The Mysteries Read online

  Maybe, after all, I wasn't any good at it. Maybe, for the better part of a decade, I'd been coasting along on luck, not skill, and now that luck had run out.

  It didn't help that I was flat broke, and suddenly aware of middle age staring me in the face. I'd had a good, long run at my fantasy of being a great detective—with a base in London, no less!—but maybe fantasy was all it had ever been. I'd never made any real money out of it; it was more like a self-sustaining hobby. Maybe it was finally time to give it up, grow up, and find a new line of work.

  I was distracted from my gloomy thoughts by a familiar soft, pattering sound, followed by a sharp metallic slap. I looked up in time to see the postman, transformed by the thick, frosted glass to a blurry grey ghost, bobbing away from my door.

  The surge of hope that sent me bouncing up out of my chair to get my mail was irrational, but as inevitable as the tides. Even though these days I did most of my business by phone or e-mail, the regular morning arrival of the mail set off an anachronistic flutter in my chest, the feeling that my whole life could be about to change. Unfortunately, the positive feeling rarely lasted long.

  That morning, the most interesting envelope came from my publishers, Wellhead Books.

  This turned out to contain a short letter, signed by someone I'd never heard of, informing me that as sales of Taken! had slowed to a trickle, they'd decided to remainder all unsold stock. They were offering me the first chance to buy all or some of the copies at an 80 percent discount. Orders in multiples of twenty, please, and kindly let them know how many were required before the end of the month.

  The news was not exactly a shock; I knew I was lucky my book had survived for as long as it had. Most books these days are allowed only a few months of shelf life before they disappear forever, and mine had been published nearly six years ago. Wellhead had been a small firm with an old-fashioned approach (small advances; personal relationships with authors; keeping books in print forever), but last year they'd been bought out and turned into an imprint of a much bigger media corporation. I couldn't blame them for wanting to dump me; I'd never managed to deliver a second book to my long-suffering editor. My career as an author had been even shorter and more inglorious than my life as a private eye.

  I set aside the monthly bank statement unopened and tossed all offers of loans, credit cards, and private financial services onto the pile on the couch awaiting my next trip to the paper-recycling bin. That left only a Lands' End catalog and a pale blue envelope postmarked Milwaukee, WI.

  I knew before I opened it what it would be, and at the sight of the card my spirits plunged even lower.

  Happy Birthday, Son.

  Another unnecessary reminder that I was no longer young. Two weeks early. Inside the card my mother had sent a check for five hundred dollars. The sight of it made me feel both relief and guilt. Relief, because now I dared open my bank statement; guilt because what kind of forty-year-old man still needs handouts from his mother?

  Just a loser like me.

  I was converting dollars to pounds in my head and trying to figure out how much would be left after I'd paid this month's bills, when a small sound made me look up.

  Through the frosted glass of the top half of the door I glimpsed a diminutive figure in green. The door handle rattled again.

  I had a disorienting flash of déjà vu, the shadow of a shade, like the memory of a dream. I stared at the door unmoving, trying to remember.

  There was a tapping sound, tentative at first, becoming a firmer knock against the glass. The little person outside wanted in.

  Finally, still feeling as if I'd slipped back into a dream, I got up and went to open the door.

  The woman on the doorstep was small, barely five feet tall, slim and lightly built. She wore a leaf-green linen dress. Her hair, just covering her ears, was a dark blond sifted with silver. She tilted up a heart-shaped face and looked at me out of golden brown eyes that reminded me, for one heart-stopping instant, of Jenny Macedo, the love of my life.

  I knew that this woman was a stranger, but for a moment, ambushed by memory, I couldn't speak or move, couldn't do anything but stare at this vision, seized by the irrational idea that Jenny had finally come back to me.

  My silence made her nervous. I saw her pupils dilate, and she leaned away from me. “Excuse me, I was looking for Ian Kennedy. Do I have the right address?” She spoke with an American accent, with a faint Texas twang—again, like Jenny's.

