by Dale Mayer
“Do you need an assistant?”
“If I reduce a lot of my overseas visits and attending rallies and being a speaker,” she said, “I would need much less help.”
“And would that bother her?” Keane asked.
She looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Well, maybe you should though,” he said in exasperation. “What you’re saying now is that you’re contemplating removing this person’s way of making a living.”
She stared at him. “So now I have to be responsible for her life too?”
Keane shrugged. “No, but, if you had her only for six months, and she’s looking at this as more of a long-term gig, she won’t be impressed if, all of a sudden, she’s out of a job.”
Charlotte sat here with her arms crossed but her fingers moving, as if playing the piano on her arms. “I don’t like the sound of that,” she announced.
“Which is why a lot of people hire part-time or online assistance,” Keane said. “If you only need them for ten hours a week, then that’s what you pay them for.”
She glanced at him in surprise. “I hadn’t really thought about hiring anybody online before, but I can see the advantages.”
“In this case, Maggie’s personally in your face and in your home. It could be hard for her to withdraw.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t quite understand why though,” she said. “We’re just employee and employer.”
“I thought you were friends,” Keane said quietly. As she turned to look at him, Nico watched the two of them interact. Keane’s gaze was intent, as if searching for something. Nico had a lot of respect for Keane’s assessment of human behavior and personalities.
She looked completely bewildered at the concept. “Of course we’re friendly,” she said. “But I wouldn’t count her as one of my friends. She’s my assistant.”
Keane’s lips quirked. “I wonder how she would describe the way the two of you were.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She pulled out her phone and then said, “I’m supposed to check in with her.”
“How about you don’t just yet,” Nico said, reaching for her phone.
She stared at him. “Why not?”
“Because she’s likely to say something to somebody else,” he said. “And, so far, we want to keep your presence at home a secret.”
“I don’t like keeping secrets.”
“I know,” he said. “But there are times when it’s very important that we do keep things quiet. This is one of them.”
She put her phone down on the table, hopped up, and paced about the kitchen. “This is back to you thinking that Maggie might be involved.”
“No,” Nico said, “it’s back to keeping things close to our chest, so we don’t confuse the issue with lots of other people knowing stuff when they don’t need to know just yet. Let’s clear all these people and see if we can come up with other suspects. Because the bottom line is, you were still kidnapped, and two of your kidnappers are dead, and one’s in custody, and bugs were found in your house. What we don’t know is how long they’ve been here.”
Keane raised his head and looked over at Nico. “Good point,” he said. He turned toward Charlotte. “When was the last time you were gone from the house?”
At that point, she was at the far end of the kitchen by the coffeepot. She spun and stormed back toward them. “I go out for coffee a lot. Sometimes I take my laptop and work in the coffee shop.”
“They wouldn’t need more than an hour or two to install these, so even that could have been enough of a window for them to have completed this job. But, just in case, when was the last time you left overnight?” Keane asked.
“At least six months ago,” she said. “But that would be even worse because it would mean that the bugs were here all this time.”
“And what was the start date for when Maggie worked with you and when was the first day that Vanessa worked with you?” Nico hesitated, then added, “And the last day she worked with you.”
Charlotte took a slow deep breath and walked over, then picked up a laptop that she had in a fancy huge wardrobe-type cupboard and brought it back to the table where she sat down and opened it. “I did hire my newest assistant, I think within about three weeks of the previous one not showing up again.”
“And so, in the meantime, you did all the work yourself?”
“In the meantime, I did none of it,” she said simply. “I just let it build up. And that’s when I realized I couldn’t continue without an assistant.”
“And did Maggie start working from your home?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Only over time has she been slowly taking some of the work back to her place.”
“Do you pay her full-time?”
She nodded. “But I’m not sure I need full-time. That’s a discussion I’ll have to have with her.”
“Did you make that as a potential down the road when you first hired her?” Keane asked.
She looked up and frowned at him. “Do you really think that she would have had me kidnapped to stop me from reducing her wages?”
“Put that way, it sounds pretty foolish,” he said. “But I’m trying to get an idea of what makes her tick. Maybe she wants part-time, and maybe full-time was too much for her. I don’t know.”
She groaned and sagged back. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be bitchy. I’m just … This whole thing is particularly unnerving.”
“And that’s why I wondered if you needed to have a nap,” Nico repeated.
“I slept so much on the flights that now I’m just feeling frustrated.” At that, she hopped up and filled three coffee cups for the three of them. When she brought them back, Keane looked at the cup in her hand and said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be having any. You’re already very jittery.”
She gave him a flat stare which let both of them know that anybody who tried to take away her coffee from her would pay for it.
