Three Daughters: A Novel (60 page)

Your daughter now and always,

Nijmeh

Truth withheld, Ead Bolus had learned, almost wills itself to surface. That’s why when people were intrigued by his profession and amazed at his investigative success, he told them sincerely, “It’s not as difficult as it might seem.”

He picked up an amazing amount of information with very little effort by asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers and filling in the emotional pauses with educated guesses. He had done many jobs for Rashid, who enjoyed stockpiling blackmail material “just in case.” Ead had looked into many, many closets, including some belonging to government people, but this job was uniquely satisfying and creative. High-class.

The very first day, from the girl’s father, who was uncommunicative and unapproachable, he found out the most important thing of all.

They met at a large family affair. Ead had wangled an invitation by persuading Jameel Mishwe that he was related to his wife, Zareefa. How could they refuse when he promptly handed them a “small gift from the States”? “It’s nothing, really. My wife wanted to be remembered to you.” It wasn’t nothing. It was an electric blender. If you brought someone a present, claimed kinship, but asked nothing in return except acceptance, how could they refuse? And they did not. He gambled that Samir would attend any large family affair. Wasn’t he the patriarch?

Both calculated gambles proved fruitful. It was easy from there on.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your lovely daughter,” he told Samir when they were introduced. “We have mutual friends.” He didn’t miss the hopeful look in Samir’s eyes before they became guarded.

“Was that recently?”

“Two weeks ago. She appears radiant. Like any new mother.”
There. He’s never thought of her in those terms.
“Your granddaughter is impressively precocious and looks very much like her mother. Paul is enraptured by his baby girl.” He paused only an instant before adding, “You must have been much the same at your own daughter’s birth.”

Samir was reflective, mulling over this information. “No. I was out of the country when Nijmeh was born.”

“Too bad. But I’m sure your wife had many others to marvel at the exquisite creature God had seen fit to send her.”

“On the contrary.” Samir was taking pleasure now in deflating this stranger who had access to his daughter and granddaughter. “My wife was quite alone when our daughter came. She had no one even to help her with the birth except for my sister. They did it together and managed very well when you consider the result.”

This was better than he’d hoped for. He could have probed further on the paucity of children. Why, if the result was so grand, had they had only one child? But that was information easily had elsewhere. No need to antagonize the man, who had already had enough torment.

The following afternoon, he stopped for coffee at the Grand Hotel, where the local businessmen could be found in the evening, chatting as they smoked the
narghilla
. “What I miss most about living in Palestine,” he mused to the local druggist sitting next to him, “is the gossip. I would never have predicted how comforting it is to discuss everybody’s affairs and chew over people’s misfortunes. I miss it dreadfully.”

“Mmm.” The man clamped his lips over his pipe, wondering briefly if it would be to his advantage to admit that he, too, loved to hear gossip. He decided to admit only enough to allow this fool to rant some more.

“Who heads the gossip mill these days?”

“Ah . . . you mean who has the biggest mouth? Nothing”—he held the pipe away from him and thrust his chin in the air to emphasize what he was saying—“but nothing is said or done that doesn’t pass Rose Muffrige’s lips. She works at the post office. So she knows what is going on here and also in the far reaches of the globe.”

“How many days for mail to reach the States?” He had chosen the earliest hour to go to the post office so she would have plenty of time to talk.

Rose Muffrige shrugged. “Who knows? Am I there when it arrives? I only know how many days from there to us.” She sniffed as if to imply that he had to earn her respect and had not done so yet.

“Of course. How stupid of me.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned close to the grille. “I need your advice,” he said conspiratorially. “I attended a social event with Samir Saleh and when I inquired after his wife, he walked away from me. What’s wrong? I don’t want to make a faux pas or cause anyone pain. Is she ill?”

“His wife is dead,” she said and when the shock sank in, added, “She was crushed to death in a hotel that collapsed in Beirut.”

“Poor man. No wonder he walked away from me. To lose his wife so early in life.” He sighed. “I’m glad I cleared up the mystery.” He made signs of being on his way, but Rose leaned over, planting her arms and ample bosom on the counter. She wasn’t about to lose her audience so quickly.

“The marriage was not an ordinary one. Samir could have had his pick, but he had to have Nadia Mishwe. No one could understand it. She was set to marry someone else but Samir got his way. He tricked her into marriage. She was heavily veiled and thought she was marrying an Englishman.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Samir had reason to regret what he did time and time again.”

“Why? He loved her . . .”

“Nadia couldn’t carry a child. She got pregnant several times but always miscarried.”

“But she did have a child.” He stepped back, confused. “I’ve met her.”

“Well, that was a miracle. The midwife made her stay in bed for the whole nine months. Even so, she didn’t have much hope. She confided to me that Nadia probably wouldn’t make it because of some internal problem. But . . . she did.”

“That was Nijmeh?”

“Mmm. Sweetness itself . . . a little angel.” She patted the back of her hair. “When the time came, I arranged the marriage myself. Samir came to me for help.” Having said this she removed herself from the counter and began to straighten two stacks of forms. She had said enough for one day.

“Strange,” he mused. “When this eagerly awaited baby was finally born, no one was there to greet her.”

“Who told you that?” asked Rose as if he had betrayed her.

