The Other Side - J. D. Robb [96]
She knocked on Smoak’s door with one hand while trying to smooth her wild hair with the other. How she must look. A fright, but she’d left Norah’s in a hurry and raced all the way. Her hope was that Henry would be too glad to see her to notice her shortcomings.
Mr. Smoak, wearing an apron and holding an uncooked pie, opened the door. His sweet baby face crumpled when he saw her. “Oh dear, you’ve just missed him. He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Left an hour ago for the train station. He walked.”
“He walked?”
“You won’t catch him now, I’m afraid. He was taking the two forty-seven.”
She sagged against the doorframe. “I see.”
“Come inside.”
“No. No, thanks—”
“He left you something. Please, come inside.”
So in she went, weak-legged and empty-headed, and followed Mr. Smoak up to Henry’s room.
“He threw a lot of stuff away, all them machines and thingamabobs for detecting, you know, ghosts. Gave me his barometer, but the rest he said is for you.”
Oh, Henry. His cameras and all the tripods, lenses, plates. His typewriter! “Did he leave anything else? A note,” she specified when Mr. Smoak looked blank.
“Oh. No, sorry, no note. Just paid his rent, whistled up his dog, and left.”
“And . . . no forwarding address?”
“No, ma’am.”
She must have looked alarmingly bereft, because all of a sudden Smoak remembered he had a pie to put in the oven and excused himself. He meant to be kind, but she had no desire to sit alone in Henry’s room and think or pine or cry or whatever Mr. Smoak imagined an abandoned lady might do. She closed the door on Henry’s heartbreaking legacy and went down the outside steps to the yard.
What to do? She couldn’t think. To have come this close and missed him—she rapped her knuckles on her forehead in frustration, skewing her hat. Idiot! You think you’re so smart, and look what you’ve done.
She had to find him, that was all. He’d go to Boston first—that’s where the two forty-seven went—but then he might go anywhere, anywhere in the whole wide world, so she’d have to act fast. An ad in the newspaper? Henry Cleland Wilde, please come back. A. D. was wrong about everything.
Walker would help her. He had all those journalist connections. If anybody could track Henry down, he . . . he . . .
What was that thing that just streaked by? A blur of brown and white dashed through the hedges between Smoak’s and the neighbor’s yard. A cat, she’d thought at first, but no. No, now that she considered, it had looked more like a dog. Yes. It looked like . . .
“Astra!” A man’s weary, irritated, out-of-breath voice. Henry’s.
Everything tingled. Weird, because simultaneously, everything went numb. She could easily have let her knees give out and collapsed in the grass, prostrate from gladness. A miracle. Here came Henry, loping down Lexington Street with a bulging gladstone bag in one hand, empty dog collar in the other.
“Henry!” she called, and “Henry!” again, before he could burst through the hedge and disappear. She never wanted him to disappear again.
He heard her and skidded to a halt, twisting around slowly, pink, perspiring face registering hope and surprise. “Angie?” Oh, the way he said it, just her name. He thought she was a miracle, too! She picked up her skirts and ran to him. Cannoned into him—almost knocked him over. Talking would take too long; she wanted to kiss his amazement and disbelief away. He was the first to remember they were standing in full view of the world; they clasped hands and ran to the side porch, their side porch, and then it was time for words.
“I’m so sorry I doubted you! I never will again. Can you forgive me?”
“You read my letter?”
“You wrote me a letter? Oh, Henry.”
“You couldn’t have—I just mailed it.”
“I’m so glad you wrote me! But, no, Walker told me.”
“Told you what?”
“About that horrible man, Finster.”
“What does Walker know about Finster?”
“Everything! Walker’s been investigating you! Not with a detective, like Lucien, but by calling up and sending cables to his newspaper friends. He said he knew you were