If he leaves we’ll follow him. You keep away from him, too.”
“Oh, you’re acting like such a cop! And ‘surveill’ isn’t a word, you know.”
“And you’re acting like an English teacher! Thinking of changing professions?”
“No, teaching’s way too dangerous for me.”
Mary emphasized the danger I’d be in if I were anywhere near the White Eagles today—“and I don’t mean from the White Eagles”—and we said good-bye, in a manner I thought was fairly civilized for threatener and threatenee. I briefly debated whether it was too early to call Bill, decided to call anyway, and had just punched his number on the kitchen phone when my cell phone rang.
“Smith,” came the rumble in my kitchen phone ear.
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up that one up and flipped open the other.
“Good morning, Ms. Chin. David Rosenberg here. I hope I’m not calling too early?”
“Mr. Rosenberg! Good to hear from you. No, it’s not too early at all. How can I help you?”
“I’ve just had a call from one of my reporters in Zurich. He’s been doing the background on Alice Fairchild that you asked for. Nothing he’s found so far is particularly surprising, but I thought you’d like to hear it.”
“Yes, I certainly would.”
“Born Shanghai 1938. Father James Fairchild, mother Frances Fairchild, both Methodist missionaries. One sister, Joan Fairchild Conrad, born 1939. I met her years ago.”
“Yes, I remember you mentioned that.” I tucked the phone onto my shoulder and plopped congee into a bowl. “You said they were Mutt and Jeff. Different from each other.” Lydia Chin, queen of the cultural reference.
“Very much. Joan’s thin and frail, which I gather she always was, and more so lately, some kind of chronic lung problem from those days. Although before she retired she taught high school, so I imagine she’s got a certain toughness. I remember her as humorous and outgoing. The type with a twinkle in her eye.”
“Where does she live?”
“Sharon, Massachusetts. Outside Boston. Her husband died six years ago.”
“Is that where Alice grew up, around Boston?”
“Yes. The Fairchilds left China in November 1945, as soon as they could after the camps were opened. They were put on one of the first ships out—both children were sick, it seems. The family settled in Sharon. Alice went on to law school—unusual for a woman of her day—and married. They divorced after eight years, apparently on amicable terms.”
“Does she have children?”
“No.”
David Rosenberg went on detailing Alice’s career, including her move to Zurich in the eighties and her growing expertise in Holocaust asset recovery. “She’s written a few articles for law journals on the fine points of that work. I’ve asked my staff to pull them. I’ll send them to you.”
“I’d appreciate that. Anything else?”
“Well, I took a look at her financials. Not my reporter, me, from here. It just seemed like the thing to do.”
“Good instincts.”
“I may be hidebound management now, but I did start out pounding the pavement. However, I have to admit everything I found seems in order.”
“So she’s not mortgaged to the hilt, anything like that?”
“Hardly. Not wealthy, but solid. She did take a hit five years ago when the capital markets fell. She’d overreached. For an estate planner it was a touch reckless, the sort of speculation that’s all right when you’re young and have decades to recover, but later you advise clients against it. Maybe she was feeling cocky.”
“But it didn’t cause her problems?”
“If things had gone her way, she’d be much closer to wealth than she is. But even though it was a large sum, she also kept a reasonable amount back. She can certainly maintain her lifestyle on what remains. Maybe that’s why she did it.”
“Why?”
“She was getting older, she had enough to live on. Why not take a flutter?”
“I guess I can see that. So it looks like she’s more or less what she claims to be.” And a number of things she didn’t mention, besides. “Do you have contact information for her sister? Just to be thorough.”
He did. I thanked him, hung up, and dialed Joan Conrad née Fairchild’s number, not sure why. After all, if I was looking for reasons to be suspicious of Alice, I didn’t need to go back any further than this week.
My mother’s always saying old women don’t need much sleep. That may be true, or maybe Joan Conrad was just, like me, an early riser. In any case, she certainly sounded chipper answering the phone.
“Good morning, Mrs. Conrad,” I said in my best outside-Chinatown accent. I felt bad