Claire and Present Danger Read online

  “Wish I could let you, but I’d be in big trouble if I did that,” I said. “What is it? Are you well?”

  She nodded.

  “Then is something frightening you—something out there? Somebody?”

  She sighed and shook her head, then she stood up abruptly. She was small and boyish, almost hidden—or hiding—inside her baggy clothing. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave now.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Would it be all right if I walked out with you? How do you get home?”

  “The bus. On the corner.”

  “Would you keep me company? You’re on the way to my car.”

  She blinked, then shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  She’d be safe and save face, because everyone would assume she was in some kind of trouble—with me. Why else would anyone be near a teacher when she didn’t have to be?

  I steeled myself against all manner of real and imagined Olivia-demons, but absolutely nothing threatened or seemed out of place. No stalkers, no cars idling, no derogatory calls, not even an embarrassing whistle or insult, and finally, the bus arrived and Olivia climbed on.

  I turned away, glad for the anticlimax, and nearly smacked into a petite woman it took me a moment to recognize.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I told you on the phone—I’m in a rush. Not today. There’s nothing to say, anyway.”

  “Please. I’m desperate!”

  I believed that she’d once been an actress. A good one, too—and she still was. “Maybe some other time.”

  “There isn’t any other time. I’m sure I’ll be—they’re going to—please. I feel as if . . . my whole life—you have to help me.”

  “Help you?” I didn’t know what to say. Help her? What was wrong with this picture? Claire Fairchild was dead. Emmie Cade’s husband was dead. A former fiancé was dead, too. The people who got close to her needed help, not her.

  “You think I’m evil.”

  Evil. Such an old-fashioned word, a pre-Freudian word, but obviously back in popularity. This was the second person in as many days to present me with the idea of evil. “I have no opinion of you,” I lied. “I don’t even know you.”

  “You were investigating me. Maybe you still are. I’m sure you’ve heard bad things, but they aren’t true.” She spoke softly, but they aren’t true sounded strained, as if she wanted to scream them. “I have to convince somebody that they aren’t true.” Her calm façade crumbled as she spoke, and she waved her hands, pushing off her phantom “bad things.”

  I was painfully aware that we were standing on the corner, smack on the busy sidewalk of a midtown street, and students who passed stared openly. “This isn’t the best place,” I said softly.

  “Where is, then?” she said. “I waited outside here for you. I only—I feel as if—”

  Her stammering felt fake and annoying. In fact, I couldn’t stand the entire situation. I had things to do, a life of my own and no time to be segmented and pulled apart.

  “It has to be now.” Her voice had regained calm and a new solidity. “Now.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I honestly cannot—”

  “If somebody was poisoned, and you could save them, but you were really busy right now—and I don’t doubt that you are—all the same, would you wait until it was convenient for you to see them? They could be dead by then!”

  But the nonhypothetical person was already dead. Odd she should pick the poison analogy.

  And maybe this business was not for me. Could you imagine either Nick or Nora ignoring the damsel in distress—or the femme fatale—whatever this shape-shifting woman was—because they had to prepare for their in-laws? I sighed, reconsidered, and admitted that my priorities were slightly skewed. “Can you be quick, please?” I finally asked. “I wish I were exaggerating about how pressed for time I am, but I’m not.”

  “I’d like to think that I’m as important as any other case you’re investigating,” she said quietly.

  I was flattered. In her eyes, once I left the schoolhouse, zap, I was instant P.I.-woman. “You are, of course,” I said, “but the truth is, this isn’t my case anymore. Our investigation is over. The client died.”

  “That’s just it! It isn’t over. Can’t be, with that—what they said, and you never had time to find out who I really am. You only heard bad things.”

  I pulled back a step.

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Tell me what’s on your mind. I don’t have time for games, and I’m going to my car in five minutes.” I checked my watch and made sure she saw me doing it. It also reminded me that I truly meant what I was saying. Ready, set, go.

