Claire and Present Danger (10 page)

CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER

time, she’d followed that imperious declaration with one that did touch me.

She was nervous. A lot was at stake. I wasn’t sure if my role was as her groupie, nursemaid, cheerleader, or witness, but here I was because Beth matters to me.

The cause was worthy. The funds raised tonight and at other events would build and maintain a battered-women’s shelter and counseling for its inhabitants. I not-so-secretly believed everybody would be better off if we each wrote a check, stayed home, and read a good book, but for reasons I cannot fathom, I am not the boss of the world.

So here I was, feeling very much the peasant at the palace. Everyone else seemed hyper-happy—waving, greeting, kissing both cheeks, and chattering away in small groups. Most of the people I know don’t travel in Beth’s circles because the tab is too high for our paychecks. Beth likes to pretend that our differences boil down to her Mrs. versus my Ms., but they go deeper than that, way down into our wallets. That wasn’t going to change at whatever point Mackenzie and I set a date and were wed.

I hadn’t a clue as to how I could mingle my way into the circles.

I was regressing even more, back to about fourth grade now, watching the popular clique at recess. I couldn’t stand this for too long.

I didn’t have to. Within seconds, as if she’d been waiting for me—and, given her nervousness, maybe she had—Beth, the world’s best hostess, was at my elbow, practically thrumming with tension as she steered me toward women dressed in chic ensembles and shoes that hadn’t had to get them from dawn to this point. “So far, so good,” she said, her eyes on the room, not on me. “Marilyn even got me—us, I mean, you and me—at the table I wanted.”

“Of course she would. You guys arranged this shindig. Why wouldn’t you sit wherever—”

“We don’t do the seating chart. How could we? She used gentle suggestions after she tested the waters.”

“What are you talking about?”

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“The politics. Where you put people is all-important for their egos, their wallets, their friendships, their enmities—it would be like my arranging the seating for your wedding.”

That wasn’t anything I’d thought about till now, but considering how readily relatives who didn’t speak to each other came to mind, quickly followed by friends who had once been coupled with other friends’ current mates, I decided not to pursue this thought, which didn’t even include the hordes otherwise known as the Mackenzie family. “Actually,” I said, “it might be nice, if ever we need to do that, of course, to have you do it.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. I’m happy you’re sitting where you want to be.”

Not that I understood why it mattered. She’d be next to me, and wasn’t that the entire reason I was here?

I wondered if amphetamines could be made airborne and pumped through air-conditioning, because not only Beth, but everybody here seemed overly delighted with everything: ecstatic to see one another, enraptured to be in this room, all but twirling with anticipa-tion of this lovely evening. Bottom line was: They were women who probably knew one another, saw one another elsewhere, and were gathered together tonight to eat and listen to a talk about the problem of spousal abuse. Was that really the stuff of the ear-piercing level of merriment—and that included Beth’s controlled hysteria at being seated at a specific table. “Who is it you’re near?”

I asked. “The guest speaker?”

Beth’s expression suggested that I ran my knuckles on the carpeting while I spoke. “Of course not!” she said. “She’s at the head table.”

“Then who—”

“This woman who consults to nonprofits. What is there to consult about with groups like that except how to get more money?

She’s very successful and the absolutely perfect contact. You’re sitting next to her because it would be too obvious if I were.”

Her transformation from carpool mom to business magnate was 74

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nothing short of amazing, even though Business Beth’s skills had been obvious during her stay-at-home phase.

“If you’re obliquely warning me to behave, so that I don’t mess up your prospect, I’ll try my best,” I said. “I remember about not making rude noises, not eating with my hands, not talking about politics or my sex life or yours—but I can’t remember the rest.

Tell me.”

She made a big-sister fake pout and fake-elbowed me in the side.

“It’s good for you to meet these people,” she said, switching out of her tycoon mode.

Luckily, I didn’t have to endure the cocktail hour for long. I’d arrived late and had about ten minutes to meet a sprinkling of women and discuss how great the weather had been until today, how wretched it was today, how hard it must be to teach what with how bad kids were and how bad the world was.

