“Neither am I — nevertheless, I am spending the time. I am answering your questions to the best of my ability. I do not know where Lila is. That question I cannot answer. But if you have others, by all means ask them. I may not satisfy you, but it will not be because I am unwilling to cooperate.”
“What do you think happened to your sister?”
Leon raised his shoulders and let them fall. “I don’t know.”
“I said what do you think happened. You don’t know what you think?”
“I think she is fine.”
“Why?”
“Because she is always fine.”
“But she’s missing.”
“She has been missing before.”
“When?”
Jerome shrugged again. “Now and again.”
“When?”
“When she was a teenager, Lila would disappear for days at a time. She would go off without telling anyone where she was going. Then, a week later, she would return and tell us all about it: I went to the Hague! I went to Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras! Vanishing is nothing new for Lila.”
“When was the last time she took off like that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Would Rachel?”
“She might.”
I stood up, put my hat back on, and walked myself to the door. Dubois followed me with his eyes only. “I am sorry that I can be of no more help,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Don’t lie. You don’t do it well.”
“You have a great deal of hostility, Mr. Mickity. Why is that?”
I opened the door and walked out. The door didn’t swing shut on its own — it wasn’t that kind of door — and I didn’t pull it closed behind me. I looked back and saw Dubois still sitting on the couch, his arms stretched wide along the top, his glass dangling from one hand.
I walked. He could close the door himself, or he could let the flies in, I didn’t care.
Rachel Dubois looked a lot like her sister, or at least like the photo of her sister Culhane had shown me. The same color hair, though Rachel’s was cut short, and the same long, old-money face. Pretty, but offputting to a guy like me, and I’d have thought to a guy like Culhane as well. I couldn’t imagine Culhane planting a kiss on lips like those with lips like his.
Rachel was a little friendlier than her brother had been. She took my hat and hung it on a brass peg, and then she took my coat and passed it to a tall man in a suit that hung on him like a shroud. She didn’t introduce us, and he didn’t make eye contact. I asked about him when we sat down.
“Oh, that’s Maren,” Rachel said, taking a second to dredge the man’s name out of memory. “He’s our valet. We couldn’t function without him.”
“We?”
“My husband and I.”
I looked around. The walls were covered with portraits, but the only man in any of them was Dr. Jerome. “Your husband live here with you?”
Rachel smiled. “Certainly. But he never paints himself.”
“Your husband is a painter?”
Color rose to her cheeks. “No. My husband paints.” By which she meant, A painter is someone who paints for a living. My husband doesn’t do anything for a living.
“What does he do when he’s not painting?” I asked.
“What does anyone do? What do you do when you’re not...” The blush returned as she remembered that she was speaking with a member of the working class. “I suppose he reads. He chairs committees. He spends time with me.”
“Does he spend any time with your sister?”
“Some.”
“Does he spend time with Leon Culhane?”
“No.”
“Will he, once they are married?”
A little shudder passed through Rachel’s shoulders. “Lila will always be welcome here.”
If she ever turns up, I thought. “Will Leon?”
“Excuse me?”
“Will Leon always be welcome here, too?”
“I will not bar my door to any member of my family, by blood or by marriage. But he will not be welcome. I’m sorry, Mr. Mickity. I imagine it sounds awful to you. I simply do not feel comfortable with that man.”
It didn’t sound awful to me at all. I’d have been surprised if she had felt comfortable with him.
“Lila is a headstrong child,” she said, in an almost maternal tone. “She will have her way, whether the rest of us like it or not. She will marry that man — there is no way around it now — and she will suffer.”
“Suffer? How?”
“Men like that make people suffer,” she said. “That’s their role in life. Don’t think it doesn’t extend to their families.”
I thought of Dahlia Stampada, who ran away with a pug-nosed sweet-talker whose sole redeeming feature was that he didn’t beat her up the way Carmine did. When he found out that Carmine was on his trail, he had shot her in the head and left her in a swimming pool. But at least he hadn’t beat her up.
I remembered Carmine’s expression when I told him that Dahlia was dead: no regret, no anger, just a sort of facial shrug. Dead was better than missing, since missing you can do with another man but dead you do alone.
And Leon had gotten my name from Carmine Stampada.
“You’re right,” I said. Rachel’s eyes opened a little wider at that, as though she felt a sudden need to reappraise me. “Leon Culhane is not the kind of man I’d want my sister marrying.”
“That’s very frank of you.”
I shrugged. “I’m always honest. In my business, it doesn’t pay to be a liar.”
“If you feel that way about Culhane, why are you working for him?”
“I don’t have a sister,” I said. “I have nothing to worry about.”
Rachel led me upstairs via a thickly carpeted staircase that made no sound at all when we climbed it. I think it was the first time in my life that I had climbed stairs that didn’t creak.
The hallway was hung with more of Rachel’s husband’s paintings. The style was bland and conservative, the way you would have expected it to be. Horseriding foxhunters. Landscapes in the Everglades. Storm clouds over the Cape. At least the horses looked like horses and the clouds looked like clouds.
Rachel opened a door at the end of the hall and took me into a room furnished with a bed, a writing desk, a telephone, and a large dresser. The room was bigger than my office. “This is where Lila stays when she’s here.”
“When was she here last?”
“In June.”
“How often did she normally come?”
“About once a month.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that you haven’t seen her in three months?”
“Yes, I do. But a great deal has been odd since she started seeing Culhane. This is the least of it.”
“Oh? What else?”
“Phone calls during which she sounded as though she was about to break into tears, but wouldn’t admit that anything was wrong. Letters we would get from her that said things like, ‘Darling, Leon and I are so wonderfully happy together!’ She was trying to put on a good face, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. I could tell she was unhappy.”
“Why did she stay? Was she afraid of leaving him?”
“Wouldn’t you be? She probably was. But really it didn’t matter. You see, she’s taken her stand with us, and she’d sooner go through all sorts of unhappiness with him than admit she was wrong. She’ll go through with the marriage now no matter how wrong she knows it is, because she told us she would.”
“Except that now she’s missing,” I said.
Rachel didn’t say anything for a second. “Yes, except for that.”
“Do you know where your sister is?”
“No.” It sounded like the truth, unfortunately.
“Your brother said that Lila has disappeared before, when she was younger. She went to New Orleans, he said.”