“She has a lot of hobbies,” I said.
“Anything worrying you?” Boney asked, looking worried. “You’re not concerned about drugs or drinking? I’m not speaking ill of your wife. A lot of housewives, more than you’d guess, they pass the day that way. The days, they get long when you’re by yourself. And if the drinking turns to drugs—and I’m not talking heroin but even prescription painkillers—well, there are some pretty awful characters selling around here right now.”
“The drug trade has gotten bad,” Gilpin said. “We’ve had a bunch of police layoffs—one-fifth of the force, and we were tight to begin with. I mean, it’s bad, we’re overrun.”
“Had a housewife, nice lady, get a tooth knocked out last month over some OxyContin,” Boney prompted.
“No, Amy might have a glass of wine or something, but not drugs.”
Boney eyed me; this was clearly not the answer she wanted. “She have some good friends here? We’d like to call some of them, just make sure. No offense. Sometimes a spouse is the last to know when drugs are involved. People get ashamed, especially women.”
Friends. In New York, Amy made and shed friends weekly; they were like her projects. She’d get intensely excited about them: Paula who gave her singing lessons and had a wicked good voice (Amy went to boarding school in Massachusetts; I loved the very occasional times she got all New England on me: wicked good); Jessie from the fashion-design course. But then I’d ask about Jessie or Paula a month later, and Amy would look at me like I was making up words.
Then there were the men who were always rattling behind Amy, eager to do the husbandly things that her husband failed to do. Fix a chair leg, hunt down her favorite imported Asian tea. Men who she swore were her friends, just good friends. Amy kept them at exactly an arm’s distance—far enough away that I couldn’t get too annoyed, close enough that she could crook a finger and they’d do her bidding.
In Missouri … good God, I really didn’t know. It only occurred to me just then. You truly are an asshole, I thought. Two years we’d been here, and after the initial flurry of meet-and-greets, those manic first months, Amy had no one she regularly saw. She had my mom, who was now dead, and me—and our main form of conversation was attack and rebuttal. When we’d been back home for a year, I’d asked her faux gallantly: “And how are you liking North Carthage, Mrs. Dunne?”
“New Carthage, you mean?” she’d replied. I refused to ask her the reference, but I knew it was an insult.
“She has a few good friends, but they’re mostly back east.”
“Her folks?”
“They live in New York. City.”
“And you still haven’t called any of these people?” Boney asked, a bemused smile on her face.
“I’ve been doing everything else you’ve been asking me to do. I haven’t had a chance.” I’d signed away permission to trace credit cards and ATMs and track Amy’s cell phone, I’d handed over Go’s cell number and the name of Sue, the widow at The Bar, who could presumably attest to the time I arrived.
“Baby of the family.” She shook her head. “You really do remind me of my little brother.” A beat. “That’s a compliment, I swear.”
“She dotes on him,” Gilpin said, scribbling in a notebook. “Okay, so you left the house at about seven-thirty A.M., and you showed up at The Bar at about noon, and in between, you were at the beach.”
There’s a beachhead about ten miles north of our house, a not overly pleasant collection of sand and silt and beer-bottle shards. Trash barrels overflowing with Styrofoam cups and dirty diapers. But there is a picnic table upwind that gets nice sun, and if you stare directly at the river, you can ignore the other crap.
“I sometimes bring my coffee and the paper and just sit. Gotta make the most of summer.”
No, I hadn’t talked to anyone at the beach. No, no one saw me.
“It’s a quiet place midweek,” Gilpin allowed.
If the police talked to anyone who knew me, they’d quickly learn that I rarely went to the beach and that I never sometimes brought my coffee to just enjoy the morning. I have Irish-white skin and an impatience for navel-gazing: A beach boy I am not. I told the police that because it had been Amy’s idea, for me to go sit in the spot where I could be alone and watch the river I loved and ponder our life together. She’d said this to me this morning, after we’d eaten her crepes. She leaned forward on the table and said, “I know we are having a tough time. I still love you so much, Nick, and I know I have a lot of things to work on. I want to be a good wife to you, and I want you to be my husband and be happy. But you need to decide what you want.”