  Her eyes shifted away from my too-intense gaze. She looked past me, into my front room. With its book-lined walls and stacks of books and box files everywhere, it looked more like the abode of a particularly messy academic, or even a small secondhand bookshop, than anyone's idea of a private investigator's office.

  Finally, I saw that apart from her height and the light brown eyes, she was nothing like Jenny. And although she was still attractive, she had to be nearer fifty than forty.

  “Yes! You're in the right place. I'm Ian Kennedy.” Trying to make up for my slowness, I spoke too heartily.

  “I'm Laura Lensky?”

  I didn't understand the rising inflection, but she was obviously still wary of me.

  I took a step back, gesturing to her to come in. “Please. I'm sorry the door was still locked; I've been at my desk for an hour already, but I'm a bit slow this morning. Please, take a seat.”

  I shut the door behind her, then moved to open the blinds, letting daylight flood through the big front window. When I looked back, my visitor was still standing because there was nowhere to sit: the couch was littered with old newspapers and junk mail waiting for recycling, and even the chair that's supposed to be kept free for clients had a copy of the Fortean Times on it. I swept it away as quickly as I could, embarrassed by the garish cover.

  “There. I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting anyone. Never mind. How can I help you?”

  She took a step backward, nearer the door. “I thought we had an appointment?”

  Finally, it clicked. I groaned and screwed up my face. How could I have forgotten? It wasn't like I had that many potential clients these days . . . I couldn't afford to alienate this one.

  “Laura Lensky, of course. Forgive me—you booked by e-mail. Said you'd be in between eight-thirty and nine. I'm really not with it this morning—I'm sorry. I'm not usually this bad, I promise. I just had some bad news . . .” I waved my hand at the computer monitor. “To do with an old case. I was thinking so hard about the past, I'm afraid I kind of lost track of the present.”

  My babbling seemed to reassure her. Some of the tension eased out of her posture, and when I invited her again to sit down, she sat.

  I started for my side of the desk, then stopped. “I've made some coffee—”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Tea?”

  She gave a brief headshake, occupied with settling a large leather shoulder bag onto her lap.

  “I have herbal teas.”

  “How nice for you.” She shot me a glance and softened her tone. “I'm fine. And I need to make this meeting short because I'm on my way to work.”

  “OK. Let's roll.” I settled down at my desk and opened her file. So far, it contained only her two e-mails and my replies. “You're looking for your daughter.”

  “Yes. Peri.”

  “Full name?”

  “Peregrine Alexandra Lensky. But we've always called her Peri.”

  “What age is she?”

  “Twenty-one, last week.”

  “And when did you last see her?”

  “Two and a half years ago. It was just before Christmas.”

  I felt something heavy drop, that inward feeling that said it was hopeless, I should refuse this case. I didn't want another failure. Two years was too long.

  Not taking my eyes off the screen, I said softly, “You know, even after a few months the chances of—”

  “But I talked to her about five months after she disappeared.”

  That surprised me into meeting her eyes. “You
talked to her?”

  “On the phone. She called me, collect, from a pay phone in Scotland. She said—all she said was, she wanted me to know that she was happy. And she loved me.” Laura's eyes were very bright. “I tried to keep her talking, to tell me more, but she wouldn't. She said she couldn't stay. We talked for maybe, I don't know, two minutes.”

  “You're sure it was her?”

  The golden eyes flashed. “I know my own daughter.”

  “Yeah, sure, I didn't mean . . .” I raised my hands helplessly. “I have to ask.”

  “It was Peri,” she said quietly.

  “And she's never called you since?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you get the feeling that she was . . . I don't know . . . making the phone call under some sort of pressure? That somebody was making her say she was OK?”

  Looking a little puzzled, she shook her head. “Why?”

  It seemed unlikely to me as well, but I was feeling my way. “Was there a big search for her when she disappeared? A police hunt?”

