“You haven’t, however, spent much time with Ellen, have you?”
“Not in person. In fact, I have now spent more time in your physical company than I have in hers. But that doesn’t matter. Since we were girls, we have shared our lives through writing. I can say, without hesitation, that Ellen was one of my dearest . . .”
Liz met Nadia’s eyes. “You feel she is gone, don’t you?” Liz asked.
“My mind tells me there are questions enough about her circumstances to suggest she chose to leave, but my tongue betrays me.” Nadia paused. “Yes, I already think of her in the past tense.”
Liz placed her hand over Nadia’s. “We will find the truth, Nadia. That’s all we can do now,” she said.
Chapter 24
The following day, the pair took a Piper Cub to one of Fiji’s three hundred islands, where Nadia had a reservation at a rustic-style resort.
“This makes me think of the film Cast Away,” Liz remarked, as the two installed themselves in a grass hut with a thatched roof just steps away from the water. The beach hut, or burrah, would have been charming enough from the outside, but it was even more delightful inside. Brightly colored batik spreads covered two beds, and intricate, hand-painted patterns in black and cream adorned the deeply peaked ceiling above them.
Obviously designed for barefoot visitors, the hut’s concrete slab entryway was fitted with a hand-woven straw mat. A dishpan of fresh water sat in front of a small bench there, so visitors might remove sand from their feet with ease before entering the hut.
“Do you see that island there?” Nadia said, pointing to a small mound or rock across the blue water.
“Um hm.”
“That is where the movie you mentioned was filmed. I gather the bar and restaurant at this resort were favored by cast and crew during the filming.”
After changing into bikinis, the pair stepped out of their hut and settled in the shade of a palm tree. Nadia, who knew the resort well, seemed set on reading. Liz, however, took out her book and only laid it on her lap. She found it hard to settle her eyes on a book when she could gaze instead at the expanse of aquamarine water, dotted with distant islands, that was laid out before her. But her book caught Nadia’s eye, nonetheless.
“You carried a library book halfway around the world!” Nadia exclaimed, noticing the call numbers pasted on the book’s spine.
“It’s one Ellen was reading before she disappeared,” Liz said, and explained to Nadia how she gained access to Ellen’s library record.
“You and Mrs. Swenson have missed your callings,” Nadia chuckled. “You should have taken up my line of work. But that’s a children’s book, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I suppose Ellen might have been reading it to Veronica.”
“May I take a look?”
“Of course.”
Nadia read aloud the blurb on the back of the paperback. “‘Margaret’s father died in a mysterious drowning accident when she was eight years old.’” She stopped and looked hard at Liz. “When did Ellen take out this book? Do you know?”
“Sometime last November, I think. I’ve got my folder about the case in my suitcase. I could check on it.” Liz retrieved the folder from the grass hut and returned to the chaise lounge under the palms. “Here’s Ellen’s borrowing record.” She spread it out on her knees. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found was borrowed November 16 and returned the next day.”
“Then that may well be the book she wrote to me about. She never mentioned the title, but in a letter she wrote in mid-November, Ellen said little things, even picking up a children’s book, were stimulating flashbacks. This book perhaps reminded her of her father. He died in a drowning accident when she was eight years old, you know. She always referred to him as her hero, her ‘Rock of Gibraltar.’ She was a—how do you say it?—‘father’s girl.’”
“‘Daddy’s girl.’ I suppose reminders of his death stirred her up emotionally, leaving her more vulnerable to those flashbacks.”
“That is how she saw it. I imagine she never read that book to Veronica. That’s why she returned it the next day.”
“Seems sensible. Look at this,” Liz said, handing to Nadia the library record.
“There are shadowed lines here and here on the paper.”
“I asked Olga to make a copy of the reading list for me. I wonder if she did a little cutting and pasting of a longer list. Ellen’s friend Lucy Gray told me she had seen Ellen’s library record and it worried Lucy to know Ellen had been reading about child abuse.”
“Why would Mrs. Swenson wish to hide that from you?”
“The book in question was a self-help book. Look, it’s this one: Silent Knights. Olga must not have realized the nature of the book from its title, since the subtitle is not listed here. It has to do with having the courage to address one’s propensity for engaging in aberrant behavior. Although I had the impression from Ellen’s librarian friend that there was just a single book in question on this topic, maybe that was not the case. Perhaps Ellen had taken out another book along those lines and Olga did not wish for me to know it.”
“You mean it looked like Ellen was a child abuser? Ridiculous!” As if to wash away that foul notion, Nadia leapt up from her chaise lounge and strode into the sea.
It was nighttime before the two women addressed the topic of Ellen again. Lying on their backs in their beds, neither could settle down immediately. For Liz, it was a case of overexcitement at the unexpected visit to Fiji. Nadia seemed unsettled after making radio contact with her colleagues.
“It seems you do not wish to tell me about the specifics of your job, Nadia,” Liz said.
“It’s not a question of wishing to tell you or not. I cannot tell you.”
“Can you tell me, at least, if I’m correct in assuming that you are working in intelligence?”
“You are correct about that.”
“For whom are you working?
“I will tell you what I tell everyone who asks: I am an interpreter working on various United Nations projects.”
“Is the U.N. actually your employer?”
“Please, Liz. Understand I have told you all I can regarding my job.”
“Can you tell me something about Ellen, then? Was she also engaged in espionage?”
Nadia laughed. After a pause, she said, “I’m sorry to make light of your question. If you think our correspondence contained some sort of coded messages, you are mistaken. In fact, Ellen lost a briefcase full of old letters from me, and her purse, when we were in New York.”
“I was thinking more about the book she had in her possession—some sort of phrase book for intelligence officers.”
“Such books are not top secret and, while they are not sold in Barnes & Noble, they sometimes turn up in used-book shops. You might get in touch with the Brattle Book Shop in Boston and see if they have any record of selling it to her. I remember the shop name because I looked up the word brattle in my dictionary to see what it means. It wasn’t in the dictionary, so I assumed it’s the owner’s name. In one of her last letters, Ellen was most enthusiastic about a purchase she said she made in the Brattle, saying it would enrich our meeting. Since she never did give me a book when we met in New York, I now ask myself if it is possible that purchase was the phrase book that enabled her to greet me in Arabic.”
“I will check with the Brattle, of course. It does seem likely she was preparing to meet you. But then, I’m troubled, too, about her interaction with the cabdriver.”