Free Claire and Present Danger by Gillian Roberts Page A

summon sobbing Batya.
    58
    CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER
    Mrs. Fairchild’s moment of triumph passed along with the mild smirk. She looked more delicate than ever and she’d aged during the visit. “I’m afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid of what that means.
    That there’s more dead. Is that in the past or—”
    “Please try not to worry,” I said as I made my exit. “From now on, we’ll take care of this.”
    I could say that—and almost believe that—because at the time, I had no idea of what any of this meant.
    59
    Six
    BACKoutside Mrs. Fairchild’s building, bidding adieu to the ornate scrolls, cryptic gargoyles, and the vaguely antebel-lum swirls of balcony rails, I understood that I wasn’t going to be the next centerfold for the Sleuth-of-the-Month Club.
    Other than that, I knew nothing. Hadn’t a clue. Literally.
    I walked toward the office in a deep funk. This wasn’t what I’d anticipated. All summer long I’d worked under Mackenzie’s supervision, and had done well, he said. But this was my true maiden voyage, my test flight. I’d expected to interview the client and leave bursting with ideas as to what to do next, but at the moment, all I drew was a blank.
    60
    CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER
    Background searches can be routine, and I’m sure that’s what C. K. thought this one would be. Unfortuately, that assumes the investigator has a few salient facts about the person being investigated—beginning, perhaps, with her actual name.
    Instead, I’d been given a blank wall and told to read the writing on it, and in this case, the moving finger had moved on so quickly, not even fingerprints were left.
    Maybe being a private eye, even a part-time one, wasn’t such a hot idea. Much as I loathed the idea of admitting my incompetence, much as I loved the idea of our partnership, push had now come to shove, and look who was falling down. Perhaps it was time to restrict myself to dangling participles and pronoun case. It was possible my mission on earth was not solving crimes, but dis-abusing people from saying, “He invited John and myself.” Or,
    “Between you and I.”
    Surely preserving the Mother Tongue was as important a public service as doing background checks.
    On the other hand, we needed additional income, and pronoun usage wasn’t going to generate it. The question remained: How could I track this creature of murky past, floating names, vague an-tecedents, no relatives, and no known jobs or schools? And how to do it subtly so her fiancé is never made aware of my investigation?
    I stopped, mid-Square, and considered what I did have.
    A birth date, August 1, thirty years ago. If, in fact, I believed that cute coincidence that she’d been born on the same day as Leo.
    I didn’t have her Social Security number, nor did I have her last address, but I could get a place-name, now. Surely a town would be named somewhere in the records of Jake King’s death, and I could work from there.
    I had a news story, a possibly fake birth date, and a studio photograph. What I didn’t have was an idea of how best to proceed. I wasn’t eager to ask Ozzie, who was gruff at best, if he’d deign to speak to me, nor did it seem adult to go home and await Mackenzie’s wisdom like a pitiable, helpless flower of a girl—the hothouse variety that isn’t native to Philadelphia.
    61
    GILLIAN ROBERTS
    “You all right, young woman?”
    Bad sign when the person offering to help you is a bent-over old woman at least fifty years your senior. “You look dazed,” she said, her gray eyes circled by worry-wrinkles. “Something hurting? You need a doctor?”
    I assured her I was fine, thanked her, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I had resources. I had my brains and, for once and probably the last time till June, I didn’t have a paper to mark or a lesson to prepare. That’s about as free as this woman gets.
    I passed Philly Prep across the way and thought about the abominable Sunshine and her ability to