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“I’m meeting Amber Randall. Jessica Jones.”
The woman clicks her keyboard with nails painted forest green. “Ah, yes! She’s on the second floor, in the Marsha room. Go right up.”
Upstairs, Jessica finds Amber sitting on a tiny gray sofa in the corner of a tiny room. She has a teapot on a table in front of her with two cups, and a plate of warm-looking chocolate cookies. She asks Jessica to close the door behind her and then invites her to take a seat on the chair opposite.
“English breakfast?” she asks, lifting the teapot by its handle and its spout. “How do you take it?”
Jessica stares at the pot and draws a blank.
Amber goes ahead and pours it, adding milk from a small glass bottle, and passes the cup to Jessica. “You look nice,” she says. “Better.”
“Yeah, well, you caught me on a bad day yesterday.” She lifts the cup and drinks the tea. It tastes of dirty flowers. She takes a cookie and eats it in three bites, having had no breakfast and nothing to eat since the previous lunchtime.
“Have another?” says Amber, pushing the plate toward her.
Jessica swallows down the goo of the cookie with the remains of her tea and shakes her head. “Mrs. Randall, shall we just…?”
“Yes. Of course. And call me Amber, please. So…” Amber pulls a folder from inside a green leather briefcase on the floor by her feet and passes it to Jessica. “I can sense that you think this is all somewhat in my head. I thought that before we go any further you should see the twins for yourself.”
Jessica pulls photos out of the folder and examines them. Two fine-featured children: a boy with a plume of dark blond hair, James Dean eyes, and a hard smile; a girl with a severe bob and brutal bangs, her dark brown eyes turned to the floor, a ring through her left nostril. Both look tall and rangy, unlike their small-boned mother. Both have strong noses and high foreheads. They remind Jessica of some kind of paintings by some kind of European artist from the 1920s.
“Nice-looking kids,” she says.
“Thank you. But listen, Lark’s been invited out after school today, starting off at a friend’s and then heading to a concert over in Williamsburg. They’re getting on the subway, five of them. You should follow them. Tail them, listen in, see what she talks about, how she behaves, who she talks to, what she does. These are the friends….”
She hands Jessica another sheaf of photos. Jessica flicks through them mindlessly, then puts them down: Two boys, two girls, rich kids, they all look the same.
“Do you have covert recording equipment?” asks Amber.
Jessica thinks of the recording app on her smartphone, the same one that Amber no doubt has on hers. Anyone could be a private eye these days. “Er, yeah, sure.”
“Could you use it?”
“Sure.” Jessica pushes the nasty tea away from her and reaches for another cookie. “What’s the name of the band?”
Amber pulls a flyer from her folder and passes it to her.
The lettering on the flyer says AKINESIZ.
“Never heard of them.”
“No,” sighs Amber. “Neither have I. Singer-as-the-band-name kind of thing. Indie-emo-rock-pop something. I don’t know. It’s sold out, so you won’t be going in. Just follow them to the venue, then you can leave.”
Jessica slides the flyer into the pile with the photos, rubbing at a smudge of chocolate she’s left on its corner.
“What time are they leaving?”
“Oh, Lord knows. Teenagers never leave when they say they’re going to leave. But they’re going from Tara’s house, here.” She taps the address on a list from the folder. “So just be where you can see them. Any time from six, I guess.”
Jessica nods and starts to ready herself to leave.
“Did you bring your birth certificate?”
Jessica pauses and lowers herself back onto her chair. “Mrs. Randall…I’m not ready to hand over something like that just yet. Let’s get this first report done and then we’ll talk about birth certificates.”
“Fine,” says Amber. “Fine. So let’s meet back here, tomorrow, midday?”
“Sure,” says Jessica, getting to her feet. “Can we have something”—she waves her fingers over the remaining cookies—“savory tomorrow? All that sugar’s made me feel a bit…” She rubs her belly.
