I smile uneasily. I do not know how long my sister has been listening. I have not told her about the pawn or the note, both of which I have just finished disclosing to John. He nods slightly: he will keep his mouth shut.
John turns to Mariah. “You gotta trust somebody,” he says, which is likely a code for: Once you go down that road, you might as well move to one of those survivalist compounds in Montana. John possesses a respect for authority that I wish I still shared, but the events of the past few weeks have shaken my faith in many human institutions.
I toss the basketball to my sister: “Come on, kiddo, take a shot.”
She catches it smoothly and throws it back hard enough to wind me at this close distance.
“No, thanks.”
“You used to love to play.”
“I used to love a lot of things.”
I glance over at John, who has developed a sudden interest in the little paper sticker glued to the side of the post holding the hoop, filled with small-print warnings in the fruitless hope that the manufacturer will be protected from liability in the event that some child manages to topple the thing over. John once protected the university hospital from possible liability too: when Kimmer and Bentley both almost died, John and Janice flew out at once. Janice held me while I cried, but it was John who talked me around, both as a scientist and as a Christian, to the view that I should be grateful to the doctors for saving my family, not angry that they almost didn’t.
“Come on, Mariah,” I say softly, extending a hand. “Don’t be down.”
“Don’t be down,” she repeats. “Like there’s nothing to be down about.”
I manage not to groan. In her current mood, Mariah will ruin everything.
John and Janice and their children are in Elm Harbor for our regular time together, always during the quiet week before the New Year dawns, sometimes out in Ohio, usually here. Kimmer and I celebrated, if that is the word, our ninth anniversary yesterday; John and Janice, who have been married seven years longer, will celebrate theirs tomorrow; the nearly common wedding dates are what got the tradition started five or six years ago. Our annual get-together tends to be a delightfully rambunctious affair, but this time it is quite solemn, acknowledging not only the death of my father but also the mood in my household, for, if Kimmer is no longer sneaking out, she is not precisely loving her husband either. The Browns believe that every marriage can be as perfect as theirs and are often uncomfortable in the presence of living refutation of their theory; but they are good friends and refuse to abandon the dream that our marriage is reparable.
My sister is a last-minute addition to Brown Week, as we like to call these occasions. Kimmer was surprisingly gentle in responding to the news that Mariah would be joining us, but it was the gentleness we reserve for the mentally ill. Of course, Misha, she is your sister after all, she murmured, patting my hand. I understand, I do -contriving, through this emphasis, to make clear that she does not. I am not sure I do either. The truth is that I would rather not have Mariah visiting during Brown Week, even if just for the day. (She is alone, having left her brood in Darien with the au pair. Howard, I believe, is in Tokyo.) Her fidgety presence is bound to wreck the comfortable chemistry of our two families, the Browns and the Madison-Garlands. I would rather have met Mariah at some other time, alone, but she refuses to discuss her news, whatever it is, on the telephone, perhaps afraid of a tap, and today turns out to be the earliest date on which we can make our calendars match.
Janice and Kimmer are in the kitchen, cooking and conspiring and snubbing Mariah. John and I are splitting our time between the driveway and the yard, fiddling with the grill on which we shortly plan to burn some expensive steaks, and, just now, listening with every appearance of credulity to Mariah’s ramblings. Over by the high hedge wall separating our property from the Felsenfelds’, Bentley is playing happily with John’s younger daughter, Faith, three years older than he, and together they are doing something clever and mysterious with Faith’s Nigerian Barbie and her hot-pink Barbie sports car, which is missing a wheel. Faith’s sister, Constance, has reached the age of nine, and is therefore above such pursuits; the last time I saw her, she was at the kitchen table, listlessly playing Boggle on her mother’s laptop. She clamors for the new version of Riven, which everybody else at school has, but her evangelical parents forbid it. Their oldest child, Luke, is fifteen, and he is somewhere in the house with his nose in an Agatha Christie novel.
“Sometimes the FBI is on the wrong side,” Mariah insists. “I mean, look at what they did to Dr. King.”
John and I exchange a glance. John is a small, tough man who grew up in a housing project in the state capital and scholarshipped his way to Elm Harbor. His dusky skin seems darker in the sinking light, but his eyes are bright and concerned.
“That’s one part of what I wanted to talk to you about, Tal,” my sister continues, walking between us so that we cannot continue the game until we have heard her out. She drove up today not in the Navigator, but in her Mercedes-hubby has his own-and is wearing a fancy brown tweed pantsuit with an Anne Klein air about it, probably the right attire for an autumn cocktail party in Darien, but not precisely what we tend to don for December backyard barbecues in Elm Harbor. I have no doubt that Kimmer is making this very point to Janice in the kitchen. “We need to decide what we’re gonna do.”
“About what, kiddo?” I ask gently.
“About the whole thing.”
John takes another shot and misses. The rebound arches into my hands. I lift the ball as though to shoot, but Mariah takes the ball from me and tucks it under her arm, a parent correcting a child. No more basketball, she is signaling, until we have heard her out.
“You remember that Sally and I have been going through Daddy’s papers, right? So let me tell you what we’ve found, and you’ll see why we have to do something.”
I almost interrupt, but I catch John’s look and subside. He plainly wants her to get it all out, and I decide to follow his example. Like a good lawyer, John knows when to avoid leading questions and let the client ramble.
“Okay, shoot.”
Tossing the basketball onto the snow-crusted grass, Mariah walks to her sparkling sea-green car and rummages in the front seat, pulling out a shiny brown briefcase, which she proceeds to set on the hood. “Wait a second,” she adds, setting the combination and opening the lid. A locked briefcase, I register, half amused and half alarmed. I glance at the back yard, worrying about the coals. Mariah returns with several folders. As she shuffles through the files, I remember the black-and-white covered ledger where she used to record the evidence of conspiracy. I tease her about the volume of her discoveries in the attic outgrowing the book.
“No, I just can’t find it,” she says, distracted.
“Maybe the bad guys stole it.”
Taking the point seriously, Mariah points to the briefcase. “That’s why I have a lock now.” Before I can digest this, she is holding one of the folders out. “Look at this,” she orders.
I take the folder, and John and I examine the neatly typed but fading label: DETECTIVE’S REPORT-ABIGAIL, it reads. I am suddenly excited. Except that the folder is empty.
“Where’s the report?” I ask.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Tal. It isn’t there. Doesn’t that strike you as a little weird?”
“A little.” But I am thinking that there are about two million reasons the report could be missing, one of them being that Mariah took it herself, or even created the empty folder as a prop for her fantasy.
On the other hand, that scrapbook did disappear, and an enchanted pawn made its way from the heart of the Gold Coast to an Elm Harbor soup kitchen, and a book that was stolen by the men who beat me up rematerialized on the seat of my car. So lots of things are possible.
“Then I remembered. When Daddy got the report from the detective, he turned it over to the police. You remember? Hoping they would do something.”
I do remember, with fresh pain. The Judge was so pleased with himself: hiring a private investigator, producing new leads. He had engaged somebody fancy, he assured us, from out in Potomac, even in those days an exclusive little town. Somebody, said the Judge, who was highly recommended and very expensive. He seemed proud to be paying so much.
“Villard,” I murmur. “That was his name, wasn’t it? Something-or-other Villard.”
“That’s right.” Mariah smiles. “Jonathan Villard.” I shake my head, for I was half hoping she would correct me, telling me the PI’s name was really Scott. But my memory has no trouble supplying the rest of the story. When the Judge received the report, he came out of his funk, told the family that he was sure we would soon see the killer punished. That was what he always said, the killer. And then he settled back to wait. And wait. And wait. As despair settled in once more.
