Treasure Box

10. Memories

"I remember you. Or do I?" She was as gracious as before, and the confusion of her words didn't show on her face.

"You were very kind to me at a party one night," said Quentin. "In fact, you introduced me to my wife."

"That would be clumsy of me, to introduce a husband and wife to each other."

"No, no, she wasn't my wife at the time, we—"

"Please, Mr. Fears, I was joking. I'm old, but I still understand the ins and outs of simple communication. I spoke to you for a while, didn't I? I think I ran on and on, but you were very patient."

"Conversing with you made me glad that I had read my sister's collection of Jane Austen novels."

"I was not around in the Georgian period, Mr. Fears."

"You converse as elegantly as if you had been. It makes a California boy like me struggle to keep up."

"Now I remember you. I caught you fingering the books in the library."

"I thought of myself as eyeing them."

"You were climbing the ladder, anyway. Did you come to thank me for introducing you to... what was the young lady's name? Not Duncan, anyway."

Not Duncan? "Madeleine Cryer."

"The niece, yes."

"Niece?"

"Well, of course to you she's your wife, but to me, she's the niece of my good friends the Duncans. They have been so kind to me in the last few years, since my husband passed on."

"And so you invited their niece to your party."

"How could I not? Such a lovely girl. Not at all like the Duncans' rather unfortunate daughter. Oh, but now I'm being a gossip."

"What's the Margaret Truman quote? 'If you can't say something nice, come sit by me'?"

"It wasn't Margaret, my dear boy. But these stories have a way of attaching themselves to the people the newsmen have actually met. Of course no one invites newspapermen to any real parties. So they never know the truly clever people."

"You aren't telling me that it was you who originated that—"

"How old do you think I am, young man!" She feigned horror. "That story was ancient before Margaret Truman was born. My great-grandmother's diary mentions hearing that line attributed to the wife of James Buchanan."

"He was the president before Lincoln, wasn't he?"

"Very good—you are in the top two percent of your generation, for knowing that."

"Do I make the top one percent for knowing that Buchanan was a bachelor?"

She clapped her hands together, hankie and all. "Oh, you are a delight, Mr. Fears! It's no fun teasing people who never understand they're being teased."

"Do the Duncans understand?"

She looked at him sharply. "So we're on a fishing expedition. But I think your purpose is either loftier or lower than mere gossip."

"Loftier, I think. My wife has left me."

"Without a claim check, it appears. So when she returns to reclaim you..."

"Oh, I'll be here waiting, if she returns. Her departure was sudden. I don't know where she is."

"Did you do her violence, young man?"

"I'm not a violent man," said Quentin. "But I appreciate your concern for her safety."

"Men do not come with labels, alas, clearly identifying those who harm women from those who are unfailing gentlemen."

"Then tell me nothing, but merely allow me to write a note to Madeleine, care of the Duncans, care of—"

"Care of me."

"Though many hands touch my message, yet may it still have power to touch her heart."

"In all my reading, I can't recall where I heard that gracious speech before."

"You heard it here."

"You invented your own? A lost art is revived before my eyes."

"That art cannot be lost as long as you are in the world. In you the river of time slipped its banks and took a different route from the rest of the world."

"Now that one you did not invent."

"The January Atlantic."

"The article on Madagascar." She laughed. "Oh, Mr. Fears, you're such a spoof."

"Madeleine and I read that issue on our last plane trip together."

Her face grew solemn. "The pleasure of your company has made me forget your errand. By all means, give me your message."

He patted his pockets for a pen. "I'm here unarmed, I'm afraid."

"Then you must rise to your feet and arm yourself at my writing desk. Perhaps you'll want to choose one of the second sheets, so you don't have my monogram on your note."

Quentin went to the writing desk, chose paper and a pen, and wrote.

Dear M

I love you and miss you. Please assure me that you're well. Tell me the future is still a treasure box which we may open together.

All my love, Q

Since Quentin had no idea what the User wanted, he could not be sure that this note, if it even reached her, would have any effect at all. But if in fact the opening of the treasure box was her goal, this note had to leave her wondering exactly how much Quentin had understood of the things that happened at the house on the Hudson. It had to be good for him if she thought he understood less than he really did. And since he understood very little, it shouldn't be hard to persuade her that he knew nothing.

