Claire and Present Danger (11 page)

I took that as the perfect cue. I sat further back in my chair, withdrawing from the table-wide conversation, and turned my attention to my left. “To tell the truth, I sometimes dread saying where I work, because so many people are hostile to the very idea of private schools, and I understand their point of view. I do. Free education and public libraries—access to information and knowledge, how to use it—that’s the basis of democracy, if you’ll forgive my getting on the soapbox.”

Ms. Baer raised her eyebrows and shrugged a “what can you do with people who don’t like whatever—but don’t take my sympathy to mean I’m wildly interested in this topic, either” sort of gesture.

“I gather you’re not one of the people in the antiprivate schools camp,” I said as a salad was placed in front of me. The greens gave me something to poke and cut so that I didn’t look too eager for information.

“It would be hypocritical to attack private schools, because I attended them from kindergarten on,” Vicky Baer said. “And I deal with them professionally now. I consult to nonprofits that need to find ways to raise funds.”

“Really? That would certainly include the private schools I know,” I said. “Your work sounds like fun. Or at least, if it’s not, you’re not stuck in that school forever.”

She’d been toying with her fork, but I could almost see through her skull as she recategorized me from ignorable dinner partner to: Contact. She put the fork down and reached under the table.

“Here,” she said. “Let me give you my card. And I have a brochure that explains more of what I do. In case your school ever . . .”

I wonder what percentage of cards exchanged in this random, optimistic, and hopeful way ever result in a sale or a job, or even a phone call. I certainly had no clout with either Havermeyer or the 80

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trustees about how or through whom they should raise money.

And yet turning down a card seems a deliberate insult, like blatantly saying, “I am not interested in you and I have no desire to know how to reach you.”

She groped under the table and, at one point, grabbed my ankle.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s gotten wedged—” And then she pulled out a pocketbook that might have been a briefcase, or was both things.

It had pockets and flaps and zipper compartments, but nonetheless, as she lifted it, the contents spilled onto the table, the floor, and me.

Vicky Baer looked crestfallen. Her façade of professionalism wasn’t quite as smooth at the moment, and she seemed profoundly stunned. I, on the other hand, am so used to my mask of competency shattering that I can almost take it in my stride, apply emotional bandages, and put myself back together. Vicky, however, lowered her lids, shutting out the sight of her possessions, then she opened her eyes up again and, lips tight, carefully replaced a lipstick, a small bottle of aspirin, a telephone, electronic calendar, and compact, while I transferred a miniature staple gun, a roll of quarters, a vaporizer, a tin of breath mints, a small unopened packet of tissues, a black felt-tip pen, and an unused packet of plastic file tabs.

“There are times you’re really relieved that no men are around, aren’t there?” Beth asked from the other side of me.

“I didn’t want to carry an actual briefcase tonight,” Vicky Baer mumbled. “I thought this would hold it all, but I forgot to zip the top when I sat down.”

I wanted to tell her that it was all right. That everybody on earth had upended a purse, and nobody cared.

“Oh, God, even this. How did this get in there?” She lifted a rawhide dog chew—used—off the floor and, frowning, dropped it back into her purse along with a white plastic square I recognized as containing floss. Then she smoothed her skirt and sat up straight. “My dog,” she said, glancing at her watch. “That was a good reminder, I guess. I’ll have to go see to him in a few minutes.”

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I looked around and she shook her head. “Poor Bruno’s in the car,” she said. “All safe, windows open, in case you’re worrying.

His joy in life is the car, and he’s a well-behaved creature, so, since he needs regular medication, it’s easiest to take him with me when possible.”

Beth made sympathetic noises.

And then, Vicky Baer remembered her original mission and un-snapped a comparment of the bag and handed me one of her cards, satiny and impressively embossed V. S. BAER, INC., IDEAS UNLIMITED, and underneath, ECONOMIC CONSULTATION TO NONPROFIT

INSTITUTIONS. The card was clipped to an equally lush, heavy-stock brochure.

“I’ll pass this on,” I said. “My school’s fund-raising efforts are pretty lame.”

