The Hunt (22 page)

“Is my dad around?” asked Peter once Mitzie had finished discussing how Joe and Judy were flourishing now she’d changed their brand of birdseed.

“Sure. He just finished up with a patient, and I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you. Hold on a sec.”

A moment later, Charles’s voice boomed out of the tiny speaker. “Peter? Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine, except I seem to have a song stuck in my head. What were you playing last night? When Rachel and I got home?”

“Last night? That was Sidney Bechet. You must know Sidney Bechet—he was a contemporary of Louis Armstrong. Not as famous, but every bit as talented. Some would argue he was even more talented. One of the great jazz musicians of all time, and a real legend on the soprano sax.”

This was practically more than Charles had said during the course of the entire weekend, and it was definitely the most I’d heard him say at once.

“Do you know which song was playing? Right when we came in?” Peter asked.

Charles didn’t remember, which meant Peter was reduced to humming it to him, but since Peter was nearly tone-deaf the rest of us ended up humming along, as well.

Charles seemed oddly delighted to be on speaker phone with us all. He chuckled. “I can’t believe you don’t recognize it—I’ve played that record hundreds of times. It’s one of Bechet’s most famous works. Some would even call it his signature piece.” And then he began to sing, in a surprisingly melodic tenor he had neglected to pass along to his son. The words were in French, which meant they mostly mushed together, but one phrase stuck out.

“Au jardin de mon coeur,” sang Charles, “une petite fleur.”

“What was that?” I interrupted.

“Au jardin de mon coeur,” he sang again, “une petite fleur.”

“Petite fleur?” asked Peter.

“It’s the name of the song. ‘Petite Fleur.’”

With a rush, disjointed memories of the previous day came flooding back: first sitting in Union
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Square as the sounds of a distant saxophone wafted over us, and then the lone musician at the Martin Luther King memorial, playing the saxophone for the handful of people scattered across the grassy lawn.

“That’s it,” I blurted out. “Now we know for sure. Marxist Santa and Petite Fleur are the same person.”

“What did you say, Rachel?” asked Charles.

“Oh. Uh, nothing.” I had no intention of giving him yet more reasons to think I was idiosyncratic.

“Dad, thanks. This has been really helpful,” said Peter.

“Yes, thank you,” the rest of us chorused.

But as soon as Peter had disconnected the call, I explained. “Marxist Santa or Petite Fleur or whatever we want to call him—he was nearby, watching us, both when I received the keychain and then again when we found the iPod. But we didn’t notice him, because he was playing the saxophone. We thought he was just a regular street musician.”

“So we’re looking for a jazz aficionado and saxophone player who’s also a hacker and a Marxist and is trying to screw up Igobe and its IPO?” summarized Peter.

“Exactly,” I said.

“But we’re not looking for that person,” Luisa reminded Peter and me, her tone stern. “We’re looking for Ben, because we’re trying to find Hilary, and the two things have nothing to do with each other. You both need to focus.”

“Right,” I said, trying to focus.

“I know this isn’t about Ben,” said Abigail apologetically, “but I still keep thinking about Leo.

It’s as if Petite Fleur is channeling him from beyond the grave.”

Luisa did not remind Abigail to focus, which seemed like a blatant double-standard. “What makes you say that?” she asked instead.

“Leo played several different instruments, including the saxophone, and he was a huge jazz fan.

He even named his dog Scat,” said Abigail.

I started to turn around in my seat, but Luisa made a threatening noise low in her throat, so I faced forward again. “What does naming a dog Scat have to do with jazz?” I asked.

“Scat’s a type of jazz singing, isn’t it?” said Peter.

“Yes,” said Abigail. “But instead of singing real words, you sing made-up syllables.”

“Like bop and bap?” I asked.

“Bop’s a real word,” said Luisa.

“Not when people sing it that way. And bap isn’t a real word, either,” I said.

“It might be, in some other language.”

“But that doesn’t count, because if you’re singing in English and then you sing bap, it’s not supposed to mean anything.”

“But it would count if you were singing in the other language,” she insisted.

“But we’re talking about singing in English.”

