Vanishing Act

by Barbara Block

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Robin Light's client was in his prime: mid-twenties and all-American. But Bryan Hayes was no happy-go-lucky guy. For four months he had been looking for his sister, Melissa, a college sophomore who waved goodbye outside her dorm and disappeared without a trace. Everyone from the university's head of security to the dean and the police have their theories about what happened to her. And so does Bryan. He's blaming it on frat boy charmer, Tommy West, Melissa's ex-boyfriend. But Robin is developing a theory of her own. If Melissa met with foul play, why did she take her clothes, her purse, and her cash? If it was such a well-planned vanishing act why is Tommy so reluctant to talk? And why does Jill Evans, Melissa's best friend and fatal victim of a bizarre accident, keep figuring into the picture? It's all as baffling as Melissa's disappearance. Combing the campus for clues, Robin has suddenly found herself moving to the head of the class, and closer to the most challenging mystery of her career. Where it will lead she is afraid to guess, but the secret pasts of a surprising array of suspects are about to come to light, placing Robin in deadly jeopardy. . .and forcing her into a desperate gamble for the truth.

Release date: October 22, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 328

Sample

“True story,” George said, his voice hoarse, the way it always is late at night. “A cop jumps in and rescues someone who’s taken a dive into the East River. Three days later he finds out this is the guy who shot his mother in the head.”

I burrowed into my comforter. “What’s your point?” An attic beam groaned overhead while the wind played with the tiles on the roof. As I closed my eyes, I wondered if that was the beam that needed shoring up. It was after two, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

“My point,” George replied, sounding aggrieved that I hadn’t gotten it, “is that you never know whether or not you’re doing something good or bad until later. You can do something that you think is good at the time but then it leads to a bad result.”

“So don’t do anything.”

“Doing nothing is still doing something.” I heard the rustle of sheets and then felt George’s breath on my face as he turned his head toward me. “Doing nothing is a physical impossibility. A black hole is still energy. Negative energy. Robin, are you listening to me?”

“More or less.” I opened one eye. It was too late for metaphysical discussions. It was too late for any discussions. Especially since I had to open the store in the morning.

George sighed and went back to staring at the ceiling. The headlights from a passing car swept over his profile before illuminating the cracks on the far wall. All planes and angles, his face looked as if it were carved from ebony.

“What the hell am I going to do with a fourteen-year-old boy?” he demanded for what must have been the tenth time that evening.

“The same thing everyone does. Get an ulcer.”

He grimaced. “Seriously.”

I shrugged and adjusted my pillow. “So tell your sister that Raymond can’t come up.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s family. What am I going to say? ‘Cecilia, sorry, but I’m too busy to help you out’?”

“Mine would.”

I studied the view out my bedroom window. The wind was whipping the cedars in the yard back and forth. They looked as if they were bowing to someone off in the distance. Tall, skinny, and shallow-rooted, two out of the five had already come down in the storm we’d had in February and were now lying across the hill, anticipating their demotion to the mulch pile when spring came. If I were smart, I’d hire someone to have the remaining three taken down at the same time instead of waiting for them to fall in the next big storm, but I probably won’t. I don’t like second-guessing fate—even when the outcome is fairly predictable.

George’s voice intruded on my thoughts, and I turned back toward him.

“Well, mine doesn’t work that way.” He looked as if he wished that it did. “Big families don’t. It must be nice being an only child.”

“Not really,” I murmured. I closed my eyes again. Why, I remember thinking, did George always pick the exact moment I was falling asleep to want to talk? His timing was impeccable. I’d been available all evening. I would have been happy to have any number of conversations then. I’d even tried to initiate several. Instead, George had spent the evening watching TV and reading the paper. We might as well be married, for God’s sake.

“By the way,” George continued, his voice floating out on the darkness, “I almost forgot. Bryan Hayes is going to call you tomorrow morning.”

“Who?” I mumbled. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“Hayes. His sister Melissa is the one that went missing around Thanksgiving.”

“Right.” I’d seen the flyers on the hill but hadn’t paid them much mind other than to think, another person gone. There’d been a spate of disappearances in the last couple of years, enough that I’d stopped paying more than perfunctory attention.

“He’s in one of my classes. He was asking if I knew anyone that could help him, so I gave him your name.”

I sat up. “What does he want me to do?”

But George didn’t answer. I glanced over. His eyes were closed. He was asleep. I, on the other hand, was now wide awake. It figured.

Bryan Hayes called me at the store shortly after ten. By then I’d remembered what I’d read about the story, which wasn’t much. We set up a meeting at four-thirty that afternoon at the Yellow Rhino, a campus hangout that was known for its bad beer, greasy chicken wings, and cardboardlike pizza. I arrived on time, but Bryan didn’t. Twenty minutes later I was still tapping my fingers on one of the tables and surveying the scene. It could have been the twin of the bar I’d hung out at when I’d been in grad school.

