Invasion of Privacy

fireplace. The bed was made, the closet closed. I opened the louvered door. All in order, including a matched set of luggage stacked on the floor.
    “What are you looking for?” The tone Loiselle had used with her people at the bank.
    “I don’t know. Is this Olga’s only luggage?”
    Loiselle came over and stood beside me. “That’s what she carried any time I had her down to my house on the Cape .”
    “Where’s her answering machine?”
    “In the den.”
    Loiselle led me to another room, with more of the bric-a-brac from halfway around the world. The machine, on one corner of a black, lacquered desk, was blinking.
    I said, “Do you know how to work this?”
    “How hard can it be?” She moved toward it, scanning the buttons for a moment before pressing one. “ ‘MESSAGES,’ ” she said.
    I heard Andrew Dees’ voice, a romantic murmur. “Just letting you know I love you.”
    Loiselle made a retching sound. “Usually takes two people to fuck up a relationship, unless one of them happens to be the Horse’s Ass.”
    Through a couple of hang-ups, she continued. “Remember when I met you here and you asked me about him?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, that message sums it all up. The man’s not so much transparent as translucent. The bad light shines through, even if you can’t quite see where it’s coming from.”
    Then out of the machine came another voice I’d heard before, from Olga’s computer at the bank. “Olechka” again, plus something rapid fire in what I assumed to be Russian.
    Loiselle said, “Did you notice?”
    “What?”
    “Uncle Ivan used English at work, Russian at home.”
    “And therefore?”
    “He has nothing to hide, John. Otherwise they’d both be in Russian.”
    I watched her as my voice came next, first from the arrival lounge and the front door the night before, then alternating with Loiselle’s own, the last message her “Olga, please!” from the bank half an hour earlier.
    When the machine clicked off, I went to the window and looked down. “Can you come here a minute?” Loiselle joined me.
    I said, “Is that empty space where Olga would park her car?”
    “Yes.”
    “Not good news.”
    “There’s worse.”
    I waited for it.
    Loiselle held up a toy the size of a hand calculator. “Olga’s PDA.”
    “Where was it?”
    “On the desk.” Loiselle looked back to the black furniture. “She must have come home from the bank yesterday and dropped this here, then taken off in her car.”
    “And not on business.”
    “Without this baby? Never.” Loiselle’s expression grew dark. “What’s going on, John?”
    “I’m hoping you can help me find out.”
    Loiselle looked around the room. “How?”
    I inclined my head toward the PDA. “Can you make that thing give us Uncle Ivan’s last name and address?” As she poked furiously at it, Loiselle said, “I told Olga.”
    “Sorry?”
    “If I told her once, I told her a hundred times: ‘This Dees character is just no good for you.’ ”
    “I hope you get the chance to tell her again.”
    Claude Loiselle looked up at me, then went back to work even faster.

    The address turned out to be a turn-of-the-century building on Beacon Street near Coolidge Comer in Brookline , about three miles from my place. Red brick with white cornices, the landscaping of low shrubs and postage-stamp lawn was meticulously trimmed, and the twin entry doors were oiled mahogany. Obviously cared for by someone who really cared, and I thought again of Paulie Fogerty at Plymouth Willows. Propping Nancy’s rose upright against the passenger seat so the water from its little tube wouldn’t run out, I left the car and walked to the main entrance.
    Uncle Ivan’s last name wasn’t on the list of buzzers and mailboxes between the entry doors and the security door, so I pushed the one marked SUPERINTENDENT. After a short time, a bandy-legged man who looked eighty but moved spryly appeared inside the foyer. He opened the security door and stuck his head out.
    “I can help you?”
    It sounded like the voice from Olga Evorova’s tape machine. “If you’re Ivan Evorova.”
    “That is who I am, but it is pronounce ‘Ee-vw-ov’, no ‘a’ at end. Because I am man, not woman.”
    He spoke with a certain loopy elegance. “My name’s John Cuddy, Mr. Evorov.” I held out my identification holder to him. “I’m a private investigator from Boston , and your niece hired me. Now I’m trying to find her, and I’m hoping you can