A Woman’s Eye

by Sara Paretsky

  “What do you think could have happened to Mrs. Pradell? I mean, do you know or suspect whether she had some motive for disappearing just like that?”

  “I’ve no idea. It’s all so strange … poor Victor. I recall that they had an argument that night we had dinner, well, a friendly argument, anyway, nothing tragic, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, miss; I’m just telling you so you’ll see how much they loved each other, well …”

  “What was the argument about?”

  That was the first I’d heard about the development. I pretended I wasn’t too interested. I didn’t want to jump the gun before I was pretty sure about it. When I left Mrs. Torres’s place, I called Quim right away.

  “I’m asking you as a professional favor, man.”

  “But I’ve never done anything like that, Lònia!” he whimpered.

  “Tell them you’re there on my behalf. They’re not going to hassle you. And do it now, okay? I need to know by noon today.”

  “Why don’t you go yourself, sweetie pie?”

  “Because I have other things to do, sweetie pie yourself! Oh, come on, man. You owe me more than erne favor, you know that.” And I hung up.

  I dialed again. Patricia still wasn’t answering. I dialed again: my friend at the telephone company gave me the address.

  When I got to the office I found a note from Quim on my desk: “Kid, I can see you really know how to get along with people. When I gave your name to those guys at the Property Registry, and at the College of Lawyers, too, they treated me like a king. How do you do it, honey? You’ll have to clue me in, I include, under separate cover, the results of my research. I’m at your disposal for whatever might be necessary, Mrs. Paloni, you know that. I’m having dinner at that rabbit restaurant of yours and I’ll have them put it on your bill. I deserve it, don’t you think? Oh, yeah: your beloved client called-wants you to call.”

  Quim’s research, as he called it, confirmed that Mr. Pradell was the owner of some land along the seashore. And that there was a project in the name of Victor Cabanes to develop it, already presented and approved, but held up “sine die.” So far, okay.

  Then to Patricia’s place. But she’d already flown the coop. She’d left the apartment four days ago, without leaving a forwarding address.

  “What if she gets mail?” I asked the doorlady.

  “She said she was sure she wouldn’t get any.”

  At the nearest telephone booth, Victor Cabanes’s secretary asked me if it would be convenient to come by the office.

  “Right away,” I said.

  Ten minutes after that “right away” they were showing me into Victor’s office. He was waiting for me, looking as though he needed to ask me to do him a favor.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” he answered with a sticky sweetness.

  “Why did you want to see me, Mr. Cabanes?”

  Naturally, he wanted to know how my investigations were going. What his wife’s friends had told me. If studying Monica’s datebook had turned anything up. Etc., etc.

  “What do you know about Patricia?” I cut him off.

  “Who’s Patricia?”

  “A very good friend of your wife.”

  “I remember she had a Mend who was a little on the flaky side … but what does that have to do with Monica?”

  “It turns out you’re the only one who doesn’t know anything about the friendship your wife had with this woman. It also turns out that she left her apartment exactly four days ago: the very day after Monica Pradell’s disappearance. What do you think about that?”

  He was taken aback. I took advantage:

  “By the way, how’s the development going?”

  “Development? What development?”

  “Blue Sea. It’s a terrific project, Mr. Cabanes. Too bad it’s being held up, isn’t it? And I’m afraid that if your wife doesn’t turn up, Mr. Pradell won’t ever get around to closing the deal on it….”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re getting at, Miss Guiu….”

  “Do you love Monica Pradell, Mr. Cabanes?”

  “Listen, what did those reptiles tell you? What are you thinking, Miss Guiu? What do you suspect?”

  It took God’s help and then some to get him to confess. And once I had it, I realized that the confession wasn’t going to do me much good. No, he didn’t love Monica anymore. He was looking for her because, in fact, her father wasn’t about to let that land be developed if his heir didn’t go along with it.

  “And you don’t know where she is, right?” I said with my very best sarcasm. “You don’t suppose she could have run off precisely so she wouldn’t be forced to say yes to something she didn’t want, do you?”

  I was beating him to death, and behaving like a spoiled kid, too. Victor was thrown completely out of gear.

  “No, I don’t think that,” he said. “Nor do I know where she is, Miss Guiu. And I must say I don’t care one bit for your attitude.”

  “Well, it’s up to you. I’ll drop the case.”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “Could this be revenge on your wife’s part?”

  “Revenge? For what?”

  “You told me you didn’t love her….”

  “Monica doesn’t know that. Or if she knows, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t love me either.”

  “Why do you live together, then?”

  But that was going beyond the limits of conjugal intimacy, propriety, appearances, and all that.

  He invited me to dinner at his place again, this time not on working time, he said. What a pity to have met him under such circumstances.

  The soiree was delightful, and I went home with Monica’s dog. It seems the Pradells were heartbroken to see her so sad and thin, and Victor didn’t want to take her to the kennels, but he couldn’t take care of her, either. She paid so much attention to me, and maybe I’d like to keep her until Monica came back.

  Sure, glad to.

  When I left, he kissed me on the cheek.

  “Tomorrow I’ll start investigating Patricia,” I told him. “I think we might just find something there.”

