spend the weekend—she’d been visiting her child in college in Florida—and I was wondering what to have for dinner. I’d begun my shopping list when Enid Waterson knocked on the kitchen door. What should she do? she asked. Dr. Hollisher didn’t answer his bell, the door was locked and she couldn’t get in. (Like me she didn’t have a key.) Should she call the police? I said: No, I’ll go back with you. So off we went, leaving a note for Alfred, who was just around the corner helping one of the neighbors with plans for a swimming pool.
The back door was locked, just like Enid said. So we walked around the house and there was the front door standing wide open. We tiptoed in carefully, not knowing what to expect. And found nothing at all.
The lights were still on. A book called Maigret Takes a Vacation was face down on the coffee table, like he’d just put it there. Next to it, a highball, ice melted and overflowing the coaster to stain the wood. And a chicken sandwich, untouched, the neatly trimmed white bread beginning to dry and shrivel at the edges.
I called the police. They looked for signs of forcible entry or violence, or other evidence left by the perpetrators, so they said. There wasn’t any. There wasn’t anything missing, not the expensive electronic equipment, not his car, not anything.
After the first excitement, the police seemed to lose interest. Maybe he went off visiting, they said, doesn’t he have a family? Yes, I said, a daughter. Well now, they told me, he’s just taken it into his head to go see her. Call her if you’re worried about him.
But how could I? I only knew that her name was Judy.
I took Dr. Hollisher’s address book and called every number in it, starting with his card-playing friends. None of them had seen him since their last game, and they didn’t know he had a daughter, he’d never mentioned her. After that I called all the business numbers, the plumber, the electrician, the man who’d repaired the roof last month, the painters, Belters Electronics, hoping he’d said something to them. He hadn’t. I called his travel agent, who told me that in just a little over a month Dr. Hollisher was scheduled to go fishing in Colorado. I called the registrars of the three schools he’d attended over the years; I called two professors: one had moved away and the other only remembered something about hybridizing camellias years ago. I called old Mr. Roberts at the Annandale Shipyards; he hadn’t seen Dr. Hollisher for months. Young Claude wasn’t even there; he’d taken a seasonal job at a Carolina coast resort, they thought.
There was nothing else we could do. I found an extra key (it was neatly labeled in a box in his desk), and Enid and I locked the door behind us.
I went about my business, doing the shopping for dinner. All the same I felt restless and out of sorts: something was wrong, I knew it and I couldn’t think of it.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that I got my thoughts in order and remembered that something was missing at Dr. Hollisher’s house. I closed my eyes to make the picture clearer: I was standing on Dr. Hollisher’s front porch, looking off across the bay. I could see the stretch of clipped green St. Augustine grass sloping down to the whitish-yellow sand and beyond it the little pier like thin black lines drawn on the grayish blue water. The misshapen PROA was there, wallowing uncertainly in the small swells. The dory was gone.
Alfred came with me this time, and we walked all around the house, searching carefully. As if a dory could be hidden behind an azalea bush. Eventually we found ourselves standing at the very end of the pier, staring down at the water. It was full of seaweed; the reddish air bladders decorated the surface like faded Christmas holly.
“Well,” Alfred said, “that’s where he went. With the dory.” So I called the police again and the Coast Guard and told them that Dr. Hollisher and his boat were both missing.
A week
The back door was locked, just like Enid said. So we walked around the house and there was the front door standing wide open. We tiptoed in carefully, not knowing what to expect. And found nothing at all.
The lights were still on. A book called Maigret Takes a Vacation was face down on the coffee table, like he’d just put it there. Next to it, a highball, ice melted and overflowing the coaster to stain the wood. And a chicken sandwich, untouched, the neatly trimmed white bread beginning to dry and shrivel at the edges.
I called the police. They looked for signs of forcible entry or violence, or other evidence left by the perpetrators, so they said. There wasn’t any. There wasn’t anything missing, not the expensive electronic equipment, not his car, not anything.
After the first excitement, the police seemed to lose interest. Maybe he went off visiting, they said, doesn’t he have a family? Yes, I said, a daughter. Well now, they told me, he’s just taken it into his head to go see her. Call her if you’re worried about him.
But how could I? I only knew that her name was Judy.
I took Dr. Hollisher’s address book and called every number in it, starting with his card-playing friends. None of them had seen him since their last game, and they didn’t know he had a daughter, he’d never mentioned her. After that I called all the business numbers, the plumber, the electrician, the man who’d repaired the roof last month, the painters, Belters Electronics, hoping he’d said something to them. He hadn’t. I called his travel agent, who told me that in just a little over a month Dr. Hollisher was scheduled to go fishing in Colorado. I called the registrars of the three schools he’d attended over the years; I called two professors: one had moved away and the other only remembered something about hybridizing camellias years ago. I called old Mr. Roberts at the Annandale Shipyards; he hadn’t seen Dr. Hollisher for months. Young Claude wasn’t even there; he’d taken a seasonal job at a Carolina coast resort, they thought.
There was nothing else we could do. I found an extra key (it was neatly labeled in a box in his desk), and Enid and I locked the door behind us.
I went about my business, doing the shopping for dinner. All the same I felt restless and out of sorts: something was wrong, I knew it and I couldn’t think of it.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that I got my thoughts in order and remembered that something was missing at Dr. Hollisher’s house. I closed my eyes to make the picture clearer: I was standing on Dr. Hollisher’s front porch, looking off across the bay. I could see the stretch of clipped green St. Augustine grass sloping down to the whitish-yellow sand and beyond it the little pier like thin black lines drawn on the grayish blue water. The misshapen PROA was there, wallowing uncertainly in the small swells. The dory was gone.
Alfred came with me this time, and we walked all around the house, searching carefully. As if a dory could be hidden behind an azalea bush. Eventually we found ourselves standing at the very end of the pier, staring down at the water. It was full of seaweed; the reddish air bladders decorated the surface like faded Christmas holly.
“Well,” Alfred said, “that’s where he went. With the dory.” So I called the police again and the Coast Guard and told them that Dr. Hollisher and his boat were both missing.
A week
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