“Barely.” Nona tried to smile. Had she ever been twenty-one? she wondered.
Connie was the black counterpart of Joan Nye, the Toodle-oo Club president. Young, pretty, bright, smart. Matt’s new wife was now twenty-two. And I’ll be forty-one, Nona thought. With neither chick nor child. Lovely thought. “This single black female wishes to meet anyone who breathes,” Connie laughed. “I’ve got a whole new batch of responses from some of the box numbers you wrote to. Ready to look at them?”
“Sure.”
“Want some more coffee? After Awesome Austin, you probably need it.” This time Nona knew her smile was almost maternal. Connie did not seem to know that offering the boss a cup of coffee was frowned upon by some feminists. “I’d love one.”
She returned with it five minutes later. “Nona, Matt’s on the phone. I told him you were in conference and he said it was vital that he talk to you.” “I’m sure it is.” Nona waited for the door to close and took a swig of coffee before she reached for the phone. Matthew, she thought. Meaning of the name? Gift of God. For sure. “Hi, Matt. How are you and the prom queen?” “Nona, is it possible for you to stop being nasty?” Had he always sounded this querulous?
“No, it really isn’t.” Damn, Nona thought. After nearly two years, it still hurts to talk with him.
“Nona, I was wondering. Why don’t you buy me out of the house? Jeanie doesn’t like the Hamptons. The market’s still lousy so I’ll give you a real break on the price. You know you can always borrow from your folks.” Matty the moocher, Nona thought. Marriage to the child-bride had reduced Matt to this. “I don’t want the house,” she said quietly. “I’m going to buy my own place when we unload this one.”
“Nona, you love that place. You’re just doing this to punish me.” “See you.” Nona broke the connection. You’re wrong, Matt, she thought. I loved the house because we bought it together and cooked lobsters to celebrate our first night in it and every year we did something else to make it even greater. Now I want to start absolutely fresh. No memories. She began to go through the new batch of letters. She’d sent out over a hundred to people who had placed recent ads requesting them to share their experiences. She’d also persuaded the cable anchorman, Gary Finch, to invite people to write in about the results of personal ads they’d either placed or answered and the reason they no longer would do it.
The result of the on-air announcement was proving to be a bonanza. A relatively small number wrote ecstatically about meeting “the most wonderful person in the world and now we’re engaged”… “living together”… “married.” Many others expressed disappointment. “He said he was an entrepreneur. Meaning he’s broke. Tried to borrow money the first time I met him.” From Bashful Single White Male: “She criticized me all through dinner. Said I had a nerve putting in the ad that I was attractive. Boy, did she make me feel lousy.” “I started getting obscene phone calls in the middle of the night.” “When I got back home from work I found him sitting on my doorstep sniffing coke.” Several letters were unsigned. “I don’t want you to know who I am, but I’m sure one of the men I met through a personal column is the man who burglarized my house.” “I brought a very attractive fortyish executive home and found him trying to kiss my seventeen-year-old daughter.”
Nona felt heartsick at the final letter in the pile. It was from a woman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “My twenty- two-year-old daughter, an actress, disappeared almost two years ago. When she did not return our calls, we went to her New York apartment. It was obvious that she had not been there in days. She was answering personal ads. We are frantic. There has been absolutely no trace of her.”
Oh God, Nona thought, oh God. Please let Erin be all right. Her hands trembling, she began to sort through the letters, adding the most interesting to one of three files: Happy About Ads. Disappointed. Serious Problem. The last letter she held out to show Agent D’Ambrosio.
At one o’clock Connie brought her in a ham and cheese sandwich. “Nothing like a little cholesterol,” Nona commented.
“There’s no point in ordering tuna for you when you never eat it,” Connie commented.
By two, Nona had dictated letters to potential guests. She made a note to herself to invite a psychiatrist or psychologist to be on the program. I ought to have someone who can do a wrap-up analysis of the whole personal-ads scene, she decided.
