Gone Girl: A Novel (27 page)

That lit up Desi’s eyes. “Oh” was all he said, the sound of someone who spied a surprise firework.

“It strikes me as odd, Nick, that you’d come here and ask Desi about his relationship—or lack thereof—with your wife,” Jacqueline Collings said. “Are you and Amy not close? I can guarantee you: Desi has had no genuine contact with Amy in decades. Decades.”

“I’m just checking in, Jacqueline. Sometimes you have to see something for yourself.”

Jacqueline started walking toward the door; she turned and gave me a single twist of her head to assure me that it was time to go.

“How very
intrepid
of you, Nick. Very do-it-yourself. Do you build your own
decks
too?” She laughed at the word and opened the door for me. I stared at the hollow of her neck and wondered why she wasn’t wearing a noose of pearls. Women like this always have thick strands of pearls to click and clack. I could smell her, though, a female scent, vaginal and strangely lewd.

“It was interesting to meet you, Nick,” she said. “Let’s all hope Amy gets home safely. Until then, the next time you want to get in touch with Desi?”

She pressed a thick, creamy card into my hands. “Call our lawyer, please.”

DIARY ENTRY

I
know this sounds the stuff of moony teenage girls, but I’ve been tracking Nick’s moods. Toward me. Just to make sure I’m not crazy. I’ve got a calendar, and I put hearts on any day Nick seems to love me again, and black squares when he doesn’t. The past year was all black squares, pretty much.

But now? Nine days of hearts. In a row. Maybe all he needed to know was how much I loved him and how unhappy I’d become. Maybe he had a
change of heart
. I’ve never loved a phrase more.

Quiz: After over a year of coldness, your husband suddenly seems to love you again. You:

It’s August, so sumptuous that I couldn’t bear any more black squares, but no, it’s been nothing but hearts, Nick acting like my husband, sweet and loving and goofy. He orders me chocolates from my favorite shop in New York for a treat, and he writes me a silly poem to go with them. A limerick, actually:

It would be funnier if our sex life were as carefree as the rhyme would suggest. But last week we did … 
fuck
?
Do it
? Something more romantic than
have sex
but less cheesy than
make love
. He came home from work and kissed me full on the lips, and he touched me as if I were really there. I almost cried, I’d been so lonely. To be kissed on the lips by your husband is the most decadent thing.

What else? He takes me swimming in the same pond he’s gone to since he was a child. I can picture little Nick flapping around manically, face and shoulders sunburned red because (just like now) he refuses to wear sunscreen, forcing Mama Mo to chase after him with lotion that she swipes on whenever she can reach him.

He’s been taking me on a full tour of his boyhood haunts, like I asked him to for ages. He walks me to the edge of the river, and he kisses me as the wind whips my hair (“My two favorite things to look at in the world,” he whispers in my ear). He kisses me in a funny little playground fort that he once considered his own clubhouse (“I always wanted to bring a girl here, a perfect girl, and look at me now,” he whispers in my ear). Two days before the mall closes for good, we ride carousel bunnies side by side, our laughter echoing through the empty miles.

He takes me for a sundae at his favorite ice cream parlor, and we have the place to ourselves in the morning, the air all sticky with sweets. He kisses me and says this place is where he stuttered and suffered through so many dates, and he wishes he could have told his high school self that he would be back here with the girl of his dreams someday. We eat ice cream until we have to roll home and get under the covers. His hand on my belly, an accidental nap.

The neurotic in me, of course, is asking: Where’s the catch? Nick’s turnaround is so sudden and so grandiose, it feels like … it feels like he must want something. Or he’s already done something and he is being preemptively sweet for when I find out. I worry. I caught him last week shuffling through my thick file box marked
THE DUNNES
! (written in my best cursive in happier days), a box filled with all the strange paperwork that makes up a marriage, a combined life. I worry that he is going to ask me for a second mortgage on The Bar, or to borrow against our life insurance, or to sell off some not-to-be-touched-for-thirty-years stock. He said he just wanted to make sure everything was in order, but he said it in a fluster. My heart would break, it really would, if, midbite of bubblegum ice cream, he turned to me and said:
You know, the interesting thing about a second mortgage is …

I had to write that, I had to let that out. And just seeing it, I know it sounds crazy. Neurotic and insecure and suspicious.

I will not let my worst self ruin my marriage. My husband loves me. He loves me and he has come back to me and that is why he is treating me so nice. That is the only reason.

Just like that:
Here is my life. It’s finally returned
.

I
sat in the billowing heat of my car outside Desi’s house, the windows rolled down, and checked my phone. A message from Gilpin: “Hi, Nick. We need to touch base today, update you on a few things, go over a few questions. Meet us at four at your house, okay? Uh … thanks.”

It was the first time I’d been ordered. Not
Could we, we’d love to, if you don’t mind
. But
We need to. Meet us …

I glanced at my watch. Three o’clock. Best not be late.

