Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  “Not really.”

  “Not Leo,” she agreed. “Such bad timing for them to show up this afternoon, of all times. Especially with that news. Sugar?”

  I declined.

  “Still, maybe good you saw them. Emphysema, if you’re wondering what my problem is.” She passed me the cup and saucer. “A muggy day like today . . . I get out of breath.” She was quiet for a while, and I adjusted down to her rhythm of speech and waited in silence, as unnatural as that felt.

  “I thought this disease was a big nothing when I was warned.” Her breathing was audibly labored. She pulled hard and paused between sentences to refill her lungs. “I was wrong. It’s a big something.”

  I was having coffee with a woman being slowly asphyxiated, and I didn’t know how to respond. Yes, it was a big something, a huge, deadly something. But how could I say that without sounding fatuous? I nodded, and opened my mouth in the hopes that appropriate words would swim into it. They didn’t, so I shut it again, hoping instead that my dropped jaw had not signified my stupidity, but instead, sympathy and horror on her behalf.

  “I’m not dying, in case you think that.”

  “No. I . . . That’s good . . . I’m glad.” I wished I could rewind the tape and go back to standing outside her creamy front door. I wanted this first meeting not to count, as my students would put it. Second time through, I’d have a ready explanation for my presence, and wise words about bad lungs. And maybe even a handle on what I was doing here.

  She sipped coffee, then put down the cup. “I expected a man,” she said. “I spoke with a man.” She sounded as if we’d pulled a fast one, swapping an inferior product for the real thing.

  That didn’t endear me to her, but I wasn’t about to be sidetracked. I fired up my speech center again, and strengthened my backbone. “I work with Mr. Mackenzie,” I said. “We’re partners.”

  I was glad she had challenged me, because I get a kick saying things like that out loud.

  The soft noise of her breathing filled the room while she decided whether I was telling the truth, and even if so, whether she found me acceptable. “I suppose you’ll do,” she finally said.

  The incapacitated fragility, while real, barely covered a will of steel and a temperament to match it, and it was so forcible, I could almost see the metal shimmer through her skin, like an undercoat of armor.

  She cleared her throat. It seemed a major production number. Then she spoke again. “The problem is, my son is getting married.”

  I was sorely tempted to ask whether her son also considered his impending marriage a problem. He certainly hadn’t looked that way, taking his future bride’s hand, speaking in the plural about leaving. But Claire Fairchild had hired us, so I used my mouth to sip coffee, not speak. Java in the mouth, in lieu of foot.

  “Let me restate that. The problem is not the idea of marriage.” She paused, breathed in and out, and continued. In a way, it was nice. There was time to consider each sentence already spoken, and to plan the following one. It made for efficient, thoughtful and, most of all, meaningful, communication—or should have. “The problem is his fiancée,” she said.

  I nodded, waited, then had to prompt her because she apparently considered that enough. “And why is she a problem?”

  Claire Fairchild planted a blue-eyed permafrost stare on me. It was more efficient than the air-conditioning in lowering the temperature. “I don’t know who she is. Appeared from nowhere. Nobody knows her.”

  I was appalled, but not entirely surprised. This was traditional Philadelphia, the city of Who Are Your Parents? For the benefit of non-Philadelphians, the translation of Claire Fairchild’s so-called problem would be: Nobody in Philadelphia—nobody in the right echelons of Philadelphia families—knew this woman’s family. Therefore, nobody knew how to rank her, and nobody knew whether she could be given her social green card.

  But that attitude was an infamous part of the Philadelphia of long ago, when your ancestry mattered more than who you yourself were. Do not ask for whom the Liberty Bell rang. Those people were tone deaf.

  This was the twenty-first century. Claire Fairchild’s words and attitude lowered her score on my estimation-o-meter. I worked at keeping my expression neutral, but I felt sorry for that sweet-faced woman in her deliberately Romantic clothing. She’d so obviously wanted to please.

  “I know what you think.” Ordinary words, but she made them so forceful, I almost believed those icy eyes had, in fact, penetrated my skull and seen my guilty ideas. “You think I’m a snob.” Pause to breathe. “That I’m talking about social status.”

