Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  “Since . . . ?”

  “Last two weeks.” She passed me the fourth:

  Nothing is free xcept some murderers.

  Dollar signs of various sizes dotted the page, and the name Independent Journal was repeated, accompanied by a date.

  “Mailed from Baltimore,” Mrs. Fairchild said.

  “Did you check out that newspaper? Find out where it is?”

  “Went to library.” She made a small gesture toward the window. I understood. She meant the library snuggled at the edge of the Square. She could walk there, though judging her strength, it would occupy the major part of the day. “Batya helped me.”

  “Does she know about the threats, then?”

  “Batya knows everything. I can’t do . . .” She sighed. “Batya knows.”

  Then pay her a living wage, I wanted to shout. Stop blackmailing her, threatening to have her deported.

  “Librarian found the paper. Outside San Francisco.”

  Where Emmie Cade last lived.

  “Librarian said it has no . . .” Her brow wrinkled as she tried to remember something. “Archives!” She nodded. “No online archives.” Her voice was weak, and she paused more often, but seemed determined to get everything out and onto the table. “But—”

  I thought I knew what she wanted to say. “They have them on file, and we can request articles.”

  She nodded. “You’ll find them.”

  That seemed an easy-enough task. “Did you report these notes to the police?”

  “What would I say?” I had put the pages on the small table beside the love seat, and she glanced at them. “Looks like kid stuff.” She stopped and breathed quietly, silently, for a minute, her eyes lowered. Then she looked up at me. “Wouldn’t have called you, except . . .” For the first time, she seemed unsure of herself.

  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Her face contorted, and she looked near tears as she handed me another page with a copy of the newspaper article the earlier mailing had referred to.

  To my surprise, the article had nothing to do with Emma Cade. “Who is Stacy?” I asked, because that was the name below a blurred picture—a copy-machine copy of a mediocre newspaper photo.

  “Emmie. Stacy. King. Cade. Who knows what else?”

  I looked at the shot of a woman, a mourner obviously taken by surprise. Her face was misted behind a veil, and one arm blurred as it rose to shield part of her face. She wore black. Only a brooch—a twisted, abstract outline of a heart—broke its severity. The woman was identified as Stacy King, widow of noted sailor Jake King.

  The text was unsettling. It managed to make clear, in oblique and nonlitigious ways, the confusion and suspicion surrounding Jake King’s death. Apparently, he’d been everybody’s favorite regular rich guy. He’d been a dot-com entrepreneur when the going was good, smart enough to pull out reams of money in time. But being a land-animal was only his day job. His soul lived on the water. Many fellow members of his yacht club were quoted as being incredulous that he’d had any accident, let alone a fatal one. According to them, Jake was practically drown-proof. He’d been exceptional, an avid sailboat racer and all-around expert seafarer, and nobody could understand why, on a calm spring day, he’d pitched over the side of his boat, half naked, not wearing the life vest he always wore, and drowned.

  “It was the heat,” the widow was quoted as saying. “The wine. I warned him, but he loved fine wines, and it was his party.” Her take on the accident sounded weak and unconvincing.

  “Jake was lots of things, but not a reckless sailor,” his ex-wife, Geraldine Fiori King, also an expert sailor, was quoted. The article semi-obliquely referred to a long and nasty divorce that followed Jake King’s meeting the lovely young Stacy. “He respected the ocean and bay,” the first Mrs. King said, “and the only time he took his vest off—well . . . you know . . . let’s say to go to sleep, okay?”

  An investigation was underway. I thought of the lithe young poet-woman I’d seen within the hour. “Are you positive this story and this Stacy has anything to do with your son’s fiancée?”

  She passed over the two photos she’d earlier pulled out of the manila envelope. One showed two young women, smiling into the sun. One, in a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with daisies, wore a halter top and a softly patterned long skirt that showed the outline of her legs through its translucent material. Her feet were bare. The hat was good for her skin, but bad for recognition purposes, as it shadowed her features. Her companion held her hand up as a visor, almost as if she were saluting the photographer. She wore a man-tailored shirt, sleeves rolled up, and tails tucked into a pair of belted, tailored slacks and deck shoes. She reminded me of my sister and all my sister’s friends.

