I sat waiting. Jefferson decided to sit next to me and regard my face with his head tilted to one side.
“Do the police know you’re looking for Adele?” he asked, stacking his cans in a cupboard.
“No.”
He shook his head as if that were solid and solemn good news. Then he turned, wiped his hands on his pants, and sat across from me.
“What do you see, Fonesca?” he asked.
“See?”
“Me, what do you see?”
“A man, lean, healthy-looking, good head of hair, serious, judging whether or not he’s going to tell me something.”
“What do you know about me?” he asked.
“Famous writer, haven’t published much. Man who likes his privacy.”
“Have you read anything of mine?”
“Fool’s Love, long time ago. I’m rereading it,” I said.
Jefferson moved close to me and rested his head on my lap.
“What do you think of it? The book?” Lonsberg asked, hands folded on the table.
“It’s a classic, great book,” I said.
“What do you think of it?” he repeated.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” he said.
“So far, it’s not my kind of book. Maybe when I really get into it…”
“It was a fluke,” Lonsberg said. “I was a kid who thought he could write. It was short, easy. I expected nothing to happen, except that I’d keep working in my father’s drugstore in Rochester, marry Evelyn Steuben, have children, go to pharmacy school. The book happened to hit the right agent and the right publisher at the right time. Teenage girl rebels, sets off on her own, learns the truth about people, the good, the bad, grows up fast, gets swept up in the anti-Vietnam business, moves in with a cello player old enough to be her grandfather. Controversy on that one. Publicity. Big success. Fonesca, the book is second-rate. Too short. Too easy with answers. It’s smart-ass wit and a few good observations.”
“I think it’s better than that,” I said.
“So does most of the world,” he said. “I don’t.”
I wondered why this famous recluse was giving me the thirty-second biography and interview he wouldn’t have given to The New York Times or Time. I thought I knew.
“Adele,” I reminded him.
“Adele,” he said, turning his head toward the wall to his right. There was an eight-by-ten framed black-and-white photograph on his kitchen wall. Four people were lined up against a background of trees. The man was a young Lonsberg.
“My wife, Evelyn,” he said, looking at the photograph. “My two kids, Laura and Brad. Both grown. Both with kids.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Evelyn? She died more than twenty years ago. Laura and Brad live here, not in the house. Laura is in Venice. Martin’s in Sarasota.”
Jefferson drooled on my leg. I patted his head.
“Adele,” I reminded him again.
“What about you?” he asked. “Your story?”
“My story?” I asked. “Why?”
“Your story,” he repeated.
“Adele,” I said again.
He looked at me and nodded.
“Your story first,” he said.
I told him about my wife’s death, a little about my family, less about what I did, a mention of my depression.
“What do you take for the depression?” he asked.
“Nothing, I see a psychologist.”
“I take Chinese herbs,” he said. “Acupuncture.
“They work on my blood pressure, my liver problems, but they can’t penetrate, get inside whatever it really is that we call ‘soul.’”
“Adele,” I said.
“Come on,” he said, getting up. I eased myself away from Jefferson and followed Lonsberg through a door. Jefferson followed. At the end of a short hall was a door, a particularly thick wooden door. Lonsberg opened it with a key and we stepped in.
It was a strange sight. Inside the room was a huge vault, the kind you might see in a bank. This vault door was open. I followed Lonsberg in.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Empty shelves,” I said. “Except for that box.”
The wooden box sat closed about chest high in the middle of one of the dark metal shelves.
’Two days ago they weren’t empty,” he said. “They were filled with manuscripts, neatly bound, carefully placed in folders, everything I’ve written over the past thirty-five years.”
It had been rumored that Lonsberg had written a few books since he went into hiding from the world, but these empty shelves represented more than a few books.
“Someone stole them?” I asked.
“Adele,” he said.
“Why? How?”
“She knew about the vault,” he said, surveying the empty shelves. “I showed it to her, let her read a few things.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“I’m a recluse,” Lonsberg said. “You know that. I started out just wanting to be away from the reporters, the fans, the scholars, and then it became a minor literary myth. I began to live it. It grew. The more I tried to protect my privacy, the more I was sought out by the determined. And the more reclusive I became. Now I like it that way. No, amend that. I’ve grown comfortable in my relative isolation. There’ve been rumors for years about my ‘secret’ writing. I was stupid enough in the last interview I gave I don’t know how many years ago to a small magazine, stupid enough to say that I still write. I don’t want the police. I don’t want to be in newspapers and tabloids. I don’t want television crews parked at my gate. I dread stepping into a courtroom, a press of reporters, a gaggle of fans.”
“A press of reporters,” I said. “A gaggle of fans. Like a pride of lions?”
“A literary critic has finally entered my house,” he said flatly.
“No, I’m a man trying to find a missing girl. You think Adele took everything?”
“Yes, and I want it all back,” Lonsberg said. “No questions asked. No charges filed. I’m told the manuscripts are worth millions of dollars. Be worth more when I die. Those books and stories are my legacy to my children and grandchildren.”
“Why didn’t you just have some of them published while you’re alive?”
He looked at me intently.
“I write because I must,” he said. “I don’t want to be misunderstood by a world that will laud, speculate, read my stories and contort them into their stories, turn my work into movies or television miniseries. It happens to them all. If it can happen to Tolstoy, Melville, Dickens who are perfectly clear, it can and will happen to a minor quirk in the history of literature named Lonsberg. Let it happen when I’m dead. I write them to stay sane, to trap my demons on paper. I’ve got some money that still comes in from my books, but I’m not rich. And every year the fewer and fewer things written about my work have grown more obtuse and stupid. People should read novels and short stories instead of reading books about novels and short stories.”
Jefferson was sniffing at the shelves. Lonsberg and I watched. And then Lonsberg spoke again.
“You know Adele,” he said. “You’re a process server. You know how to find people and you know how to keep quiet. Find her. Return my manuscripts. I’ll give you five thousand dollars if you get my work back. Quietly.”
“And Adele…?” I asked.
“No questions,” he said. “I get my manuscripts back and press no charges.”
“I’ve got questions,” I said.
He nodded.
“Why would she do this?” I said, looking around at the empty shelves in the vault.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I had a feeling he did, but there are right and wrong times and ways to deal with lies. It takes a feel for the person who is lying to me. I can call someone a liar, which results in grief, almost always mine. Or I can wait till I find the truth myself or the right time to ask the question again. I usually wait.
“Holding them for ransom?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Why?”
Lonsberg moved to the wooden box, took it down, and brought it to me.
“Open it,” he said.
I took the box and opened it. It was filled with cash. Fifties, twenties, hundreds, tens, fives.
“Forty-six thousand four hundred in that box. Adele knew it was there. There are other places in the house with a lot more money. I don’t use banks. Adele knew where it all was. There’s not a dollar missing.”