Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (13 page)

“Buy me my coffee and we’ll call it even.” He dropped his voice. “Besides, you promised to tell me more about what’s going on with Ginny as well as what happened at the clinic.” His grin crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. “You know I’m dying to hear all.”

When they walked back into the street, the light had turned a watery green and the sky seemed to come within inches of their heads. Then it was cracked by light, so unexpectedly that Claire questioned whether she had really seen it. A second latter, thunder rolled, loud and round and very close.

Hail fell from the sky and bounced up again, like Styrofoam pellets released from a giant beanbag chair. Stinging hailstones snapped against their skin. Dr. Gregory grabbed Claire’s hand and they began to run back to his office on the next block. Claire was hobbled by her ankle, though, and they were both dripping when they stumbled in the door. The place where she was used to seeing the reception desk had been filled by a free-standing shelf of supplements. Dr. Gregory was grinning at her, hail glinting in his curls like pieces of broken glass. The room was filled with the oddly intimate sound of their panting. He was standing so close that she was afraid he would kiss her. She loosened her hand and stepped back.

Rummaging in a closet, he came up with some folded patient gowns, thin fabric printed with abstract blue flowers. He tossed one to her and then began to dry his own clothes and hair, sniffing a couple of times as he did.

“I hope I haven’t made you catch cold,” Claire said, remembering how he had sniffed all through dinner.

“Don’t tell me you still believe it’s getting wet that does it. You know it’s germs and nothing but. The nose sometimes reacts to abrupt temperature changes, such as going from indoors to outdoors to indoors again.” He took both gowns and tossed them into a hamper. “Have a seat and let me have a look at your ankle. And I want you to tell me all about Ginny Sloop and what happened at the clinic.”

While Dr. Gregory examined her ankle with his fingers as much as his eyes, Claire told him about how she had been worried that Ginny had disappeared until she had found the record about her twins at the clinic.

Dr. Gregory had stopped examining her ankle and now held her foot cupped loosely in his hands. She was aware of the soft ribs of his corduroy pants underneath the sole of her foot, but she felt awkward pulling it away. He gave her another smile. “Now come on, tell me the good stuff. How did it go at the clinic? Did our little ruse work?”

Claire nodded. “I think they took me at face value until the end, and maybe even then.” Dr. Gregory gave her his full attention while she told him the whole story, ending with, “So I’ve got a whole page of names instead of just one. Charlie figured out that only four of the kids on the list are girls, but that still means we might be a long way from finding Lori’s daughter.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think the nurse completely bought my throwing up, though. She gave me a long look after she had cleaned up. But I only had a second to think of a reason that I might be behind the counter. Lucky for me, the waiting room was nothing but acres of beige carpet and no wastebasket in sight.”

Dr. Gregory trailed a finger across her foot and then stood up. “Before I forget, let me tell you that your ankle looks fine. In fact, I would say it’s recovering nicely. But you should listen to it. If it tells you to stop running and walk for a while, then do it.”

“But I already feel like my muscle is turning into fat,” Claire protested.

“Muscle doesn’t
turn into fat. It just atrophies while at the same time you’re gaining weight.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“As your doctor, I know you would want to know the truth, Claire.” He turned away and began washing his hands at the sink. “Where’s the list now?”

Claire took the crumpled photocopy from her backpack. Dr. Gregory spread it out on his desk and began to study it intently while Claire explained what Charlie and she thought all the notations meant. Then he interrupted her. “Will you look at that!” There was something like awe in his voice.

“What?” Claire responded. He tapped on the third name of a person who had acquired a baby girl in August of 1988, the one whose address they had been unable to find on Charlie’s outdated map. Mandy Price. “What is it?” Claire repeated, but he was just staring at the list, his lips moving a little bit as he considered something.

He gave his head a little shake before answering her. “I’m pretty sure that’s Mandy Price. You know, as in Amanda and Kurt Price.”

“I’ve never heard anyone call her Mandy. Are you sure?” Amanda and Kurt Price were Portland’s most famous residents, on paper at least. They were so reclusive that they might as well live in New York City or Los Angeles. No one Claire knew had actually ever seen either of them in person.

“Look at the address. I know where Parrot Road is, out by the Tualatin River, and that’s the area they live in. Ten years ago it was all farms. Now it’s two million dollar estates with gates and guards and security cameras.
 
