Without a Word (10 page)

“No, I'm not. I went out the same time Sally did, more or less dressed the way she was dressed. I even took Dashiell with me. No cars stopped for me, but then I walked over to the meat market and it was a whole other story.”

“The long-distance truckers?”

I nodded.

“I could have gone to Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina. I had my pick. And Sally, well, Sally was twenty-three, blonde…”

“Unhappy.” He finally picked up his cup and took a sip. “Okay. Leon did something right. You're good. But…”

“You don't think she's alive, do you?”

“In here,” pointing to his perfect slicked-back hair, “no. In here,” now pointing to his chest, “I hold out hope, but only once in a while, those times when I miss her the most.”

“You were close?”

“I don't think Sally got close to anyone, but we might have had the closest thing to a friendship she ever had.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I never asked anything of her she wasn't capable of giving. I wasn't her husband or her kid. I didn't count on her emotionally. We just hung out sometimes. The truth is,” both of us leaning forward this time, “she came down here a lot, to be by herself.”

“When you weren't home?”

“Either way. But even when I was home, we'd talk a little, then she'd pick up her book, wiggle it at me and go into the bedroom and close the door.”

“That seems…”

“Odd?”

He nodded. “You know how friendships are, Rachel. Whatever works you stick with. I liked having Sally around. Sally liked to read.”

“Because she was going to school?”

“The other way around. She went to school because she liked to read. It wasn't possible upstairs. Leon wasn't a problem. But Madison was a real chatterbox and Sally was always telling her to be quiet. It was just easier here.”

“Where did Leon think she was?”

“Oh, he knew.” He shrugged. “She had to study, and anyway, Leon would have done anything to make her happy. He just wasn't able to.”

I opened my mouth but Ted continued.

“It's not the usual story, that he was the wrong man, that she loved someone else. It wasn't that at all. If anything, Leon was the right man for Sally, the perfect man. He adored her and he didn't ask much of her.”

“Just that she stay.”

“Just that,” he said.

I finally picked up the tea. It was in a bone china cup like the kind my mother had collected.

“Perhaps she didn't leave him,” he said. “At least not intentionally.”

“There's always that.” I took a sip of tea. For a while neither of us spoke.

I could picture Sally here, curled up on the white couch or lying on Ted's bed, using his apartment as a sanctuary whenever she could. I bet it happened quickly, their friendship, or, more accurately, their arrangement. Maybe it was
because of his occupation and the easy intimacy of theater people. Whatever it was, it had worked for Sally. For both of them.

“What else did she like to do besides reading?” I asked.

“Not much. Not that I know of. Once she started school, she didn't have much time for anything other than her studies and that,” pointing to the ceiling.

“She cooked?”

“Never. They ordered in. Or Leon made eggs. Or spaghetti with sauce from a jar,” grimacing at the thought.

“She cleaned?”

Ted blew some air out of his nose.

“She spent time with Madison?”

Ted rubbed his forehead. “Yes and no. She wasn't much of a take-the-kid-to-the-zoo type of mom. But she'd do things for her and she worried about her. Before the…” He made an eye twitch. “She told me Madison seemed very tense. That's when she painted her room like that.”

“Sally did that?”

“Sure. What? You thought maybe Leon did it?”

“I thought Madison had done it.”

Ted shook his head. “Sally thought it would relax Madison, all that blue, the fish, the coral. She thought it would make her feel better.”

“But it didn't.”

“Not one little bit. She liked it. She was very excited by it. I can't say how much of that was because it was so cool or how much of it was that her mother was doing something for her. But Madison needed more than fancy walls to fix what ailed her. She needed…” He stopped, picked up his cup, put it down again. “She needed more traditional parenting than she was getting.”

“What would you say she was getting?” I asked.

“Benign neglect.”

“I used to be a dog trainer,” I told him. “You could tell the whole story by the way someone touched their dog.”

“Or didn't.”

“True, but very few didn't touch them at all. Of the rest, the majority, only a few touched the dogs as if they were theirs.”

Ted stared at me for a moment before speaking. When he did speak, his voice was small, the opposite of a stage whisper. Even sitting this close, I could barely hear him. “You're right. That's what the story is upstairs. Leon keeps a camera between himself and the rest of the world.”

