Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  “But it doesn’t have to be permanent. As long as we’re okay, the two of us, then as soon as I figure out what to do—”

  “Call me when you do.” He had nothing more to say. He was tired of words.

  She broke the silence within two blocks. “Somebody’s following you,” she said.

  “For God’s sake!” He pulled over, his heart racing. Yvonne. God help him, she was everywhere, spreading like a stain. He’d never be rid of her. Or of Penny. They’d be his barnacles, rock-hard growths attached to his flesh.

  But he saw nothing peculiar in the traffic stream as it passed him. “Which car?” he asked. “Where?”

  “Now I can’t tell, with us being stopped and all.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know. Dark.”

  “Black?”

  “Maybe. But you know how those dark colors all look.…”

  He took a deep breath. No time for all five. He wasn’t going to let her terrify him, make him stupid. He took one more breath and, after a final look outside, behind his car and even ahead, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he turned the ignition key. The girl needed psychiatric help.

  “I saw it,” she said. “I’m not making it up. This car was just sitting over there across the way until you came out of the police station, then it pulled off.”

  “Cars do that. They pull off,” he said.

  She rode sulkily. “You’ll see.” She turned to look out the back window every few minutes. “There,” she said once, “there it is again.”

  His heart bumped and stalled before he paused for a reality check. There’d been nothing the last time, there was nothing he could see in his rearview mirror this time. “That so?” he asked wearily. “Can you tell what kind of car it is this time?”

  “I can’t see the back where the name’d be.”

  “The color?”

  “Black, maybe?”

  “Are you sure it’s the same car as before? Where would it have gone when I stopped?”

  “It could have passed, then waited somewhere. I saw that in a movie.”

  “Do you see it right now, Penny?”

  “Well, now I’m not so…” The certainty drained from her voice.

  “Lots of cars are dark.”

  “Yours isn’t. It makes you such an easy target. So conspicuous. I know it’s cool and it was cheap but even so it must be real easy for whoever that is to tail you.”

  “Or you,” he said. “Ever think of that? You’re the one who’s missing.” And that used up his last reserve of Penny-energy. He was too tired of her to open his mouth and say another word.

  Twenty-Two

  The meeting was over. Sophia Redmond had left the office with a bruised face and two working legs, and Emma’s mind reverted to a due diligence investigation. She had to make a phone call before it got too late in St. Louis. The prospective VP of Finance’s official background had potholes big enough for him to fall into and disappear. The lawyers who hired her wanted verification immediately and she wanted that particular set of lawyers to be dazzled by her work.

  The outer door closed. Sophia was gone, then. Odd, sad, unlikable woman.

  Emma couldn’t remember the number, and she sat down and rooted around her in-box, dimly aware Billie was still standing there. Waiting, but for what? Had they made some confusing arrangement? Was there further business? She looked up at her green associate. “Coffee?” she asked, getting up to refill her cup. “There’s an extra mug.”

  “No thanks,” Billie said.

  A shame that a missing teen had to be the first assignment for somebody this insecure. Adolescents were a bitch to find. Old enough to fend poorly for themselves, but too young to be plugged in to the system where an investigator could sniff them out. Penny Redmond was connected only to school and family, and if she chose to sever those ties, she could disappear. Any teen could. No bank account, no telephone, no electric bill, no property owned, no credit history, no nothing to keep them from evaporating into the netherworld of like-minded souls. And too often, when they were finally found, it was via a headline—the teenage corpse by the road where she’d hitchhiked—or a police statistic—a hooker, or a junkie.

  Sophia Redmond’s request that her runaway daughter not come home gave Emma a sense that long ago, a bad end might have been built in for that girl.

  Billie cleared her throat. “The tape,” she said.

  “Ah, that.”

  “The insurance company accepted it. Felt they had a case.”

  “Seems so.” Emma glanced at the clock. Three-oh-six. Five-oh-six in St. Louis.

  Billie waited.

