Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,51

a look. Mail was piled up, grass wasn’t cut, unopened newspapers all over the front walk. Phone was disconnected. They went in. No sign of life or anything else. It was like one day they just up and left.”

“Bank inventories the stuff they left behind,” I said. “I went over it last night. It looks like they didn’t take much. No car.”

“Couple of our detectives went up and looked around.”

“You one of them?”

Zackis nodded.

“Yep,” he said. “Just made detective at the time. We found nothing. There were still suitcases in a closet. His and hers. Makeup in the master bath. Couple purses hanging on a knob in the front hall closet. No way to know how many suitcases they had, how many purses. Makeup looked like it was used, but . . . you married?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“How do you be sort of?”

“Takes practice,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you probably know that your sort-of wife has more makeup than anyone would believe and that when she packs to go away she takes it all, but when you look at her bathroom, or wherever, there’s, like, still a ton of makeup.”

“I know that,” I said.

“And you know she got a half-dozen purses.”

“I do,” I said.

“So we got no way to know what there was to start,” Zackis said. “Did they take suitcases? Did she take a purse? Did she pack makeup?”

“Beds made?” I said.

Zackis glanced at the report for a moment.

“Nope,” he said. “King-sized bed in the master bedroom was not made.”

“People usually make the bed before they take a trip.”

“So they don’t have to fi nd it unmade when they come back.”

“Or have someone else fi nd it so,” I said.

“Like wearing clean underwear,” Zackis said. “In case you’re in an accident.”

“Like that,” I said.

“For most people the house is their biggest investment,”

Zackis said. “They don’t just walk away and leave it.”

“They left about a hundred grand on the table,” I said. Zackis shook his head.

“It smells bad, doesn’t it,” he said.

“It does,” I said.

“No signs of foul play,” Zackis said. “No blood, nothing broken, no sign of forced entry. No hint of a weapon. Neighbors saw nothing.”

“You put out a Missing Person?”

“Yep. Nothing. Not a peep,” Zackis said.

“Neighbors shed any light?”

“Nope, pleasant couple,” Zackis said. “She was a little older than he was. Both of them were friendly enough. Didn’t bother nobody.”

“How about the car?” I said.

“Missing,” Zackis said. “Turned up a few months later in a parking lot at a mall in Toledo.”

We were quiet for a time. At the next desk another detective, with his feet up, was cleaning his nails with a pocketknife.

“This ain’t Cleveland, you know? Or Chicago. This is a little-city police department. Most of the time we get it done, but we don’t have a ton of resources. Anne Marie Turner has a sister in Lexington, Kentucky. I actually went over there and talked with her.”

He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Mail?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Bills, flyers, bank statements, no per sonal letters to either one of them.”

“Credit card statements?”

“Usual, nothing caught your eye and after . . .” He looked at the file. “August twenty-sixth, no activity at all. He cleaned out both their bank accounts on September seventeenth.”

“I know,” I said.

“We haven’t cleared the case,” Zackis said. “But we haven’t closed it either. Every once in a while, when it’s a slow day, one of us revisits it, and comes up as empty as the rest of us.”

I nodded.

“Ever hear of a guy named Perry Alderson?” I said.

“Perry Alderson,” Zackis said. “I’ve heard that name some where. Perry Alderson.”

He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully for a moment. Then he stood up.

“Lemme check something,” he said.

Zackis went out of the squad room. The dick that was cleaning his fi ngernails looked at me.

“You private?” he said.

“Yep.”

“How’s that pay?”

“Not so good in this life,” I said. “But in Paradise you get all the virgins you want.”

He looked at me for a moment and then said, “I guess maybe I’ll stay here, wait out my pension.”

Zackis came back into the squad room with a piece of paper.

“I knew I’d seen the name,” Zackis said.

He handed it to me. It was a Missing Persons circular on Perry Alderson with a picture, probably from a driver’s license. I’d never seen him before.

“Erie police put it out,” Zackis said. “Missing Person on a guy named Perry Alderson. Same year that the Turners went south.”

“In Erie?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Nice memory,” I said.

Zackis grinned.

“Made me think of Perry