“Including his daughter?” I asked. But I already knew the answer. I'd seen the space between them the very first day, space I thought Sally used to fill or might fill again if I could find her. But maybe that wasn't so. One way or another, Leon seemed to keep those he loved at bay. Perhaps that was why he'd wanted Roy. Dogs often filled the gaps between people, space they couldn't bridge on their own. Perhaps Roy was supposed to be the mortar that held them all together.

“Leon's not a toucher,” Ted said.

“And Sally? Was she?”

He shook his head. “Didn't like it.”

“No hugs good-bye?”

He shook his head again. “Tough on the kid,” he said. “Tough on me, too.”

“I've always thought that we're more like animals than we like to admit.”

“That people need physical contact, too?”

I nodded.

He took a sip of coffee.

“None of this tells us where Sally is,” I said, “if she's alive or dead.”

“Nor if Madison killed her doctor?”

“You think?”

Ted rubbed his chin, his hand covering his mouth, then shook his head. “I've been wondering about the first question for five years, the second one since I heard. I can't help you rule it out, Rachel. I wish I could.”

“You have helped me. You are helping me. You're the first person I spoke to who gave me any kind of sense of Sally. But—”

He waved his hand in the air, as if to erase what I was about to say.

“I had a client once. She was engaged and living with her boyfriend, but he was reluctant to commit to a wedding date. She'd pick one, he'd agree, then he'd change his mind, suggest a later date. One day she says, ‘Harvey, I'm not getting enough love here. I'm getting a dog.'”

“You're thinking Roy? But he was Leon's dog, Rachel. Leon was the one who wanted Roy.”

“I know.”

Ted nodded. “He took him everywhere, starting from when he was this big.” He held his free hand a foot or so above the floor. “In the beginning, he carried him in his jacket when he went out to shoot. The last month or so, Roy would just follow him, sit and wait while he took pictures, get up and walk when Leon did. He was doing this series about the amount of filming done in New York, movies and TV. I had a small part in
Law and Order
at the time. I was the nosy, chatty next-door neighbor who told the detectives about the person who'd been killed, what a slut she was. I know what you're thinking,” holding up one hand.

“I wasn't thinking anything.”

“Right. Typecasting. Well, so what. It's a living, meager, but a living.”

“You were telling me about Leon and Roy and the shoot he was doing.”

“The dog couldn't have been five months old and Leon's on the periphery of the set, kneeling down, climbing up on things, taking all these shots, and the pup, he was like a professional. He kept his yap shut. He watched Leon work, never took his eyes off him. Leon might have told him to stay sometimes because sometimes he trailed after him, but sometimes he waited. If Leon wanted someone to pay attention to him, Roy was his man, so to speak.”

“But Sally took him. Didn't that strike you as weird?”

“Weird? You've met Leon and Madison and Emil/Emily and you think it was weird that Sally took Roy for a walk?”

“What do you think? An excuse to get out of the house?”

He shrugged.

“And then,” I lifted one hand, “poof.”

“One way or another,” he said. “I hear him sometimes when I'm up late.”

“Leon?”

He nodded. “He paces.”

I nodded. “I'd pace, too.”

“He needs to know what happened.”

“One way or another,” I said. “Thanks for the tea and sympathy. Mind if I come back again?”

I expected him to smile. Instead, his eyes teared up. For a moment, he couldn't look at me.

“I should have known,” he said.

“Known what?”

“That Sally was going to take off.”

“How could you have?”

“Something she said the week she disappeared.” He put one hand over his eyes. His shoulders shuddered once. “I've never told this to anyone,” he said, looking at me now. “She'd taken Madison to see Dr. Bechman that afternoon, and after dinner, she came down. She looked awful, pale and
out of it in a way. She sat there, where you are now, and she leaned back, her head on the cushions so that she wasn't looking at me, and in this dreamy voice she said that Bechman's receptionist had told Madison she was leaving.” He stopped and shook his head.

“And?”

“Then Sally said, ‘Can you imagine a more perfect job? You'd have unlimited access to all those drug samples doctors always have by the drawerful. You could take something anytime you needed to. You'd never, ever have to feel pain. You could just float away into a world of nothingness.'”

