Claire and Present Danger (15 page)

C. K. pulled at his right earlobe. That unconscious gesture seems to pull a switch in his brain. Someday, when we’re both in rocking chairs, and he’s had so many good ideas, one of his earlobes will rest on his shoulder blade. “Maybe that person didn’t know about this article,” he finally said. “Somebody who doesn’t live in Marin County, who never knew the paper wrote about Ms.

Cade.”

“Somebody with a never-ending hate for her? Like the person who told the reporter the rumors in the first place?”

He nodded. “A Texan, wasn’t it? Remember, that story came out six months after Jake King died, when the house was sold and Emmie Cade—or Stacy King, as she’d been—was long gone to places unknown.”

“And we’ll never find out who that person was, right?”

“Doubt it. Newspaper confidentiality about sources.”

“But none of the postmarks were from Texas.”

“A mystery,” C. K. murmured. He didn’t seem that concerned, though it remained significant to me.

“So what next?” I asked.

He looked at me without saying anything, as if he was waiting for me to say something more. It’s always a pleasure to contemplate his fine features and shocking blue eyes. They are such an acute blue, you want to search for bluer words—azure, cerulean, cobalt—except they aren’t cobalt, they’re lighter and brighter.

They’re so blue, you’d notice them from around the corner.

But at the moment, I wanted him to teach me this business, and he wasn’t, so his eyes were simply blue, and annoyingly amused, and I wasn’t into gazing upon them much longer. “Manda,” he said softly after too long a pause, “it’s okay.”

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“Meaning what?”

“C’mon. You don’t have to play the ingénue, the apt pupil, the disciple. My ego can handle your charging forward on your own.

I’m countin’ on it and proud of you for it.”

“I don’t understand a thing you’re saying. In plain English, what would an experienced investigator do next?”

“No need to ask me that. Suppose you gave an assignment to research a question about Lord of the Flies, and your smartest student finds the stuff she needs and writes it up. What should she do next?”

Oh. That.

No. “I can’t call her up and tell her this,” I said. “Not now!”

“Why not? It says who Emmie Cade is and was. That was the assignment. If she wants more, she tells us so, and we continue.”

“She hired me twenty-four hours ago, and I barely did a thing—

you did it.”

“The newspaper in California did it, and that’s called research.

How different is it from the databases online? You thought it would all be nosing around with a magnifying glass?”

“I thought it would be—different.”

“Sometimes it is, but the thing is, this is now. What else does Claire Fairchild need to know before she decides to tell her son about his intended? Do you think she needs more?”

“What about the identity of the letter-sender?”

“That wasn’t what the client requested. Ms. Cade has no arrests, no records. I checked. A speeding ticket outside Austin, but that’s about it. What’s left to find out?”

It seemed hasty, unprofessional, slipshod. Too easy.

Mackenzie laughed out loud, a sound I usually relish and savor, but not when I’m the butt of the joke, and I knew I was this time. “Had a mechanic like you once. Every job, no matter how small, took a couple of days. Finally, I said, ‘If I pay you the same exorbitant rate you charge for three days, could you have my car back in an hour?’ He could and did, and said he didn’t want me 113

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to think what he did so well and quickly was easy, was all, so he kept the car in his garage those needless extra days. That’s what you think we should do. Hold back on the information so she thinks it was harder to get.”

It sounded shabby when he said it that way, but indeed, that was not far from the feeling I had.

“Instead, dazzle her with our incredible professionalism.”

“Your professionalism.”

“We’re a team,” he said softly, the blue eyes back to their inde-scribable color. “A little dumb to be competitive on this, isn’t it?”

“I’ll write the report,” I said. “Leo Fairchild is going to be furious. Vicky Baer said his mother had ruined all his previous ro-mances. And now this one, most likely, as well.”

Mackenzie shrugged. “I don’t know that this will ruin anything.

This is all—”

“I know. Rumor, speculation, and ever-increasing assets.” I turned to face my computer, but Mackenzie put a hand on my arm.

“Claire Fairchild’s worried. Her son set a wedding date. She’s playin’ sick to stop his plans until she hears from you. Talk with her. Today. Now. Phone her, tell her the facts, and that you’ll send a written version and copies of the news stories, and so forth, later—if she wants anything around where Leo might find it.”

