Uncovering Sadie's Secrets (18 page)

So when something as crude as the weather throws a monkey wrench into things, I can understand her feeling that maybe she’s being singled out by some unseen spirit bent on spiting her for her great planning abilities. She takes it personally.

“First of all, Kerrie, I think it’s supposed to stop raining tonight,” I offered. “And secondly, you’ve got a great house and, if it rains, we can do something special inside. Let me get my milk and we can start making some plans. Why don’t you make a list of the outdoor decorations you bought?”

Am I good or what? As soon as I uttered the magic words— “list” and “plans”—Kerrie immediately started to lose her waif-like countenance. By the time I returned to the table with my milk, she was bright-eyed, already halfway through her list and full of plans for how to turn the outdoor theme into an indoor extravaganza.

“You know, this could actually work out better,” she said, scanning her notes. “All this stuff inside could be really festive.”

“Disaster ahead,” my inner alarm system screamed. If the rain stopped, Kerrie might be thrown into the dumps again, torn by two great, conflicting plans. Time to step in.

“Both ways would be really festive. So whatever happens, you’re golden.” Like I said, I’m good.

I got so caught up in the party-planning comforting thing that I didn’t spill the beans about Sadie.

I know, I know—it’s hard to imagine how I, Bianca “Tell-It-Now” Balducci, could keep a secret. But not being able to use the phone the night before had changed me. I was more serene, more peaceful, less frantic.

Actually, I think I was going through withdrawal.

Anyhoo, the day passed and still only I (and Sadie, of course) knew Sadie’s real identity. The only time I came close to letting it loose was at the end of the day, when I saw Sadie herself. She smiled at me and said “I’ll see you at the party” in such a hopeful, happy way that I felt guilty for knowing she wasn’t who she said she was. She didn’t look devious or mean or criminal. She just looked like a girl trying to work things out. She looked like someone trying to lead a better, more normal life.

Uh-oh. Moral dilemma. As I rode the bus home that afternoon, it occurred to me that by uncovering Sadie’s secrets, I could be jeopardizing her happiness. If she was involved in something a little on the sad side of ethical, I could land her in a heap of hurt by finding out what it was.

Suddenly, my investigative prowess didn’t seem so sweet anymore. In fact, it kind of left a bitter taste in my mouth.

A
S
I had predicted to Kerrie the day before, Saturday dawned sunny and beautiful. No rain, just cool air, and a few unthreatening clouds dancing across the sky. What more could she ask for?

My guess was that any puddles in her back yard would be dried by party time. And if they weren’t, I was sure she’d convince her dad to rent some water-sucking device to dry them up. Or Kerrie would build one herself to do the job.

She called me three times that morning to go over last-minute plans, and two times that afternoon. Well aware of my family’s new “half-hour” rule, I carefully noted how much time I spent with Kerrie each time she called.

Luckily, Kerrie was in such a hurry to make sure everything was just right that she didn’t want to talk long. I was never in danger of violating the rule, which gave me great satisfaction the times Tony wandered into the kitchen shortly after the phone had rung for me and I was already off.

In fact, I strongly suspect he came into the kitchen on at least two occasions solely to see if I was still on the phone. It breaks my heart thinking of all those unused reprimands stored in his brain.

Well, not really.

In one of our phone connections, Kerrie and I planned to meet at her place around three so she could help me with my hair and I could help her finish decorating. I’d already planned to meet Doug at the party, thus avoiding the awkward “who drives us?” scenario, so all I needed to do was get one of my siblings to take me over at the appointed hour.

Tony was hanging out most of the day, which was odd because he was usually so busy. But he did get one Saturday a month off at Burger Boy and he’d just finished some big paper for an econ class. So he was multitasking in the living room—napping and watching TV.

Mom, on the other hand, was a virtual whirlwind of cheerful activity. She’d gone to the grocery store in the morning and baked a cake after lunch, then tried to entice me into helping her sew, but I managed to beg off. Still, it was nice hearing her hum as she laid out the green velvet fabric on the kitchen table.

Connie, I decided, was my best bet for chauffeuring duty. She’d been off the hook a lot this week because of work and Kurt, and I still had this sense that she owed me something because of her previous snide remarks about my investigative skills. Funny how something like that can stick in my craw when so many things that Tony does just roll off my back. It must be a girl thing.

In the morning, Connie had gone to her office, but was back by lunchtime and in her room in the afternoon. I waltzed in there a little after noon and gave her the directive.

“You’re taking me to Kerrie’s at three, right?” I said without wavering. I found it was best to present these things as givens, as if they’d been discussed and agreed to in some previous conversation. Sometimes, Tony, Mom, or Connie would just look at me funny and say “yeah, I guess” as they tried to remember when they’d made the commitment.

Connie, however, was getting harder to fool.

“I wish you would have asked me earlier. I would have gone into work this afternoon instead of this morning and just dropped you off on the way.” Connie was sitting in her chair leafing through some thick file. A notebook was balanced on one knee, and several videotapes were on the table beside her.

“You working on something?” I asked, pointing to the tapes and notes.

“Just finishing up my report on an insurance fraud case,” she said.

“How do you do that?”

