The Big Boom Read Online Free PDF Page A

you?”
    “I only wanted to know if he’d seen Angie.”
    “Had he?”
    “Not for a while. After they broke up, she quit her job—and he hadn’t seen her since. So I came down here. I looked around, and I saw Angie’s suitcases were still here. And the mailbox was full, like I said. So I brought the mail inside. And I cleaned up a little.”
    “How much cleaning did you do?”
    “Just a wine bottle—and some plates. And”—she looked confused for a second—“some foil wrappings. That cat, I guess he got into the trash … And I made the bed.”
    Her face was red now, embarrassed. It was her proper side, he saw. The nervous part that couldn’t stand things out of order. That kept things in place.
    “This nightgown … It needs to be laundered.”
    “Leave it,” he said. It was the cop in him, the years of homicide. “We don’t want to move things too much.”
    But she’d already taken the gown down by then. She stood there stiffly. “I’ll just fold it up. I’ll just put it away.”
    In many ways, he would have done better to inspect the apartment alone. He would have had an easier time of it. But Barbara had wanted to come. Had insisted. If nothing else, the cat needed food in his bowl.
    “What kind of computer did she use?”
    “I don’t know. One of those laptops.”
    “Do you know where it might be?”
    Barbara was at the window now. He feared she might be about to fall apart on him. When she turned, though, she was composed. Forcibly, perhaps—but still composed.
    “On her desk?”
    “No,” said Dante. “It isn’t there.”
    Dante went to the phone machine. The display said there were a half dozen new messages on the phone. He pushed the button and ran through them. An after-hours telemarketer. Her hairdresser, reminding her about an upcoming appointment. The dry cleaner’s.
    Then …
    Hey, Angie, this is Jim Rose. I’m back in town, and I was wondering if you still wanted to get together later today. We could meet—
    Just then, Angie had cut in.
    “Jim,”
she said.
    The recording had cut off the instant she spoke, and now the room was quiet. Dante remembered how such moments—on an investigation, when you heard the voice of the missing—used to give him a chill.
    “That was her,” said Barbara. Her face was flush. “She talked to that man on the phone. She picked up.”
    “Yes.”
    “So, maybe—”
    “It was last week,” he said.
    Dante ran through the rest of the messages, listening to the times, the days. The hairdresser again. More missed appointments. The man Jim Rose, it seemed, was the last phone call Angie had taken before she vanished.
    “Who is this Jim Rose?”
    “I don’t have any idea.”
    If this were a police examination, and the cops suspected foul play—if they got serious—the police would tear the place apart. Look through the bookbindings, behind the cupboards, under the loose floorboards. Sift through the dirty clothes, her trinkets, and her juvenilia. But in a case like this—Missing Persons—it could take a while for the cops to get moving, and they might not even come at all. The advantage, from Dante’s point of view: The place wasn’t a crime scene, not yet, and for the time being it was within his purview to take it apart if he wanted.
    Barbara stood by the bureau. She had opened the jewelry box and was fishing through for something.
    “Angie’s pearls,” she said. “A string her father gave her years ago.”
    “Are they there?”
    She shook her head. Dante said nothing, but he knew what she was getting at. He knew the implication. There had been pearls on the death manifest, among the articles of the deceased.
    She shut the box, opened a drawer. Shut that, too.
    “Angie had a way of scattering things.”
    “I know,” he said.
    “I appreciate your doing this. I realize, it must be hard on you, too.”
    “I’m glad to help.”
    There was the silence between them—and then he heard something stir again. Over there, he thought,