SIXTEEN

Twenty-four hours turned into seventy-two before the cops let Abby back in her house. When she got there, she remembered Sanfillipo’s words about its condition. Still she was not prepared for what she saw. From first impressions it was beyond repair. She wandered with Morgan aimlessly for nearly an hour, from room to room, trying to figure where to start.

The police were still looking for Joey. Abby knew he was on the run. When he sobered and realized what he’d done, no doubt panic set in and he took off.

The police had left their yellow tape up outside around the trees as a courtesy, a barrier against the curious. Still, a few neighbors, people Abby recognized, could be seen jaywalking in front of her house, purposeless strolls, looking as they passed at the place where the woman had been killed. Within an hour, Abby knew she could no longer stay there.

In the afternoon, a man she’d hired came by to board up two windows at the back of the house. Joey had smashed them out of their frame. The police might not have found his prints, but to Abby, Joey’s fingers were on every article in her house. His odor fouled the place. She had never been an advocate of the death penalty, but in Joey’s case she would make an exception. Lethal injection was too humane.

She could hear the workman pounding nails into plywood, sealing out the weather from her bedroom. It was raining again, somber light to add to her melancholy mood.

Late in the morning, Morgan had to return to the office. Now she was alone in the house. The workman finished. Abby busied herself straightening up, packing her possessions into cardboard boxes, whatever she could salvage. The rest went into large plastic trash bags, which Abby stacked at the curb until she had a sizeable pile.

Morgan found her phone. The cops had taken her message machine to copy its tape and returned it. Morgan put the phone back on the kitchen countertop and hooked the machine up so that it worked again.

Abby hadn’t been near the office since returning from New York, though she had called once to collect messages. There were none. This troubled her. She was told that one of the younger associates had been assigned to handle her workload for the time being. Abby saw Morgan’s hand in this, easing her load while she dealt with Theresa’s death. It was like him.

She was just about finished straightening in the kitchen when she noticed that the message light was flashing on her machine. She stopped and pushed the button. The first two were hang-ups. There was a message from Carla. It was more than a week old. She assumed it had been left on her machine before her house was vandalized. The final message was left by Lewis Cutler’s secretary. The firm’s managing partner wanted to talk to her. Abby called the office. Cutler’s secretary answered.

“Hello, Marcia.”

“Abby.” The woman sounded startled when she recognized the voice. “How are you?”

“You sound surprised,” said Abby.

“It’s just that I didn’t expect to be hearing from you. With all that’s happened, I mean. How are you doing?”

“Cleaning up.”

“I heard about it. Your friend,” she said. “Terrible. Terrible. If there’s anything I can do?”

“There’s not much anyone can do at this point,” she said.

“I suppose not.”

“Reason I was calling, I was going through my messages and found yours from Mr. Cutler.”

There was silence at the other end. Abby thought Marcia was having trouble remembering.

“Something about his wanting to see me.”

“Oh, that.” There was another long pause. “Let me see if he’s in. What he wants to do,” she said. Then the line went dead while Abby was put on hold. She listened to elevator music piped over the phone while she tapped her fingers on the wall next to it and looked at her watch. It was taking longer than Marcia needed to find her boss, unless he’d disappeared. There were no chairs left to sit on in the kitchen so Abby stood, looking down the hall into the bedroom over the top of her mattress cut to its springs by a knife. Idle thoughts for an idle mind. Why, if Joey had a knife, had he taken the time to fashion an accident in the basement? She thought for a moment, then dismissed it. Who in their right mind would try to analyze Joey? On his best day he was psychotic. It was something for the police to consider. They probably already had.

Her gaze down the long hall wandered toward the corner of her bedroom, now looking nearly normal. The small folding table that was her altar of work, the place where she wrote, rested upright again under the window covered by plywood. Abby had even managed to salvage a few of her reference books, a dictionary and thesaurus. But she still hadn’t found her typewriter, the old manual. Morgan had scoured the basement looking for it. She wondered why Joey would take a typewriter.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Marcia was back on the line.

“Cleaning up,” said Abby.

“Were you planning on coming by the office?”

“I wasn’t, but I can. What’s it about?”

“Mr. Cutler would like to talk to you.”

“What time?”

“About two o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

The offices of Starl, Hobbs & Carlton were subdued, a mirror image of Abby’s own mood at the moment. She was the author of a book worth millions, but Theresa’s murder had thrown a cloud over her life. New York and the meeting with Carla Owens seemed like something from another age.

