Lily laughed. “Ah, so you are curious after all.”
“Do you blame me?”
Another laugh. “I’d like to talk to you about what I’ve learned. May I take you to dinner — and at Rusterman’s?”
“How can I say no to an offer like that?”
“I was hoping you couldn’t. Come by for me in a taxi at seven fifteen, and I will make a seven thirty reservation.”
When I pulled up in front of her building in a cab, Lily came out of the lobby, her high heels clicking on the sidewalk. I climbed out of the taxi, held open the door, and bowed as she stepped in; then I went around and got in through the street-side door.
“Ah, what a fine gesture,” she said as I settled next to her.
“I was not about to make you slide all the way across the seat,” I told her. “Only a cad would do that. Cabbie, take us to Rusterman’s Restaurant, as fast as this old chariot of yours can go.”
“Right you are, Govn’r,” he answered with a lame attempt at a British accent.
Felix, owner Marko Vukcic’s right-hand man at the restaurant, seated us in a corner well removed from other diners and smiled at Lily, asking, “Is this table to your liking, Miss Rowan?”
“It certainly is, Felix. Thank you so much for remembering our favorite spot.” He presented menus and a wine list, promised that our waiter would be with us shortly, then executed a snappy about-face and left us.
Lily turned to me with a grin. “After we order some wine and decide on our entrées — and remember, this is on me — I will give you a report on my recent activities.”
“As a sleuth?”
“Well... I guess you could call it sleuthing. I was able to reach every one of the men Maureen had gone out with who was listed in her calendar.”
“Congratulations.”
“Not so fast with any plaudits; I really learned very little,” Lily said. “Most of them had little or no idea where she had gone, and none thought that she had behaved in any strange way the last time each was with her.”
“What about the last guy she was seen with, according to her calendar — Lloyd Thorne, wasn’t it?”
“Ah, your memory is as sharp as ever. I talked to him in his office, and he was the only one who said he sensed some unease in Maureen.”
“What did he say about her?”
Lily paused as I chose a wine and the waiter retreated. “With that memory of yours, you will of course remember that they went to the opera Tannhäuser. Thorne said from the moment he picked her up in a cab that night, Maureen was very distracted, not at all like she had been on previous occasions.”
“Any idea how many dates they’d had?”
Lily shook her head. “As I mentioned to you before, she has never talked a lot about her social life, at least not to me. But I got the impression from Thorne that theirs was not an overly serious relationship.”
“What else did he say about that night?”
“That Maureen was not her usual, talkative self on the way to the opera, at the intermissions, or when they had drinks later. ‘She seemed to be somewhere else,’ Thorne told me,” Lily added as she pulled some sheets of paper out of her purse and read from them. “‘I can’t explain it exactly, except to say it was almost like I wasn’t even there,’ Thorne said. ‘She didn’t ask me anything about myself, as she had on previous occasions, and she didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in any topic I brought up. Now you tell me that none of her friends has heard from her for days.’”
“How did Thorne seem to you?”
“Concerned, definitely. We talked in a conference room at his law firm, and he acted genuinely surprised that she had dropped out of sight. ‘I can’t imagine where she has gone to,’ he said. ‘She always seemed so well grounded to me, so self-confident.’ He really had no suggestions as to anyone else I might talk to about her whereabouts.”
“It sounds like the other men you spoke to also weren’t really helpful,” I said.
“They weren’t. Each one was agreeable to meet me. I talked to Jason Reed, the book publisher, and Eric Mason, the ad man, in their offices. Will Talmadge, whose company makes electric cables, met with me in his apartment at the Dakota; and Clay Dalton and I had coffee at a café in Greenwich Village near where he lives. Each of them, like Thorne, said he had no idea where Maureen might have gone.
“Also, they all professed genuine affection for her, especially Eric Mason, the one she sees more frequently than the others. He seemed to be the most concerned about her. If I were to guess, I’d now say that something serious might be cooking between them.”
“Interesting. Anything else to add?”
Lily paused and shook her head as if in disbelief. “Talmadge told me he thought it would be a good idea — no, make that a great idea — if he and I were to go out together sometime soon. He even suggested I might stay for a while in his apartment and have lunch with him, served by his own chef.”
“And then after lunch?”
“We did not get that far. I told him, politely, I believe, that my social calendar is well filled, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.”
“How did he take that?”
“Actually, quite well. My suspicion is that Mr. Talmadge is used to making similar suggestions to other women.”
“And getting the kind of responses he got from you?”
“I cannot be certain, of course, but given the man’s suavity — if that’s even a word — I suspect that he is not always stymied in his, shall we say, approaches.”
“I can only say that I am glad he was stymied on this occasion.”
“You say the sweetest things to a girl, you smooth talker.”
“Lord knows, I try.”
Chapter 5
We dined that evening on Rusterman’s superb squabs à la muscovite and did not further discuss Maureen Carr’s situation, other than to wonder about her brother.
“It’s worth trying to find him,” I said as we tackled desserts of raspberries in sherry cream (Lily) and blueberry pie à la mode (me).
“I agree, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. Now that my own foray into the world of detecting has proven to be less than satisfactory, I’m willing to let you have a go at the shadowy Everett Carr.”
“You gave it a good try, my dear, and sometimes the things you don’t learn can be as valuable is the ones you do. Can you recall anything Maureen ever said that might be of help regarding her brother?”
“I can’t at the moment, but I will ask the other women in our group, although I’m not optimistic about getting any results.”
“Give it a try, tomorrow if possible, and get back to me.”
Lily wasted no time the next day, although she called me in frustration at 9:00 a.m., as I was in the office opening the just-delivered mail.
“The good news is that I have reached all seven of what I refer to as our inner circle, not counting Maureen, of course. The bad news is that not a single one of them has any idea where Everett Carr lives — or anything else of substance about him, for that matter. The only shred of information is that Ellen Preston recalled Maureen telling her some months ago that she had happened to see her brother at a distance walking along Fifth Avenue, and that he looked like a vagrant. She went out of her way to avoid running into him.”
“So at least we know he is probably in the city, for whatever that’s worth. Consider me to be on the case.”
“I have a feeling that I know where you’re going next,” Lily said. “Does the name Cohen have anything to do with it?”