The Girl Next Door (20 page)

At that moment, a burgundy-colored Honda pulled up in the road beside her and stopped.
The driver lowered the window and hailed her. Nina looked up and saw Gemma waving
at her. Nina blushed, immediately thinking of her encounter with Patrick at Lindsay’s
store. Had Gemma found out somehow? Was she about to ask about Patrick and Lindsay?
Nina felt her stomach churning at the prospect of lying for Patrick’s sake. She could
see that Gemma was calling to her, but the wind made it difficult to hear. Nina stepped
off the curb and bent over so that her face was beside the open window.

“Nina, are you going into the city?” Gemma asked.

Nina nodded. “Eventually. I just missed the bus.”

“Do you want a ride? We’re on our way there. I can give you a lift.”

“You could? Are you sure?”

“Sure. I’m going right into Manhattan,” said Gemma.

“That would be great,” said Nina, truly relieved.

The driver behind Gemma honked his horn.

“Hop in,” said Gemma, pushing the button that unlocked the doors. Nina opened the
back door and threw her bag in the well of the backseat. She bent down and smiled
at the twins, who were buckled into their seats. “Hi, guys.”

Simon, who had a mouthful of cookies, attempted to smile and say, “Hi, Aunt Nina.”
In the process he sprayed his brother with cookie crumbs. Cody whacked Simon with
a plastic action figure and Simon shrieked indignantly and then began to cough.

“Cody, stop it,” cried Gemma.

Before the fight could begin in earnest, Nina pointed out the window on the street
side. “Look, you guys, look out there. A motorcycle.” Both boys quickly swiveled their
heads to look, as if the hog were an exotic bird.

Nina slammed the door, walked around to the passenger side, and slid into the front
seat, brushing her tangled, windblown hair back off her face. “Gemma, you are a lifesaver,”
she said.

Gemma was looking in the rearview mirror, and gliding out into the traffic. “I’m glad
we saw you. I thought you must be headed to the bus.”

Nina nodded. “I have a commercial shoot today and I was going to catch the last bus,
but I was waylaid at the police station. I thought I’d have to wait another hour.”

“At the police station? What was that all about?” Gemma asked.

“Well, it was about my dad,” said Nina. “Did Patrick tell you …?”

“Tell me what?” Gemma asked.

She really doesn’t know, Nina thought. Immediately, she regretted mentioning Patrick.
How could he keep the information that Duncan had been murdered from his own wife?
Didn’t they communicate at all? “I was there to find out if there were any new developments,”
Nina said carefully. “They’re now working on the assumption that my dad did
not
commit suicide. They think he was murdered.”

“Murdered,” Gemma exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Nina. “They’re sure now that it was murder.”

“My God,” said Gemma. “Do they know who …?”

“No.” Nina didn’t want to tell the whole seamy story in front of the twins. But she
felt as if Gemma was entitled to know. She was a part of the family. Nina tried to
think how best to explain it.

Gemma interrupted her thoughts. “Does Patrick know this?”

Nina could hear the anxiety in her voice. The idea that her husband might not give
her such a significant piece of information was beginning to dawn on her. Gemma clutched
the wheel and stared straight ahead, but Nina could see that her bony wrists were
trembling.

“Just the barest details,” said Nina, trying to sound reassuring. “There’s very little
to know at this point.” Nina was a little taken aback that Gemma would be more interested
in her husband’s mind-set than in learning about Duncan’s murder. Of course, Duncan
was a stranger to her. A man she barely knew. Patrick was the one she lived for. Nina
thought of Patrick, caught in Lindsay’s office, defying his sister to criticize his
behavior. She felt as if she were watching a marriage heading toward the edge of a
cliff. It’s not your business, she reminded herself. They have to work out their own
problems.

“I don’t understand your brother no matter how hard I try,” Gemma said.

Nina glanced over at Gemma’s drawn, anxious-looking face and felt a stab of pity for
her. “My brother,” Nina said, with as much circumspection as she could muster, “can
be very self-centered.”

The twins, who had been fairly quiet, suddenly erupted into a battle. Gemma glanced
in the rearview mirror. “Stop,” she yelled. “Please.”

