Invasion of Privacy

“From the way you met, it doesn’t sound like a set-up.”
    “A... you mean that Andrew arranged that we would meet?”
    “Right.”
    Evorova shook her head vigorously. “No. No, I think that would be quite impossible. The bar is one near his business, one he goes to very often, I think. But Andrew could not know I would be driving back from the Cape that day and develop engine trouble.”
    I picked up my pen for the first time. “The name of the bar?”
    “The Tides, in the town center, also.” She tensed a bit. “You will go there?”
    “That depends on what you want me to do.”
    Evorova seemed relieved. “What I want you to do is... find out things. Perhaps to watch Andrew, to…“ She admired the Statehouse again. “Find out things.”
    “But without Mr. Dees knowing I’m doing it.”
    Back to me. “Exactly, yes. I do not wish to threaten our relationship by committing an invasion of privacy.”
    I put down the pen. “Ms. Evorova, that won’t be easy, and it may not even be possible.”
    “Why so?”
    “It’s difficult to do more than what you’ve done already without Mr. Dees hearing from other people that I’ve been asking around about him.”
    “You could perhaps follow Andrew, yes? With discretion?”
    “Do you have a photo of him.”
    Evorova looked toward her lap once more, speaking almost to herself. “He does not like the camera very much, my Andrew.”
    My Andrew. I brought both hands onto the blotter, folding them. “Ms. Evorova, even with a photo, following somebody isn’t quite as easy as it looks on television.”
    “Why so?”
    “Everyone can tell after a while that they’re being tailed unless the followers use a team approach, like the police or FBI could mount.”
    She seemed to digest that.
    I said, “Is there anybody you know who I could talk to about Mr. Dees without it getting back to him?”
    A slow shake of the head. “My uncle has met Andrew, and likes him very much. If you talk to Vanya, it would... get back.”
    “How about people from work?”
    “Andrew has only one employee, and she is loyal to him, I believe.”
    “No, I meant at your bank. Has anyone met Mr. Dees?”
    “Only my friend, Clude, who owns the house on the Cape .”
    “Clude?”
    “She is French-Canadian, but born here. The spelling is C-L-A-U-D-E.”
    I wrote it down. “Last name?”
    “Wah -zell, L-O-I-S-E-L-L-E.” Evorova seemed troubled. “I would prefer you not speak with her.”
    I placed the pen back on the blotter. “It might help if you could tell me why.”
    The troubled look grew deeper. “Probably I will talk to Claude about coming to see you. However, she has had dinner with us—with Andrew and me—twice. I think she made up her mind about him the first time, but she agreed to meet him again.”
    “And?”
    “Claude is a very... instinctive person, Mr. Cuddy. She believes Andrew is hiding something from me.”
    “Did Ms. Loiselle suggest you see a private investigator?”
    “No.” The executive stare again. “She suggested I stop seeing Andrew.”
    I’d already heard enough not to contest Evorova on that one, but she kept going anyway. “You see, I have not had a very... secure life. Before I am born, my mother was pregnant with twins, another baby girl and me. When she reached her sixth month, my mother was passenger on a bus in Moscow that collided with a truck. Afterward, she felt sick, so she went to the doctor. He said to her, ‘I am sorry, but one of your babies is dead.’ He said also that it would be safer for the other baby—-me—if my mother carried both babies... to term. She did what the doctor advised, and so I lay in the womb three months next to my dead sister.” A tear trickled over the corner of Evorova’s left eye. “I never met her, but I... I still miss her.” A moment. Then, “As my other family, the ones who survived the Great Patriotic War, began dying, I dreamed of the United States , and a different life here. A secure one. And now I have that. But for me, life has been only study and work. All my time, all my energy, all my... heart. Until I met Andrew. And my heart tells me I cannot lose him just because my banker head—or my banker friend—tells me some things are perhaps not quite right. Do you see this?”
    I thought about my wife, Beth, before the cancer took her, and about Nancy Meagher, who’d very nearly come to replace her. “I think so.”
    Evorova suddenly shrugged heavily. “I am sorry. I am one