The Lost Daughter

by Lucretia Grindle

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”

  “Tell me,” Pallioti asked. “About the boyfriend? Let’s start with his name.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “You don’t know his name?” The question was sharper than Enzo intended. “I’m sorry,” he added quickly. “It just seems—”

  “I know.” Mary Louise deflated as quickly as she had bristled. “I know. It seems weird. It is weird. But honest to God, it’s true. I swear. That’s why I’m telling you. Because it is so weird. Usually, you know, girls, like, talk about this stuff. And Kristin did, kind of. I mean, she let us all know that she was seeing someone—you couldn’t miss it, she went out with him all the time. But she wouldn’t tell us anything about him. All I know is he has the same car as her dad, and he called her Beatrice.” Mary Louise made a face. “And she called him Dante. Sorry,” she added, “but that’s all. I never met him. Honestly. And in the last week or so, right before she went away, she totally shut up. She was always really careful.”

  “Careful?” Enzo felt the string pluck again.

  Mary Louise nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Like, she always went to meet him. Away from us. She said he was really private. We used to call him the Mystery Man. Kris told me that stuff, about what she called him—just that once. She said she loved him. That it was ‘the real thing,’ and that she’d invited him to her party. We’d had some wine. Kris didn’t really drink. But that was all she said. That he took her to museums and out to eat and for walks and stuff. I asked her if he had a palazzo, if she went to his house or his office, or what, and she didn’t really answer. We were both kind of drunk. If she brought him to the apartment,” Mary Louise added, “and I don’t know if she did—she made sure it was when I wasn’t around. All I really know about him is he’s older.”

  “Older?” Enzo heard the answering hum in Pallioti’s voice.

  Mary Louise nodded again. “A lot older,” she said, looking at Enzo. “Older than you.” She turned to Pallioti. “Maybe more like your age. I mean, he’s, like, Kristin’s dad. She said that. He’s in his, I don’t know, fifties. I guess”

  “If you never met him, signorina,” Pallioti asked quietly, “how do you know?”

  “Because,” Mary Louise Tennyson said, “I took his picture.”

  The photo had been taken with a cell phone, from above, and through a window. The image showed a large black car parked in the street. A blond girl, presumably Kristin Carson, was ducking into the passenger seat. A man was opening the driver’s door. Mary Louise had caught him looking straight up at her.

  It had been a rare bright day; the picture’s definition was good. The man had a strong-featured, clean-shaven face. Of medium height, broad-shouldered but not fat, even on the little phone screen it was clear that he was handsome. And knew it. He wore a dark high-necked sweater under what appeared to be a suede jacket. His sunglasses were pushed on his forehead, nestling in still abundant curly dark hair that was only slightly silvered with gray. One gloved hand rested on the top of the car door.

  There was nothing overt, but the immediate impression was unsavory. The girl, the car, the sunglasses.

  “When was this taken?” Enzo asked.

  “About ten days ago,” Mary Louise said. “Sunday. He came to pick her up to take her out to lunch. Like I said, he never did that, that I know of, anyway. But that time he did. He didn’t come up to the apartment or anything. He just parked outside the door.”

  Enzo handed the phone to Pallioti. “How long,” he asked Mary Louise, “did you say this had been going on? This man and Kristin?”

  Mary Louise shook her head.

  “I don’t know. Exactly. I thought at first—well, you know I didn’t know Kristin until we got here, really until we got the same apartment.” She ran her hand over her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about it. Kris was, she was so excited, way back when we first arrived. All, like, you know, when you’ve just met somebody you really like. But—”

  Mary Louise looked at Enzo and shrugged.

  “But?”

  “But that isn’t right. Because she was like that on the plane. On the way over. You know, we all met and flew over together in a group, and when we got here, I mean the second we landed, she started texting and she said some stuff that kind of sounded like she knew him before.”

  “Before she got here? Before she arrived in Florence?”

  Mary Louise nodded. Enzo felt the weight of Kristin’s laptop in the bag her father had handed over upstairs. His eyes met Pallioti’s over the girl’s head. “Why did you take it?”