  “Fine. Give me a call.”

  V

  “Hadn’t she ever mentioned that she was thinking of moving out of the apartment?”

  “She wasn’t nice at all. If I didn’t say hello to her, she never said a word to me. Why would she mention anything to me?”

  “Did she live alone?”

  “Yes, but she had a lot of company … especially men. Well, I don’t want to bear false witness … sometimes women came over, too.”

  “What did she live on?”

  “I don’t know … I suppose the people who came to see her, don’t you think?”

  “She didn’t have a job anywhere?”

  “Not that I know. Listen, miss, has she done something?”

  “Have you ever seen this woman?” I showed her Monica’s picture.

  She looked it over from every angle. Up close. Far away. She examined the details.

  “This face looks familiar to me, it looks kind of familiar, all right.”

  “Could I have a look at the apartment?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t be able to do that, miss. You’d have to go to the agency that rents it out. I …”

  “You have the key, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I can only show it to people with a card from the agency. Besides, there isn’t anything of hers there anymore.”

  “How about if instead of a card from the agency, I give you one of mine?”

  I showed her a ten-dollar bill.

  “Well, okay, just because I think you’re okay. But don’t go telling them at the agency that I let you in.”

  The elevator stank of trash, and it was slow.

  “Did she live here for long?” I kept up the questioning.

  “About two years, more or less.”

  “Did she get any mail?”

  “A little, not m
uch. Maybe one or two letters the whole time she lived here.” She opened the apartment door. “Both from here, from banks … they weren’t personal letters. The fact is that people don’t get personal letters anymore, do they, miss? Just letters from the bank and junk mail.”

  The doorlady went on philosophizing and opening drawers. She took her job very seriously. Meantime, I was trying to get an idea of what Patricia’s life must have been like in that apartment, so impersonal now.

  There was a dresser scarf on the side table, with a rumple in it. A clump of starch maybe? No, it was a piece of paper,

  “Could you open the blinds, please?” I said to the woman.

  She obligingly hurried to do so. I stuck my hand under the cloth and stuffed the paper into my pocket.

  Nothing else of significance in the apartment. Once I was on the street, I took a look at the paper. It was an empty envelope with the address written by hand. So Patricia had received a letter, but it didn’t say from whom, or on what street.

  I had to ask Quim for help again.

  “Come on, with your detective ID card it’ll be easy. You do these”-I gave him a list-“and I’ll do the rest,”

  “Know what I think, sweetie? I think I like the easier cases better.”

  “Don’t give me that stuff, Quim. Commercial reports are a piece of shit, and the skirt-chasing cases get boring. Have they brought in the copies of the photo?”

  “Your problem is that that jerk has you wrapped around his little finger. He even stuck you with his dog. Yes, they brought the copies.”

  “The dog! Where’s the dog?”

  “I locked her up in the bathroom. I don’t like having animals around in the office.”

  “I can’t leave her home alone all day long, the poor thing is depressed … and you, you animal, you lock her up in the bathroom!”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you got into collecting dogs, crazy lady. Collecting lipsticks is more peaceful.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Quim,” I warned him severely. I went to let the dog out.

  “It was doing weird things today, that animal,” Quim was saying.

  She’d taken a big leak in the bathroom. She came out with her tail between her legs. She took a leap when she recognized me, and when I picked her up, she licked my face.

  “Okay, Quim, go ahead and start something. What weird things was she doing? The dog, I mean.”

  “She was sniffing my shoes and she started to howl and pull away from me. She’s nuts.”

  “She’s probably hungry, poor thing,” I said. Then I went on: “Okay, that’s it. I’ll call you at Ton’s bar at six o’clock to see if you’ve found anything. Go on, clear out, off with you. Hey, don’t forget the picture!”

  “I think I’m going to quit this job. I’m not the right type to take orders from a woman.” He was still grumbling when he got in the elevator.

  I fed the dog and then grabbed the other envelope of photos to take with me to visit my share of the travel agencies. Nothing, a total failure. Quim too. Not at six, not at eight.

  “Maybe Patricia bought the ticket?” mused Quim.

  “For sure. But I gave her name to the agencies, too, and nothing’s turned up at all.”

  “You’re so smart, Miss Paloni!” Quim said.

  “A lot more than you. And don’t call me Paloni!”

  “Dirty rotten lie: I gave her name to the agencies too. But she must have bought the tickets under a false name.”

  VI

  It felt as if I’d just gone to bed when the telephone rang. “You’re still in bed?” It was Quim’s voice. “Isn’t that nice!

  I play the early bird and you’re still snoring!”

  “What’s up?”

  “I have a lead. I’m at the Osborn Agency, on Muntaner Street, between …”

  “I know where it is. I’m on my way,”

  I got dressed in a flash. The dog had destroyed the sole of one of my shoes. Luckily they were already worn out. The crepe soles stuck to the floor. All I had time to do was yell at her, and I left her curled up in a corner, trembling.

  Quim was waiting for me at the door of the travel agency,

  “They recognized Monica. Come in.”

  “How was she dressed, do you recall?” I asked the man on the other side of the counter.