  Emma felt her mouth purse. Then she sighed, with resigned exasperation. Okay. If she was going to let Billie believe her scrambled cinema verité had done the trick, then she might as well go all the way, massage the girl’s ego, much as it went against Emma’s grain to waste energy and breath on employees’ emotions. On anybody’s, her daughter would have said. And in fact, had.

  But then, Caroline couldn’t understand how weak you’d become if you were praised for inferior work. The world did not run on good intentions. Caroline didn’t see that she and her brother functioned differently and that, not parental preference, was the basis of his success. Caroline, who made an art of sibling rivalry, was convinced that Nathaniel was and always had been the favorite, and that had doomed her to a bleak existence, made revenge her life’s work and survived on a diet of bile and resentment. An annual Christmas letter and photo so Emma could track her grandchildren’s development, and that was that. But Emma couldn’t criticize any other style or philosophy of mothering after she herself had failed so miserably.

  Which had nothing to do with Billie August, who stood there, twirling a ballpoint pen. “Could I ask your opinion about what I’m doing with the search so far?”

  Emma considered the possibility that she was as much of a shit as her daughter said. What did it cost to give a little? If she was secretly saving Billie’s ass (and her own, to be honest), why not go all the way? “First I want to congratulate you,” she said. “They’re sending us another case today.”

  There. She’d said it and lightning hadn’t struck. She lied a thousand different ways every day. What did it hurt to add one more?

  Billie beamed. “I can’t believe it,” she said, demonstrating common sense. “I thought I had totally screwed it up. Which doesn’t mean I’ll ever play it as close to the line again. I mean, I was lucky this time, but I won’t count on that in the future, I promise.”

  “Now,” Emma said, “you wanted a sounding board about Penny Redmond? I heard what you told Sophia. Anything else?”

  Lots of words that added up to nothing, far as Emma could tell. But she’d proceeded logically. Interviewed friends, neighbors, the presumed boyfriend’s employers—or at least the receptionist at his place of employment. “We could probably do more about that, now that we know his name,” Emma said at that point.

  Billie looked surprised, then nodded. Emma recognized the look of total absorption—she’d been so intently looking ahead to what the next step was that she hadn’t realized she had additional knowledge now, that if it seemed warranted, she could circle back, find out more.

  Maybe. The guy was deliberately and successfully hiding.

  Billie was talking about this group he belonged to. He lived with other people—had more or less fled to them when his ex got crazy. And since the Creative Anachronism folk appeared to form the basis of his social life, it followed that he was most likely living with fellow members.…

  It sounded like a logic syllogism. If this is true, then the girl had taken her fancy education too seriously. Life wasn’t logical and people were anything but.

  “…good probability he lives with them,” Billie continued. “I was online when you called me in. The group has a website. I found out where the local groups are, and that there’s a big event this weekend—Presidents’ weekend—in Arizona. I got all excited until
I realized he probably won’t go, not if he’s hiding from this stalker, this…Yvonne.” She stopped abruptly upon saying the woman’s name.

  “What?” Emma asked. “Something?”

  “She… It’s just that I did something incredibly stupid before I came in.”

  Aha. The real reason for staying behind. The true agenda.

  “I stopped home for a few minutes, and she—this Yvonne—had followed me and it freaked me out. My home, after all. My kid! She thought—still thinks—I’m Stephen’s new lover. She didn’t exactly threaten me, but all the same, she was threatening.”

  Billie had been an actress. She dramatized things. Made for interesting stories, but not calls to action. “It’s bluster,” Emma said. “You don’t have what she wants and you aren’t preventing access to him, either. If this woman isn’t completely over the edge, she’ll lose interest in you. You’ll see.”

  “I hope you’re right. I can’t stop thinking about her—about me, too, my capabilities. If I couldn’t spot somebody following me, then—”

  “Okay,” Emma interrupted. “You’ll be more observant from now on. Back to your question. You seem on track with Penny Redmond. See what you can get from the Net. You might want to think about the hearse, too.” There. The experienced pro offers up an angle. Never say that Emma wasn’t teaching her hire. “There might be hearse-lover groups online.”