“Of course we are, since you don’t speak anything besides English. You really should consider broadening your cultural horizons.”

“My horizons are broad,” I protested.

“How are your horizons broad? Give me one example of how your horizons are broad.”

“I speak excellent pig latin.”

“You two aren’t going to start up again, are you?” asked Peter through gritted teeth. “Because we still have a good ten or fifteen miles to go, and you really don’t want to be walking on the highway once it’s dark.”

24

W e had to grovel a bit, but ultimately Peter didn’t make us walk the rest of the way, so half an hour later we were back in the lobby of the Four Seasons. Fortunately, Natasha was on duty at the front desk, and she remembered me from the previous day and still thought I was Hilary.

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She also must have been trained in not registering disgust at the appearance of hotel guests, although she did ask what had happened to my lip. I explained about the tennis ball, thinking as I did that I should come up with a more interesting excuse. If I was going to look like a special effect from a horror film, I should at least have a story that could better withstand repetition.

One with more drama and even a hint of intrigue.

We took the new keycard Natasha coded for me and headed up to the room Ben had been sharing with Hilary. We knocked, just to be safe, but there was no answer, and the Do Not Disturb sign no longer hung from the doorknob, so I used the keycard to open the door. Then I drew the security bolt on the inside so we wouldn’t have to worry about Ben walking in on us if he suddenly decided to return from whatever shady activities he’d been pursuing.

Hilary’s belongings remained in the modified state of disorder in which we’d left them the previous day, and more importantly, Ben’s suitcase was still there. We took this as a positive sign, but the pile of receipts I’d left on the desk also looked as if they hadn’t been touched, which only reinforced our hypothesis that Ben wasn’t actually playing on our team. He had no need to recreate Hilary’s itinerary if he already knew where she was.

With a collective sense of déjà vu, we began searching the room yet again, but this time we concentrated on Ben’s belongings rather than Hilary’s. His neatness seemed compulsive when contrasted with Hilary’s mess, which was compulsive only in its need for chaos. It was a miracle their relationship had lasted as long as it did.

Peter hoisted the suitcase up onto the carefully made bed and unzipped it, and we all began rifling through its contents. This felt vaguely unethical, and it was probably illegal, as well, but if desperate times did, in fact, call for desperate measures, then we were well justified. But that didn’t mean we found anything but dirty clothes stuffed into a plastic laundry bag and clean clothes folded alongside. A search of the bag’s inner and outer pockets proved equally fruitless, as did an examination of the lining for any hidden compartments. There were no papers, no maps with a convenient X marking a spot, or even a handy Palm Pilot or calendar.

Luisa began repacking the bag as Peter and Abigail started on the dresser and closet. Since I’d been so successful the first time I’d searched it, I went into the bathroom, where Ben’s toothbrush stood in a glass by the sink next to his Dopp kit. Going through this felt even more invasive than going through his suitcase; there was something more personal about a man’s deodorant and dental floss than his spare socks. But I unzipped it anyhow and began removing the items one by one. As far as I could tell, it was the usual assortment of toiletries and grooming items, but I kept digging, hoping I would come up with something revealing rather than anything disturbing. And, depending on one’s point of view on these matters, what I did come up with could have been either.

I reached into the very deepest corner of the canvas case, and my fingers landed on something small and hard but covered in soft fabric. Its very shape and texture aroused my apprehension, and my yelp of shocked discovery brought everyone running.

“Are you all right?” asked Peter, who arrived first.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Luisa, her eyes landing on the box cupped gingerly in my palm.

It was covered in dark velvet and had a tightly hinged lid.

“I haven’t looked inside yet.” I gave the box a gentle shake, but nothing rattled. It could contain cuff links of the nonrattling variety, but as much as I wanted to believe this, Ben didn’t seem like a French cuffs sort of guy.

“Do you plan on opening it?” asked Luisa. “Or are we all just going to stand around and stare at it?”

But opening the box only confirmed our darkest fears. Inside, nestled into a satin pillow, was what was unmistakably intended as an engagement ring. The modest stone was an emerald, not a diamond, but its deep green would have matched Hilary’s eyes perfectly.

