Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  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 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.”

  “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.”

  “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 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?”

  She flashed a bitter look at me. Okay, it had been a stupid question. People who are all right don’t huddle, crying, in a butler’s pantry. “Is it—is everything okay about the baby?”

  She looked down at her pregnant belly, as if surprised by it. “Yes, why . . .” She shook her head and retreated into herself again.

  We were in a social situation that might be described as awkward. Having intruded, discretion—backing off and making an exit—seemed polite. It also seemed inhumane. Was I to behave as if I’d noticed nothing? “Can I do something for you?” I asked.

  She shook her head back and forth, vigorously. “No,” she whispered. “No. Please. I handle this.”

  I heard fear, but also a real plea for me to leave her alone. “Okay, I’ll—”

  She put up a hand. “Wait—please, miss—don’t say to Mrs. Fairchild.”

  “Say that I—” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Somehow mentioning out loud that she was crying in the butler’s pantry made it worse. “—saw you?”

  “Yes. You did not see me, yes? Please, is important.”

  “Sure,” I said after a pause. “But are you positive there isn’t something I could do?”

  “Nobody can help me. Nobody on the earth.”

  “I could try.” I knew I should back out of that pantry and remove this scene from my mind. This really was none of my business. Or was it—in the way it was everybody’s business. There are no parables of the Half-Assed Samaritan who asked politely, then backed off.

  “If you say to her I tell you anything, it makes worse. That you saw me cry? That makes worse.” She drilled her words into my skull with her eyes and intensity. “She makes worse.”

  She. My client. She who gets upset about women’s names and intimidates the investigator she hired.

  “Two years I work for her,” Batya said softly. “Two years, day and night. I live here. She says, ‘Batya you are best. Stay with me.’ My aunt, she watches my baby.”

  My surprise must have shown, because Batya’s baby was inescapably, hugely here.

  “Other baby,” she said. “He is two years, but he needs medicine.” She shook her head, as if forbidding that child’s sickness to be true. “I see him Sunday only. She feeds me, gives me room, I buy his medicine, but . . .” She grimaced and shook her head.

  “Money?” I whispered. “She pays you, doesn’t she?”

  She didn’t look at me now. She shrugged, and looked away, and I had to lean close to hear her say, “Not so I can live somewhere else. Not so I can live with him. She say that is all she can pay. She is widow on—how you say—always the same money.”

  “A fixed income?”

  “Fixed. Yes. She says someday, when she dies, she is leaving me money. Is all big lie. Mr. Leo, he’s rich. He gives her everything. She gives me nothing.”

  I looked at her, an eggplant-shaped woman, face wet with tears. “And now this,” I said softly. “Are you crying because of this baby?”

  She looked up at me and sniffled. “For both babies. I ask Mrs. Fairchild for more money. Only what other people get. Is fair, what I ask. I work hard for her. I cook, shop, clean, help with the sickness. I take good care.” She put her hands protectively around her belly.

  I thought of how many positions there were like this one, how many ill and elderly people could have used Batya’s services. It would be easy enough for her to quit, to find a new job or accept public assistance. Unless . . . “Are you a legal alien, Batya? Do you have a green card?”

  She looked up at me, her mouth open and her eyes wide and wild. Her worst fears had been realized.

  “I’m not going to tell anybody. I wanted to know what she . . . Is that it?” The threat of deportation is a powerful form of blackmail and, apparently, of keeping virtual slaves from fleeing.

  “My husband left. Disappeared. Mrs. Fairchild, she says it doesn’t matter. Is my fault.” She clutched her belly and rocked.

  “Don’t panic,” I said. “Let me find out what can be done. Just take care of yourself and your baby and don’t panic—and I won’t say a word to Mrs. Fairchild.”

  “Or to—”

  “To anybody. I promise.”

  “But she—she—” She shook her head and was silent.

  I tiptoed out, the echo of that she hissing through my brain.

