“Really? You opened a restaurant with no high chairs?” Kendall countered with her own glare.
“We aren’t geared to babies,” Andrea replied coldly. “However, we do have a booster seat. But just one. And as far as children’s food, Chef can prepare smaller portions of regular adult meals, if you like.”
“Okay. I’ll stash Winnie in the booster and Rei and I will trade off holding Jacqueline. I understand this is the opening night and all, but you will probably need to improve your seating. Lesson learned!” Kendall said cheerfully.
Without answering, Andrea led us to the table. Kendall made a face at me, and I mouthed my apologies to her. I was sorry. The restaurant should have had high chairs and at least a few booster seats. But how could I locate baby furniture that looked as if it was a hundred years old and Asian?
The children played underneath the table, tugging at the white tablecloth so vigorously that I was on the verge of saying something. Finally, Carla the runner appeared with a plastic booster seat. Kendall strapped it around a chair and hoisted Win inside.
“I didn’t mean to bring them,” Kendall said. “The problem is that I’d forgotten I gave our au pair the night off to go to a dance at the Naval Academy. I didn’t want to stand you up, and I have big news I wanted you to be the second to know about.”
“Another baby?” I could ask happily, because a week earlier I’d gotten a tiny bit of proof that I wasn’t going to have one myself.
Kendall looked as if I’d slapped her. “I guess you can tell that I missed last week’s sessions with my trainer. When I stop lifting weights, my metabolism goes haywire.” She sighed. “Actually, I’ve been so busy because I agreed to organize a fund-raising dinner for Harp Snowden. I’m considering this as a possible location.”
“Wow! If you have the dinner here, Marshall and Jiro will be ecstatic!” And I would be, too, if pictures of my beautiful restaurant showed up on television and in news magazines all over the country.
“It’s going to be fun, but a ton of work. We’re meeting next week to start thinking about the logistics of it all. Food, music, the works!” Kendall snapped her fingers, and the twins started to giggle. “For music I’m thinking about trying to get Coldplay—they’re interested in liberal politics, you know. And doesn’t Hugh just love them?”
“We both do, but you know, Hugh isn’t a citizen, he can’t vote—”
“No biggie. He can still donate; there’s no law against that yet.” Kendall made a face. “I’m going to have a hell of a time convincing Win to write a check, though. He’s gotten so cranky about money lately.”
“Well, he was a Republican before he married you, right?”
“Still is.” Kendall made a face. “Thank God I have Grand’s trust to tap into for my own use. He’d never go for me spending his money on my candidates.”
“Is Win joining us later?” I inquired.
Kendall shook her head. “He has a late appointment in northern Virginia. It drives me crazy, but that’s what I deserve for marrying a real estate guy. Where’s your own hubcap?”
“Japan.” I would have elaborated, but Jacqueline was starting to try to wriggle off my lap. Kendall had said she’d hold her daughter after she finished reading the menu. That reminded me that the twins would need some dining suggestions.
“Jacqueline, do you like noodles?” I entreated. “There are some nice noodles on the menu in a yummy sweet sauce.”
“Ooh, let me have the steak,” Kendall said, studying the menu. “After that weight gain, I’m back on Atkins. And for dessert, it’s got to be fruit and whipped cream. Hmm, I don’t see it listed on the menu, but Jessica Olson’s doing the desserts, so I can ask her to put together something special for us. You should have it, too, Rei. No carbs in whipped cream!”
“But why?” I objected. “I’ve tasted Jessica’s cakes and tarts before, and they’re not to be missed.”
“I took a cooking class from her at the Smithsonian once, before I’d started watching my weight. Let me tell you that she’s a real bitch. She went ballistic when I suggested substituting Pepperidge Farm puff pastry for homemade in one of the recipes she was teaching us.”
“Well, Jessica is a La Varenne–trained pastry chef—” I cut myself off, distracted because Jacqueline started to burble about wanting macaroni, and Win Junior started grabbing all the beautiful faux-ivory-handled tableware; Kendall’s cell phone rang. She slipped it out of her Kate Spade diaper bag.
