JM03 - Red Cat (14 page)

“So, someone looking for…what?”

“Her work would be my guess.”

Mike swore under his breath. “Someone interested in her work and someone with a key.”

“I suppose she could’ve let whoever it was in— but either way it implies someone she knew.”

“Like the new boyfriend. Or maybe the old one.”

“That’s the hopeful answer,” I said. “Talking to them is way up there on my list.”

“The neighbor didn’t know their names?”

“No, but I’m hoping the sister or the brother-in-law will. I’m going again tomorrow morning.”

Mike made a noise of vague assent. “How about her other visitors— the woman, and the guy in the suit— did the neighbor know anything about them?”

“Just the vague descriptions.”

“They ring any bells?”

“The suit could’ve been the lawyer Krug’s assistant told me about. Or not. The woman could be anyone.”

Mike was quiet for a while, and I could almost hear the gears turning. “You didn’t go inside?” he asked finally.

“I would’ve had to force the window and the window gate, and that would mean nothing but heartache with the cops. B and E is bad enough, but screwing up a possible crime scene is worse, and if they find out you’ve done both it makes it that much harder to convince them you haven’t tampered with evidence. And speaking of cops, how are you doing with your contacts?”

“I’m taking a guy to lunch tomorrow,” Mike said.

“Rough work.”

“You haven’t seen him eat.”

Mike rang off and I ate some yogurt. Outside, the slush had frozen over, and the night sky was streaked with cloud. This afternoon’s snow had been a feint, not the promised onslaught but merely a scouting party. Still, the local TV news crews were giddy with anticipation. They prattled on tirelessly about plows and salt and closings and delays, and only war would’ve made them happier. The storm was good news for David, too, as was any story that sucked up air time and column inches, and pushed the Williamsburg Mermaid far from the public’s view. If he got really lucky, the snow would be followed by an ugly celebrity divorce.

On television, a stiff-haired woman gestured toward a weather map that was white from Maryland to Massachusetts, and west to the Ohio Valley. I turned up the sound. The forecast called for the storm to hit New York sometime tomorrow afternoon. I only hoped it would hold until I made it back from Wilton.

* * *

Nicole Cade was in Toronto, Herbert Deering told me, stranded at the airport by the storm that hadn’t reached us yet, and deeply unhappy. Which explained why, on my second visit, I actually made it inside the house.

“They don’t know when they’ll clear the runways,” he said. “And who knows what the airports down here will be like by then. It could be days before she makes it back.” The prospect didn’t seem entirely devastating to him.

He led me to a book-lined study with a striped silk sofa and matching slipper chairs, and a fire in the small brick fireplace. It burned silently behind glass doors, throwing off light but no heat. I sat on the sofa and Deering perched his bulk on a slipper chair, as comfortable as a hippo at the opera. He looked at me and looked nervously around the room, as if he wasn’t usually allowed in there and expected at any moment to be ordered out. He ran a hand over his messy, thin hair.

“I thought Nikki gave you Holly’s address,” he said.

I nodded. “She did, but I haven’t been able to reach Holly there. I was hoping one of you might have some other ideas of where I might find her.”

Deering rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. He’d shaved today, and nicked himself in several spots. A tiny scrap of toilet paper, punctuated with a dot of blood, still clung to the side of his neck. His eyes were red and his voice was furry, and I wondered if he wasn’t hungover.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Like I told you last time, we’re not in touch.”

“You must know some of her friends, though. A boyfriend, maybe…”

Deering shook his head and rubbed his hands on the legs of his corduroy pants. “Really, we don’t. Even when we heard from her more often, we didn’t know those things.”

“No?” I said, and smiled in what I hoped was an encouraging way. “When was it that you used to hear from her more often?”

He squinted with confusion. “When—?”

“I mean, was it months ago, years? How long?”

“She and Nikki were never close, and she pretty much stopped calling after her first year in college. We heard from her even less when she moved to the city.”

“Did you know any of the Gimlet Players?”

The name took him by surprise. “That theater group she was with?” I nodded. “We never saw any of those plays— we never saw her in anything.”

“Did you ever meet any of the players?”

