Then about six weeks ago, something upset him. He had always spent a lot of time alone in his room, but now he was either spending all his time there or disappearing for long hours after work. He stopped working overtime; he started treating the job like a job; Kitty thought this was as it should be, or she would have thought so, if he hadn’t become so moody.
“Did he say what was troubling him?”
“He’s not very talkative. Neither am I.” Kitty gave a bleak smile. “I guess we both relied on Len to talk to us and neither of us ever learned how. Anyway, this went on, him brooding, me having to remind him to eat, and then, about ten days ago, he went off in the morning, like he always does. Only he came home after a few hours. He stayed in his room for a bit, then around three he left again.”
That was the last his grandmother had seen or heard of him.
“Where did he go?”
“He didn’t tell me. He said he’d found something didn’t add up, then he took off. I started cleaning—”
She broke off as I involuntarily looked around the dust-covered sitting room.
“Yes, my grandmother would have slapped me for letting a room look like this, but since Martin disappeared I think, what’s the point? Why keep cleaning when people keep leaving?”
“Your grandmother would slap me every day if she saw the way my apartment looked,” I assured her. “‘Something didn’t add up.’ Could he have been going to the bank?”
She shook her head, her face pinched in misery. “I don’t know. He just said there was something he had to look into. Or look at? I’m not sure; I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t think it was anything special until he didn’t come home.”
“When did you start getting worried?” I asked.
“That night. Well, the next day. I thought, who knows, maybe he found a girl to spend the night with. Then, when he didn’t come home, I thought maybe he’d gone camping. He would, sometimes, just pack up a light tent and go down to Starved Rock or up to Wisconsin for a few days. He hadn’t taken a vacation since he started the job two years ago—he started right out of high school.”
“Would he go off camping without telling you?”
“He might. Since Len died, Martin doesn’t like to tell me what his plans are. But then when he still hadn’t come back, I thought he’d moved into an apartment. We used to argue about that: he could save so much money living at home, and he has his own nice little apartment down in the basement. I thought he’d moved out but didn’t have the courage to stand up and tell me to my face. Only—he isn’t answering his phone or e-mails or anything.”
“It should be pretty easy to check with his employer,” I said.
She started twisting the thick cables of her sweater around her fingers; her voice sank back to a whisper. “Last week his boss called: Martin hasn’t been to work since the day before he left here. He’s not answering their e-mails or phone calls, either.”
“That sounds really bad,” I said baldly. “What do the police say?”
“I haven’t told them. What would be the point?”
I tried not to shout at her. “The point would be that they could be looking for your grandson. He’s been gone ten days now. No phone calls, right? No postcards or e-mails? No? Then we need to get the police looking for him.”
“No!” she cried. “Just leave him alone. And don’t go calling the police, the police are worse than—never mind—but if you go to the police about my business, I’ll—I’ll sue you!”
I looked at her in bewilderment. It was hard to believe an elderly white woman might be the victim of police harassment. Maybe it was a residue of Austria under Nazi control, when police declared open season on Jews, but her ferocity made me think she was guarding against a more immediate danger.
“Ms. Binder, who are you afraid of? Has one of your daughter’s associates threatened you?”
“No! I don’t want the police involved. What if they—” She cut herself off mid-sentence.
“What if they what?” I demanded sharply.
“People like you think the police are there to help, but I know different, that’s all. We solve our own problems in my family. I don’t need police, I don’t need Charlotte Herschel’s condescension, and I don’t need you!”
I couldn’t budge her from that stance, even though I didn’t mince words about the danger her grandson might be in.
“How did he leave? Car?” I finally asked, thinking that with the plate number I might get state police to help look for him.
“Len bought him a used Subaru, when I—when we said—when Martin agreed that college would be a waste of time and money, but he didn’t take it; it’s still out front.”
She couldn’t imagine how he’d gone; she thought she would have heard a taxi. He might have just walked to the bus stop.
“What did he take with him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I told you, I wasn’t really paying any attention.”
“Have you looked in his room to see what might be missing?”