The Hunt (7 page)

“Then why would Hilary put it in the safe, Columbo?” he asked, reaching over and taking it out of the bag.

“Did you really just call me Columbo?”

But Peter didn’t respond. He weighed the pen’s heft in one hand and examined each end. Then he smiled. “I think it’s more than a pen,” he said. He pulled at its non-writing end, and it came off in his hand, revealing a short metal prong. “Voilà.”

“What is it?” I asked. “A weapon? Does it shoot darts or squirt poison or something?”

“No, but sometimes it scares me to think about how your mind works. This is even better than a poison-squirting pen. It’s a memory stick,” he said.

“How is that better?” I asked, disappointed.

“There could be anything on it,” Peter said. He pointed to the prong. “See, this is where it plugs into a USB port. Hilary could have copied the entire hard drive of her laptop onto here, practically. Documents, pictures, videos—anything. And whatever’s on here, Hilary clearly felt it was important enough to make sure she kept it locked up.”

“Oh,” I said, considering the possibilities with growing enthusiasm. “Could we attach it to Luisa’s computer and see what’s on it?”

“That should work,” said Peter.

“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

“Um, it’s already two-thirty,” said Ben.

“So?” I said.

“So?” echoed Peter.

And then I remembered. “So we’re supposed to meet your mother in half an hour,” I said, glancing at my watch. My heart sank. Finding out what was on the memory stick sounded a lot more interesting than shopping for place settings, not that that was such a high bar. Just about anything had to be more interesting than shopping for place settings.

“Are you sure you don’t want to reschedule?” Peter asked me again. “My mom will understand.”

“She’s not going to have to,” I said. Even if I’d been willing to tell Susan about Hilary’s disappearance, it didn’t seem justified. After all, we still didn’t have any reason to think she
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wasn’t with Iggie, or that Iggie could pose a serious threat. The interruption wouldn’t take that long, and now that I was normal, I had to make the normal choice, which was to meet my future mother-in-law, as promised, at Tiffany’s.

With admirable restraint, I took the pen-memory stick from Peter and handed it to Ben. “Will you give this to Luisa to check out on her computer?”

“Okay,” he said. “And I’ll see if I can take a look at the tape from the surveillance cameras, too.

I told the security guys I’d stop by their control center.”

“Thanks,” I said, although I almost wished he hadn’t mentioned the tape, because it only reminded me of something else that would be far more interesting than shopping for place settings. “We’ll meet you at four-thirty.”

I took Peter’s arm and steered him toward the elevator before my willpower could run out.

7

U nion Square was close enough that we walked the few short blocks, leaving the Prius on Market Street. In fact, we arrived at Tiffany’s early, which only added to my frustration. We probably would have had plenty of time to check out whatever was on the memory stick ourselves instead of leaving it to Ben and Luisa.

At least I had the opportunity to impress Susan with my punctuality, as she was early, too. We found her in the crystal department with a saleswoman named Marge who introduced herself as our “registry consultant.” They were deep in discussion of the relative merits of different stemware brands and designs. I’d never actually used the word stemware before, nor had it occurred to me to have opinions about it, but looking at the array of goblets and tumblers mostly just made me think how much nicer they’d look if they were filled with Diet Coke.

“Rachel, dear, how would you describe your taste?” asked Susan.

“Traditional?” asked Marge. “Contemporary?

Usually I just trusted the bartender to choose the glass he or she thought most appropriate for whatever drink I ordered—I never specified traditional or contemporary. “Um, well, uh, gee,” I said, searching for words. I turned to Peter, who was the person who actually cooked and poured beverages on those isolated occasions when cooking and pouring beverages occurred in our apartment. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want is fine by me.” Then his phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket and checked the screen. “It’s the valet service calling me back—I should take this.” He wandered off with the phone, leaving me alone with his mother, Marge and several-hundred stemware options, which seemed horribly unfair, at best.

It quickly became clear I wasn’t ready to make firm decisions about stemware just yet, nor was I ready to make firm decisions about casual china, fine china, flatware or even table linens.