“There was a guy who came here.”

“What guy?”

“An actor, from the group. He drove her up here a couple of times, to pick up some of her things. I think they were seeing each other.”

“Gene Werner?”

Deering shrugged. “It could’ve been. I don’t remember.”

“When was this?”

“The first time? A couple of years ago, maybe. And then again last summer.”

“This past summer?” He nodded. “Do you remember what he looked like?”

Deering tugged at the cuffs of his flannel shirt and thought about it. “A tall guy, with brown hair, long I think, and a little goatee. Handsome guy, looked like he could’ve been an actor or something.” Gene Werner.

“And he’s her boyfriend?”

“It seemed that way.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

“Just those two times.”

“Did she ever bring anyone else here?”

A log popped and crumbled in the fireplace, and Deering started. He shook his head. “She barely comes here herself.”

“Not for holidays or birthdays?” Deering shook his head. “When was the last time she was here?”

He squinted at me again and shrugged. “Maybe in the summer, when she came up with that guy, or maybe there was a time after. Whenever, it was a while ago. Months.”

“Would your wife remember better?”

The thought that I might ask her horrified Deering. “The summer was the last time— I’m pretty sure.”

“How about friends in town? Are there any she’s in touch with?”

Deering took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail. “Not that I know of,” he said.

“How about people from college?”

Deering shrugged vaguely. “Sorry,” he said.

I nodded. “And Holly doesn’t go to Brookfield, to visit her father?”

Deering blanched. “No,” he said.

“How do you know?” I asked. He peered at me. “I mean, how would you know if she just went up there to see him?”

Deering shook his head. “She wouldn’t. She has nothing to say to him.”

Another log collapsed in the fire, and Deering and I watched the ash and embers drift. “What happened with Holly that she doesn’t talk to her family?” I asked after a while.

Deering gave another cautious glance around the room, as if someone, maybe Nikki, might appear in the doorway. He pinched his blurry chin between thumb and forefinger. “It’s just one of those things,” he said quietly. “The parents fought a lot and the girls chose sides— Nikki with her dad and Holly with her mom— and then their mom died, just when Holly was starting high school. That’s a tough time for a kid, and Holly’s been angry ever since— at Fredrick, at Nikki, even at their mom. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been mad at pretty much the whole world.”

Deering stared again into the dwindling fire. Outside the window, snow was starting to fall.

16

The storm started slowly, and with no wind, and though the roads were crowded with people fleeing work or school, or making last, desperate runs to the supermarket, I returned to the city without incident and returned my rented car in one piece. Back in my apartment, I listened to a message from Clare—“I’ll be over later, snowshoes and all”— then I poured a glass of water and opened my notebook.

A lifetime ago, when I’d been trying merely to locate Holly Cade, Gene Werner hadn’t returned any of my telephone calls. Ultimately I’d been able to get where I was going without his help, and I’d had no need to push. But that was then. Now I knew that Werner and Holly had been seeing each other as recently as last summer, and now Jorge Arrua’s vague description of Holly’s belligerent old boyfriend—“white guy with dark hair, in his thirties…tall”— sounded less vague. I leafed through my notes until I found Werner’s phone number and address.

A deep, newscasterly voice came on the line, but it was just his answering machine, apparently back in working order. I left another message. I looked at his address, on West 108th Street. I looked outside, at the city going white, and decided what the hell. I put on jeans and boots, and a parka over my turtleneck. I left a note for Clare, and headed for the door.

The snow was coming harder when I stepped outside. My hair was white by the end of the block and frozen by the time I walked down the subway stairs at Fourteenth Street. When I walked up again, at 110th Street and Central Park West, a wind was blowing and streetlights were coming on. I headed south and west.

Werner’s block was a mixed bag— a few lovingly restored seven-figure brownstones, a few of their beaten, boarded-up cousins, a seventies-ugly housing project, and an even worse senior center from the 1980s— all bookended by slouching brick tenements. There was a coffee shop at one end of the street and a pizza parlor at the other. Werner’s building was in the middle, a four-story brownstone, not boarded but by no means restored. It was soot-streaked and the front door was wire glass and metal bars. The intercom was outside, mounted in the recessed doorway.