  She looked around, clearly wishing for a more intimate spot and for time to present her case. “If we could find a—”

  “Can’t. Here and now, or not at all. Five minutes—less the time we’re wasting.”

  “It’s that I don’t know how to say it because I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You need to talk to me but you don’t know what to say?”

  “How to.”

  “Try. One word, then another. The way you usually would.”

  She blinked, then she looked down, at the tips of her chic, polished shoes. “People don’t like me,” she said, head still lowered.

  I might have expected this of a teenager. Or the poor child Lily, who’d tried to kill herself because of perceived unpopularity. Or from me, those months in sixth grade, but not from an adult, and a near-stranger. “I’m not a mental health worker. I can’t help your personal problems.”

  “You’re proving my point. You don’t like me, either. Do you? And you don’t even know me. I’m not talking about not being invited to the prom. People like me that way—but then something happens. Like it did with Leo’s mother. People—for no reason—get bad ideas about me.”

  “Hey, Miss Pepper! Don’t you ever go home?” a student called out as a gaggle of girls walked by. I waved and returned my attention to Emmie Cade’s poor, pitiable-me routine.

  She hadn’t turned to see who’d spoken and didn’t react to the mild interruption. She was completely engrossed in her own woes.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, although I had a working theory of what she was up to. She knew we’d found out about her various and sundry dead consorts, the mystery surrounding her recent and untimely widowhood, and this was damage control. A helpless, girlie variety of same.

  “Mrs. Fairchild told Leo she’d heard bad things she wanted to check out. Bad things about me. But what? Why? Who said them? I’m an ordinary person, trying my best. Bad things happen to me, but that can’t be what she meant. I’ve had bad luck with men, but now, with Leo, I thought—” She tilted her head and looked at me, her expression pure needy appeal.

  That was probably the method she’d used so effectively several times already. Maybe with guys, she threw in more eye-batting and perhaps even a tear.

  She read my face—or, at least, my lack of response—and her expression melted down into resignation. Despair. “I’m afraid you heard something damaging to me,” she said, her voice soft and tremulous. “I’m afraid that since Mrs. Fairchild died so unexpectedly—”

  “When a person’s killed, it’s generally unexpected.” It was mean to say that, to watch fear return to her face, but I hated what she was trying to do with me.

  “And I’m so afraid! What will the police think when they know she suspected me of . . . I don’t even know what. But that she was investigating me—and then this happens.” She blinked fast, as if holding back tears, and shook her head briskly, telling her own self not to cry. “The worst part is—I don’t know why this keeps happening. Why don’t people like me? Why do they think such awful things?”

  I had no answer. Or, more accurately, I thought the answer was lodged in a cliché somewhere—where there’s smoke, et cetera. When she was always the last person standing—and when so many had fallen—one had to worry. But even I, Amanda Cruella, wouldn’t sa
y that out loud. She looked so fragile now, and even though I knew it was a practiced pose, part of her repertoire of endearing stances, I was sure a harsh word could shatter her.

  “What should I do?” she asked. “How do I stop this? How do I set the record straight?”

  “I honestly don’t think there is a record, but I guess if I were you, I’d wait until somebody, somewhere said something directly to you. And then I’d be honest.”

  “Can’t I hire you? You could find out why this keeps happening to me.”

  “I’m sure there’s a serious conflict of interest there,” I said, sure of nothing of the sort. It felt as if there should be a conflict—but with whom? On what basis?

  She accepted the idea. “Then could you help me just because—because I’m a decent human being and I’m in trouble?”

  “Calm down. You aren’t making sense.”

  “Why did she suspect me? What did she suspect me of?”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Fairchild—your employer. What were you investigating?”

  “You.”

