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He jokes about himself. “My father, Franklin Delano Wallace, was named after his distant cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who remained Father’s hero. Why do you think my name is Elliott? That was the name the president chose for one of his sons. And despite all he did for the common man, remember that Roosevelt was first and foremost an aristocrat. I’m afraid my father was not only an aristocrat but a downright snob. So when I come across too stuffy, blame it on the stuffed shirt who raised me.”
By the time we finished coffee, I had decided that I absolutely would not even hint to Elliott that I was going to actively search for Mack. I offered to stay at Mom’s apartment while she was away, a fact that pleased her. She isn’t impressed with the studio in Greenwich Village that I rented last September when I started my clerkship with the judge. She certainly didn’t know that my reason for staying at Sutton Place was to be available if Mack learned that I was still looking for him and tried to reach me there.
Outside the restaurant I hailed a cab. Elliott and Mom chose to walk to Sutton Place. As the cab pulled away, I watched with mixed feelings as Elliott took Mom’s arm, and, their shoulders brushing, they went down the street together.
8
S ixty-seven-year-old retired surgeon Dr. David Andrews did not know why he had felt so uneasy after putting his daughter back on the train to Manhattan where she was completing her junior year at NYU.
Leesey and her older brother, Gregg, had come up to Greenwich to be with him on Mother’s Day, a tough day for all of them, only the second one without Helen. The three of them had visited her grave in St. Mary’s cemetery, then gone out for an early di
Leesey had pla
Sunday evening, they had gone through some of the photograph albums and talked about Helen. “I miss her so much,” Leesey had whispered.
“Me, too, honey,” he had confided.
But Monday morning when he dropped her at the station, Leesey had been her usual bubbly self, which was why David Andrews could not understand the gnawing sense of worry that undermined his golf game both Monday and Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, he turned on the 6:30 news and was dozing in front of the television when the phone rang. It was Kate Carlisle, Leesey’s best friend, with whom she shared an apartment in Greenwich Village. Her question, and the troubled voice in which she asked it, caused him to bolt up from the easy chair.
“Dr. Andrews, is Leesey there?”
“No, she isn’t, Kate. Why would she be here?” he asked.
As he spoke he glanced around the room. Even though he had sold the big house after Helen’s death, and she’d never been in this condo, when the phone rang, he instinctively looked around for her, her hand outstretched to take the receiver from him.
When there was no answer, he demanded sharply, “Kate, why are you looking for Leesey?”
“I don’t know, I just hoped…” Kate’s voice broke.
“Kate, tell me what happened.”
“Last night she went out with some of our friends to the Woodshed, a new place we’ve been talking about trying.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s on the border of the Village and SoHo. Leesey stayed after the others left. There was a really good band, and you know how she loves to dance.”
“What time did the others leave?”
“It was about two o’clock, Dr. Andrews.”
“Had Leesey been drinking?”
“Not much. She was fine when they left but she wasn’t here when I woke up this morning, and no one has seen her all day. I’ve been trying to reach her on her cell phone, but she doesn’t answer. I’ve been calling everyone I could think of who might have seen her, but no one has.”
“Did you call that place where she was last night?”
“I spoke to the bartender there. He said that Leesey stayed till they closed at three o’clock and then left alone. He swore that she absolutely wasn’t drunk or anywhere near it. She just stayed till the end.”
Andrews closed his eyes, trying desperately to sort out the steps he needed to take. Let her be all right, God, he prayed. Leesey, the unexpected baby born when Helen was forty-five years old and they had long since given up hope of having a second child.
Impatiently, he pulled his legs off the hassock, pushed it aside, stood up, brushed back his thick white hair from his forehead, then swallowed to activate the salivary glands inside his suddenly dry mouth.
The commuter traffic is over, he thought. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to get down to Greenwich Village.
“From Greenwich, Co
“Kate, I’ll start down right away,” Andrews said. “I’ll call Leesey’s brother. We’ll meet you at the apartment. How far is this bar from your place?”
“About a mile.”
“Would she have taken a cab?”
“It was nice out. She probably would have walked.”
Alone on dark streets, late at night, Andrews thought. Trying to keep his voice from breaking, he said, “I’ll be there in an hour. Keep calling anyone you can think of who might have an idea where she is.”
Dr. Gregg Andrews was showering when the phone rang, and he decided to let the answering machine pick it up. He was off duty and had a date with someone he had met the night before at a cocktail reception for the launching of a novel by a friend. Now a cardiac surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, as his father had been until his retirement, he toweled dry, walked into his bedroom, and considered the fact that the May evening had begun to turn cool. From his closet, he chose an open-necked long-sleeve light blue shirt, tan slacks, and a navy blue jacket.
Leesey tells me I always look so stuffy, he remembered, thinking with a smile of the little sister who was twelve years his junior. She says I should get some cool colors and mix them up.
She also says I should get contact lenses and get rid of my crew cut, he thought.
“Gregg, you’re really cute, not handsome, but cute,” she had told him matter-of-factly. “I mean women like men who look as though they have a brain in their heads. And they always fall for doctors. It’s kind of a ‘Daddy’ complex, I think. But it doesn’t hurt to look a little zippy.”
The message light was blinking on the phone. He debated whether he should bother to check it now but then pressed the play button.
“Gregg, it’s Dad. Leesey’s roommate just called me. Leesey is missing. She left a bar alone last night, and no one has seen her since. I’m on my way to her apartment. Meet me there.”
Chilled, Gregg Andrews stopped the machine, and pushed the numeral that rang his father’s car. “Dad, I just got your message,” he said when his father answered. “I’ll meet you at Leesey’s apartment. On the way I’ll call Larry Ahearn. Just don’t drive too fast.”
Grabbing his cell phone, Gregg rushed out of his apartment, caught the elevator as it was descending from an upper floor, ran through the lobby, and, ignoring the doorman, rushed out into the road to flag down a cab. As usual at this hour, there was none to be seen with the light on. Frantically he looked up and down the street, hoping to spot one of the gypsy limos that were often available on Park Avenue.
He spotted one that was parked halfway down the block and rushed to get in it. He barked Leesey’s address to the driver, then opened his cell phone to call his college roommate at Georgetown, who was now Captain of detectives in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.