Ivy Secrets (44 page)

Charlie flung her purse back on the counter and stormed into the living room. She pushed a stack of magazines off the threadbare sofa and flopped down, drummed her fingers on her knee, and massaged the back of her neck with her other hand.

It was two hours before the FBI arrived. All that time, Charlie sat in the living room, bitterly uncommunicative. Dell had told Tess to leave Charlie alone, but Tess was angry. She knew Charlie blamed her for Jenny’s disappearance. She knew Charlie would never believe that maybe Charlie herself was at fault—Charlie and Peter, and the unhappy life they’d given poor Jenny, the child who should have been hers.

Now there were two men in suits, three state police, Joe Lyons, a Northampton policewoman, Dell, and Tess crammed into her kitchen.

“We’d like to speak with each of you alone,” one of the suits said. “Outside will be best.”

Tess rose, her chair scraping against the floor. “Talk to me first. I need to get out of here.”

Outside, Tess led the FBI agent—who said his name was Connors—to two lawn chairs. She and Jenny had sat here … was it only yesterday? No, Tess reasoned, it must have been the day before. She pressed her hands to her temples and tried to glue her thoughts together.

“I’d like you to run through the events of yesterday.” Connors lit a cigarette and threw the match on the ground. Tess dropped her eyes to the burned match and wondered why he was smoking. She didn’t think policemen were supposed to do that anymore. She wondered if FBI agents were considered policemen.

“Ms. Richards?”

She flicked her gaze back to him. “Yes?”

“I asked you to run through the events of yesterday.”

She frowned, her forehead pinching together, trying to remember, trying to think where to start. “We were working on the ornaments …” She recounted the argument in slow, guarded words. She knew it was important not to divulge too much—not even to so much as hint that Charlie was a terrible mother or that Charlie wasn’t even Jenny’s real mother at all. She knew it was important to sidestep the secrets, but she no longer knew why. She wondered if she could be arrested for knowing too much.

Finally, Tess told him that Jenny had run out of the studio. “I started to go after her,” she concluded. “But I decided she needed to cool off. She’s a teenager now. She’s so grown up.” The pressure eased inside her head. She turned to Connors. “Do you remember being a teenager? It’s so hard. It’s so confusing.”

He looked at her strangely. “The girl has been here all summer?” He added another note to his small pad.

Tess blinked. “Yes. Every summer. Jenny comes every summer.”

“You and Mrs. Hobart must be very close.”

Tess bit her lip. How could she tell him they were no longer close? How could she explain why Jenny visited—why Charlie still allowed it—when Tess no longer understood it herself? She only knew that every June Jenny arrived, and every September she left again. She only knew that the months in between—the months without Jenny—had become increasingly lonely with each passing year. She had not slept with Dell again—Dell had been right, that their time had passed—yet they’d remained friends. She had not slept with Dell; she had not slept with anyone. She had settled into a life of merely waiting for June, waiting for her ten-week-a-year child, her ten-week-a-year purpose in life.

“Ms. Richards?”

Tess lowered her head. She spoke in a monotone: “Charlie and I have been friends since college. Her husband’s family was very close to mine. My father was an executive of his family’s business. We grew up together.” She drew in a long breath and hoped what she’d said was enough.

“Did anyone else know about the Fabergé egg?”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone may have entered your home to steal the egg. The girl may have surprised him. Or her.”

Tess shook her head. “No. I don’t know. Who would know about the egg? Jenny didn’t talk to anyone but me. And Dell.”

He made another note. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kidnap the girl?”

“Kidnap?”

Connors set down his pen and stood. The lawn chair creaked. “Ms. Richards, the girl is obviously from a wealthy family. Wealth breeds a whole set of problems like you can’t even imagine.”

Tess frowned. “I was wealthy,” she said calmly. “I was never kidnapped.”

He tucked his pen and pad into the pocket of his jacket, then removed a folded piece of paper. “We’re going to have to search the premises,” he said. “I have a warrant.”

Tess looked up at him. She squinted her eyes against the setting sun. “A warrant?”

“We’re going to dig for clues. The girl’s life may be at stake.”

Tess looked back to the ground and fixed her gaze on her terry scuff slippers, on the graying pulled threads and the soiled, worn edges. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed them. “The house is a mess, but if you have to search it, go ahead.”

“We need to examine the studio as well.”

She shrugged. “Be careful. If you break anything the federal government will own it.”

He nodded and turned back toward the house. Tess remained seated in the shaky lawn chair, wondering when all this was going to be over.

She looked toward the house; someone had turned on the overhead light in the kitchen. Dell, probably. Tess could hear the muffled sound of voices. She tried to understand the words but could not. Neither could she get up and go inside; there were too many people in there, too much chaos. Her house had turned into a three-ring circus, with her an unwilling audience, and the FBI the ringmaster. She folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and hoped to God that Marina didn’t show up.

“Jesus, Tess, what are you doing out here in the dark?” Charlie asked.

Tess opened her eyes. “I know,” she said. “I should come in and feed Grover. Are all those people still there?”

“Only the FBI. And Joe.”

“Where’s Dell?”

Charlie started to sit beside her, then stopped. “We had an argument. She’s gone home, I guess.”

“Maybe she ran away.”

“Dell?”