“Could I see your brochure?” Beth asked, and Vicky Baer, recovered from her faux pas and, recognizing interest, perked up.

“Here, have your own. You don’t have to share.”

Then I, too, remembered my original purpose. “That private school you attended—was it one of ours? I mean here, in the city?”

“Eventually. I lived in Ohio,” she said. “Till eleventh grade, and then I was here, at Shipley.”

A prestigious school on the Main Line, but Emmie Cade hadn’t lived in these parts till now, as far as we knew. Cleveland, however, had been a stop along the corporate route. “Good school,” I said.

“A lucky move, although I suppose that’s provincial of me. Your Ohio school might have been just as good.”

She shrugged and nibbled a leaf of frisée.

“Did your family move around a lot? I’ve had students whose parents relocate almost every year, and sometimes it creates problems. Any advice?”

The salad was crisp and deliciously dressed, and after a moment, when Ms. Baer appeared to have decided against speaking again, I turned to Beth to congratulate her. “This is terrific,” I said. “Pretty room and tables and great salad.”

Beth beamed when Vicky came out of her silence to agree that 82

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this was indeed a fine event. She’d decided to speak, after all, but just as she began to talk about her schooling again, Beth decided it was appropriate to admit that she had organized tonight’s fine event, and that yes, that was her business and she had a card, too, and would Vicky want one?

I started to kick her again under the table, but she wouldn’t know why I was doing so, so I controlled myself while the two women smiled and nodded and calculated how much business the other might generate for her.

Finally, Vicky Baer remembered my question. “The thing is,”

she said, “I have no wisdom to impart because we never moved. I did. My family stayed in Ohio. I lived with a cousin here till I graduated, then went off to Cornell. It was all my decision.” She returned to her salad, and I to mine.

I had what I’d needed. Emmie Cade had never lived in the area before. Cornell had not been mentioned, but Ohio had. I could find out what school Emmie had attended in Ohio through Vicky’s transfer records and then, her parents’ names, her address, and her former and possibly next address as well. I had a friend who taught at Shipley and I was betting she could help me out with the innocuous but meaningful information.

“Did you study fund-raising? Is there such a major?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. I majored in biology, believe it or not. I thought maybe I wanted to be a doctor, but . . .” She shook her head. “Other options seemed more appealing, at least at the time.”

She smiled at the memory of her young and presumably naïve self.

“You know, the whole shebang—husband, white picket fence, and two kids.” She flashed another, possibly insincere smile, then looked down at what was left of her salad. “Unfortunately, almost the same day as I was married, I realized that none of those things appealed to me. Now, I’m single and in love with my job and my dog, and that suits me fine, and I still don’t want to be a doctor.

How about you? Why did your sister say you were an investigator if you’re an English teacher?”

“I am both, but truly, the so-called investigation work is part-time, 83

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and almost one hundred percent clerical work. I’m helping someone out, and it’s nothing like in the movies. Beth likes to tease me about it, and she was including you in the joke this time.” I busied myself spearing a reluctant piece of roasted red pepper. “Was it difficult, moving to Philadelphia?” I asked. “I met a woman who told me this is a tough place to be a newcomer.”

“The City of Brotherly Love isn’t?”

“Apparently, you have to be here a few generations before the love turns on. Or so I hear.”

“It wasn’t particularly hard on me,” she said. “Probably because when you move into a school situation . . . And I was living at my cousin’s, so I was a part of an established family. And my ex’s family’s been here for eons, so when I married and moved back here, there wasn’t a problem.”

“Guess that’s it,” I said. “That woman who said it was a tough city is grown and our age, and I don’t think she has children—they sometimes make it easier. You can always join the PTA.”

Vicky Baer wasn’t interested, but until the speaker got up on the podium, her options were pathetically limited. She had the nodding silent woman on her left, and she had me and, sporadi-cally, my sister, who was working hard to appear disinterested. So mostly, Vicky Baer had me, and she listened, and even if she didn’t pretend interest, she didn’t dump her salad remnants on my head and tell me to shut up.