  She blinked, her eyes welling.

  “His picture,” Enzo asked again. “Why did you take his picture?”

  Mary Louise opened her mouth. She looked from Enzo to Pallioti.

  “My mom,” she said finally. “My mom always told me that if you feel like there’s something wrong, you should do something about it. You know, not just sit there. That afternoon, Sunday—Kris and I had talked about him, for, like, the only time, a few nights before—and I just had a bad feeling. I just—” Mary Louise took a deep breath. “When we were drinking, I asked her, you know, where they went. To make love. Have sex. And she said—she said the Seventh Circle of Hell. And it was funny, you know, because of Dante. But it wasn’t. So when I heard her answer the intercom, I was in my room. And after she went out, I was curious, obviously. I wanted to see him. And I went to the window, at the end of the hall, that looks over the street, and I had my phone in my hand, and—”

  Tears began to run down Mary Louise’s cheeks.

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” she said. “I couldn’t think of anything else. It seemed like at least—”

  She groped in her bag for a tissue. Enzo wondered if she was still staying in the apartment, if anyone from the school had thought to move her, or if this poor girl had simply been left carrying the whole weight of whatever had or hadn’t happened to Kristin Carson.

  Pallioti put his hand on her shoulder. “Signorina Tennyson,” he asked, “where are you staying?”

  Mary Louise made an effort to smile.

  “I’m OK,” she said, sniffing. “Really. For the last few nights—well, I didn’t want to stay there anymore, in Kris’s and my apartment, so I moved into one of the others. With some of my friends.” Her eyes widened, mistaking Pallioti’s concern. “I left a note,” she added. “In an envelope on the door. And another one on the table, where Kris couldn’t miss it. So if she came back she wouldn’t think—”

  “That’s exactly the right thing.” Pallioti’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t need to worry about this anymore,” he said. “You let us worry about it now.”

  Mary Louise looked at him for a moment, then she said, “There’s something else.”

  “Go on.”

  “Up there, in front of her parents.” She twisted the sodden tissue. “I wasn’t telling the truth. I couldn’t. About ten days ago—” Mary Louise stopped. In the silence that followed, Enzo might have congratulated himself on winning his bet, if he’d been in the mood, but he wasn’t.

  When she started speaking again, Mary Louise Tennyson’s words came quickly.

  “Kristin borrowed some money from me. Kind of a lot, actually. She said she needed cash, and she didn’t want to get an advance on her credit card because her dad would see it. So I used mine.” She looked from Pallioti to Enzo. “It was four hundred euros.”

  “Did she tell you what it was for?”

  She dropped her eyes. A blush crept from under the collar of her jacket.

  “Well, no,” she said. “And I didn’t ask. I was waiting for her to tell me. I thought she might be, you know.”

  “Pregnant?”

  Mary Louise nodded.

  “That’s where I thought she went, actually.” She looked up. “That’s why I was so careful, about what I said around her folks.”

  Pallioti nodded. “So you thi
nk she needed the money for an abortion, that that’s what she’s gone to do?”

  “She could have told me,” Mary Louise said after a second. “I guess I’m mad she didn’t. I mean”—she dug her hands in to her pockets—“I know Kris doesn’t like me that much, even if we were starting to be, kind of, friends. But even so, I would have helped. I wouldn’t have said anything.” Hurt etched her pretty face. “I feel like I shouldn’t even be telling you now,” she added. “But—” Her voice began to teeter dangerously. “When she hadn’t called me back by last night, I got scared. That maybe something had gone wrong. And with her parents showing up—”

  “You did the right thing. Absolutely the right thing.”

  Pallioti pulled out his phone. He asked Mary Louise for the address of the apartment where she was staying, confirmed that there was someone there so she would not be alone, and called Guillermo to arrange for a car to come to the consulate and take her home.

  “My phone?” she asked.

  Still speaking to Guillermo, Pallioti handed Mary Louise’s phone to Enzo.