The place had the same smell of old cooking grease, the same dusty green spiky plants—maybe they lived forever and just got moved from place to place by the great bar owner in the sky—the same rickety tables, brown metal chairs, and earnestly talking college students sitting on them. The only thing the room lacked was the bluish haze of smoke hanging in the air. No Smoking signs were prominently tacked up on the wall in several places, which was why I was standing in the doorway digging around in my backpack for my lighter, when a kid tapped me on the shoulder.

“Are you Robin Light?” he asked, his breath coming out in little gasps. A light sheen of sweat covered his forehead. He looked as if he’d been running.

“And you’re Bryan Hayes?”

He nodded. I pegged him for mid-twenties. He was about six feet two inches, medium build, with a roundish face, and brown eyes set a shade too close together. He had on hiking boots, khakis, a plaid flannel shirt, an unzipped ski parka, and the inevitable baseball hat. His only sartorial extravagance was a pair of those small, perfectly rounded Japanese titanium eyeglasses that go for four hundred dollars a pop. In short, Bryan Hayes would have looked at home at any college campus in the country.

“Sorry I’m late. I got held up.”

I put my lighter away reluctantly and followed him in. He bounded along in front of me, greeting people he knew. Just watching him move made me feel tired.

I snagged a table while Bryan went to get a couple of beers. He came back with four pieces of pizza as well. I took a bite from one. It was as bad as I remembered it being, but Bryan either didn’t share my view or didn’t care, because he gobbled down two pieces immediately.

“First thing I’ve had to eat all day,” he explained abashedly when he saw me watching him.

I made a polite comment and took a sip of my beer. It was warm and flat and reminded me of the kind everyone drank before beer went upscale.

Bryan reached for the third slice, then stopped, hand hovering. “Do you want this?”

I shook my head. “Go ahead.”

“So,” Bryan Hayes asked after he was through, “how do you know George?”

“We met through mutual friends.” I didn’t want to tell him George had been my husband’s best friend until he died, for three reasons: One, I didn’t like discussing it; two, it wasn’t any of his business; and three, the topic didn’t make for good social conversation.

Bryan wiped his hands on a napkin. “He’s interesting.”

“Yes, he is.” If Bryan wanted to make small talk for a while, that was okay with me. I watched four girls and one guy at the next table dig into their pockets for change. Pennies, quarters, and dimes materialized into several piles.

“He said he used to be a cop.”

“For eight years.” Or was it seven? I forget. From where I was sitting, I watched the stream of students coming in swell. The room was becoming packed. The noise level was rising. The place was turning stuffy. I began wishing I weren’t wearing a turtleneck sweater.

“So how did he end up in grad school?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I did. He said he wanted a change.”

I leaned forward. “But somehow you think there’s more, right?”

Bryan flushed and adjusted his hat. “It just s-seems unusual,” he stammered. “I mean, you don’t associate a guy who looks like that with medieval history.”

“A guy who looks like what?” I asked innocently, curious to see if Bryan would mention that George was black or that he was enormous or that he not only looked as if he could break someone in two with his hands, but that he would enjoy doing it.

“He could be a linebacker for the Oilers,” Bryan replied, skirting the issue. “You just don’t expect to find someone like that sitting next to you in a class on manors and land rights.”

“True,” I allowed. I guess the Ralph Lauren clothes George was wearing weren’t as effectively reshaping his image as he hoped.

“I’d hate to get on the wrong side of him,” Bryan observed.

“Me too.” Actually George was a sweetie pie, much nicer than I was, but why tell Bryan that and spoil the image. I changed the subject to the one we’d come here to discuss. “So tell me about your sister,” I said. Even though I remembered the story, I wanted to hear it in Bryan’s words.

“Right.” Bryan pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “Actually, I think you met her. She was in your store this summer. She wanted a sugar glider, but the guy who works behind the counter said they didn’t make good pets.”

“They don’t.” Sugar gliders were the latest in a long line of fad pets. Tiny gliding opossums that come from Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand, they are small enough to carry around in your pocket.

“He said they have complicated nutritional needs.”

“Tim said that?”

Bryan nodded.

“Interesting. I always thought they did fine on fruits, vegetables, a little cheese, and mealworms, myself ”

“That’s what Melissa fed hers.” Bryan took off his hat, adjusted the brim, and put it back on.

“I’m glad to hear it.” The kids sitting at the table next to us were arguing about what kind of pizza to get, and I had to raise my voice to make myself heard.

“Melissa sent for it. From a magazine.”