You can’t exactly call it a neighborhood when each house comes with a minimum of ten acres. I think the Prices have about twenty acres along the river.”

Amanda Price was a chameleon who could play a Jewish refugee, a drugged-out rock and roller, or a struggling survivor of a future apocalypse. Her hair color changed as often as Lori’s, and she was famous for adopting a pitch-perfect accent for whatever part she chose. Kurt Price, Amanda’s husband, was at least a dozen years older, but aging well, his bright green eyes still captivating in his now craggy face. He had made a career out of playing one pumped-up action hero after another, although lately his roles had been a little less frequent. A star for a quarter of a century, he had spent his career saving one shrieking starlet after another from serial killers, earthquakes, Mafia dons and the occasional evil tentacled alien from outer space. Off-screen, his marriage to Amanda a dozen years before had been covered by all the tabloids, especially after one off-kilter fan killed herself at the news that someone had finally succeeded in getting Kurt to the altar.

Renowned for being reclusive, the Prices refused to shill for their films, and their private life was just that. News of Amanda’s pregnancy had only leaked to the media after she grew too big to hide it. And, as far as Claire could remember, she had never seen any pictures of the actors’ daughter. Now Claire understood the reason for their privacy. They had gone to great lengths to keep the adoption of their daughter secret. They didn’t want the whole world to know that despite the few grainy tabloid photos published of Amanda, her designer maternity-smocked belly perched above those famously long legs, the actress had never been pregnant at all.

Chapter Thirteen

That afternoon, Charlie and Claire set out, armed with the pictures of Havi and Lori as children. They decided to concentrate first on the two houses that lay within Portland’s city limits, one in the Burlingame area in southwest Portland, and the other in the Irvington neighborhood across the Willamette river in the northeast. Teresa Marquette, presumably a single mother, lived within three miles of Charlie and Claire, in a mini-subdivision of long, low ranch houses that had been put up after World War II. In J.B.’s borrowed Firebird, Claire and Charlie drove slowly down the street, until they found a turquoise house with a number that matched the one on Claire’s stolen photocopy. There was no car in the driveway and the curtains were drawn.

“Look at that lawn,” Claire remarked. It was unmarred by weeds or even a stray leaf. The flat green was as unvarying and perfect as a golf-course.

Charlie shook her head. “It does not look like a house for children.”

She was right. The house looked more like it belonged to an old man who would confiscate any ball that accidentally ended up on his property. But when they turned around and drove back past the house, they saw the gold letters on the mailbox that spelled out Marquette.

Six blocks later, Claire pulled over. Dressed in her black running tights and an old gray sweatshirt, she began to slowly run down the street. The plan called for her to run by the Marquette house, continue on for a few blocks, then turn around and run back. In case she did spy a likely candidate, she carried a small disposable camera in her sweatshirt pocket. Portland - home of the main U.S. office for Adidas and with Nike headquartered in its suburbs - was a city of runners, so her presence should arouse no comment. It was slow going, but Claire remembered Dr. Gregory’s comment that her muscles might be atrophying, and decided to keep pushing herself. After just two blocks she was out of breath. She walked one block, tried to start running again, and then she gave up and walked. A few weeks before she could have knocked five miles off without much problem, and now here she was trying to psych herself up to run at least a few feet.

The neighborhood didn’t offer much diversion. She quickly identified the four types of houses the developer had offered. One had the living room and one front bedroom on the right. The next was reversed, with everything on the left. The third and fourth simply tacked a second bedroom next to the first. It must be confusing, Claire thought, to visit your neighbors, like walking through a looking glass.

She worked up to a slow, shuffling run as she started down Teresa Marquette’s block. Many of the neighboring houses were showing their age, sagging a little bit, some in need of paint. Not the Marquette’s house. It looked freshly painted and in perfect repair. But something about its very neatness gave Claire a stunted feeling, and she realized that there no flowers edging the house or the street, nothing but the emerald grass, oppressive in its perfection. After running another block and a half, she turned and ran back past the still closed-up house.

When she got back to the car, Charlie was sitting in the driver’s seat. Claire fell into the passenger seat, still panting even though she had walked most of the way back. She fastened her seatbelt, which was so old it only went over her lap. “There was nothing to see. I don’t think anyone was home, although it was hard to tell. Whoever lives in that house does so behind closed doors.”

