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CHAPTER SEVEN

I pick up Debbie on the way out to Connecticut. She wants a day out of the city, and I figure that maybe I could use her. We follow my late-night pin drop back to the lush estate of Maybe Anna. I don’t have much of a plan here. I consider trying to make some kind of approach as a delivery man, but that won’t work here. Whatever packages get delivered here are left at the gate, I’m sure. I debate casing the place from down the street, parking and waiting for a car to come out and then following it, but my guess is, the local authorities notice old beater cars held together by duct tape idling on these fair streets. Debbie might help with that. It’s one thing when a guy is in a car by himself. It’s a little less conspicuous with a couple.

Debbie has her window down and sticks her nose out of it like a golden retriever. “Can you believe all this green?” she asks in wonder.

“Is there no green where you’re from?”

“Not green like this,” she says. “It’s like even the trees smell like money.”

I get what she means.

“Can we go for a hike, Kierce?”

“This is all private land.”

“For real?”

“Yep.”

“There must be some walking trails nearby though, right?”

“I guess,” I say.

“You like hiking?” she asks.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s boring,” I say. “It’s hot. It’s dusty or muddy. And then it’s all ‘Oh, look honey, there’s a tree! Oh, and there’s another tree! And another! Oh, I wonder what’s around that bend… Oh wow, looks like a tree!’ I get thirsty and hungry and, I mean, if you want to take a long walk in the city, yes, sure, I’m with you. You see people’s faces. You can window-shop. You can gaze upon architectural wonders or meander through a bookstore or head up to that flea market on Columbus Avenue. That’s stimulation. That’s interesting.”

Debbie smiles and sits back in her seat. “I like you, Kierce.”

“I like you too.”

“I still want to try hiking someday,” she says. “Get some fresh air.”

“Fresh air is overrated. Your lungs are strong from a lifetime of street fights.”

She laughs at that. “So what’s our plan?”

I shrug. “I’m open to ideas if you have any.”

We circle the streets and hope something comes to mind. Nothing does right away, but I’ve learned that there is something to literally and figuratively spinning your wheels. Patience is a virtue and all that. Wait enough and sometimes something happens.

Or this is what I tell myself to excuse the fact that I’m a shit planner.

We drive around like this for about twenty minutes when I see a car, a Mercedes-Benz CLE convertible with its top down, pull out of the driveway down the road from Maybe Anna’s. There are four young women in the car. They wear sunglasses and wide smiles and give off major “not a care in the world” vibes.

“Speaking of smelling like money,” Debbie says.

“How old do you think they are?” I ask.

“Like, I don’t know—high school seniors, college maybe? Why, you interested?”

I make a face at her and swing the wheel so that I’m following the Mercedes.

“You got a plan?” she asks.

“I do.”

“Care to share it?”

“They live across the street from our target house.”

“So?”

“So they probably know who lives there.”

“You think they’ll tell you?”

We follow the car to the outskirts of town. The Mercedes pulls up to some fancy converted barn, the kind of place you’d find an overpriced pottery store or those upscale wine-n-paint party joints. Molly went to one of the wine-n-paint parties last year. She brought back a painting of what might be a nature scene and gave it to me. It couldn’t be uglier and I think Molly knows that, which is why I hung it in our bedroom and I’ll be damned if I ever take it down.

A valet takes the convertible and the four—can I call them girls? teens? women?—head inside. I look for a sign telling me where I am. There is none. Debbie is on her smartphone trying to look the place up.

“It’s called the Ivy,” she says.

“What is it, a restaurant?”

She shakes her head. “A rejuvenation center.”

“Does that mean spa?”

Debbie shrugs. I pull my Ford Taurus up to the valet. The valet crinkles his nose and looks at my car as though it just plopped out of a dog’s backside. We get out and I toss him the keys.

“Don’t scratch it,” I say.

The valet looks at the exterior. “Might make it look better,” he replies.

“Good one,” I say. “If I had cash, I would tip.”

“I take Venmo and Zelle.”