“It’s amazing what you can get in the mail,” I said, thinking back to the viper someone had sent to one of my employees.

Bryan began folding the edge of the white paper plate back and forth. “George said you were pretty good at finding people.”

“I’ve had some successes in the past,” I allowed. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, and I’ll tell you if I think I can help you or not.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know. One moment Melissa was here, the next moment she wasn’t.” Bryan’s voice quivered for a second, then he regained control. “I dropped her off at the dorm, and when I went to pick her up, she wasn’t there.”

“That was how long ago?”

“Forever. Well, it seems like forever. Since right before Thanksgiving. ”

“And it’s the middle of March now.”

Bryan looked embarrassed. “I know it’s a long time, but the police have been telling me to sit tight, to be patient. But I can’t be patient any longer.”

“When did you notify the police?”

“I called the campus police almost immediately. They told me to wait, so I called the city police. They said the same thing, that I had to wait twenty-four hours before I filed a missing person’s report.”

“Which you did.”

“Yes. But nothing’s happened. I keep calling and they keep telling me they’re doing everything they can, but I don’t think they are.” Bryan swallowed. “I’ve talked to the dean of the school here, I’ve talked to the head of security, I’ve talked to Missy’s R.A” Bryan’s mouth tightened with anger as he remembered the responses he’d gotten. “Everyone keeps telling me she must have run off with someone and that she’ll be back. Well, she hasn’t come back.”

“Maybe it’s true. Maybe she has gone off with someone.”

“If you knew Missy, you wouldn’t say that. She’s very responsible. ”

“You really never know what’s going on inside someone’s head,” I observed, remembering the stunt my old college roommate had pulled. She’d been responsible too. Until the Saturday afternoon she’d walked out the door, only to reappear eight months later. Turned out she’d taken off for Mexico with a guy she’d met at the supermarket. He’d said, ‘Let’s go,’ and she’d thought, sure. What the hell. Why not. She hadn’t called, she said, because she figured we’d know she was okay. If she hadn’t been, someone would have notified us. And anyway, if she’d spoken to anyone, they just would have told her to come home.

Bryan hit the table with the palm of his hand. It wobbled. “Believe me. I know my sister. She’d never walk off like that. She’s never even late.”

Sharon hadn’t been either. “Did she take her wallet?”

Bryan frowned. “Her bag’s missing,” he conceded. His voice was truculent. “But that doesn’t mean anything. She always takes it with her wherever she goes.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s had money stolen out of it a couple of times when she left it in her room. They never found out who took it either,” he said to what was going to be my next question.

“How about her clothes?”

“I don’t think anything is missing.” Bryan scratched the side of his neck.

“But you’re not one hundred percent sure.”

“I don’t keep an inventory of her wardrobe.” Bryan’s voice rose. “And even if a few things are gone, that doesn’t mean she took off. Something happened to her.”

“Maybe. But you have to realize thousands of people disappear in this country every year. Most of them have—for a variety of reasons—just decided to walk away from their lives. Maybe she’s one of them.”

“Not my sister.” Bryan’s voice was filled with certainty.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Our mother is dying,” he said, the look on his face daring me to utter any of the usual banalities of consolation.

I didn’t. I’ve never been good with that kind of stuff. Instead, I contented myself with observing that appearances to the contrary, maybe Melissa was having trouble dealing with what was happening in her life.

“No.” Bryan poked himself in his chest with his finger. “I’m the one who has the trouble going to the hospital, not her.” He swallowed, fighting to get himself back under control. “Jesus, all my mom does is ask for her. Every time I go to see her in the hospital, she wants to know if I’ve found Melissa. She wants to know what happened to her. She’s expecting me to find out.”

I chose my next words carefully. “Are you sure you want to?”

Bryan leaned forward. “I don’t have a choice. I have to find my sister. Whatever state she’s in, dead or alive, I have to find her and bring her home.”

“Why?”

Bryan studied the stains the pizza had left behind on the white paper plate before answering. I noticed the oil and the tomato sauce had formed a palm-sized, ragged red circle. “Because,” he finally informed me in a determined voice, “for once I want to do the right thing.”

The story Bryan Hayes told me sitting there at the table with his legs wound around the chair’s metal ones was an old one, one I knew well. His father had died soon after Bryan was born, leaving his mother to raise two kids by herself. She’d gotten a job in a store selling dresses, and when she couldn’t meet the bills that way, she’d worked as a waitress two nights a week. To all intents and purposes she was never around, a fact Bryan had hated and felt guilty about hating. He’d resolved the dichotomy by blossoming from a quiet, well-behaved boy into a full-time pain in the ass, playing Cain to Melissa’s Abel. There’d been calls from teachers, visits to the principal, fights in school, shoplifting, a stolen car. In short, the usual JD litany.

