now, she could be charged. Concealing the whereabouts of a wanted felon was itself a crime. In any case, she’d certainly make the headlines. And no one would be happy. Not the Stansteads, not the party—
and, most especially, not Michael.
“He thought he would be safe enough after all this time, and he’d changed his name.”
Yeah, Faith thought, to Fuchs, German for Fox. She began to wonder just how clever a man Fox had been.
One would have thought that number one—or at most, number two—in the
“ ‘All old Jewish men look alike,’ Daddy said. He’d grown a beard and cut his hair. It was very gray. I would never have recognized him from the old pictures. He was terribly good-looking back then, don’t you think?”
Outside the large windows, the skaters endlessly circled the rink, leaving sharp trails and occasionally trac- ing intricate figures in the ice. A group of schoolkids sent a spray of chips flying up against the glass as they came to a sudden stop before racing off again.
“Very good-looking. Handsome as all get-out, but Emma, weren’t you afraid someone would see the two of you together?”
“We never went outside. He never did go outside much anyway. He thought too much fresh air was bad for people,” Emma smiled reminiscently. “I used to bring him bialys. There’s a good place near where he lived. He liked to eat them when they were still warm.
His grandmother made the best ones, ones you could
really sink your teeth into, he said. That was my great-grandmother.”
Faith wasn’t sure she could stand the pathos. And it was true: Like a real bagel, it was hard to get a good bialy these days.
“I’d have brought him more food, but there were some weeks when I couldn’t come, and I didn’t want him to depend on it. So he stuck to his own shopping.
He went out to shop once or twice a week. Daddy didn’t care about what he ate.”
Faith knew there were people like this, but she preferred not to hear about them.
“I couldn’t call him. He didn’t have a phone. We arranged that he’d be home at three o’clock on Tuesdays. Not that he had other places to go, but this way, we’d be sure. If I could make it, fine; if not, fine.
Daddy was very nonjudgmental.”
Of his daughter, perhaps. Few others, apart from some of the working class, had escaped his scathing view of the world. Fox had once put the entire United States of America on trial in a mock version staged in Central Park. Since they didn’t have a permit, the trial ended before a verdict could be reached.
Emma was buttering a scone. We seem to be developing a pattern here, Faith observed to herself. Emma unburdens herself, feels better, perks up, and I inch closer to prematurely adding Nice ’n Easy to my shopping list.
“They didn’t name the amount of money they wanted in the note,” Emma pointed out. “And my name hasn’t been in any of the papers, or someone would have told me by now, so there really is nothing we can do at the moment.”
She took a bite, swallowed, and added, “The police
would certainly have been in touch with me already if they had been going to.” She laughed at her own il- logic—and perhaps the awkwardly dangling infinitive.
“Why are you so sure about that?” Faith asked suspiciously. Grammar or no grammar, she knew what Emma was hinting. She took a bite of the scone on her own plate and put it down. Too much baking powder.
“I always sent Daddy postcards when I was traveling and couldn’t get to see him. Besides, he did so miss leaving the country. He’d hitchhiked all over the world when he was younger.”
“And he saved them?”
“One was on the fridge the last time I was there.” Ignoring the homey image this conjured up—hammer and sickle refrigerator magnets?—Faith pressed.
“But how would the police have known who you were?
Granted, they could check up on people named Emma who’d left the country for those destinations near the postmarked dates, but it wouldn’t be easy.”
“They would have recognized Michael from our wedding picture,” Emma answered matter-of-factly.
Faith’s head began to reel as she envisioned the Spartan studio apartment described in the media filled with nothing but books, an ancient Underwood on a card table, a bed, and a file cabinet—envisioned the apartment complete with an eight-by-ten glossy of Emma and Michael, the bride and groom, in a silver frame from Tiffany’s.
But Emma was right. The police would have been onto her immediately. Fox’s murderer had taken the photo and the cards. Fox’s murderer. Emma’s blackmailer?
Emma stood up. She looked out at the tree and said
pensively, “I’m madly behind with my shopping. I’d better go to Saks.”
Faith pulled on her coat. “What about Todd? What happened to him? Don’t tell me you see him at three o’clock on Wednesdays.”
“Don’t be silly. I never saw him again after that, but I did get a card in the mail a couple of years ago from some real estate firm on Long Island. You know the kind. ‘If you’re thinking of buying a house, think of me.’ And it had his picture on it; otherwise, I would never even have read it. It was right after we got married, and he must have seen the announcement in the
and he knew what had happened to Fox’s daughter.
And that she’d been pregnant by him. Faith put his name on the list of potential blackmailers.
“Was there anybody else who knew who Fox was and knew you? Anyone else around when you went to see him the first time?”
“He was living with some woman. Daddy always had women,” Emma added ruefully. Faith was glad to see it. All this Daddy Fox worship was getting to be a bit much. “I didn’t meet her, though. I think he didn’t want her to know about me.”
Faith made a mental note of this woman. The list could use a few more names. At the moment, it consisted of Lucy Morris and Todd Hartley. Poppy Morris knew about her daughter’s pregnancy and parentage, but it strained credulity to think she would be blackmailing her own daughter. Still, Faith made another note to try to find out if Poppy was paying her Bergdorf’s bills on time. Some of the veteran sales
force who had been outfitting Jane Lennox Sibley’s family forever could be counted on to spill a few beans.
Jason Morris obviously knew about Nathan Fox and his wife’s affair, yet he may not have known about Emma’s pregnancy, although Emma had mentioned that Poppy was carrying on about it all over the house.
The only reason he’d have to blackmail his—what, stepdaughter?—would be pure spite. To get his hands on the money Poppy had set aside for Emma behind his back? Faith added Jason to the list. From what little she recalled, he’d never struck her as a terribly nice man, and at the moment, that was enough to fit the profile. Then there was Fox himself—he knew Emma was his daughter and she may have told him about the pregnancy during one of their parent-child bonding visits.
But Fox was already dead when the first card turned up. Even if he’d written it, he couldn’t have orches- trated the delivery of the money or composed the second from the grave. He’d been a vocal force when previously underground, but this time around was decidedly different. Whatever one’s beliefs concerning the hereafter, none included the postal service or even faxes.
“I know I have no right to ask you to do anything else, Faith, when you’ve been such an angel, but there is one more thing. A big favor.”
Emma was putting some money down on the table, over Faith’s protests that they split the bill. “Women
