The contract was long. He was still reading. She was starting to feel uneasy. “Do you think it is demeaning?” He might not have been a household name throughout America, but at the peak of his career everybody in snowboarding knew who he was. So to be teaching five-year-olds in a small resort did seem like a big come-down.
“Of course it is demeaning, but I don’t care about that. If no one signs up, I will ask my parents to bring up some of the grandkids so we can say it is mostly a family thing.” He set the contract on the counter, open to the page where he would need to sign. “Now is it my turn?”
“Go for it.”
Except for asking her what her schedule was, he had said nothing about the progress he had been making on their deal. It turned out that he had a complete plan in place.
He had learned that Autumn’s longtime advisors, both the people who had guided her career so well and those who were involved with her lifestyle merchandise, had smelled a disaster in the very public search for Ariel. They had advised against it. She had hired new people. They had been the ones to set up the television show. Now everyone was in damage-control mode. The shopping channel had cut back on her appearances; sales were already dropping. It was a problem. The layoffs had already started. Autumn’s search for her child was costing people their jobs.
Her new advisors had agreed to release her DNA to a lab of Ben’s choosing, but only after a face-to-face meeting first.
“Why do they want that?”
“I suspect that they, not Autumn, would rather not find Ariel at all than have Ariel be unacceptable.”
“So if I am unacceptable, they won’t release the DNA?”
“I didn’t pursue that. It is inconceivable that anyone would find you unacceptable.”
Colleen had to agree with that. “So when’s the meeting? Do we need to go to California?”
“No. As I said before, we have leverage. They’re coming to DC when we take the jewelry in to be appraised next week. It’s going to be completely private. Just Autumn and one PR person. She always travels with a hairdresser and a stylist, but they won’t be in the room, and they won’t know what’s going on.”
Next week. Colleen had almost stopped listening as soon as she heard that. They were going to DC next Tuesday. Today was Friday.
So this was going to happen. It was actually going to happen. “I wonder if she and I will know, looking at each other. Do you think we will?”
“You need to be careful about that,” Ben advised. “You might think you know when it is only something that you want. I have the DNA kit here if you want to send in your sample. I did a fair amount of research. The lab is as secure as can be.”
“That’s fine.” She sat down on one of the kitchen chair and tilted her head back like a baby bird. Ben deftly swept the inside of her cheek with swabs that retracted into sealed containers.
“This won’t hold up in court,” he said as he put them in a small cardboard shipping box. “If you want it to be legal, the sample has to be collected by professionals, but I didn’t think we cared about that.”
He said that he would run in to the village so the box would get sent out before the weekend. “Oh, and for all this, my name is Gary Vogel.”
“Gary Vogel? Why? Are you trying to pass as German?”
He smiled in that way he had. His lips didn’t move, but you still knew that he was smiling. “Actually the first time I was him, I was trying to pass as twenty-one. Ryan had a fake ID, and that was the name on it. Since it was his picture and we look so much alike, he passed it along to me when he turned twenty-one.”
Another advantage of having siblings who were from the same gene pool as you. “Did Tommy and Mark use it?”
“Tommy couldn’t. He doesn’t look like us. You know him, he has that whole ‘map of Ireland’ face. Mark used it a couple of times, but by then Gary was getting a little long in the tooth. Why are you looking like that? Didn’t you ever have a fake ID made?”
“Of course not,” she answered self-righteously. She hadn’t needed to. Her features were sufficiently indistinctive that she could easily borrow an ID if she needed one. Pam Sellers, one of her older sorority sisters, had had mono and couldn’t go out much. Colleen had been Pam a lot. She had also been Reena Schone and Rachel Perdue.
And now she would find out if she was also Ariel.
Chapter 13
On Monday Colleen picked up the jewelry from the safe-deposit box. She had initially brought it in Grannor’s big walnut case. There had not been room for the case in the safe-deposit box, and she had taken it back to the lake, but she hadn’t thought to bring it with her this time. She had to ask one of the tellers for a shopping bag.
She supposed that Ben was right. Even if she did feel a connection with Autumn, she shouldn’t trust it. Of course, Autumn would feel familiar. When Colleen had to rest her ankle after hurting it in dance class, her mother had let her watch Autumn’s Disney movies. Reruns of M.J. had been aired often enough that Colleen supposed that she had seen all the episodes.
What if the meeting was awful? She had heard that meeting a celebrity could be disappointing. They didn’t make eye contact; you felt invisible. You might try to start a conversation, but any question you could ask, they had answered a million times. They weren’t going to ask you about yourself; they didn’t care about you.
But surely Autumn would care about Ariel.
Leilah hadn’t cleared out the basement, so Colleen hid the jewelry behind a pile of dirty Venetian blinds. She came upstairs, washed her hands, and started making dinner even though it was barely noon.
What was she going to wear on Tuesday? It would be nice to wear something of her mother’s. Why hadn’t she had the emerald suit altered to fit her? Yes, the color would make the rest of her look like an unbaked oatmeal cookie. The buttonholes would be too widely spaced when the jacket was cut down, and the yoke of the skirt would hit her at the widest part of her hips. But so what? It was her mother’s. She wouldn’t have to tell Autumn, but she would know herself.