“What was he thinking?” asked Luisa, incredulous. “Engagement rings aren’t Hilary’s style.”

“Neither are engagements,” I said. “Or marriage, for that matter.”

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“I had no idea he was so serious about her,” said Peter.

“I don’t think she had any idea, either,” said Luisa.

“It must have made it even worse for him when she ended things,” said Abigail.

We weren’t sure what to do with the ring, so for lack of any better ideas we restored it to its original hiding place and returned to the other room, where we resumed searching the various drawers and shelves.

Luisa was the next person to find something of interest: a sheet of hotel stationery on the bedside table, covered with a handwritten list of phone numbers. “Are any of these familiar?”

she asked, passing the piece of paper around so we could all take a look.

Each number had a local area code, but otherwise none was immediately recognizable. “Well,”

she said, “it shouldn’t be too hard to find out what they’re for.” She sat down on the bed, managed to retrieve her phone from the depths of her purse without incident and began dialing as the rest of us continued with the task at hand.

The desk was the only unsearched area somebody else wasn’t already searching, so I began sorting through the items on its surface and in its drawers, listening to Luisa’s repeated inquiries as to whom she had called. I found nothing I hadn’t already seen the previous day, and most of it had been provided by the hotel—the room-service menu, a sheath of writing paper and postcards and directions on how to access the broadband network—so I took a moment to leaf through the receipts. Regardless of Luisa’s lecture about focus, I couldn’t help but be curious as to where and when Hilary was supposed to meet Petite Fleur. At least now I understood why she’d been reading a book on jazz and didn’t have to worry about staging an intervention.

There were several little slips of paper documenting taxi rides to and from local addresses, but the receipts were the kind the cabdriver fills out by hand rather than prints from a meter, and even the ones that included a date lacked time stamps, so they were only moderately useful. I also learned that Hilary had been a frequent customer of a Seven-Eleven on Market Street during her stay in the city. There were a couple of credit-card slips for more expensive lunches and dinners, and I set those aside, thinking I would examine them more closely later. Then I came to the last receipt.

“That’s more like it,” I said as a puzzle piece clicked into place. It wasn’t part of the puzzle we were trying to solve, but it was still satisfying.

“What’s more like it?” asked Luisa, glancing up from the list of numbers.

At nine-sixteen on Friday night, Hilary had paid six dollars and forty-two cents for a Glenlivet.

This in itself was unremarkable. Hilary had always appreciated single-malt Scotch, preferably served neat, although it didn’t mention that on the receipt.

What was remarkable was the name of the establishment: Chez Bechet. An hour ago the name would have meant nothing to me, but now I knew better. It sounded exactly like the sort of place a guy who called himself Petite Fleur would hang out.

Of course, at this point figuring out where Hilary had planned to meet Petite Fleur was a purely intellectual exercise, and Luisa was quick to point that out. “The more pressing question to answer is what Ben was doing with a list of phone numbers for marinas and boat clubs.”

“Is that what the numbers are?” asked Peter, turning from his inspection of dresser drawers.

“Every single one I’ve reached so far,” she confirmed. “But I don’t know why he was calling them. What was he trying to accomplish?”

“I can answer that,” I said. “He wanted to go sailing. Caro said he asked her about places he could rent a boat when she talked to him at the party.” And then another puzzle piece clicked into place, one that fit nicely with the contents of the little velvet box. “Unbelievable. He really should have known better.”

“What’s wrong with sailing?” asked Peter.

“Nothing’s wrong with sailing. But Ben must have been planning a romantic outing with Hilary so he could pop the question.” I sighed. “What a sap.”

“How does that make him a sap?” he asked.

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“Because he should have known better than to think Hilary would find sailing romantic. Hilary’s the least romantic person on earth,” explained Luisa. I almost felt bad for Ben. How was it possible for him to have dated Hilary for even the brief period he did and still be so utterly clueless about her?

Then I had another thought, and this one was chilling. Maybe Ben hadn’t been planning a romantic outing at all, but rather an outing of an altogether different sort. “Do you think he called the marinas from the hotel phone?” I asked Luisa. Yesterday he’d said his cell-phone reception in the room had been lousy.