Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) Read online

  Claire sat on the other end of the couch. The plaid bedspread that covered the old couch did nothing to soften the protruding springs. What was Ginny doing with Dr. Bradford’s money? Then Claire remembered the bulk of it was only received after the woman relinquished her child. She turned her head to look at all the photos of a different Ginny. Ginny laughing, her eyes sun-squinted, her arms draped around the necks of two other girls. Ginny at twelve or thirteen, her fingers buried in the fur of a border collie that looked at the camera with its mouth open in a doggy smile. Ginny holding up a blue ribbon, her arm draped around the neck of a black and white cow. Directly behind where the real Ginny sat hung a picture of the old Ginny on the back of a bucking horse. Her back was slim and straight, her smile wide and unafraid. One hand gripped the pommel and the other raised her cowboy hat straight over her head. In all the photos, Ginny looked tanned and sturdy and nothing like the pale young woman who sat in front of Claire, grimacing as she leaned forward to rest her hands on the arch of her back.

  “Dr. Gregory told me you grew up in a small town. Has it been hard making the transition to Portland?”

  Ginny nodded. “My graduation class had 22 people in it. I’d known all of them since kindergarten. Here, there’s thousands of people who go to school. It’s kind of overwhelming. It’s hard to make friends. I never thought about it, but I guess I didn’t have to before. I already knew everyone.” The word bubbled out of her. Claire realized that Ginny must have days when she never spoke to anyone. “I haven’t told my parents about what it’s been like. Neither of them went to college, so when I was accepted at PSU with a full scholarship they were thrilled. They don’t want me working twenty-hour days for months on end and then see everything lost if it doesn’t rain or it rains too much. My mom does some waitressing in town, and there’s been times that’s the only money we’ve had coming in.”

  “Do they know about your” - Claire was going to say ‘babies,’ but changed it to, “pregnancy?”

  Unconsciously, Ginny rubbed her palms over swollen belly. “This happened right before I went home for the summer. I didn’t know myself for a long time. I’ve always been irregular. I just thought I was throwing up because I had an ulcer or something. Besides, I don’t think they really look at me anymore. I’m just Ginny to them, their baby. At Christmas break, I told them I couldn’t come home because I was working on a special project for extra credit. This term, I just kept wanting to sleep all the time. I finally had to drop out. They don’t know that either. They think I’m doing really well.” She sighed.

  No wonder Ginny had opened the door so readily. There must be days when she didn’t even leave this room, with its reminder of what her life had been like before she pursued her dreams. “What will you do about school?”

  “I’m enrolled again next term, but I lost my scholarship. I don’t know if you know this, but the clinic does pay the girls some money.” She watched Claire’s face carefully, as if expecting an outcry of disgust, but seemed reassured by whatever she saw there. “If I’m careful, it will be enough for at least a year. I’m going to take twenty credit hours this spring, which is more than a full load. If I do that for a few terms, I’ll catch up.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  Even though Claire was only about a dozen years older, she felt a wave of maternal feeling for Ginny. “What about the father? Does he know?”

  Ginny snorted. “He knows. I made sure about that. By the end of last year, I thought that everyone was partying except me. I figured I was probably the only virgin on campus. I decided I was old enough to make my own decisions, even ones the Catholic church or my parents don’t approve of. There was this guy in my American History class, and one day he asked me to study for finals with him. It turned out he wanted to do a lot more than that. He told me he used a condom.” A dimple moved across her belly, and Claire realized one of the babies inside her must be turning. “I don’t know if he didn’t use it right or what. After I got back to school, I went to his apartment to tell him what had happened. You know what he said to me?”

  “What?” Claire asked, unnecessarily, for the words were already spilling out of Ginny.

  “He just sat there for a moment, and then he just said, ‘Oh, I kinda forgot about that.’ That’s how special I was to him. He offered me money for an abortion, and he didn’t look too jazzed about even that. Up until then I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew when he said that that I couldn’t kill my baby. I told him I didn’t want his money. That I was going to have the baby. That was before I knew it was twins. He went all white. I think he’s afraid I’m going to sue him for child support for the next 18 years. I haven’t corrected his impression. I figured it was the least I could do.”

