“But it’s Natalie you’re interested in,” she said, getting back on track with, I thought, some reluctance. She wanted to talk about the relationship; she would continue to make lots of money doing what she enjoyed doing, but she would miss the man. I could sympathize with her.

“Right,” I said.

“She walked in dripping this sleazy sexuality and I knew Marty would fall for it. I suffered in advance, if you want to know the truth.”

“But you didn’t voice an objection.”

“I knew what Marty would say if I did. And Wormy thought she was just what we needed. She was, in fact. She was terrific. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do. If I’d asked her to scrub a floor, she probably would’ve gotten down on her hands and knees. But Marty wanted to bed her, and she had no objections. I honestly think he thought I didn’t know.”

“But you knew before it happened.”

“And I kept my mouth shut through the whole affair. We had a business relationship that had to be preserved at all costs. And we preserved it until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Tell me about Natalie.”

“She was a girl who came to town to make it. I don’t think she gave much of a damn whether she did it on her own or married it. She thought Marty was her ticket to happiness. I knew he wasn’t. If he hadn’t left his wife for me, he wouldn’t do it for Natalie. There was much less to Natalie than there was to me, and much less than met the eye. I had a feeling she was older than she said and anxious to land a man ASAP.”

“Why didn’t she leave H and J when the relationship ended?”

“She often got to meet clients. She may have thought that would lead somewhere. It might have. I think she dated a few men who came down to the office.”

“Tell me about the missing papers.”

“I never touched them. I probably never looked at them after the first interview. I didn’t care. I more or less heard they were missing and I heard Natalie was upset. But since I didn’t like her, and since she’d taken my man, at least part-time, I was perfectly willing to look on the dark side of her. I figured she’d faked her background to get the job with us.”

“Wormy remembers calling a previous employer and getting a glowing recommendation.”

Arlene smiled. “Just goes to show how little I know.”

“I thought that she was trying to block out a former life, possibly a husband and children, possibly an abusive man who might come looking for her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Your analysis is certainly more charitable than mine. So you think she took the papers so there’d be no record if someone came calling.”

“Pretty much. This chicken is great. Did you cook it earlier and freeze it?”

“Good God no. I’m not sure how to turn the stove on. In Manhattan you pick up the phone and order anything you want and they deliver it. All I’m making tonight is the coffee.”

“You have good phone numbers,” I said. “Go on about Natalie.”

“About why she stayed. I thought about it myself when it happened. Frankly, there are office romances every day of the week, and when they end, the people involved think more about whether they can get a better job somewhere else or whether they’re better off staying put. A lot of them stay put and watch their ex do the same thing with someone else in the office. In Natalie’s case I thought she might not want to go elsewhere because she had faked her references. She would want to stay at H and J long enough that we’d be her best reference. But if you’re right that Wormy checked her out, then maybe she stayed because she liked the job. I think she did like the job and she got raises, so she was doing a lot better at the end than at the beginning. We all were.”

“Let me ask you something. I’ve been hearing that someone calling himself Natalie’s brother may have been looking for her before she disappeared. Would you know if such a person called H and J?”

“There’s no way of knowing. If someone called and asked for her, they’d put him through and no one would ever know who called. You think that’s who’s responsible for her disappearance?”

“I think he may not be a brother but he may be the responsible one. He inquired at the place she lived before she moved to Greenwich Avenue.”

“So he may have found her.”

“I’m just not sure how, unless the Thanksgiving Day parade was an accidental meeting. The super in her old building didn’t know where she’d moved.”

“How did you find the old building if we didn’t have the address?”

“I worked backwards. An old woman in the Greenwich Avenue building remembered the name of the moving company.”

“You’re pretty resourceful. You looking for a job at an advertising agency run by a driven woman?”

I smiled, feeling flattered. “Probably not, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

“Let’s have dessert.”

We talked about more general things for the rest of the evening. I hadn’t learned much, but she had had the opportunity to clear herself of suspicion. And maybe she’d managed to get a few things off her chest. For my part, I saw her differently and I understood why she had been so difficult when I had first shown up at H and J.

We finished our coffee in the living room, sitting as we had when I had arrived. I walked over to the windows and looked at New York in the dark.

“You don’t see the grubbiness from up here,” Arlene said.

“It’s really quite beautiful. Did you have any sense of where Natalie came from originally?”

“Probably not New York, but I couldn’t tell you how long she’d lived here when she came to work for us.”

“She’d lived in the old apartment at least two years and she’d had at least two jobs.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to her. I didn’t like the woman and she did things that hurt me, but I didn’t wish her the kind of harm that’s probably befallen her.”

“I think we’re going to find her,” I said, looking her straight in the eye.

“Do you know where?”

“Not in the city. If you remember anything else about her, I’m still interested.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you for a wonderful dinner and a wonderful evening.”

She smiled. “The job offer was sincere.”

I promised again I would consider it.

22

“So you think she cleared herself,” Jack said as we talked about my evening later that night.

“She admitted she hated Natalie. If she’d had anything to do with Natalie’s disappearance, I think she would never have said that to me.”

“Maybe she just reads character pretty well and she figured how you’d react.”

“Maybe. But she had no motive, Jack. When Martin Jewell was involved with Natalie, that’s when Arlene had a motive. Three years later—that’s hard to see.”

“Let me ask you a potentially embarrassing question: If Natalie didn’t make herself disappear, who’ve you got?”

It was embarrassing because I still didn’t know whether Natalie had engineered her own disappearance, and if she hadn’t, I had no real suspect and almost no one even marginally suspicious. “Sandy, of course, although I don’t believe he did it, Martin Jewell because he had a close relationship with Natalie, and this mysterious ‘brother’ who has popped up a couple of times and, as far as Sandy is concerned, doesn’t exist.”

“And Arlene Hopkins.”

“You see a smoldering resentment.”

“No question about it. Four years ago she thought it was all over. Suddenly you appear on the scene, dragging up unpleasant and embarrassing facts. She has a knock-down-drag-out with Jewell that’s so bad, they decide to go their separate ways. If she’s still so touchy about Natalie, it’s possible she just bided her time and got her at the parade. I’ll bet your friend Arlene works out in a gym twice a week and is just as tough physically as she is in her office.”