  “I have to take it now,” Enzo said. “But I’ll get it back to you as soon as we download this picture of Kristin and—”

  “What picture?”

  Between their own conversation and the to-ing and fro-ing in the lobby, none of them had noticed James MacCready escorting the Carsons down the stairs. Now they stood only a few feet away. Enzo didn’t think they could possibly have heard what Mary Louise had been saying, but she blanched nonetheless, her dark eyes turning shiny with more tears.

  “What picture?” Dr. Carson asked again.

  “This picture.” Pallioti closed his own phone and reached for Mary Louise’s. “Miss Tennyson,” he said, “very kindly agreed to wait and answer some more questions for us. She remembered that she’d taken a photo of Kristin and a friend.”

  “A friend?” Kristin’s father was extracting a pair of glasses from his jacket.

  “He may have nothing to do with Kristin’s disappearance.” Pallioti smiled. He handed Kenneth Carson the cell phone. “Do you recognize him?” He asked.

  Enzo and Pallioti watched as Kristin’s father studied the screen. He frowned, then shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “No, I’ve never seen him before in my life. Is he a professor or something? How does Kris know him?”

  Pallioti ignored the question, retrieved the phone, and handed it to Clarissa Hines.

  “Ms. Hines?”

  Clarissa took Mary Louise’s phone gingerly, as if it might explode, studied it for a moment, then shook her head. Enzo caught James MacCready’s eye as he looked over her shoulder. He shook his head, too.

  “Maybe some of the other girls would. But no,” Clarissa Hines said to Pallioti. “No. I’ve never seen him before.”

  Kenneth Carson was saying something to Pallioti, asking when the photo had been taken and what would happen next, and Pallioti had begun to reply, explaining again about the reach of the databases, but Enzo didn’t hear him. He was too busy watching Kristin’s stepmother.

  In the harsh lights of the lobby, Anna Carson looked exhausted, as if she was about to fall over, the effort of walking down the consulate stairs the final straw. It was jet lag, probably. Or maybe just years of worrying about Kristin. Enzo glanced around to see if there was a chair he could offer her.

  “Let me find you somewhere to sit.”

  The words came before he remembered to translate them into English. She looked at him, then frowned and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m the original ugly American. I don’t speak a word of Italian, or—”

  Clarissa Hines was handing her Mary Louise’s phone. Kristin’s stepmother took it the way someone takes a newspaper or a magazine they aren’t interested in. She had started to hand it on to Enzo, their fingers were touching, when he felt her freeze.

  “Signora?”

  Anna Carson’s face went blank. Then she blinked. Her features had the confused look of someone surfacing from deep water.

  “Signora?” Enzo touched her elbow, grazing the soft cloth of her coat.

  She shook her head.

  “Where?” she asked. “I mean, I’m sorry—when was this taken?”

  “Outside Kristin’s apartment.” Enzo glanced at her husband, who was lost in his cross-examination of Pallioti. “The Sunday before last. We’ll get a stamp,” he added, “when we download it, for the exact time and—”

  “No.” She shook her head again.

  Enzo looked at her.

  “No?”

  Anna Carson forced a bright, cheerful, and very fake smile on to her face. “No, I have no idea who this man is.” She dropped the phone into Enzo’s hand. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she said, stepping away as she answered the question he hadn’t asked.

  * * *

  The Excelsior Hotel stood on the Piazza Ognissanti looking down its nose at its rival, The Grand, which sat almost directly across from it. Since both of them were now owned by the same American chain, Enzo suspected the rivalry was, like more and more of the city, as much marketing as reality. The idea made him sad generally. And in this case, specifically—for his grandmother.

  Like many women of her class and generation, his grandmother had marked the major events of her life at one hotel or the other. The occasions had been parsed out evenly, shared between jealous siblings. She had been proposed to in the Excelsior’s bar, and celebrated the tenth, and then the twentieth and fortieth anniversaries of the marriage that resulted, in its dining room. The fifth, fifteenth, and thirtieth anniversaries, and the lunch to mark the christening of her only child, Enzo’s mother, had been held at the Grand. Until five years ago she had lunched there every Tuesday with her best friend, who had also been her bridesmaid.