All predictable, impersonal, and quickly finished, but even in that short period, my smile muscles were going for the burn.

“I’m so glad you came,” Beth said as we went to our table.

I felt a pang. She’d implied that I’d had a choice.

“It’s great having you as a sister,” she went on. “Your life is so exciting. I feel as if I get vicarious points ’cause I’m related to you.”

Since, as far as I knew, where Beth and my mother were concerned, the most exciting (and only significant) thing I’d done in the last thirty-two years was become engaged, I was astounded by her remark. Then I realized she meant my after-school job and that she, too, had been brainwashed by Hollywood. When we had more time, I had to find out what she envisioned me doing. It would probably be along the lines of what I’d imagined—back-alley crime and fast-talking men, not a wheezing old woman with a sobbing servant, or long lists of deceased Cades. And that was an exciting day, as compared with the ones where I simply organized papers and entered data on the computer.

We reached a table draped in celadon cloth sparked by cobalt blue napkins and white dishes. Each table had a bonsai tree as a 75

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centerpiece. “Is that symbolic?” I asked Beth. “You know, like how we stunt the growth of those we beat up?”

She laughed. “It’s pretty, and short enough to see over.”

“Well, whatever . . . those battered women sure know how to throw a party.”

Beth closed her eyes in exaggerated disgust with me. But I continue to have my problems with these events, so that I considered the beautiful table furnishings and wondered how much Beth had paid to rent them, and how much furniture or counseling that might have bought a battered woman.

I wanted parties to be about having fun with people you already or might grow to enjoy, dinners to be about eating and socializing—

and charity to be from the heart, and about the recipient, not the donor.

The table slowly filled, and my sister introduced herself, and me, to each newcomer. Two women walked over together and settled down. “She’s Kay, I’m Fay. We rhyme,” the one in violet silk announced, insisting on shaking hands clear across the table, which made for a long, painful experience and a new appreciation for the diminutive bonsai. Her friend Kay opted to nod and smile instead.

Millicent somebody joined us and said she worked for the spon-soring charity, and a Dorothy also sat down, barely got out her name, then folded her hands and looked away from us all, as if completely disinterested.

“I’m Vicky Baer,” the well-tailored newest of the newcomers said as she sat down beside me.

I missed a beat before I managed what felt like a normal smile and nod, but inside, I was all gasps and exclamation points to the point where I was afraid to look at her directly.

I was as hyperastounded by being seated next to this woman as Beth had been at being placed at her table, and I couldn’t believe that we’d both been intent on finding the same person. I tried to keep my jaw from dropping.

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She was the woman in the photograph, the one in tailored slacks and shirt. The one who’d dressed like Beth. The one I’d planned to find via Beth’s Main Line tendrils. And here she was among her peers, in her natural habitat. Not all that remarkable—and yet, completely astounding. It took my innards a while to stop turning cartwheels.

“Glad to meet you,” I said, after identifying myself and hoping the time lag between Beth’s introduction and my response hadn’t actually been months, the way it felt.

“I think we’ve met before.” Beth said to Victoria Baer across me.

And she went on, charting where their paths had crossed, friends they had in common. In short, establishing her credentials as a part, however remote, of the same social circle. I barely heard the specifics because I was too busy concentrating on what I’d say and how I’d say it when I had the chance. I reviewed the great empty page I had on Emmie Cade and where her old pal could fill in the blanks. I debated how much I could ask, and considered the downside of asking too much.

I thought about what I already knew. They’d met at school, though at what stage in their schooling, at what school, I didn’t know. I had to steer the conversation around to matters educational.

And at that point, I realized Vicky was saying that she was a consultant to nonprofits, and my sister, possibly afraid of showing her business hand and seating plan by responding with her own profession, chose that moment to include me in the conversation.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to me with exaggerated party manners.

