Learning to Swim (28 page)

Now I had to leave to meet Gina.

If I cut things close, I always get lost, but if I leave plenty of time I’m fine. I arrived at the café in Montreal fifteen minutes early, and in fumbling French ordered iced tea.

I’d dressed in black—jeans, stretchy T-shirt, and blazer, with my recorder in the pocket. Gina had said she would be wearing red. I had no trouble spotting her when she arrived, ten minutes late. She had long fluffy hair and more eye makeup than I’d seen outside Nashville. I’d had plenty of time to practice my pitch:
I hadn’t heard from Madeleine for months; I was worried, I happened to find your email address in an old email
.

It turned out I didn’t have to talk much. In fact, it was so easy I might have felt guilty if it hadn’t taken all my energy to keep up with Gina’s discourse. All I had to do was introduce a topic, and she was off and running. Where could Madeleine possibly be?
Probably in Florida or on a cruise, she does like to travel, you know, and I wish I could but I just never can get away, but she said she would take me sometime and of course she’d pay for everything, I’d just have to buy my airfare
. Could she have gone off with someone?
Well, that husband of hers is at work all the time, but sometimes her brother went with her and who knows, maybe she had a boyfriend, but she never talked about it and I never saw her with anyone except her brother. She did meet some woman, I can’t remember her name, she brought her into the salon to have her nails and hair done and even paid for it, but of course she always had plenty of money
. What about her son?
Yep, he’s a real cutie, but awfully quiet and spent most of his time with that old woman, the nanny
.

Oddly, I found myself liking her.

Somewhere in all this she squeezed in talk about her job as a hairstylist—which was how she’d met Madeleine—and ate a hearty sandwich and drained two glasses of white wine. And then I took a chance on our sudden camaraderie and leaned close and said, “I’m not so sure that Madeleine really wanted children, you know.”

This started her off:
Yes, if you want to know the truth of course you know the boy was sort of an accident but like on purpose to help Philippe along with the idea of getting married because some men you know just will never take that step unless they have to and it’s no wonder really that Maddie doesn’t care for kids because she was surrounded by them you know and some really awful ones sometimes growing up in all those foster homes and I’m pretty much sure that in some of those homes the dads took liberties you know because of some things Maddie said, in fact she got pregnant really young but the baby was born dead, and you know she was really gorgeous even when she was really really young, I’ve seen pictures
.

I was glad I had my recorder—this was so fast I was barely following it. She paused and I murmured, “Sounds like she had a really tough time.”

She nodded. “Yep, and it was worse, you know, after what had happened to her parents, and she was the one who found them when she was just eleven.” She leaned close and spoke in a low voice: “One of them killed the other, you know, I’m not sure which.” I blinked.

Suddenly she looked at her watch and stood. “Say, you know, it was great to meet you, but I’ve got an appointment and parking is awful, so I’d better run.” She waggled her fingers at me and was gone before I realized that she had left me with the check.

Which I deserved. I’d encouraged this woman to talk about a friend she had no idea was dead, and had discovered details of a horribly sad past—dead parents, bad foster homes, lost baby. It didn’t help that I had two hours of driving to mull it all over.

I went straight to pick up Paul, calling Elise on my cell to ask her to let out Tiger. As I neared the school I was newly aware of every car around me. On the way home I checked the rearview mirrors so often I almost didn’t hear what Paul was telling me about his day.

When he was changing clothes, I checked Madeleine’s email. Gaius had replied: ten short words that gave me a chill.
A game where you disappear, but the boy comes back
.

My brain stuttered. This person didn’t know Madeleine had been kidnapped,
but somehow knew Paul had returned
. How could he know one of these things and not the other? I reread the initial email:
Julia o Julia, what game are you playing?

I had to turn this over to the police, but I really didn’t want to give them all Madeleine’s emails, just in case the police hadn’t seen them. I also didn’t particularly want them to know what I’d been doing.

What a mess I’d gotten myself in. Simon would have told me this was why civilians should never dabble in these things.

But because I seemed so close to finding out something, I’d send one more message. I thought hard, and wrote back,
What did you think had happened?

And then I began to research. This time I used Madeleine’s and Claude’s first names only, with the words
Québec, parents
, and
murder
. And I found the story.

They indeed had been nine and eleven when their parents had
died in an apparent murder-suicide, and had been the ones who found them dead. They’d had a different last name then; perhaps they’d taken the name of one of their foster families. I wondered if Philippe knew all these grim details.

I clicked off the computer.

I felt thoroughly ashamed. I was ashamed for meeting Gina under false pretenses. I was ashamed I’d been so intolerant of Claude, who had had such a terrible childhood. And I was ashamed for having been foolish enough to think that I could succeed where the police had not.

I’d never realized how dangerous hubris could be.

