I had lunch and took a walk, having missed my early walk this morning. In the winter, later walks were easier because the temperature was higher and there was a chance of sun. Today the sun was shining and I was glad I had postponed, not eliminated, my gentle exercise.

Back home, I put my house in order. I find that when I’m consumed with my work, whether it’s an investigation or something I’m doing for Arnold or the college, things get a little disorganized and I appreciate some downtime to reestablish order. I gathered up newspapers and put them in bags for the recycling program, then hauled out the vacuum cleaner, going from room to room without stopping, the momentum carrying me through. When I finished and went downstairs, I found the answering machine was flashing, the ring of the phone having been obscured by the noise I was generating. I pushed the PLAY button and heard a startling message.

“Miss Bennett, this is Arlene Hopkins. I think we got off on the wrong foot when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. Would you call me on my private line as soon as possible?” She dictated a number that I had to listen to a second time with a paper and pencil in my hand. Then I called it.

“This is Arlene,” the voice answered.

“This is Chris Bennett.”

“Yes, I’m so glad you called. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

Jack was at law school and I had already done all my work for my poetry class last week. “Yes, I am.”

“Come to my apartment, OK?”

“That’s fine.”

“You can park right in the building. I’ll tell them to save a space for you.” She gave me an address on East Sixty-third Street and I promised to be there at seven.

Then I called Jack and let him know.

—

New York is many worlds. It’s a cliché to say that the richest and poorest people in the country live there, but it’s a dramatic truth when you see it for yourself. Arlene Hopkins was neither, but she certainly tended more to the brighter end of the spectrum. My car was accepted courteously and I went up to the lobby level and found the elevator that would take me to her apartment, passing through security first. I half expected to be asked to turn out my pockets and submit to a metal detector, but the uniformed man let me through with a tight smile after comparing my name with one on a list. I rode up a swift elevator to the eleventh floor and found Arlene Hopkins out in the corridor, awaiting me.

“Come on in,” she said cordially, her voice and dress so different from what I had encountered in her office that I wondered whether she might be the good twin. “I’ll take your coat. We can have a drink in the living room before we sit down.”

The apartment was spectacular. One wall of the huge living room was mostly glass, and the view, unobscured, was south with glimpses of Central Park to the west and to the east of the East River.

“It’s very beautiful,” I said. I was wearing a brown pants outfit that I considered more than casual, but my hostess was in tight black pants and a white silk blouse with ruffles and frills that seemed out of character for the woman in the pin-striped suit at the office.

“I enjoy living here. What will you drink?” Canapés were already out on a table with white cocktail napkins imprinted with ARH in a small pile near them.

“White wine would be fine.” I had noticed a bottle on her bar and decided I could tolerate a glass or two before driving home.

She took care of it all quickly and sat down in a chair and crossed her legs as though she was used to being comfortable there. “We got off to a bad start,” she said, repeating what she had said on the answering machine. “I had a lot of reasons not to want to answer your questions. Those reasons are moot now, and I want to be open and forthright. I know you suspect me of having done something duplicitous.”

“I don’t suspect you at all. I’ve had time to think over what I’ve learned, and I’ve learned a great deal since I spoke to you.”

“Let me explain anyway. You’ve heard we’re breaking up, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry and surprised.”

“It’s probably been incubating for a long time. If you think divorce is tough, you should try splitting a company in two. But he has his lawyer and I have mine, and things will work out somehow. The reason I was less than forthcoming is that I was afraid of losing Martin and the company.”

“Ms. Hopkins—”

“Arlene, please. May I call you Chris?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s be as informal as we can. We’ll never see each other again after tonight, but I have the feeling neither you nor I will ever forget this meeting.”

The way she said it gave me a chill. “I don’t need or want to hear about your personal life. What I’m interested in is finding Natalie Gordon, dead or alive. If you know anything, please tell me.”

“I had a feeling about her,” she said, leaning back comfortably, “a feeling that she was trying to upgrade herself, that she was a hick intent on learning to be a big-city woman, and the person she picked to imitate was me.”

“How do you mean?”

“She would ask me about my cosmetics, my perfume, the name of the company that made my bags and shoes, and then she would turn up with not exactly the same things but similar ones. She left her lipstick in the ladies’ room once and I picked it up, thinking it was mine. She wore a pair of shoes once that I recognized as this winter’s update of the pair I had bought last winter.”

“She admired you,” I said. “You’re a gorgeous woman and you dress magnificently.” I had no intention of complimenting her; I was merely stating what was clearly true, but she nearly blushed as I said it. “She was a small-town girl from nowhere and you were the big-city success.”

“I hope you don’t flatter everyone this way.”

“I don’t and it isn’t flattery.”

“Maybe I saw myself in her then,” Arlene said thoughtfully. “I have a reputation for being driven and I worked hard to earn it. I have to succeed; there are things I need that other people merely want. I can’t relinquish control unless I have absolute confidence in the person I hand over the control to. Marty is one of the few.” She took a sip of her drink. “Was.”

I really didn’t want to hear a recap of her love affair. “Tell me about Natalie.”

“I hated her from the moment I saw her.”

I took another canapé and a sip of wine. A woman men loved and women hated. “But you agreed to hire her.”

“Marty wanted her and she would work for him more than for me. Wormy thought she was hot stuff. Her resumé was great, her references golden. I didn’t steal them, Chris. I had no reason to. Nor did I ‘borrow’ them. And Wormy’s clean. She leaves that office at night and becomes a mother. She doesn’t think till the next morning.”

A bell rang and I looked toward the sound.

“That’s dinner. Grab a couple more and bring your glass along.”

I followed her over the thick carpet into a kitchen that rivaled the Gordons’, except that it was smaller. She put down her glass and opened a microwave oven. Out came two marvelous-looking Cornish hens, stuffed, with vegetables on the side.

“Want to take my glass in?”

“Sure.” I picked up her drink and followed her into the dining room. The table was glass and steel and set with place mats, fine china, sterling silver, and crystal.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“I like nice things.”

Nice things was an understatement. We sat opposite each other and she went back for a bottle of bubbly water and the bottle of wine.

“Marty and I met seven years ago,” she said when we were eating. “It happened. He’s married and I didn’t care. Having children isn’t at the top of my list of priorities. Also I like living alone. At some point, we realized we were potentially a team in more ways than one. That’s when Hopkins and Jewell was born. We had a good run and it’s over. Someday someone’ll write a book about it, but it won’t be me.