The Dark House (44 page)

“Not for four or five days.”

“Would you mind if I went up to check her apartment? I'm her fiancé. I'm afraid something may have happened to her.”

“You don't have a key?”

Rollins shook his head.

“Doesn't trust you, huh?” the super said. “Some fiancé.”

“I'm really worried about her.”

“I can see that,” the super said. He led Rollins up to the third floor and opened Marj's door with the master key.

Marj's apartment was a mess, with fashion magazines scattered across the floor and various pieces of lingerie draped over the living room couch. Still, it touched him to see the Marj that existed when he wasn't around. It meant a lot to see the big TV in the living room, the unmade double bed with its handmade quilt, the photograph of what must have been her mother on the dresser. “Like I told you,” the super reiterated. “I really don't think she's been around.” Rollins went to the answering machine by the telephone and played back the new messages since Schecter's. Two were from an older woman who must have been Marj's mother, each one concluding “Call me, all right?” Another was from the personnel manager at Johnson asking where she was. And a last one was from Lena saying that she'd better call in soon or she was “gonzo.” He picked up the portable phone and pressed
REDIAL
to see if he could determine the last number she'd called. But no one answered there. It wasn't until Rollins hung up the receiver that he realized the number Marj had dialed was probably his own.

Rollins thanked the super, and gave him $20 for his trouble. Then he returned to the Ritz, leaving the car with the valet out front. “Marj?” he called out as soon as he came into his suite. No one answered, and the place was the way he'd left it, only somewhat neater. The maids must have been in. But the message light was on. Rollins pounced on the receiver. “You have two messages,” said an automated voice. Both were from the assistant manager of the Ritz asking when “Mr. Sinclair” was intending to check out. Rollins slammed down the receiver. He collected his spare clothes from the shelf of the closet, bunched them up, and threw them in the wastebasket. He left the suite and took the elevator down to the lobby. “I'll be checking out now,” he told the clerk at the reception desk. He received the bill for the five nights' stay, which he stuffed in his pocket without even looking at it. “Have you heard anything from Mrs. Sinclair?” Rollins asked as he signed the credit card receipt.

The receptionist checked the messages in Rollins' file. “No, sir.”

“How about a young woman named Marj Simmons?”

An interested look from the receptionist this time. “Sorry, sir.”

He called Johnson from the pay phone in the lobby. He spoke to Lena. “You haven't heard from Marj, have you?”

“No. I thought she was with you.”

“Well, she was…” He let his voice trail off.

“You know you're in huge trouble here. I really don't think Henderson wants you back after you skipped out like that. And now, God, all this publicity. Everybody's talking about the Rollins in Vermont who shot himself after a corpse turned up in his cesspool or something. Henry Rollins, right? Tell me—is he really your father?”

Rollins said no. That was all wrong. He wasn't related to any Henry Rollins.

He drove back to the North End, left his car in a tow zone, and ran back to his apartment building. The light over the stairs was working again. There was some mail for him on the front-hall table. Rollins
glanced through it. When he found no letter from Marj, he dropped the whole pile into the wastebasket under the table. He hadn't gotten far up the stairs before the door to Mrs. D'Alimonte's apartment opened, and his landlady came rushing out. “Oh, Mr. Rollins, how
are
you?” Mrs. D'Alimonte sang out.

Irked at the recollection that she had snooped in his room, Rollins continued on up.

“That's not much of a welcome home.”

Rollins stopped and turned to her, newly hopeful. “Do you have any news for me?”

“I had a wonderful visit to Baltimore, if that's what you're asking. The most delightful baptism—and the reception afterward! Heavenly.”

Rollins continued to trudge on up the stairs.

“But now tell me, Mr. Rollins, what in the world happened to those people in 2A?” The Mancusos, she meant. “They've vanished. Everything's gone.”

He thought how she had gossiped with Tina about him. “I can't help you there.” He had nearly reached the top of the stairs.

“You seem tired, Mr. Rollins. Everything okay?”

“I'm fine, Mrs. D'Alimonte. Absolutely fine.”

He put the key in the lock and opened his door. There was a letter for him. He snatched it up, hoping it was from Marj. But the front of it bore the word
MISTR
, all caps, in pencil. He opened it up. There was a strip of pictures of Heather taken at a photo booth.
ITS FR YER WALLIT
, it said on the back. He looked at it again, then set it down on the bookcase next to his calendar.

The apartment was empty. He scanned the room, hoping to find some hint of her. He couldn't believe she was gone. He sat down in his fat chair by the phone and dialed information for Morton, Illinois. There were over twenty Simmonses listed, and Rollins didn't know Marj's mother's first name, or the name of her stepfather. His love for her suddenly flamed up as if it might consume him. He barely knew the first thing about her.

