“Tell me, Miss Guiu… have you found something?”
“No, not yet. Listen, Mr. Cabanes, I’d like to talk to you, to find out more details.”
“All right, right now, if you wish…”
“By the way, remember I need another photograph. I’d like to have another look at the datebook, too, and if possible, I’d like to see her clothes, her jewelry, the atmosphere, in a word. To get a better idea, you know?”
There was a pause. Finally:
“Very well, come over for dinner. To the pavilion, I mean, around nine, is that okay?”
“I warn you I’m a vegetarian…”
“Listen, Miss Guiu, it doesn’t matter to me what you are or aren’t. The only thing I’m interested in is the job I gave you to do. Nothing more.”
Pedantic shit-head!
“All right then: your wife isn’t in any clinic, hospital, or hotel in the city. Nor is she at the morgue. That’s all I know at the moment. I’m not the Holy Ghost, you know.”
“It’s all right, don’t get mad. Tonight, come in through the door on Modolell Street. That way you won’t have to go through my in-laws’ yard.
I was ringing the doorbell of the pavilion at nine on the dot. It was a cozy house, and very luxurious, of course. It was a rich people’s nest, with all the comforts, both necessary and superfluous, and those are the most comfortable ones. Spacious. Pleasant. And Mr. Victor Cabanes-Jesus, I could have smothered him with kisses. But I kept my grip: a job was a job. Before dinner I scrutinized the belongings of the missing person. The quantity was indescribable: dresses, jackets, skirts, blouses, coats… lots of everything. Incredibly high heels, for sure.
“I couldn’t tell you whether anything is missing or not,” Victor told me. “But at least the suitcases are where they belong.”
Then, the jewelry. Some real, some not. I mean costume jewelry. But good stuff, and lots of it.
“The only things missing are the enamel pendant and ring she made herself. She was very proud of them and never took them off.”
We dined by candlelight and started on the photos.
“Monica doesn’t like to have her picture taken. I couldn’t find many at all… a few from my in-laws, some I had, and a couple from her desk.”
The champagne was leaving the bottle little by little, and the warm atmosphere in the room almost made me forget why we were looking at the pictures. Let it be said in passing, they were all really bad. No works of art, that’s for sure.
“Where was this taken?” I asked.
“The Aegean Sea. Didn’t I tell you Monica was crazy about the sea? That must have been from our honeymoon.”
“You’re wearing the same sweater you’re wearing now.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s true!”
He laughed. It was a romantic story: Monica had given him that sweater when they were on their honeymoon. And now, a few months ago, on their anniversary, she had given him another one just like it that she’d come across by chance in a shop. Victor’s eyes watered a little as he told me the story, and I couldn’t help feeling a touch of jealousy. It was hard to have to recognize, but that’s what it was: jealousy.
“Is this the pendant you mentioned before?”
The photo we were looking at presented me with a woman with distinct features. She wasn’t pretty, but she had character: eyes whose smallness was well disguised by skillful makeup, a nose difficult to hide, and a rather formless mouth. An enamel pendant with matching ring, long fingers with exaggerated nails. It was the only photo that was of any use to me at all.
“Did she always keep them so long?” I asked.
“What?”
“Her fingernails.”
“Oh, yes, and picked up the habit of drumming her nails on the pendant, making a little noise like when you clink glasses together, and I’ll tell you the truth, it made me nervous.”
“Do you have the negative of this picture?”
“What do you want it for?”
“So I can make a copy for my partner… don’t worry, man, he’s going to help me find her.”
“Surely you don’t intend to go around showing pictures of my wife all over the place?”
“And I’m going to need the addresses of the people your wife sees the most.”
“But are you planning to go see those people and ask them about Monica?”
He was really scared.
“Oh, yes, and the datebook. Perhaps you didn’t find any thing unusual, but I’m more experienced, and…” I said in a very professional tone of voice.
“I’m sure I told you, Miss Guiu, that we wanted the utmost discretion in this matter.”
The man was capable of snapping up like an oyster. How exasperating! What did he expect me to do? How could I find a missing person who hadn’t left a trace if not by trying to pick up a few traces?
I said all that in shouts. Offended. And the oyster opened up a little.
“Now how come you’re sore, Miss Guiu?”
“I’m not sore. Well, could I see your wife’s makeup? To judge by the picture, she must have been an expert at playing cutaneous dress-up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, just she was real good at making herself up,”
“Oh, well, yeah, of course.”
He showed me to the bathroom.
But I had more lipstick myself than Monica had. Perhaps the only thing she took with her was her makeup. Among the few that were left, there was a gorgeous lipstick, of an incredible color, with a case that looked like gold. I fell in love with it.
“May I take this lipstick with me?” I asked.
“Sure… but what good can it do you?”
“A question of detail, Mr. Cabanes.”
IV
“Yes, we’re good friends, but I hadn’t seen her for about a month. As far as I know, she was only seeing Patricia.”
“Who’s Patricia?”
“To be perfectly frank, miss, I think she’s a little on the murky side.”
“Where does she live?”
“Somewhere in the Eixample area, I think, but I’m not sure. But I think I do have her telephone number… that is, if she hasn’t moved… you never know, with her type,”
As I was leaving, Mrs. Culell held the door open and said, taking on a secretive tone:
“You may find out, miss, whether Monica and Victor are really the ideal couple they seem to be.”
What a hypocrite! And here I thought that people with bucks weren’t so gossipy, or at least that they had enough dignity to hide it.
I called from the first booth I could find. No answer.
I had another appointment that morning, with another of Monica’s friends. It might be useful to compare the information the Culell woman had given me and figure out how-much of it was bad blood; not that that would do me much good, but I was curious about it. However, the very thought of going through yet another session of good manners and hypocrisy had me in hysterics.
I pulled myself together and rang the doorbell. This lady had a maid.
“Victor must be beside himself,” Mrs. Torres said with a glass of whiskey in her hand.
For me, the maid brought in some orange juice, the kind you make with real oranges.
“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Monica Pradell?”
“It must have been-wait a minute.” She looked at her calendar. “Yes, two weeks ago. We ate together at the Pradells’, in the big house.”
“Do you know someone by the name of Patricia?”
She knew her, all right.
“I’ve never been able to understand it at all, such a close friendship. Wait, now that I think about it, I saw Monica with that girl, let’s see, about a week ago, yeah, I saw them from a distance. I always tell Monica, ‘I don’t know how you can be such bosom buddies with that… blockhead.’”