In the confusion after the murder she had never had time to talk with Morgan about Jack and her problems with the book. It would have to wait until things calmed. She wondered if things would ever be the same again. Abby was beginning to regret that she had ever written the book. Most of all she rued the day she’d hatched the scheme to use a male pen name and supply it with a human face.

Today Abby had dressed the part for her meeting with Cutler. She wore the same gray wool business suit she had taken with her on her trip to New York and matching heels. It was the extent of her work wardrobe after Joey had dumped all of her clothes on the closet floor and poured bleach and vinegar on them.

She wandered down the long corridor toward her office. A few heads came up, eyes of sympathy acknowledging her presence. Still no one came out to say a word. It was like she had the plague. Violent death does strange things to people.

She didn’t realize until she’d already passed the little cubicle outside her office that Marla, the paralegal who doubled as her secretary, was not at her desk. She was hoping she could pick up the loose ends of her business life starting with the messages and notes from her assistant.

She flipped on the overhead light and walked into her office. She had left papers and files on her desk when she went to New York. Her in-basket was full. Now it was empty, and the top to the desk dusted and clean.

She wandered out to Marla’s station expecting to find everything there. She didn’t. Marla’s desk was cleaner than her own. The carousel with phone messages rested on the counter above Marla’s desk. There was only a single small white envelope in Abby’s slot on the carousel, marked personal. She opened it. Inside was a pink telephone slip: “Call me at this number. It’s important.”

It was from Jack Jermaine, dated two days earlier. More troubling was the fact that the return telephone number bore a 206 area code. Jack was in Seattle. Now he was shadowing her, intruding further into her life. She would call him alright, and give him a piece of her mind. She looked at her watch. One forty-five. No time like the present. She went into her office, closed the door, and dialed.

What she got was the operator at the Four Seasons, one of the swank downtown hotels. One thing was clear: Jack didn’t stint when it came to money. She wondered if it was her own he was spending, perhaps part of an advance wheedled out of Carla.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Jack Jermaine. I believe he’s a guest.”

“One moment, please. I’ll put you through.”

Jack picked it up halfway through the second ring.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing here?” Abby didn’t bother with preliminaries.

“I read about your friend. Saw it in the paper, your name in the story. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Abby didn’t want to talk about Theresa’s death. Not with Jack. She was angry. He’d followed her to the coast. “I asked you what you’re doing here.”

“This is probably a bad time, but we gotta talk,” said Jack.

“What’s so pressing that you had to come out?”

“Things have changed,” he told her.

“How’s that?”

“We have work to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the sequel. Carla called me the night you left New York. Put on the full-court press. She wanted to talk about the next book in the series.”

“What series?”

“Seems they’re assuming I’m going to write a series, using the same characters.”

“Who led them to that assumption?”

“I thought you did,” said Jack.

“It wasn’t me.”

“Well, it wasn’t me. Anyway, they’re looking at a replay,” said Jack.

Carla and Bertoli were at it. Abby had smelled it in their first meeting. One or both were control freaks. If she had to guess, it was Owens. Before they were finished, they would be rejecting story lines and dictating their own plots, turning her into a ghost writer, using Jack’s name and face.

“Well, call her back and tell her you won’t do it.”

“What reason do I give?”

“I don’t know. Artistic. Tell her you never intended to do a series. It cheapens the message.”

“This book contains a message? I must have missed it,” said Jack.

“Never mind. Just tell her you won’t do it.”

“Before I do, you better listen to the rest of it.”

“Rest of what?”

“Got your calculator?”

“Why?”

“They’re talking doubling the deal on the second book.”

“What do you mean?”

“As in six million just for book rights.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No, I’m not. We would still hold the film stuff and all the foreign rights. Maybe get another six for those.”

“We?” said Abby.

“Fine. You. But they want to hear from me with an answer as soon as possible. Carla won’t let me sleep. She’s called me three times in the last twenty-four hours. Once in the middle of the night. The woman’s manic. Gotta give Alex an answer, she says. He won’t wait forever. She says we need to do this in order to set the hook.”

“Bertoli’s a eunuch,” said Abby. “The only hook we have to worry about is the one Carla’s trying to put through your nose. He’ll do whatever she tells him.”

“My take, too,” said Jack. “Why I didn’t worry too much about getting back to her.”

“We haven’t even published a book and they want more of the same, with the same characters. They call it publishing. They’re creating swill,” said Abby.

