The Pearl Diver (5 page)

Justin appeared at our table with two complimentary saketinis. When he saw Kendall, he said to me, “Didn’t you tell her about the cell phone policy?”

“No. What’s the policy?”

“No cell phone usage in the dining room. They’re supposed to go in the hall by the rest rooms if they want to talk.”

“I can’t interrupt her, Justin. She’s talking to Senator Snowden. By the way, could you bring some juice for the kids? Apple juice, say, in plastic glasses?”

Justin wrinkled his beautiful nose. “We have neither apple nor plastic. The best I can do is Perrier with a twist of lime—”

“Do you two like fizzy water?” I asked Win and Jacqueline.

They shrieked with excitement, and I placed the order. But Justin wasn’t done. Sternly, he addressed Kendall. “Miss, you’ll have to take your call in another place.”

“Just a minute, please, Senator.” Kendall paused and stared at the waiter. “What kind of restaurant is this that you’re so rude to the patrons?”

“House rules. Out in the hall,” Justin said firmly.

So Kendall swept out carrying her saketini and the telephone, leaving me with her little twosome.

Since I had no adult to chat with, I indulged in a little people-watching. While there were some people dressed elegantly, there were a surprising number of casual dressers. At least a dozen young men were wearing regular dress shirts, untucked, over shorts or trousers, and I spotted a woman walk by who’d tied an Hermès scarf around her torso to serve as a blouse. People had said Washington was not a fashion city—I was beginning to see that Kendall was an exception, and not a rule. I hadn’t expected people wearing scarf tops and shorts to be sitting at my elaborately decorated tables, but they, in turn, probably hadn’t been expecting to see kids.

Justin came to take the rest of our order, and I gave it: a carrot-ginger salad, noodles with
ponzu
dipping sauce, and a sweet bean–chocolate pâté for the kids’
bento
meals. Instead of the lengthy
kaiseki
menu, for myself I went for the convenience of a quick
bento
containing a
daikon
salad,
soba
noodles, and red snapper, and for Kendall asparagus with
wakame
seaweed and soy-glazed filet mignon, because of what she’d said about the Atkins diet. What kind of a country was it, I thought, where a diet book could hold sway over so many people’s dining habits? Jiro had talked seriously with Marshall about it beforehand. There were at least three dishes on the menu that met Atkins requirements. I couldn’t remember if soy was on or off the diet. I became nervous thinking about it, so I asked Justin to find Kendall and ask.

“What do you think I am, suicidal?” he snapped. “Rei, I’ve got lots of tables to serve—oh, damn, look what that little boy of yours did to the flowers.”

Hers, not mine
, I could have said, but didn’t. Win Junior had rearranged the camellias that a Georgetown florist had so care
fully arranged in a low bowl earlier that afternoon. One camellia was in his hair, and the other on his sister’s plate. She was picking up her blossom to eat it.

“Not for supper! Supper’s coming soon,” I said, taking the camellia from her lips and tucking it back into the dish. “Please check for me, Justin. I beg you. I’m not a child care expert—you need to get her back or who knows what will happen.”

Justin came back with the news that Kendall wasn’t in the hall, and that Marshall wanted me to stop by table 5, because the patrons had a question about the origins of the
tansu
behind the bar. I glanced across the room and saw Marshall sitting with them. Great. I had to do it, but I couldn’t abandon Win and Jacqueline, leaving them alone at the table.

I hung on to Jacqueline’s sticky little fingers with one hand while I unbelted Winnie from his booster seat with the other. We proceeded slowly to table 5, hampered by Winnie’s attempts to grab things off the tables we passed.

When we reached the table, I did my best to talk intelligently about the
tansu
with a pleasant older gentleman who’d spent some time in Japan. But Jacqueline kept up a patter about where her mommy was, and Win grabbed a menu out of the hands of the man’s female dining companion. I decided to make a quick exit. Glancing across the room, I saw that Kendall still hadn’t returned.

“Let’s visit the lavatory,” I said in my most cheerful voice.

“No potty!” Jacqueline cried.

