Finding Mrs. Ford Read online

  Susan waits.

  Just as the agents seem to have found their least uncomfortable positions, both dogs bound into the room, onto the sofa and onto the men, making them begin the process all over again. The taller man casts a glance at Susan in search of an intervention, but she continues to sit, unperturbed.

  “What are their names?” ventures the tall one. Maybe he’ll play good cop. The other one is as silent as Susan. He’d have been a good match for Jack.

  “Calpurnia and Pliny.”

  “What kind of names are those?”

  “Pliny the Younger was married to Calpurnia. She was his third wife. He was the nephew of Pliny the Elder. Roman Senator. Pompeii,” she waves her hand and trails off, effectively concluding the subject.

  “Weird names for dogs.”

  “My husband loved history. We call them Cal and Plin.”

  Finally, the short guy speaks. His cadence and grammar are more formal than his partner’s. “Mrs. Ford, we’re here to talk to you about Samuel Fakhouri. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Samuel Fa…?” Susan looks from one to the other. “I’m not sure I know who that is.”

  “Samuel Fakhouri. F-a-k-h-o-u-r-i.”

  “Thank you for the spelling.”

  “Any time. Thank you for the Roman history. Always nice to meet a classicist.”

  Susan turns her eyes to him. This one is definitely bad cop. “I don’t believe I know anyone by that name. Maybe you could give me some more information as to why you think I might know Mr.…”

  “Fakhouri.”

  “Mr. Fakhouri. Yes. I’m not sure I can help you. I’m certain I don’t know anyone by that name,” she asserts for the third time, her face as impenetrable as the ship’s figurehead on the wall.

  “That’s odd, Mrs. Ford, because he knows you.”

  Susan lets out a laugh. A small laugh mixed with an exhalation. But definitely a laugh.

  “Is that amusing, Mrs. Ford?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude but I’m rather busy this morning, so perhaps…”

  “Samuel Fakhouri was picked up by our agents yesterday. He’d flown from Baghdad to Istanbul to Toronto to Boston, and we got him in a taxi on his way to see you. We’re pretty sure it was you he meant to see, because we found your name and address on a paper among his possessions. Does that trigger any memories, Mrs. Ford?”

  3

  Monday, June 11, 1979

  Suburban Detroit

  Susan opened her eyes to dim light. Dust motes floated in an elongated triangle of sunlight slanting down from a window above her. Panic lapped her consciousness as she remembered that she had fallen asleep in the basement. What time was it? She sprang from the sofa and fell hard on her knees on the linoleum. Pins and needles attacked the foot she must have had tucked up under her, leaving it dead asleep. She hauled herself up, hopped the rest of the way across the floor, and did a one-footed jump up the steps.

  In the kitchen, she was relieved to see that it was only 6:54 a.m. She would not be late for her first day of work. She held the coffee pot under the sink, scooped grounds into the percolator basket, fastened the parts together, and plugged the thing in.

  “Dad!”

  No sound.

  “Daddy!”

  Nothing.

  Susan moved down the back hall to wake her father and get him propped up on some pillows. She guessed this wouldn’t be a day that William Elton Bentley would be getting out of bed.

  After her shower, she wiped condensation from the mirror and took a good, long look at herself. Her face looked flushed in heat that was already sultry and she had a crease running down her right cheek. She had to stop sleeping on that old couch.

  Back to the kitchen to grab two mugs—cream and sugar for her father, sugar only for her—then down the hall to the bedroom where her father had dozed off again.

  “Hey, Daddy. Rise and shine.” Susan swept back the curtains and opened the window a few notches more. “Here’s your coffee.”

  Elton opened his astonishingly blue eyes. Cornflower blue, her mother had called them, but Susan found them bluer than that. Despite his age and his infirmities, he still had some set of peepers. Susan’s eyes were brown like her mother’s—a living reminder blinking back from her own reflection.