“She wanted—wants—him to be happy,” I whispered. “I think this information is going to make her very sad.”

“Gonna make a lot of people sad,” he said.

For reasons I couldn’t have fully explained, except for the nonstop barrage of bad-mouthing Mary Elizabeth Betsey Maribeth Stacy Emmie Williams Stacy Collins King Cade had received, I thought about sixth grade, when for a few months, I was labeled a slut. It was a laughable, pitiable choice of insults, because puberty was taking its good old time with me, and while I can’t say I’d never noticed boys, or suspected that someday they’d interest me, they didn’t yet matter much, and I am not sure I even knew what the word slut meant—except that it was a bad thing to be. But 114

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somebody, for some reason, decided I was too something that annoyed them, and stories circulated, took hold, and grew. A time of torment, of prepubescent hell.

Luckily, the next year we moved into a neighboring district and, like that, my bad reputation evaporated to the point where I sometimes missed it.

But since then, I try to question labels. C. K. was right. Everything we’d read could be angry, hurt, or jealous rumors that had calcified over time, taking on weight and solidity and mistaken for historical truth. Of course, the woman had fed the negative fires with her inappropriate flirting and unpaid loans. Maybe she lacked character and was in fact a bad bet for Leo Fairchild. Or maybe she was too pretty, too delicate, too attractive to too many men, and she was the designated slut the way I had been in sixth grade, with as little basis.

“Look at you,” Mackenzie said. “Frozen to the spot.”

“No, I’m going to—”

“Tell you what. I’m starving and I have a lot of reading tonight.

Why don’t we both call it quits here for today and head home?”

I was all for delaying contact with the Fairchilds. “Great. I’ll tell her tomorrow, I promise.”

He shook his head. “We can stop off and tell her in person on the way. She’s a worried woman. Deserves to know. And the rain’s stopped. It’ll be nice—we’ll take a walk.”

“Both of us?”

“Like I said, we.”

“That’ll make her happy, even if the report doesn’t. She was disappointed when I showed up, because she’d talked to you—to a man. She’ll feel she’s getting her money’s worth.”

“Even though we did it in twenty-four hours,” he said.

Our office is on Market Street, close to where the cityscape begins to slide off whatever downtown pretenses rule elsewhere. Almost nobody comes to us. We deliver, instead, and often, it’s completely a matter of phone calls and e-mails without any face-to-face. But if 115

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anyone did visit the office, they’d feel right at home in the old detective movie of their choice as they’d climb to the second-floor space Ozzie rented. The glass-paned office door felt like a window into the past. We were next to a dance studio—social dancing, not ballet. When business was good, the walls reverberated with Latin and swing rhythms. The proprietors, an angry couple in their fifties, often chose to bicker at the top of the stairs. They wore formal wear day in and day out, she in ridiculously high strappy shoes, and he in a tuxedo bought when he was at least two sizes smaller. The shoulder seams tended to split, and facing material popped out until his wife noticed, glared, and used one dagger-nailed finger to push the stuffing back inside. This evening, we had to circle around them. His stuffing was showing again.

The rain, finally over, had cleansed the air, and we had a pleasant, relaxed walk to Claire Fairchild’s solid fortress of a home.

Batya opened the cream-colored front door to the condo, her eyes once again, or still, swollen and red. She held her hands under her gigantic belly, as if to keep it from falling onto the floor.

“Do you remember me?” I asked. She didn’t react quickly, but she finally nodded.

“This is Mr. Mackenzie, who spoke with Mrs. Fairchild on the phone. We’d like to talk with her now.”

“No, no.” And in case we didn’t understand those words, Batya shook her head.

“I know she’s under the weather, but she’s expecting us.”

“She is not. No. She can’t—”

“Honestly, it’s okay. She won’t get mad.” The pathetic housekeeper was still terrified of her employer. I tried to calm her fears without telling her too much about why we were here. “Actually,”

I said, “she’s waiting for us. She expects us. She may not have told you, because she thought we’d take longer, but—”

Batya shook her head to the point where I feared it might wob-ble off its moorings. “Stop. No. She isn’t—can’t—”

“Five minutes is all,” Mackenzie said. I was sure that would do 116

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it. He has a way of wrapping his words in Southern gauze that makes them acceptable, but no less strong. It always works.

