Rolly shook his head in wonderment. “Man, I don’t know how to advise you. I mean, I think I know what I would do if I were in your shoes, but you’ve got to decide yourself how to handle this.”
“Tell me,” I said. “What would you do?”
He pressed his lips together and leaned forward over the table. “I’d sit on it.”
I guess I was surprised. “Really?”
“At least for the time being. Because it’s only going to torment Cynthia. It’ll make her think that, at least back when she was a student, that had she known about the money, maybe there was something she could have done, that she could have found them if she’d only been paying attention and asking the right questions, that she could have found out what happened. But who knows whether that’s even possible now.”
I thought about that. I thought he was right.
“And not only that,” he said. “Just when Tess needs all the support and love she can get from Cynthia, when she’s in poor health, Cynthia’s going to be mad at her.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“She’s going to feel betrayed. She’s going to feel her aunt had no business keeping this information from her all these years. She’s going to feel it was her right to know about this. Which it was. And, arguably, still is. But not telling her back then, it’s water under the bridge now.”
I nodded, but then stopped. “But I’ve only just found out. If I don’t tell her, aren’t I betraying her the same way she may feel Tess did?”
Rolly studied me and smiled. “That’s why I’m glad it’s your decision instead of mine, my friend.”
When I got home, Cynthia’s car was in the drive, and there was a vehicle I didn’t recognize parked at the curb. A silver Toyota sedan, the anonymous kind of car you’d look at and never remember a moment later.
I stepped in through the front door and saw Cynthia sitting on the couch in the living room across from a short, heavyset, nearly bald man with olive-colored skin. They both got to their feet and Cynthia moved toward me.
“Hi, honey,” she said, forcing a smile.
“Hi, sweetheart.” I turned toward the man and extended a hand, which he took confidently in his and shook. “Hello,” I said.
“Mr. Archer,” he said, his voice deep and almost syrupy.
“This is Mr. Abagnall,” Cynthia said. “This is the private detective we’re hiring to find out what happened to my family.”
15
“Denton Abagnall,” the detective said. “Mrs. Archer here has filled me in on a lot of the particulars, but I wouldn’t mind asking you a few questions as well.”
“Sure,” I said, holding a “hang on just a second” finger up to him and turning to Cynthia to say, “Can I talk to you a minute?”
She gave Abagnall an apologetic look, said, “Could you excuse us?” He nodded. I steered Cynthia out the front door and onto the top step. Our house was small enough that I figured Abagnall would hear us if we had this discussion—which I was worried might become a bit heated—in the kitchen.
“What the hell’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m not waiting around anymore,” Cynthia said. “I’m not going to wait for something to happen, wondering what’s going to happen next. I’ve decided to take charge of this situation.”
“What do you expect him to find out?” I asked. “Cynthia, it’s a very old trail. It’s twenty-five years.”
“Oh, thanks,” she said. “I’d forgotten.”
I winced.
“Well, that hat didn’t appear twenty-five years ago,” she said. “That happened this week. And that phone call I got, that morning you walked Grace to school, that wasn’t twenty-five years ago, either.”
“Honey,” I said, “even if I thought hiring a private detective was a good idea, I don’t see how we can afford it. How much does he charge?”
She told me his daily rate. “And any expenses he has are on top of that,” she said.
“Okay, so how long are you prepared to let him go?” I said. “Are you going to keep him on this a week? A month? Six months? Something like this, he could spend a year on it and still be getting nowhere.”
“We can skip a mortgage payment,” Cynthia said. “You remember, that letter the bank sent us before last Christmas? That offer to let you skip a payment in January, so you can pay off your Christmas Visa bill? They tack the missed payment onto the end of the mortgage? Well, this can be my Christmas present. You don’t have to get me anything this year.”
I looked down at my feet and shook my head. I really didn’t know what to do.
“What’s happening with you, Terry?” Cynthia asked. “One of the reasons I married you is because I knew you’d be a guy who was always there for me, who knew the kind of fucked-up history I had, who’d support me, who’d be in my corner. And for years, you’ve been that guy. But lately, I don’t know, I’m getting this vibe, that maybe you aren’t that guy anymore. That maybe you’re getting tired of being that guy. That maybe you’re not even sure you believe me all the time anymore.”
“Cynthia, don’t—”
“Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m doing this, why I want to hire this man. Because he’s not going to judge me. He’s not going into this thinking I’m some sort of crackpot.”
“I never said I think you’re a—”
“You don’t have to,” Cynthia said. “I could see it in your eyes. When I thought that man was my brother. You thought I’d lost my mind.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Hire your fucking detective.”
I never saw the slap coming. I don’t think Cynthia did either, and she was the one swinging. It just happened. An explosion of anger, like a thunderclap, standing out there on the step. And all we could do for a couple of seconds was look at each other in stunned silence. Cynthia appeared to be in shock, both hands poised just over her open mouth.
Finally, I said, “I guess I can be grateful it wasn’t your backhand. I wouldn’t even be standing now.”