“You don’t have to go potty there, don’t worry. I want to show you some—fish! Fish on the walls. Don’t you like fish?” I led the two of them into the ladies’ rest room. Win decided he wanted to try to potty, and I undid his pants and struggled to undo his diaper. I spent too long figuring it out, because Win wound up exploding on the Italian-tile floor.

I pulled up his diaper in horror and scrubbed quickly at the floor with paper towels as a couple of women walked in and gasped at the sight before them. I concentrated on cleaning up,
and after I’d washed and dried everyone’s hands and was leading them out, I caught sight of Andrea.

“May I make a quick phone call from the maître d’s stand?” I grabbed her sleeve, because she seemed as if she was trying to ignore me.

“Those are for incoming calls only.” She pulled away her arm and examined it, as if I might have torn the lace on her long-sleeved blouse.

“This is an emergency.” I planned to call Kendall’s cell number, which I knew better than her household one, since she was always out.

“What kind of emergency?” Andrea prodded.

I was losing my patience. “A child care one. These kids are going to be in the restaurant all night if we don’t get their mother to come back from wherever she’s hiding.”

Andrea grudgingly let me use the telephone, but my call just went into her voice mail. She had to still be chatting with Harp Snowden. But where
was
she? Kendall couldn’t have gone far, because I could see, through the restaurant’s front door, her Volvo parked on the street.

Maybe she’d stepped out back. Trundling the children along with me, I moved through the masses and then the swinging doors that led into the kitchen. I was blindsided by a tray carried by one of the runners. The tray teetered and broth leaped from a bowl and onto me.

“Wrong door!” the girl carrying the tray practically spat at me. Right door in, left door out. I repeated it to myself as I led the children into the kitchen.

It was pandemonium. The children gazed in awe at the white-coated cooks moving fast at their stations, sautéing and stirring and flipping. There was a boom box playing salsa that was overpowered by the sound of hissing meat on the grill, the clattering of iron pans.

“Has anyone seen a woman come through here?” I called out.

“I’m the only one around, unless you count him.” Jessica, the
pastry chef, shot a naughty glance at Justin, who was pinning up a dinner order on the line.

“Yeah, girlfriend, but at least I’m not built like a Midwestern milk truck,” Justin shot back.

“I’m looking for my cousin, has anyone seen her?” I pleaded. Then I remembered that half the kitchen staff didn’t speak English. “
Dónde a chica
—” I flubbed, then pointed at the children with me. “
Madre
.”

“You have children, Rei? I didn’t know.” Jiro, who was showing one of the line cooks how to roll and then cut a
shiso
leaf, looked up with a beatific smile. He seemed to take a Zen approach to the chaos of opening night.

“Not mine, my cousin’s. I’m looking for her—she’s an attractive redhead in a black suit. I think she went into some part of the building or just outside it to make a cell phone call.”

“Ah. Let me ask.” Jiro fired off something in Spanish. I couldn’t hear it clearly because I was in the midst of retrieving Win from tumbling into a gigantic standing mixer.

A small, dark-haired man answered Jiro in Spanish and pointed to the door over which hung a spanking-new exit sign.

Jiro wrinkled his face in a way that I figured meant thank you. Then he translated for me. “She was outside. When Alberto removed some boxes about ten minutes ago, he saw her talking on the phone in the parking area.”

That was all I needed to know. I grabbed both children and went out the back to the trash area. It was dark out now, but I could make out a Dumpster piled high with garbage bags.

“Watch out, kids, there are steps here. We’re not going to tumble down them, are we?” I held tight to each child’s hand as we stood on the top of a short flight of steps. Maybe this was where Kendall had been standing; I couldn’t imagine her going down to lean against the Dumpster in her beautiful suit. I glanced down the steps and saw broken glass and was about to caution the children about it when something occurred to me.

The glass came from a broken martini glass like the one
Kendall had walked off carrying, when she was talking on the phone.

So Kendall had been out here, talking and sipping. Something must have happened that had caused her to break the glass.

She could have tripped, I told myself. Her heels were high.

But why hadn’t she come back?

Justin brought me a second cocktail, but I didn’t touch it. I kept returning to the facts: Kendall’s car was still parked outside the restaurant, but she had vanished.