Except, of course, that the moment he called attention to himself, what would stop her from ransacking his mind and finding all his secrets? Lizzy said that the User had left him some independence. You are not without resources, Lizzy said. So maybe it was worth writing this note.

He folded the note in half, then carried it to the grande dame.

"Oh, Mr. Fears, you are cruel."

"Am I?"

"You could have sealed it. Then I would have steamed it open and read your note. But handing it to me folded shows such trust that I would die before I violated it."

Quentin laughed and read it to her.

"Oh, Mr. Fears, I will not deliver this note. Instead I will find treasure boxes of my own for us to open together. Why couldn't you have white hair and arthritis! Such a romantic!"

They laughed together.

"Young love is so hard, these days, Mr. Fears," she said, offering him her hand. He took it gently, and because of the way she rested her hand on his, he did not shake it but instead bowed over it, thinking that he should surely be wearing a cutaway for this scene. "If I see my friends' naughty niece, I will reprimand her for wasting such a fine young man—and after all the trouble we took to bring you to her!"

"Trouble?"

"I told you at the party how I felt about marriages and money. The Duncans are an old family. You are new money. Such a match is made in heaven."

"But the only person I knew at this party was a lobbyist who—"

"Who was invited to this party because he knew you."

"But I only called him a day before to ask him to take me to something."

"Really? Then the Duncans must have been watching you rather closely, because it was exactly the day before when they asked me to invite both that lobbyist and their dear niece."

"So you didn't just stumble across me in the library."

"Nor was Madeleine only by chance under the cherry tree. Oh, Mr. Fears, I thought I was helping create a good family, not setting you up to have your poor heart broken. Will you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive. If I've had any happiness in my life, it's because Madeleine brought it to me. And even if I only had that happiness for a season, I'll always be grateful to you for sending me to her that night."

"I'm glad you're not in politics, Mr. Fears, for I should have to leave my home and vote for you, and I do hate going out."

"Yours would be the only vote I'd get, but I'd feel as if I had won."

She applauded him again. "If only you would pink some rival in a duel over me, I could die happy."

"I have to ask, even though I know the answer. You couldn't simply tell me the Duncans' first names and where they live, could you?

"If your wife didn't introduce you to them, and they didn't introduce themselves, it's hardly my place without their consent, don't you think?"

Quentin nodded. It was the answer he had expected. "I'll come back when it's all settled, to tell you how things came out."

"My door is always open to you, Mr. Fears. Good day."

Outside on the porch, he was almost surprised to see an ordinary overmoneyed street in Chevy Chase. There should have been carriages passing over cobbled streets, and rows of townhouses, and blossoming cherry trees. Instead it was winter, the trees were bare, and most of the houses showed that money and taste do not arrive on the same schedule.

Duncan. Friends of the grand dame—but for how long? And they arranged for his invitation to the party. She was already watching him, the User was. How had she found him? Rich men were thick on the ground inside the beltway. Why had she chosen him?

It was almost, almost worth it, just to have met the grande dame and won her friendship. If only he were really the courtly gentleman he had just mimicked in her drawing room. But somewhere along the line he suspected there would be a time when he stood toe to toe with an enemy, and there would be no pinking in that duel. Something bright red would flow, and someone would fall, and his thought at that moment was that it would probably be himself. But he would not go down easy.

Quentin got into his car. Once inside, he looked around to see if he could spot the surveillance teams that were supposed to be watching the house to see who entered and left after his visit. He didn't see anyone at all, not even a car parked on the street, which either meant that they had screwed up completely or they were very, very good. He pulled away from the curb and called Wayne Read on his cellular phone.

"You just pulled away from the house," said Wayne, by way of greeting, "and you're heading toward the beltway."

"I didn't want them to follow me."

"Just wanted you to know they were on the job."

"And calling you long distance to report on it."

"Well, hey, you can afford it and we both own stock in AT&T."

"I've got a name for you to look for. Duncan. That's a last name, a married couple and they have a daughter. Supposedly Madeleine is their niece. I'm willing to bet that Mr. Duncan is the guy who called himself Ray Cryer."

"Duncan. I'll bet there's only one Duncan family in all of the DC area."

