Gillian Roberts - Claire and Present Danger

Claire
and
Present
Danger

Gillian Roberts

Ballantine Books New York

Table of Contents

This is for Ferne and Steve Kuhn
despite the puns!

Acknowledgments

Special thanks and gratitude to Jon Keroes, who generously and repeatedly shared his considerable professional expertise. Any errors are mine, as is the fact that I took the information and twisted it to suit my criminal purposes.

And to my longtime partners in crime, estimable agent Jean Naggar, and amazing editor Joe Bladesthanks, as well, for making work a pleasure.

One

ALWAYS thought it was kids who were reluctant to go back to school, not teachers. Mackenzie sat on the side of the bed, tying the laces of his running shoes.

Another popular myth shot to hell, I muttered. The big thrill was getting new notebooks, lunch boxes, and backpacks.

An I was too insensitive to think of buyin them for you. Guess Im not a New Age kind of guy, after all.

I didnt get so much as an unused gum eraser.

But you arent actually re-entering. You did that two days ago.

He meant prep time. A duo of days designed to quash whatever optimism had built during summer. Days of listening to a lazy end-of-summer fly halfheartedly circling the room while Maurice Havermeyer, Philly Preps pathetic headmaster, droned along with them. The difference was this: The flys noises were interesting.

Our headmasters spiel was stale from the get-go with the same meaningless jargon-infested exhortations to be ever more creative, innovative, and effective. I fought to keep from putting my head on the desk and falling asleep, and wondered if I could peddle copies of his talks as cures for insomnia.

He reassured us hed be there to offer all the help and resources he could, but he was careful to never define precisely where there might be. Maybe he didnt have to. Anyone whod worked with him knew it would be as far away as possible from the problem or question.

Two days of sprucing up classrooms, filing lesson plans with the office, checking bookroom stores against class lists, and creating colorful bulletin boards nobody except our own selves would appreciate. And all of it surrounded by the loud silence of a school without students, which was not, to my definition, a school at all.

But now, here we were. The real stuff. Back to school.

Thought you loved teachin, Mackenzie said.

I do, although what love affair isnt a roller-coaster ride? It isnt that, I said, looking at a to-do list Id prepared the night before. Its everything converging at once. I felt stupid even saying that. It wasnt as if anything came as a shock, and it wasnt as if there were that many everythings. What was exceptional was how daunted I felt by my list of obligations.

I had to teach. No surprise.

I had a part-time job after school to help our personal homeland security, but Id been working there along with Mackenzie all summer, so that wasnt out of the ordinary, either.

Starting to push things over the edge, however, was an obligatory appearance at a ninetieth birthday party for a former neighbor. Given her advanced age, I couldnt rationally beg off and promise to be at her next big bash, even though the only living creature to whom old Mrs. Russell had shown kindness was Macavity, my cat. Her house had served as his summer camp and spa, and it would have been more logical for him to attend the festivities, but I didnt see how to swing that, either.

But to really make the day require at least forty hours, I had Beth. My event-planner of a sister was thrilled by my engagement, which she and my mother saw as a victory for their side, capitulation and unconditional surrender on mine. Beth was so delighted and relieved, she was doing her damnedest to absorb me into the world of wives before I was one. At the moment, this translated into attendance at a dinner she had orchestrated and produced, a fund-raiser for an abused-womens shelter. Youll love these women. Theyre the movers and shakers of the whole area, she said. She wisely left off the even if they are married, although her point was that life went on after a wedding ceremony, and that Id better set a date soon.

Half my reason to be there, she continued, is to network. There are nonprofit consultants, foundation heads, and corporate executives. People who could help build her business. Plus, it was all for a good cause and one I subscribe tobut dressing up and eating dinner as a way of helping the less fortunate has never made sense to me. Not being able to afford to go to such events is one of the few perks of living on a shoestring.

This time, I couldnt use poverty as my excuse, because Beth had comped my ticket. Besides, she was doing me an enormous favor in a few days, and being cheering section, back-up, and support for her networking attempts was a form of prepayment for what I metaphorically owed her.

Before it even began, the day cost me hours deciding what I could wear that would see me through my four lives. I settled on an outfit that wasnt great for any of them, a gray suit Id had for years that I hoped was so unremarkable, it belonged nowhere and anywhere. The bed was piled high with my rejects.

And thats why, at 7:30 A.M., instead of being exhilarated by a new school term, I was worn out.

If its too much, skip Ozzies. Mackenzie came over to where I was packing up my briefcase and kissed me in the center of my forehead.

Ozzies not the problem. I was moonlighting. Actually, both of us were moonlighting. After years of deliberation, Mackenzie had taken the plunge, leaving the police force so as to attack crime from a different perspective. He was now a Ph.D. candidate in criminology at Penn. Despite his partial fellowship, moonlighting was going to be necessary for at least the next four years.

Need I say that my mothers hysterical delight in my engagement had been tempered by this switch in careers? He had a good, steady job, she said. Why on earth...

This is what hes wanted for a long time, and its fascinating, Mom. Hell study sociology and criminology and law and biologyits a great course. And then he can go into research, or teach, orlots of things.

It takes so long!

Translation: How could you marry a man with no income for the next how long?

Further translation: Your biological clock is going to strike midnight before youll be able to afford children.

But Mom, I said. When hes done, hell be a doctor. Your son-in-law, the doctor.

.....

Translation: A Ph.D. in a cockamamie field is not a doctor.

Nonetheless, she was not that far off track. Poor R Us, and when we did the math on paying the mortgage plus luxuries like food, it seemed a good idea to bring in whatever extra cash we could. Philly Prep did not pay its teachers a living wage, unless you were living in a pup tent in Fairmount Park.

Thats why Mackenzie had gotten his P.I. license and was working whatever hours he could manage out of the office of Ozzie Bright, retired cop and current private investigator, and I was working for C. K. Mackenzie. With him, I liked to say and think, but the truth was, for. I wasnt licensed, and so was more or less his apprentice, and he, my supervisor, although Im not fond of thinking in those terms. I like to consider us a partnership, not boss and employee, or pro and peon, which is closer to reality.

Over the course of the summer, C. K. let me try my wings at everything from interviewing witnesses and new clients to clerical chores like handling the nonstop flow of papers for discovery. The words private eye prompted images of shady gents in fedoras and platinum-blonde dames in teeter-totter high heels. Of cracking wise and trapping bad guys.