The next address belonged to David and Monica Liebling. As they drove across the Fremont bridge, Charlie told Claire that Liebling was German for darling. Searching for the address, they drove slowly down the wide streets of the Irvington neighborhood, past one hundred year old homes, square, boxy and generous. Now no one had the free time to sit on the deep porches, and the maid’s rooms had probably all been turned into home offices.

 
Two stories tall with a daylight basement, the Lieblings’ house was painted a dark mossy green with cream-colored trim. There was a new red Beemer parked in the driveway, although they couldn’t see anyone moving in the house as they drove by the first and second times. Charlie parked six blocks past the Lieblings’ house and Claire started out for her second brief run of the day.

Unlike southwest Portland, this part of the city had sidewalks, so Claire could run without worrying about sharing the road with traffic. Her ankle was another matter. She had thought the idea of running surveillance would give her the push she needed to start again, but the concrete was proving much less forgiving than macadam. Each step sent a little zip of pain up her leg.

Worse, though, was her endurance. How could she have lost so much in just a week? She tried to find the same easy scissoring pace that only a few weeks before had come naturally to her. But after only two blocks, her breath caught in little wheezes and her side ached. She was reduced to walking again.

The garages and yards in this neighborhood were filled with expensive adult toys - Range Rovers, boats, elaborate barbecue grills, securely padlocked mountain bikes, a swimming pool (now shrouded in blue plastic), a pair of matching Weimarners behind a chain-link fence. These last made Claire’s heart beat even faster, although they only glanced at her with slow indifference and then looked away again. She picked up her feet and started running again.

By the time she reached the Lieblings’ block, she was convinced that she tasted blood in her mouth. A telephone pole was conveniently located directly across the street. Bracing herself against it, Claire stopped and made a show of stretching her legs while keeping her eyes fastened on the house. No one moved behind the large windows.

Claire squinted. A stuffed toy that looked like a cross between a person and an animal was perched on a windowsill on the first floor. It wore a yellow jacket and blue pants. She recognized it as a character from a popular children’s television show. Claire didn’t know any ten-year-old girls, but it seemed like the kind of thing that would appeal to one.

Her breath quickened, but Claire tried to caution herself not to get too excited. After all, if she and Charlie had unscrambled the ledger’s entries correctly, all the children on their list should be ten-year-old girls.

Claire half-ran another two blocks, then turned around and began running back on the other side of the street. The room she now sure was a child’s drew her eyes, but she didn’t see any more than the stuffed animal regarding the world through round plastic glasses. She and Charlie would have to come back.

Charlie and Claire went to a nearby Natures store to discuss their next move as well as pick up a few groceries. Natures had expanded from its original niche of organically grown vegetables to embrace every upscale consumer. Shoppers could now purchase St. Johns wort, hand-made chocolates, veal, taro root chips, expensive hearth-baked breads and milk guaranteed to be free of bovine-growth hormone. About the only item Natures refused to stock was cigarettes, and anyone smoking at their deli seating would probably have been driven out with a whip hand-woven from organically grown hemp.

While Charlie selected fresh goat cheese and some Yellow Finn potatoes, a man walked slowly past them down the produce aisle, holding a black cellular phone the size of a credit card to his ear. He seemed to be co-shopping with whoever was at the other end of the phone. “The radicchio looks a little wilted. But the arugula looks good. Want me to get some?”

When they walked past the deli case, Charlie spied a Linzer Torte and decided that she must have a slice. To be companionable, Claire ordered a piece of something called “Death by Chocolate” for herself, as well as a cup of coffee.

“What are we going to do about the Prices?” Claire asked after they had found a seat upstairs.

“It does not sound as if it will be easy to see what their child looks like.” With the side of her fork, Charlie cut a tiny shaving of torte. “Such a child would probably have private tutors, so she might not even leave for school.”

“We also need to figure out what to do if” - Claire corrected herself - “I mean
when
- we do find a girl that might be Havi and Lori’s. What if all four of them look like possibilities?” Her fork scraped against the heavy white china. Looking down, Claire was surprised to see that her entire slice of cake had already disappeared. “Lori thinks she could tell just from looking them in the face.”