Win had fallen asleep in his booster seat, as impossible as the ergonomics seemed. He drooped sideways, his mouth half-open, snoring contentedly. It was eight-thirty.

Jacqueline squirmed in my lap and said, “I want Mommy.”

Our dinners had come and gone. The red snapper I’d ordered had been tasty, but I’d barely had a nibble because I’d been busy cutting up the children’s noodles and feeding them by hand. I thought back on the pregnancy-test wand that had turned out to be negative, after all, and again felt relief. I wasn’t ready to give up the right to eat my own meals. Kendall’s steak had remained lonely and uneaten. My cousin had left her Kate Spade diaper bag underneath her chair. I picked it up and rummaged through it until I found her Palm Pilot.

In it, I found three numbers for Harp Snowden: office, home, and cell. I jotted them down on a business card and took that, and the twins, to the restaurant foyer.

Andrea looked askance when I told her I needed the phone. “I
guess you don’t care if Marshall gets mad at you, but he’s going to fire my ass if I let you tie up the line. Phones are never for restaurant staff to use—”

“A woman is missing, okay? I just want to try to connect with the person she was talking to when she disappeared. It would let me know if she’s safe or—”

“What’s going on?” Marshall demanded. He’d come up behind us, and was scowling. “Rei, you’re done with your table, right? I’d like the busboys to set it up for the next group coming in.”

“Yes, but their mother has
vanished
. I need to use a telephone to make some calls to figure out where.”

“You’re talking about Kendall? I heard there was a problem about a high chair, but nothing more serious than that.”

“Yes, it’s Kendall. I want to call the person she last spoke to—Senator Snowden—to find out if she said anything about where she was going.”

“Did you try to call her on your cell?”

“Um, I don’t have a cell phone.” I’d received one as a gift when I’d left Japan, but I’d thrown it away when I’d found its technology was incompatible in the U.S.

“Use this.” Marshall reached into his chocolate-colored flannel trousers and pulled out his own cell phone. “Just be sure to remove all the children and whatnot from the table, because we need to use it in case Hillary and her friends show up. Go into Jiro’s and my office to do it so nobody else hears this nonsense. And don’t forget to give me back the phone.”

Marshall and Jiro’s office in Bento was even more chaotic than the one I’d visited in Mandala. The children built towers out of the piles of cookbooks while I tried Senator Snowden’s various numbers. His office was closed. That left home and cell; I tried home first, and reached a woman who sounded like she might be his wife. I introduced myself and attempted, as quickly as possible, to tell her that I was trying to track down a fund-raiser to whom the senator had just been talking.

“Why don’t you call his chief of staff?” She sounded irritated.

“Mrs. Snowden—you are Mrs. Snowden?”

“Yes, I am,” she answered testily.

“My cousin and the senator were just talking on the phone, but she’s nowhere to be found. I think he might have a clue as to what happened.”

“My husband’s left the office, but he isn’t home yet. I really have no idea.”

“Does he carry his cell phone?”

“Yes, he does, but I’m not going to give you the number. You should call the office, just like everyone else.” Mrs. Snowden hung up on me.

Thanks a lot, lady, but I’ll trump you.
I turned back to the final number on the Palm Pilot: cell. Please answer, I prayed as the phone rang.

“Marshall?” The male voice on the other end sounded surprised, but not upset.

Harp Snowden must have had a caller-identification feature on his cell phone to have guessed that Marshall Zanger was calling. “Senator Snowden, it’s not Marshall. It’s Rei Shimura, using his phone. I don’t know if you remember me.”

“Harp, please.” His voice was jovial. “You’re Kendall’s cousin. I was just talking with her, actually, but we got cut off.”

So they weren’t together. “Did she tell you where she was going?”

“No. We were talking about the upcoming party and then she made a sound—something like a gasp or a cough—and the line went dead. Why are you calling? Is she okay?”

“I’m not sure. Can you remember what time the call ended?”

“Twenty minutes ago, I think. Actually, I’m going to have to get off the line, I’m in heavy traffic and I’ve got to get over a lane—”

He hung up before I could say good-bye. Using Marshall’s cell phone, I dialed Kendall’s cell number again.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Hootis,” a male voice answered.

