Chapter 6
I tried calling back, but Julie didn’t answer.
I didn’t understand. Had she really forgotten who I was? That seemed doubtful. Had I scared her with my call-out-of-the-blue? I didn’t know. The whole conversation had been surreal and spooky. It would have been one thing to tell me that Natalie didn’t want to hear from me or that I was wrong, Todd was still alive. Whatever. But she didn’t even know who I was.
How was that possible?
So now what? Calm down, for one. Deep breaths. I needed to continue my two-prong attack: Figure out what the deal was with the late Todd Sanderson, and find Natalie. The second would, of course, negate the first. Once I found Natalie, I would know all. I wondered how to do that exactly. I had looked her up online and found nothing. Her sister, too, seemed to be a dead end. So where to go? I didn’t know, but in this day and age, how hard would it be to get an address on her?
An idea came to me. I signed on to the campus website and checked the teaching schedules. Professor Shanta Newlin had a class in an hour.
I buzzed Mrs. Dinsmore.
“What, you expect me to have the file that fast?”
“No, it isn’t that. I’m wondering if you know where Professor Newlin is.”
“Well, well. This day gets more and more interesting. You know she’s engaged, right?”
I should have known better. “Mrs. Dinsmore . . .”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. She’s having breakfast with her thesis students in Valentine.”
Valentine was the campus cafeteria. I hurried across the quad toward it. It was an odd thing. A college professor always has to be on. You have to keep your head up. You have to smile or wave at every student. You have to remember every name. There was a strange sort of celebrity to walking around campus. I would claim that it didn’t matter to me, but I confess that I liked the attention and took it pretty seriously. So even now, rushed and anxious and distracted as I was, I made sure that no student felt blown off.
I avoided the two main dining rooms. These were for students. The professors who sometimes chose to join them once again felt a little desperate to me. There were lines, and I admit that they are sometimes fuzzy and flimsy and arbitrary, but I still drew them and kept on my side of them. Professor Newlin, a class act all the way, would do likewise, which was why I was confident she’d be tucked away in one of the back private dining halls, reserved for such faculty-student interaction.
She was in Bradbeer dining hall. On campus, every building, room, chair, table, shelf, and tile is named after someone who gave money. Some people bristle at this. I like it. This ivy-covered institution is isolated enough, as it should be. There is no harm in letting a little real-world, cold-cash reality in every once in a while.
I peeked in through the window. Shanta Newlin caught my eye and held up a finger signaling one minute. I nodded and waited. Five minutes later the door opened and the students streamed out. Shanta stood in the doorway. When the students were gone, she said, “Walk with me. I have to be somewhere.”
I did. Shanta Newlin had one of the most impressive resumes I’d ever seen. She graduated Stanford as a Rhodes Scholar and attended Columbia Law School. She then worked for both the CIA and FBI before serving in the last administration as an undersecretary of state.
“So what’s up?”
Her manner was, as always, brusque. When she first came to campus we had dinner. It wasn’t a date. It was a “let’s see if we want to” date. There is a subtle difference. After that date, she chose not to pursue it, and I was okay with that.
“I need a favor,” I said.
Shanta nodded, inviting me to make my request.
“I’m looking for someone. An old friend. I’ve tried all the usual methods—Google, calling the family, whatever. I can’t get an address.”
“And you figured that with my old contacts, I’d be able to help.”
“Something like that,” I said. “Well, yes, exactly like that.”
“Her name?”
“I didn’t say it was a she.”
Shanta frowned. “Name?”
“Natalie Avery.”
“When was the last time you saw her or had an address?”
“Six years ago.”
Shanta kept walking, military style, ramrod back, very fast. “Was she the one, Jake?”
“Pardon?”
A small smile came to her lips. “Do you know why I never followed up on our first date?”
“It wasn’t really a date,” I said. “It was more a ‘let’s see if we want to’ date.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I figured that you didn’t follow up because you had no interest.”
“Uh, that would be a no. Here is what I saw that night: You’re a great guy, you’re funny, you’re smart, you have a full-time job, and you have blue eyes to die for. Do you know how many single straight guys I’d met with that criteria?”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stayed quiet.
“But I could sense it. That’s part of being a trained detective, maybe. I study body language. I look for the little things.”
“Sense what?”
“You’re damaged goods.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She shrugged. “Some men carry torches for old loves, and then some guys—not many, but some—get completely consumed by the torch’s flames. It makes them nothing but long-term trouble for the follow-ups.”
I said nothing.
“So this Natalie Avery that you’re suddenly desperate to find,” Shanta said. “Is she that flame?”
What would be the point in lying? “Yes.”
She stopped and looked way up at me. “And it hurt bad?”
“You have no idea.”
Shanta Newlin nodded and started walking away, leaving me behind. “I’ll have her address for you by the end of the day.”
Chapter 7
On television, the detective always goes back to the scene of the crime. Or, come to think of it, maybe it’s the criminal who does that. Whatever. I was at a dead end, so I figured that I’d go back to where it all happened.
The retreats in Vermont.
Lanford was only about forty-five minutes from the Vermont border, but then you had another two hours plus to get up to where Natalie and I first met. Northern Vermont is rural. I grew up in Philadelphia and Natalie was from northern New Jersey. We didn’t know rural like this. Yes, an objective observer might again point out that in such a secluded venue, love would flourish in an unrealistic way. I might agree or I might point out that in the absence of other distractions—like, say, anything—love might suffocate under the weight of too much togetherness, thus making this proof of something far deeper than a summer fling.
The sun was starting to weaken by the time I passed my old retreat on Route 14. The six-acre “subsistence farm” was run by writer-in-residence Darly Wanatick, who offered critiques of the retreatees’ work. For those who don’t know, subsistence farming is farming that provides the basic needs for the farmer and his family without surpluses for marketing. In short, you grow it, you eat it, you don’t sell it. For those who don’t know what a writer in residence is or what qualifies him or her to critique your writing, it meant that Darly owned the property and
