I went to the foot of the stairs and listened, but I could hear nothing. With the new addition on our house, already more than three months old but still new to me, our bedroom was no longer just a few feet from the staircase. It sat atop the new family room off the kitchen and was the most luxurious room I had ever called my own. I walked quietly up several steps till I heard the voice of my husband talking to our son. I smiled and listened for a few moments. They seemed to be having a fine time up there although the conversation was pretty one-sided. But as long as things were calm, I went back to the kitchen and looked at the brief list Ada had written for me.
The problem with the second person on the list, Jill Brady, was that all I had for her was her work number and today was Friday, the first of January. It wasn’t likely she would be at her desk before Monday, and that was too far in the future to suit me. I took out our Manhattan directory and looked up Jill Brady. There was none listed. I tried Brooklyn with the same result, which didn’t surprise me. Young single women often kept their names out of phone books to thwart nuisance calls or worse. Well, I had the business number and that seemed like the only place to start.
After one or two rings a thoroughly nonprofessional male voice answered on a recording: “You have reached the offices of WJC. We are not open for business. Our regular office hours are Monday through Friday from nine A.M. to five-thirty P.M. If this is an emergency, please call…” and he dictated a number with a New Jersey area code, “and leave a message. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
I took down the number, called it, and left a message that I hoped would encourage him to call back soon. I didn’t have long to wait. The phone rang before I had a chance to do much else.
“Ms. Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“This is W. J. Childs. You left a message about Susan Stark?”
“That’s right. She hasn’t been seen for the last two days and she missed some appointments. I’m trying to find Jill Brady to see if she knows anything that can help.”
“I’ve got Jill’s home number here somewhere. Hold on.” He left the phone and I heard the sounds of a family, probably in another room. Then he came back and gave me the number.
“How long have you known Susan, Mr. Childs?”
“ ’Bout a year. That’s how long she’s worked for me.”
“How did you come to hire her?”
“Believe it or not, through an ad in the New York Times. I was starting up a new magazine and I needed a jack-of-all-trades, a writer, an editor, a researcher, someone in the right age group. I couldn’t afford a whole staff so I hired Susan. She does a little of everything and she does it well.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Uh, yesterday? No, must have been the day before. We took yesterday off. Have you talked to her boyfriend? I think they live together. He should know what’s going on.”
“I have,” I said. “He picked her up at the office and he dropped her off in Brooklyn and no one’s seen her since.”
“Doesn’t sound like Susan. She’s a pretty together person.”
“How did she seem the last time you saw her?”
“She seemed like Susan. I’m not the person to ask. I’m busy seventy minutes an hour, and I’m not known for noticing what people have on or if they’ve had a bad night.”
“You knew Susan had a boyfriend.”
“She introduced him at a party and I’m more or less aware they live together. Try Jill. She notices every time I wear a new tie to work. And their desks are near each others’. If Susan wanted to talk about herself, her problems, whatever, she’d probably talk to Jill.”
OK, I thought. That’s the next move.
“Could you say that again?” It was a girlish voice, confused but wide-awake.
“Mr. Childs gave me your home phone number. I’m Chris Bennett and I’m a friend of Susan Stark’s mother. Susan hasn’t been seen for two days and we’re all very worried about her. I thought, since you know her from work, you might have some idea where to find her.”
“I don’t know where she went. She just said she’d need the car for most of the day.”
“You lent her your car?”
“Yes. I didn’t need it and it’s better to give it a workout than let it sit for days on end. When you drive it, at least the battery gets charged up.”
“When did you give it to her?”
“Well I gave her the keys on the thirtieth, two days ago. I don’t know if she was planning to use it that day or yesterday or both. She just said she had to drive somewhere and she was planning to rent a car and I said, ‘Why don’t you take mine?’ ”
“Has she returned the car, Jill?”
“I guess so. She said she would.”
“You mean you haven’t seen her?”
“She said she’d just put it back in my garage when she was through with it. I haven’t looked because I don’t need it. She’ll give me the keys on Monday at work.”
“Is your car far from where you live?”
“It’s a couple of blocks. I rent the garage from an old couple with a house. They gave up their car a few years ago so they rent it out.”
“Is it too far to walk to check whether Susan’s brought it back?” I asked.
I heard her let out her breath. “I can go if it’s really important. But it’s getting dark and I think it’s cold out.”
“Call a taxi, Jill. I’ll pay for it.” It wasn’t that I was feeling expansive; I just thought that if she refused, I’d have to let the police know, and they’d show up on her doorstep and ruin what was left of her day.
“Look, I’ll walk over, OK? Give me your number and I’ll call you back in an hour. I can’t go just yet.”
I dictated my number and told her to call collect. “Did Susan give you any hint of where she was going with the car?”
“She didn’t say where, but she said she’d probably put a hundred miles or so on the car. Frankly, it sounded good to me. It’s my father’s old car and I keep having battery trouble in the winter. I really hate to drive in the ice and snow. I don’t know what I keep it for. Between the garage and the insurance, I could rent a car cheaper.”