“Yes, Harp!” she said loudly, giving me a significant glance. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak up. The acoustics in here suck.”
Justin appeared at our table with two complimentary saketinis. When he saw Kendall, he said to me, “Didn’t you tell her about the cell phone policy?”
“No. What’s the policy?”
“No cell phone usage in the dining room. They’re supposed to go in the hall by the rest rooms if they want to talk.”
“I can’t interrupt her, Justin. She’s talking to Senator Snowden. By the way, could you bring some juice for the kids? Apple juice, say, in plastic glasses?”
Justin wrinkled his beautiful nose. “We have neither apple nor plastic. The best I can do is Perrier with a twist of lime—”
“Do you two like fizzy water?” I asked Win and Jacqueline.
They shrieked with excitement, and I placed the order. But Justin wasn’t done. Sternly, he addressed Kendall. “Miss, you’ll have to take your call in another place.”
“Just a minute, please, Senator.” Kendall paused and stared at the waiter. “What kind of restaurant is this that you’re so rude to the patrons?”
“House rules. Out in the hall,” Justin said firmly.
So Kendall swept out carrying her saketini and the telephone, leaving me with her little twosome.
Since I had no adult to chat with, I indulged in a little people-watching. While there were some people dressed elegantly, there were a surprising number of casual dressers. At least a dozen young men were wearing regular dress shirts, untucked, over shorts or trousers, and I spotted a woman walk by who’d tied an Hermès scarf around her torso to serve as a blouse. People had said Washington was not a fashion city—I was beginning to see that Kendall was an exception, and not a rule. I hadn’t expected people wearing scarf tops and shorts to be sitting at my elaborately decorated tables, but they, in turn, probably hadn’t been expecting to see kids.
Justin came to take the rest of our order, and I gave it: a carrot-ginger salad, noodles with ponzu dipping sauce, and a sweet bean–chocolate pâté for the kids’ bento meals. Instead of the lengthy kaiseki menu, for myself I went for the convenience of a quick bento containing a daikon salad, soba noodles, and red snapper, and for Kendall asparagus with wakame seaweed and soy-glazed filet mignon, because of what she’d said about the Atkins diet. What kind of a country was it, I thought, where a diet book could hold sway over so many people’s dining habits? Jiro had talked seriously with Marshall about it beforehand. There were at least three dishes on the menu that met Atkins requirements. I couldn’t remember if soy was on or off the diet. I became nervous thinking about it, so I asked Justin to find Kendall and ask.
“What do you think I am, suicidal?” he snapped. “Rei, I’ve got lots of tables to serve—oh, damn, look what that little boy of yours did to the flowers.”
Hers, not mine, I could have said, but didn’t. Win Junior had rearranged the camellias that a Georgetown florist had so carefully arranged in a low bowl earlier that afternoon. One camellia was in his hair, and the other on his sister’s plate. She was picking up her blossom to eat it.
“Not for supper! Supper’s coming soon,” I said, taking the camellia from her lips and tucking it back into the dish. “Please check for me, Justin. I beg you. I’m not a child care expert—you need to get her back or who knows what will happen.”
Justin came back with the news that Kendall wasn’t in the hall, and that Marshall wanted me to stop by table 5, because the patrons had
a question about the origins of the tansu behind the bar. I glanced across the room and saw Marshall sitting with them. Great. I had to do it, but I couldn’t abandon Win and Jacqueline, leaving them alone at the table.
I hung on to Jacqueline’s sticky little fingers with one hand while I unbelted Winnie from his booster seat with the other. We proceeded slowly to table 5, hampered by Winnie’s attempts to grab things off the tables we passed.
When we reached the table, I did my best to talk intelligently about the tansu with a pleasant older gentleman who’d spent some time in Japan. But Jacqueline kept up a patter about where her mommy was, and Win grabbed a menu out of the hands of the man’s female dining companion. I decided to make a quick exit. Glancing across the room, I saw that Kendall still hadn’t returned.
“Let’s visit the lavatory,” I said in my most cheerful voice.