“Question is do we want to belly up to the trough?” said Jack. It was an open line. He was waiting for an answer.

“Tell them to wait.” Abby thought for a moment. Where was Morgan when she needed him?

“Why don’t I come down there and we’ll talk.” Jack wanted to go for the deal. Abby could smell it. But he didn’t have to write the book.

“No. Just stay where you are.”

“We need to talk,” he said. “I’ll come by there.”

“No.” Abby couldn’t tell if he’d heard her or not, because Jack had already hung up.

It was a strange feeling, like winning the lottery. Suddenly, if Carla was right, there was a six-million-dollar payday just waiting to be collected, and another one in the offing. For the first time since traveling to New York, the thought actually settled on Abby: She did not have to practice law any longer. She could do whatever she wanted. There was no question she hated her job, but it was an anchor to the normal world, where real people lived. Abby didn’t like to think of herself as rich. She had never been there, done those things. She came from working-class parents. Her father was a warehouse foreman. Somehow the thought of being rich ripped her from her roots.

In every way commercial publishing was a game of chance; the right book at the right time with the right publisher and the right budget. Writing a novel was like pulling the handle on a slot machine. If you were lucky enough to line everything up at one time, you won. If not, you went to work on the next book.

Abby had seen them on TV, winners being handed checks the size of billboards, all uttering the same mantra—”It won’t change our lives. We’ll continue to work, cuz we love our jobs.” A week later they would disappear like dust, off to the south of France. No one would hear from them again. The insidious thing that money did.

Lewis Cutler’s office was a showplace, the kind of digs designed to make a statement. In Cutler’s case, the message was “I got the power.”

When Abby arrived at the secretary’s station outside, there was no small talk. Instead she was ushered in immediately. It was the first time she didn’t have to wait.

Cutler sat behind the desk in a cushioned high-back leather chair, hunched over a pile of papers.

“Come in. Sit down.” He motioned Abby toward one of the client chairs without looking up. “With you in a minute.” Still not looking at her.

He ignored her for several more seconds while he issued instructions to Marcia, handing her some papers he had finished. She turned to go.

“Take the stuff in the basket, too.”

Marcia came back, and as she reached over to grab the stuff in the out-basket her eyes drifted toward Abby sitting in the chair. It was Abby’s first glimmer that something was wrong; a look that you would give only to the terminally ill.

Marcia left the room, and Cutler put his pen down.

“You’ve been away for several days.”

“Personal leave,” said Abby.

“Personal business, as I understand it.” He made it sound like an accusation, like anyone in the firm with a personal life had to apologize.

“I heard about your friend. I’m sorry. Have they figured out what happened?”

“Not yet.” It was not something Abby wanted to discuss with Cutler. “They’re still investigating.” She left it at that. She guessed that if Cutler had concerns about this it was limited to the possible fallout on the firm. Two women living together, one of them found dead, could be a matter of cruel speculation among the small-minded in Cutler’s circle.

“It makes what I have to do particularly painful,” he said.

Abby raised an eyebrow.

“As you know, there have been a lot of changes in the firm over the past several months. What you might call a restructuring.” The use of the code word was abrupt, just like that, no preliminaries. It caught Abby flat-footed and sent her into an adrenaline rush.

“We’ve had to do some downsizing,” said Cutler.

“I hadn’t heard.”

“That’s because you’ve been away. Much of it was announced last week.”

“Announced?”

“Layoffs,” said Cutler. “Fourteen positions.”

“I didn’t know. Am I . . .?”

He nodded.

It wasn’t that she cared about the job as much as the message that it seemed to convey; that she wasn’t good enough for them.

“You’re not alone.” This was supposed to make it easier.

“I understand.” She caught herself saying it even though she didn’t know why.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

In fact he didn’t have a clue. Abby sat in the chair with a smile on her face. Cutler figured shock. Abby was thinking that if he’d waited two more days he probably could have had her resignation without asking.

“You’re thinking why you?” said Cutler. “There’s nothing personal in it. It’s just that you hold one of the positions affected by the restructuring.”

He was prepared to respond to questions she didn’t even ask. Cutler no doubt had taken a course on how to do this.

“I want you to know that before we made the decision we looked at all the possible alternatives. I’m sorry to say that there’s no possibility of part-time work in the firm. We’ve already considered that and it just doesn’t fit into our plans. Nor is there a chance for some form of reduction.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“Reduced pay,” he said.

