Gone Girl: A Novel (20 page)

I retreated quickly and began circulating through the crowd, smiling at a series of wrinkled faces, that baggy, exhausted, disappointed look that people get in middle age, and all the faces were like that. Most of them were also drunk, dancing steps from their youth—swaying to country-club funk—and that seemed even worse. I was making my way to the French windows for some air, and a hand squeezed my arm. Nick’s mom, Mama Maureen, with her big black laser eyes, her eager pug-dog face. Thrusting a wad of goat cheese and crackers into her mouth, Maureen managed to say: “It’s not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It’s an admirable thing, and I’m glad you’re both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you’d never done it. And those will be the good times, when it’s only
days
of regret and not
months
.” I must have looked shocked—I was definitely shocked—because she said quickly: “But then you have good times too. I know you will.
You two
. A
lot
of good times. So just … forgive me, sweetheart, what I said before. I’m just being a silly old divorced lady. Oh, mother of pearl, I think I had too much
wine
.” And she fluttered a goodbye at me and scampered away through all the other disappointed couples.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Bill Dunne was suddenly saying, and he was saying it to me. “Why are you here? You’re not allowed here.”

“I’m Amy,” I say, touching his arm as if that might wake him. Bill has always liked me; even if he could think of nothing to say to me, I
could tell he liked me, the way he watched me like I was a rare bird. Now he is scowling, thrusting his chest toward me, a caricature of a young sailor ready to brawl. A few feet away, Go sets down her food and gets ready to move toward us, quietly, like she is trying to catch a fly.

“Why are you in our house?” Bill Dunne says, his mouth grimacing. “You’ve got some nerve, lady.”

“Nick?” Go calls behind her, not loudly but urgently.

“Got it,” Nick says, appearing. “Hey, Dad, this is my wife, Amy. Remember Amy? We moved back home so we could see you more. This is our new house.”

Nick glares at me: I was the one who insisted we invite his dad.

“All I’m saying, Nick,” Bill Dunne says, pointing now, jabbing an index finger toward my face, the party going hushed, several men moving slowly, cautiously, in from the other room, their hands twitching, ready to move, “is
she
doesn’t belong here. Little bitch thinks she can do whatever she wants.”

Mama Mo swoops in then, her arm around her ex-husband, always, always rising to the occasion. “Of course she belongs here, Bill. It’s her house. She’s your son’s wife. Remember?”

“I want her out of here, do you understand me, Maureen?” He shrugs her off and starts moving toward me again. “Dumb bitch. Dumb bitch.”

It’s unclear if he means me or Maureen, but then he looks at me and tightens his lips. “She doesn’t
belong
here.”

“I’ll go,” I say, and turn away, walk straight out the door, into the rain.
From the mouths of Alzheimer’s patients
, I think, trying to make light. I walk a loop around the neighborhood, waiting for Nick to appear, to guide me back to our house. The rain spackles me gently, dampening me. I really believe Nick will come after me. I turn toward the house and see only a closed door.

R
and and I sat in the vacant Find Amy Dunne headquarters at five in the morning, drinking coffee while we waited for the cops to check out Lonnie. Amy stared at us from her poster perch on the wall. Her photo looked distressed.

“I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say something to you if she was afraid,” Rand said. “Why wouldn’t she tell you?”

Amy had come to the mall to buy a gun on Valentine’s Day, of all days, that’s what our friend Lonnie had said. She was a little abashed, a little nervous:
Maybe I’m being silly, but … I just really think I need a gun
. Mostly, though, she was scared. Someone was unnerving her, she told Lonnie. She gave no more details, but when he asked her what kind of gun she wanted, she said:
One that stops someone fast
. He told her to come back in a few days, and she did. He hadn’t been able to get her one (“It’s not really my bag, man”), but now he wished he had. He remembered her well; over the months, he’d wondered how she was now and then, this sweet blonde with the fearful face, trying to get a gun on Valentine’s Day.

“Who would she be afraid of?” Rand asked.

“Tell me about Desi again, Rand,” I said. “Did you ever meet him?”

“He came to the house a few times.” Rand frowned, remembering. “He was a nice-looking kid, very solicitous of Amy—treated her like a princess. But I just never liked him. Even when things were good with them—young love, Amy’s first love—even then I disliked him.
He was very rude to me, inexplicably so. Very possessive of Amy, arms around her at all times. I found it strange, very strange, that he wouldn’t try to be nice to us. Most young men want to get in good with the parents.”

