Damage Control: A Novel Page 15

  But the French also had Georges Simenon, I thought as I slipped out. Simenon was a writer of classic, mid-twentieth-century detective fiction whose dogged Paris police inspector understood how affairs of the heart could turn—given the right mix of motive and circumstance—to affairs of blood.

  There are only a handful of motives for murder, after all, and they’ve been around since the ancient Greek morality plays: money, power, love, revenge.

  Which one had claimed Emily Mortimer?

  Back in my office, I looked up the telephone code for Limerick. Then I dialed directory information and got numbers for Marie Connor’s references.

  Mrs. Patricia Highgate didn’t answer. The number for Mrs. Elizabeth Burns had been disconnected.

  I called the Irish operator back and asked for any Elizabeth Burns in nearby towns. I got one, but she’d never heard of Marie Connor. Had I perhaps confused her with Bethany Burns, her sister-in-law, who had hired an au pair briefly the year before?

  I dutifully took down the number and left a message, asking Bethany Burns to call me collect.

  The phone rang.

  “Did you just call me?” demanded a young woman with a lilting accent.

  “Are you Mrs. Patricia Highgate?” I asked. “Or Mrs. Bethany Burns?”

  “What’d you say?”

  In the background, I heard canned music, tinkling glasses, the roar of a . . . pub?

  I repeated the question.

  “Oh yer,” said the woman, “that’s me. Highgate. Who’s calling?”

  I explained that I was considering hiring Marie Connor to care for my children.

  “All the way from Los An-ga-leeze,” the young woman whispered to someone. “It’s about Marie.”

  I heard giggles. Then Mrs. Highgate said, “Marie was the finest nanny I ever had. My children loved her. I cried when she told me she was leaving for America.”

  “Was there ever any hint of improper behavior? Anything missing from your house?”

  “None whatsoever,” Mrs. Highgate said with a hiccup.

  “And what dates did she work for you?” I asked, examining Marie’s employment record.

  “A couple years back.”

  “Could you be more specific, please.”

  “I’m no good with dates. Ever since my car accident. Head trauma.”

  From the other end came muted laughter.

  “And could you verify your address for me, please?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  I explained that it was routine and the woman rattled off a different address from the one on the letter. When asked about the discrepancy, Mrs. Highgate said, “Well, I’ve moved, haven’t I, luv? I’ve got to run now. The baby’s crying. He’ll be wanting his bottle.”

  “How many children do you have, Mrs. Highgate?”

  “Too many,” she responded, clicking off.

  I wondered whether Blair would spring for a visit to Ireland to research this further. I pictured myself lifting a pint of Guinness in a picturesque pub or eating crumbly Irish cheddar on stone-ground wheat crackers as I trooped through the heather after the dissembling Mrs. Highgate, who sounded suspiciously like a girlfriend of Marie’s, not an employer.

  If Marie had concocted false references, what else had she lied about?

  I leaned back, elated. At least one of my cases was going well today.

  * * *

  When the phone rang, I thought it might be Bethany Burns calling back.

  “Maggie?” said a familiar voice. “Is this Maggie Weinstock?”

  “Anabelle?”

  “Oh, my God,” Anabelle Paxton squealed on the other end. “It really is you.”

  And just like that, I was sixteen again.

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly shy and tongue-tied. “It’s me.”

  “Oh, my God, Maggie! What a way to reconnect. Luke e-mailed me, we’re all so grateful that you’re working on Dad’s behalf. And this horrible thing with Uncle Simon. What a nightmare.” She groaned. “Dad’s going to need all the help he can get. Gosh, Maggie, I can’t believe you’re some high-powered PR executive now.”

  “Well I’m not a vice president or anything, it’s a new job.” I paused, realizing my words would not inspire confidence. “But I have been doing this for almost ten years.”

  “I’m so proud of you. Tell me, are you married? Do you have kids?”

  “I was married, for five years.” I gave a flippant laugh. “Steve was a lawyer. Very controlling. We get along better now that we’re divorced. How about you?”

