Death at the Wheel (14 page)

I shook my head. "You're right. If it were just Donahue... but he's got Julie's kids. She trusts him. The kids know him. If they take them away and send them to some anonymous foster family, it will be that much worse for her."

"Are you sure? What about you? What about what's good for you? For other people? Not letting that guy run around loose, waving guns in people's faces."

My brain felt mushy and slow. He was right but so was I. I didn't know what to say. "Couldn't you just... uh... threaten him? Hold this over his head somehow?" I felt stupid, like I was asking him to do something improper. I didn't really know what I wanted. I longed for my usual clarity and precision but I felt wobbly and indecisive. "I know I'm not being very clear."

"I understand," he said, in a way that assured me that he did, that he knew how I felt, and while he might not approve, he would do as I asked. "I'll take care of it. I will speak with Mr. Donahue and let him know that he has made a very big mistake."

I had no doubt that he would. I was inside a special circle of protection and Duncan Donahue was going to rue the day he'd tangled with me. "Thanks, Trooper... uh... Roland... for rescuing me. I feel better now."

He gave me a quick, warm smile. "That's what I'm here for." He handed me carefully out of the car and steered me back to mine, a strong, supporting arm around my shoulders, glaring at the scrapes and scratches on the shiny red paint. He opened the door, waited until I was in, and carefully closed it behind me. I felt like I was going to my junior prom. I felt safe and grateful and served and protected, as well as battered and sore and exhausted by the aftermath of fear.

He motioned for me to roll down the window. "You take it easy now," he said. "You seem okay now but something like this can really shake you up. Sometimes you don't feel the effects right away. You start feeling shaky, you pull off the road and get yourself a cup of tea or something."

I nodded. I started the engine, gripping the wheel cautiously with my swollen hands, and accelerated into the traffic. Where had all these people been when I was cowering before Dunk Donahue's wrath?

Sun poured in through the sunroof, warming me up so that my shivering gradually stopped. I was driving on auto pilot, my mind filled with images of the last few days. I had no reason to conclude that Donahue had killed Calvin Bass, but one thing was clear—he was capable of that kind of calculated violence. Had I just foolishly asked them to let a murderer go free? Even with the sun beating down and the heat on full, a shiver went through me that left me cold for a long time.

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

In the parking lot outside my building I pulled on a sweater to cover my ruined blouse, thankful the skirt I'd worn was a murky print that was none the worse for wear after skidding along the ground, and got a spare pair of stockings from my emergency kit. The kit is another of the organized overlays I've imposed on my undisciplined personality. I never go anywhere without spare pins, buttons, stockings, double-sided tape for gaping blouses and sagging hems, barrettes, tissues, aspirin, and Band-Aids. I should have been a girl scout.

Upstairs, things were jumping. The phones seemed to have St. Vitus Dance and when I passed her desk, Sarah gave me a cynical smile, bit back a comment about my bandaged hands, and held out a stack of pink slips thick enough to paper a wall. "Northbrook wants a proposal from us ASAP," she said. "That note is on top."

I read it and sighed. They wanted something for a meeting next week. With all the proposals we'd sent out lately, we were like fishermen who bait a bunch of lines and cast them all out, then wait. If all our fish bit at once, we were going to be in serious trouble. I dumped my briefcase and the pink slips on my desk and headed for the ladies' room to do a little more restoration on my hands. On the way I met Suzanne and her baby.

"For someone who just got her ashes hauled, you don't look very cheerful," she said.

"That's the strangest expression, isn't it?"

Her eagle eyes lit on my hands. "What happened?"

"I fell off my bike."

"And I was born yesterday."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Thea...."

There's no sense in trying to evade Suzanne's questions. Her perceptive skills are what make her good at this business, and we've worked together so long she knows when I'm being evasive. "I had an unpleasant run-in with Julie Bass's brother."

She's a good enough friend so she's honest when she thinks I'm being foolish. "Oh, Thea. Not again! You promised." And she was genuinely annoyed. "Remember what I told you?"

"That we have too much work for me to get myself landed in some hospital and if I do, you won't come visit me, right?" She nodded. "Don't worry. I'm being very careful. Between you and Andre, I don't dare be anything else."

"This is careful?"

I skipped the long version. "He didn't shoot me, Suzanne."

She rolled her eyes but let it drop. "Well, I guess we have to be grateful for small favors, don't we? Isn't it a madhouse out there? How did we ever get ourselves into this mess?"

"By being good at what we do."

"And how can I say that was a mistake?" She was about to say something else when Paul, Jr. yawned an enormous yawn and began to wail. "Okay, little guy," she said, "I get the hint. Mealtime." She laid him on her shoulder and he snuggled into her neck, making hopeful sucking sounds. "Catch you later." She bustled off and I bustled right after her, wondering when I was ever going to get a chance to talk about what was going on in
her
life.

The calendar said I had a late-morning meeting. There was the Northbrook proposal to prepare. I sorted my pink slips into piles and more than half of them were urgent. It was always the same at EDGE. Clients may take six months or a year to make up their minds to work with us, and then they want results right away. Some of them. Others, like Northbrook, act fast and expect us to act faster. Sighing, I picked up the phone.

I was halfway through the stack and feeling very efficient when Suzanne walked in and dropped the
Globe
business section on my desk. A small article was circled in red. The headline was: murdered banker tied to mortgage irregularities. A typical article. After the headline, it didn't say much—just that in the course of a routine review of the Grantham Cooperative Bank, the FDIC had uncovered a number of missing mortgage applications that their investigation indicated might have been in the possession of the late Calvin Bass.

