Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

cloud of suspicion
. I much
preferred 
routine investigation
or 
a mere formality
.
‘They did wonder about your restaurant reservations
that night,’ Marybeth said, an overly casual glance.
‘My reservations?’
‘They said you told them you had reservations at
Houston’s, but they checked it out, and there were no
reservations. They seemed really interested in that.’
I had no reservation, and I had no gift. Because if I
planned on killing Amy that day, I wouldn’t have needed
reservations for that night or a gift I’d never need to give
her. The hallmarks of an extremely pragmatic killer.
I am pragmatic to a fault – my friends could certainly
tell the police that.
‘Uh, no. No, I never made reservations. They must
have misunderstood me. I’ll let them know.’
I collapsed on the couch across from Marybeth. I didn’t
want Rand to touch me again.
‘Oh, okay. Good,’ Marybeth said. ‘Did she, uh, did you
get a treasure hunt this year?’ Her eyes turned red again.
‘Before …’

---

‘Yeah, they gave me the first clue today. Gilpin and I
found the second one in my office at the college. I’m still
trying to figure it out.’
‘Can we take a look?’ my mother-in-law asked.
‘I don’t have it with me,’ I lied.
‘Will you … will you try to solve it, Nick?’ Marybeth
asked.
‘I will, Marybeth. I’ll solve it.’
‘I just hate the idea of things she touched, left out there,
all alone—’
My phone rang, the disposable, and I flicked a glance
at the display, then shut it off. I needed to get rid of the
thing, but I couldn’t yet.
‘You should pick up every call, Nick,’ Marybeth said.
‘I recognized this one – just my college alum fund
looking for money.’
Rand sat beside me on the couch. The ancient, much
abused cushions sank severely under our weight, so we
ended up pushed toward each other, arms touching, which
was fine with Rand. He was one of those guys who’d
pronounce 
I’m a hugger
as he came at you, neglecting to
ask if the feeling was mutual.
Marybeth returned to business: ‘We do think it’s
possible an 
Amy
obsessive took her.’ She turned to me, as
if pleading a case. ‘We’ve had ’em over the years.’
Amy had been fond of recollecting stories of men
obsessed with her. She described the stalkers in hushed
tones over glasses of wine at various periods during our
marriage – men who were still out there, always thinking
about her and wanting her. I suspected these stories were
inflated: The men always came off as dangerous to a very

---

precise degree – enough for me to worry about but not
enough to require us to involve the police. In short, a play
world where I could be Amy’s chest-puffed hero, defending
her honor. Amy was too independent, too modern, to be
able to admit the truth: She wanted to play damsel.
‘Lately?’
‘Not lately, no,’ Marybeth said, chewing her lip. ‘But
there was a very disturbed girl back in high school.’
‘Disturbed how?’
‘She was obsessed with Amy. Well, with 
Amazing
Amy
. Her name was Hilary Handy – she modeled herself
after Amy’s best friend in the books, Suzy. At first it was
cute, I guess. And then it was like that wasn’t good enough
anymore – she wanted to be Amazing Amy, not Suzy the
sidekick. So she began imitating 
our
Amy. She dressed
like Amy, she colored her hair blond, she’d linger outside
our house in New York. One time I was walking down the
street and she came running up to me, this strange girl, and
she looped her arm through mine and said, “I’m going to be
your daughter now. I’m going to kill Amy and be your new
Amy. Because it doesn’t really matter to you, does it? As
long as you have 
an Amy
.” Like our daughter was a piece
of fiction she could rewrite.’
‘We finally got a restraining order because she threw
Amy down a flight of stairs at school,’ Rand said. ‘Very
disturbed girl. That kind of mentality doesn’t go away.’
‘And then Desi,’ Marybeth said.
‘And Desi,’ Rand said.
Even I knew about Desi. Amy had attended a
Massachusetts boarding school called Wickshire Academy
– I had seen the photos, Amy in lacrosse skirts and

---

headbands, always with autumn colors in the background,
as if the school were based not in a town but in a month.
October. Desi Collings attended the boys’ boarding school
that was paired with Wickshire. In Amy’s stories, he was a
pale, Romantic figure, and their courtship had been of the
boarding-school variety: chilly football games and
overheated dances, lilac corsages and rides in a vintage
Jaguar. Everything a little bit mid-century.
Amy dated Desi, quite seriously, for a year. But she
began to find him alarming: He talked as if they were
engaged, he knew the number and gender of their children.
They were going to have four kids, all boys. Which sounded
suspiciously like Desi’s own family, and when he brought
his mother down to meet her, Amy grew queasy at the
striking resemblance between herself and Mrs Collings.
The older woman had kissed her cheek coldly and
murmured calmly in her ear, ‘Good luck.’ Amy couldn’t tell if
it was a warning or a threat.
After Amy cut it off with Desi, he still lingered around
the Wickshire campus, a ghostly figure in dark blazers,
leaning against wintry, leafless oak trees. Amy returned
from a dance one February night to find him lying on her
bed, naked, on top of the covers, groggy from a very
marginal pill overdose. Desi left school shortly after.
But he still phoned her, even now, and several times a
year sent her thick, padded envelopes that Amy tossed
unopened after showing them to me. They were
postmarked St. Louis. Forty minutes away. ‘It’s just a
horrible, miserable coincidence,’ she’d told me. Desi had
the St. Louis family connections on his mother’s side. This
much she knew but didn’t care to know more. I’d picked

---

through the trash to retrieve one, read the letter, sticky with
alfredo sauce, and it had been utterly banal: talk of tennis
and travel and other things preppy. Spaniels. I tried to
picture this slender dandy, a fellow in bow ties and
tortoiseshell glasses, busting into our house and grabbing
Amy with soft, manicured fingers. Tossing her in the trunk of
his vintage roadster and taking her … antiquing in Vermont.
Desi. Could anyone believe it was Desi?
‘Desi lives not far away, actually,’ I said. ‘St. Louis.’
‘Now, 
see
?’ Rand said. ‘Why are the cops not all over
this?’
‘Someone needs to be,’ I said. ‘I’ll go. After the search
here tomorrow.’
‘The police definitely seem to think it’s … close to
home,’ Marybeth said. She kept her eyes on me one beat
too long, then shivered, as if shaking off a thought.

---