Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  He was being a gentleman. A happy one.

  Is there anything on earth more infuriating than being incensed with a man who’s oblivious to it? “Sure,” I said, because that postponed the argument I knew awaited us. I didn’t want to spoil his parents’ time, either. And it was early, just past eight P.M. “Anywhere. Your call.”

  “In that case,” C. K. said, “there’s a bar in South Philly that will provide not only drinks, but local color of a sort that will make you know you’re not in Lafayette, Louisiana, anymore, folks.”

  We drove the Expressway in silence. Mackenzie turned on the radio and searched for the easy-listening station, the instant background noise because there wasn’t any foreground. We seemed to have used up our chatter.

  Gabby’s need for polite sociability broke the silence. “What a darling family you have,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I responded. “They thought the same of you.” And then I set my hearing to “pleasantries,” and let whatever was said blur into the background music becoming, if not white noise, then at best, pale, pale beige.

  “Food delicious, too,” Boy said, or something like it. “That lamb . . .”

  “House beautiful . . .”

  “Lovely . . .”

  “Adorable . . . clever . . .”

  “Even a lovely dog.” That, of course, from Gabby.

  Everything was perfect at Beth’s. She had standards. She didn’t get a mother-in-law who dressed like Merlin and recited chants.

  “What dog have you ever met that you didn’t think was lovely?” Boy seemed eternally amused by his wife. “This woman is a dog’s best friend. Any dog. All dogs.”

  “Good creatures,” she said.

  And here I’d thought that cats were witch’s familiars. Macavity had certainly taken to her immediately, but I’d ascribed it to his adoration of all things Mackenzie. Now I knew better.

  “Do you think so, Manda?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “My mind was wandering.”

  “We could make a picnic Saturday? Everybody, includin’ those adorable children of your sister’s.”

  Saturday. Their last day. “Sounds great. I don’t know Beth and Sam’s schedule, but I’m sure they’d love it.”

  “How about Valley Forge?” Mackenzie said. “Toss in a little history.” He had a future as a tour guide. Bars, picnics, you name it, he’d find the local angle.

  “And their dog, too,” Gabby said. “The park would allow him.”

  “Oh, Gabby,” Boy said. “You’re too much.”

  “I’m so homesick for the babies,” she said. “And so worried Lizzie isn’t going to remember to give Cary Grant his phenobarb both times. You know how she forgets things—and by the time we get home, he’ll be having those fits again.”

  I sat up straight. “Excuse me?”

  Mackenzie wasn’t listening to me. He was into tour guiding. “Look,” he said. “This is South Philly. See the row houses? All the same?”

  “Like apartment buildings on their side,” Boy said.

  “Phenobarbital? For dogs?” I asked.

  “New York’s an island and had nowhere to go but up, but Philly could stretch out, and here you see it,” C. K. said.

  “Poor Cary’s been takin’ it for a while,” Gabby said. “I just haven’t been away all this long since then, and Lizzie’s sweet but absentminded—”

  “Her mind is pretty absent most of the time,” Boy admitted.

  “—and if Cary doesn’t take it twice a day . . .”

  I felt as if an electric prod had been applied to my brain. It zigged and zagged and pointed fingers and ran in circles shouting for attention.

  Slow down, I told myself, as if I were back teaching the sophomores. Organize your thoughts.

  Dogs. Medication. Vicky Baer’s dog.

  The ideas spun, chasing their tails.

  Joan’s call about Vicky Baer, nee Smith. Grade slump. Nothing the school did . . .

  Olivia. Leaving school because of another girl.

  Organize your thoughts!

  The brochure.

  Why the brochure? Why had it upset me? Her triumphant list of schools and foundations. Verbal bouquets from impressive clients all over the map. D.C., Baltimore, Altoona, Chicago, San Francisco . . .

  “Cary will be fine,” Boy said. “Not like you to worry this much.”

  “Mackenzie,” I said, before he could point out other landmarks. “Humor me. Word-association time. What’s the significance of these three cities: Baltimore, Altoona, Chicago.”

  “They all have an a and an o in their name.”

