I shook my head. “No.”
Greenlease frowned at me. “No?”
I said to Letterman, “Collect your pal, what’s his name? Stew O’Neill? He’s had enough time with his family. You two go down to Kansas and have an adventure. You don’t need me for that.”
Besides, it sounded like a dodge to me. Another snipe hunt.
I rose. “I’ll stick around on this end a while in case I’m needed, if you like, Bob. Should our buddy M throw us a curve.”
“Well,” Letterman said, vaguely offended, “I’m going to head out as soon as I can round up Stew.”
“Do that,” I said. “I’m going back to my hotel, gentlemen — I’m beat. See you in the morning, Bob. Good luck, Will.”
I almost returned Greenlease’s check, but something told me I might still earn it.
Chapter Three
I got pulled over briefly at the FBI checkpoint, where Agent Grapp asked me to fill him in, which I did. It was a little after two A.M.
“This little trip Letterman and O’Neill are taking to south Missouri,” I said from behind the wheel, “means a state line’s been crossed. Surely you can wade in now.”
He was leaning in my window like a carhop again; it was cold enough for his breath to smoke and he peered at me above fogged hornrims. “Not unless the kidnappers actually take the kid there. It sounds like the runaround to me.”
“No argument. You don’t think that boy’s still alive, do you?” That forced-sounding remark about piss and vinegar was lingering.
The FBI man’s long face got longer. “We have to assume so. And I’ve been told to follow Mr. Greenlease’s lead.”
“Because he’s a worried father or a big General Motors stockholder?”
The only answer he’d had for that was a smirk as he backed away and waved me on.
Now I was in my hotel room, sitting up in bed with a slit of sun peeking between the closed curtains and the nightstand clock saying it was already after ten A.M. I had left no wake-up call, expecting to hear from Greenlease if anything had broken. Apparently nothing had, except maybe my head. While I hadn’t been drunk last night by any means, over the course of a long evening enough rum had been involved to give me a dull headache.
My stomach was in no mood for anything but the cup of black coffee I grabbed in the President’s coffee shop. Then I drove to the Greenlease place in Mission Hills. A different Fed stopped me at the checkpoint, but when I proved who I was passed me on.
Paul Greenlease greeted me again. His suit-and-tie seemed to be standard, for the duration of the kidnapping anyway, and the shyly smiling maid was there to collect my hat and coat. But before escorting me deeper into the big somber house, the older Greenlease son lingered with me in the high-ceilinged, expansive entryway like the only couple on a ballroom dance floor.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, and this adopted son looked enough like Greenlease to make a private detective suspicious, “may I ask you something?”
“Of course, Paul. And make it Nate. I’m a friend of the family in this.” With a check for five thousand dollars from his father in my billfold, admittedly.
“Now that the ransom has been delivered,” he said, stroking his rounded jaw nervously, “will you stay involved?”
“Is there news of your brother?”
“No. Nothing from Pittsburg yet.”
I offered a sigh. “It’s probably time to let the FBI take over, frankly. That’s what I’ll be advising your father.”
The dark eyes were still bloodshot. “I had the idea that... well, that Dad might want you out there trying to find the people who did this.”
“Again, that’s probably better handled by the federal investigators, at this point.” I shrugged. “I do have means and methods not open to them. Uh, admittedly there are certain... niceties I don’t have to respect. So I may be discussing that with your father. Why, son?”
The word “son” had come automatically. For a man in his mid-thirties, he seemed young to me. His high forehead tensed. “Mr. Heller, there’s something bothering me that I haven’t shared with anyone. Can I trust you not to take this to Dad and Mother?”
The formality of “Mother” next to “Dad” struck me as interesting. Not sure I could tell you why.
“You can trust me to keep your confidence, Paul, unless I think it might bear on bringing your brother home or finding those responsible.”
He tried to shrug it off. “It’s nothing, really. I shouldn’t bother you or... or anybody with it.”
“No. Please. Go ahead.”
He drew in enough air to make his chest grow; when he let it out, words came along: “I took two of the phone calls. Mostly it’s been Mr. Letterman and a few times Mother. But I spoke briefly to this... individual.”
“M?”
“M.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “And this is what I want to share with you. His voice sounded... familiar.”
I frowned; put a hand on his shoulder. “You think you may know this person?”
“I might. I can’t give you a name or anything. I don’t think it’s one of my friends. I mean, frankly, all of my circle are well-off. Not as well-off as we are, but... nobody I know needs money. Nobody needs to do something like, anything like... this.”
“The voice doesn’t remind you of anyone in particular?”
“No. It’s almost... eerie. Something, someone, from the past.”
“Paul, you aren’t old enough to have much of a past.”
“I know. Jesus, I know! I’ve been racking my brain. When I was in military school, and later college, some of us would go out drinking. Could it have been somebody from those days?”
“Could it?”
His eyebrows went up and came down. “The voice on the phone sounded drunk to me.”
“And to me. Letterman commented on it, too.”
“If I come up with something, can I bring it to you?”
“Of course.”
“If I did get a hunch about who this might be, maybe you could look into it without getting some innocent guy in trouble.”
Did he already have a hunch? I really didn’t think so. But he was right — it might come to him.
I said, “Be glad to.” I gave him an A-1 business card. “If I wind up going back to Chicago, call me there.”
His eyes widened. “Are you planning to go back to Chicago?”
“No, but I might. If the FBI steps in and your father doesn’t have any further need of me.” I offered him my hand. “Thank you, Paul. Thank you for coming to me with this.”
We shook. Firmly, this time. He smiled a little and nodded, then led me to the library where his father and the hunting wall mural awaited, then quietly slipped away.
Greenlease was sitting on the couch with his little blonde daughter, who wore a green corduroy jumper and was reading a Nancy Drew book, The Ringmaster’s Secret. She looked up at me, but didn’t smile, still wary of me. The kid was a good judge of character.
“Darling,” Greenlease told the girl, getting to his feet, “I need to talk to Mr. Heller.”
She nodded and returned her eyes to the page while her father escorted me through the double doors onto a patio that looked onto fiery-topped trees and a browning golf course. The sun was out and the chill of the night before had backed off some. We sat at a wrought-iron table on wrought-iron chairs.
“I’m afraid we’ve heard nothing,” he said solemnly.
“Paul told me. He’s a nice young man.”
“He is. I’m going to set him up in a dealership of his own one of these days.” He shifted on the metal chair. “Will and Stew got to Pittsburg around 5:30 this morning. Checked into the Hotel Besse, caught a little sleep — Will had been up forty hours. They were at the Western Union office at seven when it opened. They took along fresh clothes for Bobby, including a topcoat.”