  Anabelle said, “It’s been a long, interesting ride. I’ll tell you when we see each other. When do you want to come over?” She hesitated. “I don’t want to take you away from Dad’s case, but if you’re free, how about this evening when you get off work? We’re in Palos Verdes.”

  This evening I had a date. And I wasn’t about to forget it.

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “We’ve got plans tomorrow,” Anabelle said. “But next week’s pretty clear.”

  I hesitated. Next week might as well be next century as far as Blair was concerned. I wanted to keep my bosses happy. But I also wanted a crack at a love life. Why did I have to choose?

  But there was something else too. The past was safely locked away in a pretty little box with a red ribbon. When I thought of Anabelle, she was always sixteen and we were hopeful of what life would bring. But many years had passed. Would we like what the other had become? Would we still have things in common? Could we be friends again? Or was there too much secret history and buried heartache for us ever to be more than wary strangers? Sure, I was curious. But I also worried what might befall my pretty little box of memories.

  But now work was forcing my hand.

  “Next week seems so far away,” I said, trying to make my voice upbeat. “Let’s do it tonight.”

  * * *

  Dr. Rob Turcotte was in surgery. His secretary asked if I’d like to schedule a consultation.

  “No, thank you. Does he have voice mail?”

  At least this time I was calling ahead to reschedule. Dr. Turcotte was a busy professional. He’d understand.

  “This is Maggie Silver,” I said into his machine, “and I’m so sorry because I was very much looking forward to seeing you tonight.” I paused. Was this too forward? “But I’ve got to cancel again due to a work emergency. Look, perhaps we could get together in a few days, when things have calmed down? I owe you a dinner at this point, not just a drink. I’ll call you tomorrow and hopefully we can talk in person. Okay, bye.”

  I hung up, feeling I’d just made a terrible mistake. Then I walked to Faraday’s office to brief him, liking the gleam that appeared in his eye, liking the “Nice work” he lobbed my way. To my elated surprise, he said he’d think about a trip to Ireland.

  At four p.m., I found myself on the 405 Freeway, passing LAX.

  * * *

  I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with L.A.’s big, dysfunctional airport.

  It was a portal to new worlds and I loved the clothes and smells and languages. But its very transience held the menace of a border town—where fear of lost papers and missed flights and plummeting death clung to wayfarers like spent jet fuel.

  Because I’d lived so little when I met her, it was LAX’s glamour I first saw with Anabelle: the airline counters all shiny-clean and white, the crisp cardboard tickets tucked into our purses, the matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage lined up next to my battered black duffel as I accompanied Anabelle and the Paxtons on their Hawaiian vacation.

  My mom had worked double shifts to buy my ticket, and the Paxtons were picking up the tab for everything else, relieved, perhaps, that their daughter had a friend to entertain her while they played golf and met friends for dinner.

  So that was the dreamtime, the tropical waterfall, coral reef, coconut oil, and turquoise water part of it, Anabelle and I clip-clopping giddily onto the plane in our glitter platforms, our bikinis chafing te
nder flesh under tight silver Fiorucci jeans.

  We were glam Bowie girls all the way, throwbacks to the glitter-rock 1970s. But there was more than a little boy in us too because we didn’t want to marry Ziggy Stardust, we wanted to be him. So we sipped banana daiquiris by the pool, the sweet foam drying on our Bonne Bell lipsmacked lips, wearing identical Walkmans and singing “Starman” and “Five Years” and yeah, that would have been enough for me.

  But I got only two.

  Then came the uneasy autumn when the bond between Anabelle and I began to erode like the sandstone cliffs along PCH: slow, silent, inexorable.

  And when Anabelle developed a strange new game, I learned the dark side of the airport.

  FALL 1993

  “Where are we going?” I said, sitting in the car, filled with nameless dread.

  “You’ll see,” Anabelle said, her laughter loud and shrill.

  She drove fast and recklessly, grinding the gears of her Jetta, turning every couple of miles to examine me, strands of long blond hair flying into her mouth.

  My anxiety mounted as she drove along Jefferson, passing the remains of Ballona Creek, where the Chumash Indians once caught fish and wove river weeds into baskets.

