Treasure Box (13 page)

"This is so strange," said Mom. "You should be calling to tell us you're going to have a baby, Quentin, not that the police are going to question you."

"You never met her parents," said Dad, "and now suddenly her father is phoning you and they've got the police looking for her. Quentin, is there a chance that Madeleine was setting you up for blackmail all along? You pay up and suddenly there she is, and what was all this missing persons investigation about?"

"I don't know. So far nobody's asked me for money. It's all really confusing and I'm not sure what's really going on. But in case you're contacted and questioned, I wanted you to hear about this first from me."

"That was very wise of you, son."

"What should we tell them?" asked Mom.

"The absolute, complete truth, Mom. I didn't do anything wrong and there's nothing to hide."

"Quentin, I'm so sorry that this is happening," said Dad. "If it's any consolation, we thought she was as wonderful as you did."

"Yeah, well, we're all suckers for the perfect woman, aren't we, Dad? The difference is, the one you married is real."

"Oh, Quen," said Mom.

"Listen, there's a chance that this will hit the papers and if it does, they'll make it look like I'm guilty of something horrible because that's what sells papers. You know, Software Millionaire's Wife Missing, Husband Can't Explain Disappearance. If it's a con, and I think it is, you can be sure there'll be some evidence that supposedly contradicts things I've told you. No matter what other people are saying, though, you can be sure of this: I did no harm to Madeleine, and if I could have her back right now, as my wife, flesh and blood, right here beside me, I'd be the happiest man alive." And then, because this was true, and because he was tired, and because he had never had a chance to mourn for the wife he lost, he wept, his parents listening to him on the phone, believing him, comforting him.

And why not believe him? Everything he had said was true. And he had told them all that they could possibly believe.

Afterward, physically and emotionally drained, he fell asleep in front of the TV in the living room before Letterman got to the top ten list.

Next day he phoned his Virginia lawyer and asked him how to go about reporting a missing person. He explained that his wife had left him in New York State, but he had come home to Herndon assuming that she would find her own way back to one of their residences, only she wasn't answering the phone anywhere and until he located her he had to assume that something
might
have happened to her and he wanted the police to be on the lookout just in case—wasn't that the right thing to do? And his lawyer assured him, definitely, that was the right thing to do.

So he did it, but they didn't seem to think there was any urgency. "She'll turn up, Mr. Fears. Just give her time to cool down."

"I'm sure you're right," he answered. "But please just put out the word, won't you? Call the police up there and ask them to be on the lookout?" They assured him they'd see to it. He knew that the New York police would assume he was launching his own search because of the phone message from Ray Cryer, but if he didn't start searching it would look even worse.

That afternoon he boarded a flight to San Francisco and by evening he was in his lawyer's office.

"Only for you do I cancel dinner at my favorite restaurant in San Rafael and drive down into the city."

"You should have told me," said Quentin. "I would have come up and joined you there."

"I didn't want you there," said Wayne Read. "I wanted me and my wife there. Being married to me wouldn't be easy for any woman, and it's particularly hard for my wife. So this is costing me, Quentin."

"Madeleine left me."

"Oh." Wayne looked nonplussed for a moment. Then he put his head down on his desk. "I'm trying really really hard, Quentin."

"Go ahead and say it. You told me so."

"Quentin, I'm not happy to be right. I wanted
you
to be right."

"Yeah, well, she's gone. And I need your help."

"I assume she's got a lawyer. Do you know who yet? Because I'm not a divorce lawyer and—"

"Wayne, you're not getting it. She's
gone
. Not just leaving-me gone, I mean
gone
. I've filed a missing persons report in Virginia. I got a phone message from a man claiming to be her father, and he says they've also got the police looking for her up there."

Wayne's demeanor changed. A little bit more serious. A little bit suspicious, too, though he was trying to conceal it. Well, Quentin didn't blame him.

Quentin gave him the whole story he had told his parents.

"Well, somebody's bound to have seen her leave the house. She'll turn up somewhere."

"I doubt it."

"Why?" Again the suspicion.