Vincent D’Ambrosio arrived at quarter of three. “He knows he’s early,” Connie told Nona, “and doesn’t mind waiting.”
“No, that’s fine. Ask him to come in.”
In less than one minute, Vince D’Ambrosio forgot the remarkable discomfort of the green love seat in Nona Roberts’s office. He considered himself a good judge of people and liked Nona immediately. Her manner was straightforward, pleasant. He liked her looks. Not pretty but attractive, especially those large reflective brown eyes. She wore little if any makeup. He also liked the touches of gray in her dark blond hair. Alice, his ex-wife, was also blond but her sunny tresses were the result of regular appointments at Vidal Sassoon. Well, at least now she was married to a guy who could afford them.
It was obvious that Roberts was desperately worried. “Your letter coincides with the most recent responses I’ve been receiving,” she told him. “People writing about meeting thieves, moochers, addicts, lechers, perverts. And now…” She bit her lip. “And now, someone who never would have dreamed of answering a personal ad and did it as a favor to me is missing.”
“Tell me about her.”
Nona was fleetingly grateful that Vince D’Ambrosio did not waste time with empty reassurances. “ Erin is twenty-seven or -eight. We met six months ago in our health club. She, Darcy Scott, and I were in the same dance classes and became friendly. Darcy will be here in a few minutes.” She picked up the letter from the woman in Lancaster and handed it to Vince. “This just arrived.” Vince read it quickly and whistled silently. “Somebody didn’t file a report with us. This girl isn’t on our list. She brings the count up to seven missing.”
In the cab on the way to Nona’s office, Darcy thought of the time she and Erin had gone skiing at Stowe their senior year of college. The slopes had been icy, and most people had headed for the lodge early. At her urging, she and Erin went for one last run. Erin hit a patch of ice and fell, her leg snapping under her. When the patrol came with the meat wagon for Erin, Darcy skied beside her, then accompanied her in the ambulance. She remembered Erin’s ashen face, Erin trying to joke. “Hope this doesn’t affect my dancing. I plan to be queen of the stardust ballroom.”
“You will be.”
At the hospital, when the X-rays were developed, the surgeon raised his eyebrows. “You really did a job on yourself, but we’ll fix you up.” He’d smiled at Darcy. “Don’t look so worried. She’ll be fine.”
“I’m not just worried. I feel so damn guilty,” she’d told the doctor. “ Erin didn’t want to make the last run.”
Now as she entered Nona’s office and was introduced to Agent D’Ambrosio, Darcy realized she was experiencing exactly the same reaction. The same relief that somebody was in charge, the same guilt that she had urged Erin to answer the ads with her.
“Nona only asked if we wanted to try them. I was the one who pushed Erin to do it,” she told D’Ambrosio. He took notes as she talked about the phone call on Tuesday, about Erin ’s saying she was meeting someone named Charles North in a pub near Washington Square. She noticed the change in D’Ambrosio’s manner when she spoke about opening the safe, about giving the Bertolini necklace to Jay Stratton, about Stratton’s claim that there were diamonds missing. He asked her about Erin ’s family.
Darcy stared at her hands.
Remember arriving at Mount Holyoke first day of freshman year? Erin already there, her suitcases piled neatly in the corner. They’d sized each other up, both liked what they saw. Erin ’s eyes widening as she recognized Mother and Dad but not losing her composure.
“When Darcy wrote to me this summer introducing herself, I didn’t realize that her parents were Barbara Thorne and Robert Scott,” she’d said. “I don’t think I ever missed one of your films.” Then she added, “Darcy, I didn’t want to settle in until you were here. I thought you might have a preference about which closet or bed you wanted.”
Remember the look Mother and Dad exchanged. They were thinking, what a nice girl Erin is. They asked her to join us for dinner.
Erin had come to college alone. Her father was an invalid, she explained. We wondered why she never even