However, I did learn that my tastes defied conventional description. I was pretty sure I overheard Marge describing them as “all over the map” to one of her colleagues, and it didn’t sound as if she meant it as a compliment. Apparently most brides-to-be came into the store better prepared than I, having already studied these matters extensively.

Susan seemed to take my indecision in stride. In fact, she seemed to misinterpret it as my savoring the process. “You’re right, dear,” she said. “This is too much fun to rush through on our first trip.” There was something ominous about hearing this outing described as if it were merely the beginning of a long series of similar outings, but I tried not to think about that. We left the store loaded down with catalogs, Peter trailing behind us, still on his phone.

I was relieved to note that not choosing anything for the registry hadn’t taken very long—it was barely four o’clock. Peter and I would be well ahead of schedule to meet up with Luisa and Ben.

I was opening my mouth to thank Susan for her help when she opened her own mouth. “Saks is right here,” she said. “What do you think, Rachel? Do you want to take a quick spin inside and see what they have? I could use a few fresh things for summer.”

Given that summer in San Francisco seemed to call for the sort of clothing most people wore on Arctic expeditions, I had difficulty seeing how Saks would be the best place to find what she
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needed, but she was eager to continue shopping. I looked to Peter for help, but he didn’t even notice, intent on his ongoing cell-phone conversation. “Sure,” I said, summoning up a smile that I hoped appeared as eager as Susan’s.

She linked her arm through mine. “This is such fun. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I had a daughter to do girlie stuff with.” Peter had two older brothers, and they were both married, but one lived in London and one lived in Hong Kong—I guessed their wives didn’t afford Susan much in the way of regular daughterly companionship. Nor did I have the heart to warn her just how unfulfilling I was likely to be on the girlie front. I might not be able to describe my tastes in stemware, but I was fairly confident my tastes in apparel did not run to the girlie.

When Susan had said she could use a few fresh things for summer, she apparently had meant I could use a few fresh things for summer. Fifteen minutes later I was in a dressing room with an assortment of items she believed would look adorable on me. One would expect that someone like her, a respected attorney with a thriving local practice, would favor the tailored and professional, but everything she’d picked was either pastel or flowered, and several of her choices were both. I personally preferred black—it went with everything, which meant I never had to worry about my outfit clashing with the scenery, much less my hair, but I hadn’t wanted to rain on Susan’s shopping parade.

Unable to decide which pastel-flowered item to try on first, I closed my eyes, spun around once, and selected the first thing my hand touched, which turned out to be the pair of jeans I’d worn into the store. This was clearly an omen, but suppressing that thought I repeated the eyes-closed, spinning-around selection process. This time my hand landed on a pink sheath, nearly identical to the dress Caro Vail had worn the previous night and perfect for a tennis-playing blonde. I sighed and shimmied into it, all too aware that I wasn’t blond and that I sucked at tennis and all other activities requiring eye-hand coordination. Then I opened the dressing room door so Susan could see.

“I love it!” she cried, clapping her hands together. “Do you love it?”

I looked around for Peter. He was near the center escalators, still on his phone, but he saw me trying to catch his eye and gave a distracted smile and wave.

“See? Peter loves it, too,” said Susan.

She insisted on paying for the dress, signing the credit-card slip with a happy flourish that gave me a bad feeling about what would surely come next. “Now, we need to get you some shoes you can wear with that dress, dear,” she said. A pink dress was bad enough, but pink shoes were more than I could have dreaded. However, within twenty minutes a sales clerk was busily wrapping up my very own pair. All of my efforts to act like the perfect future daughter-in-law had resulted in my future mother-in-law dressing me up like a bridesmaid.

This was probably ironic on some level, but I was too conscious of being late to meet Ben and Luisa and too badly in need of a Diet Coke to figure out how. My head was pounding and my hands had started to twitch. I was rooting through my purse, hoping in vain that I’d stashed some Advil in there, when the photo of Iggie, Biggie and person-unknown fell out onto the sales counter.

Susan got to it before I did. “Here you go, dear,” she said, handing it to me, but then she paused, looking at the picture. “What a small world,” she said. “How do you know Leo?”

“Leo?”

“Leo. Here.” She pointed to the guy standing to the right of Iggie.