"Because I never met this Ray Cryer but he left me a phone message implying that we knew each other. He had the code that let him switch off my answering service and leave a taped message on my machine in Herndon—and only Madeleine had those codes. Well, besides you and my parents."

"So she's not missing."

"Let's just say that this guy who calls himself Ray Cryer knows more about her disappearance than I do."

"Then let's find her," said Wayne. "Between the investigators we can hire and the police, we'll find her."

"No we won't. Nobody will ever find her."

Wayne thought for a while, tapping his pencil. "Quentin, are you telling me the truth?"

"Everything I've told you is true."

"That's not exactly what I asked." Then, as Quentin was about to speak, Wayne raised his hand to stop him. "Wait a minute, Quentin. Don't get mad at me, but I have to tell you. If you have committed some crime, and you wish me to be involved with your defense in any way, don't confess that crime to me. If you confess a crime to me, then my advice to you will be to turn yourself in and make a full confession, and I will not represent you in your defense. Do you understand me?"

"Relax, Wayne," said Quentin. "I didn't kill her. As far as I know she's as alive as she ever was."

Wayne relaxed a little.

"And I do want to begin a search. But not some little penny-ante search. It's going to have to cover every city where I have residences, which is a long list, as you well know. But she might have gone to any of those places and I have to at least go through the motions of a serious search. Don't I?"

"Go through the motions?"

"I told you. We won't find her."

Wayne shook his head. "I really hate paradoxes, Quentin. Do you know where she is or don't you?"

"I know she's nowhere."

"If she's buried in the basement of that house, Quentin, the police are going to find her."

"She's not buried anywhere because she's not dead. She's also not alive. She never existed."

"That must have been an interesting wedding, Quentin."

"The real search is for her true identity, Wayne. I want to be able to prove that the Madeleine Cryer I married has no birth certificate in any of the fifty states. That she never went to school anywhere, that she never had a job. The other investigations are because I have to look like a worried husband searching for his vanished wife. But my attorney has to know that what I'm really searching for is the identity of the person who deceived me. Or someone who might know the truth about her."

Wayne leaned back in his chair. "Now, that's interesting. I wonder where the investigator should start."

"There's almost nowhere he
can
start, Wayne. Like you said, I was a fool. The whole time we were engaged, back in Virginia, she claimed she was staying with friends, moving from house to house. We talked on her cellular phone. I never had a phone number for any of those friends. Never met one. Never heard a single name. She said she was in a job somewhere in the bureaucracy, but I don't know what it was, and frankly I don't believe she ever had such a job, though of course I'll pay to have the federal personnel files searched to see if she worked for them."

"What about this Ray Cryer?"

"Whoever he is, I doubt he'll be real helpful to us—if he talks to our people at all."

"But we can investigate him and
his
background," said Wayne. "Either he really is her father or he's faking, and either way, checking up on him will help us."

"And the house, Wayne. The deeds. And I mean going back generations. She knows that house. That wasn't a fake. She knows it in the dark. She's connected to it somehow."

"We'll do it, Quentin. In the meantime, you won't mind if I strike her name off your insurance policies and out of your will?"

"Write it up and I'll sign everything."

"The police are going to be
so
suspicious of you."

"Of course they are.
You
are, and I pay you handsomely and listen to your wise and intensely personal advice. Think how much less likely
they
are to think I'm telling the whole story."

"Though of course you
are
telling the whole story." The irony in Wayne's voice was palpable.

"I've told you the whole story I'm going to tell the police and the whole story I told my parents and the story I'm going to tell everybody else forever, and every bit of it is true."

"But there are some bits you sort of left out?"

"Maybe."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"I want to. If I dare."

"Attorney-client privilege protects everything you tell me. I've already given you my don't-confess-a-crime-to-me warning. Please remember that I mean it."

"But what if the thing I tell you convinces you I'm out of my mind?"

"I'm already convinced."

"I'm not joking, Wayne. I've been questioning my own sanity, and unless you're crazy, you will too."

"Crazy people have as much right to a lawyer as sane people."

"But what if you thought it would be in my best interests to be committed to a mental hospital? To be declared incompetent?"

"I have no standing for that," said Wayne. "Your parents could try it, or your wife, or your children if you had any. Your heirs, perhaps."