  We were headed for Playa del Rey.

  She couldn’t be taking us there, could she?

  To my relief, she turned left at Lincoln and we cruised up the hill, past Loyola Marymount University, then down Manchester, and my anxiety spiked again, but instead of heading down to the beach, she turned left once more and drove into a residential area that abutted the airport.

  We were on Sandpiper Lane now. She parked by a chain-link fence. Beyond it lay a no-man’s-land. Night was falling, a burned caramel cream puff sunset, redolent of marsh grasses and dusk and sun-warmed skin.

  This was a neighborhood with street grids and lights and fire hydrants, but no houses or people, just cracked concrete foundations where homes had once stood.

  Like most places of human habitation that lie fallow, it had a strange energy. There were ghosts here, the faint afterimage of lives fractured and uprooted. You could almost see the freckle-faced, sunburned-nosed kids racing bikes down the streets, hear their shouts and laughter. Apron-wearing moms with bouffant hairdos stood on the front porches, calling them in for dinner while aerospace-industry dads relaxed with highballs in Pleather recliners.

  But now it was utterly deserted.

  “What is this place?” I said.

  “They used to call it Palisades del Rey,” Anabelle said. “The king’s hills. It was the southern end of Playa del Rey. The airport took over the land and displaced hundreds of people.”

  “It’s eerie and creepy,” I said, gazing at the sand dunes drifting across the foundations of what had once been prime oceanfront land. The sidewalks were cracked and buckled, overgrown with marsh grasses.

  A jet went by, rattling the windows of Anabelle’s Jetta. A jackrabbit loped unconcernedly across the empty street. The streetlights still stood, their lamp glass busted. Palm trees swayed like ghostly sentinels in the jet and ocean breezes. The whole development was fenced off by rusting barbed wire and signs that said, NO TRESPASSING, DANGER, DO NOT ENTER.

  We watched the sun set over the water and the sky grow purple, then dark blue and velvety black. Anabelle drank sweet Kentucky whiskey from an engraved silver flask and kept urging me to take swigs.

  There was something bleak and desperate and headlong about the way her teeth clenched around the flask, turning her pretty face into a snarl.

  Each time she thrust the flask at me, I shook my head.

  This angered Anabelle. But in my cautious and plodding way, I was thinking ahead.

  Stealthily, I confiscated her car keys. One of us had to be sober enough to drive home.

  “Isn’t it cool,” said Anabelle, waving the sloshing flask to indicate the landscape. “It’s like a doomed, forgotten city, right in the middle of L.A. This is what everything will look like after the apocalypse. Then it’ll finally match the inside of my brain.”

  Around me was eerie emptiness. I heard seabirds calling, the revving of the jets, waves crashing. A symphony of heaven and hell.

  Anabelle took one last swig and shuddered as the fiery liquid went down her throat.

  “Okay. I’m ready.” She opened the car door and stepped out unsteadily. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” I asked, following as she walked up to the fence, her hand trailing along the chain link until she found the section she wanted. She applied pressure and a hole appeared. She pressed against it and climbed through.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. “It’s illegal.”

  Anabelle gave me a look of disbelief and laughed. “Lots of the best things are, you know. When are you going to learn that?”

  Then she walked off, leaving me on the other side, fingers clinging to the wire mesh.

  “Wait!” I climbed through myself and ran to catch up.

  “Where are we going? Anabelle, stop. This isn’t funny.”

  Somewhere nearby, there was a runway. I could feel wind as the planes landed and took off, it was that close. But I followed her, out of fear, out of guilt, out of friendship.

  “We’re going to play a little game.”

  It was completely dark now, though the powerful runway lights lit up the night like a million moons.

  Anabelle’s face was in shadow.

  “What game? I don’t want to. Please, Anabelle, let’s go back. You’ve had a little too much—”

  “Don’t you want to test yourself?”

  “What kind of test are you talking about? And no, whatever it is, I don’t.”

  A plane rolled by, very close, preparing for takeoff.

  In the distance, I saw another jet approach. It picked up speed.

