marla to go to her cardiac rehab. Instead, she got on the phone with Southwest Hospital and rescheduled.
At eleven, Tony Royce, looking as handsome as ever, rushed into Albert’s waiting room. Today he wore a camel blazer and dark brown pants that matched his perfectly groomed mustache. “He’s not here yet?” He addressed Lena. “What the hell is going on?”
“He’s had twenty-two calls;” she snapped. “And, no ? he has not called, written, or E-mailed his whereabouts.”
“Yeah, tell me about the calls.” Tony lowered his voice. “Marla, everybody seems to want to know about your little problem with the assay report.”
Marla exhaled loudly but did not reply. Tony’s energetically roving dark eyes took in our morose group. He asked if anybody wanted lunch and we all said we were staying put. When he returned an hour later, he bore bags containing two cold grilled cheese sandwiches for Macguire and grilled tuna and polenta, along with a raspberry- custard tart, for Marla, Lena, and me.
“I probably shouldn’t eat this tart, but I really was very upset,” Marla grumbled as she forked up a bite dripping with berries and cream. “It’s all Albert’s fault.”
Lena said sympathetically, “If he’s not here in a couple of hours, I’ll drive up to his house to see if he’s hiding out.”
“I’m coming with you,” Marla said firmly. Unfortunately, we were all still there at three o’clock. In a convoy of four vehicles, Marla, Lena, Macguire, and I headed back up the mountain toward Eagle Mountain Estates, a swank development west of Genesee and east of Aspen Meadow. Once we were off the interstate, the large houses loomed in the mist. I felt a stab of worry about the Women’s Club dinner. I would give this expedition another forty- five minutes, and no more. We meandered along neighborhood streets until Lena pulled her Toyota up in front of an oversize A-frame of the genus mountain contemporary.
We rang. We knocked. We called. The front door was locked, as was the back. Marla traipsed around to a wall lined with windows.
“Albert! Albert Lipscomb!” she shouted. The more Marla called, the sicker Lena looked.
“Isn’t there something else we can do?” Macguire asked me. “The neighbors are going to call the cops if Marla keeps hollering like that.”
“I have a key, just wait a minute,” said Lena. She pawed through her purse and pulled out a key hanging on a chain decorated with a red plastic heart.
Within two minutes, we were all through the front door. Macguire loped up the stairs as if he owned the place. After a moment, he returned, smiling uncertainly.
“I don’t think there’s anybody here,” he reported to us.
As we walked through the first-floor rooms, I tried to calm Tom’s voice in my inner ear, something along the lines of not getting into trouble.
“Albert!” Lena called. “Al! It’s me!” There was no answer.
“Everybody wait here,” said Lena. “I know this place and I … know where Al keeps his things. If anyone’s going to pry, it should be me.”
Marla and I settled in the living room, which was decorated in brown, black, and beige. Along one wall were shelves full of books with fancy names like Driving Venture Capital on the Information Highway.
“Don’t touch anything,” Marla warned.
“We’re already in trouble, just for being here,” I informed her sourly. After the stunts she had pulled in the past few days, this hardly seemed the time for her to advise caution.
Macguire gazed out one of the floor-length windows. “The neighbors came out, anyway. They’re all gathered around like there’s been some kind of accident. Man, people are so nosy,” he said without a trace of irony.
Lena returned, looking even more anxious and ashen-faced than she had outside. Her blond cloud of hair appeared deflated. “He’s gone.” Her voice was vacant. “His suitcase, his clothes…” Her voice cracked. “His passport. We … he and I … He’s gone.”
“What?” Marla shrilled.
Wordlessly, Lena sank into a chair. I walked out to the kitchen, retrieved a Waterford glass from a cabinet, and filled it with water. Maybe I should have filled it with whiskey. Upon my return, Lena looked closer to fainting than when I’d left. She took an absentminded sip of the water, then said: “His closets are empty. His suits are all gone. Ditto his suitcases.”
Macguire interjected with, “Oh, man. I mean, can you believe this?”
“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean, gone? How do you even know where he kept his suitcases?”
“We… used to go to Estes Park together… .” Lena’s voice trailed off:
Marla addressed me tersely. “Call Tom.”
I gave her a helpless look and tried to think. Albert’s clothes and passport were gone? Where was he? “I will call Tom,” I said, “but I can tell you what he’s going to say. The cops won’t take an official missing person’s report yet. They have to wait forty-eight hours.” It was just shy of four o’clock. If Macguire and I didn’t hustle back to my kitchen right now, the Aspen Meadow Women’s Club would be out of luck.
A car honked out front and Macguire leapt to check the window.
“It’s Mr. Royce.”
Marla greeted Tony at the door and gave him the bad news. He choked and then he howled and insisted we were being ridiculous. Albert had to be somewhere around, he said firmly. Lena managed to struggle to her feet and confirm that Albert had absconded.
Tony looked wildly around the room. “There has to be a reason!” he cried. “This is absurd! He must have left a note or something!”
“You and I should go,” I said to Macguire. “We have an appointment to do food.”
“Well,” my ever-committed assistant protested, “who’s going to call the sheriffs department? They should jump right on this.”
I exhaled patiently. No question about it, Macguire was romanticizing police work. Once he spent a couple of months trying to track down drivers’ licenses and reports of missing persons’ vehicles, he’d change his tune.
When we came out to the stone foyer, Marla was slumped on the floor next to Tony. Both faces were studies in misery. Lena kept murmuring into a cellular phone about Albert being gone.
“I’ll call you,” Marla promised me. But she did not. At least, not for the rest of that day, Monday. Macguire and I were so busy with the chicken dinner for the Women’s Club, I didn’t have time to talk anyway. On Tuesday Marla did phone and say Lena had gone through Albert’s files at the office and the house. His datebook revealed nothing unusual planned, except for the partner meeting with Sam Perdue, which Albert missed. Tony confirmed that Albert’s passport and all his best clothes were indeed gone. Albert appeared to have packed and departed in haste. His Explorer was gone. None of the neighbors saw him leave. They hadn’t heard anything either, but of course it had been raining. Probably nobody even wanted to look outside.
Marla didn’t call again on Tuesday. I hoped her silence meant she’d spent most of the day at the hospital doing her rehab, the way she was supposed to. In any event, on Tuesday I was tied up preparing a last-minute vegetarian picnic for the board of the Audubon Society ? under porch eaves, because of the rain ? and came home so totally wiped out I slept for twelve hours straight. On Wednesday morning, Jake got loose. Arch and I spent several pleasant hours traipsing through damp pines and over soggy grass locating him. On our return, I pondered grinding up his dog biscuits in the disposal.
