Shelter (69 page)

    Zephyr laughed. "They're guessing it has something to do with the AI, since Merry's phobic. They're wondering if Kevin's going to ask MacroCorp to do an audit on the AI, make it play back everything that's happened."

    Roberta's stomach cramped. Please Goddess, no. "Would he do that? They're his employers. I mean—"

    "Honey, Kevin's a famous person and MacroCorp might as well be God, so who knows what they'll do? They don't operate on Earth logic." Zephyr shrugged. "None of it means anything, anyway. It's just ScoopNet blathering. You can't take it too seriously. Hey—how are you doing otherwise? I mean, about your friend and everything?"

    "Okay," Roberta said.

    Zephyr gave her a searching look. "Really okay? Well, okay. You'd better keep your stamina up, though, because I'm warning you: that job of yours is going to be crawling with press tomorrow."

    As if on cue, Roberta's phone began shrilling upstairs. Roberta and Zephyr both looked up at the ceiling, and then at each other. "That's a reporter," Zephyr said. "I guarantee it."

    "Y ou're probably right," Roberta said, "but I need to go see who it is, anyway." It might be Fred, whom she still owed an apology; it might be Iuna or Hugh or even Doe.

    It was a reporter for ScoopNet, if anyone who worked for that organization could actually be called a journalist. "Ms. Danton, can you shed any light on Meredith Walford-Lindgren's decision—"

    "No, I can't. And even if I could, I wouldn't. It's none of my business. It's certainly none of yours."

    "I think you'll find that we're willing to pay handsomely for information, Ms. Danton."

    "Too bad I don't have any, then. Good-bye." She hung up, had roughly the same conversation with roughly twenty other reporters—some of them even from legitimate news organizations—over the next half hour, and finally settled for disconnecting the phone completely while she figured out what to do. She wanted to put it on outgoing only, but didn't want to miss calls from Mitzi's family, or from Fred. Finally she hit on a compromise; she'd screen voicemail but turn the ringer off, so it wouldn't drive her completely out of her mind.

    For the next three hours, she sat with one hand on the phone while she read a trashy mystery novel. Roughly every five minutes, voicemail came on and some newspaper or website or radio station asked for information, only to be cut off when Roberta lifted the receiver and then replaced it. At eleven, feeling oddly pleased with herself for having finished her book without once talking on the phone, she switched to announce only and went to bed.

    * * *

    The first thing she did the next morning was to look outside, into the parking lot. Three buzzing camera bots, mini-helicopters, hovered outside her window, their film lights glowing red when she peered out through the curtains. Past them, she could see news trucks. Roberta pulled the curtains closed again with a shudder, wondering how long the trucks had been there. Was this what it was like all the time, being Meredith WalfordLindgren? No wonder the woman was loopy.

    Grimly, Roberta made coffee, poured herself juice, and dug a box of doughnuts out of the fridge. It was a day for caffeine and sugar, she could tell. Then she disabled call waiting and called school; Fred answered, of course. "Yes," he told her, "the building's surrounded by press, and Preston says others are hiding out on nearby roads. I've already called the parents and warned them that it might not be wise to bring the children in today."

    Oh, Gaia. "Are they getting harassed too?"

    "Many of them are, yes. The KinderkAIr board is trying to get restraining orders against the reporters, but that won't go through until this afternoon at the earliest. I think you should stay home today, Roberta."

    "I think you're right." She began calculating how much food she had in the apartment, wondering how long a siege she could withstand. She could order in, but the delivery boy would be a ScoopNet employee by the time he got to her door. "Fred, Preston, listen, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Nicholas sooner—about his being pulled out of school. I knew the night Buster died. Meredith told me she was doing it, but I didn't expect it so soon, and I was too upset to talk about it."

    "It's all right," Fred said. "You did what you could for him, Roberta. We all did."

    "Did she say anything else?" Preston said. "Did she say why—"

    "No, she didn't." Roberta looked toward the curtains. "And I've got surveillance equipment outside my living room window, so even if she had, I don't think this would be the time to talk about it. But she didn't, honest." It belatedly occurred to her that she'd probably already said too much.

    "How did the house look?" Preston asked. "Did everything seem normal there?"

    "I was only there for fifteen minutes. It looked fine. It's a nice little house. I didn't notice anything unusual." Except for the mouse in the cardboard box, but I'm not going to mention that with spybots outside.