“I wanted to.”

“And you did!” He smiled. “You were just the right amount of nervous, it was very sweet. Desi wasn’t anything but nasty.”

“Desi’s less than an hour out of town.”

“True. And Hilary Handy?” Rand said, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t want to be sexist here—she was scarier than Desi. Because that Lonnie guy at the mall, he didn’t say Amy was afraid of a man.”

“No, he just said she was afraid,” I said. “There
is
that Noelle Hawthorne girl—the one who lives near us. She told the police she was best friends with Amy when I know she wasn’t. They weren’t even
friends
. Her husband says she’s been in hysterics. That she was looking at pictures of Amy, crying. At the time I thought they were Internet photos, but … what if they were actual photos she had of Amy? What if she was stalking Amy?”

“She tried to talk with me when I was a little busy yesterday,” Rand said. “She quoted some
Amazing Amy
stuff at me.
Amazing Amy and the Best Friend War
, actually. ‘Best friends are the people who know us best.’ ”

“Sounds like Hilary,” I said. “All grown up.”

We met Boney and Gilpin just after seven
A.M
. at an IHOP out along the highway for a showdown: It was ridiculous that we were doing their job for them. It was insane that we were the ones discovering leads. It was time to call in the FBI if the local cops couldn’t handle it.

A plump, amber-eyed waitress took our orders, poured us coffee, and, clearly recognizing me, lingered within eavesdropping distance until Gilpin scatted her away. She was like a determined housefly, though. Between drink refills and dispensing of utensils and the magically quick arrival of our food, our entire harangue came in limp bursts.
This is unacceptable … no more coffee, thanks … it’s unbelievable that … uh, sure, rye is fine …

Before we were done, Boney interrupted. “I understand, guys, it’s natural to want to feel involved. But what you did was dangerous. You have got to let us handle this kind of thing.”

“That’s just it, though, you aren’t handling it,” I said. “You’d never
have gotten this information, about the gun, if we didn’t go out there last night. What did Lonnie say when you talked to him?”

“Same thing you said he said,” Gilpin said. “Amy wanted to buy a gun, she was scared.”

“You don’t seem that impressed by this information,” I snapped. “Do you think he was lying?”

“We don’t think he was lying,” Boney said. “There’s no reason for the guy to invite police attention to himself. He seemed very struck by your wife. Very … I don’t know, rattled that this had happened to her. He remembered specific details. Nick, he said she was wearing a green scarf that day. You know, not a winter scarf but a fashion-statement scarf.” She made fluttery moves with her fingers to show she thought fashion to be childish, unworthy of her attention. “Emerald green. Ring a bell?”

I nodded. “She has one she wears with blue jeans a lot.”

“And a pin on her jacket—a gold cursive A?”

“Yes.”

Boney shrugged:
Well, that settles it
.

“You don’t think he might have been so struck by her that he … kidnapped her?” I asked.

“He has an alibi. Rock-solid,” Boney said, giving me a pointed look. “To tell the truth, we’ve begun to look for … a different kind of motive.”

“Something more … personal,” Gilpin added. He looked dubiously at his pancakes, topped with strawberries and puffs of whipped cream. He began scraping them to the side of his plate.

“More personal,” I said. “So does that mean you’re finally going to talk to Desi Collings, or Hilary Handy? Or do I need to?” I had, in fact, promised Marybeth I’d go today.

“Sure, we will,” Boney said. She had the placating tone of a girl promising her pesky mom to eat better. “We doubt it’s a lead—but we’ll talk to them.”

“Well, great, thanks for doing your job, kind of,” I said. “And what about Noelle Hawthorne? If you want someone close to home, she’s right in our complex, and she seems a little obsessed with Amy.”

“I know, she’s called us, and she’s on our list.” Gilpin nodded. “Today.”

“Good. What else are you doing?”

“Nick, we’d actually like you to make some time for us, let us
pick your brain a bit more,” Boney said. “Spouses often know more than they realize. We’d like you to think a bit more about the argument—that barnburner your neighbor Mrs., uh, Teverer overheard you and Amy having the night before she went missing.”

