“Can’t ask for more than that. Have a mint.” She extended a glass dish of flat round chocolates toward me. They had sat on the little table next to her chair, her daily treat.

I took one and let it melt in my mouth, two images passing before my eyes, one the young Proust dipping his madeleines, the second an older Proust tasting them to bring back the past. It was as though I were visiting Dad again at the office in my new dress. “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Almost fifteen years. I was on the list before that. In New York, you wait for someone to die and hope your name comes up.” She laughed. “I guess there are folks out there waiting for me to kick the bucket, but they’ve got a while to go. I feel real good.”

“You sound good,” I said honestly. “You sound like an energetic person.”

“Well, I’ve always been that. Broke my hip last year but haven’t let it keep me down.”

“Where did you live before?”

“Oh, way uptown on the west side. It’s all changed. I used to like to walk in Riverside Park when I was younger, but you wouldn’t catch me going there now. Here I’ve got the subway close by and buses right outside.”

“It’s very convenient,” I agreed. “When did you start working for Mr. Jackman?”

“Maybe thirty-five years ago. Probably more. I knew your father for a long time. He’d come in in the morning with a big smile and a nice word for everybody. ‘How’re you doin’ today, Betty?’ Always nice to see him.”

It was as if each small addition to my archive of memories fleshed him out that much more. I could hear his voice saying the words, see the grin. “I want to ask you something kind of silly, Betty. Did you used to go to the Thanksgiving Day parade when my dad worked for Mr. Jackman?”

“Haven’t been to the parade since I was a child. I watch it on the TV now. I don’t like crowds. There’s a mess of crowds for that parade.”

“Tell me something. Did you know anyone who worked for Mr. Jackman who lived around here when my father worked there?”

“Who lived here? Let me see.” She looked down at the worn carpet at her feet. Her hair, which was black with deeply encroaching gray, was long and pulled back behind her head, gathered in a black velvet band. Her face was jowly and lined, bare of the slightest color. “A lot of them came from Brooklyn because you could take the old BMT into Manhattan in those days. That’s gone now, you know. All those trains have letters on ’em, never know where you’re going anymore. I used to come down on the Broadway line, same as what’s at Lincoln Center. Where did Gloria live?” she asked, as though the answer would come from the air around us. “I’m wrong,” she said, as though correcting a statement unspoken. “Gloria was this young, cute girl, but now I think of it, she lived in the Village. Dressed like she lived in the Village, too, long hair and those exotic clothes. She left maybe around the time Eddie died. Got another job.”

“What color hair did she have?” I asked, although I knew the woman of my memory didn’t look Villagey in any sense.

“Black as coal. Gloria, can’t remember her last name.”

“So you don’t think anyone who worked there lived up on the west side.”

“I don’t think so, honey.”

“What about old Mr. Jackman?”

“Oh, he always lived out in Queens, had a beautiful house, I heard.” She made the adjective long and drawn out.

“Well, I guess that answers all my questions.”

“Oh, don’t go,” she said. “Stay a while. It’s good to have company, nice to have a young person to talk to. Tell me about yourself, what you’re doing now.”

I sat back in the chair and talked to her for the next half hour. Her eyes sparkled as we exchanged reminiscences and brought each other up to date on our lives. I had no recollection of ever meeting this woman before, but when I left she was someone who fitted into my life. After about half an hour and two more mints, I said good-bye, went back downtown to retrieve my car, and drove home.

—

“Thanks for calling,” Sandy Gordon said. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

“I expect I’ve gotten all I can from Hopkins and Jewell, and while there are some intriguing things, I don’t see where they lead.”

“Like what?”

“Did you know the documents in Natalie’s personnel file were stolen or misplaced?”

“The detective said they didn’t have much from before the time she worked for them. He saw her evaluations, which he said were very flattering.”

“They are. But that’s all there is. Whatever letter she wrote answering their ad, whatever references she sent or high school transcripts, they’re all missing and no one has any idea who took them or why.”

“Did they talk to Natalie about it?”

“Yes and she was upset.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think there may have been some bad feelings between Arlene Hopkins and Natalie.”

“Anything special make you feel that way?”

“Hopkins didn’t want me talking to anyone except her. She had me steered to the word-processing pool, where only one person knew Natalie and he hadn’t been there from the beginning.”

“So you think they’re keeping something from you.”

“I think they tried. I probably found out more than Hopkins wanted me to know, but I don’t know if I’ve got everything. And if I don’t, I really don’t know where else to look, except for Natalie’s old apartment.”

“When will you go there?”

“I teach tomorrow. It’ll have to wait for Wednesday.”

“You’re doing fine, Chris. I mean that. I’m sure you’re on to something and you’re a digger, I can see that. You’ll find her. Need any more money?”

“Good heavens no. All it’s going for is parking.”

“Let me know when you run out.”

—

I dropped a note to Arnold telling him about Hopkins and Jewell, my visit to my father’s office, and what I intended to do next. If he had urgent work, I’d be glad to do it, but otherwise I seemed to have enough to occupy all my time.

13

We are both early risers and we do a lot more talking of substance in the morning when we’re fresh than in the evening when Jack is exhausted from school and driving and my metabolism is running on empty. He didn’t need to ask anything as we sat down to breakfast on Tuesday morning. I told him.

“So anyone who walked into this woman Wormy’s office when she wasn’t there could have stolen the stuff in the file,” he said.

“Essentially yes. And she must have gone out to lunch sometimes, no matter how dedicated she was. If a person goes out to lunch, she’ll be gone at least twenty minutes, and that’s really cutting it short.”

“But someone with a key could stay late and be safely alone.”

“And both principals have keys, along with Wormy.”

“What’s the motivation for Arlene Hopkins to take the papers?”

“How’s this? Natalie finds out something about Arlene that Arlene would like to keep quiet. Maybe she knows Natalie overheard a conversation she had with someone in her office or on the phone, or maybe Natalie fielded a call to Arlene that Arlene wished she hadn’t. So she takes the documents one day looking for something in them she can use as a kind of blackmail.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“It’s even possible she didn’t mean to keep them. She may only have wanted to look at them in the privacy of her office or at home. She takes them, planning to make copies or just look at them and return them, and by coincidence, in the short time they’re gone, Wormy opens the file to put Natalie’s first evaluation in it and finds it almost empty.”

“Makes sense. Once Wormy lets others know there are papers missing, Arlene, or whoever took them, can’t put them back.”