He covered his face again. “Maybe if I'd said something, if I'd done something, maybe she wouldn't have gone.”

“You don't know she went on her own volition. Besides, if she was that unhappy, what could you have done?”

Ted got up, walked over to a small white lacquer desk with drawers down one side, opened the top drawer and took out a card. He handed it to me as he walked me to the door. As I was about to thank him again, he put his arms around me.

“Yes,” he said. “Come back. Let me know what's happening. Or if you need anything. Anything at all. Or bring a book. You can curl up on the bed and read. Bring him, too.”

He had tears in his eyes when he stepped back. I could still smell the gel he used to keep his hair slicked down as I walked through the lobby and out into the street.

I looked up at Leon's apartment, wondering in the end what I'd have to tell this man, and there was Madison, looking down from the corner window. I lifted my hand and waved, but as soon as I did, she let the curtain fall back, and she disappeared.

I was going to go home, make some notes, check and see if there was any further response from Classmates.com. There was some research I wanted to do, too, some thinking as well. I wanted to look up Madison's disorder and see what drugs were used to control it, see if there was anything else available that might help her. I knew I was being silly, or perhaps overly hopeful. What chance was there that I could find something the doctor hadn't considered?

Something about this case was different. I'd think of what I wanted to do, or what I should be doing, then half the time I'd head off in another direction and do something else. It was as if someone was holding on to me, pulling at me, telling me, no, not that, this. Is that what had happened to Sally, too? Had she gone out for a breath of fresh air, maybe to get away from Madison's chattering or Leon's silence? Had someone or something taken hold of her, pulling her away from what she wanted to do, what she thought she should do?

It would be easy to suppose that it had been a who that took hold of Sally, literally took hold of her. But what if it wasn't a who? What if it had been a what instead, like whatever it was that had taken hold of me?

What if, I kept thinking, but I couldn't finish the question. I was still standing there, across the street from Madison's apartment, thinking of it that way now, Madison's building, Madison's apartment, the kid pulling on my consciousness, filling it up, thinking of her mother, Sally, escaping to Ted Fowler's serene apartment so that she could read in peace.

I crossed the street and kept on going, back to where there'd been a C. Abele that had turned out to be Charles, not Celia. There were so few Abeles in the city, I was thinking as I approached the building. It wouldn't be too big a stretch to think some of them knew each other, or maybe were related. I crossed the street, found a step to sit on and took out my cell phone, calling information and getting the numbers of the two Abeles I'd found in Brooklyn, one in Queens, six in Manhattan, including the one who lived across the street from where I was sitting. Late Sunday morning, chances are I'd find some of them home.

Claire Abele never heard of a Celia Abele but she was very nice about my having called. Richard Abele was home, too. “Wrong number,” he said, and hung up on me. I couldn't blame him either. There were so many calls lately you wanted to hang up on, people who wanted, one way or another, to get some of the money in your bank account into theirs.

Harrison and J. might have been out to brunch or at the gym. Harrison had an answering machine so I left a message. J. didn't, so I didn't. Louise had clearly been sleeping but she didn't seem at all angry at me for waking her up. Unfortunately, she didn't know any Celia Abele. I was almost ready to give up when Philip Abele answered his phone.

“She's my brother's ex,” he said. “Only…” And then he clammed up. Who the hell was I to be asking personal questions, he might have been thinking. I would have. “What do
you want with her?” he said. Protective? Or just another cranky New Yorker?

“It's about her old job,” I told him. “I'm working for a family whose little girl went to Dr. Bechman and I need to talk to Celia about—”

“No,” he interrupted. “No. No. No. I can't help you out here.”

“Well, do you think Charles might?” I asked, making an assumption based on proximity and the fact that he was all I had left at the moment.

“That would be up to him,” he said. And the line went dead.

I could have just dialed Charles's number. If there was a polite way to disturb a stranger, I suspect that would have been it. But I didn't call. I got up and walked across the street, finding the bell that said “C. Abele” and ringing it. But when the intercom crackled and he asked who was there, I wasn't sure I'd get anything more this way than I would have on the phone.

“I'm looking for Celia,” I said, “on an urgent matter.”

My day was full of surprises. Charles Abele buzzed me in. I pushed the door open, held it with my foot and looked back at the bell. He was on the third floor. Dash and I took the stairs.