  She raised her hand to her mouth to cover her smile and Claire found herself smiling back.

  “Dr. G. didn’t really say what you wanted, just that you wanted to ask me some questions about the clinic. So are you pregnant? Or thinking about adopting? I’m afraid they already have parents lined up for these two.” Ginny looked at her with her tired, open face.

  Claire found that she couldn’t lie to Ginny. She shook her head. “Neither, I’m afraid. Ten years ago, my friend had her daughter at the Bradford Clinic. Now Lori’s three-year-old son has leukemia. If she can find the girl, she might be a match for a bone marrow transplant. But the clinic won’t tell her anything”

  Ginny straightened up. “I could help you. I could look around at my appointment this afternoon. It’s not like it’s a really busy place. I could just poke around.” She looked excited, animated for the first time.

  “No,” Claire barked, her stomach giving a lurch. Why had she been seduced into telling the truth? This girl could ruin everything. “Absolutely not. If you go around asking questions, you could make it so that Lori never finds her daughter. Leave the sleuthing to someone with experience.”

  “What are you, like a private investigator?”

  Deciding a lie only counted if you said it out loud, Claire nodded.

  Her face was still painted with two bright spots of color, Ginny sagged back on the couch. “All right, I won’t. But I can keep my eyes open when I’m there, can’t I?”

  Claire knew there was no way she could stop her, but she had to try. “Don’t even do that. I don’t want you asking one question, no matter how innocent. If you made them suspicious, they might move the records completely out of the clinic.” She took out the little map Lori had drawn for her in pencil. “Where I need your help is right here and now. My friend tried to tell me about how things were, but that was ten years ago.” Claire handed Ginny the pencil. “Can you show me where the exam rooms, bathrooms, doctor’s office and nurses’ station are?”

  Ginny did. Then she surprised Claire by sketching in another rectangle a few inches behind the clinic.

  “What’s that?”

  “The doctor’s house. He lives on the property. It’s this old beautiful three-story house, you know, the kind with the stone pillars and the big deep porch. It’s on the crest of a hill so it must have a great view of the city.”

  ###

  From Ginny’s house, Claire drove to the I Spy Shoppe, fretting the whole way. The girl was so palpably lonely. What would stop her from blurting everything out to someone at the clinic? They were the only people Ginny ever spoke to. She seemed especially attached to the head nurse Vi, the same one who had cut Lori off the minute she started asking questions about her daughter.

  The I Spy Shoppe was located in a strip mall on Barbur Boulevard, next to a space that held a new restaurant every month. Now it appeared to have morphed from a Pakistani restaurant into an Ethiopian one. When the lone waiter saw Claire’s Mazda nose into the parking lot, he picked up a menu and stood at attention, then slumped as she limped past the “Lentil Stew Made Fresh Daily!” sign. Claire made a mental note to take Charlie to the restaurant soon, although it would do little to stave off its inevitable demise.

  Wi
th its cheap gray felt carpeting and white-painted walls, the I Spy Shoppe also had an air of impermanence about it, even though it had been selling its own particular brand of paranoia for over ten years. The small store’s half-dozen glass cases held an odd mixture of gag gifts (“Instant Worms,” “The Two-Headed Nickel - Wins Every Toss”) side-by-side with more serious - and expensive - items like leg shackles, bomb detectors and a briefcase booby-trapped to give any unauthorized user a nine-thousand-volt jolt.

  The clerk, Jimmy, looked up from his Soldier of Fortune magazine. “What happened to your ankle?” he asked.

  “A little escapade with a killer attack dog.” Claire said it with a smile, but he apparently believed her.