  “I wasn’t—I didn’t—” But of course, I was. I did.

  “Understandable. I might have taken it that way myself.”

  I am a talkative woman, often too much so, and seldom tongue-tied, but the nearly palpable force field surrounding this woman had the power to freeze my lips together and to turn off the pilot light in my brain. I waited for her to clarify what she meant.

  “I might have,” she repeated, “but it would be ridiculous. I’m not that sort of woman.”

  When I didn’t respond, she sighed. “I’ve never wanted for comfort,” she said. “Not socialites, however. Not from a famous family. No pedigree. Leo made the real money.”

  I avoided her laser stare and kept my gaze on an invisible spot between her head and the wall behind her.

  “You’re surprised.”

  I was going to deny that, but then I wondered why I should.

  “This place? It would have been beyond my means, but Leo bought it for me. Always kind to me, Leo. He takes good care of me.” She sat regarding her patrician hands and long fingers before she spoke again. “Not good to leap to conclusions. I’m not the stereotype you’ve decided I am.” She looked at me, the eyes still frostbitten, but a small, nontaxing smile on her face as well.

  “I assure you—” I began.

  She shook her head slightly and wagged her index finger, dismissing whatever protests I contemplated.

  So she was a smart woman and she’d read my mind, and I’d been wrong. But in that case, I had a new and equally nasty motive for investigating that young woman. Claire Fairchild’s son had made the big time, and the only woman in his life till now had been Mama, who wasn’t ready to become the second-best woman in his life.

  She sighed, as if she’d again read my mind. Time, then, to switch gears. Tackling straight-on questions and answers might dispel some of the tension. The room had become as charged as the storm-awaiting air outside. “Why don’t we—”

  “Are you clear on my motives?”

  I looked at her directly. “To be honest, not at all. You told me what wasn’t your reason for calling me in, but you haven’t said what was, or what you do want.”

  “Because you jump to conclusions. Make assumptions.” She lifted a hand and indicated the room, the world in which she lived. “It’s not about money, either. . . . I have everything . . . more than I need.”

  “Good, then. But . . .” And I waited, finishing off the coffee.

  She seemed hellbent on outlasting my silence, and she won.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is about,” I finally said. “Unless you really want me to read you a book.”

  “Seems nice, doesn’t she?”

  “Emmie? Very much so.”

  She nodded. “She is nice . . . always. . . . Leo’s a brilliant mathematician and electrical engineer. Socially?” She shook her head. Her physical motions were minimal, energy saving, but her concern for her son was nonetheless clear. “NaÏve . . . gullible . . . late-bloomer . . . an innocent in many ways.”

  I already knew that, simply by meeting them for a few minutes. I wanted her to get to the point. I had seen that Leo Fairchild wasn’t Mr. Sophistication. What I hadn’t seen was what was wrong with beautiful Emmie—or why Claire Fairchild was on the warpath. But people reveal themselves when they ramble, even when they require frequent pit stops for ingathering breath, so I stayed silent, profess
ional, I hoped, and worked to maintain bland approval on my face. I wanted to register, not react, like movie P.I.s, which, along with mystery novels and a word or two from Mackenzie, comprised my training manuals.

  “Why are you silent? Ask me things.”

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was shrinks who weren’t supposed to approve or disapprove of anything. Still, you wouldn’t think somebody who could barely breathe could be so belligerent. “I did ask,” I said. “You haven’t answered.”

  “You think I’m a meddling old crone.”

  “Of course not! I—”

  “Where’s your handle on reality, girl?”

  “What?”

  “Pay attention! I am meddling.”

  I couldn’t help a small smile. She was honest, I’ll give her that. I admire self-awareness, even when what you’re aware of is that you’re dreadful.

  She was a miserable troublemaker—and, yes, a major-league meddler—and I liked her, which was frightening.

  “The problem is, I’m a chronically ill meddler,” she said. “That’s why I’m hiring you to meddle for me.”