“No potty!” Jacqueline cried.
“You don’t have to go potty there, don’t worry. I want to show you some—fish! Fish on the walls. Don’t you like fish?” I led the two of them into the ladies’ rest room. Win decided he wanted to try to potty, and I undid his pants and struggled to undo his diaper. I spent too long figuring it out, because Win wound up exploding on the Italian-tile floor.
I pulled up his diaper in horror and scrubbed quickly at the floor with paper towels as a couple of women walked in and gasped at the sight before them. I concentrated on cleaning up, and after I’d washed and dried everyone’s hands and was leading them out, I caught sight of Andrea.
“May I make a quick phone call from the maître d’s stand?” I grabbed her sleeve, because she seemed as if she was trying to ignore me.
“Those are for incoming calls only.” She pulled away her arm and examined it, as if I might have torn the lace on her long-sleeved blouse.
“This is an emergency.” I planned to call Kendall’s cell number, which I knew better than her household one, since she was always out.
“What kind of emergency?” Andrea prodded.
I was losing my patience. “A child care one. These kids are going to be in the restaurant all night if we don’t get their mother to come back from wherever she’s hiding.”
Andrea grudgingly let me use the telephone, but my call just went into her voice mail. She had to still be chatting with Harp Snowden. But where was she? Kendall couldn’t have gone far, because I could see, through the restaurant’s front door, her Volvo parked on the street.
Maybe she’d stepped out back. Trundling the children along with me, I moved through the masses and then the swinging doors that led into the kitchen. I was blindsided by a tray carried by one of the runners. The tray teetered and broth leaped from a bowl and onto me.
“Wrong door!” the girl carrying the tray practically spat at me. Right door in, left door out. I repeated it to myself as I led the children into the kitchen.
It was pandemonium. The children gazed in awe at the white-coated cooks moving fast at their stations, sautéing and stirring and flipping. There was a boom box playing salsa that was overpowered by the sound of hissing meat on the grill, the clattering of iron pans.
“Has anyone seen a woman come through here?” I called out.
“I’m the only one around, unless you count him.” Jessica, the pastry chef, shot a naughty glance at Justin, who was pinning up a dinner order on the line.
“Yeah, girlfriend, but at least I’m not built like a Midwestern milk truck,” Justin shot back.
“I’m looking for my cousin, has anyone seen her?” I pleaded. Then I remembered that half the kitchen staff didn’t speak English. “Dónde a chica—” I flubbed, then pointed at the children with me. “Madre.”
“You have children, Rei? I didn’t know.” Jiro, who was showing one of the line cooks how to roll and then cut a shiso leaf, looked up with a beatific smile. He seemed to take a Zen approach to the chaos of opening night.
“Not mine, my cousin’s. I’m looking for her—she’s an attractive redhead in a black suit. I think she went into some part of the building or just outside it to make a cell phone call.”
“Ah. Let me ask.” Jiro fired off something in Spanish. I couldn’t hear it clearly because I was in the midst of retrieving Win from tumbling into a gigantic standing mixer.
A small, dark-haired man answered Jiro in Spanish and pointed to the door over which hung a spanking-new exit sign.
Jiro wrinkled his face in a way that I figured meant thank you. Then he translated for me. “She was outside. When Alberto removed some boxes about ten minutes ago, he saw her talking on the phone in the parking area.”
That was all I needed to know. I grabbed both children and went out the back to the trash area. It was dark out now, but I could make out a Dumpster piled high with garbage bags.
“Watch out, kids, there are steps here. We’re not going to tumble down them, are we?” I held tight to each child’s hand as we stood on the top of a short flight of steps. Maybe this was where Kendall had been standing; I couldn’t imagine her going down to lean against the Dumpster in her beautiful suit. I glanced down the steps and saw broken glass and was about to caution the children about it when something occurred to me.
The glass came from a broken martini glass like the one Kendall had walked off carrying, when she was talking on the phone.
So Kendall had been out here, talking and sipping. Something must have happened that had caused her to break the glass.
She could have tripped, I told myself. Her heels were high.