    "Did you talk to Nicholas, or see Meredith talking to him? Did—"

    "No. Look, let's talk about it some other time, okay? After ScoopNet's moved on. After they've found another scandal to milk."

    "I think that's wise," said Fred.

    "Yes, you are undoubtedly right," Preston said. "I apologize for pressing you. But ScoopNet will go away soon enough, if we all refuse to talk to them. Right now, their only source of information is your neighbor Zephyr."

    "What?"

    "I take it you have not been watching ScoopNet, Roberta?"

    "I never watch ScoopNet!" Roberta snatched up the phone and ran to her window, but when she peered through the drapes, she found her view completely blocked by camera-copters, eight or ten of them, buzzing and dancing. "Aaargh." She closed the drapes and said, "I can't see anything. Too many spybots in the way. Preston, what's that lunatic saying about me?"

    "I will give you the ScoopNet feed," he said. "Please hold for Zephyr, Roberta."

    And there was Zephyr's voice, her drama-queen performance voice, fluty and impassioned. "Roberta Danton is a wondeiful neighbor and a wondeiful friend to me and my bots, and she loves the children she works with and she would never tell any of you scoundrels anything, so you should leave her alone. She's just suffered a tragic loss; she doesn't need you vultures snooping into her life!"

    Oh, great. Thanks a lot, Zephyr. And sure enough, a babble of questions began in the background. "What kind of tragedy, Ms. Expanding Cosmos?" "Can you give us more information about that?" "Has she ever said anything to you about her earlier work with zombies?" "Does she ever talk about her childhood CV?"

    Green-growing Gaia. Did they know everything about her? "Leave Roberta alone." Zephyr said. "Someone she loves just died; she needs privacy!"

    "Who, Ms. Expanding Cosmos?" "Who just died?" "Do you know if—"

    "Enough," Roberta said, and the ScoopNet babble went away. She was shaking. "That was horrible. Horrible. I'm going to kill her. How could she do that? Now those creeps are going to be scanning every obituary page they can find."

    "The restraining order will be in your name too," Fred said. "Don't worry, Roberta. In a few hours, they're going to have to move on and leave everyone connected with the KinderkAIr alone."

    Roberta shuddered. She felt unclean. "I can't believe Zephyr did that."

    "I suspect she is doing it for her own publicity purposes," Preston said. "All of her bots are out in the parking lot with her, doing tricks for the camera. Right now she is attempting to tell the reporters about her next performance piece, although they are clearly only interested in whatever information she has about you."

    "Ugh. She can have all the publicity she wants, as long as they leave me alone!"

    "They will soon." That was Fred, endlessly comforting. "It's all right, Roberta. Try to have a nice day."

    Yeah, right. With her mystery novel finished, she didn't even have anything to read. Maybe she could teach Mr. Clean to fetch, or to play Scrabble. "You too," she said bleakly, and hung up.

    * * *

    Roberta tried to kill time with a long nap and a long bubble bath. She picked out her outfit for Mitzi's funeral, and tried to figure out what she'd say if anyone asked her why she was there. Because I loved her. Because she was just like a mother to me. Because I tried to go see her in the hospital, but I got there too late. She composed inventive curses to describe Zephyr and her bots; she brooded about Nicholas. Every hour, she called Fred to see if the restraining order had come through yet. Finally, at nearly five, he told her it had, and she turned on her phone.

    And promptly got a call. Roberta tensed, told herself that it couldn't be a reporter, and answered. It was Zephyr. "I just called to see—"

    "You're not going to see anything, Zephyr, and you're not going to say anything, either, because I'm never telling you anything again."

    "But I didn't—"

    "You're scum," Roberta said. "Scum, garbage, a publicity hound every bit as bad as those ScoopNet sickos. Got that? Good-bye."

    "But—"

    "Good-bye, Zephyr! If you want Mr. Clean back, leave me a note. Otherwise, leave me alone."

    Roberta slammed the phone down, and again it rang. Trembling with rage, she picked it up. "Zephyr, I told you to leave me alone! Don't call here, do you understand? I told you—"

    "Roberta, it's Hugh." He sounded infinitely tired.