“I always feel personally responsible,” I said. “As if this is my city—in more than a symbolic way, and I’m in charge of making it nice for new and old-timers. I wonder if there are newcomer groups to help people like her along.”

“Where does she live?” That was Beth, jumping in—meaning she was monitoring our every word no matter what else she seemed to be doing—and, as always, eager to be helpful. Or maybe this time, simply eager to be in further conversation with the consultant without seeming as if that was her intention. Every sentence she uttered, despite its actual vocabulary, could be translated as: “I’m not blatantly soliciting your business, though you could be 84

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of incredible help to me, and I hope you’ve noticed the exquisite discretion and tact that I bring to the jobs I am assigned.”

“Not far from you,” I told my sister. “In Villanova, I think.”

Vicky shifted in her seat to allow the waiter to remove her salad plate. He was as good an excuse as any for letting me know how little she cared for my chatter.

But there was Beth, bless her. Beth, who could not seem to stop talking. “I know really nice people near her in St. David’s—and a lovely book group in Radnor. Book clubs are a wonderful way to meet new, bright people. Give me her name and maybe I can help.

I don’t want to give her the wrong idea of this city.”

“I think I wrote it down,” I said. “My memory . . .” I began to reach under the table, then sat back up. “I remember—Emma Cade.” I didn’t want to say her silly-sounding nickname.

Beth had taken out a small notebook and now, she wrote the name down. “I hope she’s in the book,” she murmured.

I turned to include Vicky Baer in the conversation, or to look as if I were. I wanted to check her expression, and I was gratified. She looked like Macavity when he thinks he’s heard something crawl-ing in the walls. If her ears could have become erect or swiveled, they would have. “You look as if you were about to say something,” I said.

“It’s Emmie, not Emma. I know her. And she’s not in Villanova. Not anymore. She’s in Center City. Right off the Square.”

“Really? I must have missed . . .”

“Good, then.” Beth snapped shut her red-leather-covered-notebook. “You were worried about something that isn’t a problem at all.”

“You know her,” I said. “Amazing. Cliché or not, it really is a small world.”

“Six degrees of separation and all that,” Vicky said. “The Main Line isn’t that big, then you break it down into age groups, it approaches tiny. How’d you meet her?”

I decided it was okay to have met Claire Fairchild. “At her future mother-in-law’s place,” I said. “How about you?”

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“I knew her back in high school.”

“Shipley? I thought she said she was new to—”

“In Ohio. She arrived in tenth grade. She called herself Mary Elizabeth then. M. E. Her initials, not Emma.”

I couldn’t help but think of all the Emma-related names I’d scanned this afternoon, of all the time I’d wasted.

“I didn’t see her again till college—”

“Two schools, then. Cornell, you said.”

She nodded. “—she called herself Betsey in those days. Then she dropped out and we completely lost touch until a year ago, when I bumped into her in San Francisco. She was calling herself something else again. I don’t know why. She somehow needs . . . disguises. Anyway, now she’s here, so we see each other sometimes.”

“You know, now I’m remembering more, and the fact is, she said she moved here because she knew someone—that must be you.”

Vicky Baer frowned. “Me? Moved here because of me? Like I said, I knew her, but not like that. That’d be frightening, to be responsible for somebody’s cross-country move. She must mean somebody else.” She looked at me. “It’s like with her names. She’s got an imagination. Take everything she says with a grain—or a bushel—of salt.”

Two things were apparent. First, Vicky Baer didn’t sound like much of a friend to Emmie Cade. She seemed, in fact, barely interested in her. Second, I hadn’t thought my pitch all the way through. I should have come up with a better hook than the lonely newcomer angle, because now we were out of material and prompts.

I ate chicken and tried to avoid its fanciful packaging. The chef, in a fit of insanity, or misogyny, had created a chicken something or other, dripping butter and cream and wrapped in puff pastry. It was a given that two out of three—if not three out of three—

women in this room were on diets and every one of us picked at the concoction, protesting politely, pretending not to eat the forbidden parts and failing utterly because they tasted so good. This 86

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time, when I looked over at Beth, my expression was, at best, quizzical.