Four

I can do this, Billie told herself. I can definitely do this. Fact was, anybody could sit and stare. An autistic three-year-old could pull it off. But all the same, it felt good to be competent, even at inert passivity.

She’d bulldozed her way into this job, then had come to understand that she probably hadn’t needed to. Not that Emma Howe admitted it for a minute, but you’d have to have zero powers of observation not to notice the two empty cubicles at the agency or that the office manager–receptionist’s “illness” seemed permanent.

Billie tried not to imagine what had happened to the trio. A plague, a force of nature—or Emma?

Emma’s ad was still running, and twice, Billie had seen men whose half-hidden air of supplication suggested they were looking to be employed by Emma, not looking to employ her. Still, the extra cubicles remained unoccupied.

Yet despite all the evidence against it, Emma still behaved as if she’d done Billie an enormous favor by giving her a chance. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously each time she looked Billie’s way, as if the interloper were attempting a scam that Emma was determined to expose.

“Not yet,” she’d said when asked if there was anything she could do besides read a dry tome about rules and regulations. But then, Billie heard Emma on the phone, sounding less sure of herself than was usual. She was promising someone that she’d make him, it, a priority. “No more delays, Harold, I promise you that,” she’d said, and immediately stomped into Billie’s cubicle, tossed a file onto her desk and said, “This’d fit you. A lifestyle verification. One Sophia Redmond slipped on the pavement on ‘A’ Street. Hit her head on the way down on a lamppost and claims permanent disability. Can’t work, can’t walk without help. Wheelchair or cane-bound from dizzy spells, loss of balance plus back and neck pain. No known medical reason ascertained for it. Insurance company wants a look-see, and they want it immediately. They’ve authorized two, maybe could stretch it to three days.”

Her first case, albeit of less than Sam Spade caliber. All decked out with cheap and quick business cards and a beeper. Very professional. On surveillance. She loved the sound of the word, so much better than “a look-see.” Sur…veil…lance. Rolled on the tongue like a chocolate truffle.

But it boiled down to sitting in her car diagonally across the street from Sophia Redmond’s house. Mostly in the passenger side of her Honda as she awaited Sophia’s exit and whatever happened next.

So far, in two days, Sophia had emerged once, during a lull in the storm. A tall, sinewy woman with a frizzy halo of rusty hair, she’d leaned on a cane and a redheaded girl’s shoulder as she slowly navigated the five porch steps down to the pavement, her face gray with effort and pain, until she settled into a waiting wheelchair and directed the girl’s attempts to clean storm debris from around the house.

Later, with branches and twigs piled at the curb, the sullen girl reversed the process, slowly guiding the woman up the front stairs and into the house, then folding the wheelchair and dragging it up as well.

Billie was pretty well sold on the authenticity of Mrs. Redmond’s woes. She filled the time by reading, with frequent eyes-to-the-white-house interruptions, three newspapers, using a flashlight when the sky darkened and heavy rain made vision difficult. She had the San Francisco Chronicle, the Marin-Sonoma Independent Journal and the New York Times. She read them in reverse order of circulation size, and was now up to date on Bosnia, AIDS research, a burst dam in Rwanda, the drug-related death of a TV star, current political sniping, a new play by Tom Stoppard, the estimated density of the Sierra snowpack, the All-Pro Conference in Hawaii, and the latest Doonesbury. That information had been acquired in fits and starts throughout the day, and now, with yet another glance toward the house, she thumbed the I.J., starting from the back section with “Lifestyles,” human interest stories. The section that had profiled Emma a week ago. She worked forward, tossing the sports section. Local teams’ stats and scores could wait until Jesse was older and Billie presumably would be obliged to care about such things so that she didn’t warp her son out of acceptable shape.

The downpour eased, but that was the only change. The white house was sealed, lights on against the dullness of the day.

Billie needed a bathroom. She had avoided all liquids even though every movie detective—male, of course—ingested countless cups of coffee. Which sounded irresistible on this wet and chilly day.

But she’d had none. She was, in fact, dehydrating while sitting in the middle of endless rain.

All the same, her bladder had hit flood level.

She had read a suggestion that a PI carry a wide-mouthed jar for such emergencies, but this did not seem applicable to those of the female persuasion, particularly when wearing slacks. Stripping and straddling a jar in the back of a Honda wasn’t her idea of professionalism, but heeding the call of nature bare-assed on this quiet, privileged cul-de-sac, seemed an even worse idea.

