“Listen,” she said. “Bob is… different. Different-different. I inherited him when I came over here from Hellems-the history department? I used to think those folks in history were peculiar, but these physicists? Don’t get me started; they’re something else. And Bob, he’s the oddest ball in the rack. Excuse my honesty, but if you know him then you know that already. He likes to keep his distance. He can be difficult for people to deal with, people who aren’t sensitive to his… shall we say, tendencies. But he does his job. No more, mind you, not a scintilla more. Bob does just his job. And I’ve finally found him a desk in a lab where everybody seems to get along with him okay. What I’m saying is that he’s not on a short leash like some of the people here. I’m not going to fire Bob for whatever… this is.” I watched her expression as her imagination took her someplace she hadn’t previously considered. “Within reason, of course.”
“Ms. Santangelo, it sounds like you know him well. Do you have any idea where I might look for him?”
She thought for a moment and shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, as she took a step toward the door. “But you’ll call me if you hear anything? I am concerned. Bob grows on you.”
Like a mushroom, I thought. Or a truffle. Something parasitic.
“Of course.” I scrawled my pager number on a Post-it that I spotted on the desk behind me and handed it to her. “Will you do the same?”
She said she would and I headed out the door. Before I’d cleared the threshold I stopped and turned back to her. “Did Bob take his begonia with him? You know the one I’m talking about?”
She smiled at me. “Of course I do. You do know him well. But I don’t know the answer to your question. Why don’t you and I go down to his desk and see about that darn Christmas begonia.”
As she led me down the hall toward the administrative area that included Bob’s desk, I allowed myself the suspicion that Ms. Santangelo had quite a mouth on her when she was younger, but that a lot of ambition and some determined self-discipline had turned her from a damn-and-hell young woman to a darn-and-heck middle-aged one.
The Christmas begonia was sitting in what his boss said was its usual place on the corner of Bob’s desk. The plant’s presence told me one thing, but it told Ms. Santangelo two. She explained to me that if Bob anticipated being away from the office for an extended period-anything more than a long weekend constituted an extended period-he would carefully transport the begonia home with him. The transport was an elaborate process involving a beer-case flat and tented brown grocery bags. She also explained that if he anticipated being out of the office for a period even as long as a full day but not longer than three, he would move the plant and its pebble tray from the corner of his desk to the top of a waist-high bookshelf that sat beside a southeast facing window at the far end of the room.
“Always?” I asked.
“Always,” she confirmed, without hesitation. “He never puts the begonia in direct sun. And he always watered it from below, you know, from the pebble tray. He knows what he’s doing with it. Bob manages to keep the thing in bloom like that from Thanksgiving until spring break some years. People always comment on it, always.”
I’d already noted that the begonia was healthy, its blossoms prodigious. I stated the obvious: “Bob didn’t expect to be gone for this long, did he?”
Ms. Santangelo reached down and caressed the petals of one of the delicate begonia flowers. “No, he didn’t. I wonder if I should move it over to the bookcase so it can get some light while he’s gone. Bob would. I know he would. I just don’t know if he would want me to.”
I’d followed her hands to the desktop and was scouring the surface for a clue that might tell me something about Bob’s destination when he’d left work to go out to lunch on Monday. Other than the Christmas begonia, though, his desktop was devoid of anything personal. I asked, “When Bob plays games, does he use this computer?” I was pointing at the less-than-state-of-the-art machine that filled a third of his desk.
“No, he doesn’t. He has a laptop, he brings it with him to work every day. He asked me a long time ago if it’s okay with me for him to hook it up to the university’s network over lunch to play his games. I told him to have at it. Bob doesn’t cheat. If he’s unsure about a rule, he asks.”
Her response deflated me a little. “He took his laptop with him to lunch?”
“I don’t know, heck,” she said, and started rummaging in the drawers of Bob’s desk. From my vantage the drawers appeared to have been arranged by a demonic closet organizer.
“Don’t see it,” she said. “He must have taken it.”
“Do you know anything at all that might help me find him?”
“I wish I did,” she said. “I really wish to heck that I did.” She made her hands into fists and lifted them so that they came together just below her chin. “A few of my people here are totally reliable, you know what I mean? But some of the rest? Flakes. If they were gone for the amount of time that Bob’s been gone-a couple of days-I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Par for the darn course is what I’d think. Par for the darn course. But Bob? He’s not part of either group. He’s not regular, he’s not a flake. He’s…
“You know what? I’ll just say it: I don’t really like Bob, but I… like him. Do you understand? I do hope he’s okay.”
I understood.
I crammed in a quick stop at Mustard’s Last Stand on Broadway, inhaled my hot dogs with only a small side of guilt over the indulgence, and made it back to my office with just a few minutes to spare before my next appointment.
37
Was the after-work plan I cobbled together a good idea? Probably not. But once my workday was done I realized that I was fresh out of good ideas, so I was left to settle for questionable ones.
I assumed that it would take me a day or so to get an appointment arranged to see the inside of Doyle’s house, but I was wrong. When I phoned the listing agent asking if she could meet me for a showing, her eyes apparently began flashing dollar signs at the prospect of mining a buyer for a house for which she was already representing the seller. She asked me what time I got off work. I told her I was done at six. Without a moment’s hesitation she asked if 6:15 would work for me. “You won’t believe the water features in the backyard,” she exclaimed. “They are worth the purchase price all by themselves. Trust me, they’re…”
I didn’t tell her that I already knew.
When I called Viv, our part-time nanny, she informed me that Lauren would be late getting home, too. Viv promised me that she was happy to stay with Grace a little longer. In my head I added a small bonus to her monthly check. I also left Lauren a voice mail at her office that I would pick up some Thai takeout for dinner.
The woman I was meeting was named Virginia Danna. She pulled up in front of Doyle’s house in a silver Lexus SUV, the big version, the fancy Land Cruiser clone that was all shoulders and hips. I was parked a couple of doors farther north and walked the short distance from my car in time to meet up with her near the front porch.
“Dr. Gregory?” she beamed when she spotted me coming. “You’re going to absolutely love this place. The bathrooms need a little work, but oh, oh, the potential with the…” She was a tall, thin-the word svelte actually came to mind-elegantly dressed woman with just a hint of an accent, as though she’d emigrated to the United States from someplace when she was quite young. Despite her last name, for some reason I was guessing she was from Brazil. Her wardrobe made few concessions to winter. She wore no coat and she balanced effortlessly on high heels. All in all, very not-Boulder.