Chapter 38
Night Fourteen
Zeke
They’d decided last night to check the diner, just to be certain.
Sybil made the relevant point that if Betty were anything like Eloise, it was entirely possible that she was aggravated with them over something they were unaware of, and she was just ghosting them for a bit.
Zeke didn’t really believe that, and honestly, he didn’t get the impression that Sybil did, either, but they had to check anyway.
He was so tired that he trusted her instincts more than his own.
They arrived at four a.m., in the pitch black of night like they were vampires, which it almost felt like they were by now. They found the diner closed. A handwritten sign was posted to the inside of the glass door.
Help wanted: looking for an overnight server and hostess.
Closed between 11pm–6am until further notice.
So that was that. Their first dead end.
By the time they stumbled toward their day in the late morning—a few fitful hours of sleep finding them each—Natalie had tracked down Caleb.
“Caleb Drucker,” Sybil read aloud as she tied her hair into a bun atop her head.
She was still in her pajamas, a matching cotton set that wasn’t too dowdy and wasn’t too alluring, a combination that Zeke couldn’t help but find absurdly sexy.
He knew he needed to stop with this fantasy right now, that they were mourning Julian and worried about Betty, and his growing attachment to Sybil could have been the result of all sorts of things unrelated to actually wanting to pursue something with her.
“I have to head to PT,” he groaned. “But when I’m back?”
“When you’re back, we’ll go talk to him.” She finished his sentence.
Now it was rush hour, the city streets clogged with too many taxis and pedestrians not abiding the walk signal.
The forecast again called for snow, and once the sun had set, the temperatures had dropped into the upper twenties.
Sybil had remembered (of course she had remembered) that Betty mentioned that Caleb worked punishing hours, so there was no point in tracking him down at his apartment unless they went in the middle of the night.
Even though they were always up at that hour, they could both see why showing up at a stranger’s apartment at two a.m. looking for a girl was not the best way to start their amateur sleuthing.
Zeke’s driver deposited them all the way on the southern tip of Manhattan, in front of Morgan Stanley’s entrance.
“What’s the plan?” Zeke asked Sybil. He figured she would have one, which suited him perfectly fine.
His whole life, he’d been part of a team, but the pitchers, they did solitary work.
He had to trust that if he threw the ball where his brain and arm demanded, the rest of the lineup would live up to their ends of the bargain.
He wasn’t a batter or a base runner or a fielder.
He had one single purpose, and that was to decimate the person in front of him.
The rest of the Mets then had to add the runs, field the plays.
No wonder, it occurred to him now as he held the door for Sybil and they were hit with a rush of pumped-in heat, that while he was part of a team, he wasn’t part of the team.
His job required complete tunnel vision on himself, a narcissist’s mirror, as it were.
No one could help him if he was having a shit night, no one could help him if his speed or accuracy or drop or spin wasn’t working.
He looked at Sybil as she marched up to the information desk and was met with a wave of gratefulness—pure, honest appreciation—that she had asked him to be part of her team, that she believed he had something to offer.
The only thing he’d ever offered in the past was his arm.
“Hi,” she said to the receptionist. “We’re here for Caleb Drucker.”
The receptionist’s fingers flew over her keyboard. “He’s expecting you?”
“No,” Sybil said.
Her fingers stopped typing. “I’ll need to call up.”
“Right, can you tell him—” Sybil gestured for Zeke to join her at the desk. “Can you tell him Zeke Rodriguez is downstairs for him?”
So this was her plan. Zeke didn’t even mind, trading his fame for access. It was a small way to be helpful. Maybe his only use.
The receptionist’s eyes moved to Zeke, and he saw them widen for a beat. She reached for her headset, waited a moment, then said: “Hi, Mr. Drucker, I have a Zeke Rodriguez here to see you…Right. Yes. That one…No, he didn’t say why.”
“Just ask him if we can have five minutes of his time in the lobby,” Sybil whispered.
“He wants you to come down to the lobby,” the receptionist said.
It was amazing, Zeke thought, how fame opened literal doors. No one in this building knew him, yet everyone in this building knew him. What would his life look like without being born with a golden arm? How far would he have gotten on his other merits?
A few minutes later, the elevator door dinged, and a solidly good-looking, semi-tallish, kind-faced man in need of a haircut walked toward them.
“Holy shit, Zeke Rodriguez? Are you here to see me?” He held out his hand and offered Zeke a firm handshake. Up close, Zeke could see purple crescents under his eyes, a day-old stubble growing, like he hadn’t been home in a while.
