Missing (13 page)

Cindy Dorn put her hands to her face, as if her head
were about to split open and she were trying to hold it together by
main force.

"Please," she said. "Could we please
not do this again?"

The brother and sister stared at her for a moment,
then looked away at opposite sides of the room.

"I’m sorry," Cassie Greenleaf said in a
whisper. "We’re not usually like this, if you can believe it.
And I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t."

"There has been a lot of strain," the
brother said in what was, for a man like him, close to an apologetic
tone. "No one wanted this to happen. No one." He looked
over at me. "You didn’t ever find out who he was with there at
the end? At that bar?"

"No."

"Surely somebody ought to find out," he
said unthinkingly, before he realized where that line would lead him.

"The men he was with in the bar didn’t leave
with him," I said. "Mason was by himself when he died."

"Alone," Greenleaf said dismally, as if
that was less of a comfort than he’d expected it would be.
The sister started to cry openly. The brother put a
hand to his brow.

"I think we better call it a night," Cindy
Dorn said, getting up from the couch.

"Yes, we should go," Sam Greenleaf said to
his sister, who was still weeping. "We got a six-hour drive to
Nashville." He turned to Cindy. "l’ll come up in a week
or so and settle Mason’s affairs. If there’s anything you want
from his house, you just . . ." He looked down at the floor.
"Anything you want."

It took another ten minutes to get the Greenleafs out
of the house, into the car, and on their way to Tennessee. Cindy
maintained a thin-lipped show of politeness almost to the end. But
when Cassie Greenleaf tried to kiss her good-bye, she simply turned
her face away. Trembling, the sister started to cry again, as the
brother led her by the hand to the Seville.

"You see what you’ve done," she moaned to
Sam Greenleaf

"Now she hates me because of your bullying."

"Just get the hell in the car," he snapped.
"You can run to your shrink when you get home. Tell him any
goddamn thing you want."

"Jesus Christ," Cindy whispered, as we
watched them pull out of the driveway and off into the night. "Can
you imagine being related to them? That braying jackass actually had
the nerve to tell me that Mason’s problems were all in his head,
like a brain tumor."

"He’s certainly washed his hands of him at
this point. The brother more or less told me he didn’t want me to
continue to investigate."

"Of course he doesn’t want to continue. The
blood might end up on his front door." She blew some steam out
of her mouth. "You said you needed to get into Mason’s condo?"

"If you can handle it."

"After that crew, I can handle anything."

On the way over to Mount Adams, I filled Cindy in on
the little that I’d learned that day. Just going over it in my own
mind reminded me of how vague it really was—speculative and
inconclusive opinions, divided somewhat depressingly between gay and
straight. The only good news—and it was good news for Cindy—was
that it didn’t appear that Greenleaf had been betraying her with
Del Cavanaugh. I’d expected her to be greatly relieved, but she
didn’t react with relief. Instead she curled up in the car seat and
didn’t say a thing.

After a time I asked her what was wrong.

"Everything," she said miserably. "Seeing
his brother and sister, how ashamed they are of him, even now.
Hearing what his gay friends said about him—about me. Like they’re
gossiping about some dead actor and his fag-hag moll, when he was
just this shy, decent, mixed-up man. It’s disgusting to be
everybody’s meat."

"It doesn’t change who he was," I said,
"or who you are."

"Everything’s changed," she said angrily.
"He changed everything by what he did. And now I’ve got to
live with it. With the ugly inconclusive horror of it. I mean, you
were in that hotel room with me. You saw what he looked like—what
Sam and Cassie are so embarrassed to call their own. What Sully and
Del say he was doomed to come to. What the rest of them are wondering
if I drove him to."

I didn’t say anything.

"I mean, so what if he wasn’t with Del? So
what? He left me alone, without a word."

"You want to forget about this, Cindy?" I
said.

"Yes, I want to forget about it. But I can’t.
I can’t sleep, and I can’t stand to be awake. So what do you
suggest?"

By then, we were at the foot of Mount Adams, climbing
the hillside. Instead of turning onto Celestial, I drove up past the
bar district and parked beneath some maple trees, in a little
cul-de-sac overlooking the river. It was dark and fairly quiet, save
for crickets and the distant bar noise.

"I’m sorry," Cindy said, after sitting
there in silence for some time. "I’m just fresh out of inner
resources. All the people who’ve been parading through the house.
Seeing my dirty socks, my dirty house, my dirty, screwed-up life. I
feel completely exposed." She hugged her arms around her
breasts. "And alone."

She leaned her head back against the seat and looked
over at me.

I felt a surge of protectiveness run through me like
a current. Without thinking, I pulled her to me and kissed her on the
mouth. After a moment she drew back and stared at me uncertainly.
"Are we going to do this thing?" she said, asking it more
of herself than of me—a1though it was a damn good question.

"Do you want to do it?" I asked.

"I don’t know. My needs are pretty enormous
right now." She stared at me uneasily. "I could fall in
love with you, Harry."

"What would be wrong with that?" I said,
knowing full well that there could be plenty wrong with it—for me
as well as for her. A part-time drunk who’d been living without
real hope or attachments for the better part of a decade.

"It’s what I used to do when I had a problem,"
Cindy said in a small voice. "Fall in love. Usually with the
wrong guy."

I inched back in the seat. "You have to do
what’s right for you."

"Don’t be mad. I wasn’t talking about you. I
was talking about me."

"I’m not mad, Cindy. You’re right to be
careful. You should I think about this. Maybe we both should."

She gave me a shy, sidelong look. "What you said
at the hospital, about being on different stars, scared me. You live
in a cold place."

"I’ve seen a different side of life than you
have," I said, feeling more stung by what she said than I had
any right to be. What she had said was true.