But she hadn’t done it. She was going to have to wear her boring “back to school night” black pantsuit.
She could have at least gotten her hair cut, but she hadn’t. This always happened to her. Her hair was fine one day, fine the next, fine the day after that, and then suddenly it was awful, a scraggly nightmare. Why didn’t she schedule regular appointments?
Because she was a foreign language teacher at a parochial school. She wanted to get every last second out of a haircut. She supposed that if she did indeed get money from Grannor, she could get better haircuts. At least that wouldn’t be as complicated as having more money than your friends.
* * * *
It would take at least three-and-a-half hours to drive to DC. They were taking Grannor’s big Lincoln as it was more comfortable than Colleen’s little tin can of a car. Ben suggested that she pack a small overnight bag in case they wanted to stay over.
They were first going to drop off the jewelry at a place on Connecticut Avenue. Ben would call ahead. Someone would come out and escort Colleen and the jewelry inside while he parked the car. Then a limousine service would take them from the jeweler’s to the small hotel where Autumn was staying. It was in Georgetown, and Ben said that he didn’t want to have to find parking. It didn’t seem like him to worry about something like that, but she had agreed to let him do things his way.
Colleen insisted that they leave extra-early. It was a good thing as rain slowed the traffic on I-81. The rain let up as they headed east, but there was roadwork on I-66 and a stalled vehicle in the middle of Connecticut Avenue. They were going to arrive at the jeweler’s thirty minutes after they had hoped to.
Colleen started to fret. Ben assured her that they still had plenty of time, and even if they were a little behind schedule, the jeweler’s would be open all day, and Autumn wasn’t going to leave.
“I hate being late,” she said.
They finally pulled up to the front of the jewelry store. Waiting outside were a burly security guard and a middle-aged man in a neat pin-striped suit. The man introduced himself as Seth Robbins, the grandson of the founder and the company’s senior gemologist. He accepted the jewelry as unblinkingly as if clients always carried their jewels in a Forever Twenty-One shopping bag. He then directed Colleen through the carpeted retail space and into a back room, half of which was divided into three glass-walled cubicles with the rest given over to a conference table. Coffee and pastries were set up on a sideboard. Colleen accepted a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. Mr. Robbins began to unpack the jewelry, careful to keep his hands visible to her at all times. Two young apprentice gemologists took the pieces from him one at a time, going to glass-walled cubicles to examine the jewelry under a microscope, careful not to turn their backs or hide their hands. They were doing a preliminary examination of each piece, Mr. Robbins explained. Preparing the appraisals and lab certificates was much more time-consuming.
He didn’t say it, but they were probably checking to be sure that she hadn’t brought in any fakes. For all she knew, all the pieces might be fake. That would be an interesting twist.
She watched blankly as the gemologists worked. Shouldn’t she be feeling something more? She might never see any of this jewelry again. When she was a little girl, she had been dazzled by the five-strand topaz choker with its pave diamond bars. Now she knew that she would have to be at least six inches taller to dream of wearing it. And even if she were taller, where would she have worn it? The last charity gala that she had attended had been a pancake supper at the elementary school.
She looked at her watch. They were to meet Autumn in sixty-seven minutes.
Mr. Robbins told her that the pearls needed to be restrung. She said that she knew that.
Sixty-six minutes.
“Mr. Robbins, could you please come here?” It was one of the apprentices, speaking from the entry to her cubicle.
Mr. Robbins signaled to the security guard to come stand closer to the shopping bag. With another gesture, he encouraged Colleen to come to the cubicle with him. It seemed rude not to go. The breath-mint tin was open on the apprentice’s worktable. Two rings were still in it; the third was under the microscope.
He bent over the microscope. Colleen looked at her watch again. Fifty-nine minutes.
“Oh, my,” Mr. Robbins said. “This is unusually fine.”
Apparently the diamonds in all three rings were not only large, but had remarkable clarity and unusual cut. The gemologists exclaimed over them to one another. Mr. Robbins asked her what she knew of their history. “Do you know when they were purchased?”
“No.” Their history was lost.
Another three minutes had passed.
The sapphire earrings were taken out…the garnet bracelet…forty-eight minutes…a single ruby earring, its mate long missing…two gold pocket watches…the cameo brooch…the cloisonné bracelets…finally, finally they were done. Mr. Robbins signed a receipt, which Colleen put in her purse without looking at it. The security guard told her that the car was out front.
Ben was waiting for her near the retail counters. “Any surprises?” he asked, slipping his phone in his pocket.
“Are we going to be late? Do we have enough time?”
“We’ll be fine.”
The car waiting for them was black and quietly luxurious. The back seat was more spacious than the front, and there were, as in airplanes, drop-down trays that could be used as desks. The windows were tinted. Colleen could see out, but it was hard for other people to see in.
Colleen noticed Ben looking at his phone. “What’s wrong? I thought you said we were okay.”