  I don’t know how he does things like that so quickly, but I did know that wasn’t the answer I needed. I sighed and folded my arms across my chest and even shook my head a bit to loosen up my thoughts, shake them out of the ruts they were in, get them organized.

  I had it. “The notes!” I spoke as softly as I could, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. “I knew there was something about that brochure—the anonymous notes came from the places Vicky Baer travels to!”

  “Lovely. Except . . . so what?”

  “So what? She sent those notes. That’s what!”

  “And? Mean-spirited, I’ll grant you, but . . . I repeat, so what? Legally, what is that? Abuse of the postal service? Claire Fairchild might have been interested in that—if it’s true—but she’s beyond caring. Batya murdered her. Case closed.”

  No. It wasn’t. Even if I didn’t yet know why, I knew it wasn’t over. And it felt urgently important that I line up the wild and unrelated messages flashing neon in my brain. Find the words to explain the electrical charges in my nervous system.

  High school! Olivia. Leaving. Vicky leaving. Not the school’s fault.

  Sick dogs! Vicky left the dinner to take care of one.

  No. Wait. My brain buzzed, the signs flashed randomly, all together, separately and I still couldn’t make them out.

  Phone call! She was going to take care of the dog after she took her phone call.

  Emmie Cade had announced a wedding date that day. Was that the call?

  Leo had already quarreled with his mother that day. Had found out about her hiring us. Told Emmie. Was that the call?

  Pretending! Nobody knew Claire Fairchild was faking her illness then.

  Shower! Something made Vicky visit Claire Fairchild that night. Was the idea of a bridal shower that urgent? Especially after she’d told me she wasn’t all that close with Emmie, though they were old acquaintances, more than real friends.

  Friend! Vicky’s visiting a friend who was feeling bad. Right now. “Mackenzie.” I put a hand on his arm.

  “And here we are,” he answered. “At the corner.” I saw a beer’s name lit up on a red brick wall. Accurate as ever, he’d found us a Typical South Philly Bar. It could occupy a display at the Smithsonian.

  “No,” I said.

  He pulled into a spot a few houses up.

  “No,” I said again. “Turn around. We’re wrong—everything we thought is wrong. The whole way we looked at this was wrong.”

  “This is it. I’m right,” he said, looking confused.

  “I mean about Claire Fairchild. Batya didn’t do it, Mackenzie.”

  “Please,” he said. “The police are—you know that. I told you—”

  “They’re all wrong, too! I know what happened now. Trust me. Turn around. We have to go to Emmie’s right now.” I looked at my watch. “And hope it’s not too late.”

  “Actually, you’re not making sense,” he said, not unkindly. “My folks—we all agreed to a nightcap.” He turned off the ignition.

  “No! Turn it back on—I was wrong. I can’t mess this up, too—she asked me to help her!”

  “Who?”

  “Emmie Cade!”

  “No need to raise your—when? What about?”

  “That isn’t the point!”

  “What is the point?”

  “That you have to leave here right now and get to her—she’s in d
anger!”

  “Phone her if you’re worried.”

  “What difference would that make? We have to go!”

  “You’re lettin’ your imagination—”

  “Ooooh, noooo,” Gabby suddenly said, or moaned. She pressed both the heels of her hands to her temples. “I can’t believe—I’m havin’ the most terrifyin’—painful—vision—a girl—cryin’—something bad—somebody needs me. Quick. Somebody . . .” Her voice faded off.

  “Oh, for Pete’s—” Mackenzie said.

  “Hits her like this,” Boy said with audible admiration.

  “She cries, she dies. . . ,” she whispered rhythmically.

  “Mother, please. It’s not funny anymore.”

  The neon in my brain buzzed and flashed, all the words turning into danger signs.

  “She needs, she—”

  “Mother, those rhymes are—”

  “Son,” Boy said. That was all. Apparently, it was enough.

  “This is craziness,” Mackenzie muttered, but he started the car, turned the corner, then turned again, back into the direction of Center City and Emmie Cade. “Why, when all logic—” He gave up on the idea of logic. “You’re going to be humiliated,” he said. “This is about the least professional . . .”

