She picked an innocuous movie about a basset hound, although she thought Jesse had already seen it. But that’d be all right. When he liked something, he liked it, and saw nothing odd about viewing it again. He had no problems with commitment. Security, not novelty, was the spice of his life. Probably grow up to be as dull as old Talkman himself.
Once in the car, she put the tape on the seat beside her and felt it bump against her cellular phone. She’d forgotten to turn it on again, not that it mattered. Billie had become conscientious about the pager. The phone was hers, for emergencies and reaching other people’s pagers.
She aimed the car toward home. Friday night and Ivan would be off to a new romantic adventure. The boy did not learn from experience. Or maybe his Slavic soul, even transplanted to California, required its share of agonies.
But his heartbreak-seeking apparatus complicated her life, too, when Ivan slipped into Chekhovian darkness and needed to talk. She reminded herself that things would ease with time. In roughly a year and a half, Jess would be five and ready for kindergarten, paid for by the state, not her. Less child care, less expense. Present chaos was not permanent. Just give it time.
Time again, still nagging.
Plus, she thought, when Jesse turned five, she’d be close to full PI status, if not already there, and greatly enriched earnings. More cash, less expense. Bliss city.
When you are five, my son…
Five. That was what was wrong. That’s what it was about time. The length of time Sunny had been Mrs. Marshall. Because in those files she’d been arranging this afternoon, in that original play search of Talkman, there’d been a pre–San Francisco wife.
She remembered and felt a fluttering excitement fill her. They hadn’t found divorce proceedings in the Nevada records. She’d thought that perhaps he’d divorced in California, but now she knew he’d come to San Francisco from Nevada five years ago and married Sunny five years ago—that whirlwind courtship of two months—and their oldest child was just over four. So when had there been time to discard wife number one?
The question, pushed to the center of her consciousness, seemed important. But almost instantly, it was flipped sideways by the sight of a dark car crossing the intersection she faced, license plate JUS KIDN.
What the hell game was that girl playing? Hiding from her, then tooling out seconds after Billie left?
Drop it, an Emma-inspired voice barked into her ear. The girl’s a screw-up. Don’t get involved. You did what you promised. Your role in that family’s life is over. You’ve got your own family.
But what if Penny wasn’t playing games, but still searching for Wesley? Had been doing so around the neighborhood while Billie searched for her.
What if they’d crossed wires and missed each other by seconds—which seemed obvious—and Billie’s nonappearance had sent Penny on some wild-goose chase? What if…?
Billie flipped on her right-turn signal, and once again—but absolutely for the last time, she promised the nagging Emma-voice—went after Penny Redmond.
Thirty-Two
Emma zipped her bulging briefcase and grimaced at being in thrall to force of habit. No way she was going to work tonight. George was bringing takeout. It was her favorite time when they could talk over the week in leisurely fashion, take as long as they needed. For anything. You reached an age, and time seemed the only true luxury.
Besides, she felt stale and tired and there was no rush to the papers stuffed in the canvas case.
Which only underlined the complete lack of any need to take a bit of this home, but she couldn’t resist and she didn’t want to be “cured” of this problem, either. Would cost a fortune and years of boredom lying on a couch to find out she was indulging a pathological insecurity. Something her mother had done to her a thousand years ago. And then—so what? What would be better for the knowledge? Still, she felt a bit of an ass, and an obsessive compulsive one at that.
“Goofing off already?” Zack asked. “Oh, ’scuse me—I meant taking off.”
“I am, and so should you. Get a life.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s seven and a half minutes before five. I’d be ripping you off, cheating you.”
She picked a crumpled ball of paper out of his wastebasket and tossed it at his head. “And have a good weekend,” she said. “Give my son my not overbearing, but very real love, okay? And tell him not to work so hard.”
“Will do. And he will send back precisely the same and equally fervent wishes that I will deliver Tuesday morning. You’ll lock up, then?” he asked, and when she nodded, he saluted her and was gone.
