No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [49]
“Between here and Chicago,” Cynthia said. “He was in sales. He took orders, I think it was, for machine shop supplies. That kind of thing.”
“You never knew his exact route?”
She shook her head. “I was just a kid. I didn’t really understand what he did, only that it meant he was on the road a lot of the time. One time, he showed me some pictures of the Wrigley building in Chicago. There’s a Polaroid shot of it in the box, I think.”
Abagnall nodded, folded his notebook shut and slipped it into his jacket, then handed each of us a business card. He gathered up the shoeboxes and got to his feet. “I’ll be in touch soon, let you know how I’m progressing. How about you pay me now for three days of my services? I wouldn’t expect to find the answers to your questions in that time, but I might have an idea whether I think it’s reasonable to think that such a thing is possible.”
Cynthia went for her checkbook, which was in her purse, wrote out a check and handed it to Abagnall.
Grace, who had been upstairs all this time, called down, “Mom? Can you come up here for a second? I spilled something on my top.”
“I’ll walk Mr. Abagnall to his car,” I said.
Abagnall had his door open and was about to plop down into his seat when I said, “Cynthia mentioned that you might want to talk to her aunt, to Tess.”
“Yes.”
If I didn’t want Abagnall’s efforts to be a complete waste, it made sense for him to know as much as possible.
“She recently told me something, something she’s not yet disclosed to Cynthia.”
Abagnall didn’t beg, but waited. I told him about the anonymous donations of cash.
“Well,” he said.
“I’ll tell Tess to expect you. And I’ll tell her she should tell you everything.”
“Thank you,” he said. He dropped into the seat, pulled the door shut, powered down the window. “Do you believe her?”
“Tess? Yes, I do. She showed me the note, the envelopes.”
“No. Your wife. Do you believe your wife?”
I cleared my throat before responding. “Of course.”
Abagnall reached over his shoulder for the seat belt, snapped it in place. “One time I had a woman call me up, wanted me to find someone, went to see her, and can you guess who she wanted me to locate?”
I waited.
“Elvis. She wanted me to find Elvis Presley. This was around 1990, I think it was, and Elvis had been dead about thirteen years at that point. She lived in a big house, had lots of money, and she had a few screws loose as I’m sure you might have guessed, and she’d never so much as met Elvis in her entire life and had no connection to him whatsoever, but she was convinced that the King was still alive and just waiting for her to find and rescue him. I could have worked for her for a year, trying to track him down for her. She could have been my early retirement plan, this lady, bless her heart. But I had to say no. She was very upset, so I explained to her that I’d been hired once before to find Elvis, and that I’d found him, and he was fine, but wanted to live the rest of his life in peace.”
“No kidding. And did she accept that?”
“Well, she seemed to at the time. Of course, she might have called some other detective. For all I know, he’s still working on the case.” He chuckled softly to himself. “Wouldn’t that be something.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Abagnall?” I asked.
“I guess the point I’m making is, your wife really wants to know what happened to her parents and her brother. I wouldn’t take a check from someone I thought was trying to string me a line. Your wife isn’t trying to string me a line.”
“No, I don’t think she is, either,” I said. “But this woman who wanted you to find Elvis, was she trying to string you a line? Or did she really believe, in her heart, that Elvis was still alive?”
Abagnall gave me a sad smile. “I’ll report back to you folks in three days, sooner if I learn anything interesting.”
16
“Men are weak—not you, of course—and they let you down, but just as often it’s the women who’ll really betray you,” she said.
“I know. You’ve said this before,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Getting sarcastic. He didn’t like it