He was standing in the doorway when we got there, his curly hair a bit messy, his shirt a washed-out-looking plaid in blues and grays, his pants baggy corduroys, looking as if he'd slept in them. Though, on second thought, I doubted that Charles Abele was sleeping any better than Leon Spector did.

“I'm sorry for disturbing your Sunday,” I said.

He stepped back, making room for me and Dashiell, closing the door behind us, walking over to a light green couch, soft pillows nestled in the corners, a glass coffee table in
front of it covered with sections of the
Times
. There were two black leather chairs facing the couch. I sat in one of those, Dashiell sliding down to smell the nubby pale wall-to-wall.

“What now?” he asked, a man as weary as my client but who seemed to be, unfortunately for him, far more connected to his own pain.

“I'm not sure I understand what you mean,” I said, hoping he might tell me what had already occurred that made him look as if the bones in his body could barely hold him erect.

“What is it you want with Celia? What's the urgent matter?”

“You've had enough of those,” I said, trying again.

But Charles Abele wasn't having any. He sat up straighter and looked me over. “Can we get to the point, Miss…?”

“Alexander,” I told him. “Rachel. I was hired by the father of a little girl who was a patient of the doctor Celia used to work for.”

“Madison Spector?”

I nodded. “I wanted to talk to Celia about Madison because she knew her before she stopped talking.”

He nodded. He knew that part, too.

“She lives two blocks away,” he said.

“You're the only Abele listed in the neighborhood. Is she unlisted?”

“She went back to using her maiden name,” he said. “Daniels. They live on West Eleventh Street.”

“They?”

“Celia and JoAnn.”

I'd already been too nosy. I had no legal status and this man owed me nothing. But I did tilt my head, the way Dashiell does, to show him that my interest hadn't waned.

“The baby.”

“Mr. Abele,” I said, “every time I ask you a personal question, I feel my mother turning over in her grave. I wasn't brought up to be, well, I know I'm being very intrusive. But there's a little girl suspected of murdering her doctor and she won't speak. She won't tell anyone that she didn't do that. Or that she did. And I'm trying, despite some awful odds, to…”

“I understand what you're trying to do, Miss Alexander. What happened to Madison is heartbreaking. Anyone would want to help.”

“Then you know about it? It wasn't in the paper.”

“Celia was very fond of her.”

“That's the first I heard of that.”

“Of what?”

“Anyone being fond of Madison.”

“People are fond of all sorts of people,” he said, “even people they shouldn't be fond of.”

I nodded. “I'm so sorry,” I said.

“She said she was quitting her job. Just like that. No discussion.” He pointed to himself and then to me, as if I were Celia telling him the bad news. “The thing is, my writing hasn't taken off.” He laughed. Perhaps more of an expulsion of breath than a laugh. “I have three novels out, but I haven't made it to mid-list yet. What I'm saying is that we couldn't live on my advances. We needed Celia's income and she'd agreed to give me five years, well, five more years. Unless…”

I waited, but Dashiell didn't. He got up and went over to Charles Abele, dumping his big blocky head in Charles's lap, the well-honed habit of an experienced therapy dog, helping when help was needed.

“But we hadn't gotten pregnant, so…” He waved a hand in the air, let it alight on Dashiell's head. “He's a very nice dog,” he said.

“Thanks. Did she say why she was quitting so suddenly?”

“She did. She's very forthcoming, my wife.” He laughed. I didn't know what was funny but I neglected to say so. “At least she was that day. She said she was pregnant so she had to leave.”

“But it's against the law to…”

“Not that she was asked to leave. Not that. That she had to leave because it was Dr. Bechman's baby and it would be very awkward for her to remain there, what with the doctor being married, too.”

“Oh.”

“No big thing her being honest, you know, because we already knew it couldn't have been my baby, and we hadn't been trying artificial insemination. It cost more than we could afford. So, one way or another, I would have figured out that the honeymoon was over, wouldn't you think?”

“I would,” I said, understanding why he'd asked me “What now?” when I'd walked in, understanding the laugh, too.

“She said she was moving out.”

