last saw him, he was mostly bald on top and wore his gray hair down to his shirt collar. Now he was coloring it brown, with an orange tint, and the hair on the top of his head had magically grown back. I couldn’t tell if it was a toupee or very good implants.
He was wearing a navy blue robe over pajamas, and he had deep circles under his eyes. He looked exhausted.
He released me, then pushed against my chest and leaned back to examine my face. “Look at you—you get more and more handsome each time I see you. Enough, already! You don’t age. You make a deal with the devil, Nicky? Is there a portrait of you looking like an alter kaker in your attic?”
“I live in the city,” I said. “No attic.”
He laughed. “You’re not married, are you?”
“I’ve avoided that so far.”
He put a palm on my cheek and slapped gently. “Punim like this, I bet you gotta beat off the girls with a stick.” He was trying valiantly to feign his customary high spirits, but I wasn’t convinced. He put a pudgy arm around my lower back. He couldn’t reach as high as my shoulders. “Thank you for coming, Nickeleh, my friend. Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“This new?” he said, jerking his head toward my car.
“I’ve had it for a while.”
I drive a Land Rover Defender 110, which is boxy and Jeep-like and virtually indestructible. Hand-cranked windows. Rock-hard seats. Not a very comfortable ride, and pretty noisy inside when you exceed thirty miles an hour. But it’s the best car I’ve ever owned.
“Love it. Love it. I drove one of those around the Serengeti once on safari. Ten days. Annelise and Alexa and me. Of course, the girls hated Africa. Spent the whole time complaining about the insects, and how much the animals stank, and…” His smile disappeared abruptly, his face drooping as if worn out by the effort of keeping up the façade. “Ahhh, Nick,” he whispered, a look of pain contorting his face, “I’m scared out of my mind.”
6.
“When did you last hear from her?” I said.
We sat in the only room downstairs that looked like it got any use, a big L-shaped eat-in kitchen/sitting room, in comfortable chairs covered in slouchy off-white slipcovers. The view was spectacular: the steely gray waves of Cape Ann lapping against the rocky coastline.
“Last night she drove down to Boston—she told Belinda she’d be back later, which Belinda assumed meant, you know, midnight or something. One or two in the morning, if she was having a good time.”
“When was this—what time did she leave the house?”
“Early evening, I think. I was on my way back from work.” Marcus Capital Management had an entire floor in one of the new buildings on Rowes Wharf, which I could see from a corner of my own office. He always worked long hours when Mom was his assistant, and he probably still did. A town car would take him into Boston every morning and take him home to Manchester every night. “She was gone by the time I got home.”
“What was she doing in Boston?”
He heaved a long sigh, more like a moan. “Oh, you know, she’s always partying, that one. Always going out, to discos or what have you.”
Disco: I couldn’t remember when I last heard that word. “She drove herself? Or did she get a ride with a friend?”
“She drove. Loves to drive. She got her permit on the day she turned sixteen.”
“Was she meeting friends? Or was this a date? Or what?”
“Meeting a friend, I think. Alexa’s not dating, thank God. Not yet, anyway. I mean, not as far as I know.”
I wondered how much Alexa told her father about her social life. Not much, I suspected. “Did she say where she was going?”
“She just told Belinda she was meeting someone.”
“But not a guy.”
“No, not a man.” He sounded annoyed. “Friends. Or a friend. She told Belinda…” Marcus shook his head, his cheeks quivering. Then he put a hand over his eyes, squeezing hard, and gave another long sigh.
After a few seconds I asked softly, “Where’s Belinda?”
“She’s upstairs, lying down,” Marcus said, his pudgy hand still covering his eyes. “She’s just sick about it. She’s taking this really hard, Nick. She didn’t sleep all night. She’s a wreck. She blames herself.”
“For what?”
“For letting Alexa go out. Not asking enough questions, I don’t know. It’s not Belinda’s fault. It’s not easy being the stepmother. Any time she tries to, you know, lay