Free Slightly Abridged by Ellen Pall

veil.”
    â€œSo see if those are in her closet. I don’t think she’s the kind of person who would go out for the evening in her day clothes, do you? Especially if she was angling for a date.”
    â€œGood point.”
    They hung up. Ten minutes later, they were on the phone, comparing notes again.
    â€œDennis can’t reach the collector guy,” Juliet reported. “He’s not at home, not at the office.”
    â€œNo one answers her number in Espyville. I don’t see the purple dress or the hat and purse.”
    This, more than anything else, struck fear into both their hearts.

    â€œAnd the manuscript?”
    â€œI’m still looking.”
    They hung up. At twelve-fifteen, Suzy called again. She had searched Mrs. Caffrey’s things. Of course, the manuscript could be hidden somewhere Suzy hadn’t thought of. But she knew that room pretty well; she used to sleep in it when things were really bad with Jack, her ex-husband. The manuscript was missing. So was Mrs. Caffrey.
    Juliet hung up and called Murray.
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    Murray Landis and Juliet Bodine first met when they were nineteen years old. Murray, studying art at Harvard, had then been dating Juliet’s Radcliffe roommate, Mona. Their affair, like all of Mona’s, had been torrid; but not so torrid that Murray hadn’t noticed Juliet, and vice versa.
    Nothing had ever been said or done between them. On the contrary, diligent restraint was practiced on both sides, and after Mona and Murray broke up, Juliet lost track of him. Then one morning last summer, he’d turned up at her door, a police detective investigating a death among a group of dancers at the Jansch troupe, where Juliet had been helping a friend restructure the narrative of a ballet based on Great Expectations . Murray was still an artist in his off hours, a serious artist. But rather than starve as a sculptor, he had decided to go into the family business: after growing up in Brooklyn, the son of a cop of a son of a cop, he’d joined the NYPD. He had been assigned to Juliet’s precinct for some years before the Jansch death brought them together.
    Juliet was lucky; he answered his own phone at the station house.
    â€œJule! I’m sitting here catching up on paperwork, bored out of my skull. How the hell ya doin’?” he shouted, in the broad Brooklynese he could turn on and off at will.

    She explained.
    â€œSo it’s really Suzy who should be calling,” he suggested, when the bare bones had been outlined.
    â€œWell, we just weren’t sure anyone would care if we called out of the blue. Don’t you have to wait twenty-four hours or something?”
    â€œNah, that’s one of those urban folklore things,” Murray said, “like alligators in the sewers. Especially after the weather we’ve had, we’ll get on it right away. But it’s really not a detective matter. I’ll send you a couple of uniforms.”
    â€œYou don’t think you”—Juliet broke off, then finished rather wistfully—“you couldn’t come yourself?”
    â€œOh hell, sure, if it makes you feel better. If she doesn’t turn up right away, a detective would be assigned anyhow. But she probably just got lost or something, don’tcha think? I mean, you said she’s what, eighty-four?”
    â€œBut she’s sharp as a tack.”
    â€œYeah, okay …”
    Landis was quiet a moment, weighing the possibilities. A person finds her way around for eighty-four years, all of a sudden she can’t, that is a little screwy. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d had a heart attack or been hit by a car and was in the hospital—or worse. But he didn’t want to alarm Juliet.
    â€œAnyway, I’ll get myself over to your friend’s B and B with a couple of the guys,” he said aloud. “Say half an hour?”
    Juliet went across the street to wait for him with Suzy.