Nina swiveled around in her seat and saw that Simon was hoarding several toys, impervious
to his brother’s shrieking. Nina rapped him on the knee. “Hey! Give your brother one
of those,” she said.

“This is mine,” Simon started to protest.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” said Nina. “Just pick one and give it to him. Or
I’ll
pick one.” Nina turned back around in her seat. Before Gemma could say any more about
Patrick, Nina changed the subject. “So, you guys having a day in the city?” she asked.

“No,” said Gemma. “We’re going to pick up the new housekeeper.”

“The new housekeeper,” said Nina, surprised. “What happened to Elena?”

“She had to rush back to Panama. Her sister was in an accident.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Nina, remembering the Mass card, the compassion in Elena’s
eyes.

“The new person is named Cora,” Gemma said.

N
INA
slammed the car door with effusive thanks and rushed into her building and up to
her apartment to get dressed for
her appointment at the studio in SoHo. She didn’t bother with any makeup. The photographer
would have his own makeup artist at the studio. Her nerves were jangled by the time
she caught a cab and got back downtown, but she arrived on time, and allowed herself
to be moved about numbly, like a prop, while technicians adjusted lighting and tried
different makeup and outfits on her and the photographer shot endless Polaroids, which
he and the director then mulled over. Nina learned her few lines and then was leafing
through a magazine when she thought she heard her cell phone ring in her satchel on
the floor. She could hardly tell if it was hers, given the general hubbub in the studio.
As she reached into her bag she saw two set carpenters and a makeup artist reach for
their phones at the same time. Nina pulled out her ringing phone as if it were a grab
bag prize, while the others tucked theirs back away in disappointment.

“Nina?”

Her heart leaped. “Andre? How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m in Sante Fe. I just got here. Listen …”

“How was the trip?” she asked.

“All right,” he said, deflecting her question and abruptly getting down to business.
“I just wanted to tell you—I did what I said I’d do. I checked around with my … contacts
among the prison population. No luck there. Nobody had given anything to Duncan to
deliver. A lot of the guys were quite broken up about your dad’s death, by the way.”

“Thanks. Thanks for trying. I found out from Detective Hagen—he’s the detective who
worked on my mother’s case—that my dad
was
trying to track down information about my mother’s … murder. He told Detective Hagen
that he had some new information.”

Andre was silent for a moment. “Did he say what it was?”

“He didn’t know,” said Nina.

“Do you think that might be related to his murder?” he asked.

Nina hesitated, then finally admitted it to herself, and said, “I think it’s possible.
Don’t you?” She felt a sudden, overwhelming closeness to Andre, the only other person
who seemed to really care about what had happened to Duncan Avery.

“Well, it might be. If it is, you have to be very careful, Nina.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“It worries me,” he went on. “Because if Duncan was killed for stirring this whole
thing up …”

She smiled, happy in spite of herself to think that he might be worried about her.
“I know, I know. Don’t worry. I’m not even in Hoffman. I’m in New York on a job right
now …”

“Nina, can you join us?” the director called out with an edge in his voice.

“Andre, they need me. I have to go. Can I call you back?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she heard him say as he ended the call.

The day drew to a close without a single foot of actual film having been shot, and
the director announced that they would have to postpone shooting for three days. When
Nina got back to the apartment, it was growing dark, and gloom seemed to have settled
over her spirits as well. She sat down in an armchair in the living room and stared
out at the city lights, which were winking on all over the skyline as evening fell.
It was good to be back in the city, she reminded herself. She felt at home here. I
should call someone, she thought. Go out to dinner. The thought of getting ready was
exhausting, but her friend Francine lived just around the corner on Amsterdam. Francine
worked for a newsmagazine and always had lots of great stories, not to mention romantic
troubles. They could go to a neighborhood place, where all she needed to do to get
ready
was to comb her hair. They could drink some wine and catch up over Thai food or a
burger. She dialed Francine’s number and waited while it rang. When the machine came
on, Nina hesitated, and then hung up.