  She shook her head. An old bitterness twisted her mouth, and I knew in advance what I would hear. “Peri was an adult, over eighteen, and there was no evidence of any crime, or force . . . The police always assumed she'd left of her own free will. That she'd had enough of me and her boyfriend and just went off to live her own life.” She sighed. “And, well, maybe she did. Except there was no reason for it—she wasn't unhappy, in fact, everything was working out just as she wanted. There was no reason for her to run away, none at all.”

  I left that one for the moment. “Why do you think she called?”

  She sat up a little straighter. “Because she knew I'd be worried. I mean, she could have thought of that months earlier, but, well, better late than never. She didn't want me to worry—she wanted me to know she was happy. But she didn't want me trying to interfere, talking her into coming back, which is why she didn't give me any way of getting in touch with her.”

  So far, so ordinary. It was an old, old story; only the details would be different. Peri had fallen in love with a stranger, or she'd joined a religious cult, or maybe she'd just gone on the road to find herself, in her own way, in her own time.

  “And you believed that she was happy? That she was OK? How did she sound?”

  She considered the question carefully, kneading the soft leather of her bag between her hands. “Alive. Herself. Um. Emotional . . . very . . .”

  “Scared?” In my mind's eye, there was a man in a phone booth with the girl, a little snub-nosed pistol pressed into her back.

  As if she could see this melodramatic image, Laura frowned and shook her head. “Not scared. Happy, but . . . I thought once she was on the brink of tears. Maybe a little homesick? Torn two ways? She did say she missed me, but . . .” She sighed and gave her head a shake. “I'd like to think I'm more important to her than I obviously am. Maybe I'll never know what made her leave the way she did. But I think she meant it when she said she was happy. I don't think she said that under threat.”

  I nodded slowly, as if I understood. “So you accepted that she was OK and let it go at that?”

  “Of course not!”

  Her astonished, angry glare made me feel like a complete idiot. I was wise enough to keep my mouth shut rather than make things worse.

  “She's my daughter,” Laura said slowly, explaining the facts of life to a half-wit. “My only child. Of course I couldn't let it go. I wouldn't try to force her to come home—even if I could. But I wanted to know for myself that she really was OK. I got in touch with the police again, and they traced the call for me. Once I found out where she'd been, I went there myself, the next day.

  “There was no sign of her, but I managed to find this woman who had talked to her—she'd given Peri the coin she'd used for the pay phone. She'd felt sorry for her, she said. She said . . .” Laura paused, her eyelids fluttering, and drew a steadying breath before going on. “She said Peri didn't look all that well. She offered her a meal, but Peri wasn't interested. She said she didn't need anything but a coin for the call.” She fixed her eyes on mine, willing me to understand. “But she didn't have anything. Not a penny. Her clothes were in rags. She wasn't even carrying a bag, she didn't have ten pence to stick in the phone, and—at least, the woman thought—she was pregnant.”

  I felt a jolt of vindication, almost triumph. It was like fitting the vital piece of a puzzle satisfyingly into place. I was careful not to reveal my feelings, and spoke gently, aware that this could be a sore point: “Could that be why she ran away?”

  “Peri didn't have to run away!” It was a cry from the heart. Laura bit her lip, composed herself, and said, sounding resigned, “I guess you need to know a little more about what the situation was when she left.”

  I gave her my most sympathetic look. “Please.”

  She gave a small sigh and settled as best she could into the chair. It was a cheap, secondhand piece of mass-produced office furniture, impossible to really feel comfortable in. Usually I didn't care—after all, this was an office, not my living room, and I was only a cheap detective. But already I felt that Laura Lensky deserved better, much better, than anything I could provide.

  “Peri and I were always close,” she began. “Then I got offered this job in London, when she was in her senior year of high school. We agreed that the most sensible thing was for her to finish out the year, living with her best friend in Texas, while I came over here. She'd already been accepted by Brown University—her first choice. The plan was that she'd spend the summer with me in London, then fly back to the States when school started.”

