Claire and Present Danger by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

returned the cup to the table before speaking, and I wondered if she had a repertoire of distracting actions to take her listener’s—and her own—mind off what a strain it was to keep up a conversation.
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    CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER
    She looked at me directly. “Later, you realize, she didn’t say anything.”
    “I think I understand.”
    She pursed her mouth, but decided to be clearer. “Where she grew up? She says . . . father was executive. Changed companies.
    Moved a lot. Lived in Atlanta.”
    Something tangible at last. “That’s a start.” I wrote it down.
    “And Bridgeport. Austin. Fargo.”
    I looked up. Mrs. Fairchild’s mouth had tightened. “Gotcha,”
    she was saying, as if I were her enemy, as if we weren’t supposedly working in tandem. “Chicago,” she said. “Los Angeles. Cleveland.” She tapped her index finger on the arm of the wing chair.
    “Many schools, too. Talk. More talk. Funny stories, but . . .”
    “You mean that ultimately you realize she never mentioned what companies her father worked for?” I asked, hoping to spare Mrs. Fairchild a bit of air. “Or a specific school?”
    She nodded. “Or dates. Or neighborhoods. Los Angeles!” Both of her hands rose and spread apart to show the daunting size of L.A., the meaninglessness of not being more specific about origins.
    I thought about the beautiful woman in the poet’s blouse, her graceful gestures, that flash of high-wattage smile, her free-flowing compliments about my supposed job. I could imagine her speaking at length and saying very little, but saying it in a warm and delicious manner. Was she accidentally or deliberately offering conversational cotton candy?
    A woman could babble out of nervousness when confronted with the formidable Claire Fairchild. Or she could have a conversational style based on the idea that nothing about herself was all that interesting or important, so above all, she shouldn’t bother listeners with specifics. Instead, she’d aim to entertain, amuse, and turn the conversation to other topics and other people. What, in fact, could be a more traditionally feminine philosophy than to feel that her purpose was to make the listener happy? Maybe she’d been taught to behave that way.
    Nothing Claire Fairchild said necessarily triggered suspicion. I’d 41
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    had friends—short-timers passing through Philadelphia—whose fathers worked for I.B.M., and they’d referred to the initials as standing for “I’ve been moved.” Things might have changed by now, but that’s how it was for a large segment of the nation’s children, and for a long time.
    Plus, I knew people who were congenitally vague, avoiding specifics as if they were tainted. They intended to be clear, they thought they’d been clear, but I nevertheless had to ask, “Do you mean . . . ?” Poor communication skills, not anything malicious.
    “Did she say where she lived right before she moved here?” I asked.
    “Near San Francisco.”
    I must have frowned, thinking what near might mean in researching a person’s tracks.
    “Yes,” Claire Fairchild said. “Vague. I ask, ‘where?’ She says . . .
    ‘Gosh! You know Indian Cliffs? Little town, a way out? I was near there.’ Always places nobody’s heard of.”
    I wondered whether Claire Fairchild had ever traveled, whether
    “places nobody’s heard of” was accurate, or a reflection of a stay-at-home, unsophisticated woman. Not that I knew where any “Indian Cliffs” was in the Bay Area, either, but I was the perfect example of someone who hadn’t—yet—gotten to travel.
    “Then she talks about the baby deer by the front door, and the fox that ran by.” She paused and bit at her bottom lip, remembering.
    I nodded encouragement.
    “The story’s charming. And over. Nothing . . . definite. Ever.”
    She looked up toward the scrolls on the crown-molding and sighed. Then she looked at me, and her expression was solemn.
    “So you called us.” I still