I called Walt Kendig as Duffy headed back toward Mill Street in our quest to head back to New Jersey before the Tappan Zee fell down, which could be any minute. I’d promised I’d call him, so I did. Yes, we’d found out he was in Damien Mosley’s high school class, but so were two hundred other people. The poor man seemed so happy to hear from me that it was just a touch pathetic.
“This is amazing!” he gushed. Duffy, who could no doubt hear Walt’s voice despite my holding the phone to my ear, grimaced a little. “Duffy Madison and Rachel Goldman.”
I decided not to debate his choice of billing and thanked him again for his help in our search for Damien Mosley. Walt seemed surprised somehow that we had not wrapped the whole thing up and found Damien, returned him to Poughkeepsie, and moved on to our next adventure before three in the afternoon.
“I thought for sure you’d be able to track him down,” he said.
“Well, maybe we still can, but it’s going to take more time,” I told him. “Anyway, you were a big help, and we really appreciate your contribution. If we ever come back up to Poughkeepsie . . .” Maybe Duffy might come back to look for Damien Mosley, but I didn’t see how this was going to help my writing at all, so he’d be doing any further digging on his own.
“Hang on,” Walt said. Damn! Just when I thought I’d made a clean break of it. “I found something back at my office that might be of help to you. Do you want to come over here and see it?”
“What is it?” I asked, suppressing a sigh. I just wanted to go home and write something bad.
“A picture. Something that could give you an idea of Damien and what he was like.”
A photograph of Damien Mosley would certainly go a long way to proving he was or was not actually the Duffy Madison now driving me away from Poughkeepsie. “Can you just send it to my phone?” I asked Walt.
“It’s a real printed-out photograph,” he said. “It’s a little faded, and I don’t think a scan would hold up well. You need to take a look. I mean, I don’t want to tell you your business.”
“My business is making stuff up,” I told him, then looked at Duffy, who was frowning. “Walt says—”
“I heard him.” Duffy made a right turn to begin his process of turning us in the opposite direction, back toward Walt’s office. He’d do this by making three right turns rather than pulling into someone’s driveway and then backing out in a K-turn or simply making a U-turn like any other normal American.
“We’re on our way,” I told Walt and hung up before he could be exultant at me. I just wasn’t in the mood. I was tired of the detective life and wanted to go back to being a hack writer. I leaned back—I don’t know why I always tend to move forward when I’m on the phone in a car—and moaned a little.
“What’s the problem?” Duffy asked. “We might very well be on the verge of finding out something truly significant about Damien Mosley’s disappearance.”
I went back to closing my eyes. It just felt good. “I’m not an investigator, Duffy. I’m less interested in finding Damien than I am in finding my mojo.”
It was very relaxing not to see anything but to feel the movement of the car as Duffy made his numerous right turns, then a left to get us back in the proper direction. “As we’ve discussed, I believe the two are intertwined. Your writer’s block is bound to be relieved by finding the truth so you can accept that I am what I say I am.”
I didn’t open my eyes, but I did feel my teeth clench. Still, I managed to push between them, “I don’t have writer’s block. There is no such thing as writer’s block. I’m still writing. What I have is a slump brought on by your messing with my head.”
In my mind’s eye, I could see the look on his face. If you believed him, I could have seen it before he had a face. “I am not messing with your head, Rachel.”
That was enough; I opened my eyes and faced him. Duffy, of course, did not take his eyes off the road because he’s Duffy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and Duffy would never do that.
“You are,” I said. “You can’t have it both ways, Duffy. If you’re not messing with my head, then you are delusional. Those are the only two possibilities, and you’ve already told me you’re not delusional, so what does that leave?”
There was no answer; we were already pulling up to Walt Kendig’s place of business at Associated Accounting Services, as generic a name for a business as I could possibly imagine, and I have to name fake businesses all the time. Duffy parked the car across the street from the office, which was indicated by a sign in a third-floor window. There was a really dilapidated little MG, a two-seat sports car that had seen better days before 1974, its front right fender held on with duct tape, parked in front. I was glad we had gotten the address ahead of time, or I, personally, would have driven right by the unremarkable building and kept going until we’d gotten to Albany. Which I was guessing would be pretty far.
We got out of the car, Duffy changing his face from glum at having been challenged to businesslike and inquisitive. I imagine my face was going from frustrated to impatient but didn’t have a mirror handy and was glad for it.
After trudging up the stairs (the building was only four stories and old enough not to have required an elevator) to Associated Accounting Services, I let Duffy lead me to the office door. I was still sort of longing for the lovely moment I’d spent in the car with my eyes closed. I resolved to sleep the whole way home. It had already been a long day, and it was still the middle of the afternoon.
“How far are we from Woodstock?” I asked Duffy suddenly. My father lives in Claremont, New York, near Woodstock, and if it was not very far from here, I could look forward to feeling guilty for not going to see him.
