Claire and Present Danger (6 page)

Then, after another long pause: “But—out of nowhere.”

And we were back to the starting line. I drained my coffee cup on that one because otherwise, I’d have had too much to say. The

“nowhere” business grated on my nerves. Where was someone supposed to appear out of? Was it necessary to send trumpeters and heralds in advance? Courtiers to inform the court of where you’ve been, so it won’t be labeled nowhere?

“Do you mean she’s a recent newcomer to Philadelphia?” I finally asked.

“A year. Less.”

That was the sin. Of course. An outlander. An alien. I could see the movie marquee now: She Came from Somewhere Else! Thousands of tiny Claire Fairchilds fleeing in horror.

“Rented a house in Villanova. Joined the cricket club. Charita-ble groups. Right circles right away. Met Leo at a party. Moved here, into this building. Engaged to my son.”

“She lives here?”

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She pointed her index finger upward. “Upstairs.” She lifted her eyebrows. “She said the suburbs were no place to be single and childless.”

Moving to Leo’s mother’s building, lovely and unique a place as it was, did seem a rather obvious positioning of the troops for the major assault.

Nonetheless, she was right about living as a single in the suburbs. And even if she moved to the city so as to be more visible to Leo, so what? All’s fair, they say, and so far, this newcomer sounded pleasantly—dully—ordinary. Maybe a little tawdry—a gold digger.

But Claire Fairchild had said this wasn’t about money. And in any case, while it might be more interesting for her to have put her energy into ending world hunger, if her goal was marriage to a wealthy man, then she’d demonstrated expertise and wisdom, and had been out front and honest about it. My mother would have revered her, wished she’d been her daughter, and before I had at-tached myself to my significantly unwealthy man—would have wanted me to make Emmie Cade my guru and life guide. Maybe I didn’t want her as my new best friend, but, so far, she sounded as unworthy of investigation as it was possible to be.

Maybe we were having a semantic problem. I tried to figure out what Claire Fairchild actually meant, to force out specifics about the nowhere business. “Has she told you where she lived before she moved here?”

“In her way.”

“Meaning?”

Mrs. Fairchild required several deep breaths before continuing, and then her words were spaced with pauses. “Emmie talks. Chatters. Smiles. Answers. Laughs. Very merry. Open-seeming.”

The significant word, apparently, was seeming.

This time, Claire Fairchild leaned over and lifted her coffee cup and sipped at what had to now be a lukewarm brew. She carefully returned the cup to the table before speaking, and I wondered if she had a repertoire of distracting actions to take her listener’s—and her own—mind off what a strain it was to keep up a conversation.

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She looked at me directly. “Later, you realize, she didn’t say anything.”

“I think I understand.”

She pursed her mouth, but decided to be clearer. “Where she grew up? She says . . . father was executive. Changed companies.

Moved a lot. Lived in Atlanta.”

Something tangible at last. “That’s a start.” I wrote it down.

“And Bridgeport. Austin. Fargo.”

I looked up. Mrs. Fairchild’s mouth had tightened. “Gotcha,”

she was saying, as if I were her enemy, as if we weren’t supposedly working in tandem. “Chicago,” she said. “Los Angeles. Cleveland.” She tapped her index finger on the arm of the wing chair.

“Many schools, too. Talk. More talk. Funny stories, but . . .”

“You mean that ultimately you realize she never mentioned what companies her father worked for?” I asked, hoping to spare Mrs. Fairchild a bit of air. “Or a specific school?”

She nodded. “Or dates. Or neighborhoods. Los Angeles!” Both of her hands rose and spread apart to show the daunting size of L.A., the meaninglessness of not being more specific about origins.

I thought about the beautiful woman in the poet’s blouse, her graceful gestures, that flash of high-wattage smile, her free-flowing compliments about my supposed job. I could imagine her speaking at length and saying very little, but saying it in a warm and delicious manner. Was she accidentally or deliberately offering conversational cotton candy?

A woman could babble out of nervousness when confronted with the formidable Claire Fairchild. Or she could have a conversational style based on the idea that nothing about herself was all that interesting or important, so above all, she shouldn’t bother listeners with specifics. Instead, she’d aim to entertain, amuse, and turn the conversation to other topics and other people. What, in fact, could be a more traditionally feminine philosophy than to feel that her purpose was to make the listener happy? Maybe she’d been taught to behave that way.