  “Did you breathe all night?” he asked. Susan’s father greeted her practically every morning of her life with this inanity and it always made the two of them laugh.

  “I think so, Daddy. I’m still here. How about you? Are you getting up today?”

  “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.” He winked at his little girl.

  “I’m starting work today, Dad. At Winkleman’s. The ladies’ boutique.”

  “That’s fine, Susie Jo.” Her father was truly the only person on the planet that Susan would permit to address her this way. “Don’t let it distract you from your goals, though.”

  “I won’t, Daddy. This is just a summer job.”

  This year would be Susan’s last at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, a small liberal arts institution that had seen better days. The charismatic Dr. Paul Weaver, its president of twenty-five years, had recently retired, and the grandiose perks of his tenure—a college yacht, a box at the Cleveland orchestra—were quickly disappearing. But the Academic Term Abroad, mandatory for all juniors, carried on. This had drawn Susan to Lake Erie and, afterwards, the memory of her junior semester in France—her first trip abroad—was planted in her mind as her North Star, guiding her toward the future. She most definitely had her goals.

  “Good girl.” He reached out to give her his cup. “I might need to rest a spell. I’m feelin’ pretty tuckered already.”

  “Are you sure, Daddy? It’s pretty early still.” But she could see that he’d made up his mind.

  In her bedroom, Susan nibbled on toast and stepped into the outfit she had laid out the night before. A crisp white A-line skirt and a red silk ascot blouse with a bow that she meticulously tied at the neck. This style of top had become so popular of late that everyone called it the “working girl blouse.” Well, that’s what she was this summer.

  She slid her feet into red cork T-strap platforms, leaned over her make-up mirror to brush on some mascara and lip gloss, gave her short blond hair a tousle, and pinched both cheeks, hoping the blood flow would smooth out that crease.

  “I’m going!” she called to the silent house and gently closed the door behind her.

  Her tiny Le Car sat in the driveway. As far as she knew, it was the only car in the neighborhood that hadn’t been made in Detroit. Renault’s newest model had captivated her from the moment she’d first seen it advertised and she had spent two years saving to buy a used one. In bright yellow, with a thick black stripe and the words, Le Car, boldly scrawled along both sides, everything about it charmed her. It was small in contrast to the Cadillacs her parents had favored. It drove hard, unlike the cushioned ride of the Buicks and Lincolns of their friends. And it was French, which symbolized everything that Susan hoped to become.

  She revved the engine and set off for Winkleman’s.

  Deftly, she maneuvered into the parking lot of Tech Plaza. Her mother had told her that JFK had visited this shopping strip on his campaign trail in 1960, though it was hard for her to imagine a president—even a presidential candidate—coming to Warren, Michigan now. What middle-class dream had Warren symbolized then? Today, Susan could only see its sameness, its monotonous stretches of razor-straight streets, all named for girls like her—Darlenes and Lindas and Marshas.

  Susan’s reverie was shattered by the bleat of a car horn. She slammed on her brakes—though she couldn’t have been going more than twenty—as a bedraggled white Corvette streaked across her path.

  “Hey!” Susan shouted.

  But the car was no longer in earshot.

  Her composure shaken, Susan followed her new employer’s instructions and parked at the back of the lot. Unfolding herself from her car, she flattened her ski
rt with her hands, and tightened the bow of her blouse. Then she started—feet turned out, shoulders back and head held high, like the dancer she was—toward the neat row of shops. As she neared the front, she noticed the same Corvette parked askew and straddling two spaces.

  “Hi!” A girl popped out of it and spoke directly to Susan. She was the most beautiful girl that Susan had ever seen.

  “You cut me off back there,” Susan said, instantly embarrassed by her tone. “I mean, you drove right in front of me.”

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” the girl effused. “I was changing the radio station and I didn’t see you and then you were just there like a turtle in the road.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Annie Nelson! I’m starting work at Winkleman’s today!”