If she had to come back tomorrow, she’d wear a skirt. Long, loose, retro Summer of Love type thing if she could find one. And carry a mixing bowl with a lid. Had Tupperware ever considered this a selling point for their burp-top containers?

The question remained. How did the penis-challenged PI pee? True equity lay in being able to unzip and relieve oneself standing up and barely revealed. Not penis envy, Sigmund. Peeing envy.

Meantime, she tried to dissociate from the discomfort. Think positively. What a good job she’d done of doing nothing. A-plus for effort, if not achievement.

Not much longer to go, in any case. Emma would observe Sophia Redmond after five, would make note of any after-dark boogying, and the insurance company had only authorized two days’ worth of surveillance.

Billie reached the last of her reading material, the front page of the I.J. She skipped the newest commission report which—surprise, surprise—said the county needed better mass transit and moved to the description of another heist by the jogging burglar. Very Marin to have an aerobically fit thief who knew the hillsides well enough to remove jewelry from their wealthy homes and flee on his secret woodland paths so quickly that security companies answering the alarms found the valuables—and the burglar—long gone. She imagined his ad in the personals: Self-employed professional, fit, loves nature, diamonds and starlight runs, seeks slender SWF who likes same and can keep secrets.

She scanned the street again. The rain had become negligible, no more than driblets. She thought she saw two shadows, both of them upright and moving at the Redmonds’ bay window, but they were blurred by a lacy curtain so that they could have been anyone.

Tomorrow, if the insurance authorized a third day of surveillance, she’d bring her Walkman and a book on tape. She was getting whiplash from the up and down of her vigilante newspaper reading.

She folded the I.J. for the last bit of print left in her car, the bottom half of the front page.

POLICE RESUME SEARCH ON NICASIO FARM the headline said.

In a windswept West Marin pasture, with only cows as observers, police resumed digging for a possible answer to the mystery of the unknown person who has come to be known as the “Meadow Child.” In January, the buried remains of a child estimated to be two to three years old were found in dairy farmer Earl Blankenship’s pasture by participants in a mock medieval pageant being held on the property.

A preliminary forensic report hypothesized that the child had been dead for approximately five years. Stopped from search attempts for over two weeks by inclement weather followed by an injunction by Blankenship who feared disruptions of the terrain would endanger his cattle, police resumed excavations this morning in a fenced-off area.

“At this time, we have no reason to suspect further burials took place at this spot, but we can’t eliminate that possibility without some investigation,” the Sheriff’s Office said. “Meanwhile, we have no leads to the child’s identity and no open cases matching this child’s description. Anyone with information is encouraged to call us.”

Meantime, the Blankenship cows watch from behind their fence as the digging continues.

Billie read every word of the account, with the prickly sensation that she had entered an alternate dimension where there was another version of her own lost child’s story.

Whose child had disappeared so silently, with so little ceremony or respect for his brief life? What possible perceived offense could provoke such violence? When Jesse was missing, no matter how often she told herself that Cameron wouldn’t harm his own son, she’d at the same time known how tenuous and shallow her self-assurances were. Out of displaced rage, for a perceived desertion, for love turned inside out, people did the unimaginable.

Jesse could have disappeared as completely and irrevocably as this child had. Five years somebody had been waiting. Five years counted in minutes, seconds. The cul-de-sac suddenly grew noisy with the arrival of both a gusty cloudburst and a long yellow car. Almost a limousine, an ancient one with unfamiliar contours, but it had blind sides in back and tinted windows. An old hearse, she thought, painted the color of butter. A pet hearse.

It passed Billie, then slowly made its way down the street, as if unsure of its destination, finally braking and honking three times in front of the Redmond house. Billie dropped the I.J. onto the seat beside her and sat up straight. The rain was fast and sharp, beating a tattoo on the car roof, pelting the windshield.

Seeing anything except the exhaust of the waiting car was difficult.

The front door of the house opened. Billie scooted over to lower the side window for better visibility. It wouldn’t budge. She’d locked those controls against car-pool explorers.

She climbed to the driver’s side and opened the door, crouching halfway out of it to watch.

The redheaded girl slammed the door behind her after she dragged a suitcase free of it, then clunked down the steps, one at a time, bracing the case against her so that it didn’t plummet.

When she was three stairs down, the door opened again, this time by none other than wild-haired Sophia Redmond, she who formerly could not stand upright without assistance.