  “I know that. Leo told me. But why? What did she think? What bad things did she hear? From whom? How?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does! Who else heard whatever it was? And why is this happening? I left San Francisco because it had started back there. There was this . . . buzzing. That I’m a . . . that I did horrible things. I ran as far as I could get, but three thousand miles away—it’s happening again. This behind-my-back—but as fast as I turn around, nobody’s there.” She looked wide-eyed and terrified, even though her words were fairly well organized. I didn’t trust her or her claims of being afraid.

  “I’m sorry you’re going through this, but I do believe that ultimately, the truth, whatever it is, will out.”

  It was her turn, after pressing almost too close to me the whole time, to step back now, and turn herself into a vaguely amused sophisticate. “You believe that,” she said slowly.

  I nodded.

  “It’s so naÏve. I’m surprised. I thought you were savvier. Understood more about the world.”

  “Look, whatever it is—” I felt awful sounding as if I didn’t know about the rumors. She might be guilty of a multitude of crimes, but somebody else was, in fact, spreading the word. Somebody, or several somebodies—the post offices had been scattered—had mailed damning notes to Claire Fairchild. Had worked to craft them, to find the information, to post them. Emmie Cade’s suspicions were grounded in reality. What I didn’t know for sure was whether the accusations were grounded in reality as well. “It’s only rumor, you say. Sticks and stones and all that. Ignore it.”

  “How can I?” Her voice rising, she reached out as she spoke, as if to grab my hand, to literally pull me over to her side. I stepped back and she caught herself, and clasped her hands together. “Mrs. Fairchild is dead.” She sounded slightly out of breath, as if she were exercising. “She took medicine that killed her. She doesn’t go out much. She doesn’t shop. Somebody had to give it to her, then, right? I was there that night, and if they think I already . . .”

  I waited.

  “In San Francisco, my husband drowned. All the papers kept saying was what an expert yachtsman and sailor he was, and that’s true. But they didn’t say he was also an expert drinker. Not a drunk, not an alcoholic, I think, though I’m not sure, but a man who binged socially. It’s easy to keep that under wraps when you have money and own your own company, even though it was pulling that down, too. I didn’t really understand about it until after we were married, but I had hopes we’d get it more under control. We didn’t.

  “Instead, we got better at keeping it a secret. He’d get tipsy at parties, but then we’d leave. I’d drive or we’d take a taxi, or hire a limo service, and maybe he’d finish his drinking at home, where nobody except me would see it. He didn’t always go into his office, even when he was around, and things there were sliding, so when I suggested that he was drunk that day . . .” She shuddered. “Why would I lie? His friends knew. Nobody suspected anything terrible then. It was sad—but not that much of a shock, even. They knew what had happened—and then it all turned around. His first wife, I think. She hates me. I understand. His kids hate me, too. Somebody, anyway, started these rumors, and suddenly the papers quoted people as saying—even people who’d been drunk with him lots of times—that he was a great guy, a regular pal—fun to be with, which he was, and that they were shocked about the drowning because he was such a good sailor.”

  “You’re saying he fell overboard drunk?”

  “Of course. And that’s what the law thought—thinks—too. He wasn’t wearing a life vest, and that’s presented as highly suspicious—if you saw those news stories, or maybe you actually did, if you were checking out my past.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Why is that suspicious? It’s embarrassing, but not evil. He was—we were—I was in the . . . in our bedroom. I was below. He wanted to get another bottle of wine. He was . . . amorous. People don’t wear life vests then.”

  “There were all those people—”

  “Nobody around us. Just me and Jake in our own room. And that’s taken to be suspicious, but if you understand the situation . . .”

  I was listening to her as skeptically as I could manage, but also wondering whether listening at all was a good or stupid thing. Would Mackenzie compliment me for gathering additional information or would he say he couldn’t believe I’d wasted so much time? Much more than five minutes had passed. He’d made it clear that we’d be lucky to be paid for what we’d already done—I had to remember that this semi-career was all about money—and we surely wouldn’t be recompensed for standing on the corner talking with the prime suspect.