  Susan couldn’t help but stare. The girl wore a knock-off of the Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress—its V cut low in the front—and chunky Candies heels, made of wood with only a thin strip of leather to hold them on. Her chestnut hair was softly curled and hung down to the middle of her back. Slightly taller than Susan, with a more curvaceous figure and very long legs, she had eschewed stockings to leave them bare. That was uncommon.

  “You’re going to work at Winkleman’s?” Susan parroted back.

  “Yeah! You too?”

  “Uh. Yes.”

  “First day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too! That means we’ll be best friends.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say. She had practically run Susan over and now she was prattling on about being best friends.

  “You know, we’re supposed to park at the back.” Susan heard herself sounding peevish again.

  The girl—Annie—didn’t seem to notice Susan’s foul mood. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Susan Bentley.”

  “Do you always wear your hair so short?” she said as she pointed a finger.

  Self-consciously, Susan touched her head. She had recently shorn her blond hair after seeing Jean Seberg in a French class screening of Breathless. Boyish, her father had called it, but she was attempting to look gamine.

  Before she could stop herself, her hand slipped down to her cheek to feel if the sleep-crease was still there. Annie’s beauty was unnerving.

  “I like it.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair! It looks good with your brown eyes.”

  Susan stared at this outrageous girl. Annie’s eyes were hazel, with a slight tilt upwards at the outer corners. Her brows were dark, with an arch that was peaked just outside the irises, her nose strong, her lips full. Her features shouldn’t have all worked together, but they did. Taken as a package, which is the only way you can take someone, Annie was impossibly beautiful.

  But it was Annie’s movements, her body language that held Susan’s attention. She moved in staccato, fluttery bursts, like she wasn’t fully in control of her own trajectory. To a particular type of man, Susan guessed, Annie might have looked as if she were in need of rescue—as if strong arms could just reach out and grab her, keep her from falling over her own two feet.

  Suddenly, in a gesture that might have struck Susan as overly familiar, if it weren’t for Annie’s disarming persona, she held out her hand to Susan. “Wanna go in together?”

  Susan looked around for an alternative. Seeing none, she cautiously linked arms with Annie, a girl so exotic to Susan that she might as well have been an ostrich taking form on the asphalt today.

  Together, Susan and Annie finished the walk into Winkleman’s, plunk in the middle of Tech Plaza—that shining star of Warren’s past that could not have augured its future.

  4

  Friday, June 22, 1979

  “Annie?” Susan called out, as she tidied the area around the cash register—clipping receipts, piling loose hangers, dropping pens in their cup. Ten days into the job, their manager had run to the bank and left the two of them in charge of the store. “It’s been quiet for an hour now. Let’s go back and clean up the dressing rooms before Nancy comes back.”

  “Ugh,” grunted Annie, who was trying on scarves in front of a mirror. “Do we have to?”

  “It’ll go faster with the two of us doing it. We’ll hear the chimes if anyone comes in.”

  “You’re so sensible, Susan. I bet you make your bed every morning.”

  “I…” Susan caught herself answering seriously. “Okay, I’m a bore. But, c’mon. Let’s go.”

  “You’re not the bore. This job is the bore.”

  “The pay’s not bad.”

  “The pay’s not great.”

  “Why don’t we debate this while we hang up clothes?”

  “Okay. You win.”

  Susan and Annie marched in tandem to the back of the store. Inside the dressing rooms of Winkleman’s were five separate cubicles. The biggest, with three-way mirrors and a carpeted drum on which to stand, was spacious enough for a seamstress to work her magic. Cleaning up these fitting rooms was to be their final duty of the day.

  And a long day it had been.

  From matrons to teens, there had been a steady stream of customers since morning. Winkleman’s was every female’s go-to stop, especially in summer when teenagers were out of school. The boutique carried the finest clothes in Warren and its air conditioning—which most of Warren’s look-alike ranch houses did not have—was a draw.

  “What a day,” Susan said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “All those pimply teenagers!” Annie chimed in. “You have to watch them like hawks. Most of them have sticky fingers.”

