Shit!
He rode down to the lobby, walked quickly through the lobby and out onto South Broad, and got into his car.
On the way to Wallingford, he pulled into a gas station and called Chad from a pay phone. He didn't want his parents to overhear him, as they probably would if he called from what he thought of as home.
He told Chad what he knew, that when he called from the lobby of the Bellvue-Stratford, she didn't answer her telephone, and that the rent-a-cop at the parking garage told him he remembered seeing a blonde in a red Porsche 911 leaving early the previous evening.
He did not mention to Chad that she had apparently not spent the night in her room-the unmade bed suggested that-because that would have meant letting Chad know he'd gone into her room.
He now recognized that going into her room was another item on his long list of Dumb Things I Have Done Without Thinking First.
The whole incident should be finished and done with, but once again he had that feeling that something wasn't kosher and that the incident was not closed.
FIVE
Patricia Payne found her husband on the flagstone patio outside the kitchen, comfortably sprawled on a cast-aluminum lounge, and, surprising her not at all, with a thick legal brief in his hands.
"Guess who's coming to breakfast?" she asked.
Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne lived in a large, rambling house on four acres on Providence Road, in Wallingford, on Pennsylvania Route 252. It was a museum, Payne often thought gratefully, that Patricia had turned, with love, into a home.
What was now the kitchen and the sewing room had been the whole house when it had been built of fieldstone before the Revolution. Additions and modifications over two centuries had turned it into a large rambling structure that fit no specific architectural category, although a real estate saleswoman had once remarked in the hearing of Patricia that "the Payne place just looked like old, old money."
The house was comfortable, even luxurious, but not ostentatious. There was neither swimming pool nor tennis court, but there was, in what a century before had been a stable, a four-car garage. The Payne family swam, as well as rode, at the Rose Tree Hunt Club. They had a summer house in Cape May, New Jersey, which did have a tennis court, as well as a berth for their boat, a thirty-eight-foot Hatteras, called Final Tort IV.
The only thing wrong with it, Brewster Payne now thought, was that the children were now gone.
"Not Amy," he said. "I just talked to her."
Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., was the eldest of the Payne children.
"Matt."
"I'll be damned."
"He called here," she said. "And he said he would be here in an hour."
"I wonder what the probability factor of that actually happening is?"
"Maybe he's got something on his mind," Patricia said. "He seemed a little strange last night."
"He didn't seem strange to me," he said.
The telephone, sitting on the fieldstone wall that bordered the patio, rang.
Patricia answered it, then handed it to her husband.
"Brewster Payne," he said.
"Charley Emmons, Brew. How the hell are you?"
Charles M. Emmons, Esq., was a law-school classmate and a frequent golf partner of Brewster Payne, and the senior member of a Wall Street law firm that specialized in corporate mergers.
"Charley, my boy! How the hell are you?"
"At the moment, a little embarrassed, frankly."
"I can't believe you want to borrow money, but I will listen with compassion."
"I don't have to borrow money from you; I can take all I need from you on the links."
"Do I detect a challenge?"
"Unfortunately, no. I wish it was something like that."
"What's up, Charley? What can I do for you?"
"You don't know Tom Reynolds, do you?"
Thomas J. Reynolds, if that's who he's talking about, Brewster Payne recalled, is chairman of the board, president, and chief executive officer of-what the hell is the name?-a Fortune 500 company that has been gobbling up independent food manufacturers at what looks like a rate of one a week.
"Only by reputation. But if we're talking about the same fellow, Pat and I met his daughter last night."
"Susan?"
"Yes."
"Tom knows we're friends," Charley Emmons said.
"And how might Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester be of service to-what's the name of his company? "
"Tomar, Inc.," Charley furnished.
"Yes, of course, Tomar, Incorporated. You know our motto, Charley: 'No case too small, no cause so apparently harebrained, so long as there is an adequate retainer up front.' "
Charley Emmons laughed dutifully.
"The thing is, Brew-the firm is in pretty deep with Tomar; otherwise, believe me, I wouldn't be making this call-about Tom's daughter."
"Oh?"
"You were at young Nesbitt's last night?"
"Yes, we were. I rather thought we'd see you there."
"The story as I get it, Brew, is that Susan left the party with Matt and hasn't been seen since."
There was a perceptible pause before Payne replied.
"Charley, Matt is no longer a child. And neither is that young woman. Matt, you know, has an apartment in the city…"
"I understand, I understand," Charley said. "But the thing is, the girl always telephones her mother when she's out of town, just before she goes to bed, and she didn't call last night."
"How old is the girl? Twenty-two, twenty-three, something like that?"
"Actually, a little older. Twenty-six or twenty-seven."
"So when it comes to defending my son, I won't have to worry about statutory rape, will I?"
"Now, take it easy, Brew. No one is suggesting…"
"What exactly are you suggesting, Charley?"
"I'm suggesting that I have a very important client-and a friend, too-who is worried about his daughter. You can understand that."
"All right. What is it you want me to do?"
"Find Matt, and have him have the girl call home. Do you have any idea where he is?"
"What makes Mr. Reynolds so sure his daughter is with Matt?" Payne asked.
"When her mother, in the wee hours, called her hotel-the Bellvue-and there was no answer, she called young Nesbitt's wife-the girls were at Bennington together-and she told her Matt had taken the girl somewhere to listen to jazz."
"Charley, I'm more than a little reluctant to intrude in Matt's personal life."
"I understand that, Brew. But under the circumstances…"
"Does the phrase 'consenting adults' ever come up in your practice, Charley?"
"Brew, the girl's an only child. A Presbyterian Jewish Princess, if you like."
"That doesn't sound like Matt's type," Payne said, thinking aloud. "As a matter of fact, Charley, Matt's on his way out here. I will, with great discretion, ask him if he is acquainted with this young woman, and if there is any way he can suggest to her that she should telephone her mother."
"And you'll call me, right?"
There was a perceptible pause before Brewster Cortland Payne II replied.
"All right, Charley, I'll call you."
He replaced the telephone in its cradle.
"The phrase 'consenting adults' caught my attention, darling," Patricia said.
"You remember the girl we met last night? Talking to Matt?"
"What about her?"
"No one seems to know where she is," Payne said. "When last seen, she was in the company of one Matthew Payne, headed for some jazz place."
"No," Patricia said.
"No?"
"I went looking for Matt last night. I couldn't find him, but that girl was still there."
"Maybe he was there and you couldn't find him."
"No. I asked Martha Peebles if she had seen Matt, and she said she had seen him leaving. And that was before I saw the girl. Her name is Susan Reynolds, by the way."