“No, it was left out of the report.”
“Do you know who issued the SAR?”
“A man named Asghar Chuback. He’s a partner at an investment firm called Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell Investments and Securities. They’re located in Northampton, Massachusetts.”
Chaz spun the laptop toward her. The Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell web page was the digital equivalent of thick ivory stock and embossed logos—rich, fancy, upper class—the kind of design that told those without eight-figure portfolios not to bother.
“Did you tell Detective Schwartz about this?” Kat asked.
“Not yet. Frankly, he didn’t seem all that impressed with the stolen license plate.”
There were links on the site for wealth management, institutional services, global investments. There was a lot of talk about privacy and discretion. “We’ll never get them to talk to us,” Kat said.
“Wrong.”
“How so?”
“I thought the same thing, but I made the call anyway,” Chaz said. “He’s willing. I made you an appointment.”
“With Chuback?”
“Yep.”
“For when?”
“Anytime tonight. His secretary said he’s working with the overseas market and will be there all night. Weird, but he seems anxious to talk. The ride should take about three hours.” He snapped the laptop closed and stood. “I’ll drive.”
Kat didn’t want that. Yes, she trusted Chaz and all, but she still hadn’t told him all the details, especially about the personal Jeff-Ron connection. That wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted around the precinct. Plus, much as he might be getting better, three hours in a car with Chaz—six hours round-trip—was something she wasn’t yet ready to handle.
“I’ll drive myself up,” she said. “You stay here in case we need some kind of follow-up.”
She expected an argument. She didn’t get one.
“Okay,” he said, “but it’ll be faster if you just take my car. Come on. The garage is around the corner.”
• • •
Martha Paquet carried her suitcase to the door. The suitcase was old, predating the invention of the rolling ones, or maybe Harold had been too cheap, even back then. Harold hated to travel, except twice a year when he did a “Vegas run” with his drinking buddies, the kind of trip that caused cringing winks and snickers from all upon their return. For those outings, he used a fancy Tumi carry-on—it was only for his use, he said—but he’d taken that, and pretty much everything else of value in their condo, years ago, before the final divorce. Harold didn’t wait for the courts. He rented a U-Haul, took everything he could from the condo, and told her, “Try to get it back, bitch.”
Long time ago.
Martha looked out the window. “This is crazy,” she said to her sister, Sandi.
“You only live once.”
“Yes, I know.”
Sandi put her arm around her. “And you deserve this. Mom and Dad would so approve.”
Martha arched her eyebrow. “Oh, I doubt that.”
Her parents had been deeply religious people. After years of domestic abuse at the hands of Harold—no reason to go into that—Martha had ended up moving back here to help Dad take care of her terminally ill mom. But as it often plays out, Dad, the healthy one, had died of a sudden heart attack six years ago. Mom had finally passed last year. Mom had firmly believed she was going to Paradise with Dad—claimed she couldn’t wait for that day—but that hadn’t stopped her from fighting and scraping and enduring agonizing treatments to hang on to this mortal coil.
Martha had stayed with her mother the whole time, living in this house as her nurse and companion. She didn’t mind. There was no talk of sending Mom to hospice or a nursing home or even hiring someone. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it, and Martha, who loved her mother dearly, would never have asked.
“You put your life on hold long enough,” Sandi reminded her. “You’re due for some fun.”
She was, she guessed. There had been attempts at relationships after the divorce, but her caring for Mom, not to mention her own wariness after Harold, got in the way. Martha never complained. It wasn’t her way. She was glad for her lot in life. She didn’t ask or expect more. That wasn’t to say she didn’t long.
“It only takes one person to change your life,” Sandi said. “You.”
“Right.”
“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one.”
Sandi meant well with all her little life aphorisms. She posted them on her Facebook wall every Friday, often accompanied with a picture of flowers or perfect sunsets, stuff like that. She called them Sandi’s Sayings, though, of course, she had written none of them.
A black limousine pulled up in front of the house. Martha felt something catch in her throat.
“Oh, Martha, that car is beautiful!” Sandi squealed.
Martha couldn’t move. She stood there as the chauffeur got out and started toward her door. A month ago, after much prodding from Sandi, Martha had signed up for an Internet dating service. To her surprise, she almost immediately began an online flirtation with a wonderful man named Michael Craig. It was crazy when she thought about it—so unlike her—and she had scoffed at the whole idea, how juvenile it was, how the kids today wouldn’t know what a real relationship was if it bit them on the ass because they spend all their time on screens and never see the person face-to-face and blah blah blah.
So how did she fall into this?
The truth was, there were advantages to starting online. It didn’t matter what you looked like (other than in photographs). Your hair could be messed up, your makeup all wrong, something stuck in your teeth—it didn’t matter. You could relax and not try so hard. You never saw disappointment on your suitor’s face and always assumed he was smiling at what you said and did. If it didn’t work out, you wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him at the grocery store or local strip mall. It gave it enough distance so you could be yourself and let your guard down.
It felt safe.
How serious could it get, after all?
She suppressed a smile. The relationship had heated up—no reason to go into details—and moving into more and more intense areas, until finally, Michael Craig wrote in an IM: Let’s chuck it all and meet!
Martha Paquet remembered sitting at the computer in full blush mode. Oh, how she longed for real contact, for the kind of physical intimacy with a man she had always imagined. She had been lonely and afraid for so long, and now she had met someone—but did she dare take the next step? Martha expressed her reluctance to Michael. She didn’t want to risk losing what they had—but then again, as he himself finally said in his own understanding way, what did they have?
Nothing when you thought about it. Smoke and mirrors. But if they met in person, if the chemistry was anything like it was online . . .
But suppose it wasn’t? Suppose—and this must happen more times than not—suppose it all fizzled away when they finally met face-to-face. Suppose she ended up being, as she expected she would, a complete disappointment.
Martha wanted to postpone. She asked him to be patient. He said he would be, but relationships don’t work like that. Relations can’t remain stagnant. They are either getting better or getting worse. She could feel Michael starting to pull back ever so slowly. He was a man, she knew. He had needs and wants, just as she did.
Then, odd as this may now seem, Martha had visited her sister’s Facebook page and seen the following aphorism posted against a photo of waves crashing on the shore:
“I don’t regret the things I’ve done. I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”
No one was credited with the quote, but it hit Martha right where she lived. She had been right in the first place: An online relationship isn’t real. It could work as an introduction maybe. It could be intense. It could bring pleasure and pain, but you can live in a fake reality only for so long. In the end, it was role-playing.
There seemed little to lose and so much to gain.
So yes, as Martha stood by the door watching the chauffeur make his approach, she was both terrified and excited. There was also another damn quote on Sandi’s wall, something about taking risks and doing one thing every day that scares you. If that was in any way the meaning of life, Martha had managed to never live even a single moment.