Nico really liked that spirit and spunk. He hadn’t seen enough of it, but now that she was back home again, and they were trying to solve this problem, he quite enjoyed seeing that part of her personality show up.
Chapter 9
The coffee was more of a prop than a necessary stimulant because, right now, Charlotte’s body was buzzing. Irritation was the primal reason. She hated all the references to Maggie being involved. But, as Charlotte sat here, being honest with herself, she was considering whether, in any way, Maggie could be involved or not. What did Charlotte really know about the woman? Then Nico started asking similar questions to what had already been in her mind.
“Is she married?”
She shook her head.
“Siblings?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Children?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyebrows rose at that. “How long has she been here in town?”
She glared at him. “I don’t know, several years at least.”
He settled back.
She didn’t need him to say anything to realize that basically she didn’t know anything about Maggie. “It’s still early in the investigation,” she announced. “Why not turn your attention to somebody else?”
“Why?” Keane asked under his breath. “This one looks really good.”
She glared at him.
He gave her a half a smile and said, “We have to be realistic here. Essentially you don’t know very much about this woman.”
She sank back into her chair and shook her head. “I thought I did.”
“And what would you think that you know?” Nico asked.
“She’s caring. She’s efficient. She’s punctual, and she does the job I need her to do.” She frowned as she tried to think about her. “She’s pleasant and easy to talk to. I don’t know. She has more of a grandmotherly look, and I find her somebody easy to have around.” Even she could tell that those were completely inane reasons. “Look. I’m not very much into business mode
apparently, and I’m doing so much less on the activism front now, and this last trip was proof that I don’t want to do any more traveling either. So obviously I’ll need a whole lot less of an assistant than I had before.” She frowned at that. “Maggie probably only does about half-a-day’s job for me anyway.”
“And yet you are paying her full-time?”
She thought about it and said, “Yes, I guess I am. And that needs to stop too.” She hopped to her feet and paced again. “I think I felt sorry for her.”
“Uh-huh,” Nico said. “That works for a lot of people.”
“What? Feeling sorry for somebody? She’s done a good job since I’ve had her here. It’s not like I’ve regretted hiring her. But I don’t need anybody for as much work anymore. A few weeks ago I decided I only wanted somebody in the house half time, so she was taking work back home again.”
“But what kind of work?”
“Contacting other activists, dealing with all the emails, dealing with the publications and the government crap that seems to never end,” she said. “But, if I go to just writing, then I can get rid of all that in my life. … And it’s a huge headache honestly.”
“But you have a huge following for your activism.”
“Sure,” she said. “But it’s not me, it’s the whole group. If I were to step out, there wouldn’t be an issue.”
“Whole group?”
She looked from one to the other, as they both stared at her in confusion. “Well, it’s not just me who goes and does all this. There’s a group of us. The GA group.” They immediately wrote this down. “It stands for Global Awareness,” she said. “Four of us are leaders. We had to replace two others, our right-hand guys essentially, and I guess I’ll be the third. But others are stepping into our places.”
“The names, please.”
She quickly gave him the names of the main players. “There’s Steve Darwin, although he’s backed out for health reasons. There’s Hank Mullins and Midge. Midge—” She hesitated. “Midge Hennessy, I think.”
“And you’re the fourth?”
“Yes.” Then she leaned forward and tapped the pad of paper. “And the two new ones are Michael Ruse, and I believe her name is Kat Simcoe. They replaced John and Sue. John Edwards and Sue … Carlson.” Again, with those names written down, she nodded and said, “So, if I step back, it’s really not a big deal.”
“So, when you say you have all this work that you’ve hired an assistant for, it’s mostly work for the GA group?”
She nodded. “I do a lot of the secretarial work for the group.”
“But you had hired this person, not the group?”
She frowned and nodded. “Yes. I did that to make my work easier so I could write. But it’s not enough,” she cried out in frustration. “I still don’t get enough time to write.”
“So who would take over the secretarial work if you step out of the picture?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “It’s really not my issue. I can hand it over to whomever is willing to take it over.”
“But then your assistant won’t have a job at all, right?”
“Probably not.” She dropped her face into her hands. “Honestly, I didn’t even think about this when I hired her. I was trying to replace my assistant. A big stack of work had built up. I wasn’t even thinking down the road, but, after these last few days, I don’t want to be doing this anymore. And that means I’m stepping back,” she said firmly. “That decision is now made, and that means I have to let go of my assistant sometime in the next little while, but first I need to hand over the paperwork jobs to the new secretary.”
“Who hasn’t been picked yet, correct?”
She nodded. “That person hasn’t been chosen because nobody knows that I’m stepping back.”
