I’m guessing you needed the replica in hand to obtain the search warrant that allowed you to eventually uncover Winnie’s identity? Of course, back in October, neither Winnie nor I had any inkling you were onto us. We were too busy managing the inventory that was piling up on our shelves—handbags that I turned in to your team, every single one in our possession.
Naturally, like you, I noticed the discrepancy in numbers. My records show there should have been an additional two hundred units. I can only assume that Winnie managed to liquidate those bags sometime at the end of October before fleeing the country. She certainly needed the cash.
You’re saying that Boss Mak confirmed as much? He told you a contact informed him that those two hundred superfakes changed hands on October 26? Of course I’m stunned. How would he know that? Who would have told him? But if you’ve verified the information and believe it to be true, then you must be right. Winnie wasn’t in the Bay Area then, but I suppose she could have easily sent a lackey to our office unit in South San Francisco to get the bags and make the sale. By this time, she strongly doubted my commitment and had accused me multiple times of slacking off, so it makes sense that she’d manage the liquidation on her own.
I hope you’re not suggesting that I sold those bags and stashed away the funds. That would have been impossible. You see, Detective, October 26 was the day of my fifteen-year college reunion. You have my cell phone location data; you can see for yourself that I was down in the Peninsula all day, despite my reluctance to be there.
Why didn’t I want to go? Imagine the situation, Detective: Here I was, at what had to be the very nadir of my life, forced to confront the most accomplished people on the planet. I felt like the brunt of the universe’s sick joke, the laughingstock of Silicon Valley, the punching bag of the global elite.
Carla and Joanne must have sensed my anguish, because that morning, I awoke to a flurry of text messages, warning me to not even think about backing out.
Carla typed, I’ll even pick you up. Door-to-door service. I won’t take no for an answer.
In the end, my friends agreed to let me skip the official on-campus events in exchange for coming to our classmate Aimee Cho’s backyard brunch.
As Carla already told you, she picked me up at around 10:30 in the morning and drove me straight to Aimee’s Woodside mansion, where I remained until approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, at which point I hitched a ride back to the city with another classmate, Troy Howard. At no point in the day did I go to South San Francisco—not to offload our inventory nor for any other reason.
What can I tell you about the party? It was one of those perfect Northern Californian fall days: a crisp seventy degrees, a cloudless blue sky, all that overflowing golden light—the kind of day that only seemed to underscore my miserable mood. Gripping my elbow, Carla pulled me into the group taking a tour of Aimee’s newly redecorated home. As my friends swooned over the sustainably grown Brazilian teak floors and the dining room chairs upholstered in mint Thai silk, I tried to figure out how to convince Winnie to stop hiring shoppers, white or any other race, to pause all operations until we had answers. Her primary objection would obviously be the loss of revenue, but that was paltry compared to getting caught.
Again and again I answered my classmates brightly, I’m focused on my son right now. I’ll start looking in earnest once he goes to preschool. Oh, we decided to wait a year because he only just turned three.
That’s so brave of you to take a break, Aimee cooed. She was a fellow dissatisfied corporate lawyer.
Her husband, Brent, who did something in finance that earned him ten times her already ample salary, added, Aimee was sending emails, like, fifteen minutes after delivering.
She mimed slapping him across the face; he pretended to strangle her. They laughed and pecked each other’s cheek. Everyone else laughed along, and I followed suit, a split second behind, like an alien desperate to appear human.
Let me be clear, Detective. It’s no exaggeration to say that at this moment in time I was failing on all fronts: as an employee, a wife, a mother, a friend—hell, as a flipping Stanford grad. What I wanted more than anything was to crawl into a cave and hide from my shortcomings, the polar opposite of what I’d walked into.
Retreating to the bar, I asked a uniformed bartender for a mojito. When Joanne spotted me and waved me over, I downed as much of my drink as I could before joining her. She was with Javier Delgado, who did something important at Google, and Javier’s partner, Andrew.
We donate a hundred bucks to the alumni fund every year, Joanne said, pointing out her son, who dashed past squealing in pursuit of a pack of children (all of them, no doubt, potty trained and enrolled in school). It’s a small investment in the future.
We need to get on that, Javier said, smacking his partner’s elbow.
Andrew rolled his eyes and stage-whispered, We’re not even sure we’re having kids. He turned politely to me. Do you have kids?
What’s that? I said, struggling to keep up with the conversation.
He repeated the question.
Oh, yes, one.
Her husband works at Stanford so they don’t have to donate, Joanne said.
Say, said Javier, is anyone in touch with Winnie Fang? I heard she’s back in town.
Joanne looked at me.
A little bit, I said. She comes to SF for work from time to time. I didn’t elaborate.
Predictably, the conversation turned to the SAT scandal of our past, and to how it compared to the more recent Hollywood scandal, and then to another classmate who’d been arrested for insider trading, but had successfully fought the charges with the aid of a costly lawyer, and was back at a hedge fund and richer than ever.
I chugged the last of my drink and went to get a refill, ignoring Joanne’s raised eyebrows.
I assume, Detective, that Joanne told you she lost track of me for, say, half an hour midway through the party? That’s because Winnie called while I was waiting for my drink, and I had to dart into a bathroom to talk to her.
We have to pause all activities, I said. Just until we figure out what’s going on. We can’t risk a shopper getting caught.
Wrong answer, Winnie said. I asked for solutions, not this.
How can I solve a problem we don’t fully comprehend?
With that kind of attitude, you’ll never come up with anything good.
Around and around we went, talking past each other, unable to reach a compromise. At last, she ended the call, and I turned on the tap to assuage the suspicions of anyone waiting outside. (That’s how paranoid Winnie had made me.) Rinsing my hands, I observed my reflection in the mirror, the deep groove between my eyebrows, the lusterless eyes and pinched mouth. Who was this craven person looking back at me, expecting to be told what to do?
Outside, I paused by the patio doors, taking in this backyard abounding with power brokers, all tanned and relaxed, basking in their success and good fortune, in their lives of plenty and ease. This was what I had lost. No, this was what Winnie had stolen from me.
Soon, my classmates began to head to campus for the football game and various panels and lectures, more eating and drinking. This is when I rode back to the city with Troy Howard and his wife, Kathy. He’d been the sixteenth employee at Twitter and was now basically retired. All the way to San Francisco, they regaled me with stories about their family’s travels to Tanzania, Jaipur, the Azores.
Now, of course, we’re grounded for a while because the girls are in school, Troy said.
Kathy asked, Where’s your little one in school?
We decided to wait a year, I said. Henri only just turned three.
That’s good, no rush, Troy said, as though he hadn’t mentioned that his girls had been learning Mandarin since birth from their live-in Chinese nanny to ensure truly native accents.