The summer air show—a parade of jets and prop planes spinning loops up and down the Mississippi, buzzing the tourist steamboats, rattling teeth—was three days off, and the practice runs were in high gear by the time Gilpin and Rhonda arrived. We were all back in my living room for the first time since The Day Of.

My home was right on a flight path; the noise was somewhere between jackhammer and avalanche. My cop buddies and I tried to jam a conversation in the spaces between the blasts. Rhonda looked more birdlike than usual—favoring one leg, then another, her head moving all around the room as her gaze alighted on different objects, angles—a magpie looking to line her nest. Gilpin hovered next to her, chewing his lip, tapping a foot. Even the room felt restive: The afternoon sun lit up an atomic flurry of dust motes. A jet shot over the house, that awful sky-rip noise.

“Okay, couple of things here,” Rhonda said when the silence returned. She and Gilpin sat down as if they both had suddenly decided to stay awhile. “Some stuff to get clear on, some stuff to tell you. All very routine. And as always, if you want a lawyer—”

But I knew from my TV shows, my movies, that only guilty guys lawyered up. Real, grieving, worried, innocent husbands did not.

“I don’t, thanks,” I said. “I actually have some information to share with you. About Amy’s former stalker, the guy she dated back in high school.”

“Desi—uh, Collins,” began Gilpin.

“Collings. I know you all talked to him, I know you for some reason aren’t that interested in him, so I went to visit him myself today. To make sure he seemed … okay. And I don’t think he is okay. I think he’s someone you all should look into. Really look into. I mean, he moves to St. Louis—”

“He was living in St. Louis three years before you all moved back,” Gilpin said.

“Fine, but he’s in St. Louis. Easy drive. Amy bought a gun because she was afraid—”

“Desi’s okay, Nick. Nice guy,” Rhonda said. “Don’t you think? He reminds me of you, actually. Real golden boy, baby of the family.”

“I’m a twin. Not the baby. I’m actually three minutes older.”

Rhonda was clearly trying to nip at me, see if she could get a rise, but even knowing this didn’t prevent the angry blood flush to my stomach every time she accused me of being a baby.

“Anyway,” Gilpin interrupted. “Both he and his mother deny that he ever stalked Amy, or that he even had much contact with her these past years except the occasional note.”

“My wife would tell you differently. He wrote Amy for years—
years
—and then he shows up
here
for the search, Rhonda. Did you know that? He was here that first day. You talked about keeping an eye out for men inserting themselves into the investigation—”

“Desi Collings is not a suspect,” she interrupted, one hand up.

“But—”

“Desi Collings is not a suspect,” she repeated.

The news stung. I wanted to accuse her of being swayed by
Ellen Abbott
, but
Ellen Abbott
was probably best left unmentioned.

“Okay, well what about all these, these
guys
who’ve clogged up our
tip line?” I walked over and grabbed the sheet of names and numbers that I’d carelessly tossed on the dining room table. I began reading names. “Inserting themselves into the investigation: David Samson, Murphy Clark—those are old boyfriends—Tommy O’Hara, Tommy O’Hara, Tommy O’Hara, that’s three calls, Tito Puente—that’s just a dumb joke.”

“Have you phoned any of them back?” Boney asked.

“No. Isn’t that your job? I don’t know which are worthwhile and which are crazies. I don’t have time to call some jackass pretending to be Tito Puente.”

“I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on the tip line, Nick,” Rhonda said. “It’s kind of a woodwork situation. I mean, we’ve fielded a lot of phone calls from your old
girlfriends
. Just want to say hi. See how you are. People are strange.”

“Maybe we should get started on our questions,” Gilpin nudged.

“Right. Well, I guess we should begin with where you were the morning your wife went missing,” Boney said, suddenly apologetic, deferential. She was playing good cop, and we both knew she was playing good cop. Unless she was actually on my side. It seemed possible that sometimes a cop was just on your side. Right?

“When I was
at the beach
.”

“And you still can’t recall anyone seeing you there?” Boney asked. “It’d help us so much if we could just cross this little thing off our list.” She allowed a sympathetic silence. Rhonda could not only keep quiet, she could infuse the room with a mood of her choosing, like an octopus and its ink.

“Believe me, I’d like that as much as you. But no. I don’t remember anyone.”

Boney smiled a worried smile. “It’s strange, we’ve mentioned—just in passing—your being at the beach to a few people, and they all said … They were all surprised, let’s put it that way. Said that didn’t sound like you. You aren’t a beach guy.”

I shrugged. “I mean, do I go to the beach and lay out all day? No. But to sip my coffee in the morning? Sure.”

“Hey, this might help,” Boney said brightly. “Where’d you buy your coffee that morning?” She turned to Gilpin as if to seek approval. “Could tighten the time frame at least, right?”

“I made it here,” I said.

“Oh.” She frowned. “That’s weird, because you don’t have any
coffee here. Nowhere in the house. I remember thinking it was odd. A caffeine addict notices these things.”

Right, just something you happened to notice
, I thought.
I knew a cop named Bony Moronie … Her traps are so obvious, they’re clearly phony …