“Terry,” she said, “I don’t know what happened. I just, I just kind of lost my mind there for a second.”
I pulled her close to me, whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry. I’ll always be that guy in your corner, I’ll always be here for you.”
She put her arms around me and pressed her head into my chest. I had a pretty good feeling that we’d be throwing our money away. But even if Denton Abagnall didn’t find out anything, maybe hiring him to try was exactly what Cynthia needed to do. Maybe she was right. It was a way to take control of the situation.
At least for a while. As long as we could afford it. I did some quick calculations in my head and figured that a month’s mortgage payment, plus dipping into the movie rental fund for the next couple of months, would buy us a week of Abagnall’s time.
“We’ll hire him,” I said. She hugged me a bit more tightly.
“If he doesn’t find anything soon,” she said, still not looking at me, “we’ll stop.”
“What do we know about this guy?” I asked. “Is he reliable? Is he trustworthy?”
Cynthia pulled away, sniffed. I handed her a tissue from my pocket and she dabbed her eyes, blew her nose. “I called Deadline. Got the producer. She got all defensive when she knew it was me, figured I was going to give her shit about that psychic, but then I asked her if they ever used detectives to find out stuff for them, and she gave me this guy’s name, said they hadn’t used him, but they did a story on him once. Said he seemed on the up-and-up.”
“Then let’s go talk to him,” I said.
Abagnall had been sitting on the couch, looking through Cynthia’s shoeboxes of mementos, and got up when we came in. I know he spotted my red cheek, but he did a good job of not being too obvious about it.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I was having a look at your things here. I’d like to spend some more time looking at them, provided you’ve reached a decision about whether you want my help.”
??
?We have,” I said. “And we do. We’d like you to try to find out what happened to Cynthia’s family.”
“I’m not going to give you any false hopes,” Abagnall said. He spoke slowly, deliberately, and jotted down the occasional thing in his notebook. “This is a very cold trail. I’ll start with reviewing the police file on this, talking to anyone who remembers working on the case, but I think you should have low expectations.”
Cynthia nodded solemnly.
“I don’t see a lot here,” he said, motioning to the shoeboxes, “that jumps out at me, that offers any sorts of clues, at least right away. But I wouldn’t mind hanging on to these, for a while, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine,” Cynthia said. “Just so long as I get them back.”
“Of course.”
“What about the hat?” she asked. The hat she believed to be her father’s sat on the couch next to him. He’d been looking at it earlier.
“Well,” he said, “the first thing I would suggest is that you and your husband review your security arrangements here, perhaps upgrade your locks, get deadbolts on your doors.”
“I’m on it,” I said. I had already called a couple of locksmiths to see who could fit us in first.
“Because whether this hat is your father’s or not, someone got in here and left it. You have a daughter. You want this house to be as secure as it can possibly be. As far as determining whether this is your father’s,” he said, his voice low and comforting, “I suppose I could take it to a private lab and they could attempt to do a DNA test on it, to find hair samples from it, sweat from the inside lining. But that won’t be cheap, and Mrs. Archer, you’d need to provide a sample for comparison purposes. If there turned out to be a link between your DNA and what they might find on this hat, well, that might confirm that this was indeed your father’s, but it won’t tell us where he is or whether he’s alive.”
I could tell, looking at Cynthia, that she was starting to feel overwhelmed.
“Why don’t we just leave out that part of it for now,” I suggested.
Abagnall nodded. “That would be my advice, at least for the time being.” Inside his jacket, his cell phone rang. “Excuse me one second.” He opened the phone, saw who was calling, answered it. “Yes, love?” He listened, nodded. “Oh, that sounds wonderful. With the shrimp?” He smiled. “But not too spicy. Okay. I’ll see you in a bit.” He folded the phone and put it away. “My wife,” he said. “She gives me a call about this time to let me know what she’s making for dinner.”
Cynthia and I exchanged glances.
“Shrimp with linguini in a hot pepper sauce tonight,” he said, smiling. “Gives me something to look forward to. Now, Mrs. Archer, I wonder, do you think you have any photos of your father? You’ve provided some of your mother, and one of your brother, but I have nothing for Clayton Bigge.”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“I’ll check with the Department of Motor Vehicles,” he said. “I don’t know how far back their records go, but maybe they have a photo. And perhaps you could tell me a bit more about the route he traveled for work.”
“Between here and Chicago,” Cynthia said. “He was in sales. He took orders, I think it was, for machine shop supplies. That kind of thing.”
“You never knew his exact route?”
She shook her head. “I was just a kid. I didn’t really understand what he did, only that it meant he was on the road a lot of the time. One time, he showed me some pictures of the Wrigley building in Chicago. There’s a Polaroid shot of it in the box, I think.”
Abagnall nodded, folded his notebook shut and slipped it into his jacket, then handed each of us a business card. He gathered up the shoeboxes and got to his feet. “I’ll be in touch soon, let you know how I’m progressing. How about you pay me now for three days of my services? I wouldn’t expect to find the answers to your questions in that time, but I might have an idea whether I think it’s reasonable to think that such a thing is possible.”