  “An ankle’s not much to injure in that case. One trick is to remember to throw your forearm over your throat. Better to have your arm bitten than to have your throat torn out.” Jimmy demonstrated, looking as if he were trying to strangle himself. “And if you get knocked off your feet, you assume the pillbug position.” He laced his fingers together and put his hands over the back of his neck, with the fingers facing inside. He curled his body over so that his face was against his knees. He straightened up, his knees giving an audible pop. “Of course, you’re better off if it never comes to that. I always advise clients to try our Dog B Gon.” As Claire thought to herself that the name would make a good license plate, Jimmy tapped on the top of the glass case, indicating a small metal canister about the size of a bottle of correction fluid. “It’s guaranteed to stop about any dog in its tracks. And another thing to try is German. Most attack dogs are trained to ignore English commands. Say ‘Halt’ instead of ‘stop.’”

  “I think this particular dog didn’t understand any language, English or foreign.”

  “That’s the problem. People go out of their way to train their dogs to be mean, but it’s like leaving a loaded gun lying on top of the TV set. You don’t know who’s going to get hurt.” Eyes narrowed, he gave her a little nod, then switched into his salesman mode. “So what can I do you for today?”

  Jimmy had once sold Claire a stun gun the size of a beeper. When it came to planning a break-in, he was happy to again give her advice, just as long as she understood it was speculative. He spent his days fantasizing that he was really Double Oh Seven, while he sold “nannycams” hidden in teddy bears to suspicious parents - and telephone tapping devices to even more suspicious spouses.

  Leaning on the counter so that she could keep her weight off her left ankle, Claire laid out her problem for Jimmy. “Suppose there’s a building I need to get into at night - but I don’t happen to have a key. If I were able to get inside beforehand, do you have anything I could use to keep the lock from closing so I could come by later?” She paused, then added, “Of course this is all hypothetical.”

  “Of course.” He gave her a wink. The thing about Jimmy was that he never asked why you wanted to do what you wanted to do. He narrowed his eyes and stroked the sparse goatee he had been attempting to grow for as long as Claire had known him. “You could try putty in the mechanism. Or tape. But that would only work with certain kinds of locks, and if no one tries the door after they think they’ve locked it. What kind of lock will you be working with? Standard Yale? Disc tumbler? Your five-pin household?”

  Claire was already beginning to feel overwhelmed. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Then what I would really recommend is a pick kit. I’ve got the basics for thirty-nine-ninety-five, or a deluxe set for seventy-nine-ninety-five.” He was already unlocking one of the display cases.

  “You mean, like to pick a lock? Can anybody do that?”

  “Sure, if you practice a bit.” He pulled a palm-sized folded leather case from the top glass shelf and flipped it open. Inside were a dozen black metal tools, each about the size of a toothpick. He picked up one that had a ninety-degree bend at one end. “See, you slide this in where the key would go, and then put pressure on it. Then you take a pick or a rake,” he touched tools that had either a single hooked end or a series of waves, then picked up one to demonstrate, “slip it in, and you just start working it and working it until the tumblers click home.”

  “Won’t that take a long time?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “My first one took an hour. Now I can do one in about five minutes. My advice is to practice at home first on as many different types of locks as you can find. You would probably be pretty good at it.” He cleared his throat. “In my experience, women have more delicate, sensitive fingers.”

  This was Jimmy’s version of flirting, but Claire ignored it. Instead, curiosity got the better of her. “Do you sell very many of these pick kits?”

  “It’s a steady mover.”

  “What do people buy them for?”

  Jimmy narrowed his eyes and gave a warning shake of his head. “You know my motto. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Maybe,” he lifted his shoulders, “maybe some people get locked out of their houses a lot.” Or, Claire thought, they get locked out of other people’s houses a lot. He realized she was eyeing him skeptically. “Or maybe, you know, it’s like a hobby.”

  In a country where shooting an AK-47 could be classified as a hobby, Claire supposed anything was possible. She bought the less expensive pick set, as well as a nineteen-ninety-five booklet that Jimmy promised would give her step-by-step instructions for all types of locks. And remembering the sickening wash of terror when the dog had leaped at her, she had Jimmy throw in a bottle of Dog B Gon. It might come in handy the next time she went running.