“But what if more than one of them appears right?”

“If we had a blood sample, we could have a DNA test done,” Claire said. “I see that in the newspaper all the time now, where they test the supposed father to see if he is or is not.”

“Lori and Havi’s blood we could get. But a child’s?” Charlie pushed away her half-eaten cake. After fifty years in America, she still ate like a European. Quality counted for far more than quantity. Just a taste of the perfect flavor trumped the family-sized generic brand any day. Claire stared longingly at what was left of her friend’s desert while promising herself that she wouldn’t touch it.

“There must be some way we could get a sample without tipping our hand and directly asking the parents. I could dress as a nurse and, I don’t know, go their school and arrange to have them taken out of class....” The idea already seemed to be going no place. “I guess that won’t work.” Claire tried again.
 
“Maybe you could offer your services as a baby-sitter. Any one who looks at you trusts you. And then you tell the girl you need to giver her a shot. Or wait, wait, you don’t need a scientific sample, all neat in a syringe. And you don’t even need a lot. That’s not how they get it at a crime scene. You just need a little bit of blood on something. Maybe you could talk the girl into becoming your blood sister, you know, where each person pricks their finger? Then you could help her clean up and smear a little bit of blood on a washcloth.
 
It might well be the last time you baby-sit, but at least they probably wouldn’t call the cops.” Without even being aware that she had done it, Claire realized that she had pulled Charlie’s discarded torte to her and eaten several bites of buttery pastry and raspberry jam. Well, too late now. She shrugged and continued eating as ideas popped into her mind. “Or does it have to be blood? What about spit?”

“Spit?”

“Remember that lady in Vancouver who disappeared and was last seen leaving a bar with an ex-con? They found blood in his truck, but since she was gone there was none of her DNA to compare it to. But then they thought of collecting DNA from the flap of an envelope they knew she had licked. It shouldn’t be too hard to get the girl to lick something. And at least that way we wouldn’t have to worry about how to get blood. You could just find a way to play mailman, give the kid some stamps and envelopes, then cart it all off to be analyzed.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t comment. In her heart, Claire knew that all of her plans would be difficult, if not impossible, to carry out. As she sucked the last bit of Linzer Torte from her fork, she wished desperately that she had been able to remember Lori’s number when she held the ledger in her hands.

One-fourth of their problem was solved on the way home as they drove past the Marquettes. A white Eagle station wagon now stood in the drive, its tailgate open to reveal a half-dozen paper grocery bags from Fred Meyer. A girl came out of the house, lifted one of the bags into her thin arms, and carried it back inside. A girl who looked about ten-years-old.
 
A tall, gangly girl with hair the color of corn-silk, and skin the blue-white shade of skim milk. Charlie took a pen and made a thick black line through Teresa Marquettes’ name. “One down and three to go,” she said.

###

Charlie and Claire had been parked outside the Lieblings’ house since four in the morning. After weighing the pros and cons of sleepiness versus urgent calls of nature, Claire had reluctantly decided not to bring her insulated coffee mug with her. At five-thirty, they watched the light behind a small pebbled glass window go on upstairs. “The bathroom,” Claire whispered, and Charlie nodded. After about five minutes, the first light blinked out, then another light came on in rectangular window set high in the wall of the ground floor. “The kitchen?” Charlie guessed. A glimpse of a dark head dipping down, then something round and silver that caught the light as it was lowered and then raised again. Claire imagined a kettle being filled at the sink. At six a.m., another light blinked on in the second story, this one staying on. Shadows moved behind curtains and blinds, and gradually more lights were turned on in the house until they burned in nearly every room.

Dressed in dark colors, Charlie and Claire sat in the borrowed Firebird and watched the Lieblings’ house, hoping for a glimpse of the girl who lived there. They had rolled the windows down a crack to keep them from steaming up. Anyone glancing out would only see a car, not an obviously occupied car. A steady drizzle kept even the most motivated joggers indoors. At six-thirty, a woman in a baseball cap and rain coat appeared at the end of the block. Whenever the wolfhound on the end of her leash stopped to sniff a hydrant or bush, the woman jerked it forward. As the pair crossed by on the other side of the street, Claire and Charlie held themselves absolutely still, but neither the woman nor the dog noticed them.