by John Lutz
Jody stayed very still, trying to tune in. Hearing but not comprehending. Sometimes catching phrases she wanted to hear.
The voice that definitely wasn’t Enders’s did say clearly, “She has a cat, right?”
Enders said something about the cat keeping her spirit up. The “her” might well be Mildred Dash.
“It’s keeping her building up, too,” the other voice said.
“What if-”
“Lose something?” Dollie the receptionist asked Jody. She’d approached Jody unheard.
“I might have.” Jody shuffled through the papers faster, the transcript of a boring deposition in an illegal corporate takeover case. “I need to make a copy of this.” She held out the sheaf of papers. “You do that while I go back to my desk and see if I forgot or dropped one.”
Dollie wasn’t quite sure if an intern outranked a receptionist, but she couldn’t take a chance. Her expression made obvious what she thought about Jody giving her instructions. That was fine with Jody. Dollie’s irritation was what Dollie would remember most about their encounter in the hall near Enders’s office door.
Dollie visibly fumed for a few seconds, then snatched the papers from Jody’s hand and strode away in the direction of the copy machine.
Jody returned to her desk, in what was more a cubicle than an office. From where she sat she had a glimpse of the hall, but when Enders’s visitor left she caught only a brief look at him from the back. He was average height if a little on the short side. Slender but fit. His body contained strength. In the few seconds that she saw him, Jody thought his walk was vaguely familiar. She thought, but couldn’t imagine who the man might be. Someone with Meeding Properties? More likely, someone who couldn’t be traced to Meeding Properties. Or to Enders and Coil.
Jody noticed Dollie approaching with the copies and originals of the deposition transcript she’d handed her. Dollie kept her expression neutral as she laid the neatly stacked papers on Jody’s desk. “I wasn’t mad at you a few minutes ago,” she said. “It’s just that seeing you like that…”
“Like what?”
“Somebody else kind of sneaked around here like you for some reason.”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
“She’d have said that, too.”
“Who we talking about here?”
“You know… Macy Collins.”
Jody felt a tremor run through her body. “You saying Macy-”
“I’m not saying anything about anyone,” Dollie interrupted, and then turned and left the cubicle.
Which didn’t prevent Jody from finishing her sentence.
“-found something that got her killed?”
At lunch that day, Jody sat in bright sunlight at an outdoor table at a corner restaurant. She picked at her Cobb salad, mulling over the brief snatch of conversation she’d heard wafting from Enders’s office. Something beyond Mildred Dash’s cat had been mentioned-possibly. Jody had heard the muted exchange just before Dollie had approached in the hall.
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d made out the words Waycliffe College.
She’d overheard those words in an earlier conversation at the firm, but in a hushed manner, and not in any context she understood. There seemed to be some kind of need for secrecy that excluded even a future alumna like her.
Maybe, she thought, she was making a fool of herself, sneaking about eavesdropping and leafing through files. She could do the simple and obvious thing and ask Jack Enders or Joseph Coil what work the firm was doing for Waycliffe.
But she had a strong suspicion that would be a mistake. Instead she would keep studying the files that she’d copied from the firm’s computers. Most of it was stultifying legal boilerplate, but now and then a crack of light shone through.
She did know what she had to do about what she’d overheard today. Jody had something like a photographic mind and remembered Mildred Dash’s phone number from the Meeding Properties file.
She got her anonymous throwaway cell phone from her purse and pecked out the number. It was no surprise when she got no answer.
Jody knew the number had to be to a cell phone. There hadn’t been landline phone service to Dash’s apartment for weeks. That was part of the strategy of isolating her.
Jody called the number again and texted a simple message: if u have a cat don’t let it out.
When she’d replaced the phone in her purse, she finished her salad and ordered a wedge of chocolate cake.
Diet and dessert in one meal.
Fighting fat to a draw.
But she knew better.
“Ms. Culver,” Fedderman said to the head librarian, “I’m Larry Fedderman, Penny’s husband.” They’d met before, but being in the vicinity of Ms. Culver seemed to call for a measure of formality.
“Of course you are. I congratulated you after your wedding,” Ms. Culver said, from behind a formidable stack of books she was sorting. Her round rimless glasses reminded Fedderman of some kind of military equipment allowing her to see into the enemy’s mind.
“Er, yes,” Fedderman said. “I remember.”
Ms. Culver managed a smile, but it seemed forced. “Penny seems to have made a good choice.”
Fedderman was surprised. “In husbands, you mean?”
“Of course. What did you think I meant? Suits?”
