“Violet was the one who hired me,” I said. “It’s been more than a week. I’ve met her husband too. Interesting man.”
“You’re being uncharacteristically diplomatic,” Penny said. “Randy is downright strange. People like to call him an eccentric. I think he’s just damn weird. Violet deserves a medal for keeping that marriage together. He’s been a disaster.”
“But he’s been a great businessman.”
“Using Violet’s money,” Penny said. “If it weren’t for her father setting him up, he’d be shoveling coal in West Virginia.”
Her cook, Balzac, brought over a plate of beef carpaccio served with arugula and shaved parmesan cheese. He also delivered a plate of warm sweetbreads. My favorite.
“My detecting has taught me that Violet and her daughter have a somewhat complicated relationship,” I said.
“They always have,” Penny said. “Tinsley blames Violet for Randy’s boorish behavior. Let’s just say he hasn’t been the most discreet with his extracurriculars. She ran away several times as a teenager. Always overseas. Each time was connected to the discovery of a different infidelity.”
“Let me get this right. The father’s the one out bopping around, yet she’s mad at the mother?”
“She thinks Violet’s aloofness left him no choice. You’ve met her. She’s not the warmest pebble on the beach.”
“No, but at least she’s making the effort to find her daughter.”
“Violet’s a control freak if there ever was one,” Penny said. “The fact that she’s the one making a fuss doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“You think this disappearance has something to do with one of her father’s mistresses?”
Penny thought for a moment, then said, “Hard for me to call it. If something like this is pissing her off, Tinsley’s old enough now she could just pack up her things and move out on her own. Why would she need to run away?”
“The better question is why she’s still living with a difficult mother and all that drama when she has plenty of other options?”
Penny smiled. “Because down to her core, she’s a daddy’s girl. He’s a strong presence in her life. Like I said before, it’s complicated.”
“You think she was kidnapped?”
“Unlikely. Kidnapped for money? Why now? After all these years when she was a child dependent on her wealthy parents, no one so much as breathed in her direction. So why would they do it now when she’s an adult? Not saying it’s not possible, but it makes the least sense.”
“Then what do you think it is?”
Penny shrugged. “Too many possibilities. What are you thinking?”
I had just taken a bite of the carpaccio and cheese. The lemon vinaigrette dressing perfectly cut the sharpness of the cheese. The beef melted in my mouth.
“I’m not even close to working this all out,” I said. “But I think she ran away.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she’s hiding something.”
“Like what?”
“A little bun in the oven.”
Penny was about to tip her glass, but instead lowered it back to the table. Her eyes widened. “Pregnant?”
I nodded.
“Do you know this as a fact?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“And who do you suspect is the father?”
“Chopper McNair.”
“Who the hell is he?”
“The nephew of one of Chicago’s biggest gangsters.”
“My God,” Penny said. “Violet must be torn apart.”
“I don’t think she knows about the pregnancy.”
“Jesus Christ. If it’s true, it will absolutely destroy her.”
18
I HAD GOTTEN HOME late from Penny’s house and had dozed off on the couch, watching a replay of last year’s British Open on the Golf Channel. The last thing I remembered was a group walking up the eighteenth fairway and an aerial shot of the violent wind gusts battering the Atlantic Ocean. Then I felt water trickling down my throat as I struggled to get air through my nose and into my lungs. The pool water cascaded off my face, and I lifted my head back, feeling the warmth of the sun. Marco’s hand was no longer on my head, but his arm was still pressed against my chest. I gasped in a much-needed breath.
I couldn’t make out the faces standing above me, but I could see the color of their shirts. Yellows and bright blues mixed with reds and whites—that was what caught my eye. There were so many colors and so many who just stood there watching me struggle in the water. Strangely, the sound of voices I had heard before my head was pushed into the water was gone. There was only silence, except for the sound of tires grinding on dirt and gravel. A long dirt road outside the pool ran from the entrance of the camp all the way up the hill to the back of the property, ending where the woods started.
Two large pools had been built into the hill, one on top, the other at the base. Marco had gathered all the campers in our group, or tribe, as we called them, and told us to follow him to the lower pool. We thought it strange to be heading there at this time of the day. We swam twice a day, and those times were tightly regulated, because all the tribes shared the same pools, and there were hundreds of campers. We thought we were going for a special swim. It was our favorite activity, especially during these hot summer afternoons when the sun bore down on us uninterrupted for hours. But I should’ve known something was amiss when he told us to leave our towels in our lodge. We never went to the pools without our towels.
He’d lined us up along the pool’s concrete perimeter and began lecturing us about following orders and not causing problems. The camp office had already booted two campers who’d walked into the girls’ bays, stolen their swimsuits and underwear, and thrown them in the trees over by the pond. The head office had scolded the counselors for not having control of their tribes. Since that incident at the beginning of the summer, zero tolerance for mischievous behavior had been declared. Regardless of how much he liked all of us, Marco was the boss, and he was not going