“Ah, I’m calling for—”

It sounded like the phone receiver fell hard, against something, and then I heard nothing.

I kept the phone to my ear, and one hand on Jacqueline. No more conversation, even though I said “hello” a few more times. From the digital display on the telephone’s face, I knew I’d gotten the right number for Kendall. But someone else had answered. “Hootis.” It had sounded like a strange name at first. But as I thought about it more, I realized what it meant.

Who dis?

Who is this?

My empty stomach was turning nauseous, and my forehead was warm. My cousin was not alone. Maybe I was being melodramatic, assuming too much. But Kendall had been gone half an hour, and someone else had her phone.

Andrea popped her head in. “What’s going on?”

I laid the cell phone aside without disconnecting it. Then I took her a few steps away and told her, in a low voice, what was going on.

“That doesn’t sound good.” All the hauteur had dropped from her, for once.

“I’m going to call 911. There’s another phone in here, somewhere, isn’t there?” I scanned the overloaded desk.

Andrea slid open a drawer, and voilà, there was a cordless phone and receiver. “They won’t believe you.”

“What?” I asked, my fingers punching in 911 on the new phone.

“I’m telling you, they won’t care. This is D.C. Somebody missing for twenty minutes isn’t exactly viewed as urgent.”

As the operator patched me through to the police, I thought quickly about how to get the best result. Andrea was right that Kendall’s absence wasn’t long enough for her to qualify as a missing person. So when the police dispatcher came on the line, I told him about the cut-off phone call, the smashed glass, and the strange male voice on the other end of the cell phone.

The dispatcher switched me to a cool voice that said, “Homicide. Detective Burns.”

Homicide. I couldn’t fathom Kendall having reached that point already. I told my story again, layering the fact that a U.S. senator with whom she’d been speaking was concerned for her safety. This was D.C., as Andrea had said, and every connection counted.

“Do you still have the connection open to the cell phone?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I didn’t hang up, but I heard a noise on the other end. It might be on or off.”

“Give me the number for your cousin and we’ll test it from here,” he said. “And whatever you do, make sure nobody disconnects the phone you were using. We have a mobile phone-trace unit we can bring in to hook up to that cell phone if it comes to that. Hang on for me. I’ll be right back.” The detective came back on the line after about two minutes. “We can’t get through. We’ll bring the mobile phone-tracer—probably be there in ten minutes or less.”

I took the time to drag Marshall to privacy and tell him that I had to temporarily hand over his precious phone to the police.

“You couldn’t have picked a better night for this,” Marshall said as he watched me coax the drooping twins to the restaurant foyer, where I planned to wait for the police.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” I answered coldly. “However, it shouldn’t impact things too much. They’re really mostly interested in talking to the cook who saw Kendall go outside.”

“Great. The police go into my kitchen, everyone’s going to think it’s getting raided by the INS.”

“Don’t be such a fatalist,” I said.

“Me, a fatalist? How about you? I don’t think it’s an abduction when a guest leaves the table to make a phone call in privacy.”

“Look, I’m sorry about this. Maybe you can make an announcement about what’s going on so the diners don’t think it’s an INS raid.”

“Thank you, I will. I’ll let everyone know that our restaurant is
so fabulous that the district’s finest criminals have discovered it already.”

There was no point in talking with Marshall. He was angry, and if I hadn’t been so worried about my cousin, I would have felt sympathy for him. But Kendall was in danger. Detective Burns’s response made this clear.

Jacqueline had started to cry because Win was hitting her. Resolutely, I plopped myself on a bench in the foyer with one child on each knee. Andrea, from her position at the podium, watched, a distasteful expression on her face.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I murmured, smoothing Jacqueline’s hair back into its bow. “Everything’s going to be okay. Win, do you like policemen? You’re going to meet one soon!”

He didn’t answer me, so I looked at him and saw that he had taken Marshall’s cell phone from its perch on a shelf and was punching in numbers.

“No!” I blurted out, pulling it away from him. Now he was crying as hard as Jacqueline. I held the phone aloft, as high as I could.

Justin popped his head around the corner. “I hear that redheaded witch flew off on her broomstick.”

