False Conception Read online

  “Well …”

  I shrugged. “The police will be here with a warrant by the end of the week. Since that’s the way you want to handle it.”

  Naturally, she yielded. She was too nice not to, and it’s the nice ones you can manipulate easily, which is one of the less endearing corollaries of the profession.

  Two minutes later I was back in Greta Hammond’s apartment, with Mrs. Hapwood and her cat chaperoning my every move. I moved through the place rather quickly, describing the case I was seeking, enlisting Mrs. Hapwood’s help in the search. At one point my eye lingered on the couch as I tried to transform the woman I’d made love to into an extortionist or worse, but thankfully I couldn’t come close.

  What I was looking for wasn’t a briefcase, of course, but an explanation for Greta Hammond’s absence, and perhaps a clue to her whereabouts. Fortunately, there were indications her departure had been benign. There was no food decomposing on plates, no stagnant bathwater, no overturned chairs, no splash of blood to indicate a violent intrusion. There was only the musty smell of disuse and the normal clutter of a harried existence. I took all that as a good sign.

  But there weren’t indications of a premeditated departure, either—no undraped clothes hangers, no empty drawers or bookcases, no orange boxes or storage bags scattered about. At bottom, the shape and contents of the apartment seemed undisturbed, which was mysterious in itself, given the circumstances. The only sense I got was that there wasn’t quite enough of everything, as though the contents had been reduced across the board by maybe 20 percent, as though Greta had taken only what she truly needed and left the rest behind. But that was at best a hunch.

  I was about to give up when I remembered the packet of photos in the desk. After sidling idly to it, I directed Mrs. Hapwood’s attention elsewhere, then opened the drawer for a peek. But the photos were gone, as were some of the other contents.

  I paged quickly through the past few weeks in the engagement calendar on the desktop, but except for some predictable notations, there was nothing unusual but for a big black circle drawn around a day in mid-May. For a moment, I thought it marked the date of our tryst, and was indicative of its significance to her, but a run through my grainy memory suggested we had coupled at least two weeks later. As a consolation prize for my lack of progress, I slid Greta’s six-inch plastic ruler into my pocket while Mrs. Hapwood was toying with her cat, then told her I’d done all I could.

  “Do you have any reason to think she met with foul play?” I asked in all innocence as I headed for the door.

  “Why would I think that?”

  I shrugged. “Because she was worried about something; because strangers have been inquiring about her; because you overheard a mysterious phone conversation?”

  She shook her head. “There wasn’t anything like that. Only the fight with her friend.”

  “The friend from across the street?”

  She nodded.

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of months ago, I guess. I don’t keep good track of time.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “I didn’t hear the words, I just heard the voices. Screams and screeches. I had my hand on the phone toward the end; wouldn’t be the first time I got the cops to quiet someone down.”

  “Well, let’s hope it was only a tiff and not something serious. You did see her afterward, right?”

  She nodded. “Women don’t hurt women, anyway,” she said in a surprising burst of gender analysis. I guess she’d never heard of Lizzy Borden.

  After urging Mrs. Hapwood to be sure Greta called me the minute she got back, I walked two blocks north and took a stool at the end of the counter. The breakfast crowd had thinned, but a handful of customers lingered over coffee and the Chronicle, prolonging the peak of their day.

  I was in the middle of an apricot danish by the time Leo came out of the kitchen. After flirting with a woman at a table, he strolled behind the counter and began to put salt in some shakers. When he had finished, our eyes met and held but it took him a while to place me. When he had, he lumbered toward me, his tattoo as sinuous as ever.

  “How ya doin’?” was his opener.

  “Good. You?”

  “Okay. You been in before, right?”

  I nodded. “Couple of months ago. I was looking for a place to live.”

  His smile was a smoke-stained accusation. “You was looking for some action, too.”

  “I was attracted to Greta Hammond, if that’s what you mean.”

  He beamed expansively, his omniscience again supreme. “She said you come by later on.”

  “I did. Yes.”

  “She said she liked you.”

  “The feeling was mutual.”

  “She said she wouldn’t mind bumping into you again. And then she didn’t talk about you no more.”

  “Maybe that’s because she did bump into me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nice things.”

  That part didn’t please him. He started to take umbrage, but knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. “What you after now?”

  “I’m looking for Greta. I can’t seem to get her by phone. I was wondering if she moved or something.”

  Leo looked up and down the counter, then lowered his voice to a grating whisper. “It’s good you showed up.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I was about to come looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause Greta ain’t around all of a sudden.”

  “How long’s she been gone?”

  “Three weeks Monday.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Have you talked to her friend, Linda?”

  “I talked to everybody.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You think someone did something to her?”