  I didn’t answer. Neither did my ally, the witch, who sat muttering her pathetic rhymes, her hands still pressed to her temples. “Hurry,” I said. “She’s counting on our misreading everything. Don’t play into her hands.”

  “Hurry, scurry,” Gabby muttered.

  Traffic was miraculously light—almost as if a witch were in control—and within fifteen minutes, we were in front of Claire Fairchild and Emmie Cade’s building.

  Way in front. We couldn’t find a parking space.

  “Tell you what. I’ll wait in the car with my folks,” Mackenzie said. “You can go up and check things out. Take your cell phone. Call if there’s a problem.”

  What had happened to our partnership? What if something as wrong as I feared was going on and I was already inside the apartment? “At what stage in the problem should I call?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.

  “I have to go with her. I have to see the girl in pain. Touch her—touch something of hers.” Gabby Mackenzie still pressed her temples as if holding on to a vision, and her voice sounded as if it came out of an empty vase.

  Mackenzie punched the steering wheel. “There aren’t any parking spaces,” he said.

  “I’ll make one happen,” Gabby said, just as—right before?—slightly after?—a man walked out of the building jiggling keys.

  “Damn,” Mackenzie said as the man pulled an SUV out of a prize spot.

  Damn was right. I looked at Gabby in amazement, then, in the two of us went, top speed, while C. K., still trying to save face and avoid going anywhere, pretended to be occupied with locking up the car and talking to his father.

  Gabby and I entered the outer lobby. I found M. E. Cade’s apartment number on a neatly printed list behind glass, and pressed the buzzer.

  “They don’t listen, do they?” Gabby said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Like father, like son. Good as it gets, but—that tiny flaw. Don’t take us seriously. Humor us, gentle us—and do what they think’s right.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re—”

  “Takes special powers now and then to get through to them.”

  “You are saying what I think you’re—”

  The men arrived. She didn’t have to tell me to drop that conversational thread. We were buzzed in, and rode to Emmie’s floor in silence, though Mackenzie’s expression spoke volumes.

  The future Mrs. Fairchild didn’t occupy an entire floor the way the late Mrs. Fairchild had, and since the visiting clairvoyant apparently didn’t do doors, I managed to go in the wrong direction twice, which was difficult, before determining on which door to knock. Only then did I allow myself to consider precisely what I was going to do with or about any of this.

  Or admit, despite my supernatural backup, that I could be humiliatingly wrong.

  The hallway was silent except for Mackenzie’s whistle-hum, a faint and unpleasant sound he’s apt to produce between his teeth, all unawares, when he would rather be anywhere but where he finds himself. “Nobody home,” he said after a too-long wait.

  “I know she’s here. I’ll prove it.” Gabby pounded on the door, then nodded smartly.

  And the door opened.

  “That the girl in trouble?” Gabby asked me out of the side of her mouth.

  I shook my head. “That’s trouble itself.”

  “What’s this?” Vicky Baer said. “Who are all of you?” She put a finger up to her mouth. “She’s ill. Can’t see anybody, certainly not a huge group of people.”

  Without a signal, without a word, Gabby and I pushed forward, moved Vicky to one side, and ran into the apartment.

  “Hey!” Vicky screamed from right behind us. “Where do you think you’re—”

  “Emmie!” Like the panicked fool I was, I shouted her name even though I was sure she was already dead.

  The living room was nearly empty. Little furniture and no body. Nobody. I ran through an archway, toward the bedroom, I assumed.

  “Wait!” Gabby called, and I turned and saw her zoom through the open French windows, her arms held wide, and then, closed tight around a small figure leaning on, and half over, the balcony railing, like something dropped and abandoned there.

  She looked smaller than ever, diminished. Boneless and liable to sink to the ground if Gabby let go, but Gabby didn’t. Instead, she whispered something while gentling Emmie onto a wrought-iron chair next to a small table holding a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  I flooded with relief to the point where I thought I might slide to the ground myself. She was alive. The terrible thing hadn’t happened.