  “A tailored outfit, light color. Lilac blouse. Curly hair, sort of …” the man recited.

  “Mahogany-colored?” I asked.

  “Mahogany? Dark red, it was.”

  “That’s right. You’re very observant.”

  “No, not really. I noticed her because she was very … elegant … and especially because she made this constant noise.”

  I looked at him, surprised.

  “Yes,” Quim interrupted. “She was wearing that medal that’s in the picture. And she kept tapping it with her fingernails.”

  “It sounded like glass,” clarified the employee with satisfaction.

  “She bought two tickets to Paris, the day after her disappearance. And she left a Paris address!”

  “Well, make out a ticket for me. To Paris. For today, if possible,” I said.

  “Have you lost your senses altogether?” Quim yelled, appalled.

  “Don’t fail to feed the dog, you hear? We can’t let her starve to death now that she’s getting her appetite back.”

  “Okay, okay, go to Paris. And don’t come back, dammit!”

  VII

  It was an apartment building. An old house that with some resources and a certain number of new doors had been transformed from a home for well-off bourgeois into a semiluxurious, semisnobbish Tower of Babel.

  Patricia opened the door. She was an exuberant woman. She had on a rather transparent tunic and her hair was wound up in a towel. Her glasses were covered with rhinestones.

  “Where’s Monica?” I asked right away.

  The smile froze on her face, and her extraordinarily fleshy lips, traced with a line darker than the color of her lipstick, filled up with little wrinkles. Her queenly pose tottered, and she didn’t try to pretend.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  She let me in, but she wouldn’t tell me where Monica was. Nor what they were doing, the two of them. But I had that figured out, and the more Patricia did to hide it, the surer I was. Women’s intuition, as they say, but also because of professional experience. The apartment was quite dark, but perhaps that would encourage secret-sharing.

  “Do you realize I can turn you in for kidnapping, dear?”

  “Why can’t they just leave her alone, poor kid?” she said.

  “Don’t change the subject. Whether they leave her alone or not, that’s up to her family. They’re paying me to find her, and that’s what I’m going to do, no matter what.”

  “So you’d ruin her life, now that she’s starting to fix it up?”

  “With you, right?”

  She wouldn’t go for it, though. She was just a childhood friend and she’d helped her escape, she said. Monica would have ended up in a nuthouse if it hadn’t been for her. Victor hadn’t told me that his wife was under the treatment of a psychiatrist, right? He hadn’t told me because he didn’t know.

  So that was it! The three weekly Ps in her datebook. At first I’d been convinced they meant the beauty parlor, and so had Victor. Then later I thought it stood for Patricia, and it turned out it meant psychiatrist. Now it was clear as a bell: all that was left was for Patricia to be willing to confess, and then Monica herself. Piece of cake. I was just sorry about how Victor was going to feel.

  “Why was she under psychiatric care?” I asked.

  “You didn’t know about it, did you?”

  “Of course I knew, naturally,” I lied. “Victor knew top. And I know why, but I want you to tell me. So don’t go making up any absurd stories.”

  “She was done in by her monotonous life. Depressed.”

  She didn’t even buy that one herself, of course. She was good at keeping things under the rug,
that poor excuse for a Sappho.

  “And you, of course, decided to rescue her, out of generosity, right? What did you get out of this deal? What did you gain by deceiving the poor gal? She’s got a pretty substantial bank account.”

  “I didn’t do it for the money!”

  Now we were getting somewhere. I spurred on:

  “No? You did it out of the kindness of your heart, then? Come on, where’s Monica? If I don’t find her, it won’t be just a kidnapping, it’ll be murder.”

  It took pain and perspiration, threats, lies, promises…. She wouldn’t budge, this gal, but I finally managed to get her between a rock and a hard place, and she began to fall apart altogether.

  Her dark voice, with a foreign accent I wasn’t able to identify, broke down. First she cried and cried, and then, sheltered by the darkness, she explained it all to me.

  VIII

  “Patricia made me swear I wouldn’t make out my report until you’re on your way to Australia,” I said.

  “Will you stick to that?” Monica asked.

  “If you’ll write a letter for me explaining the whole thing. It’s a matter of professional pride.”

  We were in the bar of the Carse Hotel, near Westminster. Patricia had set up the appointment herself the previous day, but Monica still didn’t quite trust me.

  “Why did you come to London?” I asked, just to say something.

  “To get ready to go to Australia. Patricia must have told you that, didn’t she?”

  “Just out of curiosity, personal not professional,” I said. “Why didn’t you take all the money out of your account? Because I assume your father will disinherit you.”

  “So I wouldn’t leave any leads behind. But you can see that didn’t do me any good. It didn’t work, either, for us to stay apart until everything was ready. If my husband had hired a man instead of a woman, even if he’d found Patricia, she’d have gotten rid of him. But you put it all together, and now look.”

  I’d established some kind of complicity with Monica in spite of myself. I didn’t like Patricia at all, but Monica was so pleasant, so peaceful, just the opposite of that gnawing tigress. But she did have, as Victor had told me, the habit of drumming her fingernails against that enamel pendant. It really was unnerving.