Rand’s head jerked toward me.

Jan Teverer, the Christian casserole lady who wouldn’t meet my eye anymore.

“I mean, could it have been because—I know this is hard to hear, Mr. Elliott—because Amy was under the influence of something?” Boney asked. Innocent eyes. “I mean, maybe she
has
had contact with less savory elements in town. There are plenty of other drug dealers. Maybe she got in over her head, and that’s why she wanted a gun. There’s got to be a reason she wants a gun for protection and doesn’t tell her husband. And Nick, we’d like you to think harder about where you were between that time—the time of the argument, about eleven
P.M
., the last anyone heard Amy’s voice—”

“Besides me.”

“Besides you—and noon, when you arrived at your bar. If you were out and about in this town, driving to the beach, hanging around the dock area, someone must have seen you. Even if it was someone just, you know, walking his dog. If you can help us, I think that would be really …”

“Helpful,” Gilpin finished. He speared a strawberry.

They both watched me attentively, congenially. “It’d be super-helpful, Nick,” Gilpin repeated more pleasantly. First time I’d heard about the argument—that they knew about it—and they chose to tell me in front of Rand—and they chose to pretend it wasn’t a gotcha.

“Sure thing,” I said.

“You mind telling us what it was about?” Boney asked. “The argument?”

“What did Mrs. Teverer tell you it was about?”

“I hate to take her word when I got you right here.” She poured some cream into her coffee.

“It was such a nothing argument,” I began. “That’s why I never mentioned it. Just both of us scrapping at each other, the way couples do sometimes.”

Rand looked at me as if he had no clue what I was talking about:
Scrapping? What is this
scrapping
of which you speak?

“It was just—about dinner,” I lied. “About what we’d do for dinner for our anniversary. You know, Amy is a traditionalist about these things—”

“The lobster!” Rand interrupted. He turned to the cops. “Amy cooks lobster every year for Nick.”

“Right. But there’s nowhere to get lobster in this town, not alive, from the tank, so she was frustrated. I had the Houston’s reservation—”

“I thought you said you
didn’t
have a Houston’s reservation.” Rand frowned.

“Well, yes, sorry, I’m getting confused. I just had the idea of the Houston’s reservation. But I really should have just arranged to have some lobster flown in.”

The cops, each of them, raised an accidental eyebrow.
How very fancy
.

“It’s not that expensive to do. Anyway, we were at this rotten loggerheads, and it was one of those arguments that got bigger than it should have.” I took a bite of my pancakes. I could feel the heat rushing from under my collar. “We were laughing about it within the hour.”

“Hunh” was all Boney said.

“And where are you on the treasure hunt?” Gilpin asked.

I stood up, put down some money, ready to go. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be playing defense here. “Nowhere, not right yet—it’s hard to think clearly with so much going on.”

“Okay,” Gilpin said. “It’s less likely the treasure hunt is an angle, now that we know she was already feeling threatened months ago. But keep me in the loop anyway, okay?”

We all shuffled out into the heat. As Rand and I got into our car, Boney called out, “Hey, is Amy still a two, Nick?”

I frowned at her.

“A size two?” she repeated.

“Yes, she is, I think,” I said. “Yes. She is.”

Boney made a face that said
Hmmmm
, and got in her car.

“What do you think that was about?” Rand asked.

“Those two, who knows?”

We remained silent for most of the way to the hotel, Rand staring out the window at the rows of fast-food restaurants blinking by, me
thinking about my lie—my lies. We had to circle to find a space at the Days Inn; the payroll convention was apparently a hot ticket.

“You know, it’s funny, how provincial I am, lifetime New Yorker,” Rand said, fingers on the door handle. “When Amy talked about moving back here, back along the
Ole
Mississippi River, with you, I pictured … green, farmland, apple trees, and those great old red barns. I have to tell you, it’s really quite ugly here.” He laughed. “I can’t think of a single thing of beauty in this whole town. Except for my daughter.”

He got out and strode quickly toward the hotel, and I didn’t try to catch up. I entered the headquarters a few minutes behind him, took a seat at a secluded table toward the back of the room. I needed to complete the treasure hunt before the clues disappeared, figure out where Amy had been taking me. After a few hours’ stint here, I’d deal with the third clue. In the meantime, I dialed.