"That's what the surveillance team is for, right? I wrote a note to Madeleine and left it with the grande dame. Either she'll send somebody to the Duncans or the Duncans will send somebody to pick it up. Either way, there'll be somebody to follow."

"Unless she puts it in an envelope and puts a stamp on it."

"People still do that?" Of course he knew they did, but since he hadn't personally licked a stamp in many years, he simply hadn't thought about that possibility.

"Still a bargain at thirty-two cents. And if we interfere with the U.S. mail, that's a felony for all concerned, so we won't do it, even for a guy we love as much as we love you, Quentin."

"Yeah, well, you still have the name Duncan to go on."

"I can hear the phone call now. 'Is this the Duncan family that has a niece who magically disappears after six months of marriage to a rich insane man because he doesn't open a box in time?' We'll find 'em for sure."

"If you're so smart, I'll bet you know who the only bachelor president was."

"Of the U.S.? James Buchanan, the guy right before Lincoln. A Virginian who did his best to screw things up for the North before the Civil War. You want more?"

"Have you found anything about her cellular phone number?"

"It's a Cellular One number, one of the ones they reserve for company use in that area. Needless to say, it hasn't been assigned to anyone during the past year."

"And here I was thinking the connection was always so clear," said Quentin.

So all his phone calls to her while they were engaged had probably taken place without anyone actually answering a phone anywhere. The User just made him think he was hearing Madeleine's voice come out of the phone.

He got out onto the beltway before rush hour started, so driving home was only mildly hellish. When he got inside the message light was flashing again on his machine. He wondered if it would be 'Ray Cryer' again or some other mischief from the User. Instead it was the police chief in Mixinack, New York. That wasn't the town Quentin had walked to when he beat his retreat from Madeleine's house; Mixinack lay to the north, and farther away. But who could fathom how jurisdictions were laid out? It was still midafternoon. He called.

"Chief Bolt here."

"I'm—you answer the phone yourself?"

"Everybody's at the coffee machine or using the john. Who's this?"

"Quentin Fears, returning your call."

"Well, hi."

"Hi." Quentin didn't want to say anything until he found out what Bolt already knew. So he let the silence hang, till Bolt picked up the conversation and went on.

"I got this fax from Herndon, Virginia, saying your wife was missing. You found her yet?"

"Not yet, no. I have investigators on it, but there's nothing yet."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that. Haven't seen your wife, Mr. Fears."

"I'm even sorrier to hear that."

"I can bet. Tough break. My wife left me once. Damned shame. Came back, too. Damned shame. That was a joke, son. But I guess you don't feel like joking."

"I appreciate your thoughtfulness."

"I'm a thoughtful kind of guy. I bet you're wondering why I bothered to call when I don't have anything to tell you. Well, what can I say? I'm a curious guy. My secretary just got married and with this stomach flu going around I've got to keep all the men I've got left out on the road running speed traps, or we won't be able to meet the payroll. That's another joke, but I've given up on you laughing."

"You're telling me you're all alone in the office."

"That's my point! You are listening! Well, you see, that's why I'm the one saw your fax. We get a lot of those—hate the damn machine, you know, like to rip it out of the wall, since we have to pay for the paper for every boneheaded stupid meaningless fax that any moron in the country decides every police department ought to have. But your fax caught my eye, because of the address you gave for that house where you say your wife left you."

"You know the place?"

"Well, you see, this is a small town, and yes, I know it well. Drive past it quite a bit. Hasn't been a soul living there for five years since the old lady went to a rest home."

An old lady who had ties to the house, gone to a rest home. That might explain why Grandmother couldn't find him herself.

"I have my boys check it out now and then," said Bolt, "to make sure there's no vandalism. You know, broken windows."

"Are there any?"

"You tell me, son. You're the one says he spent the night."

"I didn't say that."

"No, I guess I'm saying that. Saw that fax from Herndon, and I thought, let's check it out. So next time I'm driving down that way in daylight, I pull up and sure enough, there's tire tracks going in and coming out. And footprints. Don't like footprints—that's vandals. That's bums trying to squat in an abandoned house. Or tracks can be bored teenagers looking for a place to smoke some weed or pass along some sexually transmitted disease, but whatever it was I figured it was my job to know. Drove on in, parked a ways back, and saw as how you must have had a driver when you got out of your car."

