The Best of Enemies (29 page)

“Depends,” I reply.
“Do you like elephant jokes?”

With deadpan delivery, she replies, “I don’t like them . . .
I live for them!
”

“Then it’s a date,” I reply.

“Okay, then.
’Bye, new friend Miss Jack!”
She scampers off into the recesses of the home.
As she propels herself up the stairs, I can hear her exclaim, “Zucchini muffins!”
and I can’t hide my grin.

“Stop smirking,
Bouvier
.
She’s eight.
She’s still at the age where she likes everyone.”
But she says this without rancor.
“Anyway, let’s talk in here.”

I follow her out of the mudroom and to the kitchen proper.
I sit at an old wooden table, heaped with bowls full of lemons.
Why so many lemons?
Is Kitty starting a lemonade stand?
And what is it about women and kitchens?
Mrs.
Martin used to have a sign that read N
O
M
ATTER
W
HERE
I S
ERVE
M
Y
G
UESTS,
I
T
S
EEMS
T
HEY
L
IKE
M
Y
K
ITCHEN
B
EST
.
Is kitchen-gathering a portion of the girl code I never learned?
My brothers and I always headed as far away from the kitchen as possible because the chairs weren’t as comfortable as the couch, and also because no one wanted to accidentally be crushed in a landslide of dirty dishes.

“Let me change out of these wet clothes and check in with my husband.
Hopefully I’ll catch him before he goes out to dinner,” Kitty says as she trots down the hall.
“Back in two shakes.
Stay right there.
Mean it.
Don’t go anywhere.”

By the time I reply, “Where would I go?”
she’s already upstairs.

•   •   •

“Where the hell are you, Bouvier?”

Kord, Konnor, and I are all gathered in rocking gaming seats in front of the gigantic television in the basement.
After ten minutes of waiting, I couldn’t resist the siren song of what sounded like action.

“Mom, Miss Jack’s down here with us!”
Kord, the elder son, calls.
Kitty hustles down the basement stairs.
“She’s KILLING IT on
Madden NFL
!
How come you never brought her over before?”

“Hey, Mom!”
Konnor says, brightening when he sees his mother.
“You want a turn?”

Kitty bends down to fix Konnor’s wrinkled collar.
“Love to, but not now, kiddo.
Miss Jack and I have some business to discuss upstairs.
But don’t forget, you still owe me a rematch.”

“Mom’s almost as good as you are,” Kord tells me.

“You play
Madden 15
, Kitty?”
I ask.
I’m surprised to hear she joins in her children’s games.
My mother would always retreat when we broke out the Atari.
She said the electronic beeps gave her a migraine.

“I have many talents,” Kitty replies lightly.
“Boys, did Baba give you dinner yet?”

“Yeah, we ate around five o’clock,” Kord replies, gaze fixed on the game.

Kitty places a finger to her ear.
“Beg pardon?”

Kord shoots her an apologetic grin.
“
Yes.
Sorry, Mom,
yes
.
We had the spinach lasagna.”

As they all interact with one another, with their blond hair, toothy grins, and patrician features, the three of them look like a page ripped out of the JCPenney catalog.

“That’s great, sweetie!”
She places a conspiratorial hand on his shoulder and leans in close.
“So, what’d you really eat?”

“Busted!”
Konnor said in the same kind of smug, you’re-gonna-get-it tone I thought emanated exclusively from John-John.

“Frozen pizza.
But I split a bag of spring mix salad with Kassie and Konnor,” he says.

“How many colors?”
Kitty asks.

Kord raises four fingers, eyes back on the game.
“I added those sliced mushrooms, plus red peppers, black olives, and pepperoncini.”

Wow.
Only under threat of martial law would my brothers or I consume anything healthy at that age.

Kitty holds out her palm.
“Up top, my man.”
Kord rewards her with a high five.
She returns her attention to Konnor.
“As for you, don’t pretend you weren’t playing
Medal of Honor: Airborne
while I was out.
Rated T for Teen means
not you
, my twelve-year-old friend.”

Konnor’s mouth hangs open.
“How did you . . .”

“I’m on top of everything that happens under this roof.
Okay, guys, you have fun!
We’ll be upstairs if you need anything.
Jack, shall we?”
She so handily makes this order sound so much like a request that I find myself complying without argument.
Who’d have guessed
Kitty
could be a commanding presence?

As we climb the basement stairs, I’m curious as to her methods.
“How’d you know about the pizza and the video game?
Nanny cams?”

Kitty’s now dressed in an outfit similar to mine, hair pulled back in a loose bun.
We look like those women in the tampon commercials, drinking wine with lunch.
“Nothing that high-tech, I’m afraid.
Just finely tuned MSP—Mom Sensory Perception.
You see, Kord had an oil stain on his shirt from drippy pizza cheese and I saw crumbs on the counter.
My spinach lasagna isn’t greasy and doesn’t contain cornmeal.”