“How can you say that!” I didn’t bother to hide my anger. “She had to go outside to finish her phone call and she vanished. It’s your fault this happened!”

“I didn’t tell her she had to go outside,” Justin said. “Just away from the dining area.”

“If you had just let her finish—” I stopped talking, because I was on the verge of crying, and people were streaming in. A black man in a preppy-looking tan suit walked in with another man in uniform. I stood up to address them, but before I could do that, Andrea had swung into operation. “Sir, under what name is your party’s reservation?”

“I’m not here for dinner. I’m Louis Burns, a homicide detective with the District police.”

I jumped up from the bench where I’d been sitting. “I’m Rei Shimura, the one who called. I have the phone right here.”

“Is there a quieter place within this restaurant where we can link our computer to your phone?” Burns said. Now I noticed that the uniformed officer with him was carrying something that looked like a laptop computer.

“There’s an office shared by the chef and the restaurant owner. And about the cell phone, it belongs to the restaurant owner, Marshall Zanger, who needs it back as soon as possible.”

“That might be a while. And the children don’t need to come with us,” Burns said as I gathered them up.

“They’re Kendall’s children. There’s nobody else to watch them, just me.” I was starting to feel defensive of Jacqueline and Win. Didn’t anyone in Washington tolerate children?

“If you take them home, I can work faster and give you updates by phone on what’s happening,” Burns said.

I looked at the wilting, whining twosome and saw the sense of his suggestion. And the family Volvo, with its two child-safety seats, was parked just outside. I could ferry Win and Jacqueline back to Potomac, tuck them into their cribs, and wait for word from Kendall.

I fished around in the diaper bag, pulling out a makeup case, diapers and wipes and plastic cups, before latching onto a Gucci key ring. I opened the car easily, but found that snapping children into their car seats took some time to figure out, given that I had even less experience with child travel than child pottying. After that, I had to figure out how to get to Potomac without using the beltway, as I usually did; in the end I remembered that Massachusetts Avenue would lead me there, so I took it.

Traffic, at this hour of the evening, was light. As the car sped smoothly to the suburbs, I thought about how far Kendall might have gone already with the strange man who had answered her telephone. Far in terms of distance, far in terms of violation…

I fought back a lump in my throat and drove into Treetops, the development of hulking homes where my cousin lived. Its builders had made an effort to maintain a fringe of tall old trees between the houses and the road. Once inside Treetops, though,
the houses were so large that there were only a few yards between them, barely enough to grow anything. I drove slowly, hoping I wouldn’t pass the turn. It was hard to remember Kendall’s street because, to me, they all looked the same. Harmony Way—yes, that was it. I recognized her home when I saw on the front door a eucalyptus wreath tied with a pink-and-green ribbon, and Win Junior’s red Little Tikes car tipped over the front path.

I jabbed the doorbell hard, just in case Kendall’s husband was home from his meeting, but nobody answered. Please let the alarm be off, I prayed to myself as I tried different keys in the lock. The door swung open with a soft chiming sound, not the siren I’d feared. Excellent, I thought, hurrying back to the car to bring in the children. With one tucked under each of my arms, it was a heavy load, but I couldn’t risk leaving one child in the car unsupervised for even a minute. Despite the rough handling, Jacqueline kept snoring, but Win Junior woke up and wanted to play in his car.

“It’s too late. Too dark,” I said. Once we got inside, I unloaded Win on the Persian rug in the cavernous entry hall while I carried Jacquie upstairs to her crib. Then I hurried back downstairs to make milk for Win, who’d begun to whine for it. He showed me where the sippy cups were, and pointed out the soymilk in the fridge. As a cup of milk revolved in the microwave, I surveyed Kendall and Win’s kitchen. It was state-of-the-art, in Kendall’s words, with acres of black granite countertop, and faux-faded cream cabinetry. Near the Sub-zero fridge, a faux-antique framed chalkboard had neatly chalked-in names and phone numbers. Kendall’s work and cell, as well as Win’s. I’d call him after I got the children settled. As I was on my way to them, the telephone rang. Louis Burns told me that he’d determined Kendall’s cell phone was moving at a pace that seemed to indicate it was in a car.