No Place Like Home (48 page)

As usual, the sound of his voice shattered Mom. She began to cry. “Mack, I love you. I need to see you,” she
begged. “I don't care what trouble you may be in, what problems you have to solve, I'll help you. Mack, for God's sake, it's been ten years. Don't do this to me any longer. Please . . . please . . . ”

He never stayed on the phone for as long as a minute. I'm sure he knew that we would try to trace the call, but now that that technology is available, he always calls from one of these cell phones with a prepaid time card.

I had been planning what I would say to him and rushed now to make him hear me out before he hung up. “Mack, I'm going to find you,” I said. “The cops tried and failed. So did the private detectives. But I won't fail. I
swear
I won't.” My voice had been quiet and firm, as I had planned, but then the sound of my mother crying sent me over the edge. “I'm going to track you down, you lowlife,” I shrieked, “and you'd better have an awfully good reason for torturing us like this.”

I heard a click and knew that he had disconnected. I could have bitten my tongue off to take back the name I had called him, but of course it was too late.

Knowing what I was facing, that Mom would be furious at me for the way I had screamed at Mack, I put on a robe and went down the hall to the suite she and Dad had shared.

Sutton Place is an upscale Manhattan neighborhood of town houses and apartment buildings overlooking the East River. My father bought this apartment after putting himself through Fordham Law School at night and working his way up to becoming a partner in a corporate law firm. Our privileged childhood was the result of his brains and the hard-work ethic that was instilled in him by his widowed Scotch-Irish mother. He never allowed a
nickel of the money my mother inherited to affect our lives.

I tapped on the door and pushed it open. She was standing at the panoramic window that overlooked the East River. She did not turn, even though she knew I was there. It was a clear night, and to the left I could see the lights of the Queensboro Bridge. Even in this predawn hour, there was a steady stream of cars going back and forth across it. The fanciful thought crossed my mind that maybe Mack was in one of those cars and, having made his annual call, was now on this way to a distant destination.

Mack had always loved travel; it was in his veins. My mother's father, Liam O'Connell, was born in Dublin, educated at Trinity College, and came to the United States, smart, well-educated, and broke. Within five years he was buying potato fields in Long Island that eventually became the Hamptons, property in Palm Beach County, property on Third Avenue when it was still a dirty, dark street in the shadow of the elevated train track that hovered over it. That was when he sent for, and married, the English girl he had met at Trinity.

My mother, Olivia, is a genuine English beauty, tall, still slender as a reed at sixty-two, with silver hair, blue-gray eyes, and classic features. In appearance, Mack was practically her clone.

I inherited my father's reddish brown hair, hazel eyes, and stubborn jaw. When my mother wore heels, she was a shade taller than Dad, and, like him, I'm just average height. I found myself yearning for him as I walked across the room and put my arm around my mother.

She spun around, and I could feel the anger radiating
from her. “Carolyn, how
could
you talk to Mack like that?” she snapped, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest. “Can't you understand that there must be some terrible problem that is keeping him from us? Can't you understand that he must be feeling frightened and helpless and that this call is a cry for understanding?”

Before my father died, they often used to have emotional conversations like this. Mom, always protective of Mack, my father getting to the point where he was ready to wash his hands of it all and stop worrying. “For the love of God, Liv,” he would snap at Mom, “he sounds all right. Maybe he's involved with some woman and doesn't want to bring her around. Maybe he's trying to be an actor. He wanted to be one when he was a kid. Maybe I was too tough on him, making him have summer jobs. Who knows?”

They would end up apologizing to each other, Mom crying, Dad anguished and angry at himself for upsetting her.

I wasn't going to make a second mistake by trying to justify myself. Instead I said, “Mom, listen to me. Since we haven't found Mack by now, he's not worrying about my threat. Look at it this way. You've heard from him. You know he's alive. He sounds downright upbeat. I know you hate sleeping pills, but I also know your doctor gave you a prescription. So take one now and get some rest.”

I didn't wait for her to answer me. I knew I couldn't do any good by staying with her any longer because I was angry too. Angry at her for railing at me, angry at Mack, angry at the fact that this ten-room duplex apartment was too big for Mom to live in alone, too filled with memories. But she won't sell it because she doesn't trust that
Mack's annual telephone call will be bounced to a new location, and of course she reminds me that he had said one day he would turn the key in the lock and be home . . . Home.
Here.

I got back into bed, but sleep was a long way off. I started planning how I would begin to look for Mack. I thought about going to Lucas Reed, the private investigator whom Dad hired, but then changed my mind. I was going to treat Mack's disappearance as if it had happened yesterday. The first thing Dad did when we became alarmed about Mack was call the police and report him missing. I'd begin at the beginning.