“Samir. He said only his sister helped with the birth.”

“I never could understand that at all,” said Rose. “Mary Thomas, who had helped dozens of women give birth, was just down the road but Julia never called her. I could never understand why she took such a chance when Nadia had had such difficulty. But”—she hunched her shoulders and widened her eyes with puzzlement—“they did it all themselves. Everything. I thought that was very foolish. Very foolish.”

From Rose he went to the offices of the Palestine
Post
. A man as prominent as Samir must have provoked a story or two. He was hoping to see the birth announcement, but something much more intriguing caught his eyes—a story of a bizarre and tragic plane crash with a large, ghoulish picture of the wreckage and the mangled bodies. He looked at the picture for a long time. Then spent equal time perusing the passport photos of the couple: young, attractive . . . he had an eerie feeling. They looked vaguely familiar, especially the woman.

He read the account carefully, catching his breath when he came to the next to last paragraph:
The body of their infant daughter, also a passenger, was never recovered. Authorities, certain that the baby could not have survived such impact, decided that gruesome speculation over the whereabouts of the body served no purpose.

He found it almost equally provocative to learn that “a white, untanned circle on one of Kenneth Walker’s fingers attested to the presence and mysterious disappearance of the dead man’s ring.”

When he went to see Julia, he had to be more inventive. He had to tell her that he was there on behalf of the Walkers. It was a stroke of luck that the Walkers lived within eighty miles of his own residence in Washington. Therefore it was perfectly reasonable for him to tell her that they had asked him to find out anything he could about the circumstances of their son’s death.

The moment the name was off his lips, fear transformed her face. He had known what to look for and he had found it. He really didn’t need to ask anything else. He was that certain. But being that he was there and the room was so pleasant and he always enjoyed a brandy in a well-decorated room with an easy chair and a fireplace, he stayed and let her dig a deeper and deeper hole. He was almost embarrassed for her and afraid she would say too much. She appeared almost hysterical enough to admit to what he now knew she and her sister-in-law had done.

When he returned to the States, he went to the archives of the
Times Herald
, the
Washington
Post
and the
Evening Star
to see what the society pages had on the Walker family. Two papers had the story of Jason Walker’s suicide. There were the usual wedding announcements and a family portrait in the Sunday gravure magazine. He got a formal Bachrach engagement photograph of Carolyn Walker, née McCarren; Walker’s mother and father, Mary and Jason; Walker’s sister, Charlotte; Charlotte’s daughter, Sally; Carolyn’s mother and father. He laid them all out and convinced himself that his conclusions were accurate.

Next he visited a photographer and requested a composite made from all the photos, using Mary Walker’s chin and the spectacular Oriental setting of the eyes, the McCarren forehead and the straight silken hair and elegant nose of Inga McCarren, née Lisle, Carolyn’s mother. The result more than supported his hunch.

He wrote out a report in diary form, presented his case, and stood looking out the window while Rashid Ibn Rashid read through it. When he saw the papers drop to the table, he said, “Star Halaby is the genetic beneficiary of the McCarren-Walker clan. She is not the natural daughter of Samir Saleh or Nadia Mishwe. As best I can piece it together, no one—certainly not the girl herself and certainly not her father—knows of this. The mother knew but the mother is dead. There is one person left who was there. An aunt. I went to see her and when I mentioned the name Walker, it was as if I’d shot her mother before her eyes. I would bet my life that Kenneth Walker’s missing ring is in her keep.”

Rashid was silent and Ead prepared to leave. “What will you do with this information?”

“Nothing right now.” He closed the folder. “But I like to keep my options open.”

“Forgive me, but . . . who is there to manipulate with this information? Certainly not Nijmeh Halaby.”

“It’s complicated. If I wanted only to hurt the girl, I could tell her all this and confuse her, but that wouldn’t mean much. The only way I can use this information is to threaten to tell her father. She’d never want that. She knows it would kill her father and she would do anything not to have him know.”

“And what is it that you want from this girl? What does she have that you want?”

“I want her husband.”

“Her husband?” Ead Bolus was not often surprised, but this bit of news sent his eyebrows north. If Rashid was homosexual, he hid it well.
Her husband.

“Yes. I want him for my Asha.”

The little coffeehouse was overcrowded and steamy. The windows had triangles of frost at the corners and the diners were hunched over their food, glad to be indoors. The waitresses, tendrils of hair escaping their pleated caps, bustled from table to table.

Delal poked at the crust of a meat-and-vegetable pie and served herself a spoonful. She sighed, cut a piece of meat into tiny pieces, and then put her knife and fork neatly at the top of her plate. “Aren’t you hungry?” asked James. “I wouldn’t mind having some of yours if you’re only going to mush it up.”

“Huh? Oh . . . go right ahead.” He took the serving spoon and helped himself. She buttered a large piece of bread and placed it on his plate.

“Thanks. What’s the matter?”

“James. I’ve got something to tell you . . . you mustn’t get upset. It’s not your fault. I took all the risks on my own. You never pressured me to have sex.” He stopped chewing and looked around, which made her think she was talking too loud. She repeated the last sentence in a whisper. “You never pressured me to have sex. I take equal responsibility. I’m a big girl.”