Her cousin Joey would be wondering what happened to her. He would say something to her father, and her father would say you can never count on Angela. She is always late. It was true. She had been late her whole life.
Mazara would have called looking for her by now, and had probably stopped by her apartment, and let himself in. She had given him a key, something she now regretted. He would make himself comfortable, drink beer and watch a football match on television. He would think she was in the city, shopping, or having lunch. It wouldn't be an issue until tonight or tomorrow when she still had not returned his calls or returned to the apartment.
Standing at the door, she moved the handle up and down. It was locked. Of course, it was locked, and the door was heavy and solid. She looked around the room for something to jam in the keyhole to try to unlock it. There was a brass doorstopper screwed into the baseboard molding. She unscrewed it and pulled the rubber cap off the end and tried to stick it in the keyhole, but it was too big.
Angela unfastened her belt, took it off and folded the buckle away from the clasp and stuck the clasp in the keyhole. She moved it around trying to find the pin. She tried for ten minutes and quit, frustrated, throwing her belt on the floor. She turned on the faucet and put her hand under it and scooped water up to her mouth, drank and turned off the water.
She looked out the window and saw a man walking along the road at least a hundred meters away. She opened the window as far as it would go and yelled, "Signore… can you hear me? Help!" She said it again, but he was too far. He continued on his way, never glancing in her direction.
She looked in the mirror, annoyed, irritated, angry at herself for letting this happen. She went over and picked up the belt, bent the buckle back and stuck the clasp in the keyhole again, moving it in a circular motion, doing this for almost fifteen more minutes, trying to find the pin until her hand ached, too tired to continue. She stretched her arms over her head and bent down and touched her t-s.
Angela was thinking about her nanny, Carmella whose father was a locksmith from Siena. He had taught Angela how to set a pin, saying, you reach in the lock with something long and sharp, a piece of metal, and find the pin that's binding the most and push it up until you feel it set. That's how you pick a lock. She had tried it the one time and was able to do it, but that was long ago.
She stuck her belt clasp in the lock again, moving it to the right edge and then the left. She pushed as hard as she could and thought she felt something move.
Chapter Twenty-one
Sharon's boss called his cell phone. He didn't recognize the number and answered it. Her name was DeAnn Forbes. They'd met a couple times, but he didn't know her very well.
DeAnn said, "I'm worried about Sharon, we all are. Is she all right?"
"Stressed out. Just needs some time off." He had to be careful what he said.
"Imagine my surprise," DeAnn said, "when I got an email saying she was taking a leave of absence. I couldn't believe it. Sharon's our top rep and I had to try to explain to our clients what was going on and didn't have a clue. Ray, can you help me out, can you tell me what the hell's going on?"
What was he going to say? He'd been kicked out of the Secret Service, went home and Sharon wasn't there, and based on the mail and phone messages, she hadn't been around for days. He was thinking about the article in the Free Press about the guy who reported his wife missing. She worked in Puerto Rico during the week and came home on weekends to see her husband and two kids. The husband said they'd had an argument and his wife decided to go back to Puerto Rico a day early. The husband said she was picked up in a dark sedan. He didn't know anything more.
Two weeks later the Macomb County Sheriff's Department went to his house with a search warrant and found the wife's torso in a garbage can in the garage. The husband confessed he'd cut up her body in his dad's machine shop and strewn her body parts in a wooded area behind their house. A detective working the case said, when the wife's missing the husband is always the main suspect.
Ray said, "Sharon will call you, explain everything when she's ready."
DeAnn said, "Does she have cancer, can you tell me that?"
Ray said, "She's not dying." He hoped she wasn't.
DeAnn said, "Tell her we love her and she's welcome back whenever she wants."
Ray was suspicious, didn't believe it. Sharon would've called, not sent an email. That wasn't like her. She was conscientious and responsible, loved her job, and made a lot of money, more than he did and he was well paid for a federal agent. It didn't seem plausible that she'd just up and leave with someone like Joey Palermo, either. But she had to be lonely, starved for attention and affection. He certainly hadn't helped the situation. She was alone most of the time and when he came home he made her miserable. He couldn't see it before or maybe he didn't want to stop and consider her point of view. It was as if his life had been out of focus and now everything was in perfect register. He wanted her back and wondered if what he was feeling was possessiveness or love. Did he still love her? Did he ever?
But if she planned to go away with Joey she would've told someone, wouldn't she? Her sister? Her friends? The way she did it didn't make sense. That's why Ray had his doubts. Until he knew better he'd have to assume something was wrong, something had happened to Sharon.
He drove downtown to the McNamara Building, where he'd worked for the first two years as an agent. Parked in an open lot across from the office, went in the building and asked for Jim Teegarden.
Teeg came down and got him, shook his hand and said, "Good to see you, Ray. This take you back?"
"Deja vu all over again."
Teeg was compact and meticulous, dark hair going gray, wearing a blue Oxford-cloth shirt with heavy starch, gold cuff links, and a designer tie. They took an elevator up to the tenth floor, a bullpen of cubicles where Ray had worked. He said, "Looks exactly the same. Like I walked out yesterday."
"What'd you think, the Service was going to change?"
Teegarden had fifteen years in. He was a GS-15, same as Ray had been, and had his own office. Ray stood at the window, glancing at the GM Building a few blocks away, and beyond it the Detroit River and the shoreline of Canada. With the casinos and new construction Detroit looked better than ever. But Ray didn't care, he liked it the way it was. Liked its rustbelt, blue-collar charm.
Teeg said, "Here's Joey, take a look."
He had a stack of photographs in his hands, sliding three off the deck like he was dealing cards, and arranged them on his desk that didn't have anything on it except a phone. Ray stood there looking down at a black-and-white shots, a close-up of Joey's face. Nice-looking guy, heavy beard, dark hair slicked back, Joey grinning, Joey smoking a cigar in the second one, getting in his car in front of the Messina Spaghetti Company, his office, a two-story cinderblock building on Grosbeck.
The next series showed Joey in his boat on Lake St Clair; Joey outside the Roostertail, the riverside, partying with his buddies, and Joey on a street in downtown Detroit, making his daily collections.
Teegarden put three more shots on top of those, showing Joey with a baseball bat. He was in a batters stance, and it looked like the inside of a restaurant. There were tables in the background but nobody sitting at them. Another shot showed Joey swinging for the fence. And in the third one, Joey was outside the restaurant, big smile, bat resting on his shoulder.