She sighed heavily, and looked put upon. “It’s pretty simple, really,” she said. Then, warming to her topic, she leaned forward and explained: “Every PI does it a little differently. I like to break it down into several components. I write a nice, short cover letter to the client that summarizes in a few quick sentences whether we met the investigative goals.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if the client wants us to see if someone is bilking them out of insurance money, I write that down and then say yes, we were able to determine that so-and-so is engaging in what appears to be fraudulent behavior, or no, we did not observe any, or the information we found and the observations we made are inconclusive. Then I write a quick boilerplate sentence or two about the techniques. Then I refer them to the enclosed report.”

“And what’s in that?”

“I outline how we did the investigation—records looked into, surveillance, interviews. All that stuff. But I keep it nice and readable. Like a story. I save the times, dates, and other data for the appendix at the end. Then I do a section called ‘Findings’ where I list our observations and, well, findings. Then I do a ‘Conclusions’ section where I tie it all together. Sometimes I even include a ‘Recommendations’ section where I might recommend they take a case to the police or alter a security procedure or something. Then there’s the appendix with the supporting documentation.”

“Wow. That sounds like a lot of work.” I was starting to reassess whether being a private investigator was worth all the effort. Maybe I could leapfrog over it to High Court Justice.

“It’s not all Nancy Drew skulking-around, you know. It’s methodical, painstaking. It’s not glamorous.”

“Who’s Nancy Drew?”

Connie threw me a look but I swerved to avoid it.

“I haven’t had a chance to follow up on your friend, by the way,” Connie continued. “Maybe next week if I have a little extra time. I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah. With Kurt.” Bull’s-eye. Connie blushed.

“Kurt’s a friend.”

“Uh-huh. Hear ya. Anyhoo, can we leave around two-thirty?”

“It only takes five minutes to get to Kerrie’s, Bianca.”

“It takes longer than that.”

“Well, not a half hour.”

“I want to be early. To help Kerrie.”

“You’re already going early.” Connie sighed again and shook her head. “But okay. Two-thirty. I’ll take you. Who’s picking you up?”

“Not sure. I might be able to get a ride.”

“Just let Mom know so she doesn’t worry, okay?”

“Okay.”

A
T EXACTLY
two-thirty, I was knocking on Connie’s bedroom door, a canvas tote bag under my arm. In it was the flapper costume, my make-up bag, some perfume, and other assorted items I would need to create the alluring image I was after. Or just to look decent.

Connie, car keys in hand, appeared without a word, and we headed off after a quick farewell to Mom, who was now in the kitchen making chicken soup from scratch. The smell of it made me hungry and I hoped Kerrie had a meal break planned in the afternoon’s festivities.

On the way to Kerrie’s, Connie decided to be sisterly and started chatting me up about my life, Doug, schoolwork, you name it. Finally, she came to Sadie.

“I’ve been thinking about your friend, Bianca. You should consider confronting her with what you know and urging her to get help if she needs it. After all, what’s the point of figuring out her problem except to get her help? You can do that without having all the pieces to the puzzle.”

I felt like hitting myself in the head with the flat of my hand. Actually, hitting Connie in the head with my hand would have been a whole lot more satisfying, but what I mean is that Connie had indeed made an important observation, one that I had conveniently shoved out of my mind as I focused on the party, Kerrie, and seeing Doug.

Why in the heck was I trying to figure out Sadie’s secrets? Just so I could say I’d done it? Just so I could wave it under Connie’s nose and hear her admit I was a phenomenal investigator with superior intellectual skills?

As a matter of fact, I’d envisioned just such a scenario a couple of times since finding out Sadie’s real identity. My favorite one was where I came to Connie’s office just as she was in the midst of a meeting with an Important Client. I’d be dressed all in black, maybe some black stretch pants and leather jacket, boots, hair kind of spiky. I’d look really tough, cool, and smart.

Connie would interrupt the meeting to hear what I had to say (okay, so I hadn’t figured out why she’d interrupt the meeting). I would present my findings, maybe even slap a three-inch-thick report on her desk (I’d added this detail just today after hearing about how she writes up her own reports), and give an oral presentation of such sweeping grace and rhetorical clarity that her jaw would actually hang open. And so would the mouth of the Important Client. Oh, yeah, and Kurt’s mouth would open, too. I just thought of that—Kurt being there.

So all three of them would be staring at me wonder-struck. And Connie would swallow hard and say, “Bianca, that’s pretty impressive.” And the Important Client would say, “Would you assign her to my case?” And Kurt would say (with a smile and a wink), “You better sign her up right away, Con. And don’t give her any filing jobs. This girl’s headed for an appointment with destiny.”

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly Kurt’s style, but this is, after all,
my
fantasy.

Those images were now sucked out of my brain by the vacuum of Ethical Dilemma. How many ethical dilemmas can one girl handle in such a short time, huh? What was going on here?

My dilemma was—do I solve the mystery or do I help Sadie? Sure, they weren’t mutually exclusive, but helping Sadie could occur without solving her mystery.

The point was, if I waited until I had all the “pieces of the puzzle,” as Connie put it, and if Sadie was truly in trouble, I might be jeopardizing her safety. Why not turn my recently discovered investigative skills into superior powers of persuasion? If I could figure out who Sadie was, surely I could convince her to come clean and go to the authorities if she was in trouble. Right?

“That’s a good idea,” I said to Connie. I was feeling so generous of spirit now that my thoughts were focused on what should be the endgame—helping Sadie—that I finally spilled the beans.