"My in-laws?"

"They're running a different scam right now," said Wayne. "The point is, your attorney couldn't try to commit you on his own account. I'd be disbarred if I tried. My job would be to stop
them
."

"But if you—
when
you don't believe me, will you still work as hard for me as before? Or will you start handing my work over to underlings until you finally spin me off to some other lawyer?"

"Quentin, now you're bothering me. What is this, some alien abduction thing?"

"I wish." He took a deep breath. "Get out your recorder."

"I'll remember what you tell me."

"I want it in my own voice."

"Quentin, attorney-client privilege only protects you in court, not from public attacks on your reputation. Of course I'll do all I can to protect any tape you make here, but the best protection is for the tape never to exist."

"Tape it."

"Your call." Shaking his head, Wayne got out his recorder. And Quentin told him what really happened, starting with his sighting of a woman who looked like Lizzy at the Elden Street Giant food store in Herndon. From there he skipped to the events at Madeleine's family mansion. The midnight snack. The reason she gave him not to take a shower. The exquisite food at breakfast. The other people at the table. The walk on the bluff. And then the treasure box, Grandmother saying "Find me," Madeleine fleeing into the graveyard. No footprints but his own. The names on the headstones. The dark, cold, empty house, the dust and filth, the bed that only he slept in, the bureau that held only his own clothing. The words that appeared on the door. The talking rat. And then Lizzy, dead Lizzy come back to talk to him, to explain what she understood. And the long walk back to civilization.

Told all in a stream, Quentin didn't believe the story himself.

But there was Wayne Read, turning off the tape recorder, nodding. "I'll keep this tape, Quentin. In my safe. I'm not going to give it to a secretary to transcribe."

"Right."

"What I don't get, Quentin, is why you told me this... stuff."

"Maybe I just had to tell someone."

"Not you, Quentin. You're not a get-it-off-your-chest kind of guy."

"Maybe I'm afraid that somewhere along the line I'm going to get killed. And if I am, I want somebody to know why."

"Me? Your close, intimate lifelong friend?"

He was right. It wasn't Wayne Read he had told this story for. Quentin thought for a moment. "If I'm dead, Wayne, then I want you to play this for my parents."

"Quentin, come on."

"I want them to know."

"Quentin, it's one thing to tell me this stuff, but telling your folks this thing about Lizzy coming back—how is that going to do anything but hurt them?"

Quentin leaned across the desk. "Give me the tape and I'll find another attorney."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it, I just gave you my best advice. I'm used to you ignoring me. But you
are
an ass, Quentin."

"Thanks."

"If you're not crazy you're the stupidest liar I've ever known. Dead people hanging around just in case somebody conjures them back? For
breakfast?
"

"I'm sure inventive, aren't I, Wayne?"

"The worst thing is that I can't even tell my wife because if she heard
this
story she'd know I was having an affair and didn't even care enough to come up with good lies."

"Are you having an affair?"

Wayne sighed and looked away for a moment. "I'm not, but she is."

"You're kidding."

Glumly, Wayne explained. "When she started getting suspicious of me, I figured
something
had changed, and it wasn't me, I was just the same as always. So I had her watched for a few weeks. She was giving—favors, I should say—to guys in the parking lots of bars."

"And she's still accusing
you
of having affairs?"

"Quentin, people are crazy. That's why I told you that. So you'd understand—I know that people do crazy things. But they do them in the real world. The guys my wife sees—they're cowboy types. She goes to cowboy bars. In Marin County, right in San Rafael, we have three kids, and she's blowing guys in the parking lot in exchange for a joint. How is that crazier than your telling me this horrible story that you actually want me to play for your parents if you suddenly croak. I once thought you were the only island of sanity in a screwed-up world. You had no connections except your parents. You didn't get emotionally involved. Rational decisions kept doubling your fortune every three years or so. No waste. No lies. No illusions. Then you fall in love with a woman and she leaves you and you come to me with this
story
and I swear, Quentin, I've lost all faith in the human race. I've got only one question. Is there any way you can get
my
wife to disappear off the face of the earth? No, no, I don't mean that."