But why hadn’t she come back?
4
Justin brought me a second cocktail, but I didn’t touch it. I kept returning to the facts: Kendall’s car was still parked outside the restaurant, but she had vanished.
Win had fallen asleep in his booster seat, as impossible as the ergonomics seemed. He drooped sideways, his mouth half-open, snoring contentedly. It was eight-thirty.
Jacqueline squirmed in my lap and said, “I want Mommy.”
Our dinners had come and gone. The red snapper I’d ordered had been tasty, but I’d barely had a nibble because I’d been busy cutting up the children’s noodles and feeding them by hand. I thought back on the pregnancy-test wand that had turned out to be negative, after all, and again felt relief. I wasn’t ready to give up the right to eat my own meals. Kendall’s steak had remained lonely and uneaten. My cousin had left her Kate Spade diaper bag underneath her chair. I picked it up and rummaged through it until I found her Palm Pilot.
In it, I found three numbers for Harp Snowden: office, home, and cell. I jotted them down on a business card and took that, and the twins, to the restaurant foyer.
Andrea looked askance when I told her I needed the phone. “I guess you don’t care if Marshall gets mad at you, but he’s going to fire my ass if I let you tie up the line. Phones are never for restaurant staff to use—”
“A woman is missing, okay? I just want to try to connect with the person she was talking to when she disappeared. It would let me know if she’s safe or—”
“What’s going on?” Marshall demanded. He’d come up behind us, and was scowling. “Rei, you’re done with your table, right? I’d like the busboys to set it up for the next group coming in.”
“Yes, but their mother has vanished. I need to use a telephone to make some calls to figure out where.”
“You’re talking about Kendall? I heard there was a problem about a high chair, but nothing more serious than that.”
“Yes, it’s Kendall. I want to call the person she last spoke to—Senator Snowden—to find out if she said anything about where she was going.”
“Did you try to call her on your cell?”
“Um, I don’t have a cell phone.” I’d received one as a gift when I’d left Japan, but I’d thrown it away when I’d found its technology was incompatible in the U.S.
“Use this.” Marshall reached into his chocolate-colored flannel trousers and pulled out his own cell phone. “Just be sure to remove all the children and wha
tnot from the table, because we need to use it in case Hillary and her friends show up. Go into Jiro’s and my office to do it so nobody else hears this nonsense. And don’t forget to give me back the phone.”
Marshall and Jiro’s office in Bento was even more chaotic than the one I’d visited in Mandala. The children built towers out of the piles of cookbooks while I tried Senator Snowden’s various numbers. His office was closed. That left home and cell; I tried home first, and reached a woman who sounded like she might be his wife. I introduced myself and attempted, as quickly as possible, to tell her that I was trying to track down a fund-raiser to whom the senator had just been talking.
“Why don’t you call his chief of staff?” She sounded irritated.
“Mrs. Snowden—you are Mrs. Snowden?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered testily.
“My cousin and the senator were just talking on the phone, but she’s nowhere to be found. I think he might have a clue as to what happened.”
“My husband’s left the office, but he isn’t home yet. I really have no idea.”
“Does he carry his cell phone?”
“Yes, he does, but I’m not going to give you the number. You should call the office, just like everyone else.” Mrs. Snowden hung up on me.
Thanks a lot, lady, but I’ll trump you. I turned back to the final number on the Palm Pilot: cell. Please answer, I prayed as the phone rang.
“Marshall?” The male voice on the other end sounded surprised, but not upset.
Harp Snowden must have had a caller-identification feature on his cell phone to have guessed that Marshall Zanger was calling. “Senator Snowden, it’s not Marshall. It’s Rei Shimura, using his phone. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Harp, please.” His voice was jovial. “You’re Kendall’s cousin. I was just talking with her, actually, but we got cut off.”
So they weren’t together. “Did she tell you where she was going?”
“No. We were talking about the upcoming party and then she made a sound—something like a gasp or a cough—and the line went dead. Why are you calling? Is she okay?”
The Pearl Diver Page 5