She could try her friend Sara, who lived in Tribeca, but it seemed too much like work
to go all the way downtown. Maybe she was better off staying in, anyway. She needed
her beauty sleep. Once she and her friends got talking they could stay out late, and
she could end up drinking more wine than she intended. If she stayed in, she could
have one glass, an omelette, and go to bed early. There was an open call she wanted
to go to tomorrow. Nina sat back down in the living room. She found her mind wandering
to Andre. She closed her eyes and felt a little weak at the thought of him. Then she
shook her head and opened her eyes. Animal attraction to a stranger, she thought.
An
engaged
stranger. Even though she thought he might feel it, too, it didn’t mean anything.
He was already taken.

Just then the phone rang, and she jumped. Andre, she thought, her heart lifting. She
rushed to pick it up. “Hello?”

“Nina? This is Frank Hagen.”

“Lieutenant Hagen?” She felt curious and alarmed all at once.

“Yeah. Look, after what we talked about this morning, I decided to ask a few questions
of my own. I thought you might want to know. It seems they already found that woman
they were looking for. The hooker.”

“They did?” Nina cried. “Was she … did she tell them what my dad wanted? Why he was
with her?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “And she’s not gonna be telling them anything. They found
her in the morgue.”

“She’s dead?” Nina’s heart skipped a beat.

“Yup,” said Frank. “It turns out she’s been in the hospital for the last week. She
was admitted with pneumonia. Nobody
knew where she was because she kept quiet about having AIDS. I guess she figured
it was bad for business. Anyway, from what I heard, she wasn’t too good about taking
care of herself. She was more interested in scoring some crack than in taking her
AIDS cocktail, so when the pneumonia hit she couldn’t fight it off and she checked
out.”

“Checked out, like …?”

“Like died,” said Frank bluntly.

“Shit. Pardon my language,” said Nina.

“Yeah, Chief Perry’s put ‘case closed’ to it,” said Frank sarcastically.

“But he can’t. My dad didn’t…”

“I tried to tell him they were barking up the wrong tree, but he wasn’t interested,”
said Hagen. “He reminded me that I was retired and that the force could get along
just fine without my help.”

Nina could easily picture it. She had heard the chief express disdain for the retired
detective with too little to do. “So that’s it?” she protested.

“Well, not exactly. It wasn’t a total loss. You see, the hooker’s name was Perdita
Maxwell. It’s one of those names you don’t forget,” said Frank Hagen with a chuckle.
“I recognized it the minute I heard it.”

“What about it?” Nina asked, frowning.

“I recognized it because she was one of the many people we interviewed when your mother
was murdered,” said Hagen. “Perdita Maxwell, that was the name she used for customers.
Her real name was Penny. Penelope Mears. Does that ring a bell? She was the mother
of that druggie friend of your brother’s. The one who thought he was a rock-and-roll
star. Calvin Mears.”

Nina’s heart started to pound. She sat up straight, clutching the phone. “Calvin Mears?
Jimmy’s friend.”

“That’s the one,” said Frank Hagen. “I looked it up in the file to be sure, but I
knew the minute I heard the name.”

“My father was looking for Calvin’s mother?” she said.

“My guess is, he was trying to locate Calvin,” said Hagen.

“Right. Of course,” she breathed.

“But,” Frank cautioned, “Calvin Mears is long gone. He had to leave town years ago.
He was involved with some girl who died of an overdose.”

“Yes. I remember Jimmy saying something about that,” said Nina. “Did he give her the
overdose?”

“Well, he was definitely on the scene when it happened. It was one of those things
where everybody knew but nobody was saying anything,” said Frank, in a tone of reminiscence.
“We picked Mears up for it but we had to let him go. We couldn’t really make anything
stick. Not long after that, Mears disappeared.”

“But his mother probably knew where he was,” Nina said, thinking out loud.

“Probably,” Frank Hagen agreed.

They were both silent for a moment.

“You know …” said Nina.

“What’s that?” Hagen asked.

“Well, I’m just thinking. If Mears finds out that his mother died, he might come back.
You know, just to pay his respects. Don’t you think?”

“I doubt it,” said Hagen. “That girl that died? Keefer was her name. Her father wanted
revenge. Keefer let everybody know that he was going to kill Mears if he got a hold
of him. Mears knows better than to come back.”