Claire and Present Danger by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online

professional, I hoped, and worked to maintain bland approval on my face. I wanted to register, not react, like movie P.I.s, which, along with mystery novels and a word or two from Mackenzie, comprised my training manuals.
    “Why are you silent? Ask me things.”
    Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was shrinks who weren’t supposed to approve or disapprove of anything. Still, you wouldn’t 35
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    think somebody who could barely breathe could be so belligerent.
    “I did ask,” I said. “You haven’t answered.”
    “You think I’m a meddling old crone.”
    “Of course not! I—”
    “Where’s your handle on reality, girl?”
    “What?”
    “Pay attention! I am meddling.”
    I couldn’t help a small smile. She was honest, I’ll give her that. I admire self-awareness, even when what you’re aware of is that you’re dreadful.
    She was a miserable troublemaker—and, yes, a major-league meddler—and I liked her, which was frightening.
    “The problem is, I’m a chronically ill meddler,” she said.
    “That’s why I’m hiring you to meddle for me.”
    I no longer liked her, and I wasn’t overly fond of me, either. I’d sold out to the enemy, was doing its dirty work. Was betraying my entire species: quaking fiancées facing malevolent mothers-in-law.
    My emotions rode the seesaw, and I didn’t know where they’d come down—except that on this first day back to school, I’d have to give myself an F for remaining professional and uninvolved.
    36
    Four
    “OKAY,” I finally said, pulling on my invisible private-eye cloak that would make me tough and strong-jawed. “What’s up? Why am I here?”
    Mrs. Fairchild raised her eyebrows.
    “I’m not asking you a metaphysical question.”
    She grinned. In another setting, at another time, she probably could be fun. But now, the grin flattened, and vertical creases—
    canyons, really, they were so deep—appeared between her eyebrows.
    Frowning was not a recently acquired or unfamiliar expression.
    “I need to know who she is.” She leaned forward in her chair, 37
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    examining me as best as she could, and avoided the point yet again.
    “You look too young for this kind of work.”
    It was a statement, not a question, so I let it ride. Besides, I wasn’t all that young. Thirty-two is old enough to have this job. Any kind of job, in fact, except president of the U.S. But given that Mrs. Fairchild was treating her fortysomething son as if he were a helpless, innocent boy-child, it followed that she probably thought of me as being in the late fetal stage. “A first question, then. What’s Emmie’s full name?”
    She raised her eyebrows this time. “When I introduced—didn’t I say?”
    “She introduced herself, and only said ‘Emmie.’ ”
    “Well, then. That’s part of the problem. You see?”
    I did not. I tried to imagine how the nickname and/or the omit-ted last name could so offend this woman that she’d call in private investigators, especially since Leo had also been introduced with only a first name. Since the only theories I could envision involved more bigotry than I could manage, I stopped imagining.
    “Cade,” she finally said. She looked as if she was waiting for a reaction so she could spring. “Calls herself Cade.”
    Calls herself? As I called myself Pepper, and she, Fairchild? I ignored the slur and moved on. “I know she said Emmie, but is that officially Emma?”
    She shrugged and simultaneously shook her head. A halfhearted body language “who knows anything at all?”
    But we were discussing a first name, not something generally subject to interpretation and misconstruction. “Ms. Cade’s name seems to distress you,” I said. “Why is that?” I could have recited amazing names I have seen on the Philly Prep list of students, names that would highlight Emmie Cade’s ordinariness. Offhand, I remembered students named for geographical sites including Morocco, Paris, and Verona, semiprecious gems (I