“No, Jenny. Maybe she just ran away. Why doesn’t anyone believe it? Why don’t they just leave me alone?”

Charlie didn’t answer.

“What did you and Dell fight about?”

“Marina.”

“Is she coming?”

Charlie shrugged. “We haven’t heard.”

Tess stared into space. “She’ll be here. I bet she’ll be here.”

“Tess … Do you think Jenny’s disappearance has anything to do with Marina?”

“Why?”

“Because for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you called her.”

“I told you. It was because of the picture. I think Jenny figured out you’re not her real mother,” Tess half smiled, enjoying saying those words.
You’re not her real mother.

“You should have waited until you talked to me. I could have talked to Jenny …”

“She ran away. Remember?”

Charlie shifted her weight: the high heel of one of her shoes sunk into the ground.

“You look ridiculous standing there,” Tess said. “Are they in the studio?”

“Who?”

“The FBI.”

“They finished in there.”

Tess pulled herself from the broken chair. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

Charlie followed Tess quietly down the path to the studio. Inside, Tess led Charlie into the small room off the main studio—the room where she often stayed late at night when
she was too wired to want to leave her work, or too tired to walk back to the house. She went to the narrow, unmade bed that was strewn with sketchbooks and littered with papers. She shuffled through the mess until she found the sketchbook she wanted, then flipped a few pages and showed it to Charlie.

“This is my design,” she said, proudly showing a page with a colorful illustration of a vase. “I sent it to Blackburn. It’s based on Jenny’s egg.”

“The Fabergé?”

“Well, of course the Fabergé. I wanted to surprise Jenny.”

“It’s lovely.” Charlie looked over at the shelves. “What is Jenny making? Dell told me you’ve been teaching her.”

Tess smiled and walked to the shelf. “She has quite a knack.” She scanned the shelf and removed a tapered, amber ornament. As she ran her hand over the smooth, cool surface, she said quietly: “This is the one she was working on yesterday. This is the one she was working on when we had the fight.”

Then Tess realized that wasn’t right. This couldn’t be the last ornament Jenny had worked on. It couldn’t be, because Jenny had smashed that one. Jenny had hurled it across the room and smashed it. Tess looked over at the wall the ornament had hit, then lowered her eyes to the floor. No glass fragments remained: She vaguely remembered sweeping them up. Would that have been last night?

Heaviness seemed to compress her chest.

The door to the studio opened.

“Tess?” It was Joe Lyons. “Can you come out here, please?”

Tess set the ornament back on the shelf. “What’s wrong?”

“The FBI wants to talk to you again.”

“I told them everything I know.”

Joe shrugged. “They asked me to bring you back to the house.”

“I am perfectly capable of bringing myself, thank you, Chief Lyons.” She pushed past Joe and headed up the path toward her house, her once-cozy house now invaded with intrusive, questioning cops. All because of Jenny. All because
Marina had gotten pregnant and wouldn’t have an abortion and because Charlie had stolen Peter and adopted Jenny and because Peter’s stupid mother had left Jenny the stupid egg.

    “Ms. Richards,” the other FBI agent asked, “are you in financial trouble?”

Tess frowned. She stood in her kitchen, her stuffy, familiar kitchen, that now looked so foreign with all the people there. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think we’d better go into the living room,” the agent said, and moved through the door. Without protest, Tess followed. He moved some magazines and sat on the sofa; she sat on the chair adjacent to him. Then he thrust a handful of papers at her. “According to these, you are three months in arrears on your electric bill; two on your phone bill. There are several second notices here for miscellaneous charges to various stores, as well as from what appear to be suppliers of your glassblowing supplies.”

Tess stared at the papers. “I own my own business,” she explained. “Sometimes there are cash flow problems.”

“Tell me about them.” The agent leaned forward.

His breath smelled like LifeSavers. Butter rum. She turned her face away. “All those bills will be paid as soon as my order is delivered. I have a contract for the work I’m doing. As soon as I deliver the ornaments, those bills will be paid. But I’m not going to get them finished if you take up any more of my time. I’ve already lost a day’s work today.”

“When we looked in the studio we saw about a dozen trinkets on the shelf.”

Tess raised her chin. “They’re not trinkets. They’re ornaments. Christmas ornaments. Handblown.”

“Ma’am, my name’s Greenberg, and I don’t know much about Christmas ornaments. But I doubt that the ones we saw will bring in enough money to cover these bills.” He waved the stack at her again.

“I have other sources of funds.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” She sat up straight. “I am about to have a design
purchased by the Blackburn Gallery. You’ve probably never heard of them.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Well, they’re making a decision on my design right now. It will bring in a great deal of money.”

The agent looked at the stack of bills, then back to Tess.

“I support myself,” Tess said. “I’ve been supporting myself since college. I know how to manage my money, Mr. Green berg.”

“We’d like to see the books for your business.”

The pressure returned to her chest.

“And you won’t mind if we call Mr. Blackburn?”

“There is no Mr. Blackburn. He’s been dead for half a century.”

“Well, then, you won’t mind if we call whoever is in charge of the gallery?”

It was difficult to breathe. She wondered if she was having a heart attack. “Look, Officer, or Agent, or whatever you call yourself. I don’t see what my business has to do with the problem at hand. I suggest you stop snooping through my things and go out and look for Jenny. A girl is missing, in case you’ve forgotten.”