“Pretty,” I said, closing the folder.
“Beautiful,” he corrected. “Exquisite, charming.”
“Any guesses?” I said. “About what happened?”
He shrugged and moved from the balcony into the living room. I followed, folder in hand. We stopped in front of a painting of his wife on the wall over a big comfortable-looking pale suede sofa. In spite of the sofa and the tasteful contemporary look about the place, it wasn’t my kind of home, but I could appreciate what it cost-which, I think, was the point.
“Another man perhaps, but I doubt it,” he said. “At least I hope it isn’t, but… We have had no major quarrels. I denied her nothing, nothing. I am far from a poor man, Mr. Fonesca, and…”
He paused and sighed deeply.
“And,” he continued, composing himself, “I have checked our joint checking and savings accounts. Most of the money has been removed. A little is left. I have my corporate attorney checking other holdings, which Melanie might have had access to. I find it impossible to believe she would simply take as much money as she could and just walk out on me.”
“You ever done any acting, Mr. Sebastian?”
The look on his face changed and there seemed to be a definite tinge of pink in the perfect tan.
“What the hell do you mean?” he said.
“There was a little hitch in your voice when you mentioned another man,” I said, having decided that none of the chairs in the room were designed for sitting in, at least not by me. “I thought you might want me to pick up on that.”
“Maybe I made a mistake in calling you,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said.
I didn’t like the Carl Sebastian I had seen so far. Maybe there was a real Carl Sebastian under the Ricardo Montalban imitation. I might lose the job, but I didn’t need the money that badly, not with a bit of Beryl Tree’s life savings about to go into my wallet.
“What’s your fucking problem here, Fonesca?”
This was much better. He was in my face now.
“I want to talk to whoever Carl Sebastian was before he became Carl Sebastian in capital letters,” I said. “You want the folder back?”
I stood waiting. I didn’t smile. I don’t smile much. He was making a decision.
“Okay,” he said, his shoulders dropping a little, the blissful all-white-toothed smile fading. “I came out of the army, poor family back in Dayton. My father worked as a bagger in a supermarket. My mother was home with a bad heart and diabetes. I never went to college. Got a job with a construction company. Union apprentice. Worked up, into the office. Look at my hands.”
He held out his hands, palms up. I looked.
“The cuts, the calluses, don’t go away, not ones like this. I used these hands to climb over the backs of men and a few women to get where I am. Some of those backs had razors growing out of them. I’ve been cut, but I haven’t fallen. Melanie is smarter than I am, not street smart, but smart. And she wasn’t for sale. I didn’t buy her to show her off like some of the people I know who say they’re my friends. There are razors under those thousand-dollar sports jackets and regret under the beautiful faces of their wives. Melanie is real.”
“The hitch in your voice,” I said.
“You don’t give up.”
“You want me to.”
“No, no.” He shook his head and smiled. “I want someone who doesn’t give up. I… She has a good friend. This is very difficult for me.”
“A good friend?”
“For about the last year, Melanie has been seeing a psychiatrist, nothing major, problems to be worked out about her childhood, her relationship to her parents. The psychiatrist’s name is Geoffrey Green. That’s Geoffrey with a ‘G,’ but I’ll bet my ass he started off with a ‘J,’ and I know that there was a ‘berg’ at the end of that ‘Green’ a couple of decades ago. I checked. He’s got an office over one of those antique shops on Palm Avenue. I’m not a young man. I’m not immune to Jealousy. Green is both young and good-looking. There were times when I couldn’t make up my mind whether my suspicions were simply that of an older man afraid of losing his beautiful young wife or they were reasonable worries.”
He looked up at the painting of his wife.
“I’ll check it out,” I said. “If I’m still on the job.”
“You’re on the job,” he said, his voice low as he turned away from me.
“Melanie is a bit of a loner,” he went on. “But because of business connections we belong to a wide variety of organizations. Selby Gardens. Asolo Theater Angels, Opera Guild, charity groups, and we’re seen at balls and dances. Melanie said that in the past two years we have been on the Herald-Tribune’ s society page eleven times. In spite of this, Melanie had no really close friends, with the possible exception of Caroline Wilkerson, the widow of my late partner. Her address and number are in the folder along with Green’s.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Do? Find my wife, of course,” Sebastian said, turning from the painting to look at me again.
“Has she committed a crime? Stolen money from you, money she doesn’t have the right to take?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The money in the accounts was both of ours. The jewels are hers.”
“So she’s free to go where she wants to go, even free to leave her husband, take money out of your joint accounts and wander away. It may be a boyfriend. It may be a lot of things.”
“I just want you to find her,” he said. “I just want to talk to her. I just want to know what happened and if there’s anything I can do to get her back.”
“She could be halfway to Singapore by now,” I said.
“Your expense account is unlimited,” he answered.
“I just want you to keep me informed if you leave town in search of Melanie and I would expect you, as a professional, will keep expenses to a minimum and give me a full accounting of all expenditures when you find her.”
“If I find her,” I said. “I’ll do my best to find out why she left. If I find her, I’ll have to ask her if she’s willing to talk to you. I’ll tell you where she is if she gives me permission to tell you.”
“I understand,” he said. “Come with me.”
I followed him into an office, where he moved to a desk and picked up something that lay next to a computer. The office was bright, with large windows and another angle on the bay, going north. The walls were “decorated” with about a dozen large, framed photographs, black-and-whites: Dust Bowl, toothless men with caps and overalls, scrawny women with their arms draped over the shoulders of scrawny children standing in front of clapboard shacks.
“If I find she’s left the area, it’ll have to wait till I finish a job I’ve got,” I said.
“How long will this other work take you?”
He had a checkbook in his hand, a red leather checkbook.
“Few days, no more, probably. Can’t be sure, but not long.”
“Would a bonus persuade you to put this other work aside?” he asked, tapping the checkbook against his side.
“No.”
“Anything could have happened to Melanie,” he said. “Doesn’t that mean something to you?”
“I can recommend someone else you can contact about the job,” I said. “There are about eight licensed private investigators in Sarasota. Another handful in Bradenton. A few in Venice. Maybe three of them are reasonably good.”
“Are you independently wealthy, Mr. Fonesca?”
“No, but I don’t have to be wealthy to be independent.”
“Do you have any idea of what it’s like to lose a wife?” he asked with a catch in his voice.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay,” he said without pursuing the loss of my wife. “I’ll give you a chance. Larry said you’re good. He also said your fee is negotiable. I’ll write out a check. If it’s acceptable, you have the job. If not, hand it back, give me the folder and the name of a reliable private detective and we’ll shake hands and go on about our business.”
He put the checkbook on the desk, opened it, pulled a glistening gold pen from his pocket and wrote. He wrote fast, tore out the check and handed it to me.