Cynthia went for her checkbook, which was in her purse, wrote out a check and handed it to Abagnall.
Grace, who had been upstairs all this time, called down, “Mom? Can you come up here for a second? I spilled something on my top.”
“I’ll walk Mr. Abagnall to his car,” I said.
Abagnall had his door open and was about to plop down into his seat when I said, “Cynthia mentioned that you might want to talk to her aunt, to Tess.”
“Yes.”
If I didn’t want Abagnall’s efforts to be a complete waste, it made sense for him to know as much as possible.
“She recently told me something, something she’s not yet disclosed to Cynthia.”
Abagnall didn’t beg, but waited. I told him about the anonymous donations of cash.
“Well,” he said.
“I’ll tell Tess to expect you. And I’ll tell her she should tell you everything.”
“Thank you,” he said. He dropped into the seat, pulled the door shut, powered down the window. “Do you believe her?”
“Tess? Yes, I do. She showed me the note, the envelopes.”
“No. Your wife. Do you believe your wife?”
I cleared my throat before responding. “Of course.”
Abagnall reached over his shoulder for the seat belt, snapped it in place. “One time I had a woman call me up, wanted me to find someone, went to see her, and can you guess who she wanted me to locate?”
I waited.
“Elvis. She wanted me to find Elvis Presley. This was around 1990, I think it was, and Elvis had been dead about thirteen years at that point. She lived in a big house, had lots of money, and she had a few screws loose as I’m sure you might have guessed, and she’d never so much as met Elvis in her entire life and had no connection to him whatsoever, but she was convinced that the King was still alive and just waiting for her to find and rescue him. I could have worked for her for a year, trying to track him down for her. She could have been my early retirement plan, this lady, bless her heart. But I had to say no. She was very upset, so I explained to her that I’d been hired once before to find Elvis, and that I’d found him, and he was fine, but wanted to live the rest of his life in peace.”
“No kidding. And did she accept that?”
“Well, she seemed to at the time. Of course, she might have called some other detective. For all I know, he’s still working on the case.” He chuckled softly to himself. “Wouldn’t that be something.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Abagnall?” I asked.
“I guess the point I’m making is, your wife really wants to know what happened to her parents and her brother. I wouldn’t take a check from someone I thought was trying to string me a line. Your wife isn’t trying to string me a line.”
“No, I don’t think she is, either,” I said. “But this woman who wanted you to find Elvis, was she trying to string you a line? Or did she really believe, in her heart, that Elvis was still alive?”
Abagnall gave me a sad smile. “I’ll report back to you folks in three days, sooner if I learn anything interesting.”
16
“Men are weak—not you, of course—and they let you down, but just as often it’s the women who’ll really betray you,” she said.
“I know. You’ve said this before,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Getting sarcastic. He didn’t like it when she got like that. “Am I boring you, sweetheart?”
“No, it’s okay. Go ahead. You were saying. Women will betray you, too. I was listening.”
“That’s right. Like that Tess.”
“Yeah, her.”
“She stole from me.”
“Well…” Technically speaking, he was thinking, then decided it wasn’t worth getting into a debate.
“That’s basically what she did,” she said. “That money was mine. She had no business hanging on to it herself.”
“It’s not like she spent it on herself. She did use it to—”
?
??Enough! It makes me crazy, the more I think about it. And I don’t appreciate you defending her.”
“I’m not defending her,” he said.
“She should have found a way to tell me and make things right.”
And how would she have done that, he wondered. But he said nothing.
“Are you there?” she said.
“I’m still here.”
“Was there something you wanted to say?”
“Nothing. Just…well, that would have been a bit tricky, don’t you think?”
“I can’t talk to you sometimes,” she said. “Call me tomorrow. If I need some intelligent conversation in the meantime, I’ll talk to the mirror.”
17
After Abagnall left, I called Tess from my cell to give her a heads-up.
“I’ll help him any way I can,” Tess said. “I think Cynthia’s doing the right thing, having someone private look into this. If she’s willing to take this kind of step, she’s probably ready for me to tell her what I know.”
“We’ll all get together again soon.”
“When the phone rang, I was actually thinking about calling you,” Tess said. “But I didn’t want to call you at the house, it would seem odd, my asking for you if Cynthia answered, and I don’t think I have your cell phone number around here anywhere.”
“What is it, Tess?”
She took a breath. “Oh, Terry, I went for another test.”
I felt my legs going weak. “What did they say?” She’d told me earlier that she might have a few months left. I wondered if that timetable had been shortened.
“I’m going to be okay,” she said. “They said the other tests, they were fairly conclusive, but they turned out to be wrong. This last one, it was definite.” She paused. “Terry, I’m not dying.”
“Oh my God, Tess, that’s such wonderful news. They’re sure?”
“They’re sure.”
“That’s so wonderful.”
“Yeah, if I were the kind of person who ever prayed, I’d have to say my prayers were answered. But Terry. Tell me you didn’t tell Cynthia.”