“I don’t know him, actually. The person in the middle is someone I know from college, Iggie Berhrenz. He was at the party last night.”

Fortunately, Susan didn’t ask why I was carrying around a picture of Iggie, as that would have been hard to explain, nor did she think it strange when I asked if she knew Leo’s last name.

“Now, what was it?” she mused. “I may have forgotten, but I’m not sure if I ever knew it. He was always just Leo.”

“Then how did you know his first name?” asked Peter, who had reappeared at my side far too
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late to intercede in Susan’s purchases on my behalf.

“From Berkeley,” she said, pointing at the building in the background. “That’s Sproul Hall, on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Remember when I taught a seminar at the law school there, a few years back? Leo was one of the graduate students who worked in tech support. You know, helping faculty when they had computer problems. He could fix anything, and he was always so nice about it. Once, he stayed up all night helping me recover a lost file, and he refused to let me pay him anything extra for his time. And he’s a friend of your friend. What a small world,” she repeated in wonder.

It wasn’t that small. After all, Iggie and his ex-wife had gone to graduate school at Berkeley, as well. But at least we now could put part of a name to the unidentified face, and it shouldn’t prove too hard to find out the rest of the name, or, I hoped, to track down its owner and ask him why he thought Hilary had felt it necessary to stash the picture in such a top-secret locale.

He might even know where we could find Iggie. All we had to do was check with the university and ask them about former graduate students named Leo who had worked in tech support and helped visiting law-school instructors. With a name like Leo, it would be easy, I thought, pleased.

My pleasure was almost enough to blot out any concerns about just where Peter’s mother thought I’d be wearing my pink dress and matching shoes.

8

W e said goodbye to Susan outside Saks after agreeing to meet for an early dinner in Chinatown.

She offered to take the shopping bags home, which was nice of her, but it also meant I wouldn’t have the opportunity to accidentally allow my new outfit to be crushed under a passing cable car.

“Thank you for standing idly by while your mother dressed me up like Bridesmaid Barbie,” I said to Peter as we waited to cross Post Street.

“I thought you looked cute,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “The pink is amazing with your hair.”

I found his utter cluelessness about such matters to be part of his charm, so I didn’t bother to debate this with him. “What were all those phone calls?” I asked.

“The valet service tracked down the guys who parked cars at the party last night and had them get in touch with me. There were three in total—high-school kids who work for the service on weekends.”

“Did any of them remember Hilary?”

“Did I mention they were in high school? They all remembered Hilary. She’s the living incarnation of adolescent male fantasy.”

“I’m sure there were posters of women just like her decorating the walls at your frat house,” I said.

“It wasn’t that sort of fraternity,” he protested. “In fact, we were pretty nerdy. And why are you so surprised I was in a fraternity?” The light finally changed, and we hurried across the street.

Because fraternities are so normal, I thought but didn’t say, nor did I say I shouldn’t be surprised given how normal everything else was about him and his family. “Was there a matching sorority?” I asked instead. “Where people wore a lot of pink?”

“Caro’s sorority was sort of like a sister sorority. And Caro likes to wear pink. So, yes, I guess there was a matching sorority where people wore a lot of pink.”

A mental picture of a sorority house filled with pastel-clad triathletes flashed before my eyes. I gave silent thanks that I’d lacked the spirit of adventure applying to a college in California would have required before returning to the matter at hand. “So what did the male adolescents have to say?”

“Ben and Luisa are right over there,” Peter said, pointing them out in line at a coffee cart. “Why don’t I wait and tell you all at the same time?”

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The four of us purchased beverages and found a table on the plaza. It was a pleasant spot, especially during those fleeting moments when the sun managed to break through the clouds, and a breeze carried the faint notes of a saxophone accompanied by the occasional clang of a cable car’s bell or a barking dog. My seat faced directly onto the statue at the plaza’s center, a woman doing an arabesque atop a Corinthian column. She looked energetic and healthful, as if she hadn’t been deprived of vital carbonated and artificially sweetened cola refreshment. I, on the other hand, had the Rice-a-Roni theme song running through my head, courtesy of the cable cars, and was trying to make do with seltzer, which was doing nothing to relieve my withdrawal symptoms.