I
T DIDN’T HELP THAT TONIGHT PHILIPPE HAD ASKED ME TO
an annual affair for local businesses, where his company had been nominated for an award—he had an extra ticket because Claude had canceled. Even I knew not to wear the same dress, and on my own I’d found a simple black dress that had been marked down. Fortunately I could use the shoes I’d gotten earlier.

This was your standard awards buffet dinner, with pompous speakers and jokes not as funny as the tellers intended. It was fancier and bigger than dinners I’d attended for my small newspaper, but not all that different. Philippe had graciously accepted his award and we were at the post-dinner socializing part. He had gone to get us wine when I heard someone speak beside me.

“Hello,” the voice said, and I jumped visibly. At first I didn’t recognize the man standing there. It was Detective Jameson, shirt neatly ironed, tie closed, hair tidy.

“Hello,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. We could see Philippe across the room, in a three-way conversation with a shrill woman and a stout man, glasses of wine in his hands, gracefully trying to get away.

“So you’re dating now,” he said abruptly.

“No,” I said. “No, we’re not.”

“What about the boyfriend in Vermont?”

I turned to look at him, but his face showed nothing. “I just told you that I’m not dating Philippe. Just because I am at a function with
him doesn’t mean we’re dating. Look, you’re here, I’m here, and we’re not dating.”

He shrugged. “How long have you been sleeping with him?”

For a moment I couldn’t believe I had heard correctly, and then I was suddenly so angry I could hardly speak. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“You haven’t answered.”

With an effort I controlled my temper. “My private life is none of your business.”

He shrugged again. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. When you have a puzzle to solve, it helps to have all the pieces.” He looked at me placidly. “It’s an easy question.”

I stared at him. “I am not involved with Philippe,” I said. “I am not dating Philippe. I am not sleeping with Philippe. But,
one
, this has nothing to do with anything you’re investigating, and,
two
, you have no idea if I’m telling the truth.”

The crowd jostled around us, and then he was behind me, and I could see Philippe detaching himself and beginning to move toward me. “One, I never ask anything without a reason,” Jameson said, almost in my ear. “And, two, whether you’re telling the truth or not, your answer tells me something.” Then he was gone.

Philippe had to go to work early the next morning, so I drove Paul to school. When I got back, I went up to check Madeleine’s email, feeling nervous and more than a little guilty. One reply from Gaius:
That maybe someone has gotten even with you—someone you cut off, like me?
I read the words once and then a second and third time. This sounded like something from a jilted lover. This had to go to the police, without a doubt.

I went off on my ride, and on the bike I worked out how to do it. I would print the incoming Gaius emails with the coding revealed to show IP addresses, and fax them to the police station anonymously from a Jiffy Print. The police could trace the sender. It would be out
of my hands. I’d stop tinkering, now. No more emails. No more Craigslist ads. No more meeting friends of Philippe’s wife.

Decision made.

When you’ve ridden a bike as many miles as I have, you look for trouble on a subconscious level. Without realizing it you watch for a car door suddenly opening, a dog bolting, a driver about to heave a can or bottle. When something happens, you have to react, and react quickly.

What crept into my consciousness now was a car, a big dark one, coming toward me and suddenly turning left directly across my path. Whether the driver was blinded by the sun, had fallen asleep at the wheel, or had had a sudden homicidal impulse, I didn’t know and didn’t care. A couple of tons of metal were bearing down on me, and if I didn’t get out of the way I’d be dead. No time to reverse direction, and I knew I couldn’t accelerate enough to get out of its path. Without conscious thought, I jerked my front wheel hard right in an almost impossibly sharp turn.

The car just cleared my rear tire, nearly knocking me over from turbulence. Had there been nothing in my way, I could have ridden it out or just run into the curb. But there was a line of cars parked along the side of the road, and nowhere to go. I crunched hard into the bumper of a shiny red car, and while I was airborne had time to consider how much better it was to hit a static object than be hit by one coming at you. Not for nothing did I make
A
s in physics.

That was the last thing I knew until I opened my eyes and saw people leaning over me. I could hear a siren keening in the distance. “She’s moving,” a voice said. But moving hurt, so I stopped. It can seem surprisingly restful to lie on hard pavement. The sun was bright overhead, and too many people were staring at me. I could feel a wetness on my knees and elbows. I closed my eyes again. I kept them closed, ignoring the buzz of voices. But I heard an ambulance arrive, and felt the jostle as I was placed on a backboard. I didn’t want to get in an ambulance, which wouldn’t be cheap, but neither did I have enough energy to protest. I felt a tear trail from beneath my closed eyelids.

As they lifted the stretcher, I called out, “My bike, where’s my bike?”

A murmured reply I didn’t catch.

“I’m not leaving without my bike,” I insisted, although in truth I wasn’t about to try to hop up.

More murmurs. “Someone will watch your bike,” a voice said near my face. “But we need to worry about you right now.” I thought about trying to sit up, but something seemed to be holding me down. I heard the ambulance doors close, and we started to move.