  “That’s her, too. This past summer. The halter girl. The other is a proof.”

  “The other woman? Proof of what?”

  She shook her head.

  I understood. Not the other girl, but the other photo, and not evidence of anything, but a photographer’s proof.

  “Leo thought maybe an engagement announcement.” She took a few slow breaths before starting again. “She didn’t like any of the shots. So, nothing in the paper, but . . . I still have proofs. Must return.” Finally, a clear image of the young woman I’d met today. Emmie Cade, a.k.a. Stacy King. I didn’t know why she hadn’t liked the portrait unless she truly didn’t want a clear image of herself anywhere. The photographer had captured her delicate beauty and the exceptionally warm smile. She didn’t look as if she were posing. She didn’t look capable of artifice of any sort. Instead, she looked as if she were transparent and the viewer had a view straight into her pure heart, catching her in a moment of joy.

  I would have pressed my case that this woman wasn’t related to the one in the news story, except that Emmie Cade wore the identical, unusual brooch of metal that had been hammered and twisted into a semiabstract image of a heart.

  “You know,” I said, “despite whatever initial confusion there was at the time of that news story, and despite these anonymous messages, the law found her innocent or she wouldn’t be here. This feels like maliciousness. Somebody who’s furious that she’s finding happiness again. Or somebody without any real reason, just a desire to make trouble.”

  “I hope so.” She looked at me, head slightly tilted, challenging me to say she was lying. Oddly, I believed her. I couldn’t remember anyone else about whom I’d had such a mix of positive and negative emotions, all at the same time.

  “That’s why Leo isn’t to know about this,” she said.

  “What if—they’re probably just an evil-minded prank, but if there’s any real threat—”

  “Not till he’s married, I think. No point before. No money till then.”

  “And that marriage is taking place in two weeks?”

  “I can’t let it. Not until you”—she gestured toward the pages—“What I’ll do is get sick. Today. Near death. Delay wedding until you . . .” She squinted at me, as if close-reading my expression. “I’m pretending sickness,” she said. “I look worse than I am,” she said. “People think—they’ll believe, but I’ll be around for years.”

  “Of course.” If force of will had anything to do with longevity, she’d outlast me.

  “When we know what’s true, I’ll recover. Up to you.”

  I nodded, painfully aware of how many people’s happiness, and perhaps lives, now depended on my nonexistent investigative expertise.

  “Until then . . .” She put her finger to her mouth.

  She was being remarkably considerate. She was suspicious with cause and worried on behalf of her son, but unwilling to taint his relationships—with his fiancée and with her—with her fears.

  “He’s happy,” she whispered, underlining and emphasizing my thoughts.

  She was a complicated woman: a considerate and worried parent, a meddling, autocratic harridan; a woman with a sly wit and an imperious attitude, Batya’s inhumane slave-keeper. All of the above and who kne
w how much else?

  Her daughter-in-law-to-be was all charm and grace, mildly ditsy and vague and/or a conniving gold digger and murderer. So far.

  This wasn’t what I wanted. When I read fiction, I wanted characters as complicated as they are in real life. In real life, however, particularly in this real-life new job, I wanted no ambiguity. I wanted a comic book world, with 100 percent bad villains and my good guys spotless. And while I was at it, I wanted X-ray vision and the knowledge, flat out, whether to like or trust somebody or not.

  I put the studio portrait of Emmie Cade into my briefcase along with the anonymous notes. I paused as I added the snapshot of the two women smiling into the sun. “Do you know who the second woman is in this picture?”

  “Victoria. Victoria Baer.”

  “Does she live in the city?” I would have staked my day’s income that she did not. Given that Emmie’s first rental was in Villanova, my bet was that her one friend in the area lived nearby in the suburbs. Besides, she looked Main Line. She had that classic look, so understated as to be barely audible, reflecting the utter fear of flashiness or trend-following.

