“ Erin should be along any minute,” Darcy told him as they were seated. “I’m surprised she isn’t waiting. She’s always so prompt, it actually gives me a complex.”
“She’s probably stuck in traffic,” Nona said. “Let’s order wine. We know she’ll have chablis.”
Half an hour later, Darcy pushed her chair back. “I’m going to phone Erin. The only thing I can imagine is that when she delivered the necklace she designed for Bertolini’s, there might have been some adjustment needed. She loses track of time when she’s working.”
The answering machine was on in Erin ’s studio apartment. Darcy returned to the table and realized Nona’s anxious expression mirrored her own feelings. “I left a message that we’re waiting for her and to call here if she can’t make it.” They ordered dinner. Darcy loved this restaurant, but tonight she was hardly aware of what she was eating. Every few minutes she glanced at the door hoping that Erin would come flying in with a perfectly reasonable explanation of why she had been delayed.
She did not come.
Darcy lived on the top floor of a brownstone on East Forty-ninth Street, Nona in a co-op on Central Park West. When they left the restaurant they took separate cabs, promising that whoever heard from Erin first would contact the other. The minute she got home, Darcy tried Erin ’s number again. She tried an hour later, just before she went to bed. This time she left an emphatic message. “ Erin, I’m worried about you. It’s Wednesday, 11:15. I don’t care how late you get in, call me.”
Eventually, Darcy fell into an uneasy sleep.
When she awakened at 6 a.m., her immediate thought was that Erin had not called.
Jay Stratton stared out the corner window of his thirtieth-floor apartment in Waterside Plaza on Twenty-fifth Street and the East River Drive. The view was spectacular: the East River arced by the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, the twin towers to the right, the Hudson behind them, the streams of traffic, agonizingly slow in the evening rush hour, flowing well enough now. It was seven-thirty.