Mary Clark - Where Are You Now?

“Carolyn, don’t look at me like that. Can’t you understand that Mack was my best friend? I never could figure out why he chose to disappear. Now I wonder if something was going on in his head that nobody realized at the time.”

“Are you worried about Mack or about yourself, Nick?” I asked.

“I won’t answer that. Carolyn, the one thing I beg of you, plead with you, is that if he is in contact with you, or if he does call you, don’t think you’re doing him a favor by shielding him. Did you hear the message Leesey Andrews left for her father this morning?” He looked at me expectantly.

For a moment I was too shaken to speak, then managed to say that I hadn’t turned on the radio or television all day. But when Nick told me, all I could think of was Barrott’s theory that Mack stole his own car. It’s crazy, but it reminded me of the day I was five or six years old and Mack suddenly had a terrible nosebleed. Daddy was home, and he grabbed one of the monogrammed towels from a rack in the bathroom to stem the flow. We had an elderly housekeeper at that time who adored Mack. She was so upset that she tried to yank the towel out of Dad’s hand. “That one’s for show,” she shrieked, “it’s for show!”

Daddy always got a kick out of telling that story, but he always added, “Poor Mrs. Anderson was so worried about Mack, but to her the fancy towels just weren’t disposable. I told her the towels have our name on them, and Mack can ruin them if he likes!”

I could imagine Mack stealing his own car, but not Mack holding Leesey hostage and torturing her father. I looked at Nick. “I don’t know what to think about Mack,” I said. “I swear to you and to anyone who will listen that other than those Mother’s Day calls, I have not heard from Mack or seen him in ten years.”

Nick nodded, and my guess is that he believed me. Then he asked, “Do you think that I am responsible for Leesey’s disappearance? That I have her hidden somewhere?”

I examined my heart and my soul before I answered. “No, I don’t,” I said. “But both of you have been dragged into this, Mack because I went to the police, you because she disappeared from your club. If it’s neither one of you, then who is responsible?”

“Carolyn, I don’t know where to begin to look for the answer to that.”

We talked for more than an hour. I told him I was going to try to see Lil Kramer alone, because she was afraid to say anything in front of her husband. We went round and round about the fact that, just before he vanished, Mack had been upset with Mrs. Kramer but hadn’t told Nick why. I told Nick how Bruce Galbraith had been so hostile about Mack when I saw him last week, and that I thought Barbara had rushed to visit her father in Martha’s Vineyard just to avoid being questioned.

“I’m going to drive up there tomorrow or Tuesday,” I said. “Mother doesn’t want to see me, and Elliott will take care of her.”

Nick asked me if I thought that Mom would marry Elliott.

“I think so,” I said. “Quite honestly, I hope so. They’re very good together. Mom certainly loved Dad, but he delighted in being a bit of a rebel. Elliott is actually more of a soul mate, which of course is a little hard for me to swallow. They’re both perfectionists, and I think they’ll be very happy together.” Then I added words I’d never thought I’d say. “That’s why Mack was always her favorite. He did everything right. I’m too impulsive for Mom’s taste. Witness going to the police and opening up this whole mess.”

I was appalled that I had confided that to Nick. I think he was about to come over to me, maybe put his arms around me, but he must have known that wasn’t what I wanted. Instead, he said, his tone light, “See if you can guess this one: ‘She sprang full-fledged from her father’s brow.’”

“The goddess Minerva,” I said. “Sister Catherine, sixth grade. Man, how she loved teaching mythology.” I stood up. “You did ask me to have dinner, you know. How about Neary’s? I want a sliced-steak sandwich and french fries.”

Nick hesitated. “Carolyn, I have to warn you. There are cameras outside. My car’s near the door. We can make a run for it. I don’t think they’ll follow us.”

That was the way it turned out. The camera lights flashed the moment we exited the building. Someone tried to shove a microphone in my face. “Ms. MacKenzie, do you think your brother…” Nick grabbed my hand, and we ran for his car. He drove up York Avenue until Seventy-second Street, then turned and doubled back. “I think we should be okay now,” he said.

I didn’t agree or disagree. My one consolation was that Mom was in a safe place where the media couldn’t get at her.

Neary’s is an Irish pub on Fifty-seventh Street, a block away from Sutton Place. It’s like a second home for many of us in the neighborhood. The atmosphere is warm, the food is good, and the odds are that on any given night, you’ll know half the diners.

If I needed moral support, and God knows I did, Jimmy Neary provided it. When he saw me he crossed the room instantly. “Carolyn, it’s a disgrace what they’re insinuating about Mack,” he told me, putting a warm hand on my shoulder. “That boy was a saint. You wait and see, the truth will come out.”

He turned, and recognized Nick. “Hey, kid. Remember when you and Mack came in, you bet me that your father’s pasta was a match for my corned beef?”

“We never put it to the test,” Nick said. “And now my Dad is in Florida, retired.”

“Retired? How does he like it?” Jimmy asked.

“He hates it.”

“So would I. Tell him to come back, and we’ll finally get the answer.”

Jimmy ushered us to one of the corner tables in the back. That was where Nick told me more about the visit to Florida. “I begged my mother to keep the New York papers away from Pop,” he said. “I don’t know what it will do to him if he finds out I’ve been designated a ‘person of interest’ in Leesey’s disappearance.”

Over sliced-steak sandwiches, by unspoken mutual consent, we drifted into neutral territory. Nick talked about opening his first restaurant and how well it did. He hinted that these last five years, he’d moved too fast. “I think I read Donald Trump’s success story once too often,” he admitted. “I got the idea that skating on thin ice was fun. I’ve banked an awful lot on the Woodshed. It’s the right spot at the right time. But if the State Liquor Authority wants to shut it down, they’ll find a way. And if that happens, I’m in big trouble.”

We talked cautiously about Barbara Hanover. “I remember thinking how beautiful she was,” I told him.

“She is and was, but Carolyn, there’s something else about Barbara, a kind of calculated ‘What’s best for Barbara?’ agenda. It’s hard to explain. But after we all graduated and I went for my MBA, Mack was gone, and as for Bruce, I didn’t care if I ever saw him again.”

We both had a cappuccino, then Nick drove me back to Sutton Place. There was just one television van halfway down the block. He rushed me into the building and to the elevator. As the operator held the door open, Nick said, “Carolyn, I didn’t do it and neither did Mack. Hang on to that thought.”

He skipped the social kiss and was gone. I went upstairs. The message light was blinking. It was Detective Barrott. “Ms. MacKenzie. At eighty forty P.M. tonight, you received another call from Leesey Andrews’s cell phone. Your brother didn’t leave a message.”

L ucas Reeves had not taken the weekend off. He had spent it in his office, working with his technicians. Charles MacKenzie Sr. had hired him nearly ten years ago to find his missing son, and the fact that he had never been able to uncover even the slightest hint of what happened to Mack had given Reeves a sense of failure that was never far from his consciousness.