Abby started to open her mouth to tell him that she wouldn’t consider it. Cutler anticipated. “Nor can we delay the decision,” he said.

She hadn’t asked for a thing. In fact, she was enjoying his discomfort, wondering why he was running off at the mouth.

“May I ask how the firm is restructuring?” said Abby.

“That’s confidential, at least at the moment. It would be easier,” he said, “if you were to tender your resignation.”

Now she raised an eyebrow. “Easier on who?” She knew where he was headed, cutting her off from unemployment benefits. If she quit, she wouldn’t get them. This would help the firm’s bottom line.

“It would look better on a résumé,” he said. “We’d be prepared to offer you a letter of recommendation.”

“Are you saying that if I don’t resign you don’t give me one?”

“That’s not what I said.”

Abby felt a rush, thought for a second. He was talking to the six-million-dollar woman and the prick didn’t have a clue. She wasn’t about to tell him. She thought for a moment, looked at him, and said: “Why not?” Just like that she’d quit.

Cutler looked up from his desk, an expression like he’d missed something. No one went this easily.

She wondered what the partners would do with her pay. No doubt divvy it up into bonuses for themselves.

“I’d like to say good-bye to Marla.”

Ah, finally there was something he could deny her. “That’s not possible.” Now he felt more in charge.

“Why not?”

“Ms. Evans resigned last week.” He said it almost with a smile.

Marla Evans had two kids and a mortgage. Without notice, without any warning, they’d waited until Abby was out of town and fired her. She wondered why Morgan hadn’t told her. Then it hit her. Maybe he was on the hit list as well. But how could they fire a partner?

“I’d like to say good-bye to Mr. Spencer.”

“Not on the premises,” said Cutler. “Now that the decision has been made, we’d prefer that you clean out your desk and be out of the office quickly. Say an hour.” It was one of the rules fashioned by the canning consultants. You didn’t want the cannee hanging around the watercooler poisoning the labor pool.

“We can provide assistance if you need it,” he said.

Abby looked at him.

“To clean out your desk.” It was almost as if he was trying to provoke an argument, searching for a normal reaction, some anger. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“That won’t be necessary.” Instead she offered a smile. “And I want to thank you.”

He hesitated but couldn’t resist. “What for?”

“For being such an asshole. It always makes it easier.” She got up and headed for the door. There was no apology. No “sorry this had to happen,” no justification or cause. Just “clean out your desk and disappear in an hour.” Modern American business etiquette.

He had done this three times in the last two days, and in each instance Cutler had returned to the papers on his desk before the person he sacked made it to the door. With Abby he watched her go, until the door closed behind her, wondering if perhaps she might have gone around the bend, and whether she might be coming back with a gun.

On the way out she passed Marcia’s desk.

“Oh.” The secretary looked up. “I have to ask you for your keys to the office.”

Abby reached in her purse and pulled out her keys. She broke a nail sliding them off the ring. She was angrier than she looked. She dropped the two keys on the secretary’s desk.

“And your parking pass?”

“That I paid for through the end of the month,” said Abby. “I think I’ll keep it until then.”

Marcia looked at Cutler’s door as if she didn’t quite know how she would break this to him.

“Tell him to sue me,” said Abby, When she turned, there was a uniformed security guard standing in front of her.

“What do you want?”

“He’s supposed to stay with you until you’re finished. Then escort you from the building,” said Marcia.

“Is that really necessary?”

“It’s the procedure,” said Marcia.

Now she knew why no one would make eye contact when she showed up in the office. It had nothing to do with Theresa’s murder. It had to do with another killing, the one Cutler had just performed in his office.

It was like a parade of humiliation down the hall, Abby and the security guard, the hardware on his belt squeaking and jingling like some jailer. Every eye in the office came up for a glance as she passed by the phalanx of open doors down the long corridor. She wanted to scream “I’m worth six million dollars” but couldn’t even whisper it. By the time she reached her own office, Abby felt like the scarlet woman. She had difficulty restraining herself when she saw him sitting behind her desk with his feet propped up.

“Are you comfortable?”

Jack looked at her and immediately removed his feet. “You look awful.”

“Thanks.”

He uncoupled his hands from behind the back of his neck and got out of the chair. “Who’s he?” He pointed to the security guard.

“Didn’t get your name,” said Abby.

“Harold,” said the guard.

“Harold, meet Jack. The two men in my life.”

“How you doin’?” said Jack.