“I'm sorry,” the operator said, “without a first name or street address—”

 

Rollins was pretty sure he didn't move for the next several weeks. He certainly had no memory of doing so. He slept, he ate. He was aware of placing a number of telephone calls to Marj's apartment, and more to Lena at Johnson. He looked at Heather's picture a few times, and it cheered him a little. The owner of the little cottage that he rented for a week every year in Nova Scotia called up to ask where he was; he'd been due there three days before. “I won't be coming this year,” he said, and returned the receiver to its cradle. On several occasions, people yelled up to him from the courtyard saying they were from a TV station. He didn't respond, and they went away after a while. Mrs. D'Alimonte pounded on his door once to tell him his car was being towed, but the news meant nothing to him. He was finished with the Nissan anyway.

He was aware that his brother, Richard, took care of the funeral arrangements for his father, which consisted of scattering his ashes off Bald Mountain, as requested by his will. This was a relief, since Rollins could not bear the prospect of burying him in the family graveyard at Forest Hills where little Stephanie lay, and, for all he knew, he himself would someday go. Detective LeBeau called with a few more questions about Neely, which Rollins answered.

The days came and went. The shadows crossed the room.

Somehow he mustered the energy to attend Neely's memorial service at the Blanchard family plot in Lexington. He arrived by taxi. The plot was on the far slope of a large, private cemetery, and it was bordered by Norwegian spruces, and azaleas and dogwoods grew among the mottled gravestones. Rollins came late, for a clump of media personnel had established an outpost past the iron railing, their cameras trained on the proceedings. Rollins was still numb, but he knew enough to keep his distance from his aunt. Her shoulders sagging, Aunt Eleanor stood by the catafalque upon which Neely's cremated remains rested in a small chest. She clung to her portly husband, George, who stood beside her, ashen-faced. Eleanor was veiled, but he could see that she had been broken by her grief. Her only child, after all, had been seduced and then raped and killed in a plot
masterminded by her uncle, Eleanor's own ex-brother-in-law. It was all too grotesque for words.

A smattering of cousins, including some of the New York Arnolds he'd seen at Gloucester, formed a kind of buffer zone around the couple. Rollins' own mother was there in a wheelchair. She was there, motionless, in the shade of a great spruce far off to one side. Richard stood stone-faced behind her, with his wife, Susan, and their two children beside him. Rollins gave his mother a perfunctory kiss. Her lips quivered in reply, but no sound came out.

After some hesitation, Rollins grasped his brother's hand in both of his. “Look, about the other day…” he began.

“Don't worry about it.” Richard pulled Rollins close and embraced him.

To keep the tears from falling, Rollins slipped free and leaned down to Richard's eight-year-old daughter, Natalie, who'd grown quite tall. Not knowing what else to say, he told her that he admired her dress. He added that he'd been meaning to send her a birthday present, but she needed to remind him of the correct date. “May eighth,” she'd said very properly. “And my brother's is August thirty-first.”

A young female minister was standing before the square hole that had been opened in the earth to receive Neely's remains, and she was addressing the group with her hands outstretched. “The greatest of your mysteries, Lord, is life itself,” she was saying. Rollins paid little attention. His eyes were on Natalie, trying to see if he could spot anything of Stephanie in her. So Rollins was only dimly aware of a little Toyota coming up the drive, of a door opening and closing again with a thump. He didn't actually turn until he heard the sound of someone coming rapidly toward them along the gravel path. It was a young woman in a tight black skirt, a beautiful young woman. Probably the most beautiful young woman ever. One hand was perched atop her head, holding down an immense hat that threatened to blow off as she hurried along. Rollins might have shouted to her, but he could tell there was no need. Marj was coming. She was coming to him. Other heads turned as, with whispers of apology, Marj sidled through the
crowd toward Rollins. And then she was right there next to him, the brim of her hat flopping against the side of his face as she whispered, “Hi. Remember me?”

Rollins could sense that people were staring, but he didn't care. Overjoyed, he circled his arms around Marj and pushed his face toward hers. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. And her big hat flew right off her head.

F
or much assistance on matters pertaining to missing persons, I would like to thank Charles Allen of Management Consultants, Inc., of Lexington, Massachusetts. For help with other technical details, I'm grateful to Gretchen Young and John Colcord. For literary advice and encouragement, I'm deeply indebted to Sally Brady and all my fellow members of two of her writing groups, but especially to Erica Funkhauser, Tom Lonergan, Caroline Preston, and Judy Richardson. My thanks, too, to Amanda Vaill for some friendly editing. On the business side, Kris Dahl at International Creative Management has proved a brilliant and patient agent. My editor, Dan Conaway, has been a dream, demonstrating, time and again, that the era of careful, intelligent, incisive editing has by no means ended in New York publishing. And, as always, I have been sustained in this work by the unfailing love of my wife, Megan Marshall.