“Let’s chat later, shall we?”

Debbie and I enter a sea of white. The barn has high ceilings and big picture windows. Plush white leather chaise lounge chairs line all four walls, with what looks like a round cocktail bar in the middle. The clientele wear white terrycloth robes and lie on the chaises.

They have IVs in their arms.

Debbie leans toward me and says sotto voce, “You know what this reminds me of?”

“What?” I ask.

“My mother getting chemo.”

I say nothing for a moment. This is the first time Debbie has ever revealed anything even slightly personal.

“Except this is way more ritzy.” She thinks about it. “Do you say ‘more ritzy’ or ‘ritzier’?”

“‘Ritzier,’ I think.” Then I add, “I’m sorry about your mom.” I’m thinking about asking how her mom is or if she’s dead or alive or still going through chemo or in remission, but Debbie shakes me off like a baseball pitcher who doesn’t like what the catcher is signaling.

“Do you think that’s what this is?” Debbie asks. “Like rich-people chemo?”

“No,” I say.

“Me neither. Everyone at chemo had brittle yellow skin. These rich people glow like rich people.”

A receptionist with a constant blink, as though midseizure, steps in front of us. “May I help you?”

“My dad wants to buy me a treatment,” Debbie says. “It’s my birthday.”

“Oh wow, how wonderful.”

I smile at her. The proud father. In my peripheral vision I see the four girls from the convertible come out in white bathrobes. They are led to four chaises on the right wall. They sit-lie, and four women dressed in pink scrubs like pediatric nurses put IVs into their left arms. They sip what might be pina coladas from cocktail glasses with small umbrellas.

“Ivy,” I say softly. “Like IV.”

“Yes, that’s our service,” the receptionist says. Her voice turns a tad condescending. “Our IV therapies start at eight hundred dollars.”

“American dollars?” I ask.

“I have a brochure.”

She opens it. There are treatments called Super Immunity and Beauty Boost and Elite Energy. There is something called a Myers Cocktail and HydroBlast and VeinVitalizer and HornyHelper. I look at Debbie and then toward the Convertible Girls. Debbie understands my meaning.

“Can we talk about the options over here,” Debbie says, trying to look embarrassed, “like away from my dad?”

“Oh, of course.”

They move away, leaving me be. The girls are all lying back as though tanning on a beach. Now or never.

I stick out here like a snowman in a sauna. Still, the initial looks I’m getting from the four girls are more curious than accusatory. They are in a peppery, animated conversation punctuated with an indiscernible blend of young exclamations including “I know, right”s and “sus”es and “it’s giving”s and “sending me”s and “mid”s and “simp”s. They barely look up until I am standing over them. I don’t say anything. I wait. The conversation fades away like the end of a song more than it stops. Then a few “what the f” giggles start up as I just stand there and give them my warmest smile.

The girl who was driving is the first to speak. “Uh, can we help you?”

“My name is Sami Kierce,” I say. I hold up my phone with the photo I took of the gate blocking Maybe Anna’s driveway. “Could you tell me who lives here?”

Sometimes you try subtle. Sometimes you just dive right in.

The girls all share a glance, but the convertible’s driver keeps her eyes on mine.

“Are you a cop, Sami Kierce?” she asks.

“Used to be.”

“Why aren’t you one anymore?”

“Got thrown off the force.”

Again the other girls turn their heads and mutter. They are almost background noise now. It’s just the driver and me.

“Why do you want to know who lives there?” she asks.

“More than twenty years ago, when I was probably around your age, I fell hard for a girl when I was backpacking through southern Spain.”

“Like a summer romance?” one of the girls says.

“Exactly like that,” I reply.

The other two girls say “aww.” The driver keeps her eyes on me.

I continue: “Anyway, like I said, I fell for a girl in Spain. Up until last night, I thought she was dead.”

“What happened last night?” Driver Girl asks.