I knew people down at the courthouse, which also houses the district attorney's office. I decided that my search would begin there.

Finally I drifted off and began to dream of following a shadowy figure who was walking across a bridge. Try as I would to keep him in sight, he was too fast for me, and when we reached land, I didn't know which way to turn. But then I heard him calling me, his voice mournful and troubled.
Carolyn, stay back, stay back.

“I can't, Mack,” I said aloud as I awakened. “I can't.”

2

Monsignor Devon MacKenzie ruefully commented to visitors that his beloved St. Francis de Sales Church was located so close to the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine that it was almost invisible.

A dozen years ago, Devon had expected to hear that St. Francis would be closed, and he could not in honesty have contested the decision. After all, it had been built in the nineteenth century and needed major repairs. But then as more apartment buildings went up in the area and older walk-ups were renovated, he had been gratified to see the faces of new parishioners at Sunday Masses.

The growing congregation meant that in the past five years he had been able to carry out some of those repairs. The stained-glass windows were cleaned; years of built-up soil removed from the murals; the wooden
pews sanded and refinished, the kneeling benches covered with soft new carpeting.

Then, when Pope Benedict decreed that individual pastors could decide to offer a Tridentine Mass, Devon, who was proficient in Latin, announced that henceforth the eleven o'clock Sunday Mass would be celebrated in the ancient tongue of the Church.

The response stunned him. The Mass was now filled to overflowing, not only with senior citizens but teenagers and young adults who reverently responded
“Deo gratias”
in place of “Thanks be to God,” and prayed
“Pater Noster”
instead of “Our Father.”

Devon was sixty-eight, two years younger than the brother he had lost on 9/11, and uncle and godfather of the nephew who had disappeared. At Mass, when he invited the congregation to silently offer their own petitions, his first prayer was always for Mack and that one day he would come home.

On Mother's Day, that prayer was always especially fervent. Today, when he returned to the rectory, there was a message waiting for him on the answering machine from Carolyn. “Uncle Dev—he called at five of three this morning. Sounded fine. Hung up fast. See you tonight.”

Monsignor Devon could hear the strain in his niece's voice. His relief that his nephew had called was mixed with sharp anger. Damn you, Mack, he thought. Haven't you any idea what you're doing to us? As he tugged off his Roman collar, Devon reached for the phone to call Carolyn back. Before he could begin to dial, the doorbell rang.

It was his boyhood friend, Frank Lennon, a retired
software executive, who served as head usher on Sundays and who counted, itemized, and deposited the Sunday collections.

Devon had long since learned to read people's faces and to know instantly if there was a genuine problem. That was what he was reading in Lennon's weathered face. “What's up, Frank?” he asked.

“Mack was at the eleven, Dev,” Lennon said flatly. “He dropped a note for you in the basket. It was folded inside a twenty-dollar bill.”

Monsignor Devon MacKenzie grabbed the scrap of paper, read the ten words printed on it, then, not trusting what he was seeing, read them again. “UNCLE DEVON, TELL CAROLYN SHE MUST NOT LOOK FOR ME.”

MARY HIGGINS CLARK
is the author of twenty-five suspense novels; three collections of short stories; a historical novel,
Mount Vernon Love Story
; and a memoir,
Kitchen Privileges
; and is the coauthor with Carol Higgins Clark of four suspense novels:
Deck the Halls, He Sees You When You're Sleeping, The Christmas Thief,
and
Santa Cruise
. More than eighty million copies of her books are in print in the United States alone, and her books are worldwide bestsellers.

By Mary Higgins Clark

Where Are You Now?

I Heard That Song Before

Two Little Girls in Blue

No Place Like Home

Nighttime Is My Time

The Second Time Around

Kitchen Privileges

Mount Vernon Love Story

Silent Night/All Through the Night

Daddy's Little Girl

On the Street Where You Live

Before I Say Good-bye

We'll Meet Again

All Through the Night

You Belong to Me

Pretend You Don't See Her

My Gal Sunday

Moonlight Becomes You

Silent Night

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

The Lottery Winner

Remember Me

I'll Be Seeing You

All Around the Town

Loves Music, Loves to Dance

The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories

While My Pretty One Sleeps

Weep No More, My Lady

Stillwatch

A Cry in the Night

The Cradle Will Fall

A Stranger Is Watching

Where Are the Children?

By Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

The Christmas Thief

He Sees You When You're Sleeping

Deck the Halls

Santa Cruise