my bosses ever did.'
'It helped,' Kitty said, 'that you worked for me and Uncle Donald.'
Tess provided dinner for that night's round of calls, carry-out from a storefront more notable for its ambitions than its accomplishments. Butchers Hill Hot Food Hot served pizza, Italian entrees, subs and burgers-'American sandwiches' in the parlance of its menu-along with passable Indian food. It was the latter Tess had chosen, ordering an array of samosas, nan, and a double portion of rogan josh. She also had asked the delivery boy to tuck four bottles of Kingfisher Beer in with the order.
'Look, I need a beer tonight, okay?' she said, when she caught Jackie's disapproving look.
'I didn't say anything,' Jackie said, examining the foil containers, the plastic lids fogged over from steam. 'From Fresh Fields to the Grease Pits in twenty-four hours. For all you know that's greyhound meat in that so- called lamb dish.'
Esskay whimpered, not because she understood Jackie's slur, but because she adored rogan josh and seldom got more than a smear of sauce and a few grains of rice.
'It's better than that fish-and-tofu abomination you brought in here last night. Do you really like that food? Or do you just think you should like it?'
'You know, I think I'll have one of those beers after all. But whatever you do, don't eat or drink while you're on a call. It's too tacky.'
They had started with a sense of excitement, but the hours dragged slowly this time, each call putting them further away from the possibility of an answer. Twenty-four hours ago, victory had seemed so imminient. Even skeptical Tess had become convinced that Jackie's systematic approach would lead them to her daughter. But tonight's calls yielded no new clues. Not a single Caitlin. Not even a thirteen-year-old Kate or Katie. With the end so tantalizingly close, the work became dull and frustrating. Tess raced too quickly through her rehearsed lines, only to repeat them for bewildered listeners. Jackie become impatient and imperious, bullying her Johnsons as if she suspected them of lying about their children's names.
At 9:55, when Tess punched in the number for Wyler Johnston and heard the quavering voice on the end of the line, she simply hung up.
'That's it,' she said. 'She's not out there.'
'You didn't even ask that household any of the questions,' Jackie protested, reaching for Tess's sheet of numbers.
Tess grabbed the paper back from her, tearing it, not caring that she was tearing it: 'He sounded as if he was ninety-five. According to the criss-cross, he's lived at that address for forty-five years. Do you really think he's your daughter's adoptive father?'
'He could be her grandfather. And there are still people we haven't made contact with.' Jackie began shuffling through her papers. 'Maybe we should broaden our search to the whole metro area, canvass anyone with a name close to Johnson and Johnston. Or it could be Jones. Willa Mott's memory isn't perfect, you know, you said so yourself. No one remembers everything just right.'
'Jackie-'
Jackie put her hands over her eyes, although Tess suspected it was her ears she really wanted to cover, like a child who chants over words she can't bear to hear.
'Maybe someone else can help you.' She tried to sound kind and caring, instead of just tired and frustrated. 'I don't know. But I feel like I'm taking your money under false pretenses at this point. We're not getting anywhere here, and I don't know where else to go. Sure, there was a chance that Willa Mott remembered the name right, that the family who took your daughter in was right where they always were, and that they named her Caitlin. But it was always a long-shot. People don't stay in the same place for thirteen years anymore. Maybe the people at the Adoption Rights group have some ideas, but I'm fresh out.'
'They don't, you know they don't. The agency was the only lead we have.'
'Then you need a private investigator who knows more about this kind of work than I do. The truth is, the other case I'm working on is going to take more and more time. There might be criminal charges, and I'm in pretty deep. You'd be better off working with someone else, someone who can give you first priority.'
'No. I want
They had saved two of the Kingfishers, planning to drink them in a triumphant toast. Tess opened both now and began to pour one in Jackie's glass, but Jackie took the bottle from her and drank straight from it, just as Tess always did.
'Look, it's great that you wanted to give a break to a new businesswoman. But there's got to be some other female private investigator starting out on her own. Go to her.'
Jackie had already downed more than a third of her beer. She stared into the bottle as if her daughter might be at the bottom. Tess was remembering how adamant Jackie had been that first day, how sure of herself.
And you had to be paying really close attention to know of Tess's fondness for chocolate malts, a detail Jackie had known before Tess mentioned it. How can you know what kind of dark smear a kid has on her face in a black-and-white photo? You can know it's chocolate, perhaps, but you can't know it's malt. Yet Jackie had always known.
'It wasn't just a woman you wanted, was it? It's me. It had to be me. Why Jackie?'
Jackie Weir raised her eyes from the bottle and looked at Tess helplessly, as if she could no longer speak. Then she shifted her gaze to the wall, to that photo. The crying girl on the flying rabbit.
'I knew you,' she said at last. 'When we were younger.'
'Were we at Western together?' Jackie could have been a senior when she was a freshman.
'No, at the drugstore,' she said, pointing her beer bottle at the photo. 'Not that one, the big one, the one on Bond Street.'
'The Weinstein flagship on Bond and Shakespeare? That's my Aunt Kitty's bookstore.'
'It wasn't then. Not when I was eighteen. Not when you were fifteen. Not when you used to come in after school and drink chocolate malteds, and talk to your grandfather about your day. Your hair was usually in a long, shiny plait down your back and you were so thin, then, almost scrawny. That must have been when you were running all the time.'
'It was. But I don't-' She stopped, embarrassed.
'Don't remember me? There's no reason you would. I was just the girl in the back, flipping burgers. I wore an apron, and a hairnet, and those big glasses. But I could hear you. You told your grandfather about the good grades you were getting and the parties you were going to and what this boy or that boy had said to you. It was like watching a rerun of those old Patty Duke shows, listening to your life.'
'Funny, my adolescence seemed more like a sitcom based on Kafka to me.'
Jackie heard her, but she wasn't having any of it, any more than she had let Tess see herself as some poor frail female about to plunge through the tattered safety net. 'Then last March, I read about you in the paper. Your picture was there, with that dog. Like I said, you look just the same. Later, when I saw you had opened up a private detective agency, I knew I had to hire you. I knew when it became difficult, or rough, you couldn't drop me, like the first detective did, or spend my money without getting results, like the second one did. You had to help me. You had to.'
'Just because you once worked for my grandfather, because I was out front sipping sodas while you were in the back, making burgers?'
Jackie looked frightened, as if the words she were about to utter were so forbidden, so long unspoken, that she wasn't quite sure what they might do once let loose in the world.
'You have to help me because Samuel Weinstein was my baby's father.'