  As he was slipping her purchases in a bag, Claire asked him if he knew where she might be able to get some fake I.D. “I’m not talking a driver’s license, or anything like that. But what if I wanted to make someone think I was a college student?”

  Despite the fact that they were the only two people in the Shoppe, Jimmy whispered his recommendation from the side of his mouth. “Harry’s Camera. Beaverton.” He handed the bag to her, then added, “This building you’re interested in. It doesn’t have an alarm, does it?”

  Claire noted that Jimmy hadn’t brought up that possibility until after he had made his sale. “I hadn’t thought about that.” Her plan, such as it was, was already crumbling. “I don’t know. Do you have anything that could circumvent one?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Probably not. There’s two basic types. One monitors the perimeter - your doors, windows, transoms, vents, skylights. They’re usually set to notice vibrations. Some sophisticated alarms are tuned to the frequency of breaking glass. The other type of alarm monitors the interior space with either heat or motion detectors. But both are prone to falsing.”

  “Falsing?” Claire echoed.

  “Say a heavy truck goes by. Or a helium balloon left over from a party starts drifting around. Nine times out of ten, an alarm goes off for the wrong reason. That’s why most of them aren’t hooked up to police stations any more - too many false alarms. Even the monitoring agencies don’t take them too seriously. And a lot of alarms aren’t monitored at all.”

  “Then what would be the point of having one?”

  “The primary goal is to scare someone off. If some jerk is kicking in your back door and starts hearing a loud noise, nine times out of ten he’ll decide it’s better to go someplace else. And even with an unmonitored alarm, usually someone will notice and eventually check it out, even if it’s just a neighbor calling to complain about the noise.”

  “But I don’t have any idea what kind of alarm system this building has, or if it even has an alarm system.”

  “You’ve got questions, Jimmy’s got answers,” Jimmy said. He paused and looked around the empty store. “Do you want my advice?”

  “Of course I do, Jimmy.”

  “I think you should break out, not break in.”

  ###

  Evidently, Harry was a lot less secretive than Jimmy about his business, because his half-page ad in the Yellow Pages trumpeted “I.D. - all types!” in seventy-two point type. Harry’s turned o
ut to be located in another anonymous suburb strip mall. Harry probably made most of his money, not off the few cameras in a dusty glass case, but through the sale of instant identification displayed on a Plexiglas divider in the middle of the room. The clerk behind the counter told Claire that the I.D. section was self-serve, and she could see that the woman had the same “I don’t want to know” attitude as Jimmy. The cards bore official-looking headings like “Employee I.D.,” “College I.D.,” and “Student I.D.” Some had spaces for height, weight, date of birth, and/or hair and eye colors. One version just said “Official Identification Card,” another showed a pseudo-governmental eagle with the words “United States Federal Service Employee.” As far as Claire could tell, none of the college I.D. cards available at Harry’s Camera were for colleges that actually existed. Corona State sounded good, Claire decided as she looked over her choices. It seemed plausibly Californian. She could be a transfer student who hadn’t gotten her Portland State I.D. yet.

  To complete her makeover, Lori had loaned Claire an age-appropriate outfit of chunky shoes paired with a frankly polyester dress. For a day or two, Claire had even thought about wearing a wig to the doctor’s office, until she’d realized that once she took off her underwear she would give away the game away. And she wasn’t brave or stupid enough to try dyeing her pubic hair. Before coming to Harry’s Camera, Claire had compromised by pulling her hair back in a bun so tight that it made her eyes hurt. At least it no longer looked curly, and thus perhaps not so much like Claire Montrose.

  She used a touch screen computer to enter the information she wanted to claim as hers. The result was printed out on card stock on a special color printer. Then Claire sat in one of the photo booths, pulled the wine-red curtain, and snapped herself two times. Holding the still wet photos by their edges, she took her new Corona State I.D. to the laminating machine.

  WHO RU

  Chapter Eight