There were three apartments to a floor; Werner was in 2-B. I leaned on the button but got no answer. I tried his neighbors and got the same. I stepped back from the building and looked up. All the second-floor windows that I could see were dark. There was a narrow passage between Werner’s building and the one next to it, and I could see a side door about twenty feet along, under a security light, but the alley was protected by a high metal gate that no one had been considerate enough to prop open with a coffee cup. I pulled out my cell phone and tried Werner’s number again. Again the machine. I dropped my phone into my pocket and walked to the corner and into the pizza place.

There were a half-dozen tables, all empty, to the right as I came in, and to the left a counter. The guy behind it was rolling out dough and listening to forrГі on a loud radio, and he barely glanced up when I came in. I ordered a slice and a Pepsi, and he slid a large piece of pizza into the oven and filled a tall cup with ice and soda. I took the cup to a table by the window and waited for my pizza and stared through the snow at the front of Werner’s building.

I made the pizza last, and the soda too, and the whole time I ate, I saw only one person pass through Werner’s door. She was a small, round woman, with a long, puffy coat and frizzy hair exploding from under a white knit cap, and she was inside the building before I could make a move. A minute later I saw a light go on on the top floor. I was throwing out my greasy napkins when the second person came along. He wore a red parka and he was tall, and underneath the snow on his head, there was dark hair. He had two sacks of groceries, and he set them on the sidewalk as he dug in his pockets. I ran out the door, zipping my coat as I went.

“Gene,” I called, as I crossed the street. He didn’t look. “Hey, Gene,” I said again, coming up beside him.

He pulled a heavy key ring from his pocket and stooped for his bags. He looked at me curiously.

“Huh?” he said.

Unless Werner had developed an overbite and bad acne scars since Terry Greer’s bar snapshots had been taken, this wasn’t him. “Sorry,” I said. “Wrong guy. I was supposed to meet Gene, but he hasn’t shown up yet. Gene Werner— you know him?”

A wrinkle of distaste crossed the man’s face. “I know who he is.”

“I was supposed to meet him here half an hour ago. Have you seen him around?”

“Not lately,” the man said. He slid his key into the lock and pushed the front door open. I followed behind him and stepped into the doorway. He turned and elbowed the door shut. I stopped it with my foot.

“You mind if I wait inside? It’s pretty cold out here.”

He shook his head. “No can do— building rules. Sorry, man.” He leaned against the door.

There was nothing to be gained from a shoving match; I moved my foot back. “Do you remember when you saw him last?” I asked as the door swung shut.

The man shrugged and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said again. He carried his bags to the elevator and watched me through the glass until I walked away.

It was full dark now and snowing harder. The wind was heavier too, swirling between buildings and spinning the snow in dizzying vortices. Spikes of icy air ran down my collar and up my sleeves. Across the street, lights were going out in the pizza parlor, and at the coffee shop the roller gates were already down. I headed east, toward the subway.

I spotted him in less than a block, when he stepped out from the shadow of the senior center and began trudging along behind me. He couldn’t have been worse at running a tail if he’d been pounding on a drum. And I recognized him right away too, from the gray parka and biker boots and big shoulders, and from the wide face with tiny features: Babyface, Holly’s new boyfriend.

I knew he hadn’t tailed me to 108th Street— it would’ve been impossible to miss him on my way there— which meant he’d picked me up at Werner’s place. Which meant he’d been staking it out. I’d have to remember to ask him why. I paused at the corner of 108th and Central Park West and made a show of checking my watch. Babyface ducked behind a van. He was nothing if not earnest.

There was little traffic on CPW: a few cabs cruising slowly south, slewing when their brake lights flared, a FedEx truck double parked at 106th Street, delivering God only knew what in the middle of a blizzard, a Number 10 bus lumbering uptown, and another headed back down. Across the street, Central Park was a landscape through static: bare trees, footpaths, streetlamps, and stone walls, all gray and grainy and dissolving in a whirl of snow. The northbound bus was still three car lengths away when I sprinted across the avenue, and its horn was still braying when I went into the park at a run.