“Did she say that she and Dr. Bechman…”

He shook his head. “The doctor had no intention of breaking up his family. Only mine.” He sucked in his lower lip, stroked Dashiell's head, then continued. “I told her she didn't have to do that, that she didn't have to leave. I told her I'd raise the kid with her, I'd love the kid, I'd give the kid my name, I'd do whatever, if she would stop seeing Bechman. She said she couldn't do that. She said she wouldn't do that.”

“So she moved out.”

“Yes, she did.” Big breath.

“And got another job?”

Charles Abele shook his head slowly from side to side. “Bechman paid the bills.”

“Is that so?”

“It was.” He sighed. “I don't imagine Mrs. Bechman will keep up the payments, do you?”

“Mrs. Bechman knows about this?”

“No, I was just being…”

I nodded. “And who could blame you?” I said. “Mr. Abele, a few minutes ago you said ‘the baby.' But wasn't this about five years ago? Because my understanding is that Ms. Peach has been…”

“She's a little over four. Four and three months. JoAnn, that's what they named her. Eric only had boys. He was thrilled to pieces, she said, Celia said. He doted on her. I do, too.”

“You see her?”

He bent his head, figuring out, I thought, how to explain this peculiar arrangement to me. But he needn't have bothered. I thought I understood it already. If people could love a dog that bit them repeatedly, why couldn't Charles Abele love the child his ex-wife had had with her lover? And perhaps the ex-wife as well.

“It could be viewed as merely a practical matter, free babysitting. But it wasn't that. It was more like a kindness, giving me something to make up for what was taken away.”

“How did it start?” I asked.

He sighed. “I can't really say. Things came up during the pregnancy, financial matters, social matters. And then there was the insurance. It was, is, in both our names, and of course it was awkward for him to be at the birth—how could he explain an eleven-hour absence?”

“So you were there?”

“I was. I saw her come into the world. I held her when she was a minute old and carried her to her mother. I fell in love with Eric Bechman's daughter before he did.”

“And continue to visit and see her?”

“And love her. I'm Uncle Charles,” he said, his eyes shining, one tear falling. “I have the same visiting schedule a divorced dad would have. Plus extra time when Celia needs me to babysit.”

“You do that for her?”

“I do it to be with JoAnn. And for Celia.”

“So you and Celia get along?”

“Most of the time.” He raised a hand, dropped it back onto Dashiell's neck. “We've even talked about me taking JoAnn during the day so that Celia can go back to work. She'll have to now. She has no choice.”

“Do you think she'd talk to me, about Madison?”

He lifted a hand, holding up a pointer, picking up the phone and dialing. But then he slid out from under Dash's head, got up and walked out of the room before she answered, choosing to explain things in private.

Men killed over smaller issues than this, I thought. He seemed to be a very gentle man, a loving man, a forgiving man. He seemed to be a hopeful man, too, perhaps ridiculously so. Had he been thinking that if he were the perfect ex, the loving uncle, the man Celia could always count on, still, that one day her relationship with Bechman would fall apart, that one day he'd have not only the woman he loved, but the child as well?

Of course, appearances could be deceiving and what things looked like might not be the way things were. Hadn't my client said that the first time we'd met?

There was a wall of books, a desk nearby, a stack of papers on the desk, a laptop, a printer, a mug with pens and pencils, probably a pile of unpaid bills somewhere, too. Along the widest of the bookshelves, there were framed pictures of JoAnn as an infant, JoAnn sitting up, standing, walking, on a swing, JoAnn as a toddler, JoAnn at four and JoAnn with her mother, a pretty woman with straight blonde
hair, like Madison's, and serious blue eyes. Forthcoming, he'd said. God save us all.

Charles Abele came back into the room, put the phone in the cradle and handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “She said you could call her,” he told me.

“She won't see me?” I asked.

“She will. But she wanted you to call first. She's…” He was still standing, his arms at his side, looking off to the side, toward the pictures of JoAnn, who, unlike Madison, smiled for the camera. “She's having a bad day. A bad…” His voice trailed off.

“That's understandable,” I said. “I'll call her tomorrow.” I got up. “You've been so gracious, so helpful. I can't thank you enough.” I put out my hand to shake his, but instead he took it and tucked it against his side, walking me to the door as if we were old friends.

He let go of my hand and opened the door. “Do you think Madison did it?” he whispered.