Sophia’s screaming ability was unimpaired, but the younger woman continued her bumpy descent. Behind the open car door, Billie patted the rear seat for her camera, cursing until she located it on the floor.

She was already half drenched. Would have worn her raincoat except that Ivan had laughed at the sight of her this A.M., when it was still dry out. “Good!” her six-foot-three Russian nanny said. “Is very Humphrey Bogart uniform but would be better with slanty hat, too. Is very subtle.” The fact that he pronounced the b in “subtle” didn’t make his barb less sharp. She’d left the raincoat home.

She pointed the video camera at the ready. So far, Sophia was inert except for her mouth.

The girl reached the sidewalk, turned back toward the house, ran up the stairs, gesticulated, then retrieved a bicycle from the porch. The hearse’s driver, an agile-looking male in a hooded wind-breaker, jumped out of the car to put the suitcase and bike inside. The young girl turned her back to the house and opened the passenger-side door.

Which produced a burst of movement as Sophia Redmond erupted out of her house and down the front stairs, her balance intact even in the slippery rain, her agility remarkable, particularly when she jumped the last step and raced to the street.

“Yes!” Billie softly shouted, aiming the camera. “Go for it, Sophia! Gotcha, baby!” The camera whirred. She felt like a sports narrator. “See, Emma? I’ve got what it takes—I got her. The blonde got her. And praise the Lord—she’s totally recovered. A miracle—look at that! A leap, a levitation, for God’s sake, she’s Olympic gold!”

At that moment, Billie remembered that videotapes recorded sound along with image. Her cheeks heated, even in the chilly rain, and she concentrated on keeping her mouth shut while she recorded the young man shutting the trunk, the young woman slamming her car door and Sophia’s race to its window, which she pounded with both fists.

But what if she were too far back for a dear picture in the downpour? That blur of wild woman could be almost anyone. Billie crouched, closed the back door, opened the front and moved forward as far as she could, resting the camera on the car’s roof.

Sophia’s screams were swallowed by the rain. Her blouse stuck to her back, her wild hair sagged.

The driver released the brake and was off, shooting ahead until he apparently realized he was on a dead-end street, a cul-de-sac, and with a squeal, U-turned on two wheels and sped out, veering to pass the screaming Sophia.

Billie ducked, hoping it was an illusion that he was about to plow through her, and indeed, he didn’t. Not through, but into.

A yellow metallic, glassy crunch as the hearse caught her right front fender and moved on.

As Billie grabbed for the sliding video camera, the swinging driver’s-side door slammed into her, knocking her down, hard, onto the curbside mud. Her proving grounds, indeed.

She clutched the still-whirring video camera, now taping a closeup of her left front tire. She took a deep breath, stood up, brushed herself off, managing only to muddy her hands and the camera which she again aimed at Sophia Redmond. The soaked woman stood still and seemed disoriented. Then, she tilted toward Billie, to push her head and neck forward, the better to see what was going on with the white Honda down her street. Billie ducked and cursed, and when she again dared to peek above the car, Sophia Redmond was hobbling toward her house, the image of a dizzy, enfeebled woman. She made her way up the stairs on her hands and knees.

Billie wasn’t going to win an Oscar for this film. She muttered a prayer to the god of PIs that the videotape had some clear and convincing footage of Sophia’s feet in action. And that it wasn’t only on the part where Billie had babbled like a fool.

Now the street was empty, disrupted only by the sounds of the rain and wind until Billie, having stashed the camera in the car, felt entitled to finally inspect her fender.

“Damn it all to hell!” she screamed, kicking the tire. The car was disfigured, conspicuous and illegal with only one working headlight. Knowing squat about cars but enough about the paths her life took, she understood that the estimate for repairs would be within a few dollars of her deductible. And would be many times the amount she’d earned doing this surveillance.

She sat back down on the muddy grass curb. Last month she’d been occupied with strands of beads, with cufflinks and turbans and demonstrations of special effects with multiple belts.

Now what? She had battled to be employed by a failing agency, to work for a harpy she’d mistaken for a mentor, and she’d just completed her first Very Private Investigation. And what had she gained from her glamorous new career? Stained and soaking slacks, filthy hands, one probably blurred but definitely embarrassing videotape, a still-pathetic income, and a looming car repair bill.

This was not The American Way. This was the opposite of progress.

She should have stayed where she belonged, behind a counter, demonstrating forty-three ways to tie a scarf. At least that place had rest rooms.