  I no longer liked her, and I wasn’t overly fond of me, either. I’d sold out to the enemy, was doing its dirty work. Was betraying my entire species: quaking fiancées facing malevolent mothers-in-law.

  My emotions rode the seesaw, and I didn’t know where they’d come down—except that on this first day back to school, I’d have to give myself an F for remaining professional and uninvolved.

  Four

  “OKAY,” I finally said, pulling on my invisible private-eye cloak that would make me tough and strong-jawed. “What’s up? Why am I here?”

  Mrs. Fairchild raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m not asking you a metaphysical question.”

  She grinned. In another setting, at another time, she probably could be fun. But now, the grin flattened, and vertical creases—canyons, really, they were so deep—appeared between her eyebrows. Frowning was not a recently acquired or unfamiliar expression. “I need to know who she is.” She leaned forward in her chair, examining me as best as she could, and avoided the point yet again. “You look too young for this kind of work.”

  It was a statement, not a question, so I let it ride. Besides, I wasn’t all that young. Thirty-two is old enough to have this job. Any kind of job, in fact, except president of the U.S. But given that Mrs. Fairchild was treating her fortysomething son as if he were a helpless, innocent boy-child, it followed that she probably thought of me as being in the late fetal stage. “A first question, then. What’s Emmie’s full name?”

  She raised her eyebrows this time. “When I introduced—didn’t I say?”

  “She introduced herself, and only said ‘Emmie.’ “

  “Well, then. That’s part of the problem. You see?”

  I did not. I tried to imagine how the nickname and/or the omitted last name could so offend this woman that she’d call in private investigators, especially since Leo had also been introduced with only a first name. Since the only theories I could envision involved more bigotry than I could manage, I stopped imagining.

  “Cade,” she finally said. She looked as if she was waiting for a reaction so she could spring. “Calls herself Cade.”

  Calls herself? As I called myself Pepper, and she, Fairchild? I ignored the slur and moved on. “I know she said Emmie, but is that officially Emma?”

  She shrugged and simultaneously shook her head. A halfhearted body language “who knows anything at all?”

  But we were discussing a first name, not something generally subject to interpretation and misconstruction. “Ms. Cade’s name seems to distress you,” I said. “Why is that?” I could have recited amazing names I have seen on the Philly Prep list of students, names that would highlight Emmie Cade’s ordinariness. Offhand, I remembered students named for geographical sites including Morocco, Paris, and Verona, semiprecious gems (I was particularly fond of Lapis Lazuli O’Brien), climactic conditions including a Hurricane Waters, and Sirocco something or other; and one name that was not only odd but included punctuation: X-tra Stein. I always wanted to know the story behind the poor girl’s naming, and I had to believe that despite the fancy spelling and having a dash of her own, the Steins were not overconcerned with X-tra’s self-esteem.

  Mrs. Fairchild would have appreciated the names, but I wanted her to keep believing that my story of a day job teaching was a clever ruse and, in real life, I was her full-time investigator. She appeared to be a woman who would not be happy with someone who was not only female, but who had to stop sleuthing in order to grade spelling exams.

  I cut to the chase. “What troubles you about her? What do you want us to look for?”

  She lifted both hands, palms out, as if to defend herself. “Who is she? That’s the trouble.” She seemed eager to make herself clear no matter how many sentences and pauses it took. “That’s what you have to find out. She’s sweet. Friendly. Fine first impression.”

  Did I have to point out that I needed a problem, and she was giving me an endorsement?

  Then, after another long pause: “But—out of nowhere.”

  And we were back to the starting line. I drained my coffee cup on that one because otherwise, I’d have had too much to say. The “nowhere” business grated on my nerves. Where was someone supposed to appear out of? Was it necessary to send trumpeters and heralds in advance? Courtiers to inform the court of where you’ve been, so it won’t be labeled nowhere?

  “Do you mean she’s a recent newcomer to Philadelphia?” I finally asked.

  “A year. Less.”

  That was the sin. Of course. An outlander. An alien. I could see the movie marquee now: She Came from Somewhere Else! Thousands of tiny Claire Fairchilds fleeing in horror.