  “Yeah, I think someone did something. Till you showed up, I thought you was the one that done it.”

  “Has anyone called the cops?”

  “Cops don’t count for much out here.”

  “Well, I’m worried about her, too. I’m going to try to find her.”

  He was still leery of my motives. “Why?”

  “We got along.”

  “Yeah. So did we.”

  We paused in homage to the object of our mutual regard. “So what do you think I should do first? Talk to people who worked with her up the hill?”

  He shook his head. “Medical geeks is all that’s up there; she didn’t run much with them. But she had something in the works, I know that much.”

  “What?”

  “Something that was going to make her some money. But I think it went sour.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “She was feeling real down last time she was in. And she was also pissed. Pissed at someone for fucking her over.”

  “Who was she pissed at?”

  “She didn’t say. No name, or nothing. But she was pissed and she said she was going to make him pay for what he did.”

  “That sounds a little like blackmail.”

  Leo awakened the cobra by crossing his arms. “From someone else, maybe; not her. But I figure she got involved in some scam that went south and now she’s at the bottom of the fucking bay.”

  I tried not to shudder. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing she’d be mixed up in.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know what it was at first. Maybe they set her up. Maybe she was conned. But sure as shit something happened, because there at the end, she wasn’t sounding like herself. She was sounding like a woman with both tits in a wringer.”

  “Do you have any idea at all who the guy is?”

  “Yeah. I got an idea. He come in looking for her.”

  “When?”

  “Week ago.”

  “Who was it?”

  Leo woke the cobra and gave me a good loo
k at it. “The asshole claimed to be her husband.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Don’t know that, either. All I know is, Greta’s up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”

  CHAPTER 16

  There was one more place to try, so I knocked on the door to the duplex. It was Saturday, so there was a chance she was home, and this time I got lucky.

  She was blond and in her early thirties, tall and slim and attractively exhausted. She was dressed for cleaning and scrubbing and ironing, the things working women can only do on weekends, and when she opened the door she was scowling—she had programmed her day to the max and hadn’t scheduled an interruption.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I began. “My name’s Tanner. I’m a friend of Greta Hammond’s.”

  “You are?” Her vacant look suggested that was the last subject she thought I would broach.

  “I’m not a friend of long standing,” I explained, “but I know your name is Linda and you have a daughter named Ingrid who goes to Argonne school and you’ve been a friend of Greta’s for quite a while.”

  “So?” Her eyes thinned to a squint and she shoved her hands in her denim pockets. The middle button of her flannel shirt was missing, and a wisp of white bra peeked through the gap, a clinical contrast to the rest of her dingy outfit.

  “I’m here because I’m worried about her,” I said, with enough ambiguity to pique her interest. “And I’m guessing you are, too.” “Why would I be worried?”

  “Because she’s missing. At least everyone else in the neighborhood thinks she’s missing, and unless you know where she is, I’m assuming you do, too. I was hoping we could talk about it.”

  The request was unnerving. She glanced back to the house as though there was someone inside who would object to my presence and get her off the hook.

  “I can come back later,” I offered, as fealty and anxiety collided between us. “You seem pretty busy right now.”

  Something in my face helped her make a decision. “No. This is as good a time as any. I need to talk about it, too.” She fussed with her hair as she inspected me. “Who are you, again?”

  “Marsh Tanner. I met Greta a couple of months ago, when I was looking for a place to live. Then my job fell through, so I didn’t … anyway, I stopped by to see Greta one night, to thank her for her help, and we …” I left the rest to Greta’s indiscretion or Linda’s imagination.

  The tension went out of her face. “So you’re that guy.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Greta was like a kid after the circus,” she said with a laugh, then quickly sobered. “Is that the last time you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “I was hoping she’d run off with you. That was the most joyful explanation I could think of and I was praying it was true.” She brushed at an aberrant lock of hair. “So now I have to think about all those other possibilities,” she concluded glumly.

  “I think we should discuss some of them.”

  She sighed and stepped back. “I guess we should. Come on in. Do you want coffee? Excuse the mess, but—” She shrugged at the state of her scattered quarters, as though her possessions had unruly minds of their own. “My daughter wanted to shift the furniture around because it was so boring the way it had been for the last five years, but of course she disappeared halfway through the project. Par for the course.”

  And it was true—the furniture was shoved to the center of the room, the rugs were rolled, the occasional tables were tugged to the fringes—she might have been moving out. “Coffee would be fine,” I told her.

  “If you can find a seat, help yourself. If not, grab a pillow and find a spot on the floor.”