Obviously, distraught Eastern Europeans do not comprehend how attractive that accent is supposed to be. “No minutes!” Batya said. “Mrs. Fairchild can’t see you, can’t hear you—not you, not nobody. Mrs. Fairchild—she’s dead!”

117

Ten

BATYA’Sannouncement left me breathless.

“Steady there,” Mackenzie said.

I was astonished, but not faint. Nonetheless, “Water,”

he said to Batya. “And she’d better sit down.” Before the housekeeper could respond, he steered me in, his arm around me, brac-ing me.

“I’m fine! What are you doing?” I whispered, my back to the watching Batya.

“Indulging my curiosity.” Mackenzie seated me in the same love seat I’d occupied the day before. I tried to look dizzy.

Mackenzie shook his head. “You’d better sit down, too,” he told 118

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Batya. “In your condition. Rest, please. You’ve already had a bad shock. I’ll get you both water.”

“Yes,” she said, propelling herself into a hard-backed chair against the wall. Once on it, her feet barely touched the carpet. She’d need help getting off without tumbling forward, and I wondered how she managed when she was alone. “Is awful,” she said, eyes wild.

But once he’d left the room, she had no conversational bon mots to offer, so we sat in an awkward silence until I put my head back and closed my eyes, opening them only when I heard the slosh of water.

C. K. held two glasses. I sipped mine and mimed calming myself down.

“I’m sorry we’ve intruded at a time like this,” he said softly.

Batya fanned the air with her hand. “You okay now?” she asked me, and I nodded. “I was afraid. Maybe I have two heart attacks here.”

“Is that what happened?” Mackenzie asked. “Mrs. Fairchild had a heart attack?”

She nodded and sniffled, arched back until she could reach a pocket, and extracted a crumpled lump of overused tissue, then blew her nose. “Like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“I thought her problems were with her lungs,” Mackenzie said.

“Mister,” Batya said. “I am not doctor. I wake up when emergency comes pounding and they say looks like heart, and later, that’s what Mr. Leo tells me. That’s what doctors tell him.”

“Wait—paramedics arrived when you were asleep?”

“Wakes me up, yes. Pounding, banging—they would break door if I didn’t let them in. Scared me. Like secret police, like—my own heart—” She forgot she was holding a glass, and she pressed her hand and the glass to her chest and spilled a goodly portion of it onto herself.

“Was someone else here, too?”

“Nobody. Me. Only me.”

“You think Mrs. Fairchild called the paramedics, then?”

“Who else? Except she is unconscious when they get here. They 119

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say for some time. Hour, more. Makes no sense, but is how it is.

Maybe rescuers come slow, like take an hour?”

“What time did they get here?”

She blinked her swollen eyes, looked worried by the question, then silently debated it before nodding. “Midnight?”

“And was she still alive?” Mackenzie asked.

She shook her head.

“Near the phone when she . . .”

Batya winced.

Mackenzie opted for euphemism. “. . . passed on?”

Batya shook her head and looked down at her belly, not as if she wanted to gaze upon her unborn child, but as if she didn’t want to meet our eyes. “She was on bed, but half off, too.”

Trying to reach the phone? I was over the initial shock, and now I felt her death as a great pressure on my own heart. What an ironic pity, to think you were pretending to be sick, when unbe-knownst to you, you were, in fact, fatally ill.

After a beat too long of silence, Batya looked up at us. “She said she felt bad, but I didn’t know so bad!”

“Nobody’s blaming you,” Mackenzie said softly.

Batya didn’t look convinced of that.

“People have heart attacks without warning.”

“Is not my fault,” she said. “Mr. Leo, he tells me to go to bed. He says everything is fine. Later—I can’t hear so much in my room, way back there. She has buzzer to get me.” She shook her head.

“What am I doing now? No job, and Mr. Leo, he says I was supposed to take care of her! He says this to me today, after she is dead.”

“Let’s back up a bit. He told you to go to bed. That was last night, correct? He was here?”

“Everybody is here. Was train station. They come, they go . . . I don’t feel so good now and so much back and forth and Mrs.