Free Where Are You Now? by Mary Higgins Clark

to have come to that conclusion on her own. She referred to Mack as ‘absent without leave.’ She’s going to join some mutual friends of ours for a cruise around the Greek islands. I’ve been invited to be with them and may go for the last ten days.”
    â€œYou should ,” Aaron said promptly. “You don’t give yourself nearly enough time off.”
    â€œAnd on my next birthday I’ll be sixty-five. In a lot of companies I’d be pushed out at that age. That’s the benefit of owning this one—I’m not going anywhere for a long time.” He paused, as if preparing himself, then said, “But I didn’t ask you to join me to discuss vacation plans.”
    Surprised, Aaron Klein watched as Wallace’s eyes clouded with worry.
    â€œAaron, you’ve gone through the experience of losingyour mother in a random crime. If the positions were reversed, if your mother was the one who had disappeared and then kept in contact, would you respect her wishes or would you feel that you should keep on trying to find her? I find myself absolutely uncertain and troubled. Did I give Olivia the right advice, or should I have told her to renew and redouble her efforts to find Mack?”
    Suppose Mom had disappeared ten years ago, Aaron asked himself. Suppose she phoned once a year, then, when I told her I needed to find her and was going to track her down, she sent me a note telling me to leave her alone, what would I do?
    The answer was not hard to reach. “If my mother did to me what Mack has done to his family and to you, I would say, ‘If that’s the way you want it, Mom, so be it. I have other fish to fry.’ ”
    Elliott Wallace smiled. “ ‘Other fish to fry’? That’s a strange way to put it. But thank you, Aaron. I needed to be reassured I’m not failing Mack or Olivia . . .” He paused, then corrected himself: “I mean his mother and sister, of course.”
    â€œYou’re not failing them,” Aaron Klein said emphatically.
    That night, as he was sipping a predinner glass of wine with his wife, Aaron said, “Jenny, today I realized that even stuffed shirts are like schoolboys when they fall in love. Elliott can’t mention Olivia MacKenzie’s name without getting stars in his eyes.”

14

    N icholas DeMarco, owner of the trendy club the Woodshed, as well as an upscale restaurant in Palm Beach, was notified of the disappearance of the NYU coed Leesey Andrews late Tuesday evening while on a golf outing in South Carolina.
    On Wednesday morning, he flew home, and by three o’clock Wednesday afternoon he was following a secretary down a long corridor on the ninth floor of 1 Hogan Place to the section where the detectives assigned to the District Attorney of Manhattan worked. He had an appointment with Captain Larry Ahearn, the commanding officer of the squad.
    Tall, with the lean figure of a disciplined athlete, Nick walked with long strides, a worried frown on his forehead. Absentmindedly, he passed a hand through his short hair, which, despite his best efforts, curled when it was damp.
    I should have stopped home long enough to change, he chided himself. He was wearing an open-necked checkered blue and white sport shirt, which felt too casual, even with a light blue jacket and dark blue slacks.
    â€œThis is the detectives’ squad room,” the secretary explained, as they entered a large room in which rows of desks were haphazardly clustered. Only a half dozen of them were occupied, although piles of papers and ringing telephones testified to the fact that all of the others were active workstations.
    The five men and one woman who were there looked up as he crossed the room, threading his way between the desks after the secretary. He was keenly aware of being the object of sharp scrutiny. Ten to one, they all know who I am and why I’m here, and they resent me. They have me pegged as