“That story you did on corruption inside the SDNY was great,” I tell her now.
“Thanks. It almost didn’t run. Long story. But tell me what’s going on with you. What are you working on?”
“Meg’s back,” I say.
I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Really? Tell me everything.”
I fill her in, telling her about the Google Alert and tracking Meg down at one of Ron Ashton’s fundraisers, then posing as a potential buyer and befriending her. “She’s hired me as an assistant,” I say.
“How’s that going?”
“Depends on who you ask,” I tell her. Then I explain about the missing bank statements. “Scott thinks it’s possible she knows who I am and that now she might be targeting me.”
“Seems pretty risky for her if she is,” Jenna says.
“That’s what I think. Plus, in the two weeks since they’ve gone missing, nothing’s different. We spend at least four hours together every day, and I don’t see any change in her behavior or attitude toward me. I don’t care how good she is at what she does, no one’s that good.”
“Where do you think the statements went?” Jenna asks.
“Maybe they just got lost in the mail,” I offer. Though even as I say the words, they don’t ring true. That it’s possible the woman who didn’t think twice about encouraging a young female reporter to meet with Nate might easily be the kind of opportunist Scott thinks she is.
“So, after all these years of wondering, what’s she like?”
I think about how to answer. The careful dance we’re both doing—each of us lying about who we are and what we want, always one careless comment away from the edge. Then I think of Meg’s sharp humor. The vulnerability she’s shown.
“If I didn’t know who she was and what she did, I’d probably be her friend.”
“I think Scott’s right to be concerned,” Jenna says. “Whether she knows who you are or not, you need to be careful.”
“Don’t worry.”
But since Meg’s return, a different version of her has emerged. She isn’t the one-dimensional con artist who’d lived inside my imagination for so many years. She’s a woman who hates men like Ron as much as I do. Who always insists on paying for lunch and ends up tipping 30 percent. Who rolls her window down at red lights to give $5 to the homeless person standing there.
“Where are you going to pitch the story? And when?”
“I don’t know,” I hedge. I’d been thinking about Vanity Fair or Esquire. This is exactly the kind of big, splashy story they would love—a beautiful, mysterious female con artist—but all I have are some ten-year-old claims and a lot of empty space. “I need to know where she’s been and what she’d done to get an idea of what she’s doing now.”
“Where does she say she’s been?”
“Michigan. Selling real estate,” I say. “She’s got a website, with photos of houses she’s sold and client testimonials.”
“Fake?”
“Almost certainly. But it’s a dead end.” In the weeks since Meg’s return, I haven’t been able to find any company in Michigan operating under the name Ann Arbor Realty. An image search of the listings from her website were all traced back to Zillow or Redfin with other agents’ names attached. “I’m stuck,” I admit. “None of the databases I have access to are going to turn up what Meg wants to keep hidden.”
“Let me put one of my researchers on it, off the books. See what we can turn up.”