“Hey, don’t ask me. I didn’t know when I married Margaret that she was a bitch, but that’s what she turned out to be. Is it possible that Tom could have worked for the government, for some clandestine branch of the military? Sure. Fact is, he made up a history, a biography. The college thing was just the tip of the iceberg. He’s covering something up, escaping something. That much I’d say for sure.”
“But couldn’t there be a-benign explanation?”
“Like he ran up a lot of parking tickets in Dubuque? Doubtful.”
Claire did not smile.
“But I’ll tell you the truth,” Devereaux said somberly. “I always thought Tom was a little too smooth for his own good, but he’s your husband, so I gotta side with him. When the government starts gathering its forces to go after one guy, you gotta believe they’re trying to hide something, too.”
That evening, as she was trying to convince Annie that it was bedtime, the phone rang.
She recognized the voice right away: Julia Margolis, the wife of her closest friend on the Harvard faculty, Abe Margolis, who taught constitutional law. “Claire?” she said in her big contralto. “Where are you? You’re an hour and a half late-is everything all right?”
“An hour-oh my God. You invited us for dinner tonight. Oh, shit, Julia. I’m so sorry, I totally forgot about it.”
“Are you sure you’re all right? That’s not like you at all.” Julia Margolis was a large and still very beautiful brunette in her late fifties, a great cook and an even greater hostess.
“I’ve been insanely busy,” Claire said, then revised that: “Tom had to go out of town on business suddenly, and I feel like everything’s falling down around me.”
“Well, I’ve had the swordfish marinating for something like two days, and I really hate to waste it. Why don’t you come over now?”
“I’m sorry, Julia. I really am. Rosa’s gone home, and I don’t have a sitter, and I’m just frantic. Please forgive me.”
“Of course, dear. But when things settle down, will you call me? We’d love to see you two.”
CHAPTER TEN
Later that evening Claire and Jackie sat in the downstairs study, in paired, slightly weathered French leather club chairs. Tom had spent two months searching for the perfect chairs for Claire’s office, because she’d once admired them in a Ralph Lauren ad. Finally he’d located a dealer in New York who imported them from the Paris flea market. They’d gone from a Paris nightclub in the twenties to Cambridge in the late nineties, and they were still magnificently comfortable.
Jackie again wore black jeans and a black T-shirt. Paint spatters freckled her shirt and arms: she was a painter who earned her living as a technical writer. Claire was still wearing her blue suit, a Chanel knockoff but a nice one, because she hadn’t had a minute to change. She was exhausted and her head ached and her neck and shoulders felt stiff. All she wanted to do right now was run a nice hot bath and soak in it for an hour.
The room glowed amber as the sun set.
“Ray Devereaux says Tom used to be some kind of clandestine army operative who got entangled in something,” Jackie said. “Jesus. You think Ray’s information is good?”
“He’s usually reliable. Always has been.”
“So what do you think, he did something for the government, the Pentagon, something undercover, and maybe he got into trouble? And… and he goes AWOL, just takes off, and he goes into hiding and changes his name, and then he moves to Boston and goes into business and hopes he never gets caught? And then, one day, by coincidence, your house is broken into and the cops run his prints, and bingo, the Pentagon’s found him? Is that how it goes?”
“Basically, yeah.” Claire turned to see whether Jackie was being ironic, or simply skeptical, but she wasn’t. She was thinking out loud, as she so often did.
“Hard to get a job with a firm if you have no references for them to check into,” Jackie went on, “so he starts his own business, and that way he doesn’t have people checking too deeply into his background.”
Claire closed her eyes again, nodded.
“So everything you know about Tom is a lie,” Jackie suggested gently.
“Maybe not everything. A lot. An enormous amount.”
Very softly, Jackie said, “But you feel betrayed. It’s, like, custom-made to rip your heart out.”
Tears came to Claire’s eyes, tears of frustration and exhaustion rather than of sadness. “Is it a betrayal if he’s escaping, hiding?”
“He lied to you, Claire. He never told you about it. He’s not who he told you he was. A man who can lie about his life, create a whole fake background, is a man who can lie about anything.”
“He contacted me again, Jacks.”
“How?”
“We don’t know if there are bugs here,” Claire said, pointing at the ceiling, although who knew where listening devices might be planted?
“Well, what are you going to do?” Jackie asked, but then the doorbell rang. They looked at each other. Now who could it be? Claire got up reluctantly and went to the front door.
It was a young guy in his early twenties, with a scuzzy goatee and a brass stud earring in his left ear, wearing bicycle shorts and a leather jacket. “Boston Messengers,” he announced.
Claire looked past him to see two Crown Victorias parked at the curb in front of their house. Passengers in both vehicles were staring at the visitor.
“Are you Claire Chapman?”
Claire nodded, alert.
“Jesus, lady, those guys out there stopped me and asked me a million questions, who am I and what am I doing here-you got something going on in here? You in some sort of trouble? ’Cause I don’t want trouble.”
“What are you doing here?” Claire demanded.
“I got a package for Claire Chapman. I just need to see some kind of ID.”
“Hold on,” Claire said. She closed the door, retrieved her purse from the hall table, and removed her driver’s license from her wallet.
She opened the door again and handed him the license.
The kid inspected it, comparing the picture to her face. He nodded. “I gotta ask for your Harvard faculty card, too.”
“Who’s the package from?”
“I dunno.” He looked at it. “Something Lenahan.”
Claire was immediately flooded with relief, then excitement. “Here,” she said, handing him her faculty ID card.
He looked at it, once again comparing the photos. “Okay,” he said warily. “Sign here.”
She signed, took the package-a flat, rigid cardboard envelope about nine by twelve inches-tipped him, and closed the door.
“Who’s it from?” Jackie asked.
Claire smiled and didn’t answer. Tom knew the phones were tapped, which meant that voice mail and the fax machine weren’t safe. He knew they’d be monitoring the mail. The sudden appearance of a courier might work just once, but without a court order they couldn’t intercept the package.
Inside was a handwritten letter, which brought tears to her eyes-and a plan, which for the first time brought her hope.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A full moon. A warm night. The watchers at their stations in their government-issue sedans lulled by the tedium. It was barely half an hour later. The doorbell rang, and Claire answered it. She wasn’t at all surprised to see the two FBI agents, Howard Massie and John Crawford, standing there in almost identical trench coats. No doubt they’d been summoned by the watchers and had rushed over.
Massie spoke first as they entered. “Where’s the envelope?” he demanded. He was a large man, larger than she’d remembered from the nightmarish scene at the mall and the “conversation” that followed.
“First we talk,” Claire said, leading them into the sitting area just off the foyer, a sofa and a couple of comfortable upholstered chairs on a sisal carpet, around a tufted, tapestry-covered ottoman neatly stacked with old New Yorkers. It was a part of the house they rarely used, and it looked that way, sterile, like a display in a furniture store.