Nothing Claire Fairchild said necessarily triggered suspicion. I’d 41

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had friends—short-timers passing through Philadelphia—whose fathers worked for I.B.M., and they’d referred to the initials as standing for “I’ve been moved.” Things might have changed by now, but that’s how it was for a large segment of the nation’s children, and for a long time.

Plus, I knew people who were congenitally vague, avoiding specifics as if they were tainted. They intended to be clear, they thought they’d been clear, but I nevertheless had to ask, “Do you mean . . . ?” Poor communication skills, not anything malicious.

“Did she say where she lived right before she moved here?” I asked.

“Near San Francisco.”

I must have frowned, thinking what near might mean in researching a person’s tracks.

“Yes,” Claire Fairchild said. “Vague. I ask, ‘where?’ She says . . .

‘Gosh! You know Indian Cliffs? Little town, a way out? I was near there.’ Always places nobody’s heard of.”

I wondered whether Claire Fairchild had ever traveled, whether

“places nobody’s heard of” was accurate, or a reflection of a stay-at-home, unsophisticated woman. Not that I knew where any “Indian Cliffs” was in the Bay Area, either, but I was the perfect example of someone who hadn’t—yet—gotten to travel.

“Then she talks about the baby deer by the front door, and the fox that ran by.” She paused and bit at her bottom lip, remembering.

I nodded encouragement.

“The story’s charming. And over. Nothing . . . definite. Ever.”

She looked up toward the scrolls on the crown-molding and sighed. Then she looked at me, and her expression was solemn.

“So you called us.” I still didn’t get it. Emmie Cade sounded ditsy. Besides, one look at Claire Fairchild’s unforgiving eyes, and a woman in love with her son had good reason to blur what might be a less than stellar, educated, or straight-and-narrow past. I’m sure I’m not the only adult female who has adventures and experiments in my past that I’d prefer be kept quietly away from prospective in-laws.

And there was the issue of how powerful Claire’s hold was on 42

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her boy, how much her opinion would matter. As witness her having hired me.

“I could use more information,” I said. “All I’ve got at this point is her name and a last address somewhere near San Francisco.”

Claire Fairchild rolled her eyes. I had no idea why.

“For example,” I asked, ignoring the theatrics, “has she mentioned a college?”

She shook her head. “Here’s what I know: Her birthday is August first. Same as Leo’s.”

That was cute.

“Or so she says.”

“And her age?”

A slow head shake this time. “ ‘Much younger than Leo!’ she said. Seemed wrong to press her on it. On anything. Finally found out she’s thirty. Widowed. College?” She shook her head in her abbreviated, energy-saving manner—one turn left, one turn right—

and continued in her telegraphic stop-and-start manner. “Parents died. Small plane crash. No siblings.”

Fortune was not smiling upon me. My first solo flight and I, too, were going to crash. So far, I had found no visible inroads to Emmie Cade’s background. “Did you talk about the wedding?” I asked.

She looked miffed. An intrusion into her personal life, I suppose, as if inviting me here weren’t precisely that. “They only announced it today. That’s why they were here. I told you,” she said with mild indignation. “Two weeks from now.”

“So you said. Not much time. That’s why I thought you might have discussed a guest list. Bridesmaids? Maid of honor? Out-of-town friends or—”

“Only the date. Small, of course. Tiny. No attendants I know of. No list.”

I took a deep breath and considered. “Did she ever say what brought her to Philadelphia?”

Mrs. Fairchild was silent, considering. Then she shook her head.

“Her friend, I think. Victoria. Nice girl.”

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“You’ve met her?”

She nodded. “Knew her before Emmie. Leo’s friend. Knew Emmie back when. Bumped into each other again in San Francisco last year.”

Good—an actual way to wiggle into Emmie Cade’s past. “Do you remember Victoria’s last name?”

“Baer, but Emmie sometimes calls her Smitty. Maiden name Smith, I guess. Victoria’s divorced.”

“You said school friend. Is Victoria Baer perhaps a college friend?”