  “Emmie’s had too much.” Vicky stood at the open doorway, hands on hips, Mackenzie and Boy behind her. Her voice so disapproved of what she saw, it felt curled down at its edges.

  Gabby stood above Emmie, emerald sleeves billowing in the evening’s breeze.

  “I don’t think so,” I said to Vicky. “Claire Fairchild had too much, but Emmie hasn’t had quite enough. What was next on the schedule? She was going to have a sudden impulse to jump? It wouldn’t take much of a push. She’s pretty small.”

  “You’re out of—she’s been drinking and ranting—”

  I held up the bottle. “Nearly full. And neither glass really touched.” Pity, I thought. It was good wine, going to waste.

  Below us, a car honked and brakes squealed.

  “I’m callin’ paramedics.” Mackenzie opened his cell and cursed softly. “Phone’s dead.”

  “She’s drunk!” Vicky insisted, but C. K. was gone, into the apartment in search of a live phone.

  We were on the same side again. Partners.

  Emmie showed signs of life. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. Cliffffffff . . .” She sounded like a tire going flat. “Long time ago . . .”

  “Who?” I asked, wondering where this man fit into her biography, but remembering, then, Joan’s call. The school in Ohio from which Vicky Smith had fled.

  “Says I ruined . . . sorry . . . teen . . .”

  “Too drunk to make sense,” Vicky said. “I’m going home.”

  “No, wait,” I said. She wouldn’t have, but Boy stood behind her like a closed gate. “What’s your poor dog doing for medication these days?”

  “Dog?” Gabby’d been idling, hovering over Emmie like a guardian angel, or mere mortal of the kind-and-concerned variety, not a proper witch at all. Of course, there’d been no need for magic. Emmie was alive. The word dog piqued the first sign of interest in the happenings.

  “Why?” I asked Vicky. “Why Claire Fairchild? What did she ever do to you?”

  Vicky eyed me blankly, her face a mask, and I knew. It had never been about Claire Fairchild. She’d been nothing more than a war casualty, collateral damage, t
hat dehumanizing term that was easier to say than human beings killed by a war they weren’t waging.

  A woman treated as no more than a bump en route to a more important goal. A life dispassionately trashed as a device to frame someone else, a bullet to remove a rival. It hurt to believe it. “And Emmie takes the fall. Literally,” I said. “That was your plan.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing mysterious about Mrs. Fairchild’s death.”

  I hated that she referred politely, remotely to the woman she’d killed.

  “She was dying,” Vicky said. “No secret. She died. I don’t see what you—”

  “You don’t die of pretending to be ill. You die when somebody substitutes her pet’s medicine for your real pills.”

  “Your dog’s medicine?” Gabby’s voice again came out of empty tubing, echoing somehow on its own, and she was all action, her normal laissez-faire gone. She raised her arms toward the sky, her sleeves billowing, her nails twinkling in reflected light.

  “Who are you?” Vicky shielded her face with her hands, as if Gabby physically threatened her.

  “A witch,” Gabby said in that inhuman hollow-pipe voice. “And I don’t like you one bit.”

  “There’s no such thing as a—” Vicky swallowed hard, and curled her mouth, but she didn’t take her eyes off Gabby for a second, and when Gabby made two sets of claws of her spangled nails—that’s all, not a word or a curse or a spell—I thought Vicky might faint. “You’re insane!” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorrrrr . . .” Emmie said in a whisper. “So long ago, shouldn’t—”

  “Shut up!” Vicky screamed, still keeping her eyes on Gabby, who made a sound suspiciously like a hiss.

  “High school,” I said. “And then what? Cornell? The boy she ran away with?”

  “Nothing. Who cared?”

  “You did. And then San Francisco—what? Bygones will be bygones, so you’re polite to the widow and then what? Leo?”

  “Din’ know . . . Leeeeeee . . .” Emmie couldn’t finish the name. Her head dropped further forward, and she was silent.

  “Hang in there. Help’s coming. Damn phone was in the bedroom—under the bed.” Mackenzie was back. He went to Emmie, and I edged over and back to give him room and watch him try to keep her awake.