Extenuating Circumstances

Extenuating Circumstances
Jonathan Valin
1989

To Katherine
 

1

The Lessing house was on Riverside Drive in Covington, almost directly across the Ohio River from the stadium. I knew it was across from the stadium because I could hear the afternoon baseball crowd grumbling in the distance, like an army of men talking fitfully in their sleep. I couldn't see the stadium itself, or much of anything on the Ohio side. The midsummer heat had raised a mist on the river, making the crowd noises drifting over the water seem detached, dreamlike. It could have been the Styx -the distant welter, the voices of the doomed. It could also have been the Ohio River on a hot, humid July afternoon with a baseball game in progress. It was a day to make you a little soft in the brain.

What I could see, had no trouble seeing, was a pretty French Quarter house on a small rise above the street where I had parked. A flagstone terrace dotted with cane furniture. A row of French windows in a white stucco wall. A second-story veranda, railed in wrought iron with a second row of French windows opening onto it. Two people were sitting on the terrace, a man and a woman looking in opposite directions, like drawings on a jelly glass. Neither one of them was looking at me.

I hied my way up a short flight of stone steps. The man turned toward me. He was too fat to be wearing the blue polo shirt he had on without a bra. He had a long, dour, jowly face that drooped down his neck like dough from a hook. His brown crew-cut hair was chopped level on top and mowed to about a half an inch height, like a fescue lawn. I put his age at about thirty.

The fat man trained his dark eyes on me savagely, as if I'd been dragged up the stairs by the cat. The girl continued to look off into space. She was very pretty and very young, no more than twenty-five, with the fragile, frozen, doting face of an enamel shepherdess all porcelain and gold, with just the faintest hints of pale blue and pink in her eyes and mouth. She wore a fluffy tennis outfit that made her glow in the sun.

"Are you the detective?" the fat man said irritably.

"That's me. Harry Stoner."

"Janey? The detective is here." The man looked toward the girl in the tennis outfit. His voice, which had sounded hard and officious to me, turned sugary and coaxing. I wondered if Janey was the kind of girl whom everyone addressed that way, like a favorite child.

Janey turned her head slowly toward us, and I saw that she'd been crying. The silver tear streaks made her delicate white face even prettier. The fat man ducked his head unhappily, as if he couldn't stand to see her in misery.

"This is Mr. Stoner," he said under his breath.

Janey blinked once and wiped her eyes with both hands. Her fingernails were almond-shaped and painted a pearly pink.

"Hello," she said in a childlike voice, and forced a smile. The smile faded instantly, and she looked off again, abstractedly, into the distant mist of the river.

"Janey is Ira's wife," the fat man said categorically, as if he was reminding her too.

"Are you the one who called me?" I asked him.

"Yes. I'm Len Trumaine. Ira Lessing's partner."

"And Ira is?"

The girl's eyes welled again with tears. "Gone," she said plaintively, and Len Trumaine winced. "Ira's gone."
 
 

Janey Lessing led us into the French Quarter house, down a hall lined with framed Impressionist prints that lit up the walls like rays of sunlight coming through small, high windows. Len Trumaine eyed me nervously, then looked straight ahead at Janey's tiny, skirted ass and pale enamel legs, as if she were his kid at the zoo and he was afraid to let her too far out of his sight. Eventually we came to a living room. A plump white couch, bracket-shaped, sat in front of a polished marble fireplace, with a fiery Rothko blazing above it. We settled there.

"You want a drink?" Trumaine said to me.

I shook my head.

"Well, I could use a drink. Janey?"

She shook her head, no. Trumaine walked over to a brass liquor cart and poured himself a very stiff scotch. He'd almost drained the glass by the time he sat down on the couch. The liquor made his face flush and brought out a thick sweat on his forehead.

"You're sweating, Len," Janey said gruesomely.

Trumaine laughed lamely. "Yeah, well, I sweat when I'm nervous, Janey. You know that." He turned to me with a weak smile. "Janey and I have known each other since we were kids. We grew up together." He said it by way of excuse, as if he didn't want to leave the impression that he was run by the girl, although that was the impression I was beginning to get.

Len Trumaine swallowed the rest of his scotch in a gulp and set the tumbler down on a glass coffee table.

"I guess you're wondering why we called you."

"About Mr. Lessing's disappearance, I assume." Trumaine flushed again. "I forgot Janey told you
that. It's about Ira all right."

"He's been gone for two days," Janey blurted out.

"Two days isn't very long," I said.

The girl's face turned red, as if I'd insulted her.

"Something's happened to him!" she shrieked.

The shrillness of Janey Lessing's voice startled me, as if she'd thrown a piece of crystal at my feet. "What makes you think something's happened to your husband?"

"I just know," she said with the same piercing certainty.

"There are all sorts of reasons why a man might drop out of sight for a short time."

The girl gave me a furious look, as if she had her heart set on tragedy, as if she usually got what her
heart was set on. Trumaine quickly stepped in.

"Janey is right to be worried. Ira is a man of habit. He doesn't just disappear for days on end."

I turned toward Trumaine. "You said that you and he were partners?"

"We run a plastics company on Madison, here in Covington. Well, I run it. Ira has a number of other
responsibilities."

"Such as?"

"He's a city commissioner, for one."

"That's like a councilman?"

Trumaine nodded. "Ira comes from one of the city's oldest families. The Lessings have been on the commission for decades."

"And when exactly did he disappear?"

