"I'm pulling into a rest stop even as we speak. I'll call you on the Blight's 800 number."
Tess pulled her Toyota into a lane banked by a row of public telephones. It must have seemed so cutting edge once, a highway rest stop built so you could make a call without leaving your car. How quaint, how adorably low-tech. But it was a cheaper, better connection than the cell phone provided.
"Okay, I've got my notebook out. Shoot me what you have on Susan King."
"First of all, she's not Susan King anymore-she's Jacqueline Weir. Changed her name legally when she was eighteen. Probably thought that was good enough to keep her relatives from finding her."
"It would have been, if her relatives didn't now have access to Dorie's magic fingers." A little stroking was all part of the package with Dorie. "Why do you assume she changed her name in order to hide? The way her sister explained it, they just lost touch after she had a falling-out with their mother."
"Jacqueline Weir has the best reason of all to hide from her relatives-money. For someone who's only thirty-two, she's done pretty well for herself. She has her own business. A consulting firm, according to the file, but that could be anything. She must be doing well, because she has a huge line of credit. She also has a mortgage of sixty-five thousand dollars on a Columbia condo."
"That's not such a big deal," Tess objected, even as she wrote down the address Dorie rattled off.
"No, but the loan is secured by her own stocks, and not many thirty-two-year-olds have a portfolio like that. Approximately two hundred thousand dollars at market close yesterday. How much do you have in savings?"
"Don't tell me you pulled her credit report, Dorie. I thought we agreed you weren't going to do that unless it was absolutely necessary."
"Okay, I didn't pull her credit report. Let's just say my sixth sense tells me it's excellent. What else? Oh yeah, she leases a brand-new Lexus, only through her company, so it's a tax thing. Very crafty, this Susan King-Jacqueline Weir. I did find some sort of legal action filed on a Susan King when I ran the Chicago Title search, but it's after she changed her name, so I'm thinking it's not the same Susan King, or else it's no big deal. If someone had been really serious about collecting, they would have gone to the trouble of finding her. Probably parking tickets, some penny-ante shit like that."
"If she's so wealthy, wouldn't she pay her parking tickets?"
"Look, I'm not saying she's rich, but she's obviously got enough money on hand so relatives who aren't so well off would feel comfortable yelling for hand-outs."
Tess thought of Mary Browne in her expensive yellow suit, which matched the shoes, which matched the ribbon on her straw hat. Tess's mother dressed that way and it didn't come cheap, that matchy-matchy look. The shoe bills alone were staggering. "Her sister didn't look as if she was hurting."
"Yeah, well that's part of the trick of getting money, isn't it? Not looking like you need it. By the way, I ran Mary Browne with the birth date you gave me."
"And?"
"Even limiting the search to Maryland, I found about a hundred. With e's, without e's, but at least a hundred who could be her. Yet not a single one with that particular DOB."
"I knew she was lying about her age."
"Maybe." Dorie didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe she's not using her right name, either. Or maybe she's not from where she says she's from. Maybe she's not this woman's sister, and maybe you don't really know why she's looking for Susan King, who's trying to make a new life for herself as Jacqueline Weir."
Tess looked at her watch. "Look, I'm not far from the turn-off to Columbia. Tell you what-I'll buzz by her place and if Jacqueline Weir is home, I'll try to figure out her story without letting on who hired me. Will that make you happy?"
"Not as happy as the check you owe me for this."
Tess hung up the phone and, not without some effort, wedged her way back into traffic. Idling along, she couldn't help thinking about what Dorie might find on Theresa Esther Monaghan in her electronic data bases. A twelve-year-old Toyota. No mortgage, although she had a loan for the business, co-signed by Kitty and Tyner. No other record of the business-after all, it was in the name of Edgar Keyes, although Tess's name showed up on the incorporation papers as vice president. It made her feel safe and smug, knowing how few electronic tracks she had left. It also made her feel like something of a failure. Surely important people couldn't move so anonymously through life.
She was so busy thinking about her electronic profile that she almost missed the turn-off for Columbia. She caught Highway 175 at the last possible moment and headed west, into the heart of Maryland's last fling with Utopia.
The planned community of Columbia, brought forth during the giddy optimism of the sixties, was to have revolutionized the suburbs with its "villages" and mandated proportions of green space. A new town, as it had been called, a different way to live. But Columbia's only real legacy was its strangely named cul de sacs-Proud Foot Place, Open Window Way, Sea Change. Utopia was just another suburb, a bedroom community for Baltimore and D.C. The late developer James Rouse was better known for his much imitated "festival marketplaces," from Boston's Faneuil Hall to Baltimore's Harborplace, than he was for his new city. He had wanted to change the way people lived and ended up changing the way tourists shopped. So much for life as a visionary, Tess thought. At least he had walked the walk, living in his own creation, and using his retirement years to build housing for the inner-city poor.
Jacqueline Weir's condo was in a development known as the Cove, which at thirty-years-plus was Columbia's equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. Tess wandered through the cluster of stucco and brick buildings for almost fifteen minutes before she found the address. It was a two-story apartment that backed up to a small canal along the man-made Wilde Lake, stagnant and bright green with algae at this time of year.
Dorie's misgivings had gotten to her. What if Jacqueline Weir didn't want to be found? What if she had a legitimate reason not to see her sister again? What if Mary Browne wasn't her sister? Tess couldn't show up on the woman's doorstep and say "Heigh-ho, I was hired to find you, any reason I shouldn't?" However, armed with nothing more than a clipboard and one of her plain, tell-nothing business cards, she could transform herself into a pollster and ask all sorts of personal questions that might give her the information she needed. Or she could pretend to be from one of those new computer services that offered to reunite people with lost loved ones, then gauge Jacqueline Weir's reaction to this one-time free offer. She rapped briskly at the door, full of purpose.
No answer, no sound of movement came from within the apartment. Dorie had said Jacqueline/Susan worked from home, but who knew where a consultant might be at midday? She rapped again, and this time heard high heels moving across hardwood floors. Perfect. She stood a little straighter, thinking again of the Banneker monitor and the ramrod spine of Mrs. Nelson. She smoothed her hair with her free hand. Lies crowded her tongue, ready to be told.
They all vanished, every word vanished, when the door opened.
"I'd thought you'd get here a little faster than this," said the woman Tess knew as Mary Browne. "But I guess you did okay, all things considered."
Chapter 8
"Who are you?"
"I'm Jackie Weir," said the woman Tess knew as Mary Browne. Certainly, she dressed like Mary Browne. Today, it was a coral suit with white trim at the cuffs and collars. The white was picked up by her high-heeled shoes, pearl earrings, and a double strand of pearls against her dark throat. All this, just to sit in her home-office, waiting for Tess to come to the punchline of her sick little joke.