  She looked like my sister Beth’s wardrobe.

  “Bryn Mawr,” Claire Fairchild said.

  I’d find Victoria Smith Baer in a flash. Even though she and Emmie Cade would be younger than Beth, I was willing to bet I’d get a leg up via the suburban matron’s six degrees of separation. The hardest boiled gumshoes relied on confidantes, pipelines, and snitches. Those are guy words for gossips. I knew gossips.

  “Then that’s it for now.” I briefly outlined whatever I could think of as to when we’d report back to her, and while I spoke, I tidied the pages she’d given me and the photographs. She passed me the manila envelope and I was ready to refill it when I remembered something. “Didn’t you say you’ve received half a dozen of these notes?”

  She nodded.

  “I have five.” I recounted to be sure.

  She pulled back in surprised confusion and shook her head.

  I looked around and didn’t see any more pages. Then I looked inside the manila envelope and saw it. “It got itself stuck.”

  She watched as I pulled it out, then put her hand to her mouth and nodded.

  This page was different, red construction paper, onto which black bold oversized letters spelled out:

  AND THERE’S MORE DEAD!!!!!

  That was all. The letters looked clipped from happy ads. This one got to me viscerally. I looked up and was startled to see a smirk on Claire Fairchild’s face.

  “Hate that, don’t you?” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Having to change your mind.” She squinched up her mouth, but couldn’t control the slightly malevolent grin.

  “About what?”

  “Witches and crones and meddlers. Evil mothers-in-law.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, ma’am.” I stood up. “I’ll let myself out.” I didn’t want to summon sobbing Batya.

  Mrs. Fairchild’s moment of triumph passed along with the mild smirk. She looked more delicate than ever and she’d aged during the visit. “I’m afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid of what that means. That there’s more dead. Is that in the past or—”

  “Please try not to worry,” I said as I made my exit. “From now on, we’ll take care of this.”

  I could say that—and almost believe that—because at the time, I had no idea of what any of this meant.

  Six

  BACK outside Mrs. Fairchild’s building, bidding adieu to the ornate scrolls, cryptic gargoyles, and the vaguely antebellum swirls of balcony rails, I understood that I wasn’t going to be the next centerfold for the Sleuth-of-the-Month Club.

  Other than that, I knew nothing. Hadn’t a clue. Literally.

  I walked toward the office in a deep funk. This wasn’t what I’d anticipated. All summer long I’d worked under Mackenzie’s supervision, and had done well, he said. But this was my true maiden voyage, my test flight. I’d expected to interview the client and leave bursting with ideas as to what to do next, but at the moment, all I drew was a blank.

  Background searches can be routine, and I’m sure that’s what C. K. thought this one would be. Unfortuately, that assumes the investigator has a few salient facts about the person being investigated—beginning, perhaps, with her actual name.

  Instead, I’d been given a blank wall and told to read the writing on it, and in this case, the moving finger had moved on so quickly, not even fingerprints were left.

  Maybe being a private eye, even a part-time one, wasn’t such a hot idea. Much as I loathed the idea of admitting my incompetence, much as I loved the idea of our partnership, push had now come to shove, and look who was falling down. Perhaps it was time to restrict myself to dangling participles and pronoun case. It was possible my mission on earth was not solving crimes, but disabusing people from saying, “He invited John and myself.” Or, “Between you and I.”

  Surely preserving the Mother Tongue was as important a public service as doing background checks.

  On the other hand, we needed additional income, and pronoun usage wasn’t going to generate it. The question remained: How could I track this creature of murky past, floating names, vague antecedents, no relatives, and no known jobs or schools? And how to do it subtly so her fiancé is never made aware of my investigation?

  I stopped, mid-Square, and considered what I did have.

  A birth date, August 1, thirty years ago. If, in fact, I believed that cute coincidence that she’d been born on the same day as Leo.