“She showed up at a class I was teaching in the city. Then she bolted out when I spotted her. I followed her back here, but she disappeared behind that gate. I tried to get in, but her security guys threw me out.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” another girl—the other three all seem to be one mass to me now—says. They all stare up at me with classic doe-in-the headlights expressions. They are engaged, paying attention, wanting to know more.

That’s the thing about truth—it has its own unmistakable odor. You can smell truth. Authenticity can disarm the opposition.

“Wait,” Driver Girl says, “how do you not know the name of your old girlfriend?”

“She said it was Anna.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

I shrug.

“Are you sure it’s the same girl?”

“I guess I can’t be. It’s been over twenty years. She’s changed a lot.”

“But?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s her. But if I’m wrong, there’s only one way to find out.”

“This is so weird,” one of the girls says.

“Kind of stalkerish too.”

“Maybe she was, I don’t know, ghosting him?”

“Then why come to his class?”

“Oh right, right.”

“Hold up,” Driver Girl adds. She has these intense blue eyes that bore holes. “You said you thought she was dead.”

“Yes,” I reply. “Worse, I thought maybe I was responsible for her death. I’ve lived with that guilt and worry for twenty-two years. As for stalking and ghosting or whatever, I have no interest in her in that way. It was a long time ago. I’m happily married. We just had a baby.”

I show them a photo on my phone of the three of us. Molly had set her phone up with the timer and then she used some app that created a cheesy rainbow background like we used to get at Sears department stores as kids.

The girls in unison, almost as though they’d practiced it, say, “Awwww.”

“So cute!”

“Adorbs!”

They take my phone from me and pinch-zoom the photo to get closer in.

“Is that your wife?”

“Yes,” I say.

“She’s so pretty.”

“She is,” I agree.

“Does she know you’re here?”

“Yes. We don’t keep secrets. I just need answers. Molly—that’s my wife’s name—she gets it.”

They all share looks, not sure what to say next.

“Please,” I say. “I just need answers. I don’t mean anyone any harm.”

The girl on the far right says, “But you don’t want to go there.”

“They aren’t nice people,” another adds.

“My mom said it’s an old mobster’s place,” Girl Three says, “and they shoot anyone who tries to get to him.”

“No,” Far Right Girl says, “it’s some rich Russian guy who wears a lot of chains.”

Driving Girl signs and sits up. “Excuse me, Gardenia?”

One of the women in pink scrubs comes out from behind the circular IV bar. Driver Girl motions toward the IV in her arm. Gardenia attaches it to a metal IV stand with five wheels on the bottom and two hooks at the top. Driver Girl rises and gestures for me to follow her.

“As you can see,” she tells me, glancing back at her friends, “the family that lives there works hard on maintaining their privacy.”

“So they aren’t rich Russians or mobsters?”

“No.” She looks down, chews on her lower lip. “But they have good reason to want their privacy.”

“That being?”

“The family has suffered a lot of tragedy. The woman you saw. Your girlfriend from Spain.”

“What about her?”

“How old is she?”

“Around my age.”

Her face pales. “Still.”

“Still what?”

“She could have just been someone who worked at the estate. Like a housekeeper or groundskeeper or something.”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I tried to sneak to the house through the woods. Before security caught me, I saw Anna in an upstairs bedroom window. I mean, maybe she was just dusting or whatever, but it was late at night.”

“Still,” she says again. “It doesn’t mean it was her.”

“Wasn’t who?”

“I mean, no one is even sure she lives there.” Her words are coming fast now. Driver Girl had been so poised, so mature up to this point. “But that’s what my parents told me. I’ve never seen her. I don’t think anyone has.”

“Slow down a second,” I say. “Take a deep breath.”

“No,” she replies. “If I slow down—if I think about it too long—I won’t tell you. I’ll back out. The family that lives there.”

“What about them?”

“Their last name is Belmond.”

It feels as though the air has been suddenly sucked out of the room. Her eyes stay on mine.

I almost take a step back. “Belmond,” I repeat. “As in?”

She nods. “Victoria Belmond. The girl you call Anna? She may very well be Victoria Belmond.”