  “Rented a house in Villanova. Joined the cricket club. Charitable groups. Right circles right away. Met Leo at a party. Moved here, into this building. Engaged to my son.”

  “She lives here?”

  She pointed her index finger upward. “Upstairs.” She lifted her eyebrows. “She said the suburbs were no place to be single and childless.”

  Moving to Leo’s mother’s building, lovely and unique a place as it was, did seem a rather obvious positioning of the troops for the major assault.

  Nonetheless, she was right about living as a single in the suburbs. And even if she moved to the city so as to be more visible to Leo, so what? All’s fair, they say, and so far, this newcomer sounded pleasantly—dully—ordinary. Maybe a little tawdry—a gold digger. But Claire Fairchild had said this wasn’t about money. And in any case, while it might be more interesting for her to have put her energy into ending world hunger, if her goal was marriage to a wealthy man, then she’d demonstrated expertise and wisdom, and had been out front and honest about it. My mother would have revered her, wished she’d been her daughter, and before I had attached myself to my significantly unwealthy man—would have wanted me to make Emmie Cade my guru and life guide. Maybe I didn’t want her as my new best friend, but, so far, she sounded as unworthy of investigation as it was possible to be.

  Maybe we were having a semantic problem. I tried to figure out what Claire Fairchild actually meant, to force out specifics about the nowhere business. “Has she told you where she lived before she moved here?”

  “In her way.”

  “Meaning?”

  Mrs. Fairchild required several deep breaths before continuing, and then her words were spaced with pauses. “Emmie talks. Chatters. Smiles. Answers. Laughs. Very merry. Open-seeming.”

  The significant word, apparently, was seeming.

  This time, Claire Fairchild leaned over and lifted her coffee cup and sipped at what had to now be a lukewarm brew. She carefully returned the cup to the table before speaking, and I wondered if she had a repertoire of distracting actions to take her listener’s—and her own—mind off what a strain it was to keep up a conversation.

  She looked at me directly. “Later, you realize, she didn’t say
anything.”

  “I think I understand.”

  She pursed her mouth, but decided to be clearer. “Where she grew up? She says . . . father was executive. Changed companies. Moved a lot. Lived in Atlanta.”

  Something tangible at last. “That’s a start.” I wrote it down.

  “And Bridgeport. Austin. Fargo.”

  I looked up. Mrs. Fairchild’s mouth had tightened. “Gotcha,” she was saying, as if I were her enemy, as if we weren’t supposedly working in tandem. “Chicago,” she said. “Los Angeles. Cleveland.” She tapped her index finger on the arm of the wing chair. “Many schools, too. Talk. More talk. Funny stories, but . . .”

  “You mean that ultimately you realize she never mentioned what companies her father worked for?” I asked, hoping to spare Mrs. Fairchild a bit of air. “Or a specific school?”

  She nodded. “Or dates. Or neighborhoods. Los Angeles!” Both of her hands rose and spread apart to show the daunting size of L.A., the meaninglessness of not being more specific about origins.

  I thought about the beautiful woman in the poet’s blouse, her graceful gestures, that flash of high-wattage smile, her free-flowing compliments about my supposed job. I could imagine her speaking at length and saying very little, but saying it in a warm and delicious manner. Was she accidentally or deliberately offering conversational cotton candy?

  A woman could babble out of nervousness when confronted with the formidable Claire Fairchild. Or she could have a conversational style based on the idea that nothing about herself was all that interesting or important, so above all, she shouldn’t bother listeners with specifics. Instead, she’d aim to entertain, amuse, and turn the conversation to other topics and other people. What, in fact, could be a more traditionally feminine philosophy than to feel that her purpose was to make the listener happy? Maybe she’d been taught to behave that way.

  Nothing Claire Fairchild said necessarily triggered suspicion. I’d had friends—short-timers passing through Philadelphia—whose fathers worked for I.B.M., and they’d referred to the initials as standing for “I’ve been moved.” Things might have changed by now, but that’s how it was for a large segment of the nation’s children, and for a long time.