  I didn’t have her Social Security number, nor did I have her last address, but I could get a place-name, now. Surely a town would be named somewhere in the records of Jake King’s death, and I could work from there.

  I had a news story, a possibly fake birth date, and a studio photograph. What I didn’t have was an idea of how best to proceed. I wasn’t eager to ask Ozzie, who was gruff at best, if he’d deign to speak to me, nor did it seem adult to go home and await Mackenzie’s wisdom like a pitiable, helpless flower of a girl—the hothouse variety that isn’t native to Philadelphia.

  “You all right, young woman?”

  Bad sign when the person offering to help you is a bent-over old woman at least fifty years your senior. “You look dazed,” she said, her gray eyes circled by worry-wrinkles. “Something hurting? You need a doctor?”

  I assured her I was fine, thanked her, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I had resources. I had my brains and, for once and probably the last time till June, I didn’t have a paper to mark or a lesson to prepare. That’s about as free as this woman gets.

  I passed Philly Prep across the way and thought about the abominable Sunshine and her ability to look on the bright side even when there wasn’t one. Hard as it was to swallow, I had to be more like her and focus on the positives.

  I had the name of Emmie’s local friend and former classmate and she most likely could give me a lead into Emmie’s origins. Where she’d gone to school at some point. Her actual maiden name. And I had the newspaper story, the newspaper’s archives. If the death of Jake King was as big a mystery as that article made it out to be, there’d be other stories, more information, especially about the widow. A coroner’s inquest. Perhaps a trial.

  For now, I’d assume that after all the fuss over Jake King’s death, Emmie had opted to take back her maiden name. That didn’t explain the Stacy-Emmie switch, but I didn’t need her first name for the Social Security death index. I was looking for her father’s name, and Cade didn’t seem that common a surname.

  I wasn’t down for the count yet. By the time I reached the office, I was reinvigorated. I needed to be, because Ozzie Bright—whose name did not reflect truth in advertising—was never overjoyed to see me, and was always less than helpful. He’d welcomed Mackenzie, on any basis, because Mackenzie could walk and chew gum at the same time, plus, he understood computers. Ozzie could make neither of these claims.
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  He wasn’t a misogynist; he was more of what was called “a guy’s guy,” comfortable working with men. I’m sure that in his secret heart, he referred to me as “that dame.” And dames had no place in his office, except as clients.

  Ozzie was tolerated, however—more than tolerated, accepted fully, and recommended by his former associates on the force—because while he was still wearing a uniform, he’d suffered an “unfortunate accident,” the details of which were never discussed, except that they involved a weapon and a never-to-be-disclosed part of his anatomy. The silence surrounding Ozzie’s condition was a prime example of male bonding, but a female couldn’t help but notice that whenever it was obliquely referred to, all the men in the room murmured, “Poor bastard.”

  His cranky and stubborn ways, his frustration and ineptitude with electronics, the basic tool of today’s private investigator—all that was greeted with the slow, sad shake of the head and an almost saintly level of tolerance. I didn’t expect much of Ozzie, except that he’d let me do my thing without interference.

  Which is what I did. “I’m only here for”—I checked my watch and estimated the time I had between now, the party at my former neighbor’s, and arrival at the Bellevue—“a half hour,” I told him. He didn’t bother to hide his relief.

  Not everyone’s listed on the Social Security death lists. Some people belonged to private pension plans, a group that included lots of teachers, in fact. But it was highly probable that a corporate executive—if Emmie Cade had been telling the truth about that—would have paid in.

  I looked up Cade.

  First big surprise: There were over two thousand. I suppose that did, in fact, mean it wasn’t an overly common last name, but the numbers were nonetheless daunting. Still, I hoped that among all those names, I’d narrow it down to logical dates and find the woman and man with the same place and date of death. Her parents, my plane-crash victims.

  The list was alphabetical. I had to pick a letter and click on it, which meant I couldn’t do a visual check through the alphabet, and I couldn’t retain whole lists in my head waiting to find a date-mate elsewhere. Ninety-five names and I was still in the A’s.