  “The one I found only listed cars for sale. Not helpful.”

  She’d already thought of it. “In that case, since we’re billing that pathetic woman by the hour to find her daughter, what say we cut the chat?”

  Billie stood up instantly, nodded and left.

  You could waste your life blathering. Now to try St. Louis. Who knew, maybe human-resource people also worked late now and then.

  *

  She couldn’t figure that woman out. Offered to share her foul coffee, gave an attaboy, then behaved like she was being attacked if you tried to thank her. Billie had to remember that this wasn’t her life, it was her job. Get on with it and try not to become an Emma, measuring life in billable minutes and nothing more.

  Back to the Society for Creative Anachronism. She was actually eager, excited by the possibilities and by the imaginary world itself. She understood the appeal of retreating into the world as it should be, not as it was or is. The Middle Ages would not be her first choice—but if somebody wanted to recreate New York or Paris in the 1920s, she’d consider a divided life.

  She returned to where she’d been, remembering that nagging and now-frightening sense that she wasn’t paying enough attention to something. A name had pricked her brain, but which one, and why? She’d have to go through everything all over again, wait and see if the warning tingle reoccurred.

  “Where are you, Stephen?” she asked the machine. She failed to get the tingle, to get anything, including information. She couldn’t access the list of upcoming events or local members, but it probably didn’t matter. Stephen Tassio’s name wasn’t going to be on an online discussion group or a list of members. He was hiding. She returned to the discussion group. If nothing else, it was a way of learning more about them.

  They discussed just about everything: the construction of armor, pros and cons of outsiders at events, what sort of medieval twist to give one’s speech (“forsooth” was declared an embarrassingly primitive gaffe)—even whether bunny rabbit was, would have been, or could be, medievally kosher. There were countless responses to each question, including the one concerning the hapless rabbits. She read one letter after another, checking each e-mail address, since even though they sent greetings and signed off with their SCA names, their “mundane” names were often part of their address, or put in parentheses after it.

  She moved quickly, scrolling back to see if she’d missed anything interesting, returning to the master list for the same reason, saying the mundane names out loud and flooding with adrenaline when she heard herself say, “Stephen,” but she’d mispronounced a Stepan, and that was his medieval name. “John, Laurel, Mary.” None felt significant—nothing triggered a particular response. What had? And why couldn’t she find it, feel it, again?

  The building’s heat acted as a sedative. She switched to full names to keep herself awake and slightly more challenged. Last stop before the damned hearses, she told herself. And why would he go online to talk about a car he already had if he wasn’t online here?

  “Jane Heller, Sam Browne, R. Tannenbaum, no Stephen Tassio, no Stephen T., no S. Tassio…DeeDee Stanley, Alicia Malone, Douglas Newber—” She’d just said something she should have listened to… She scrolled back again, said every last name and this time, she paused at Alicia Malone. Alicia. That was the name she’d seen elsewhere, too. Not the most common name, and she’d heard it. Somebody had said it in the last few days, and pray to God it hadn’t been Ivan when they’d had a glass of wine late the night before. Ivan’s romantic complexities were too often the subject matter during a time that was supposedly reserved for reviewing how her household was doing. According to Ivan, his life was seldom going well, and it was endlessly complicated, because of his adoration of and overenthusiasm for the opposite sex.

  One of his girls had been a Tawny, she was sure. And the other complication, a Brittany. “Very American,” he’d thought.

  So who was Alicia? It wasn’t as if Billie’s life was a long waltz between friends and gossip and lots of names, so Alicia had to be part of the search for Penny.

  She opened her notebook and held her breath. Please have written it down. Alicia couldn’t have been all that important or she’d remember something more than the sound of her name, but please let her have documented it.