“Hi,” Sybil said. “We’re friends with Betty.”
At the mention of her name, Caleb’s animated face grew still.
“You guys know Betty? I’m sorry, I’m confused.”
“Yes, weird, I know,” Zeke said. “We’re—” He glanced at Sybil to see if she was comfortable with him taking the lead. She nodded encouragingly. “We’re worried about her. She’s sort of…my roommate. And we haven’t heard from her in a few days.”
Caleb’s eyes moved from Zeke to Sybil to Zeke again. “I don’t, I’m not…” he stuttered. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head like he was trying to clear a muddle of thoughts. “I haven’t slept in a day. My brain isn’t quite working.”
Zeke wanted to say, Join the club, but the last time he had done that, they’d ended up in The Insomniacs, where a retired FBI agent was evidently using them to get closer to a young woman who, from what Zeke had pieced together from Julian’s files, may or may not be a murderer and/or arsonist fleeing from authorities.
“We’re just worried about her. A friend of ours recently passed away, and we haven’t heard from her since,” Sybil said gently.
“I thought it was me,” Caleb said. “She just…she just ghosted me a couple of days ago. I thought I was getting too, I don’t know, clingy?
I surprised her at work one night, and I thought things were going really well.
But I haven’t heard from her either. Not since…
” He unlocked his phone. “Yeah, four days ago.”
“Four days ago,” Zeke said. “So same as us.”
Now Caleb looked genuinely distraught, his jaw tightening, his eyebrows darting into a diagonal.
If this were a true crime series, there was a chance, Zeke considered, that the boyfriend would be a suspect, but either Caleb was the best actor disguised as an investment banker known to man, or he was truly broken up by the news.
“I guess I thought, I mean, you guys obviously know her—she likes her space. I guess I thought she was just taking space,” Caleb said.
Sybil placed a hand on his arm. “She probably is. Don’t worry.”
Caleb wasn’t a fool, though, Zeke could tell.
“But you’re here. So you’re worried. Also, I’m still confused.” Caleb turned to Zeke. “You guys were roommates? I mean, not to get too weird, but I obviously know who you are. My younger brother has your poster on his wall.”
“She didn’t tell you?” Zeke asked.
“No, and now I’m starting to wonder what else I didn’t know.”
Join the club, Zeke thought again.
“Can I give you my number?” Sybil reached for his phone. “We can stay in touch. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon, and maybe if you hear from her, you can let us know? And vice versa?”
“Yeah, for sure,” Caleb said as Sybil punched her contact information into his phone, then sent herself a text from his phone.
“Now we’re connected,” she said, and Zeke knew she was leaving nothing to chance. His Sybil. She was really something.
“Hey,” Zeke said. “How did you guys meet? She never told me.”
“Oh, funny story, sort of one of those meet-cutes,” Caleb said.
He lit up, then realized that maybe their story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
“Anyway, Grand Central, rush hour, we were on our phones and literally collided. I gave her my card, she texted a few weeks later.” He sighed. “I don’t know, man, I really like her.”
“Did she say what she was doing at Grand Central?” Sybil asked.
“I assume getting a train? Like I was? Although, actually, I was getting on, heading home. She was getting off. So…come to think of it, I’m not sure. I never thought about it.”
“And did she tell you anything about her family?” Sybil was good at this, Zeke thought. Kind but still pressing.
“Grew up in Colorado, not close with her parents who still live there, I think, hmmm, Mom works in a salon, Dad is a contractor. Divorced when she was little. Moved to New York out of high school thinking she could be a star? I know it sounds stupid but I really think—thought, I don’t know—that she could be. I just totally believed in her.”
“Right, right, that sounds about right.” Sybil smiled at him. “Okay, we shouldn’t take up more of your time. I know how these places grind you to the bone.”
His eyes grew somber, then widened. “Her brother, Levi, maybe you could call him? Maybe he would know?”
“She mentioned Levi to you?” Zeke perked up.
“Yeah, for sure. She really admired him, seeing the world, all that cool stuff.”
“Great,” Sybil said, and squeezed his arm. “Great, this is so helpful. We’ll be sure to track down Levi.”
Colorado. Both parents alive. Dad a contractor. But also, Levi.
Betty seemed to weave truths into her fictions, Zeke thought. Maybe this was one moment of honesty they could bite into, one real thing among a spool of lies. If they were lucky enough, this lead would unravel the rest of them.