  Her eyes roamed restlessly about the room, along my bookshelves and up to the old, dusty cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling.

  “Peri loved London, as I knew she would. But then something happened that I hadn't expected. She fell in love with a London boy. A young man, I should say. Hugh.”

  “You didn't like him?”

  “I did.” She caught my eye, to stress her sincerity. “He's great; a really nice guy. He was completely smitten by her, and he made her happy—it was so sweet to see them together. I was fine with it, really.”

  I thought she was protesting too much. “But?”

  She sighed. “But this was not the nineteenth century. I wanted something more than a good marriage for her—and I'd always thought she did, too. But now, the first time she falls in love, she just loses interest in everything else. She didn't want to go to college. She didn't want to leave Hugh. I guess if he'd had his own place, she would have left me and moved in with him. But he was still living with his mom and his stepdad and a couple of sisters—so she was stuck staying with me.”

  “You argued.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Well, of course we did. I couldn't bear to see her throwing everything away for an infatuation. Not even for true love, if that's what it turned out to be.”

  She straightened up. “And Hugh took my side. He didn't like the thought of being separated from her, but he was sensible, a responsible young man—and more in touch with reality than Peri was. He knew she ought to continue her education. Finally, under pressure from us both, she agreed to go away to Brown as planned. Meanwhile, Hugh was going to look into the possibility of a job in America, and she could apply to transfer to some English universities. I figured that would give her an incentive to keep her grades up. She'd be back in London for Christmas, and at that point we'd all discuss what would happen next. I admit, I was hoping that after a few months apart they'd find it easier to go on like that—eighteen is awfully young to tie yourself down for life—but I wanted the best for her, whatever it turned out to be.”

  “So what happened?”

  “As soon as I saw her get off the plane I knew I couldn't send her away again. She was so miserable she looked ill. She didn't come back to life again until Hugh hugged her.”

  “True love.”

  She couldn't quite manage a smile in response. “She needed him, that was obvio
us.”

  “And that was OK with you?”

  She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and shook her head. “I guess you don't have any children.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe it's different for a man. For a woman, the baby is part of you. At first, she can't survive without you. And then, more and more, she can. Until, finally, it seems that she can't survive with you—everything you try to do for her is wrong—so you just have to let go, and stand back, and let them make their own mistakes, and realize, maybe, they aren't mistakes, they're just somebody else's life.”

  I waited, but she was finished.

  “So. You were going to let her drop out of college, stay in London, do what she wanted. What about the boyfriend? Had his feelings changed?”

  “Of course not. Hugh loved her as much . . . more than ever.”

  “So why did she run away?”

  She was silent, looking down at the bag in her lap.

  I pressed. “If all she wanted was to be with Hugh and nobody was standing in her way, why leave? Did they have a fight?”

  “No . . . at least, I don't think so . . .”

  “If she was pregnant by someone else . . .”

  “What?” She stared as if I'd said something unthinkable.

  To me, it seemed obvious. “She'd been away for months. Even if she loved Hugh, something might have happened while they were apart. I'm not saying it was her fault. Who knows how it happened. Maybe she couldn't bring herself to confess. Maybe she was afraid Hugh would reject her, so she ran away first.”

  “She didn't run away. I'm sure. She was taken.”

  Taken!

  My nerves vibrated like a struck bell.

  I took a breath. “Tell me everything that happened on the day she left. Everything you remember about the last time you saw your daughter.”

  She chewed her lip, then shook her head. Her hair bounced and shimmered, strands sparkling, in a shaft of dusty sunlight. “I don't have time today. Anyway, you need to talk to Hugh. He was with her the whole evening, and according to him, the things that happened—well, the police could never make any sense of it, but somehow it's got to be connected. You've got to hear his story before I tell you mine.”