"We did."

"Yeah, well, I looked for a lady's footprints, but it seems she never got out of the car."

"Is that what it looks like?"

"Or you carried her in. It's damn sure she never set foot in that snow."

"Interesting observation."

"So far so good," said Chief Bolt. "So I remember how the owner asked me to look in on the place, so I think, Time to look in. Climbed up the steps and it's kind of dirty in there, isn't it?"

"Yes sir, I'd say so."

"And cold. A man could freeze his ass off in there. But somebody walked upstairs and spent the night on a filthy dustcover and peed in a toilet that doesn't flush and spit toothpaste into the dry sink. Walked to the basement kitchen, stepping on roaches all the way, walked to the empty fridge—am I getting this right?"

Bolt's cocky sarcasm was contagious. As always, Quentin picked up the tone of the conversation and played it back. "You're quite the Sherlock Holmes," he said.

Bolt's reaction was a brief "Ha." And then: "Well, I won't go through your whole itinerary. A walk out to the bluff. You did a real dance all over the graveyard. Walked around front. And then I've got your tracks coming back out the front door. You sat down on the second from the bottom step and set your bags down beside you. And then you got up and walked on out to the road and went south. Have I about got it right?"

"Can't argue with the truth, Chief."

"And I ask myself, where was this woman who was supposedly last seen leaving the old Laurent place?"

"Laurent?"

"I guess the Laurents lived there longest so the name stuck. Anyway, the only thing I could figure was the missing woman you're looking for must have drove off in that car. Looked like the driver went around to open the door for her, but she never got out. And now she's missing."

"Definitely missing."

"So I really had only one question for you, Mr. Fears."

"Fearsss. Rhymes with pierce."

"Here's my question. Why did a man who the Herndon police tell me is richer than several third world countries combined, why would such a man go inside a freezing cold abandoned house and spend the night in bugs and filth?"

"Is that a crime, Chief?"

"Oh, if I caught you there, I could lock you up and put a vagrancy charge on you, but since you could show means of support and all, I don't think it would stick. Trespass, of course, but you didn't steal or vandalize. So no, we're not charging you with anything. I'm just curious, that's all."

"So am I. I want to know where my wife is. Doesn't sound like you know."

"I see," said Chief Bolt. "Kind of unfair for you to come up here, act weird, go away, and not answer questions about it."

This wasn't going at all well.

"Chief, let me ask you a question."

"Do you want me to answer it or just weasel around like you did?"

"Didn't you get an inquiry from a Ray Cryer about my wife, Madeleine Cryer Fears?"

"Ah, the father-in-law."

"I've never met him, but he says he is."

"Maybe it's in the paperwork somewhere, but—"

"No, it would have been called in during the last few days. You've been answering the phone, right?"

"Ray Cryer?"

"Right."

"Nothing here. I've got the old messy-desk filing system, so I can't swear to it, but no, nothing."

"Well, you see, this Ray Cryer called me and told me he had called you to tell you his daughter was missing. From that house. And that he already had the local police looking for her."

"We're the local police, and we aren't. Looking for her."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"But if you were there when she left, Mr. Fears, why would he call to tell you she was gone?"

"That's my question, Chief. It sounded to me like maybe he was trying to set up a different version of events."

"Well, we'll never know, will we? Right now, all I've got is your word that your wife was there. And clear evidence that you've got really weird taste in lodgings."

"Well, thank you, Chief Bolt, you've been really helpful."

"So you're gonna blow me off?"

"No sir. On the contrary, I'm hoping you'll keep your eyes open and help my investigators when they get there."

"This Ray Cryer blackmailing you? Is that it?"

"Pardon?"

"Were you on drugs that night? Was it a drug deal or something, and they dropped you off and threatened you or something?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You won't tell me why you acted so weird, I got to rack my brain coming up with stories that fit the evidence."

"Chief, the house is haunted. I was invited in by ghosts, slept with ghosts, had breakfast with ghosts, went on out to the graveyard to say good-bye to their bodies, and then hiked along the highway to get home."

"You know, I may be a small-town chief of the tiniest police force this side of Maggody Arkansas, but I got as good a doorway into jail as any other cop in America. So why are you showing me such disrespect, son? Though I will say that at least you're paying for the call."