    "Hugh! Hugh, I'm so sorry, I—"

    "I know. You're having a really rotten week, aren't you? Listen, I can't talk long, but I just wanted you to know—Doe and I went through Mitzi's things and found something she wanted you to have."

    "Oh," Roberta said, her eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Hugh, thank you-that's so kind."

    "We'd give it to you at the funeral, but I'm afraid it will get lost in the hurry somehow—all the people—so stupid to think of death as being hectic, but—"

    "Is there anything I can do? Help deal with caterers or anything?"

    "No, dear, thank you. Iuna's doing all of that." Of course. "Oh, damn, Roberta, I didn't mean that as a slap in the face, I'm sorry."

    "It's okay, Hugh, don't worry about it. My feelings are the last things you should have to worry about right now." She could imagine what Mitzi's response to that would have been: Spoken like a true martyr.

    Hugh sighed. "Well, anyway. I'd like to come see you. And I'm wondering when would be a good time. Tomorrow night? Can I stop by your apartment? Would seven be all right?"

    "Yes, fine, of course. I'll see you then." Mitzi had wanted her to have something? What could it be, and how had Hugh and Doe known? Roberta blinked, the floor feeling unsteady beneath her feet, and said, "Hugh, thank you."

    Twenty-Seven

    THINGS were more or less back to normal the next day, especially since a spectacular, and spectacularly fatal, train derailment outside Addis Ababa distracted media attention from Nicholas Walford-Lindgren's kindergarten career. Roberta wondered if Meredith was as grateful for the diversion as Roberta herself was, and if she felt as ruefully guilty for welcoming other people's horror. Most of the children seemed to have ignored the media feeding frenzy and just enjoyed their day off. Roberta envied their practicality.

    Throughout the day, she found herself wondering what Hugh would be giving her that evening. During Roberta's years with Doe, Mitzi had given her plenty of presents, birthday gifts, and Christmas packages, always carefully chosen and often handmade: a hand-knitted sweater Mitzi claimed matched Roberta's eyes, a set of framed photographs of Doe as a baby (Doe had taken those with her when she left, but perhaps it was just as well), a cross-stitched sampler of a bluejay, now hanging in the kitchen, that Mitzi had made after Roberta talked about the jay who'd lived in her backyard when her parents were still alive. Other gifts had gotten lost, broken, misplaced: shattered clay bowls, earrings to which one mate had vanished, houseplants felled by Roberta's black thumb. Still, Roberta couldn't imagine what Hugh could give her that would mean more than the few things she still had.

    He showed up promptly at seven, bearing a small black velvet box. "My goodness," Roberta said, sitting on the couch as she gingerly opened the thing. "What—oh, Hugh! This must be worth money!"

    "Probably," he agreed. "It's old. It belonged to Mitzi's grandmother. I don't know how good the stones are, though."

    Rubies and diamonds. Dumbfounded, Roberta blinked at the gold and red and rainbow-dazzled ring that lay against the black. "I—how can you—Hugh, it's beautiful, I love it, but it's an heirloom and I'm not part of the family anymore."

    "Mitzi wanted you to have it," Hugh said wearily. "She was going to give it to you for—when you and Doe had been together five years, but—"

    "We didn't quite get there."

    "No. And Mitzi was very sad about that and so am I, and really, there's nothing else I can honorably say on that subject, so I'm going to drop it. But Mitzi wanted you to have the ring, anyway, Berta. I know she did. She mentioned it a few weeks before she got sick. She was going to call you in a month or so, when maybe things had settled down, and invite you to lunch."

    "To give me the ring?" Roberta eased it out of the box. She had small hands, but even so, it only fit her pinky.

    "To have lunch with you," Hugh said, smiling. "Knowing Mitzi, she'd have saved the ring for your birthday or Christmas, probably with regular lunches in between. She stayed friends with Doe's first college girlfriend and both of Tracy's ex-husbands: you know Mitzi. Anyway, there's a story that goes with the ring."

    "Of course there is," Roberta said, and then, "Are there presents for all the others too? Are you trotting all over the country this week, delivering baubles to the kids' ex-lovers?"

    "No. If she had anything picked out for the others, I didn't know about it, for which I'm frankly grateful. Not that I'm not glad to see you—it's a hard errand, is all." He stopped, sighed, and then said, "I won't be able to tell the story as well as Mitzi would."