She raised her shoulders in a gentle shrug. Her expression was worth a thousand words, or at least thirteen: Did you expect anything more concrete than that? Didn’t I say she’s vague? Then she returned to spoken language. “Emmie called her a school friend.

But . . .” She sighed and lifted her shoulders, reverting to world-weary body language. “Emmie’s vague about college. She quit, anyway. No degree.”

Another easy source moved back into the shadows.

“Got sick, she says. That—whatever you call it. Students get it.

My day, called ‘the kissing disease.’ ” Her mouth curdled again.

She knew how Emmie had contracted her illness.

“Mononucleosis,” I said. “A virus.” Not that it would be okay in Claire Fairchild’s cosmos if her son’s intended had gotten an illness that involved the transmission of bodily fluids.

“Didn’t go back. Talks about getting a degree now. Why not?

She doesn’t work.”

“You said she’s widowed. Is her income from her dead husband?”

Claire Fairchild lowered her eyelids and almost subliminally raised her shoulders.

Maybe Victoria Baer would be less vague. Or at least tell me the name of her alma mater.

“That ring.” Claire Fairchild tilted her head and nodded toward my hand on the arm of my chair. “Are you engaged?”

I nodded.

“Pretty.”

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“It was my fiancé’s grandmother’s.” The small sapphire encircled by tiny diamonds didn’t particularly look like an engagement ring, which was one of many reasons I loved it, but apparently Mrs. Fairchild was ever on alert for signs of impending matrimony.

“Will it affect your attitude?”

“Toward what?”

“My . . . this investigation.”

“Why would it?” Though I’d never admit it, I knew the answer, and, I suspect, so did she. And the answer was yes, definitely—it already had prejudiced me against her. She’d notched up all the dreadful mother-in-law clichés by calling in auxiliary troops with which to persecute a girl. She’d have frightened and repulsed me even if I myself were not engaged.

“You know his parents?”

“I’m about to meet them. They live out of state.” They’re going to appear out of nowhere, I wanted to add, and how about that?

“Do they know you?”

She wasn’t making sense. “As I said, we haven’t met.”

“Do they know normal things? Your name—”

“You know that about your son’s fiancée.”

She shook her head.

So that was the problem with the name. She didn’t believe it was real.

Not that she said so. She aimed her iceberg eyes at me and said nothing.

“Mrs. Fairchild?”

She seemed to pull herself back from the far horizon. “I didn’t decide to investigate out of the blue.”

“Of course not.” The velocity and emphasis with which I lied were improving with practice.

“But that’s what you think.”

My lies were fast and loud and failures.

“I don’t do things like hire private investigators.”

Need I mention what a rush that sentence gave me? Forget her imperial attitude. She believed I was what I said I was, even though 45

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I barely believed it. She’d handed me my credentials. I felt knighted by the queen.

“I don’t care what you think.”

The thrill was gone. “It’s your dime, Mrs. Fairchild, but if I’m on the wrong track—or if you think I am—maybe you could be more helpful about rerouting me. More precise about why you decided to hire me—”

“I didn’t.”

“Us, then. Hire us.”

She had a wide variety of lip-poses. This time, she pushed her chin forward and pulled her mouth tight, regarding me again with her freezing gaze.

I’d about had it, especially if it meant coffee, in which case I’d had about too much of it. “While you’re thinking,” I said as I stood up, “could you direct me to a powder room?”

She pointed toward the entry and to the right. Even though I’d asked to leave the room, I felt dismissed.

The apartment was spacious, with a hall leading off the entry. I passed a full dining room, its long table ready to seat ten, and then I saw the door she’d mentioned and opened it.

Except she hadn’t meant this door, because I found myself in a narrow room lined to its high ceiling with shelves heavy with china and glasses on one side, and boxes and bags of rice and grains on the other. Traditionally, a butler’s pantry, I believed, but at the moment, a housekeeper’s refuge. I’d nearly tripped over Batya, the super-pregnant dumpling, who sat on a low step stool, crying.

She looked up at me, a tissue pressed to her nose, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought this was the—” What did it matter what I’d thought?

Batya clutched her belly and looked away.

“Are you all right?”