  “I’m not a bad person,” Emmie said. “I’m not saying I’ve been the most careful, or . . . or—” She waved her arms again, as if one of them might catch the missing word. “Sensible woman. I was . . . I don’t know. Wild. And I made dumb choices. And sometimes I took the . . . easier way. If somebody offered to help me out . . . maybe I shouldn’t have, but it was never really bad stuff. I liked the wrong guys. Except for Leo, now. He’s different. He’s solid. And, okay, I’ve done things that weren’t . . . I was not a perfect little good girl. Or big girl. But none of that means I did the kinds of thing they’re saying.”

  “Maybe they aren’t saying anything. Or more likely, maybe nobody is listening to whatever somebody’s saying.”

  “Mrs. Fairchild was.”

  “She was hoping I’d find nothing. She liked how happy her son was.”

  Emmie looked at me sideways, her mouth curled. “She hired you to check me out. That’s not what I consider real friendly.”

  That reminded me of my own future mother-in-law, and I checked my watch.

  “It’s making me ill,” she said. “I can’t sleep without drugs—I can’t eat—it’s making me crazy and sick. That woman—that Batya—she says I killed Claire Fairchild with this little bunch of flowers I brought for her. Poor woman—I think she’s snapped.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, and I meant it. I didn’t know how people tied their lives up in knots this way.

  “Can I talk with you again? Will you help me? Is there some way you could find out who’s spreading these rumors?”

  I knew they were more than rumors. They were newspaper reports, her actual track record. “I’ll—I’ll think about what’s appropriate,” I said. “And now I absolutely—”

  “Thank you! Thank you for listening.”

  No matter how many doubts I had about whether she was a liar and a murderer, there was something undeniably winning and sympathetic about her. Mackenzie had reminded me that even the newspaper story was innuendo and supposition. “The Truth” as an absolute was nowhere to be seen, so maybe she was being victimized on a grand scale.

  Or maybe she was an experienced—almost a professional—manipulator. Actress, seasoned fortune-hunter, experienced seductress. A s
iren, and I was a sucker. I made my way to my car, thinking only, now, of Gabby and Boy, Bea and Gilbert, and how I was going to handle the next few days. Countdown had begun, and I had enough to do to fill every one of those twenty-four hours.

  Mackenzie should be home by now, cramming as much reading and classwork in as possible tonight so that he wouldn’t feel pressured when his parents arrived.

  We’d have time to talk while we cleaned together, later, but I wasn’t sure I could wait that long to tell him about Claire Fairchild’s unnatural death, and Emmie Cade’s bizarre curbside appearance. In fact, I knew I couldn’t. I unlocked the door to our loft and called out, “Study break time! Drop the books because you won’t believe what—”

  Three tall people stood up.

  Impossible. Mackenzie had hired actors to scare me out of my wits. This was Wednesday. They were coming tomorrow. Thursday.

  The two tall strangers grinned at me. They stood in the middle of the mess and chaos of my household, smiling. Or perhaps silently laughing at the pathetic situation.

  I blinked.

  They were still there.

  “Noah’s girl—” the balding one said.

  “Clarissa,” the Technicolor one added.

  “Clarissa was invited to visit a friend, and Noah and Angela were driving her upstate, so we left a day early. No traffic, either.”

  “Besides, we were so excited about meeting you, honey! Come over and give a hug.” She wore a shiny scarlet peasant-style blouse and dangling green and scarlet sparkling earrings, and she opened her arms wide. Her nails matched her earrings. Including the sparkles.

  When he’d called his mother “colorful,” I hadn’t realized he meant it literally.

  “Poor baby,” she said. “You’ve got this huge blotch on your sleeve, did you know?”

  “Meet the folks,” Mackenzie said.

  Fourteen

  EITHER his parents called ahead from the road, or Mackenzie had suddenly become prescient. It was not in either of our natures to rush home from school and shop, straighten and polish, and yet, once my vision stopped flashing and crackling and my synapses returned to their usual connections, the tidiness of the loft registered.