The phones rang. Both lines. Simultaneously.
She was tempted to let the service pick up, tell them the office was closed. But then, of course, they’d page her and it would prolong the agony. She sat down at Zack’s desk and tried to remember how to avoid disconnecting anybody. “Yes?” she said after she’d pressed the first line, asked it to hold and pressed the second.
“This is Emma Howe agency?”
“More or less,” she said. “Who is this?”
“Ivan.”
Terse. Accented. Sense of urgency. Had the Cold War started up again, the Evil Empire resin-faced without her noticing it?
“I am nanny.”
Damnation. A basso profundo Mary Poppins. So it was about Billie, wasn’t it? Had to be. She had a college student tending her child, living with her, but she hadn’t said the gender. His voice seemed to be resonating through a tall, burly body. Echoes of Rasputin, maybe. An in-house Russian giant. Young. She wondered what the real relationship was between Billie and this man. “She isn’t here. Left a while back.”
“A while? How much while?”
“An hour, I’d guess. Can you hold a second?” Emma fumbled with the hold button while he muttered darkly about having to leave house now, this instant. “Yes?” she asked the second caller.
“Is this Billie August? Is this the Howe agency? I’m looking for a Ms. Billie August?”
Emma was suddenly sick of Billie’s very name. Why all these people calling at five P.M. on a Friday? “This is Emma Howe,” she said. “Ms. August isn’t here at the moment.” Maybe she could fix up this high-pitched girlie-girl with Ivan. Between them they’d produce children with voices in the normal range.
“I’m calling for Mr. Bradford Davies?” She made it another question, as if Emma should agree with her, tell her she was on the right track. “Mr. Davies is with—”
“I’m familiar with Mr. Davies,” Emma said.
“Yes. Of course. And we’re expecting Ms. August Tuesday morning, after the holiday weekend—?” She paused, leaving her question that was not a question dangling.
“Yes?” Emma prompted back. The exchange felt like a stupid game that would never end.
“There’s been an unexpected change of plans? Mr. Davies would like Ms. August to wait until further notice instead? Could you let her know? We’re sorry for whatever inconvenience this may cause your—”
“I’ll let her know. Thanks.” Emma switched to the other line.
“This very bad!” Ivan was saying on his line. She got the impression that he’d been speaking nonstop while he was on hold. “You know where is she?”
“She told me she was going home. Maybe she stopped to buy groceries. When she does come in, would you tell her there’s been a change of plans and she’s to come to the office, not the factory, on Tuesday?”
“We do not need groceries.”
Her blood pressure rose. Why should Emma have an iota of interest in whether or not Billie needed to stock the larder, or in the domestic arrangements of her new hire? Neither item was supposed to intrude on this office. “Well,” she said, “that’s the best I can come up with. I’m sure she’ll be back any minute….” Why bother? Why reassure this stranger about a situation she knew nothing about?
“If you find anything, you call me, please yes?”
That kid of Billie’s was going to speak an interest
ing variation on the mother tongue by the time he entered school.
“I have evening appointment,” Ivan said. “Important arrangement.”
“Sure.” Emma would bet the ranch the important arrangement had to do with realigning his testosterone. She hung up. So where the hell was Billie? She’d distinctly said she was going home to hide out for the entire weekend. Made a point of it. Besides, if she knew her baby-sitter needed out by five, she should respect that.
Or maybe that nervous chatter’s function had been to create static, noise to cover up—poorly—a lie. About what? A somebody still more appealing than Ivan sounded—a TGIF quickie en route? At least that would show a little…a little something.
She stood, deeded the phones to the answering service and frowned at the need to delay her weekend’s start in order to get the message—Davies’, not Ivan’s—to Billie. She suspected the postponement meant he’d opted for a quick and silencing payoff that would dissolve the job before it began, which thought did not brighten her mood.