  And there it was, a fit. Mrs. Tassio going on about Stephen’s dreadful friends. And one, the Malone girl, who’d seemed quite lovely until she pulled him into her weird group and approved of his getting that bird. And Mr. Tassio, murmuring, half to himself, that he’d always been fond of Alicia.

  Billie felt like Lewis and Clark. Both of them. She’d found something in this new world, even if she didn’t yet know what it was or meant.

  She went out to the reception area and borrowed Zack’s phone book. “Malone,” she whispered. “Be listed.” It would be so unusual as to be heretical, but there were miracles.

  And there was her first occupationally-based one. “San Geronimo Valley Financial Services” listed Alicia Malone but only a phone number. Still, it was something. She kissed the white pages and grabbed the phone.

  The message said that the office was closed and Alicia Malone out of town until after President’s Day. Billie left a message, anyway. “Damn,” she muttered as she hung up. But Emma probably knew some way to get the address that went with the number. Billie could at least find the office, be ready on Tuesday after the long weekend.

  The weekend seemed very long indeed when thought of that way.

  The outer door opened and Yvonne, looking as if she’d lost weight in the last two hours, barged in. “Ha!” she said, pointing at Billie. “That’s what I figured!”

  “Jesus Christ!” Billie said. “I told you—”

  “Can I help?” Zack asked Yvonne in a tone that would have deterred anyone normal.

  Yvonne ignored him. “You’re a detective,” she said, her finger still aimed at Billie. “At first, I thought you came here because you were hiring one. That you were looking for him, too. I waited. I can be patient.” She nodded several times in agreement with herself. “You have no idea how patient I can be.”

  “Yvonne,” Billie began.

  “You know this woman?” Zack asked. “Is she a client?”

  “This is Yvonne. I don’t know her last name. She’s looking for her former boyfriend on her own, not as a client.”

  “Not former.” Yvonne wagged a finger back and forth, chastising them. “We’re for keeps. He’s been forced to—”

  “She hasn’t hired you?” Zack asked.

  Billie shook her head.

  “I want to,�
�� Yvonne said. “Now that I know you weren’t here to hire somebody, you’re here to be hired yourself!” She giggled, then abruptly grew serious again. “That’s what I want to do.” She finally let her hand fall into normal position. No more finger-pointing. A step forward.

  No way in hell Billie could knowingly work for a lunatic, provide a stalker with information—assuming she could get any. Even Emma Howe, with all her rules about not inflicting your own morality on clients’ issues—even she wouldn’t put an innocent in danger for a few bucks.

  “I’m really sorry,” Billie said, “but I couldn’t do that. I’m too booked. I couldn’t.”

  Yvonne flashed a look at Zack, as if he might be prompting Billie to lie, then she looked back at Billie, and then to the closed glass-paned door. “Who else is here?” she demanded. “Somebody here better not be too busy for me. I have my rights, I’m a citizen. Everybody treats me like horseshit.” The woman zoomed from rage to heartbreak without missing a beat.

  Yvonne’s eyes overflowed, and she brushed at them as she spoke. “You don’t realize—this is the anniversary of our last time together. Two months ago today, in the rain, we went to Stinson, our special place.” Her voice had grown dreamy, heavy, as if drugged as she sank into her tale. “We’d been there before. The bartender owns a house and sometimes he rents out the guest room to special friends. Stephen took me there. Everywhere—Mendocino, camping in the Trinity Alps, Big Sur—Point Reyes a lot.…”

  “Listen, I appreciate your interest, but—”

  “It was storming, but we put on our slickers and went on the beach. The ocean was wild, the rain—he took my hand, held it. I thought he was going to ask me to marry him, that’s what I thought!” Like a badly played violin, her voice grew ever higher, thinner and piercing.

  “Thought he would marry me and instead he’d been pressured into getting rid of me.” She pressed her palms against her solar plexus. “It hurt him, but he had to do it. His parents forced him. Exactly two months ago today.”