Wow.
My mother would never have picked up on those clues.
“Okay, then how’d you know about the younger one?”
As a reporter, I’m trained to observe my surroundings, especially when embedded.
With so much danger in the field, one uncalculated move could mean the difference between life and death.
“I didn’t notice a
Medal of Honor
game box sitting out anywhere.”

Kitty tells me, “Motherhood is the ultimate game of high-stakes poker.
You want to win, you have to know how to read your kids.
You learn their tells and anticipate their next moves.
For example, Konnor’s cheeks were flushed.
When I touched his collar, it felt damp, as though he’d recently been worked up about something.
Madden 15
’s a fine E for Everyone game, but doesn’t provide that level of adrenaline rush, so I speculated he’d been playing
Medal of Honor
.
That’s our only Rated T for Teen game.
On that hunch, I glanced at the shelf where we house the boxes and spotted open space between alphabetically arranged
Mario Kart
and
Minecraft
.
Case closed.”

•   •   •

Our tentative truce holds while we compare notes and form our plan of attack.
Finding Ingrid is our first priority.
“Here’s how we play this—I’ll ping my NSA contact who owes me an off-the-books favor.
He can very quietly run the gamut from recording cell phone calls to tracing credit card activity on Ingrid and anyone in her family.”

Kitty furrows her brow.
“On a scale from one to ten, how legal is that?”

“A ten.”

Kitty begins to chew on her lower lip, as though in thought.
“Really?
Because that sounds like something a super-villain would do.”

“Oh.
I reversed the numbers.
One, definitely.
Probably more like zero.”

Without hesitation, Kitty says, “Big no.
Big, fat, huge, screaming no.”

“Kitty, do you want to help Sars or not?
This would all be through unofficial channels, not part of the public record.”

“Help Betsy, yes.
End up in
Orange Is the New Black
, no.
Look at this face.
I would be the Piper character and I wouldn’t have an ex-girlfriend there to protect me.”

“Kitty, I see no other alternative.”

Kitty’s voice ratchets up a note.
“Yeah, because you only see what you want to see.
Tell me again why we can’t go through official channels.”
Kitty begins to police up our dirty dinner plates.
To give due credit, her spinach lasagna was superb.
The roasted eggplant was an unexpected addition and the ricotta had a touch of something sweet—cinnamon, nutmeg?
Her meal made me want to learn to cook.
But just because she knows her way around a kitchen doesn’t mean she understands the complexities of conducting an investigation.

“Kitty, a Fort Knox’s worth of money is missing.
A crime on this level had to involve more than a single person.
We have no idea who else may have helped perpetrate the fraud.
Dozens could have been on the take, paid to look the other way.
Starting an official investigation could tip off Trip.
I’m sure he’s fled to a country without an extradition treaty.
My suspicion is he’s fled to someplace cushy and relatively easy for us to look for him, like Monaco, but if he finds out someone’s on his trail, he could go deep undercover somewhere impossible to travel to, like Equatorial Guinea.”

“Where?”

“It’s a small country in Western Africa, south of Cameroon.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Exactly.”
While Kitty rinses our plates, I add, “I suppose you’re also opposed to monitoring Ingrid’s banking activity or hacking security cameras in her neighborhood?”

She bangs flatware into the dishwasher in response.

“Fine,” I reply, growing frustrated at her rejection of each viable solution.
“If you’re not comfortable using modern, covert technology, we can go old school by interviewing associates and potential witnesses.
We can stake out her domicile.
But I’m afraid we’ll inadvertently tip off Trip.
Or, God forbid, Sars.”

“A stakeout, Jordan?
With cold cups of carry-out coffee, sub sandwiches, and us hiding behind an open newspaper in the front seat?
That would be a fab way to approach the situation, if we lived in, say, 1976.
Shall I start calling you KoJack now?”

My bonhomie dissipates with every obstacle Kitty throws in our path, but at least she’s stopped calling me Bouvier.
“Listen, I can always do this without you.”

“Like I’m going to let you hog all the credit and be the big hero to Betsy?
No.
No way.”

“Then what’s
your
plan, Kitty?
Forgive me if I sound dubious.
I wasn’t aware that you learned a lot about in-depth reporting on your, um . . .
squash Web site
.”

That was probably uncalled for.

Kitty bristles in response.
“I guess if you had any friends, you’d be aware of the concept of”—she makes air quotes—“‘social media.’
It’s ‘media’ for people who aren’t ‘socially retarded.’”

We hear a gasp from the doorway to the dining room, where Kassie stands in a long cotton nightgown, trembling with fury.
“MOMMY, YOU SAID THE R-WORD!
Not funny!
Avery called Winston the r-word last week and I told her she was being hurtful.
She didn’t care, but
I do
.
No one’s supposed to use words on the Never Never list!!”

Kitty hustles over to Kassie and scoops her up, bringing her back to the table to sit in her lap.
“Oh, honey, no.
I’m so sorry, but you misunderstood me.
Mommy didn’t say the r-word in a way meant to be cruel.
She was using the literal definition of retarded, which means slow or stunted.”

Kassie thrusts out her chin, unconvinced.
“You sounded hurtful.”