Although Bryan didn’t come right out and say so, it was obvious to me he felt finding his sister was his shot at redemption, his chance to make up for all the grief he’d caused his mother. He’d spent the months since her disappearance hoping Melissa would turn up. But time was running out. His mother was in the hospital, chained to her bed by wires and tubes, begging him to find out what had happened, and he had given his word that he would.

“Maybe it’s stupid,” he said, giving me a wan smile. “But I don’t want to break another promise.”

I made a sympathetic noise and waited for him to continue.

Bryan drained the last of his beer and carefully put the glass back down on the table. Then he leaned forward. “I know this kind of stuff is expensive and I don’t have a lot of money, but my mom gave me some.”

“So she knows you’re here?”

Bryan nodded. He took his wallet out of his pocket and handed me a small wad of new-looking bills. “There’s four hundred in there. I can give you another four hundred next week.”

“Fine.” I unzipped my backpack and stuffed the money inside. I’d gotten over feeling guilty about charging for my services a while ago. If Bryan had gone to one of the private investigators listed in the phone book this would have cost him thousands.

“Aren’t you going to count it?”

“Should I?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I left my backpack on the table. “Now that that’s out of the way, why don’t you show me your sister’s picture.”

Bryan handed me a copy of the same flyer I’d seen on my walk over to the Yellow Rhino. “Here,” he said, smoothing the wrinkles out of the piece of paper with the flat of his hand before handing it to me.

I studied it again. According to the stats at the bottom of the page, Melissa Hayes was nineteen years old, five feet five inches tall, weighed 128 pounds, had hazel eyes and light brown hair, and was last seen wearing jeans, a plaid flannel button-down shirt, a navy jacket with a leather collar, and a pair of sneakers. She had no visible scars or other identifying marks. What the poster didn’t say was that she had her brother’s smile and the shape of his chin.

As I studied the photograph, I couldn’t help thinking that three of the children who had gone missing in the area in the last two years had come to a bad end, but they’d been much younger. The odds of a happier ending for a nineteen-year-old girl were considerably higher. I held on to that thought as I went back to looking at Melissa’s picture. In it she was leaning against a tree trunk. A small blue colonial with white shutters figured in the background. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and she’d tied a green shirt over her shoulders. The day must have started off cool and warmed up. Her hair was long and parted on the side. Her smile was bright, her features symmetrical. Like her brother, she could have fit into any college campus in the country.

“May I?” Bryan asked as he reached over and took the flyer from me. He devoured it with his eyes before sighing and handing it back. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Very,” I replied, noting his use of the present tense. I hoped he was right. I hoped it wasn’t just wishful thinking. “When was this taken?”

“Last year.”

“She looks happy.”

“She was.”

I indicated the house in the background. “Is this your home?”

He nodded.

I pointed to the flyer while I tried not to think about how much I wanted a cigarette. “May I keep this?”

“Sure. I have lots more.”

“Where’d you put them up?”

“Mostly around campus. You think I should have put them up some other places too?” he asked worriedly.

I reassured him while I smoothed out the paper and laid it on the table. Melissa looked like someone who would be kind to children and animals, and I hoped she would fall in with the ninety-five percent of missing persons who vanish because they wanted to rather than the five percent who are kidnapped and killed.

“Have the police been through her belongings?”

Bryan nodded. “I gave them her address book.”

“Do you know if she kept a diary?”

“No. She always she said she was going to start, but she never got around to it. I suppose you want to see her room too?” His voice betrayed the slightest hint of exasperation.

“It would be helpful, unless, of course, you have a problem with that.”

“No,” he replied quickly. “None at all.”

I tapped my fingers on the table while I gathered my thoughts. I was finding it difficult to concentrate in the surrounding din. We should have gone somewhere else. Bryan opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, closed it again, and took his hat off, ran his fingers through his hair, and put it back on again.

“Do you have something you want to tell me?” I asked as I got my notebook and pen out of my backpack.

Bryan licked his lips.

I opened the notebook. “I can’t help you if I don’t have all the information.”

“Talk to Tommy West.” Bryan spit the name out as if it had been a tack.

“Who’s that?”

“Melissa’s boyfriend.”

I felt as if I were playing twenty questions. “Okay. What about him?”

“They were always fighting.”

I thought about Murphy. And George. “Lots of couples fight.”

“She was getting ready to dump him and he didn’t like that. He said he wasn’t going to let her go.”

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“A detective interviewed him. For all the good it did.” Bryan’s tone was bitter. “Marks ...”

“... the detective?”

“Right.”

I wrote his name down and underlined it.

“... said West didn’t have anything to do with Missy’s disappearance. ”

I stated the self-evident. “But you. . .