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Her phone rings. It’s Jerome. “Did you track her down?”

“No. I’m in her apartment now. I don’t like it, J.” She tells him about the car, thinking he’ll dismiss it, but Jerome doesn’t like it, either.

“Huh. Look in the little basket by the front door. She always drops her keys there when she comes in. I’ve seen her do it a thousand times.”

Barbara looks. There’s a spare key to Holly’s Prius there, but not her keyring. Not her swipe card for the elevator, either. “They’re probably in that big shoulder bag of hers.”

“Maybe, but why is her car there and she’s not?”

“She took the bus?” Barbara says doubtfully.

“They’re not running a regular schedule because of Covid. I found that out when I tried to take one to the airport. I had to Uber.”

“Poor you,” she says, but it’s a bad attempt at their usual amiable raillery.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Ba. I think I’m going to come home.”

“Jerome, no!”

“Jerome yes. I’ll see what I can get for a flight. If she turns up before I get on a plane, call me or shoot me a text.”

“What about your glitzy weekend in Montauk? You might get a chance to meet Spielberg!”

“I didn’t like his last two movies, anyway. She seemed fine when I talked to her yesterday, but…” He trails off, but goes on before she can speak: “It might be the case. The Dahl woman left me a message, too. She sounded really worried. Hols could have run across the wrong person investigating Bonnie’s disappearance. And the others. Now there’s this guy Castro from nine or ten years ago, add him to the list.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” All Barbara knows for sure is that Holly would never have parked that way. It’s sloppy, and sloppy is one thing Holly isn’t.

“Have you tried calling the office?”

“Yes. On the way over. Voicemail.”

“Maybe you should go there. Make sure she isn’t… I don’t know.”

But Barbara knows. Make sure she isn’t dead.

“We’re probably jumping at shadows, J. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, and you’ll be flying home for nothing.”

“Check the office. Just, if you find her before I get on a plane, let me know.”

She leaves and hurries back down the stairs.

12

As Barbara is talking to her brother in Holly’s empty apartment, Rodney Harris is on his porch, planning the letter he will write to Gut, an important journal dedicated to gastroenterology and hepatology. In the latest issue, Roddy has read a perfectly absurd paper by George Hawkins, about the relationship he claims to have discovered between the pylorus and Crohn’s disease. Hawkins—a PhD, no less!—has totally misrepresented papers written by Myron DeLong and… and that other fellow, whose name Roddy can’t recall at the moment. Hawkins’s conclusions are thus completely wrong.

Roddy munches from his supply of deep-fried Elf Balls, relishing the crunch as he bites down. My response will destroy him, he thinks contentedly.

He recalls that they have a prisoner in the basement. He can’t remember her name, but he does remember the look of horror on her face when Em told her how they had managed to keep the worst depredations of old age at bay. The idea of knocking down her foolish prejudices one by one pleases him almost as much as writing the letter to Gut that will knock down Professor George Hawkins’s flimsy house of cards. He has forgotten Emily’s command to stay out of the basement. Even if he had recalled it, he would have dismissed it as foolish. The woman is in a cage, for God’s sake!

He gets up and goes into the house, tossing another Elf Ball into his mouth as he does. They have a wonderfully clarifying effect.

13

Holly creaks to her feet as Harris descends to the basement. She’s wondering if this is it, how it ends. He comes to the foot of the stairs and just stands there for a moment. Off in his own universe. He’s still wearing his robe and pajamas. He takes something brown and round from the pocket of his robe and tosses it into his mouth. Holly doesn’t want to believe it’s a piece of Penny Dahl’s daughter, but suspects it is. Her left hand is a fist, squeezing and releasing in time with the pulsing ache in her head, short nails digging into her palm.

“Is that what I think it is?”

He gives her a conspiratorial smile but says nothing.