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.