“Didn’t mean to talk right across you. Everybody—this is my sister, Amanda.” Only Vicky Baer and the pale, smiling, silent creature on her other side could hear. The silent woman was also nameless. She’d whispered something inaudible as she’d seated herself, and since then, she’d nodded—silently—at anything anyone said.

She nodded now, her smile implying that of all the names Beth’s sister could have had, mine was the best, pure music to her ears.

Beth rolled on, possibly believing that her duties that evening 77

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included emceeing the event itself. I relaxed. This was going to work out amazingly well, and I was delighted that I’d come.

“Amanda’s keeping quiet like this because—” Beth said.

End of relaxing. I tensed up, hoping against hope that she wasn’t headed where I feared.

She was. “—she’s a sleuth. Be careful what you say or do!”

And like that, my sister had taken my amazing, serendipitous proximity to Victoria Baer—my incredible good fortune—and blown it to smithereens.

Did she think P.I. stood for Public Investigator? I kicked her under the table.

She looked at me in honest surprise, then moved her feet, as if that had been her fault. Then, her humor restored, she winked.

“She’s entirely too modest,” she told the table in general.

“Excuse me?” Victoria Baer said. “It’s so noisy in here. What was that? What did you say you did?”

“Fact is, I didn’t say—”

“A private investigator. Isn’t that a hoot?” Beth’s voice had climbed to new eager-anxious hostess heights. “You know, like Miss Marple.”

“She wasn’t a—”

“Okay, like Columbo.”

“He was a cop.” Not that I cared about her imagery. I cared about how she’d wrecked my stroke of good fortune, and I wanted to throttle her.

Violence wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Surely I could re-think the situation, turn this to my advantage or at least neutralize the damage. Sure, the bad news was that Vicky Baer would now be suspicious if I moved beyond table-talk pleasantries to anything specific. But given bad news, wasn’t it a cosmic necessity, then, for balance’s sake that there be good news, too? I was hard-pressed to think of what it could be, until I reminded myself that Beth hadn’t told Victoria the precise facts I needed to know.

Of course, that was because Beth didn’t know them, but all the same, I clung to that. Victoria Baer didn’t know me, and the odds 78

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of bumping into her again were slim, so I could return to plan A and ask away.

Most of all, Vicky Baer didn’t know that her friend was being investigated and would have no reason to imagine such a thing unless I stuck both my foot and leg into my mouth.

“She’s modest about it,” Beth said, still replying to Victoria Baer’s question, which, I was sure, had been polite conversation that didn’t warrant a dissertation. “I don’t know why.” She smiled, or at least bared her teeth, waiting for a response I truly couldn’t muster. The things I could think of would have broken my promise to mind my manners.

“Truly,” I finally said. “I help out in an office a few hours a week. I file papers, but Beth has me confused with Sam Spade.”

Ha-ha, laugh it off, forget about it, please, Ms. Baer.

“Or Emma Peel in The Avengers,” Fay—or Kay—said from across the table. “I always loved the way she dressed.”

“That’s precisely how it is. And how I dress, too,” I agreed.

“It sounds exciting and . . . dangerous,” Victoria Baer said.

“Filing? The only dangers are paper cuts and being bored to death.”

She smiled politely and, as two more women joined us, completing the table, the conversation turned to them, much to my relief. Except, of course, that at the next lull, Beth again felt the need to introduce me to them as her sister, the shamus. Time to either gag my sibling or take over the conversation myself for damage control. “Beth doesn’t want you to know that my actual job is quite ordinary and seldom glamorized by Hollywood produc-tions. I teach high school English. Now you know the dull truth, and please don’t think less of Beth because of how boring I am.”

“Teaching’s probably more dangerous than we thought your other job was. Kids today.” The speaker was one of the newcomers, an elderly woman with unnaturally black hair through which her scalp showed. I wonder when “kids today” became shorthand for how drastically the human race was in decline. I suspected that the phrase was one of the first the Neanderthals expressed.

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“They’re not that bad,” I said.

“Everything I hear, I read . . . where do you teach, then?”

I told them.

“A private school,” the black-haired woman said. “No wonder.”