  I found a chair in the exact center of the room and removed the women’s magazines that were piled on top of it. When she returned with the coffee, Linda perched on the matching love seat that was perpendicular to me. We had to contort to keep an eye on each other.

  “I don’t know your last name,” I said.

  “Webber.”

  “Do you work with Greta?”

  She shook her head. “We met at a local restaurant. We kept showing up at the same time every Sunday, and got to talking and discovered we lived across the street from each other. Eventually we cut out the middleman.”

  “Poor Leo.”

  She blinked. “You know Leo?”

  “I was just talking with him.”

  “Did he know anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  The expression prompted a question. “Is Leo okay?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He seems enamored with Greta. Do you think there’s any chance he might have …”

  “What?”

  “Gone out of his gourd when she rebuffed his advances.”

  She shook her head. “I think it’s pretty much what he does—make advances and get rebuffed. He’d have a heart attack if anyone took him up on it. But God. If you’re asking if it’s impossible, then no. Of course it’s not. Any man on earth is capable of that.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  She met my eye, then yielded a fraction. “Most of them.”

  I passed on my chance at surrebuttal. “I understand you and Greta had quite a fight a couple of months back.”

  “What?”

  “The argument.”

  “What argument?”

  “The one in Greta’s apartment. The one so loud it made Mrs. Hapwood consider calling the cops.”

  She squeezed her cup with both hands. “If there was such an argument, it wasn’t with me.”

  “Then who was it with?”

  “No idea.”

  “Greta didn’t mention it?”

  She shook her head. “And for your information, Greta and I didn’t argue; we didn’t want to waste the time. What we used each other for was reinforcement, not the opposite, and arguing would get in the way of that. But now that I think about it, we didn’t disagree about all that much.” She smiled wistfully. “Except rap music. Greta likes it; I think it ought to be banned.” Her final words were thick with emotion, and she paused to get a grip.

  “Let’s back up a second,” I said. “I need to know whether you really don’t know anything about Greta, or whether you’re part of her scheme and covering up.”

  “What scheme?”

  “You tell me.”

  The hurt in her eyes was palpable. “I don’t know about any scheme. And even if I did, why would I cover for her?”

  “Because she’s your friend and you might think you were doing her a favor. But I assure you, you aren’t. She could be in big trouble, legal trouble, and I need to find her to keep it from happening.”

  She bit her lip and looked worried. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

  “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. Do you know where she is?”

  “No.”

  “Scout’s honor?” She nodded. “I really don’t, and I’ve been worried sick about it. Ingrid’s been after me to go to the police for days.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t want to make things worse.”

  “How would that happen?”

  “I don’t know. But around the time you showed up, Greta started acting funny. I figured she’d fallen in love—that does weird things to people, as you probably know.”

  “I have a vague recollection.”

  “But it seemed more sinister than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing specific; she was just … touchy. And upset about something. I figured maybe you ditched her after a couple of dates, but now that you mention it, she did say some things that hinted of schemes and plots of some sort.”

  “How so?”

  “She made odd references to her past, as though something she’d done a long time ago
was haunting her. And she was talking so morbidly.”

  “About what?”

  “Suicide. Murder. Euthanasia. Abortion. All kinds of sick stuff. I was getting worried about her mental health; it really wasn’t like her.”

  “What were the references to her past about?”

  “She asked me if I’d ever known anyone who was truly evil. And I told her I hadn’t and that I didn’t believe such people existed. And she told me they did, and that one of them had been after her for years, but she had finally found a way to beat him.”

  “Was she talking about her ex-husband?”

  “That was my assumption, but I’m not sure.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Luke? No. All I know is what she said about him.”

  “Which was?”

  “That he was handsome, ambitious, and dumb.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was Greta afraid of him, do you think?”

  “She was upset, I know that. But I don’t know if he was the reason.”

  “Leo said the guy had come around recently, asking about her.”

  “If he did, I didn’t see him.”

  I changed directions. “Where was Greta from?”

  “Somewhere in the Midwest, I think. Ohio. Iowa. She didn’t talk about it much.”

  “Did she go to college?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know where. I don’t think she graduated. If she had a degree, she’d have a better job.”

  “Does she have family?”

  “Her father’s dead, I know that. So is mine. We talked about it one time. About what effect it had on us.”

  “What did you decide?”

  Her eyes became ceramic. “I decided it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Greta decided she was still grieving over it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. She said she was responsible, somehow. But she didn’t say how. Or for what.”

  “What about her mother?”

  “I never heard her mention her.”

  “Greta had a child, she told me.”

  Linda nodded. “It died.”

  “How?”

  “Some sort of congenital abnormality, I think, but I don’t know what. I got the impression it happened right away, that she didn’t bond with it or anything.”