Almost an hour later, I was drowning in Irish breakfast tea. I'd finally broken down and bought a scone. I don't like scones-to me they taste like warm rocks, sometimes not even warm-but it was all they had. What would have been wrong with serving a bagel or a piece of wheat toast? I was turning pages in the merger file, reading tedious notes, memos, legal documents, and remembering exactly what I had so disliked about my assignment in headquarters. Then I found it. Nestled in among the other papers was a check stub. It was dated April 1995. There was no name, but it was in the nice round amount of ten thousand dollars, and it had been issued by none other than Crescent Security, same as the name on the invoice I'd re-suspended twice. Molly had described Crescent Security as a nickel-and-dime firm that did background checks, which couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred bucks apiece. I tried to remember the amount on the invoice. I didn't think it was more than a few hundred dollars. I knew it wasn't anywhere near ten thousand.
The shop had filled up since I'd been there, and several heads turned my way when my beeper went off. They looked at me as if my cell phone had gone off in church. I checked the display and was surprised not to see the number from Operations. It was a number that was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it, so I ignored it. With only a few pages left in the file, I wanted to get to the back. When I got there, I was glad I did.
Stuck in the back of the file as if it didn't belong there was a single sheet of paper folded in half. Handwritten in black ink on the white page was one paragraph.
I think of how my life would be without him, and the thought of letting go scares me to death. I can't think about it directly, so I creep up close to the thought, walk around the feeling, touch it, pull back. When I get too close, I have trouble breathing. My lungs fill up with something cold and heavy, and I feel myself going under. And then I think about my life before him, about the work that filled my days and the ghosts that walked the nights with me, and I feel myself going under again and the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him. And I can't let go. Because when I'm with him, I exist. Without him, I'm afraid I'll disappear, disappear to a place where God can't save me and I can't save myself.
The air suddenly felt thicker, harder to breathe. Even if it hadn't been in her handwriting, I would have known that Ellen had written those words. I recognized her voice-the longing in her voice. I read it again. Who was she writing about? Had he left her? Is that why she'd 'disappeared'? Because she hadn't known how to save herself? I put the page down, pushed back from the table, and leaned over. I took a few deep breaths, releasing each one in a long exhale. In my mind I saw Ellen writing those words. I saw her reaching out, reaching up for him and trying not to drown. What I couldn't see was his face, the face of the man she was reaching for. And I couldn't see him reaching back for her. She was reaching into emptiness, and I knew what that felt like.
A large woman pushed behind my chair, trying to get by. She brushed against my shoulder, and her touch made me shrink away, pull into myself. It was time to go.
Out in the car, I sat with the door open and the note in my hand, feeling the fresh ocean air on my face and listening to the calls of the seagulls. Up until then Ellen had been elusive to me, hiding amidst the color-coded labels and the calligraphic handwriting and the bare walls of her office. But on this page, in these words, she didn't hide, and it was almost painful to see her so clearly, like looking into the sun after a long walk in the dark. I flipped the page over hoping for a signature or a date, some clue as to who inspired it. Nothing. It could have been written a month ago. It could have been written five years ago. I had a strong feeling based on nothing more than instinct that it was more like last month.
I read it again, this time more slowly. There were no cross-outs, no corrections. The thoughts and words seemed to have flowed out onto the page fully formed, as if she couldn't hold them back. Toward the end the handwriting loosened, almost a tangible representation of the author coming unraveled.
Maybe Ellen had left a suicide note after all.
"Harborside Hyatt, how may I direct your call?"
No wonder the number on the beeper had been familiar. It was my own hotel.
"This is Alex Shanahan. I'm a guest and someone from the hotel beeped me."
"Hold on." I used the Muzak moment as an opportunity to turn up the volume on the cell phone so I could hear over the road noise. Traffic on Route 1A was beginning to build.
"This is the front desk. May I help you?"
I repeated my story to the clerk and waited after he, too, put me on hold.
"Miss Shanahan, this is the concierge." Yet a third hotel employee, this one female, and yet another opportunity to repeat my explanation.
"We received an urgent fax for you this morning," she told me, "with instructions to contact you immediately."
An urgent fax. How dramatic. Probably from Lenny. "Do you have it there?"
"Yes. May I read it to you?"
"Go ahead."
"It says, 'Meet tonight, seven o'clock at Ciao Bella.' "
My scalp began to tingle and my eyeballs went dry. Ciao Bella. The secret code word. "That's it?"
"Yes, it seems to be. There's no signature or cover page."
"Could you look at the time stamp across the top and tell me where it came from?"
"It was sent at nine-forty this morning from Sir Speedy in Nahant."
The meeting was on. "Thank you. Leave it there for me, and I'll pick it up when I get in. Oh…"
"Yes?"
"One more thing. Where did you get my beeper number?"
"It was on the fax with the instructions to contact you."
"Okay, thanks again."
The steering wheel had become hard to manage because my hands were sweating so much. I couldn't get the temperature right in the car, and the eucalyptus smell from my hair was too strong in the enclosed space. I should have taken my coat off for the ride back. I had no idea who Mr. Nahant was or even if he was a he, for that matter. Whoever it was, he knew my beeper number, which was a whole lot more than I knew about him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The hinges squealed, the door to the restaurant opened, and yet another party arrived at Ciao Bella not to have dinner with me. Fifteen minutes had stretched to thirty, thirty to forty-five. I had eaten too much bread with garlic-infused olive oil and watched a silent hockey game on the set over the bar. Anticipation had given way to frustration, frustration to starvation, and finally to ravioli. Twenty minutes after I'd finished eating, I was still there and still alone. I gave the waitress a big tip for holding her table so long and went out to Newbury Street.
I'd wasted an entire afternoon clenched in nervous anticipation, pacing around my hotel room, speculating as to who the mystery man was and what he could tell me. I'd worked up a good head of anxiety, and now I had no place to put it. The bright New England Saturday had disappeared, turning first to gray, then to a cold, steady rain that had lasted all afternoon. It wasn't exactly ideal weather for strolling, but it had stopped raining, so I decided to anyway.