Who knows what the real reason was. She’d died of breast cancer last year, so she wasn’t around to ask. But Alexa was never the same after that, and she wasn’t exactly an easygoing, well-adjusted kid before the incident took place. She got even more rebellious, smoking at school, breaking curfew, doing whatever she could to get into trouble.
So one day a few months after it happened, my mother called me-I was working in Washington at the time, at the Defense Department-and asked me to drive up to New Hampshire and have a talk with Alexa at Exeter.
I tracked her down on the stadium field and watched her play field hockey for a while. Even though she didn’t consider herself a jock, she moved with a sinewy grace. She played with immense concentration. She had the rare ability to completely lose herself in the flow of the game.
She wasn’t easy to talk to, but since I was Frankie Heller’s son, and she loved my mom unambivalently, and since I wasn’t her dad, eventually I broke through. She still hadn’t metabolized the terror of the abduction. I told her that was normal, and that I’d worry about her if she hadn’t been so deeply frightened by that day. I said it was great she was being so defiant.
She looked at me with disbelief, then suspicion. What kind of mind game was I playing?
I said I was serious. Defiance is great. That is how you learn to resist. I told her that fear is a tremendously useful instinct, since it’s a warning signal. Fear tells us we’re facing danger. We have to listen to it, use it. I even gave her a book about “the gift of fear,” though I doubt she ever read it.
I told her that she was not only a girl but a beautiful girl and a rich girl, and that those were three strikes against her. I taught her how to look for danger signals, and then I showed her some rudimentary self-defense techniques, a few basic martial-arts moves. Nothing fancy, but enough. I’d hate to be a drunken Exeter boy who tried to push her too far.
I took her to a dojo outside Boston and introduced her to Bujinkan self-defense techniques. I knew it would be great discipline for her, instill some self-confidence, be a healthy outlet for some of the aggression that had been building up inside her. Whenever I came to Boston and she was home from school, we’d make a point of getting together and practicing. And even, after a while, talking.
It wasn’t the solution I’d hoped it would be, though. She continued doing stuff she knew would get her in trouble-smoking, drinking, whatever-and Marcus had to send her to some kind of reform school for a year. Who knows why she went through such a difficult period. It might have been the trauma of the abduction. But it might just as well have been a reaction to her mother’s running off.
Or maybe it was just being a teenager.
“WHAT’S WITH all the security?” I asked. “It wasn’t here last time I visited.”
Marcus paused. “Times have changed. More crazies out there. I have more money. Newsweek did a story about me. Forbes, Fortune, the cable news-I mean, it’s not like I’m a shrinking violet.”
“Have you received any threats?”
“Threats? Like, did someone come up to me on State Street with a gun and threaten to blow my brains out or something? No. But I’m not going to wait.”
“So it’s just a precaution.”
“What, you don’t think I should be taking precautions?”
“Of course you should. I just want to know if you had any specific warning, a breakin, whatever-anything that inspired you to tighten your security.”
“I made him do it,” a female voice said.
Belinda Marcus had entered the kitchen. She was a tall, slender blonde, extremely beautiful. But icy. Maybe forty, but a well-cared-for forty. A forty that got regular Botox and collagen fillers and the occasional well-timed mini-facelift. A woman whose idea of “work” was something you had done at a plastic surgeon’s office.
She was all in white: skinny white ankle-slit pants, a white silk top with wide shoulder straps that looked like they were made out of origami, a low neckline with seamed cups that drew your eye to her small but pert breasts. She was barefoot. Her toenails were painted coral.
“I thought it was absolutely mad that Marshall didn’t have any guards. A man who’s worth as much as Marshall Marcus? As prominent as he is? We’re just sitting ducks out here at the end of the point. And after what happened to Alexa?”
“They were out shopping, Belinda. A movie, whatever. That coulda happened even if we had a… an armed battalion surrounding the house. They were in the Chestnut Hill Mall, for Christ’s sake!”
“You haven’t introduced me to Mr. Heller,” Belinda said. She approached, offered me her hand. It was bony and cool. Her fingernails were painted coral too. She had the vacant beauty of your classic trophy-wife bimbo, and she spoke with a sugary Georgia accent, all mint juleps and sweet iced tea.
I stood up. “Nick,” I said. All I knew about her was what I’d heard from my mother. Belinda Jackson Marcus had been a flight attendant with Delta and met Marcus in the bar at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, in Atlanta.
“Pardon my manners,” Marcus said but remained slouched in his chair. “Nick, Belinda. Belinda, Nick,” he added perfunctorily. “Is she not a gorgeous creature, this girl?” A wide, pleased smile: he’d gotten his teeth capped too. That and the new hair: Marcus had never been vain, so I assumed he’d done all this work out of insecurity at having a wife so much younger and so beautiful. Or maybe she’d been pushing him to renovate.
Belinda tipped her head and rolled her eyes, a coy, fawnlike gesture. “Have you offered Mr. Heller some lunch?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Now, what’s wrong with you, sugar?” Belinda said.
“What kind of lousy host am I?” he said. “See? What would I do without Belinda? I’m an animal. An uncivilized beast. How about a sandwich, Nickeleh?”
“I’m good,” I said.
“Nothing?”
“I’m fine.”
Belinda said, “How about I fix y’all some coffee?”
“Sure.”
She glided over to the long black soapstone-topped island and clicked on an electric kettle. Her tight white pants emphasized the curves of her tight butt. She clearly spent most of her time working out, probably with a trainer, with a special focus on the glutes. “I’m not really much for making coffee,” she said, “but we have instant. It’s quite good, actually.” She held up a little foil packet.
“You know, I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I’ve had too much coffee this morning already.”
Belinda turned around suddenly. “Nick,” she said. “You have to find her.” She approached slowly. “Please. You have to find her.”
She was freshly made up, I noticed. She didn’t look like she’d been up all night. Unlike her husband, she looked refreshed, as if she’d just awakened from a long restorative nap. She wore pink lip gloss, her lips perfectly lined. I knew enough about women and their makeup to know that you didn’t roll out of bed looking like that.
“Did Alexa tell you who she was meeting?” I asked.
“I didn’t… she doesn’t exactly tell me everything. Me being the stepmother and all.”
“She loves you,” Marcus said. “She just doesn’t realize it yet.”
“But you asked her, right?” I said.
Belinda’s glossy lips parted half an inch. “Of course I asked!” she said, indignant.
“She didn’t tell you what time she’d be back?”
“Well, I assumed by midnight, maybe a little later, but you know, she doesn’t take it too well when I ask her that sort of thing. She says she doesn’t like to be treated like a child.”