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appreciated his input and would give it the serious consideration it deserved, I dropped the nice and snapped, “I’ve got to go.”
    Then I hung up and called the police.

Chapter Four

    It wasn’t only that I had what in the flower business is called “a great nose,” a highly sensitive sense of smell: Anyone with two nostrils would instantly know that Detective Sergeant Timothy Coleman’s body odor was over-the-top. And his generous application of synthetic lime cologne did nothing to camouflage it.
    “Please excuse me, Mrs. Gersten,” Nassau County’s finest said after he cleared his throat. His manners were exquisite, as if to apologize for his pungency. Maybe as a child he’d been beaten and forced to memorize Emily Post’s Etiquette; his politeness was as aggressive as his BO. “Are you sure it’s all right if I sit down?”
    “Of course,” I said, fast as I could. “Please.” I couldn’t wait to get to the couch. The chemical reaction of his smell added to my ever escalating fear was so explosive that— ka-boom! —I got dizzy two seconds after I’d opened the door for him. Now I almost dove onto the couch so I wouldn’t risk swooning into it.
    “Thank you so much,” he said.
    We had already spent twenty minutes talking at the kitchen table, but then my housekeeper had arrived, toting a bag of her own microfiber cloths. Driven as Bernadine was by her obsessive-compulsive need to empty the dishwasher before she took off her coat, the detective and I couldn’t stay in the kitchen. However, bringing Coleman into the living room hadn’t changed the environment. He stank. And his excessive courtesy was simultaneously exhausting me and making me a nervous wreck. What’s his game? What does he want from me?
    “The reason I’m asking for all this information now, ma’am, is so I don’t need to keep having to come back to you for more. I hope you understand and can bear with me.”
    “Of course. I appreciate . . .” Besides the dizziness, my mind kept veering off in a hundred directions. It didn’t seem like I’d offered any helpful information about Jonah that Detective Sergeant Coleman could use. Not one single “Good, I see, right” had escaped his lips. So I felt doubly pressured to make a positive impression. I wanted him to think I was a fine, deserving person so he’d work day and night to find my husband. But he wouldn’t think I was so fine if I went berserk, which I felt I could do at any second. If I started screeching hysterically—“I want my husband! I want my husband!” — while grabbing the detective’s lapels and shaking him, he would get sidetracked. Maybe he’d decide I was one of those “She seemed so nice” wives who, three days before her period, axes her husband and shoves himinto a calico-covered Container Store box with the croquet set and pool toys—then saunters back to the kitchen to make zucchini bread.
    The tension was too much. Also, from the minute I opened the door, I was afraid he’d be hostile because of my height. Tall women get to some short guys, and not in a good way. And Coleman was short, like he’d been zoomed down to 75 percent. With me at five feet nine inches, I didn’t want him to feel I was the type who didn’t take mini-men seriously, even though he’d never see the five-five he probably lied about on his driver’s license. I wasn’t hung up on height. Jonah was shorter, but not dollhousey like Coleman. Jonah was solid and strong.
    Then I got upset with myself: It’s not about you or Detective Sergeant Smell-o-rama. It’s about Jonah . I hung my head with shame—not a good idea, because the sudden shift of position made me want to throw up.
    Coleman, perched on the edge of the seat of a carved Sri Lankan chair, kept the questions coming. I suppose I answered. Images kept flashing inside my head and overpowered any thought: Jonah writhing on the floor in some obscure men’s room at Mount Sinai, delirious with fever from a