Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

then he clammed up. Who the hell was I to be asking personal questions, he might have been thinking. I would have. “What do you want with her?” he said. Protective? Or just another cranky New Yorker?
    “It’s about her old job,” I told him. “I’m working for a family whose little girl went to Dr. Bechman and I need to talk to Celia about—”
    “No,” he interrupted. “No. No. No. I can’t help you out here.”
    “Well, do you think Charles might?” I asked, making an assumption based on proximity and the fact that he was all I had left at the moment.
    ‘That would be up to him,” he said. And the line went dead.
    I could have just dialed Charles’s number. If there was a polite way to disturb a stranger, I suspect that would have been it. But I didn’t call. I got up and walked across the street, finding the bell that said “C. Abele” and ringing it. But when the intercom crackled and he asked who was there, I wasn’t sure I’d get anything more this way than I would have on the phone.
    “I’m looking for Celia,” I said, “on an urgent matter.”
    My day was full of surprises. Charles Abele buzzed me in. I pushed the door open, held it with my foot and looked back at the bell. He was on the third floor. Dash and I took the stairs.
    He was standing in the doorway when we got there, his curly hair a bit messy, his shirt a washed-out-looking plaid in blues and grays, his pants baggy corduroys, looking as if he’d slept in them. Though, on second thought, I doubted that Charles Abele was sleeping any better than Leon Spector did.
    “I’m sorry for disturbing your Sunday,” I said.
    He stepped back, making room for me and Dashiell, closing the door behind us, walking over to a light green couch, soft pillows nestled in the comers, a glass coffee table in front of it covered with sections of the Times. There were two black leather chairs facing the couch. I sat in one of those, Dashiell sliding down to smell the nubby pale wall-to-wall.
    “What now?” he asked, a man as weary as my client but who seemed to be, unfortunately for him, far more connected to his own pain.
    “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said, hoping he might tell me what had already occurred that made him look as if the bones in his body could barely hold him erect.
    “What is it you want with Celia? What’s the urgent matter?”
    “You’ve had enough of those,” I said, trying again.
    But Charles Abele wasn’t having any. He sat up straighter and looked me over. “Can we get to the point, Miss . . .?”
    “Alexander,” I told him. “Rachel. I was hired by the father of a little girl who was a patient of the doctor Celia used to work for.”
    “Madison Spector?”
    I nodded. “I wanted to talk to Celia about Madison because she knew her before she stopped talking.”
    He nodded. He knew that part, too.
    “She lives two blocks away,” he said.
    “You’re the only Abele listed in the neighborhood. Is she unlisted?”
    “She went back to using her maiden name,” he said. “Daniels. They live on West Eleventh Street.”
    “They?”
    “Celia and JoAnn.”
    I’d already been too nosy. I had no legal status and this man owed me nothing. But I did tilt my head, the way Dashiell does, to show him that my interest hadn’t waned.
    “The baby.”
    “Mr. Abele,” I said, “every time I ask you a personal question, I feel my mother turning over in her grave. I wasn’t brought up to be, well, I know I’m being very intrusive. But there’s a little girl suspected of murdering her doctor and she won’t speak. She won’t tell anyone that she didn’t do that. Or that she did. And I’m trying, despite some awful odds, to . . .“
    “I understand what you’re trying to do, Miss Alexander. What happened to Madison is heartbreaking. Anyone would want to help.”
    “Then you know about it? It wasn’t in the paper.”
    “Celia was very fond of her.”
    “That’s the first I heard of that.”
    “Of what?”
    “Anyone being fond of Madison.”
    “People are fond of all sorts of people,” he said, “even people they shouldn’t be fond of.”
    I nodded. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
    “She said she was quitting her job. Just like that. No discussion.” He pointed to himself and then to me, as if I were Celia telling him the bad news. “The thing is, my writing hasn’t taken off.” He laughed. Perhaps more of an expulsion of breath than a laugh. “I have three novels out, but I