I stood. "Alice Brown?"
"Yes, I'm Alice Brown," she said, looking at me not with hostility but with a clear reserve. Maybe it was just her way; or maybe she had some idea why I was there.
"My name is Bill Smith," I said. "Please, sit down." I held the chair for her and she sat, her back straight, her shoulders relaxed. She folded her hands loosely on the table, gave me a direct gaze.
"I'm a friend of Jimmy Antonelli's," I said as I sat again. "It's important that I speak to him, and I think you know where he is."
"Jimmy," she said. She dropped her eyes to the tabletop. "No, I don't know where he is."
"I'm a friend of his," I repeated. "He's in trouble. Maybe he deserves it, maybe not. Either way, maybe I can help."
"I know who you are," she said evenly. "But I can't help you."
"Tony thought you might."
"Oh." She smiled a little. "I like Tony. I wish he and Jimmy had gotten along better." She stood abruptly, went behind the counter, made a business of making herself a cup of sweet-smelling herbal tea. "Do you want more coffee?" she asked.
"Please. It's terrific coffee."
She brought the pot over, poured, returned the pot to the heat, sat again. She sipped her tea. I waited to see what it was all about.
"Jimmy talked about you a lot," she said, cupping her tea in both hands. "He said you were the only other person who ever took him seriously. He said you didn't make him feel like a punk."
"What did he mean, the only other person?"
"Besides me. I was the other one."
I didn't say anything. She went on, "I suppose Tony told you Jimmy was living here with me for a while."
"This is your house?"
She nodded. "I grew up here. I live alone here now; my father died a year ago." Her face said she still wasn't used to it.
"I’m sorry."
She smiled softly. "Thank you."
I drank my coffee. "The bakery is yours, then?"
"Laura's and Joanie's and mine. That was Joanie you met when you came in."
"And Jimmy?"
She was quiet for a moment, looking out the window. Then she went on. "I got to know Jimmy in the fall. We needed a delivery van and none of us knows about cars. I take my Plymouth to the garage where Jimmy works. I could tell he knew what he was doing, so I asked him to help us find a used van and put it in shape. That's how we got to know each other, driving around looking at vans. At first he did his tough-guy act, but I wasn't interested. Finally we started to just talk. We talked a lot. He wasn't used to that, he said. He said nobody had ever cared what he had to say, except you."
"He never gave anybody much of a chance."
"That's what I told him."
Outside the window the wind ruffled the grasses. I said, "And he moved in with you?"
"Just before Christmas. I knew his reputation, but I didn't care. I knew Jimmy, I thought. And you know what?" "What?"
"I was right. It wasn't a mistake and I'm not sorry."
"But something must have gone wrong."
She nodded. "He wasn't ready. He just wasn't ready. He started seeing someone else. It didn't last long, a couple of weeks. It was over by the time I found out. He felt terrible about it, he said. It was just something that happened, it didn't mean anything. But I told him I didn't even want to start playing that game. I told him to leave."
"When was that?"
She swirled the floating leaves around in the bottom of her teacup, watched their patterns as they settled. "That he moved out? Maybe a week ago."
"Who was the someone else?"
She pushed her teacup away. "Maybe I'm talking too much."
"You haven't said anything that could hurt Jimmy," I said. She didn't answer. "Please," I said. "It's important."
"Her name is Ginny Sanderson."
"Mark Sanderson's daughter?"
"Do you know her?" she asked, eyebrows raised.
"No. But her father is looking for her. She hasn't been home for a couple of days."
Her answer surprised me: "Would you go home, if he were your father?"
I asked, "Do you think she's with Jimmy?" "No."
"Why not?"
"He . . ." she hesitated. "He said she'd dropped him for somebody else."
"Do you know who?"
She shook her head.
"And you don't think she and Jimmy could have gotten back together?"
"No," again.
"Alice," I said, "I've got to find him. I'm not the only person looking for him. A man's been killed. The police are calling it a homicide and they think Jimmy's involved."
"I know." Her fair, clear skin flushed a deep red. "I mean, I know about the killing, and I know it happened at Tony's bar. It was on the news. The man who was killed—Jimmy had talked about him. He talked about all those people. I told him he didn't have to explain things to me, but he said he wanted me to know." She looked at me seriously. "He said that was over. He said he wants something different now." She added quietly, "I hope he finds it."
She peered through the window to the pale horizon, but I didn't think she was watching the clouds. Her dark eyes turned back to me. "I don't think Jimmy killed that man."
"Why do you say that, if you haven't seen him?"
She didn't answer right away. Finally she said, "You don't think he did either." It wasn't a question.
I said, "I want to talk to him."
She gave a small shrug, spread her hands helplessly.
"If he does get in touch with you, will you tell him I'm here and I want to help?"
She nodded.
"My cell phone number is on the card. Or you can always reach me at Antonelli's. Jimmy knows that." I stood. She stood too, and hesitated; then she offered me her hand. We shook; her skin was soft and smooth. She smiled a quiet smile which didn't so much light up her face as allow it to glow softly, from within.
I went back down the porch steps and out to my car. The wind had come up and the clouds had thickened. I drove out of the lot and down the driveway, turning left onto Winterhill Road, the way I had come. The land up here on the ridge was gently rolling. I looked for a spot to pull off and I found a good one, behind a little slope about two hundred yards from the house. The road curved here; someone concentrating on driving, especially at dusk, might pass a parked car and never even notice.
I pushed the seat back, stretched my legs. I turned the CD player on, slipped in the disc of Uchida playing my Mozart Adagio. I could never hope to play with the control she had, the enormous technical mastery that made the piano respond to her precise intention every time, but I could learn from it. My fingers started to feel the music, to move the way your foot will move to where the brake pedal should be when someone else is driving the car. The Baldwin in the cabin, recently tuned, had sounded good these last two nights in the cedar-scented darkness. Now, in the still car, the tips of my fingers, looking for the smoothness and hard edges of ivory and ebony, found only denim and leather and the coldness of the air.
Color drained from the fields and the sky as the day grew old around me. I turned the car on twice, to get a little heat, trying to thaw that deep bone chill that can come from sitting in the cold, not moving. I kept reaching for a cigarette, remembering I had none, cursing first silently, then out loud.
Three cars passed me during the time I sat there, two from the east, one from the west. With each I turned off the tape, listened with the window open for the sound of brakes or slamming doors. In the wide, treeless emptiness the wind, blowing east, would have brought me those sounds, but there was nothing, so I stayed where I was and I waited.
It was longer than I thought, almost two hours, the day close to darkness, when the yellow Horizon I'd been waiting for whisked by. It had been the only Plymouth in the Winterhill lot. I started the car, pulled out without haste. I wanted plenty of room between us on roads as deserted as these.