  On the now rare occasions when his grandfather was out of town, Enzo sometimes escorted her to one of the lobbies for tea. Or if she was feeling festive, or annoyed, to the roof garden or bar, depending on the season, for a martini. He had told his grandparents that he was joining the police, rather than going to medical school as they had hoped for him, over dinner in the safety of the Excelsior dining room.

  Now, as he came through the door, he was forced to admit that the much-trumpeted refurbishment was indeed impressive. The inlaid marble floors with their clashing circles and squares, the blue insets of the coffered ceiling, and the chandeliers that hung from them, were undeniably brighter. The carpets were no longer threadbare. The mahogany and brass glowed, and the potted palms had been banished. Which, he thought, explained the sadness in his grandmother’s eyes. All this polishing, all this chic efficiency, had left the place empty. Denied their shadows and dusty corners, its ghosts had fled.

  At the reception desk, Enzo slipped his identification out of his pocket. The doorman, who had not been replaced in the frenzy of updating, had recognized him. The young woman on duty did not. All she saw were jeans and sneakers topped by a leather jacket and ponytail. She was about to say that deliveries went to the service door, or possibly to ring for security, when he placed his credentials in front of her. She looked at them. Then she looked at Enzo, who smiled and told her what he needed.

  According to the concierge, when the Carsons returned from the consulate, Mrs. Carson—who had apparently recovered and was no longer exhausted—had asked about the best places to run in the city. Steering her away from the Cascine, the concierge had suggested she head for the Lungarno Torrigiani, and if she didn’t mind hills, the Costa San Giorgio. He’d marked the route on a map. She’d come down ten minutes later, in running gear, and gone out. That had been over an hour ago. No, she had not yet returned. But, he murmured after a moment’s hesitation, it had come to his attention that the Carsons had a reservation for lunch. In the restaurant at one o’clock. A table for three. They were being joined by the American consul.

  Enzo glanced at his watch, then wandered into a corner where he settled on an uncomfortable settee that had a
clear view of the entrance. The old revolving doors had survived along with the doorman. They swung at regular intervals like some kind of circus show, spitting the wealthy and well-heeled into the lobby or spinning them out into the gray morning. Enzo resisted the impulse to take out his phone and check with the computer lab, see if they had found anything on Kristin Carson’s laptop.

  Given that he could he could observe two, if not three, things at once and remember them in more detail than most people remembered their names, he refrained largely because it wouldn’t do any good. The police geek squad was impervious to harassment. And everything else. Nestled in the heart of the labyrinth that was the building’s basement, breathing their own air, running on their own time, they took pride in the fact that no one had yet discovered the threat or bribe that could move them. If there was something to find on Kristin’s computer, they’d find it, in their own sweet time and not before. When they did, they’d text him. Enzo leaned back and concentrated on the doors. He suspected Kristin Carson’s stepmother was not going to be delighted to see him.

  * * *

  When Anna Carson did finally come into the hotel lobby she was behind a family with two teenagers, boys, bickering and giving each other little shoves, and looked so different from the woman Enzo had seen at the consulate a few hours earlier that he almost missed her.

  The unreconstructed male in his brain couldn’t help registering the fact that her running clothes, spandex leggings and a windbreaker, were a distinct improvement over the almost dowdy skirt and sweater she’d been wearing that morning. It wasn’t tennis or golf. As the concierge said, Anna Carson ran. And seriously. Legs like that didn’t shuffle for fun. Her hair was pulled back. Despite the weather, she was wearing sunglasses.

  Enzo caught up with her just as she put her hand on the stair banister.

  “Signora Carson?”

  She looked up, startled, then almost too late, remembered to smile. It was nothing more than a slight upturn of her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course. From the consulate this morning—I’ve forgotten your name.” She shook her head in a silly-me gesture that Enzo found entirely unconvincing. “I’m not very good with names.”