“About an hour,” Duffy answered. “Why? Is there some reason you believe Damien Mosley might be there?”
We found the office door and opened it, so I didn’t have to answer him. It wasn’t a large office, but there were five or six people in cubicles in a sort of bullpen operation and a very bored-looking receptionist at the front desk.
She didn’t get a chance to ask us what business we might have there for two reasons: (1) Walt Kendig appeared out of nowhere, undoubtedly having been watching out the window for us, and greeted us too warmly; and (2) she was applying nail polish and was very engrossed in her work. Black polish, if you were wondering. And Halloween wasn’t even on the horizon yet.
“I’m so glad I caught you before you left!” Walt gushed. “I think you’ll find this very interesting.” He led us back toward his desk, third cubicle on the left, with the air of someone who was having way too much fun and knew it. “I found it after I talked to you because you reminded me of those days.”
We didn’t have to ask which days. We stood at Walt’s desk, and he sat behind it, reaching for a folder.
“It was taken with a regular film camera, not a digital one,” Walt said, seemingly apologizing for the poor visual quality of what we were about to see. It sort of made me wonder why we were bothering until I remembered Duffy and how I was about to discover that he was not Damien Mosley.
And that wasn’t going to make me feel better, I knew.
“When was it taken, and where was it processed?” Duffy was the professional. I was the writer. We were each acting to type. I sat down in a spare chair because I was tired.
“Probably about a year before Damien left,” Walt said. “And if I remember correctly, I had the roll developed at the CVS on South Road. Why does that matter?”
He handed the photograph to Duffy, who looked like he didn’t want to touch it. It was evidence, even if there had been no crime committed, and Duffy was uncomfortable about contaminating the evidence. I knew he wished he had a pair of latex gloves in his pocket, or maybe he did and just didn’t want to be seen for the anal retentive nut that he is.
“Everything matters in an investigation,” he said. It’s boilerplate; something he says when he doesn’t have a reason for the nutty question he’s asked but is afraid that if he doesn’t ask it, he’ll discover it is the key to the whole puzzle later. Duffy is haunted by something that happened to him as a young man, but I haven’t decided what it was yet.
It didn’t matter. Walt looked sufficiently impressed with the import of the moment. Besides, he had called us with this juicy piece of evidence and wanted (it was obvious) to be seen as a useful and helpful member of the team. Which was fine, since I was resigning from the team as soon as I got back to Adamstown. It was nice Duffy would have somebody to play with after I left.
“Wow,” Walt said. “I could maybe check and see if they have records that go back that far.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Duffy said. “But if it becomes important, I will check with you.”
Walt, awed, leaned in as Duffy turned his complete attention to the photograph. I was disengaged at this point but not so much that I didn’t look at the desk surface to see what all the fuss was about.
It was, as advertised, a pretty ragged printed photograph on what I’m sure was promoted as premium stock, in a matte finish that actually made the image less sharp than it might have been. I was trying to show off how indifferent I could be about it all—writers are such children—but I had to lean over the desk to get anything approaching a good look.
The picture showed five people in bowling shirts, which was not a huge surprise. Walt’s major connection to Damien Mosley appeared to be the bowling team, so any images he’d have would probably be related. The bowlers were standing around the ball return pointing to the screen over their heads, where presumably the score of their latest game was being displayed. It was too small a picture to make out the numbers and letters on the screen, but the team all looked pleased.
I recognized most of them. Walt, of course, was at the center, his arms around the shoulders of the two bowlers to his right and left, who were Louise Refsnyder (right) and Rod Wilkerson (left). Wearing a baseball cap on the far right was a man about Duffy’s size and build, wearing a baseball cap (for a local minor league team, I was guessing, because the logo was not a Major League affiliate) that cast a shadow on the top half of his face and almost completely obscured his eyes.
“Rod’s standing two people away from Louise,” I told Duffy. “He said he didn’t know her.”
“We knew he was lying.” Duffy shrugged.
“Rod said he didn’t know Lou?” Walt sounded astonished. “They were pretty tight for a while before he married Brenda.”
Duffy and I exchanged a look.
“That’s Damien,” Walt said, pointing at the man in the cap. He didn’t know we’d visited with Rod, so it was a natural comment to make. I still found myself mentally rolling my eyes at him; of course that was Damien. Someone who looked like Duffy but would be frustrating enough not to let us see his face? Who else could it be?
At the far left was a woman, not perfectly slim but attractive, her dark hair parted in the middle and hanging to her shoulders. She was grinning but in an artificial way. It was easy to see she was doing her best to look happy. The fact that she was indifferent showed around the corners of her eyes.
“Who is that?” Duffy asked, indicating the woman.
Walt didn’t even have to look. “That’s Michelle,” he said. “I forgot she was on the team until I found the picture.”
Gee, thanks, Walt. That was way helpful.
Duffy looked at him a moment and asked, “Michelle?”
“Michelle Mosley. Damien’s wife.”