Madeleine had a late date and wanted to shower and change before she went out. She promised to come by the store in the morning when I told her Bloody Murder had bagels and lox for brunch. I stayed in my booth and around eight thirty, Jerry wandered in looking harried. Instead of the slightly preppy khakis and navy blue sweater he had on at lunch, he was wearing an old pair of jeans, a black t-shirt that stretched snugly over his torso and a beat-up brown leather bomber jacket that had either been in the family for years or had been picked up at a Salvation Army thrift shop.
“Out with it,” I said, saying nothing about his appearance.
“You’re supposed to be home, resting,” was his greeting. Hostility at twenty paces.
“My, aren’t we surly? Considering you just told your wife you were going to be with me, isn’t it nice that you finally are?” His face darkened to a shade of blood-red I’d last seen in a wreath of Ian MacKay’s funeral flowers. “Now, let’s make a truth-teller out of me, what do you have?”
He produced a sheaf of papers. “I ran by the office after I got your message. Holly Mason Fisher. Born June tenth, nineteen seventy-four in Fairfield, Connecticut. One drug bust at eighteen--uppers--but let off because the arresting officer didn’t have an I crossed or a T dotted on the warrant. This is to become a trend. Mommy and daddy had good lawyers.
“She went to NYU for a couple years, majored in art history. It sounds to me like she was shopping for an MRS degree. Seriously, what do you do with a Bachelor’s or, God forbid, a Master’s in art history?”
“Teach or be a museum curator. If you’re good or have connections, I imagine you could work in acquisitions for places like the Met or the Chicago Art Institute. Maybe work for a New York gallery—I hear there are tons of them. Did she have any other arrests?”
“Several, but none of them resulted in convictions. They’re all drug-related and include one for prostitution--that was in 1992. After that, she dropped out of college and it looks like her parents cut her off from the family fortune. She worked for a while through various temporary staffing agencies, volunteered at Beth-Israel hospital, where she met and then married Franklin Fisher, MD, who was a resident in neurology at the time. He got a job at Sharp Memorial Hospital in California. She moved across the country with him.”
“What next?” I wanted the DigiCom part, but it’s usually best to let people tell their stories their own way once you finally get them talking.
“It looks like she cleaned up her act a little bit. She finished her degree at the University of California after she established residency in the state. Apparently the local art museum wasn’t hiring when she graduated. Instead, she worked part-time at the Computer Museum of America, and met your boy and Ian MacKay at a fundraiser. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that’s where she got back into drugs.”
“What makes you say that?” I sipped coffee. I’d gone through at least one pot while I’d been here. I was going to get charged rent on the booth at this rate.
“Another arrest crops up in 1998, again for prostitution.”
“A part-time job at a museum isn’t going to pay for a coke habit,” I said, connecting dots.
“Exactly,” Jerry said. “Her husband divorces her at this point, and she’s out on the street with nothing. Her parents aren’t going to help her. She ends up living further north with another girl who works at DigiCom, and then gets a job in their sales department.”
“Who was supplying the drugs, Jerry?”
“It looks like MacKay was the main connection.” Which maybe meant Michael wasn’t dealing. That made me feel better for some reason. “I don’t know where he was getting them. Sometimes a prosecutor will give a lighter sentence if dealers rat out their suppliers--use the little fish to reel in the big fish. It doesn’t look like it happened in his case.”
“Madeleine said Holly dropped out of sight for a couple years--was she in jail, finally?” I hadn’t liked being in jail. I did like the idea of Holly being there.
“Got it in one,” Jerry said. “My guess is she ran through her severance pay pretty quickly and ended up on the street. She got arrested in L.A. and got out of jail a little over a year ago, when she worked her way east.
“What about MacKay?” I asked. “What do you have on him?”
“Nothing, Zo. I’m not going to help you look for a man who was put in his family mausoleum. Ian MacKay is dead.”
“Michael wouldn’t tell you that if he were here.” If he were alive to tell you. My stomach clenched with worry and I reminded myself again that Fisher hadn’t killed anyone yet and she’d had plenty of opportunity.
“Zo . . .”
“Damn it, Jerry. If you had bothered to talk to Ruby Jemison, you’d believe me. MacKay is alive. He and Holly picked Michael up after the N.A. meeting.”
“What?” He looked dumbfounded, eyes wide open. I felt gratified for a moment.
“You heard me,” I glared at him.
“Zo, I went to Michael’s to get her number. It wasn’t there, how did you get in touch with her? Neither was the printout of craigslist you told me about. Or the hot & sour soup container, for that matter. I did run the juice in the fridge through the lab. Nothing in it but pulp, water and vitamin C.”
I didn’t mention Dodson. “Madeleine was just here, so was Ruby. Ask the server.”
Unfortunately, I had been sitting here for so long, I had gone through a shift change. The woman that was now pouring my coffee hadn’t seen either of my previous companions. Neither had anyone else who was currently working. Jerry looked at me calmly with eyes full of pity.
“Go home, Zo. I told you that you should be at home resting. I know you want to find Michael, so do I, but talking to people that don’t exist to get my attention isn’t going to help him.”
“Marie met Madeleine.”
“But you can’t produce Ruby. Give it up and accept this Holly woman’s a dead end.”
He sounded way too confident. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because she’s no longer in the state. I talked to Joyce MacKay before I got here. Holly Fisher has left the building. She boarded a Delta flight for New York this afternoon.”