"Chief Bolt, I don't want to be your enemy."

"That's good to hear. I'm not a good enemy to have."

"Can you tell me anything about old lady Laurent?"

"Laurent? She's dead."

Dead? Then what was "Find me" all about? "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Happened about twenty years ago and she was older than God when she croaked, so nobody's broke up about it."

"I thought you said the old lady went into a rest home a few years ago."

"Son, it's plain to me you don't know squat about that house and the people who used to live in it, and yet you said your wife took you there to meet her family. Now you lay it out plain. Is this Ray Cryer blackmailing you about something? Did you do something criminal in that house? Or are you just insane? Because you sure as hell did not marry a woman who has anything to do with that house, since that family is gone. Old lady Laurent is dead. The current owner is her daughter, the old lady I mentioned who went into a rest home. And her only daughter is about thirty-five and married with a little kid, and she's never been back since the old lady moved out."

"I did nothing criminal in that house. If Ray Cryer is blackmailing me, he hasn't asked for money yet and if he does I won't give him any because I haven't done anything I need to hide. As to whether I'm insane, well, at my income level people generally call us eccentric."

"But you're still not answering my questions."

"Chief, I want very much to meet you."

"The feeling is mutual."

"I want to go through that house with you and find out everything you can tell me about it."

"What, am I a realtor now?"

"Believe me or not, Chief, my wife came to that house with me. She grew up in that house, of that I have no doubt. It's her people buried in the graveyard. And if I have any hope of finding her, it'll be through whatever I can learn about that house. So I will be there soon. And in the meantime, I'll fax you the receipt from the limo service that took us there, so you can find out whether I did in fact arrive with my wife."

"I'll be waiting for it, son."

They said their chilly good-byes. Quentin hung up the phone and called the limo company to have them fax Chief Bolt a copy of the bill. All the while, he kept telling himself that this was about the stupidest thing he could do. Since Ray Cryer was lying and he hadn't told the police anything, why should Quentin do anything to arouse more suspicion? Why didn't he just tell Bolt some cockamamy story and hang up and sigh in relief and call off the search for a missing wife that he knew would never turn up? And above all, why would he provoke Bolt into getting proof positive from the limo driver that yes indeed, Mrs. Fears got out of the car and went into the house with Mr. Fears? The fact that there were no woman's footprints coming out of the house could only make the chief suspect foul play.

And yet at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. A gut feeling. A sense that Chief Bolt was a decent guy whose trust was worth having. And there was something important about him.

Oh. Of course. Chief Bolt knew the old lady. And if there was any sense to the universe at all, the old lady in the rest home had to be Grandmother. Didn't she? Only she wasn't old lady Laurent, who was twenty years dead, which would make her Grandmother's late mother, which meant Laurent must have been Grandmother's maiden name and the chief would know her married name and where to find her. So knowing the chief was maybe a route to Grandmother.

It was also quite possibly a route to jail.

Quentin shuddered, and then thought of the thing that had made him shudder: When he felt so certain that he should say what he said to the chief, what made him think it was his own idea? For all he knew, he was acting out somebody's script.

No. The User doesn't do that. She's made me see things, but she hasn't made me do things. She can't make me say or do things because if she could, that box would be open and this whole thing would have ended back there by the Hudson. And if Grandmother could make me do things she wouldn't have made me see a talking rat in order to persuade me.

Quentin thought about it some more and realized why he didn't palm off some easy lie on the chief. It was because Quentin was a pretty good judge of people, Madeleine, of course, being a spectacular exception. After screening hundreds and hundreds of people responding to his ads, after working with many dozens of partners over the years, he could tell pretty quickly which people he'd enjoy working with and which would be nothing but pain.

And Chief Bolt was his kind of guy. It was that simple. If Bolt were asking him for funding to start some business, Quentin would hear him out, make sure the premise was sound, and have the papers drawn up, because he could do business with Bolt.

Except the business Bolt was in was the suspicious cop trade, and the only partnership the chief had in mind was the uneasy partnership of cop and suspect. The only thing the chief lacked was evidence of a crime and Quentin was helping him find some.

Maybe it's an unconscious attempt to thwart the User, thought Quentin. After all, I can't open that treasure box if I'm in jail.