“Show-off,” I said as I approached. “Most people need two pencils with strong erasers to work that puzzle.”
Not until I spoke did she lift her head. The reading glasses for some reason made her appear even younger and more attractive.
“Helps keep my mind off Tinsley,” she said, resting her pen and folding her glasses into a beaded case. “But the longer she’s gone, the less effective the distractions are becoming.”
“Waiting is always the toughest,” I said.
“Easy for you to say on your side of the matter,” she said. “Very different from where I sit.”
There was no response to this that didn’t sound either patronizing or argumentative, so I moved on.
“I met Tinsley’s boyfriend,” I said.
She answered by raising one of her eyebrows.
“Did you know much about him?”
“Tinsley and I didn’t discuss her romantic life.”
“He’s from the South Side. Grew up pretty tough but turned his life around. Graduated from DePaul with honors.”
“That much I knew,” she said.
“They’re serious enough to consider spending the rest of their lives together.”
“That much I didn’t know.”
“He thinks your daughter is a free spirit, generous, and strong. He admires her as much as he loves her.”
“Does he know where she is?”
“He does not.”
“Does he think she’s okay?”
“He does.”
“When did he last speak to her?”
“The night she was supposed to be sleeping over with Hunter Morgan. He texted her later that night, but she didn’t answer. He called twice the next day, but her phone went right to voice mail. He called Hunter to find out if anything had happened, and Hunter said Tinsley never showed up. He still hasn’t heard from her.”
Mrs. Gerrigan looked away. I knew she was fighting back tears. But her stoicism held up.
“Your husband doesn’t seem to be too worried about her disappearance.”
“Randolph is in total denial,” she said, still looking out the window. From our vantage point we could see clear into the expanse of the lake, nothing but water and light and the occasional yacht sliding by. The waves crashed softly onto their private stretch of beach. I wondered if Chopper would ever be allowed to stand where I now stood and take in this amazing vista.
I continued to stand there quietly. Silence was often a good interrogation tool. I wanted her to give me more. She did.
She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Randolph loves Tinsley more than life itself,” she finally said. “The two of them don’t always see eye to eye on things, but they’re thick as thieves, and he always wants her to be happy.”
“Even if her happiness means dating a kid from the South Side?”
“Race is not an issue in my house, Mr. Cayne,” she said. “The quality of the person is what’s most important.”
I stood there again in silence, hoping to draw more out of her, but she stared out into the lake. The sun was dancing on the waves. Whatever fortune they’d paid to erect this colossus, this view alone made it worth every cent. After a minute or so she turned to me all composed and said, “Shall we go see her room?”
I nodded. “Seventeen across. Residency.”
She looked at me with a furrowed brow.
“Seventeen across in your crossword puzzle,” I said. “Residency is the answer. That’s what they call a doctor’s training program.”
After an elevator ride to the third floor and a trip down a carpeted hallway wide enough to drive two eighteen-wheelers side by side, we arrived at Tinsley’s room. Mrs. Gerrigan decided to wait outside. She instructed me to call out if I needed her.
I opened the door and quickly realized that this wasn’t just a bedroom; rather, it was an apartment. It had a furnished front sitting room the size of most people’s living rooms, a bathroom big enough to have a couch and two chairs in it, a walk-in closet bigger than the average person’s bedroom, and a bed wide enough to comfortably sleep a family of four with room left over.
Not that I had any real strategy in mind, but I decided to start in the closet. Like the rest of the room it, too, was painted a powder blue. Racks of clothes had been coordinated according to garment type and further organized by color. There must have been a hundred pairs of sandals and shoes neatly arranged in their individual cubbyholes. The carpet had those patterned streaks as if it had been recently vacuumed. I looked for footprints, but there weren’t any, which told me no one had walked into the closet after the vacuuming. Nothing looked out of place or missing, but what could I tell? There were so many clothes lining the racks that an entire wardrobe could’ve been missing and I wouldn’t have known it.
I moved into the bedroom area, which was anchored by a four-poster bed draped with custom-made heavy silk curtains with ornate beading that matched several rows of pillows of various sizes. I imagined this was what a bedroom looked like in a royal palace. Every little girl dreamed of sleeping in a bed like this just once in her life, and this is what greeted Tinsley Gerrigan every night.
The sitting area of the bedroom was tastefully decorated in light, playful colors. It wasn’t a girlie girl’s room, but it was feminine and smelled fresh thanks to the colorful assortment of flowers arranged in a large crystal vase on a side table. I walked across the room to a large mahogany desk. It had a couple of loose papers on it, a letter from Oberlin College’s alumni council, and an invitation from some children’s charity to make a donation and attend a gala at the Art Institute. There was a desktop computer that was still turned on, but the monitor had fallen into sleep mode. A screensaver of Tinsley leaning forward on