She looked into Billie’s cubicle as if it would yield clues to its occupant’s missing-in-action status, but all she saw were three files lined up on her desk. Three? She’d only been on the one case. She looked at them, puzzled, then laughed. Faux files. The imaginary dossiers they’d drawn up. The girl was pathetic.
And as if the word pathetic triggered recognition, she realized where it was Billie must have snuck off to, why she’d lied. Emma didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Billie hadn’t gone to a lover—not even to the supermarket. She’d been afraid to admit she was going to Penny Redmond, to try—futilely—to make up for the insults life had handed the girl and her brother.
Well, then…what was the number there?
She picked up the one actual file, ruffled its pages and shook her head in amused despair. A puzzlement, that Billie. So intent and intense—look at her notes. So afraid she’d miss something important that she recorded everything to the point of tediousness. Did anybody have to know when Penny Redmond last baby-sat for some woman named Sally? She wasn’t missing, didn’t need a “last seen” or worse, “last baby-sat at.” Or that she showed Sunny Marshall some necklace thing—a heart with “VUX” written on it. And next to that, in the margin, three arrows pointing at the heart. One said: GREEK. The second: Jewelry call? And the third: SCRIPT.
VUX?
But in the end, she’d found the girl, which was what mattered. Not in the expected manner, not without mess and bloodshed—but that wasn’t Billie’s fault.
She tried the Redmonds, but got only their voice mail, Arthur sounding oily. She hung up, put the folder back in its precise formation with its make-believe kin and dialed Billie’s cellular.
“The mobile number you are calling is not currently in operation or it is out of a—” Emma slammed down the receiver. She wasn’t out of range—hadn’t driven into the High Sierras. She was in San Rafael playing idiot Samaritan and her phone was off, damn her!
She took a deep breath. Okay. She’d page her and wait. If Billie didn’t call back, and quickly, then there’d be a phone call to her later on—one that connected—to suggest that she find someone else to drive insane.
She’d give it ten minutes. Not one second more. The girl was eating into her weekend. Enough was enough.
She dialed the pager and began her countdown. And wondered why she’d never seen Greek letters that looked like they could spell. “VUX.” She looked at the notes again, “Script,” she said. “She wasn’t talking about a script, was she?” She made a phone call on the second line. “Reference desk, please,” she said.
*
Billie felt in a frantic trance. She kept the dark blue car in sight, although shortly after she’d turned the corner and begun to follow it, she’d realized that Penny was not its driver. The head she saw behind the wheel was close-cropped. Adult male. If it weren’t for the license plate, she’d have given up the pursuit as a mistake.
It had taken two or three blocks more before she was able to find a position in a lane beside his, from which she could see more of his face.
Harley Marshall. The Talkman. He’d said he was going for a run.
She was worried at first that he’d see her—then not worried at all. Who cared? She wanted—would—demand an explanation. What logical reason could he have for driving the Redmonds’ car? She’d seen the Jaguar, for God’s sake. She’d seen this car in the Redmonds’ garage. And where were the children?
He couldn’t be going to retrieve them because they couldn’t have gotten anywhere far on their own. Wouldn’t have even if they could.
She thought about calling the police, but didn’t know what she’d be reporting. I see the wrong person driving a car, Officer. Where, they might well ask, was the crime in a neighbor’s borrowing wheels?
Then Emma. She needed to talk to Emma even if Emma ranted and raved and screeched about this. She reached with her right hand for her phone and turned it on, dialing the office number in a series of frantic stabs while she kept her sights on the dark blue car.
The exchange answered, promised they’d be in touch with Emma. “Say it’s an emergency!” She wondered if it was one even as the words came out. But the service meant that Emma had gone for the day, maybe for the weekend. Who knew when she’d decide to call in for messages? And it wasn’t going to do any good to insist this was an emergency—Emma had pretty much told the service that everybody considers their need an emergency, and weekends, particularly Friday evenings, were sacrosanct. People who might really need her knew to tell the service to beep her.