  “No, Anabelle, don’t. You’re . . .”

  My voice was drowned out by the impossible noise of the jet drawing closer. I felt my eardrums would burst as the jet rocketed by like some great steel monster. The air filled with the choking, sickening industrial stench of jet fuel.

  Anabelle darted out across the runway to the culvert and threw herself down, just feet from the runway. She lay on her back, arms folded over her chest like a sacrificial offering to the cruel, steel-nosed gods of the sky.

  My shrieks rose with the jet’s engine and then a wind whipped me and I clung to the chain-link fence in the dark as it went past, burrowing my face into my chest, beseeching the gods. No, no no, Anabelle, I wailed.

  When it passed I looked up, terrified of what I’d see. And she was still there, like a corpse, but unharmed.

  She got up and walked steadily back to me. Her face was pale, her hair snaking like wild tendrils around her face, her lips compressed into a tight but triumphant line. She held out her hand.

  “Come, Maggie. Your turn.”

  I was backing away, shaking my head.

  “You’re crazy, Anabelle. I’m not doing that, I’m not . . .” I lapsed into incoherent babble.

  “It’s like nothing you’ve ever done before. The ultimate drug. It’s a shock to your system, it clarifies and purifies. You’re missing out on the high of a lifetime. The buildup of the jet, then the release. Sometimes I come as the plane passes over.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “Anabelle, let’s go home. I’ll get high with you. We’ll play music. I’ll tell you a story. Please. Let’s get away from here.”

  I walked back, opened the passenger door, and held it for her.

  Anabelle looked serene and I swear there was something postcoital about her now, as if this insane caper had released all the pent-up emotions that haunted her.

  She climbed into the seat like an obedient child, yawned, and fell deeply asleep.

  * * *

  When we got back to Villa Marbella, I’d shaken her awake. We sat cross-legged in her room and I asked how she’d learned that game.

  “Some guys showed me. They like to smoke sherm, then go down there and play chicken
with the planes.”

  “You shouldn’t hang around with guys like that, Anabelle.”

  “Who should I hang around with? You?” She paused. “But you’re so boring, Maggie.”

  Abruptly, she got up and began to flip through a stack of tattered old records that she kept around, even though she’d replaced them with CDs.

  She was right. But if her idea of fun was playing chicken with jets at LAX, I wanted no part of it. Her crazy antics had induced a certain clarity of my own.

  “You’re really starting to scare me. You’ve been different. Ever since . . . I mean . . . can’t you see? You’ve changed.”

  “And you haven’t changed, Maggie. That’s the problem right there.”

  She pulled out Led Zep’s Physical Graffiti and pretended to read the liner notes. She’d never understood why I haunted the thrift stores, scooping up dirt-cheap first pressings of X and Wall of Voodoo and Patti Smith and John Hiatt as everyone else dumped their vinyl.

  I told her it was because vinyl sounded warmer to this analog girl and she’d believed me because the truth wouldn’t have occurred to her: I couldn’t afford a CD player.

  I loved Anabelle. But I was losing her. Ever since that night on the beach, things had changed drastically between us. And there was no one I could talk to. Not Luke, who saw me as the Judas who’d betrayed his sister, even if Anabelle herself didn’t see it that way. Not my mother, who’d just forbid me ever to see Anabelle again. And certainly not the Paxtons. It was as if we existed in two separate universes, with no wormhole to connect us. I couldn’t tell the Paxtons what their daughter was up to any more than I could tell our teachers. And yet I had to do something. And so my brain ran like a rat on a treadmill, panting, exhausted, unable to get off. I knew things were moving toward some kind of cataclysm. Some kind of rift. But when it would come, and what would be the aftermath, I couldn’t have imagined.

  * * *

  Sixteen years later, I shuddered as I drove past the crawling anthill city of LAX. I didn’t think kids played chicken on the jet runways anymore. I’m not even sure how Anabelle and her friends got away with it back in 1993. But I knew for certain that 9/11 had ended the days of lax security.

  I jumped when the phone rang, but it was only Mom.