“We aren’t going to be late,” he assured her. “The publicist was supposed to text me the suite number, and he hasn’t.”
“Is that a problem? Should we do something?”
“If we don’t hear by the time we get there, we’ll ask at the front desk.” He was calm.
Colleen looked at the window. She had no idea where they were. The street was wide; there were businesses on both sides, small boutiques and chic-looking bistros. They came to a traffic circle, then a stoplight. The driver had to stop. Colleen leaned forward and looked ahead. There seemed to be a stoplight at every single intersection.
They were never going to get there.
The driver turned off the wide street onto a narrow one, then again onto one that was narrower still. The street was lined with brick row houses. The street must have once been residential, but the houses now had small brass plates or discreet signs identifying places of business.
“The hotel is up ahead,” the driver said. “I’m going to have to pull up ahead of the entrance.”
Colleen looked around. She didn’t see anything that looked like a hotel, but on Ben’s side of the car, one building had a maroon awning covering the passage to the curb. A cluster of people were standing under the awning as if to escape the rain.
But it hadn’t rained here. The pavement was dry.
She reached into her purse, wanting to check her phone to be sure that the ringer was turned off. The purse tilted, spilling out half of what was inside. Her lipstick fell to the floor. As she bent forward to retrieve it, she heard Ben opening the car door. The lipstick had rolled farther than she had thought, and she had to undo her seat belt in order to reach it. She was putting it back in her purse and sliding across the seat when suddenly Ben was back in the car, shouldering her aside. He slammed the door.
“Go, go,” he yelled at the driver. The car shot ahead, then stopped so quickly that Colleen jerked forward, falling against the back of the front seat.
The car’s horn blared. Someone was pounding on the car. Ben had his hand on her, pressing her down. She turned her head so she could see out the side window. Someone was trying to look in. It was a woman. She had her face close to the window, her hands forming a tunnel as she tried to block out the glare of the sun.
Colleen tried to sit up. Ben used his forearm to force her to lie on the seat. “Stay down,” he ordered, then he twisted in his seat, doing something, and an instant later she was swaddled in darkness. He had thrown his blazer over her head.
She tried to throw it off. “Don’t,” he said. “We can’t let them get your picture.”
“What on earth is going on? You have to tell me.”
“I can’t move,” she heard the driver say. “Someone’s right in front of the car.” He started honking the horn again, over and over, a fast, rhythmless tattoo.
Colleen lifted the edge of Ben’s jacket. Spurts of light, sharp little bullets, were flashing in the car window. They were from cameras. People were trying to get a picture of her. She heard a clicking near the door handle. They were trying to get in.
Ben’s cell phone rang. Colleen felt his weight shift as he pulled it out of his pocket.
“I’m not saying one word,” he snapped, “until you get these people off of us…no…no…I don’t want to hear it until the car can move…I’m turning off my phone.”
The driver had stopped using the horn. Colleen could hear the pounding on the car and the voices… “Ariel, Ariel. Ariel, please. Roll down the window.”
“How many are there?” she asked.
“Not sure.” Ben was trying to keep out of view too. “Eight…ten…but two people are in front of the car, and one in back. We can’t move.”
“Jesus,” the driver swore, “someone’s climbing up over the hood. What’s wrong with these people?”
“How good are their pictures going to be?” Ben asked.
“Awful. We can’t have a lot of tint on our windows here, but there’s enough that they’re only going to get their own reflection, especially the idiots who don’t know how to turn the flash off on the
ir cell phones.”
“That seems to be most of them.”
“No, there’s at least one professional,” the driver said. “There’s also a guy with a sound boom. This was planned.”
“You’re with a big outfit, aren’t you?” Ben asked him.
“Biggest in DC.”
“Then call your boss and tell him to tell the hotel that if they don’t get some staff out here, you’ll never pick up anyone at this hotel ever again. And you’ll get the other services to blackball them too.”
Colleen lifted up the edge of the jacket again. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“No, ma’am. Not yet,” the driver said. “We’ll be here all afternoon if we have to explain ourselves to the cops.”
“And they’ll only care about your safety,” Ben added, “not your privacy. First thing they’ll have us all get out of the car.”
And then everyone would take her picture. They would want to get close to her, they would want to…actually, Colleen had no idea what they could possibly want.
The driver was still on the phone, not using his horn, so there was nothing to block out the pounding and the voices. “Ariel…Ariel, please…” It was like being in some horrible zombie-attack movie.
In a market in Egypt…or had it been Cambodia?…she had once been surrounded by a swarm of beggars’ children, but a tiny bit of money had gotten her out of that.
“Please, Ariel…come out…” The voices, the pounding continued.
“I think I can back up,” the driver said. Colleen felt the car move a foot or so, then stop. “Nope. Damn these people. They’re crazy. They deserve to be run over.”
At least they were in the car. It was protecting them from this frenzied little mob. What if they had been on foot, walking from wherever Ben had parked?
“Okay,” the driver said in another minute. “Got a text from my boss. Some publicist is going to come out with the hotel people.”
“Then get away as fast as you can.”
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