He nodded, glanced at me, and hurried out, pausing in the doorway to put his hands over his ears. As she herself would say, Mrs. Winston would cotton to no indifference about the matter. I didn’t laugh at Liam’s antics. As soon as he left, I started for the stairway. I knew every moment I took to walk away that this was definitely no laughing matter.
This is Ava’s doing, was the first thing I thought. I hadn’t imagined her after all. She was there, and
I wouldn’t put it past her to have plucked poor Collin Nickels out of the herd, as she liked to refer to young men, just to show me that she was close and could do it. Maybe to show me that she could pluck Liam just as easily. I shuddered. Of course, this also confirmed for me that Daddy was probably nearby. This was her way of giving me a warning.
For a long while—too long—I just sat on my bed thinking and worrying. At times, when memories of threatening words, distorted raging faces, and my sisters’ deliveries to my father returned, I trembled over what I had heard and seen. I had never thought about the families of any of those men and what they must have gone through once they were reported missing, just what Collin Nickels’s family would soon be going through. Of course, they hadn’t been men whom I, or even any of my sisters, would know much about. It had been easier not to care that way, I suppose, not that Ava had revealed any concern one way or another.
I was surprised at the knock on my door, surprised and grateful, because it snapped me out of my horrid reverie and made me realize how much time I had wasted ruminating. Liam would be there in a little more than a half hour. He was always on time, even now, especially now. It was as if he thought I wouldn’t wait or would be angry enough to leave him after only ten minutes beyond our time to meet. It told me that his natural instincts were telling him that there was still something very tentative about me. I understood. He wouldn’t think otherwise until he heard me pronounce those two words, “I do.”
I opened the door to face Jim Lamb.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you I wasn’t completely forthcoming with the police just now.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to involve you any more than you were just by being a fellow tenant.”
“How could I be involved any more than that? I had much less to do with him than anyone else here had, especially you.”
“Well, he did tell me some personal things.”
“What? How did any of that concern me?” I was practically lunging at him. My aggressive questioning made him wince.
“He was infatuated with you,” he said. “At times, he embarrassed me with his revelations, telling me how he fantasized about you. He even admitted to coming down the hallway very late at night and just standing here quietly, hoping to hear you move or sigh or something. It was . . . a little sick, I think. I told him so, and he stopped talking to me about you. I didn’t say anything about it, because I can’t see how it would relate to his disappearance, do you?”
I stared at him a moment. Of course I could see how it would relate. If Ava had confronted him, he would have seen the resemblances between Ava and myself, and she would have known enough to use my name to tempt and hook him. “Easy fish,” she would call him.
“No,” I told Jim in a calmer tone. “You’re right. There was no need to mention that. It would just add something confusing.”
“I’m sure he’ll show up. He’s a weird guy. Mrs. Winston doesn’t appreciate how weird he is. I don’t think it’s beyond him to ignore what’s proper etiquette as it relates to her and Mrs. McGruder.”
“Probably so,” I said.
He stood there searching for some other way to keep me talking.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got to get ready to go out, Jim. I’m sorry.”
“Of course,” he said, taking a step back. He didn’t turn away. I had to close the door in his face.
When Liam came for me, he wanted to know more about Collin Nickels. He had given it more thought, especially because I had looked so disturbed to hear about him. I told him I hardly knew him at all.
“Except for one short conversation in the upstairs hallway, I barely exchanged another word with the man.”
“You seemed really concerned about him,” he said.
“I could see how disturbed your great-aunt Amelia was, that’s all.”
He nodded. For now, I got by with that, but there would surely be something else soon to make him wonder about me and my reactions.
Another week went by without any resolution to the mystery of the missing Collin Nickels. I learned that a police detective had come by while I was at work to go through Collin’s things, and then eventually they had gathered everything and taken it down to the police station, hoping it would produce some lead. I hoped he hadn’t written anything about me that would bring them back to question me further. Apparently, there was nothing. At breakfast daily, either Mrs. Winston or Mrs. McGruder would announce that another day had passed without any news.
“It’s as if he literally disappeared,” Mrs. Winston told me. “One day, he just evaporated. I didn’t get to know him that well, but he had a real love for history. I enjoyed our little talks at breakfast and dinner.”
“Oh, he’ll turn up looking embarrassed about it all,” Mr. Brady insisted. She gave him one of her disapproving glares, and he quickly returned to his breakfast.
Five days later, when I returned from work, Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder greeted me in the hallway outside the dining room. They had apparently been waiting for my arrival. My first thought was that Collin Nickels’s body had been found. I almost wished for that. No body of any man delivered to Daddy was ever found. If Collin’s body was found, that would eliminate Ava as a suspect. He had come to some other misfortune, which, whatever it was, wasn’t as bad, I was sure. But they had something else on their minds.
“We both think you have made a very wise and very generous decision, Lorelei,” Mrs. Winston began. The two of them wore identical smiles of approval.