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

What an odd man
, I thought. 
Who compares another
man’s wife to a bath he wants to sink into? Another man’s
missing 
wife?
Behind Desi was a long, polished end table bearing
several silver-framed photos. In the center was an oversize
one of Desi and Amy back in high school, in tennis whites –
the two so preposterously stylish, so monied-lush they could
have been a frame from a Hitchcock movie. I pictured Desi,
teenage Desi, slipping into Amy’s dorm room, dropping his
clothes to the floor, settling onto the cold sheets, swallowing
plastic-coated pills. Waiting to be found. It was a form of
punishment, of rage, but not the kind that occurred in my
house. I could see why the police weren’t that interested.

---

Desi trailed my glance.
‘Oh, well, you can’t blame me for that.’ He smiled. ‘I
mean, would 
you
throw away a photo that perfect?’
‘Of a girl I hadn’t known for twenty years?’ I said before
I could stop. I realized my tone sounded more aggressive
than was wise.
‘I know Amy,’ Desi snapped. He took a breath. ‘I knew
her. I knew her very well. There aren’t any leads? I have to
ask … Her father, is he … there?’
‘Of course he is.’
‘I don’t suppose … He was definitely in New York when
it happened?’
‘He was in New York. Why?’
Desi shrugged: 
Just curious, no reason
. We sat in
silence for a half minute, playing a game of eye-contact
chicken. Neither of us blinked.
‘I actually came here, Desi, to see what you could tell
me.’
I tried again to picture Desi making off with Amy. Did
he have a lake house somewhere nearby? All these types
did. Would it be believable, this refined, sophisticated man
keeping Amy in some preppy basement rec room, Amy
pacing the carpet, sleeping on a dusty sofa in some bright,
clubby ’60s color, lemon yellow or coral. I wished Boney
and Gilpin were here, had witnessed the proprietary tone of
Desi’s voice: 
I know Amy
.
‘Me?’ Desi laughed. 
He laughed richly
. The perfect
phrase to describe the sound. ‘I can’t tell you anything. Like
you said, I don’t know her.’
‘But you just said you did.’
‘I certainly don’t know her like you know her.’

---

‘You stalked her in high school.’
‘I 
stalked
her? Nick. She was my girlfriend.’
‘Until she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘And you wouldn’t go away.’
‘Oh, I probably did pine for her. But nothing out of the
ordinary.’
‘You call trying to kill yourself in her dorm room
ordinary?’
He jerked his head, squinted his eyes. He opened his
mouth to speak, then stared down at his hands. ‘I’m not
sure what you’re talking about, Nick,’ he finally said.
‘I’m talking about you stalking my wife. In high school.
Now.’
‘That’s 
really
what this is about?’ He laughed again.
‘Good God, I thought you were raising money for a reward
fund or something. Which I’m happy to cover, by the way.
Like I said, I’ve never stopped wanting the best for Amy. Do
I love her? No. I don’t know her anymore, not really. We
exchange the occasional letter. But it is interesting, you
coming here. You confusing the issue. Because I have to
tell you, Nick, on TV, hell, 
here
, now, you don’t seem to be a
grieving, worried husband. You seem … smug. The police,
by the way, already talked with me, thanks, I guess to you.
Or Amy’s parents. Strange you didn’t know – you’d think
they’d tell the husband everything if he were in the clear.’
My stomach clenched. ‘I’m here because I wanted to
see for myself your face when you talked about Amy,’ I said.
‘I gotta tell you, it worries me. You get a little … moony.’
‘One of us has to,’ Desi said, again reasonably.
‘Sweetheart?’ A voice came from the back of the
house, and another set of expensive shoes clattered
toward the living room. ‘What was the name of that 
book
—’

---

The woman was a blurry vision of Amy, Amy in a
steam-fogged mirror – exact coloring, extremely similar
features, but a quarter century older, the flesh, the features,
all let out a bit like a fine fabric. She was still gorgeous, a
woman who chose to age gracefully. She was shaped like
some sort of origami creation: elbows in extreme points, a
clothes-hanger collarbone. She wore a china-blue sheath
dress and had the same pull Amy did: When she was in a
room, you kept turning your head back her way. She gave
me a rather predatory smile.
‘Hello, I’m Jacqueline Collings.’
‘Mother, this is Amy’s husband, Nick,’ Desi said.
‘Amy.’ The woman smiled again. She had a bottom-of-
a-well voice, deep and strangely resonant. ‘We’ve been
quite interested in that story around here. Yes, very
interested.’ She turned coldly to her son. ‘We can never
stop thinking about the superb Amy Elliott, can we?’
‘Amy Dunne now,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Jacqueline agreed. ‘I’m so sorry, Nick, for
what you’re going through.’ She stared at me a moment.
‘I’m sorry, I must … I didn’t picture Amy with such an …
American
boy.’ She seemed to be speaking neither to me
nor to Desi. ‘Good God, he even has a cleft chin.’
‘I came over to see if your son had any information,’ I
said. ‘I know he’s written my wife a lot of letters over the
years.’
‘Oh, the 
letters
!’ Jacqueline smiled angrily. ‘Such an
interesting way to spend one’s time, don’t you think?’
‘Amy shared them with you?’ Desi asked. ‘I’m
surprised.’
‘No,’ I said, turning to him. ‘She threw them away

---

unopened, always.’
‘All of them? Always? You know that?’ Desi said, still
smiling.
‘Once I went through the trash to read one.’ I turned
back to Jacqueline. ‘Just to see what exactly was going on.’
‘Good for you,’ Jacqueline said, purring at me. ‘I’d
expect nothing less of my husband.’
‘Amy and I always wrote each other letters,’ Desi said.
He had his mother’s cadence, the delivery that indicated
everything he said was something you’d want to hear. ‘It
was our thing. I find e-mail so … cheap. And no one saves
them. No one saves an e-mail, because it’s so inherently
impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great
love letters – from Simone de Beauvoir to Sartre, from
Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia – I don’t know, I always
think about what will be lost—’
‘Have you kept all my letters?’ Jacqueline asked. She
was standing at the fireplace, looking down on us, one long
sinewy arm trailing along the mantelpiece.
‘Of course.’
She turned to me with an elegant shrug. ‘Just curious.’
I shivered, was about to reach out toward the fireplace
for warmth, but remembered that it was July. ‘It seems to
me a rather strange devotion to keep up all these years,’ I
said. ‘I mean, she didn’t write you back.’
That lit up Desi’s eyes. ‘Oh’ was all he said, the sound
of someone who spied a surprise firework.
‘It strikes me as odd, Nick, that you’d come here and
ask Desi about his relationship – or lack thereof – with your
wife,’ Jacqueline Collings said. ‘Are you and Amy not
close? I can guarantee you: Desi has had no genuine

---

contact with Amy in decades. Decades.’
‘I’m just checking in, Jacqueline. Sometimes you have
to see something for yourself.’
Jacqueline started walking toward the door; she turned
and gave me a single twist of her head to assure me that it
was time to go.
‘How very 
intrepid
of you, Nick. Very do-it-yourself. Do
you build your own 
decks
too?’ She laughed at the word
and opened the door for me. I stared at the hollow of her
neck and wondered why she wasn’t wearing a noose of
pearls. Women like these always have thick strands of
pearls to click and clack. I could smell her, though, a female
scent, vaginal and strangely lewd.
‘It was interesting to meet you, Nick,’ she said. ‘Let’s
all hope Amy gets home safely. Until then, the next time you
want to get in touch with Desi?’
She pressed a thick, creamy card into my hands. ‘Call
our lawyer, please.’

---