  “Annie!”

  “It’s true! C’mon, Susan.”

  “Have you ever shoplifted?” Susan asked.

  “Me? I try anything once. Twice if I like it.”

  “Three times to make sure.”

  “What?”

  “Mae West.” Susan looked closely at Annie to make sure she wasn’t pulling her leg. “You’re quoting her. I was just finishing the quotation.”

  “I am? I thought I made that up.”

  “Not really. No.”

  Annie burst out laughing. “You’re pretty useful to have around!”

  “Ha ha,” Susan said dryly. “You said we were best friends the first day we met.”

  “I’m clairvoyant.”

  “You’re definitely something,” Susan said as she pushed open the doors to the dressing rooms, one by one. “Look at this! Aren’t you amazed by the mess?”

  “Um, no.” Annie trailed behind.

  “Well, the sooner we clean up, the sooner we’re out.” Susan grabbed a pile of rejects from the floor of the first cubicle and thrust it at Annie. She scooped up another pile and walked to the rolling rack at the end of the hall.

  “How do you hang this stupid thing?” Annie struggled to attach a one-shouldered dress to a hanger.

  “Here,” Susan took it and revealed the hidden straps meant to hold the dress to the hanger. “I’m just saying I wouldn’t leave clothing all over the floor in heaps.”

  “I would. Everybody would. Look around, Susan. Everybody does.”

  “I see that. But I always hang everything up. I mean, I don’t actually take it back to the racks. I’m not that fussy.”

  “Who, you? You’re not fussy at all! Here, you finish this.” Annie dropped the mustard-colored cowl neck sweater that she’d been turning around, trying to determine which end was up.

  Susan struggled with it for a moment then shrugged. “I can’t hang up this thing either.” She gave up the hanger and opted to fold it for shelving.

  “I’m bored. Wanna play Truth or Dare?” Annie asked, in a burst of energy. “I’ll go first!”

  “What?”

  “I pick Truth,” Annie answered herself. “Okay. Three years ago, for senior prom, I bought a dress at this very Winkleman’s and returned it the next week.”

  “After you wore it?”

  “Yes, Susan, after I wore it. How about you?”

  “How about me what?”

&nbs
p; “Tell me something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a Truth or Dare something.”

  “I’m not really sure I want to play this game.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Just pick truth. It’s easier. You only have to tell me one little secret.”

  “Oh, all right. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Honest Injun,” Annie held up her right hand in a scout pledge.

  “Well,” Susan hesitated and sat on a stool, holding the folded sweater on her lap, smoothing it flat with her palms. “When I got to college, there was a party the first night. I put on a sweater like this one—a cowl neck—except it was black. It felt strange, like it didn’t sit right on my body. The seams in the sleeves kept twisting around my arms. And, I hadn’t remembered the neck being ribbed. The whole time I was talking to people I tried not to fidget. But when I came home I saw what I’d done. I’d worn the sweater upside down.” Susan trailed off and lapsed into silence. She gave the cowl neck sweater one final press, rose and placed it on the top shelf of the rack.

  “That’s it? That’s your big secret?”

  “It’s just that I’d never met these people before and I came to an event with my clothing upside down.”

  “I don’t really get the big deal. I bought a dress, wore it and then returned it. Although I did manage to wear it right side up,” Annie said as she cracked up laughing.

  “I don’t know. I just felt awkward.”

  “Yeah, I get that part. But, so what?”

  Susan had revealed something of herself in the story and had expected Annie to understand it without explanation. It had been a little test, which Annie seemed to be failing.

  “Well, I thought it was clear.” Susan watched herself now, taking a risk, knowing she was putting herself out there, in front of Annie, a wild card. “I just felt foolish in front of everyone.”

  Annie reached out and touched Susan’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I feel foolish all the time.”

  The doorbell chimed.

  “Oh geez! I hope it’s not another customer!” Susan said as she moved toward the front.