I could feel his fear. I could understand the terror of losing someone, a beautiful woman on a street in New York. “You reported it to the police,” I said.

“I waited for the parade to end, telling myself I was overreacting, that when the streets cleared, she would turn up. It was a long time before Santa Claus rolled down Central Park West with the street cleaners right in his wake. As soon as he passes, the crowd disperses. Some of them go to one of the nearby subway stations on CPW, some of them go over to Broadway and pick up a subway or bus or cab over there. I stood in the street till it was empty, Chris, till the last kid and the last parent disappeared. Then I found a cop and told him my story.”

That, of course, was why he didn’t think much of cops. Where adults are concerned, a missing person isn’t treated the way homicide is. Homicide is concrete, visible, amenable to scientific investigation. A missing person is the absence of all of the above. The police have only the word of an allegedly interested party that someone allegedly disappeared at an alleged time and place. In some cases the police must surely ask themselves whether the missing person ever existed. And adults are different from children; they are responsible to themselves and they have no obligation, certainly no legal one, to remain in a place or with a person if they don’t feel like it. The police may look out for the person, but even if they find him, they have no legal right to bring him back. It is a loss like no other.

“And nothing ever turned up,” I said.

“Nothing. In fact, the little I learned only made things worse. Although Natalie was in her thirties, her life seemed to begin a few years before I met her. Before that, there’s nothing, no family, no history, no job. I’m not sure anymore who the girl I married was, where she came from, even whether she was married before she met me.” He opened his hands. “I’ve come up empty, emptier than before. I’m torn up over this, the loss, the wondering what happened to her. Sometimes I dream of that balloon man walking by us. I see him coming and I see him going and I know he’s the messenger of the greatest loss in my life. And I wonder, why didn’t I know when I saw him coming down the street that he carried that terrible message?”

In my mind I could see it, the almost invisible man beneath all the balloons inflated with helium reaching for the sky, children with balloons tied to their wrists to keep them from escaping. How sad that such a beautiful, colorful image meant something so evil to this poor man.

“Was she pregnant?” I asked finally.

“I don’t know.” He answered quickly, as though he knew the answer to every question an investigator might ask, and he probably did.

“I’m so terribly sorry for your loss,” I said.

“I want to hire you, Chris.”

I must have looked startled because he said, “Don’t say anything. Just listen for a minute. I have looked for her. I have had a private detective look for her. I have played games with the police while they supposedly looked for her. She’s gone. She’s nowhere. She turned a corner and disappeared off the face of the earth. Whether she’s dead or alive, I must know. I can’t function anymore. I can’t move forward and I’ve never been able to stand still. You have to help me.”

“I’m not a private detective, Sandy. I can’t accept money to investigate her disappearance, and frankly, I wouldn’t know how to start.” I felt at a total loss. A woman turns a corner and disappears off the face of the earth. Where do you begin?

“Don’t turn me down so quickly. I know you’re not licensed. I’m not asking you to do anything that isn’t legal. Forget the money; we can talk about that later. If you’d like me to give a donation to your favorite charity, I’m more than happy to do that. I’ll pay your expenses. I’ll give you every picture of her that I have, every scrap of writing that I’ve been able to dig up. I have lists of her favorite foods, her favorite perfume, expressions she always used. And I have a few things that may be useful that I didn’t have when I hired the detective. It’s all yours. My life is an open book; I’ll answer any question you have with absolute truth. Just don’t turn me down.”

My heart really went out to him, but this was so different from the other cases I’d worked on, cases in which I had a personal interest, in which there was some physical evidence, something to go on. What was there here? A balloon floating skyward, an empty street, a crowd of people who had noticed nothing.

“Chris?”

I turned to see Jack standing in the doorway, his coat on and mine over his arm. “Jack. Sandy and I were just talking.”

“You want to stay? I can make it home alone.” He gave me a smile.

“Why don’t you go?” Sandy said to me. “I’ll be in touch. Just think about it.”

I felt troubled and uncertain. “Fine.” I offered my hand and we shook.

“Nice meeting you, Jack,” Sandy said, standing as I did. “So long, folks.”

“You look like you’re not all here,” Jack said as he helped me on with my coat.

“Let’s talk about it outside.”

We found Mel and Hal and said our good-byes, Mel pressing a CARE package on me as we left.

“Thank goodness for Mel,” Jack said as we stepped into the cold, dark winter late afternoon. “At least I’m off the hook for cooking dinner.”

2

“He get you shook up about something?”

“He told me a terrible story, but there’s something else shaking me up. You talked to him, didn’t you?”

“For kind of a long time after lunch. Seems like a nice enough guy.”

“He said he was related to Melanie.”

“He’s her uncle.”

That surprised me. “He looks kind of young to be her uncle.”

“Said he was her mother’s kid brother, a lot younger than her mother.”

“Mel’s old roommate mentioned him during brunch. She said he had a weird story to tell. I had no idea this was the man and that was the story.”

Jack took his key out of his pocket and we turned up the front walk. The snow had been shoveled away and the shrubs we had planted in the fall looked healthy and green in spite of the cold. “Do I get to hear the story?”

“His wife disappeared during the Thanksgiving Day parade the year before last.”

“That is weird.”

“Without a trace. She turned a corner to buy a balloon and he never saw her again.”

We walked inside and I went to turn the heat up as Jack closed and locked the front door.

“Feel like a fire?” he called.

“You bet,” I called back. “Want something to drink?”

“Maybe some coffee. I tried some of Hal’s special single-malt Scotch, and if I have anything else, I won’t be able to study.”

I put on a pot and rubbed my hands together, happy for the fire I could already smell. The heat would take time, but the fire was instantaneous. Jack had already talked about the possibility of putting a wood-burning stove in the fireplace and heating the downstairs with it. It struck me as a good idea with a downside; I love the look of a fire. A good fire is more interesting than a television screen. Anyway, it was a thought for the future.

When I carried in the carafe, the living room was warm and fragrant with the woody smells I love so much.

“That smells good,” Jack said, referring to the coffee.

“So does that.” I nodded toward the fire.

“You know me. Nothing smells as good to a cop as fresh coffee.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek, then took the carafe back to the kitchen. When we were sipping in front of the fire, I told Jack what I remembered of Sandy Gordon’s story.

“Those things are very tough,” Jack said when he’d heard the whole thing. “I have to believe there’s a large possibility this woman planned her disappearance right down to saying she was going for a balloon.”