“Thanks, Jill. You’ve really been a help. I’ll be home all night, so whenever you call is fine.”
I ran upstairs to tell the news to Jack.
“OK. That sounds like real progress. You know where that garage of Jill’s is?”
“I forgot to ask but it’s a 718 number, so it’s Brooklyn or Queens.”
“Or Staten Island,” Jack said. “You remember the number?”
I remembered the first three digits.
“Brooklyn. So this Jill lives somewhere near the Starks, and Susan got dropped at the Starks’ two days ago, and either went from there to the garage or slept over at the Starks’ and picked up the car yesterday.”
“And we’ll find out in an hour or so if she returned it.”
“If she didn’t, we’ll have to get the plate number and put it in the alarms.”
“Jill’s not going to like that.”
“We’ve got a missing person and a lot of unanswered questions. This isn’t a matter of liking it or not.”
But I felt for Jill. She had done someone a kindness and accidentally got herself involved in a police inquiry. I hoped it wouldn’t tear her life apart.
Jill called back as I was getting started on my busy hour with Eddie: his bath, his nursing, his nice, warm bed. The bath was almost ready when the phone rang.
“It’s not there,” Jill’s voice said.
“The car hasn’t been returned?”
“The garage is empty. I listened to my answering machine and she hasn’t called. But I don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about. She knew I wasn’t going to use the car this weekend, and maybe she got back from wherever too late to drop it off yesterday, and today’s a day for sleeping late. She probably left it in the street and she’ll get it back tomorrow.”
“Jill, can you give me the plate number on your car?”
“Why?” There was a note of hostility in the question.
“Because I think the police will want to keep an eye open for it.”
“That’s crazy. She didn’t steal it. I lent it to her. I don’t care whether it’s back or not.”
“But Susan’s missing and she’s very likely to be where the car is.”
I could feel her distress in the silence. Then she dictated the plate number and described the car. It was an old maroon Chevy with a noticeable dent in the rear fender on the passenger side where, she explained sadly, a taxi had clipped her; her case was still pending.
I gave the information to Jack while I got Eddie ready for our big hour together, and he phoned it in to the Brooklyn precinct where he and Kevin had reported Susan’s disappearance. Eddie had started to fill out into adorable chubbiness, and he had begun to smile regularly, making his parents about as happy as we had ever been. He had begun to love his bath, a distinct change from those first days home when he clearly hated it.
Clean, warm, and happy, he snuggled on my shoulder as I settled in an old rocker we had moved into his room. Jack came in as I was nursing and said there would be an alarm out for the car in the tri-state area.
“And they’ll probably drop in on Jill Brady tonight, ask her the same questions you did, and get the same answers.”
“I feel sorry for her, Jack. I start to see why people are reluctant to come forward.”
“It has to be done, Chris. Boy, he’s getting big, isn’t he?”
I looked down at our son and brushed my fingers through his fine hair. “I guess there’s no other way of conducting an investigation,” I said with resignation.
“Gotta start somewhere.”
“Let me give Arnold a quick call. Can you burp him?”
I giggled and handed Eddie over.
Arnold was home and came to the phone as soon as he heard Harriet mention my name. I briefed him, hearing his appreciative grunts as I went through what I had learned and from whom.
“I knew you’d be light-years ahead of the cops,” he said. “It sounds like you’ve really learned something. But that bit about Susan thinking she’s adopted. I’ve always thought she was a very sane girl, and that’s crazy. I was there when Ada was pregnant and I was at the synagogue the night they named her. And I’ve never seen a mother and daughter look as much alike as those two.”
“Arnold, forget the facts. Something was bothering her and that’s how she made it real.”
“You think she spent yesterday looking for a mythical birth mother?”
“I don’t know, and she didn’t tell anyone that I know where she was going, why, or what she expected to find.”
“How far did she say she’d be driving?”
“About a hundred miles altogether. When Jack gets through burping Eddie, he’ll drop a compass on a map and draw a circle with a radius of fifty miles. Let’s see what we come up with.”
“I don’t think your compass is going to highlight any person or place that’ll ring any bells. It’s only an estimate anyway. And driving in circles never got me anywhere.”
“I’m glad your sense of humor hasn’t deserted you,” I said.
“Was that my sense of humor talking? I thought it was my rational self. Well, maybe Harriet can scare up an old compass of our kids’ and we’ll draw our own circles. Where’s ground zero? Brooklyn?”
“Somewhere near Ada Stark’s house.”
“Always knew Brooklyn was the center of the world. Thanks, Chrissie. You’ve restored my faith.”
“In what?”
“In you. In the civilian population. In the ability of one smart human being with a telephone to dig up information.”
I said my good-byes, retrieved my baby, and sat down in the rocker to finish what we had started.