The guard actually waved, not exactly certain what he should be doing.

Abby could not remember a moment when she’d felt so low.

“Your timing, as always, is impeccable,” she told Jack.

“Why’s that?”

“I really don’t feel like company right now.”

“I understand. But I thought we could talk.”

“Not just now.” Abby started going through the drawers of her credenza, taking things out and stacking them on top of her desk. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically, at the end of her string. Jack sensed it, rolled the chair her way, and Abby slumped, almost falling into it.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she told him.

“You want some water?” Jack looked at the guard. “Get her some water.”

Harold hesitated but only for a second.

“Now.” It was the thing about dominance. Harold disappeared down the hall.

“What’s wrong?”

“What isn’t,” said Abby. “My best friend’s been killed. I’ve just been fired. A security guard is standing over my desk while I clean it out. And when I come back to my office you’re sitting in my chair with your feet on the desk.”

“One out of four ain’t bad,” said Jack.

Even in her present mood, she smiled. “Don’t you ever take no for an answer?”

“No.”

“Maybe I should have Harold throw you out.”

“Let’s see if he can find the watercooler first.” He fanned her with some paper from one of the drawers.

“Do the cops know what happened to your friend?”

“Theresa?”

Jack nodded.

“They’re not sure. Still looking into it. You never told me what you’re doing here,” she said.

“What I said on the phone. They want another book.”

“No. I mean what are you doing in Seattle?”

“Bringing you the news.”

“You could have done that on the phone. In fact, you did.”

“I thought it would be better if we worked out the details in person. Don’t want to mess anything up,” said Jack.

“God forbid,” said Abby.

He eased her back in the chair until she was reclining, then spun it around so that her back was to him. Then he began to slowly rub her shoulders and the nape of her neck.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Keeping up appearances. You never know when Carla might have somebody watching,” said Jack.

It wasn’t lost on Abby that he’d never answered her question: what he was doing in Seattle.

“Right. And who would be watching us?”

“How the hell do I know? Want me to stop?”

“No.” His hands on the back of her neck melted the tension in her spine like snow on a hot day.

“By the way, how did you get in here?” Abby looked up at him, an inverted image overhead.

“Nobody out front. I let myself in.”

“Just like that?”

He nodded.

“But there’s an electronic lock on the door.”

“And a button on the secretary’s desk,” said Jack. “Laid a book on it. Does the trick.”

“You really don’t take no for an answer, do you?”

Harold was back with the water. Jack used a little on Abby’s forehead. She sipped the rest from a paper cup.

“Got any boxes?” He turned to Harold.

“Some out by the stairs,” said the guard.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get ’em.”

The guard was wondering if this was in his job description. Jack shot him a look and Harold disappeared down the hall one more time. He was back a minute later with two boxes.

It took Jack ten minutes to empty the drawers of Abby’s desk and credenza, and a couple more to load her books and a sweater off the coat tree in the corner. He taped the tops of the boxes closed and handed one to Harold. “Here, make yourself useful.”

The guard found himself stooped over with the weight of the box. The bottom rested on his can of pepper spray in its holster on his two-hundred-dollar webbed belt. Just when he figured Jack was going to carry the other box, Jack picked it up and slid it on top of the first one, wedging it under Harold’s chin. Then he turned to Abby. “Ready to go?”

“That’s mine, too.” She pointed to the coat tree.

“No problem.” Jack picked it up, slipped it under the crook of Harold’s arm, pushing the guard’s elbow down like a clamp to hold it in place. “There. How’s that?”

Harold couldn’t talk. His chin was jammed with boxes and if he moved his arm the coat tree would fall out.

“Gotta be careful of that,” said Jack. He tapped the can of pepper spray hanging on Harold’s belt. “Move too quickly, it could go off. That stuff’ll burn the pupils right out of your eyes.”

Jack took Abby by the arm and they headed out the door, followed by Harold, the thirty-eight-caliber bellboy.

Out front, Jack opened the door from the inside. The two women were back at reception. They looked at the strange entourage. Harold in uniform with boxes. Jack opened the outer door for him.

“It’s the white Ford, up front. Third floor parking garage.” He would have stuck his keys in Harold’s mouth, but the guy would have broken a tooth, he was that angry.

“Ladies.” Jack gave them a casual salute.

They looked at Abby as if they’d never seen her in quite this same light before.

They couldn’t take their eyes off of Jack, his steely blue gaze and bullshit grin, like where in the world did she get him?