I shrugged and pushed the paper aside, picking up the phone for another call, but the article kept nagging at me. Not by what it did say, which wasn't much, but by what it suggested. As I waited, on hold, for someone whose time was more valuable than mine, I thought of the argument Sherry DuBose had told me about between Bass and Eliot Ramsay, and Bass's secretary's hysteria on the phone about Ramsay and some missing papers. I wondered if there was someone I should share my speculations with, but before I could think about it further, Sarah stuck a note in front of me. "Your mother is on Nine and she says it's urgent!"

Why should she be different from anyone else? And anyway, lately, with her, everything was urgent. I nodded, gave up on the person who was keeping me on hold, and pressed the button. My mother's distressed voice exploded from the phone.

"Someone broke into Julie's house and tried to burn it down!" I almost asked what she wanted me to do about it, but I'd hear that in due course anyway.

The story was shocking. Someone, unnoticed by the neighbors, had broken into Julie's house, torn the entire place apart, then set it on fire to cover up the destruction. An alert neighbor had seen the smoke and called the fire department, but not before the downstairs had been seriously damaged and many of Julie's and the children's things destroyed.

"As if that poor girl hasn't been through enough, losing her husband and then being charged with the crime... without having vandals breaking in and destroying her home! People these days! Honestly. A bunch of predators just waiting for a chance to take advantage."

Mom was still talking, but I was following my own thoughts, wondering if it really was vandals or if someone was looking for something, like maybe the missing mortgages. Wondering if Calvin Bass was really responsible for the missing papers or if Ramsay was taking advantage of his death and inability to defend himself to get rid of a big problem. Probably something I ought to take to the police, but what would I say? I have this hunch about the papers? And had they—the police—considered whether Ramsay might have had an interest in eliminating Cal Bass? I could imagine how that would go. By the time I'd finished my first sentence they'd be looking at me like I had two heads. No. Before I said anything to anyone, there were questions I wanted to ask Rita and Sherry, like why missing mortgage applications might have someone's Jockeys in a twist.

"Isn't that just the saddest thing?" my mother said.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. What's so sad?"

"I didn't call just to pass the time of day," she said huffily. "I want you to do something about this."

"Do something about what?" I asked wearily, trying to keep my irritation out of my voice. Getting annoyed with her would only prolong things. Maybe it was a good thing Andre and I didn't live together, though lately I'd begun to wonder about it. Together, we never got enough sleep, and when I'm tired, I'm grouchy. "I'm doing all I can. I have a job to do, you know. Right now, I'm absolutely swamped. I've got deadlines."

"Too swamped to help a desperate person in trouble, I suppose."

"Mom, I'm doing all I can. Yesterday I went to see her brother—"

"Duncan. Yes. Julie just adores her brother. She talks about him all the time."

"I don't know why. He's a madman. He nearly killed me."

"Don't exaggerate, dear. It's unattractive. Anyway, as I was saying when you weren't listening..."

I wasn't the only one who wasn't listening, but when Mom has an agenda, she's all output and no input. I gave up the effort of getting her attention and tried to sound involved. "Did you get me the names of Julie's friends?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, if you'd been listening. Julie doesn't seem to have had any close friends. I talked to two women she plays tennis with at the club yesterday. One of them told me Julie was a cold fish who was friendly only when she wanted to be; the other said she'd tried but Julie was so distant she got the impression that Julie wasn't interested in being friends. And then when I was talking to one of Dr. Durren's nurses about those scandalous rumors, you know what she said? She said Dr. Durren kept a picture of Julie and the children in his desk drawer. That's how good a friend he was. Isn't it just the saddest thing? If you ask me, it's his wife who's the real cold fish. Won't do anything to further his career, never comes to hospital functions with him."

Sarah was standing in the doorway, pointing at her watch. "Mom, I've got to go. I have a meeting. I'll call you tonight."

"Don't call. Come for dinner," she insisted. I agreed just to get her off the phone. It only meant another two hours of driving, one down, one back, on top of the three and a half I'd already driven today.

Luckily, the meeting was in our conference room, so I didn't have to drive anywhere for that. A smooth, efficient meeting, which reminded me that I've been in this business long enough to know what I'm doing, a confidence I've worked a long time to achieve. I came out of the meeting feeling comfortable that Bobby and Lisa, our two professional employees, were ready to run the focus groups and our telephone team was prepped to handle a survey questionnaire, and at least the work portion of my life was under control.

I went back to my unfinished stack of urgent slips, reflecting on the fact that the downside of success is more work to be done and the same number of bodies to do it. Still, it was better than last year at this time, when I was worrying about where the money for the payroll was going to come from.

I'd stopped by Sarah's desk to mooch one of the granola bars she keeps in her drawer when Suzanne buzzed by. "All set for next week?" I nodded. "What about Northbrook?"

"They want a proposal," I said glumly.

"Come on. Where's the old Kozak enthusiasm?"

"I'm hungry. I can't be enthusiastic when I'm hungry."

"Other people eat these things called meals, you know. Sarah, haven't you got something to toss to this ravening beast?"

Sarah opened her drawer and looked in. "Sorry," she said, "I seem to have run out. Lisa might have something."

"I thought feeding Thea was part of your job," Suzanne said a little shortly.

Sarah only shrugged. Sometimes she could get rather huffy about what was and was not her job. "Maybe you need to hire someone else...."

My heart sank. If Sarah quit I would be in serious trouble.

She was a wonderful secretary. "Don't even joke about leaving," I said. "You'll give me heart failure. I'll just go hungry."

"You got any food, Bobby?" Sarah said, tapping impatiently on her keyboard.