“Most would say it’s understandable after what you’ve been through.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But they’re all fairly fanatical. I wasn’t really even thinking about stepping back, but I noticed that I had been distancing myself a lot in the last six months to a year. Handing off a lot of stuff to my assistant, happy to pay somebody else to deal with it. It hasn’t changed my beliefs at all, but one can keep doing only so much on this before it impacts the rest of your world, and I really, really want to get back to writing. Like I said, I think I can do a much better job reaching a wider audience through my books.”
“Okay,” Nico said. “How many of these people have been in your house?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Well, none of them,” she said. “Or they’d have been on that other list.”
“So have you met any of these other people in the group?”
She nodded. “Oh, absolutely. Lots of them. But all at events. I feel like I haven’t explained this very clearly to you.” And even that seemed to come out more garbled than she was expecting. “I must be more tired than I thought.”
“I’ll put it down to tiredness,” Nico said. “And maybe, instead of that coffee, you should go lie down.”
She stared at him, but even her eyes were starting to blur. “I’ll lie down on the couch,” she said. “Just have a nap and see if I can hit refresh on my brain.”
“That sounds like a good idea. We’ll keep working on the names you gave us.”
She nodded, stood, picked up her coffee, and went into her living room. Her house had an open layout concept, and the change in flooring showed where the living room was. She had a gas fireplace and two couches on either side with a coffee table in the middle. She placed her cup down and snagged one of the folded blankets over the back of the couch and stretched out there. Then she pulled on the blanket and tucked it up to her chin. She closed her eyes and tried to rest.
She’d been with this GA group for a good eight years or so. She couldn’t see any of those members having anything to do with this mess in her life. But no doubt somebody had arranged or screwed up the booking in Australia. It didn’t make any sense though to send her over there to get kidnapped when she could just as easily have been kidnapped here.
“So why not here?” she muttered to herself.
“Are you talking to us?” Nico asked. “I thought you would be asleep.”
“I’m trying to,” she said. “But it makes no sense for anybody in the GA group that I’m involved with to send me to Sydney to get kidnapped. It would be much easier to attack me here.”
At that, he lifted his head, looked at her, and said, “Good point. So did you have any contacts in Sydney? Did you have anybody over there particularly who would be trying to get a hold of you? To get revenge on you or something like that?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know why. I hardly know anybody in Sydney.” It was hard to keep the bewilderment out of her voice because, damn it, she was surprised and shocked and horrified by all this. It made no sense. “I wonder if laws are more lax over there?” she asked.
“Depends on which ones you’re talking about,” Nico said. “Or was it just a case of it was easier because it wasn’t in the States. Maybe somebody couldn’t get here to get at you.”
“What about the four somebodies?” she asked with a yawn. “When you think about it, two men lost their lives, and one lost his freedom over there, and one’s still alive and all for what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what we’re still working on.”
“Back to that whole family thing again,” Keane said. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about your brother?”
“Nothing since grade four,” she said, her eyes falling shut. “But feel free if you get some information to fill me in.”
“Will do,” he said.
She was just about to doze off when her eyes opened wide. “That’s several times you’ve mentioned him. What do you know about my brother?” She sat up, the blanket falling off to the side as she stared at the two men. “Do you have information that I don’t know?”
“Maybe,” Nico said. “But it’s classified.”
She
snorted at that. “Classified? Well, isn’t that a typical government response.”
He stared at her. “That’s your prejudice showing.”
“Prejudice?”
“Antigovernment beliefs.”
At that, she stormed to her feet and asked, “Do you have any idea how little they care about the environment? How little they care about the indigenous people?”
“I’m not getting into that,” Nico said. “I’m trying to tell you that you need to be a little bit more open-minded in this case.”
She frowned at that. “Is my brother alive?” she demanded.
The two men exchanged looks.
She walked toward the men in the kitchen and then slammed her hands down on the table and glared at them. “Answer me, damn it.”
Nico seemed to make a decision, then he nodded. “We believe so.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said. “So you know just as much as I do, which means we believe he’s alive, considering he was alive when I saw him in grade four.”
“Yes,” he said, “but I can’t tell you very much.”
“Why not?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because I don’t know very much,” he said.
“Well, I want somebody here who does know something,” she snapped. “This is just too ridiculous.”
Nico agreed with her. The fact of the matter was, there was no reason that she shouldn’t have access to her brother. Sure, her brother might be in some top secret world, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least communicate and let his sister know he was alive. Nico had mentioned this once more in his chat window, and it came back with a question mark. Time to remind them again. Is it wrong for a phone call at least or have him just show up at her door?
We’ll see.
“Even if he is alive,” she said, turning to face him, “that wouldn’t have anything to do with this nightmare.” At the odd silence again, she frowned and said, “I feel like we have a great big chasm between us, and all the information I need is floating down at the bottom.”
Nico looked at her unhelpfully. “Our hands are tied too,” he said.