"He left this house on the evening of the Fourth," Janey Lessing said, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation. "We'd been watching the fireworks on the terrace, and when they were over Ira said that he would be driving back to the office for a few hours."

"Did he say why he was going to the office?"

"Business, of course."

"Commissioner business or plastics business?"

The girl looked flustered. "What difference does it make what kind of business? My husband drove away on Sunday night and never came back."

She fixed her eyes on me as if she expected me to produce Ira Lessing on the spot.

"Mrs. Lessing," I said, "I'm not a magician. I need information to do my job."

"But I don't know what kind of business Ira had to do!" she cried. "I don't know about his business!"

Tears welled up again in her hazel eyes, and she covered her face with her hands.

Trumaine hopped to his feet, giving me an ugly, sidelong glance. "Janey, it's going to be all right. Believe me, honey, we'll find him."

"Why did this happen, Len?" she said behind her hands.

Len petted her head. "You should go lie down," he said gently. "I'll handle this."

The girl got up as bidden and walked out of the room without giving me a glance. Trumaine stared after her with something a lot more self-interested than concern for a friend.

"You didn't have to be so tough on her," he said, turning to me.

"I wasn't being tough. I was doing my job."

"Well, do your job a little more tactfully from now on, at least around Janey. Ira means everything to her. I would think you could see that for yourself."

Trumaine sank into a white chair opposite me and wiped his sweaty brow. "I realize that Janey may appear to be ... an alarmist. But the truth is that it is completely out of character for Ira to disappear like this, without leaving word. Ira's compulsive. He does everything by a timetable. He wants everything in its place, if you see what I mean."

"I've met the wife."

Trumaine scowled weakly.

"Has Lessing made any enemies? Through the commission or through your business?"

"God, no. Everyone likes Ira. He's a genuinely decent, extremely charitable man."

There wasn't a trace of irony in his voice, although there obviously should have been, considering how he felt about the missus.

"He doesn't play around, does he? With other women?"

Trumaine looked shocked. "He's got Janey," he said, as if she were first prize in the lottery. "Why would he do that?"

"Stranger things have happened."
 
 

2

I got Trumaine to drive me over to the plastics plant on Madison so I could look at Ira Lessing's office. It took him about ten minutes to work his way uptown, through the maze of Covington's one-way streets, thick with summer litter and summer haze. The shop stood out distinctly in a run-down block of crumbling storefronts -a freshly constructed concrete building painted bright pink, with a pale blue awning running the length of the facade, like the ribbon on a child's Easter hat.

"The paint scheme was Ira's idea," Trumaine said. "Ira and Janey's. To spruce the place up."

"Did it help business?"

Trumaine grunted. "It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Actually, he could paint it in stripes for all the customers care. It's the Lessing name that makes the business go. And the product, of course."

Trumaine parked his red Volvo in a car lot beside the pink building. The spaces were numbered 1 to 20 on the tarmac, and the first two numbers had names stenciled beneath them -RESERVED FOR MR. LESSING, RESERVED FOR MR. TRUMAINE. A tall fence surrounded the lot, topped with barbed wire and anchored in the walls of the shop.

"That's a helluva fence," I said as we got out of the car.

Trumaine shrugged. "Ira didn't believe in taking chances."

I tugged at the fencing with my right hand, making it ring up and down its length. "What did he drive, a Rolls-Royce?"

"Actually, he got a new car in May. A Beemer 325i."

"Pink and blue?"

Trumaine glared at me. "Silver and black."

"Did he take the car with him on the night of the Fourth?"

"As far as I know, yes. Anyway, it's disappeared too."

It was so hot on the street that we both broke into sweats before we could make it around the side of the building and through the entry door of Lessing & Trumaine Plastics. Inside, the air was icy cold. A pinkcheeked secretary with horn-rim glasses chained to her ears and a hairdo like a bronzed shoe sat at a desk in back of a small reception area. She smiled warmly at Len Trumaine.

"Howdy, boss," she said in a nervous, jangly voice. "Still burning hot out there?"

"Like Hades," Trumaine said, mopping his brow with one hand and digging at his blue polo shirt with the other. "Millie, this is Mr. Stoner. He's going to help us with our problem."

"Welcome to you," Millie said. "I sure hope you find Mr. L. quick. Things are starting to pile up around this place."

Trumaine shivered against something colder than the air-conditioning. "I suppose you should know that Ira signs the checks here. If we don't find him by Friday, I don't know how anybody's going to get paid this week -including you."

"Maybe he lit out for Vegas," Millie said playfully, "with the company funds."

"Does he like to gamble?" I asked her.

She threw her hand at me. "I'm just kidding. Mr. L.'s a real straight shooter. He don't gamble and he don't drink. He's a gentleman."

Trumaine guided me past Millie into Lessing's office. Like his home, the room was immaculately clean and expensively furnished in pale oak. There were several Rothkos on the walls, no advertisements for the business. But then it was already clear that Lessing was selling class, caste, and connections and not just plastics. The papers on the desk in the middle of the room were arrayed like sheet music, everything neatly piled in squares. Two framed photographs sat on opposite ends of the desk. One was Janey Lessing, in a riding outfit. The other was a picture of a blond man in his early thirties with a pale, handsome, delicately featured face, like a Pre-Raphaelite prince with a crew cut. I picked up the picture of the man. In the photo he was wearing a tuxedo coat, dress shirt, and black bow tie.