After I turned off the recorder, my uncle said, his voice husky, “I’m glad your mother wasn’t around when you came across that tape, Carolyn. I don’t think I’d ever play it for her.”

“I don’t intend to let her hear it. But, Devon, I’m trying to figure out its significance, if any. Did Mack ever talk to you about taking private lessons with a drama teacher at Columbia?”

“I remember that in an offhand way he did. You know when Mack was about thirteen and his voice was changing, he went through a period where it was really high-pitched. He got unmercifully teased about it at school.”

“I don’t remember Mack having a high-pitched voice,” I protested, then paused to search my memory. When Mack was thirteen I was eight years old.

“Of course, his voice deepened, but Mack was a more sensitive kid than most people realized. He didn’t show his feelings when he was hurt, but years later, he admitted to me how miserable he had been during that period.” Uncle Dev tapped the side of his mug, remembering. “Maybe some residual of that pain got him involved in the voice lessons. On the other hand, Mack wanted to become a trial lawyer and a good one. He told me that a good trial lawyer must also be a good actor. Maybe that could account for both the lessons and the passage he recited on that tape.”

Obviously, we could come to no conclusion. Whether Mack had chosen that dark passage because of his own state of mind, or was simply reciting a prepared text, could only be a guessing game. Nor could we possibly know why he either stopped recording, or erased the rest of the session with the drama teacher.

At 12:30, Uncle Devon gave me a warm hug and went off to his golf game. I went back to Sutton Place and was glad to go there because I no longer felt at home in my West Village apartment. The fact that I lived next door to where Leesey Andrews lived was terribly troubling to me. If it were not for that fact, I thought, I am sure that Detective Barrott would not be trying to connect Mack to her disappearance.

I wanted to talk to Aaron Klein, the son of Mack’s drama teacher. It would be easy enough to contact him. Aaron had been working at Wallace and Madison for nearly twenty years and was now Uncle Elliott’s chosen successor. I remembered that a year after Mack disappeared, his mother was the victim of a robbery and was murdered, and that Mom and Dad went with Uncle Elliott to visit him when he was sitting shiva.

The problem was I didn’t want Uncle Elliott to be involved in our meeting. As far as Elliott was concerned, he believed that Mom and I were planning to accept Mack’s request, which, in so many words, was “Leave me alone.” If Elliott knew I was contacting Aaron Klein because of Mack, as sure as day follows night he would feel it his duty to discuss it with Mom.

That meant I had to make an appointment with Klein outside the office and ask him to keep whatever conversation we had confidential, then trust him not to go blabbing to Elliott.

I went back to Dad’s office, flicked on the light, and went over Mack’s file again. I knew Lucas Reeves, the private investigator, had interviewed Mack’s drama teacher, as well as other members of the Columbia University Faculty. I had read his comments the other day and knew they weren’t helpful, but now I was looking specifically for what he had written about Esther Klein.

It was very short. “Ms. Klein expressed her sorrow and shock over Mack’s disappearance. She was unaware of any specific problem he may have been having.”

An innocuous statement, I thought, remembering the dictionary definition of the word “innocuous”: “Pallid; uninspiring; without power to interest or excite.”

The few words she and Mack had exchanged on the tape suggested they had had a warm relationship. Had Esther Klein been deliberately evasive when she was talking to Reeves? And if so, why?

It was a question that made me toss and turn in bed that night. Monday morning couldn’t come fast enough for me. I took the chance that Aaron Klein was one of those executives who gets to his desk early, and at twenty of nine phoned Wallace and Madison and asked for him.

His secretary had the usual question: “What is this in reference to?” and seemed miffed when I said it was personal, but when she gave Aaron Klein my name, he took my call immediately.

As briefly as I could, I explained to him that I did not want to upset Elliott or my mother by continuing to search for my brother, but that I had come across a tape of Mack and Aaron’s mother, and could I possibly meet him outside the office to play it for him?

His response was warm and understanding. “Elliott told me that your brother phoned on Mother’s Day last week and left a note saying that you were not to search for him.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which is why I want to keep this between us. But the tape that I found may suggest that Mack was having a problem. I don’t know how much your mother may have talked to you about him.”

“She was very fond of Mack,” Klein said swiftly. “I do understand why you don’t want to involve Elliott and your mother. I’ve always been so sorry about your brother. Listen, I’m leaving early today. My boys are in a school play this evening and I don’t intend to miss it by being caught in traffic. I have all the tapes my mother made with her private students in a box in the attic. I’m sure any she made with your brother are there. Would you want to drive up to my house at about five o’clock this evening? I’ll give them all to you.”

Of course I promptly agreed. I called down to the garage and told the attendant I’d be picking up my mother’s car. I knew it would be hurtful to hear Mack’s voice over and over again, but at least if I could be reasonably sure that the tape I found in the suitcase was one of many in that vein, it would end the gnawing fear that he disappeared because he had a terrible problem he could not share with us.

Satisfied that I had made the connection, I made a fresh pot of coffee and turned on the morning news, then listened with a sinking heart to the latest report on the Leesey Andrews case. Someone had tipped a reporter at the Post that she had phoned her father Saturday and had promised to call again on Mother’s Day.

ON MOTHER’S DAY!

My cell phone rang. Every instinct told me that it was Detective Barrott. I did not answer, and a moment later when I checked my messages, I heard his voice. “Ms. MacKenzie, I’d like to see you again as soon as possible. My number is…”

I disconnected, my heart racing. I had his number, and I had no intention of calling him back until after I saw Aaron Klein.

At five o’clock that evening, when I arrived at the Klein home in Darien, I walked into a firestorm. After I rang the bell, the door was opened by an attractive woman in her late thirties who introduced herself as Aaron’s wife, Jenny. The strained expression on her face told me that something was terribly wrong.

She brought me into the den. Aaron Klein was on his knees on the rug, surrounded by overturned boxes. Stacks of tapes had been separated in individual piles. There must have been three hundred of them at least.

Aaron’s face was deathly pale. When he saw me, he got up slowly. He looked past me to his wife. “Jenny, they are absolutely not here, not one of them.”

“But it doesn’t make sense, Aaron,” she protested. “Why would-?”

He interrupted her and looked at me, his expression hostile. “I have never been satisfied that my mother was the victim of a random crime,” he said flatly. “At the time, it didn’t seem as if anything had been taken from her apartment, but that isn’t true. There is not a single tape of your brother’s lessons with her here, and I know there were at least twenty of them, and I know they were there after he disappeared. The only person who would want them would be your brother.”