"I didn’t say it scared me away. It’s
just—there are some things about me you don’t know. Things you
should know, maybe. I mean aside from the fact that my last lover was
bisexual."
I didn’t say anything.

"That doesn’t bother you?"

I told her the truth. "Yeah, it bothers me. But
you had safe sex. And I haven’t wanted to take a chance on anyone
for so long, I figure I can’t let it matter."

"You’re honest enough." Leaning over, she
caressed my cheek, then kissed me on the mouth. "I’m not a
cock tease, you know. You don’t know me very well yet, but believe
me, I’m not."

Smiling, I said, "I believe you."

I started the car, nervously feeling as if I’d
actually taken a chance for the first time in about ten years—reached
out and grabbed the Opportunity I’d always seem to let pass by. It
was unsettling, because the old familiar drunk in me had planned to
let her pass by, too.

Apparently, the rest of me had different priorities.
 

14

IT was past ten by the time we pulled up in front of
Mason Greenleaf’s condo. After what had begun in the car, I’d
expected Cindy to react badly when she saw the place. But if she felt
any guilt, she held it in. At least, at first she did.

We parked on Celestial and walked through the salty
white patches of street light over to the Chinese red door. Cindy
opened it with a key she had taken from her purse. The breath of that
burning summer breathed out of the dead house. The smell of heat and
dead plants and Mason Greenleaf Cindy turned away.

"I don’t know if I can go in," she said,
leaning heavily against the jamb.

"Then let me do it."

I went through the door into the dark, burning living
room. Navigating by memory I found the spiral staircase leading to
the second floor, and a wall switch that shot a focused spot directly
down the staircase. I climbed up through the light to the bedroom.
His enameled desk was on the right. I went over to it and flipped on
a lamp. I already knew where the bank books were. I’d seen them in
the desk drawer the first time I’d searched the room—a
leather-bound check register and a savings book mixed in with his
school papers. I took them from the drawer and laid them on the
desktop, then sat down in his chair and started to go through them.

The savings book was current through the week of July
10, the week he had disappeared. Even though I knew the man came from
money, the balance staggered me. It was in the high six figures.
Every month a deposit of three grand had been made to the
account—probably his paycheck from Nine Mile. Every three months
there was a much larger deposit of ten thousand dollars, possibly
from a trust fund or another savings account. The withdrawals were
just as consistent—weekly transfers of from five hundred to a
thousand dollars.

The check register showed me where the savings
transfers had gone. He had kept a constant balance of three or four
thousand dollars in the checking account, All expenditures were
neatly laid out in a fine hand. The week before he disappeared, he’d
spent his usual amounts on groceries, credit cards, phone bill, CG&E,
tickets to the summer opera, Playhouse-in-the-Park, and Riverbend. On
Tuesday, July 12, two days before he’d dropped out of sight, he’d
made his last entry: a check made out to cash in the amount of a
thousand dollars. It was a fairly large sum, but there were several
other such checks scattered throughout the previous months. As far as
I could see, there was nothing in his records to indicate that he was
being blackmailed or that he was planning any kind of major change.

As I was flipping back through the checkbook,
examining earlier months, Cindy Dorn came up the stairs.

"They’re still delivering his mail," she
said shakily. "I’ve got to call the post office and tell them
to stop."

She went over to the bed, sat down, and put her face
in her hands. I went over and sat down next to her, putting my arm
around her shoulder.

"I’m okay," she said, sounding not at all
okay. "Did you find anything?"

"No. Nothing. Just an ordinary week with one
slightly larger than usual check made to cash on Tuesday. No other
entries."

"We were supposed to go to the opera on Friday.
Werther." She laughed dully. "Appropriate, huh?"

"I don’t know much about it."

Cindy smiled. "I didn’t either. It was Mason’s
passion, opera and theater."

"Yeah, I saw. Riverbend, the Playhouse. He kept
you busy."

"He was fun. He knew a lot about a lot of
things."

"And he was rich," I said, feeling
over-matched.

"That didn’t matter. I was never into rich.
Neither was he. I mean, it was nice to go all those places, but I
just went to be with him. I’m kind of a homebody, really." She
glanced at me nervously. "Jesus, let’s get out of here. I’m
beginning to feel uncomfortable again—and guilty."

"Okay." I helped her up.

"Do you think we’re ever going to know what
happened to him, Harry?" she said as we walked over to the
Stair.

"You want the truth?"

"Always."

"No, I don’t."

Cindy sighed. "Then maybe it’s time to stop."

The police impoundment lot was located on Gest
Street, near Dalton. To get there, I had to circle back down through
town onto the Ninth Street overpass, through the west side industrial
flat. As soon as we got off the hill, Cindy relaxed.

"It was just being there," she said, trying
to explain her nerves.

"Seeing the letters, knowing he would never read
them."

"It’s bound to happen. You loved him. You
still do."

"Yes," she said. "But I honestly don’t
know if I can forgive him. We never lied to each other, Mason and
I—that was the basis of our relationship, that was why he was so
dear to me. The other men I’ve known—the ones that I loved—I
was always the one who was up front, laying myself open like a fool
and getting burned for it. With Mason there was a mutual trust.
That’s the thing that’s so hurtful. I did trust him."

It probably wasn’t in my own interest, but I said
it anyway. "Nobody who I talked to today thought that he didn’t
love you."

"Then why did he kill himself?"

"It didn’t have to do with you, Cindy. It had
to do with him. He had a lot of fears, a lot of conflicts. Seeing
Cavanaugh dying of AIDS, maybe, triggered a panic. He’d been to the
doctor that week already on Thursday, complaining about fatigue,
insomnia, bad dreams."