Missing You(36)

Was it any wonder he clung so strongly to his mother?

It was late when Kat reached her apartment, but it wasn’t as though police stations kept hours. She looked up the phone number of the Greenwich Police Department and called, giving her NYPD title and figuring to leave a message for Detective Schwartz, but the dispatcher threw her a curve.

“Hold on. Joe is here. I’ll connect you.”

Two rings later, “This is Detective Joseph Schwartz. How may I help you?”

Polite.

Kat gave her name and rank. “A young man named Brandon Phelps came to see me today.”

“Wait, didn’t you say you were NYPD?”

“Yes.”

“So Brandon visited you in New York City?”

“Right.”

“Are you a friend of the family or something?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He thinks his mother is missing,” Kat said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“So he wanted me to look into it.”

Schwartz sighed. “Why the hell would Brandon go to you?”

“You sound like you know him.”

“Of course I know him. You said you’re NYPD, right? Why did he go to you?”

Kat wasn’t sure how much she wanted to go into Brandon’s illegal hacking activities or the fact that she was frequenting a dating site. “I’m not sure, but he said he first asked you for help. Is that true?”

“It is.”

“I know his claim seems crazy,” Kat continued, “but I’m wondering whether we can do something to put his mind at ease.”

“Detective Donovan?”

“Call me Kat.”

“Okay, call me Joe. I’m trying to think how to put this. . . .” He took a moment. Then: “I would say that you haven’t been told the full story.”

“So why don’t you fill me in?”

“I have a better idea, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Why don’t you take a drive up to Greenwich in the morning?”

“Because it’s far.”

“It’s only forty minutes from midtown. I think it might benefit both of us. I’m here until noon.”

? ? ?

Kat would have driven up, there and then, but she’d had too much to drink. She slept fitfully and, figuring she would wait until after the traffic eased, headed over to yoga class. Aqua, who was always there before the first student arrived, never showed. The students mumbled, concerned. One student, a too-skinny older woman, decided to lead the class, but it didn’t take. The students slowly dispersed. Kat waited around a few more minutes, hoping Aqua would show. He didn’t.

Figuring most of the traffic had cleared out, Kat rented a Zipcar at nine fifteen. The ride, as advertised, took forty minutes.

Look up “tony” in your figurative dictionary (the adjective, not the name) and lush and flush Greenwich, Connecticut, pops up. If you run a hedge fund exceeding a billion dollars, it was pretty much a federal law that you had to live in Greenwich, Connecticut. Greenwich had the wealthiest residents per capita of anywhere in the United States, and it looked it.

Detective Schwartz offered Kat a Coke. She accepted it and sat on the other side of his Formica desk. Everything here in the station looked sleek and expensive and unused. Schwartz had a handlebar mustache, complete with the barbershop-quartet waxed tips. He wore a dress shirt with suspenders.

“So tell me how you’re involved in this case,” Schwartz said.

“Brandon came to me. He asked for my help.”

“I still don’t get why.”

Kat was still not ready to tell him everything. “He said it was because you guys didn’t believe him.”

Schwartz gave her skeptical cop eyes. “And he thought, what, a random cop in New York City would?”

She tried to steer him away from all this. “He came to you guys, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you said something on the phone about knowing him from before?”

“Something like that, yes.” Joe Schwartz leaned in a little closer. “This is a small town, you know what I mean? I mean, it’s not a small town but it’s a small town.”

“You’re asking for my discretion.”

“Yes.”

“You got it.”

He leaned back and put his hands flat on the desk. “We in the police department are a little too familiar with Brandon Phelps.”

“Meaning?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“I checked,” Kat said. “Brandon has no record.”

Schwartz spread his hand. “I guess you missed the part where I said this was a small town.”

“Ah.”

“Ever see the movie Chinatown?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He cleared his throat and tried to imitate Joe Mantell. “‘Forget it, Jake. It’s Greenwich.’ Don’t get me wrong. He’s only been arrested for petty crap. He broke into the high school a few times, drives too fast, vandalism, deals a little pot, you get the drift. And to be fair, none of this happened before his old man died. We all knew and liked the father, and the mother, well, Dana Phelps is good people. Salt of the earth. Will do anything for you. But the kid . . . I don’t know. There’s always been something off about him.”