  Five

  WHEN I returned to the living room, Claire Fairchild looked as if she’d fallen asleep. I stood near the entry and cleared my throat by way of announcement. Her eyes opened and she adjusted her torso to a more upright position. I suspected that once, before parts of her went bad, she’d had ramrod posture.

  “Don’t sit down,” she said.

  Fired? Like that? I formulated a protest, feeling as humiliated as the frightened housekeeper had been, except my emotions immediately steamed and mutated into anger. Enough of this woman’s imperial attitude!

  “The desk.” She pointed. “Bottom drawer.”

  As almost always, I was glad I’d held my temper. I didn’t hear arrogance in her voice. I heard exhaustion. It had probably been a busier than normal day already, with her son’s visit and, as added psychic strain, his announcement of a wedding date to a woman she wanted investigated. Me. And, from the appearance of it, earlier on, a confrontation with her housekeeper.

  I went to the small desk—what was called a lady’s desk because it’s easier to say lady’s than useless, undersized, and intended for trivial, inconsequential tasks. It was narrow and delicately formed of pale wood inlay. I opened the lower of its two shallow drawers.

  “On top,” she said. I extracted a plain manila envelope and held it up. She lowered her head in a nod of acknowledgment, then, wiggling her index finger again, indicated that I should bring it over.

  I handed it to her and sat down on my assigned love seat.

  “I thought I was being too . . . careful . . . putting it there. He drops over. Lucky today.”

  So there was more to this than a snit about inadequate story-telling skills, and we were finally getting to the point.

  She slowly unclipped the envelope and extracted sheets of paper and photographs, all of which she let sit on her lap. “I worried,” she said. “Not right, how she says nothing. How determined she is. Moving here. But I called because of this.” She checked one of the papers on her lap, then passed it to me.

  The top of the page was dominated by a drawing of a skinny-necked insect with huge eyes and saw-edged front legs, an unreal creature from an inept science-fiction film. Below was a message written in a collage of different-sized print from what looked like newspapers and magazines. I had the sense of being back in an old movie. Given computers and clip art, nobody had to cut up newspapers to remain anonymous. This was the Antiques Roadshow of crime. I read the message:

  the PRAYING man TIS! lookS devout but LOOKS lie! sHE eats its mate when sex is done.

  “Did this come in the mail?”

  She nodded.


  “Do you have the envelope?”

  She shook her head and frowned. At herself this time, I trusted. “I remember. From New Jersey, somewhere.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I said, wondering why I was trying to spare her feelings. “In any case, this could mean anything, about anybody or nobody. Most likely, it’s a prank. I don’t think it should worry you. Somebody plucked your name from the phone book—”

  “Not listed.”

  “You know what I mean. Somebody found your name and address. For starters, it’s on the wall downstairs, next to the buzzers. This isn’t necessarily anything, and its meaning—it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Then this came.” She passed a second sheet that was again crudely fashioned out of snippets of print, some words pasted on letter by letter. Letters were clipped from shiny magazine stock, others from newspaper headlines or advertisements.

  Would not YOU Feel More InFORMed IF! you Could read THE Independent Journal?

  I looked up at Mrs. Fairchild. “Sent from Altoona,” she said. “I remember.”

  “What’s it mean? What’s this Journal? The sender doesn’t sound bright, to put it mildly.”

  She shook her head and passed me a third page that had only a date, about fifteen months ago. “From Chicago.” The envelope was clipped to a page dominated by an illustration of a praying mantis.

  It made me sad that the detailed drawing had been hacked out of a library or textbook, just for the sake of this ill-intended mailing. I knew that defacing books was not the problem I was supposed to be considering, but all the same . . .

  The message read:

  PRAY NOW! Don’t wait UNTIL It’s TOO late & YOU are tHE prey!

  I was ashamed of myself for noticing—and worse, being pleased by—the fact that we were dealing with a literate crank, because it’s and too were properly spelled. I guess you can take the English teacher out of the classroom, but et cetera. “Is this the end of it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Six so far. Every three–four days.”