She could do that. She kept forgetting about the thing. Nobody used it to reach her, anyway. But she had it. Thank God. She reached for the phone again, and punched in Emma’s pager’s number.
And froze. What was the number for her to return? What was Billie’s cellular phone number? She glanced down, turned the phone over, examined it even though she knew the number was not on it. She’d barely ever used it, never had to tell anybody its number, and it had plain and simply fallen out of her mind. There was a way to bring it up, buttons to punch, but what were they?
Had she written it down anywhere? How could so much depend on such a stupid thing?
She needed to pull over, think this through, make her mind work the way it was supposed to, the way it usually did, but then the blue car might get away altogether. Thank God for Friday-night commute congestion. He couldn’t move too quickly, which was lucky for her—
Her pager buzzed. She nearly wept with relief.
*
Emma stood tapping her foot, waiting. Finally she sat down at Billie’s pitiably neat and insignificant desk. There wasn’t anything worth snooping through in here, only those files she kept as souvenirs. Maybe she was afraid of forgetting what was available on the computer. Emma flipped open the one about the dog-groomer. There, next to the notes, in the careful hand, underlined, was the CD-ROM source. That must be why she was clinging to them. She opened the one about the radio fellow. Excessive notes again. Everything. What a worrier. Did she realize that in a few weeks, this would all be second nature to her? Look at this: elim. ‘Illogical’ poss—e.g., a Marshall b. ’35 too old, one b. ’92, too young, lvs. Harley. Why write that down?
Reg.vote Rep. in Nev. (prob would be in Ca., too?) Mar. Rec. on disk e.g., Harley m. Genia Ann Christophe, 1989 (so track thru maiden name, too?) L. V. No div. Rec. Maybe CA—by County.
Those rich-kid schools of hers had taught her that more is better. Jeez, but they’d forgotten to say that thoroughness was different from clutter. The real, the necessary, and irrelevant junk all tossed in there together.
She looked at her watch. Six more minutes. Her eyes wandered back up the page filled with the small, tidy script. Genia wasn’t the current Mrs. M, was she? She opened the Redmond file and found it, as, of course, she knew she would. Sunny. Genia’s nickname? Except—here it was. Married five years, three children (boys), aged four and two-year-old twins. Love at first sight—
she even wrote that. Emma shook her head. The girl’s mind was an open pit—ready to receive whatever was thrown in. Trash, treasure, dead bodies…Genia Christophe. She looked at her notes on her call to the library. Genia. Gamma, that looks like a “v” when written. Christophe. Chi, that looks like an “x” and Mu, for Marshall, in the middle like a proper monogram. Mu, that’s written like a “u.” VUX.
Four minutes. Might as well use them. She looked at Billie’s meticulous entry about Genia Christophe, looked at the length of Harley’s marriage. Considered looking under Marin County for a divorce record for the first Mrs. M, but decided not to waste the time. Nevada was where they’d lived. Nevada was the place for “quickie” divorces, not California, where property had to be divided and all manner of mess delay, and conflict occurred. Why move to the difficult state to split?
Then she changed her mind. She would use the data bank after all. Not, however, for divorces. It was births, not dissolutions, she was after, and more’s the pity.
Thirty-Three
Billie pulled the beeper off her belt and held it in a shaky right hand while she drove. The blue car headed down congested Second Street, onto San Pedro Road, then stopped, caught in traffic. Every commuter had suddenly craved food, and the lines into the full parking lots around Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods resulted in standstill chaos. The better to read the beeper, then.
And the number to call was—her own damned home! Disappointed anger was immediately replaced by panic. Ivan wouldn’t page her except in an emergency. She pictured Jesse—then stopped, willing the awful images away as she punched in her number on her phone and held her breath until she heard Ivan’s “Yes? Hello?”
“What’s wrong? What—”
“Why you aren’t here? Your boss says you were coming home. I told you, I am sorry to inconvenience but Robin, the girl from my history class—”
“Ivan, stop talking, this is—”
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