“No, no,” Fedderman said, wondering if he’d just been insulted as well as complimented with one swipe. “What I wanted to talk to you about was Penny’s mood lately.”
“Must we stay in the past tense, Larry?”
“Everyone calls me Feds.”
“You wish to talk to me about Penny’s moodiness.”
“Her fear,” Fedderman said.
“She’s afraid of you?” Ms. Culver seemed to find that less than credible.
“ For me,” Fedderman said. “She fears I’m going to get shot. Or hurt some other way. You know, my job…”
“Ah, the policeman’s wife’s dilemma. I believe we might have that one in stock.”
“I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen it plenty of times in other marriages.”
“What usually happens?”
“Divorce.”
“And the alternative is?”
“Pen needs to learn to live with her fear,” Fedderman said. “To put it aside. Like all of us do about something.” He wondered what fears Ms. Culver might be putting aside, hiding behind her books.
Ms. Culver smiled. “You’ve apparently given this some thought, Larry.”
“Plenty of thought.”
“And you think everyone must learn to set aside some fear or other?”
“Sure. That’s life. There’s risk in everything, which means possible fear. We simply have to learn to live with it.”
“Or divorce it.”
“Or accept it. Like you’re going to have to do with e-books.”
A stiff smile from Ms. Culver. “I’m aware that Penny thinks I’m obsessive about e-books. But they are something to fear.”
“Something to accept.”
“Ha! Shelley and Shakespeare for ninety-nine cents!”
“But you lend them out free here.”
“We lend books. Not bits and bytes of electronic impulses, or whatever they are.”
“It’s text,” Fedderman said. “Stuff people read rather than watch like pictures.”
Ms. Culver stared at him.
“We have to embrace the future,” Fedderman said. “We’ve got no choice.”
“I accepted that you married my friend Penny.”
Fedderman thought that was an odd thing to say.
Ms. Culver adroitly adjusted her glasses, as if bringing him into sharper focus. It made Fedderman uneasy. “I think what you’re suggesting,” she said, “is that I set an example for Penny. I’ll no longer walk around in fear of e-books, and she’ll take my example and no longer walk around fearing that some night you won’t come home from work.”
“Something like that,” Fedderman said
.
“Do you think these fears are comparable?”
Fedderman shrugged. “Fear is fear.”
“Is love all the same?”
“More or less.”
Where was Ms. Culver going with this conversation? It seemed to be getting more and more obscure.
“And you’re sure you love Penny?” she asked.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
That creepy stare again. It was unnerving.
“What?” Fedderman asked.
“Nothing,” Ms. Culver said. “Just an unfinished thought. You’re right. I’ll try to set an example. We do have to learn to put our fears aside. We have to learn to do that with lots of emotions.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Ms. Culver said.
PART TWO
That a lie which is half a truth
Is ever the blackest of lies
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Grandmother”
46
“I don’t quite know what you mean by that,” Quinn said to Jody, over supper in the brownstone that evening. They were having ravioli along with a salad Pearl and Jody had spent over an hour preparing in the kitchen. Quinn mused that Jody had awakened in Pearl a domestic side that was new to him. Not that she wasn’t in other matters still the old Pearl.
Jody swallowed a bite of ravioli. “I think what they’re doing to Mildred Dash could be interpreted as illegal.”
“Interpreted?” Pearl said, taking a sip of the merlot Quinn had bought on the way home from the office.
“Mildred has a clause in her lease requiring all the tenants’ permission before the building can be razed in the event of eminent domain, and for at least six months’ notice before having to leave the property.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Pearl said. “Especially that first part.”
“Sounds illegal,” Quinn added.
“That, or we’re talking about the penumbra of the law,” Jody said with a wicked grin.
“Seems it wouldn’t hold up in court,” Pearl said.
“Of course not, but it would take a while to wend its way through the legal process. And for Meeding Properties, time is money.”
“And that’s what Mildred Dash is counting on,” Quinn said. “We understand that, but what’s her endgame?”
Jody swallowed too big a bite. She was excited. Her face was flushed and her red hair seemed to be standing on end. Quinn was enjoying this. And he couldn’t help but notice that, except for the wild and colorful hairdo, Jody sure looked like Pearl when she was argumentative.
A sip of wine, another huge gulp, and Jody was calm enough to talk. “Mildred is no fool. She’s an attorney herself. My guess is that she’s trying to stall them long enough that they’ll be losing so much money by not building, they’ll be forced to change their plans so the development doesn’t require that particular patch of ground.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Pearl said, “Meeding Properties owns that patch of ground, compliments of the city of New York.”
“But the terms of the sale specified that the leases went with the property. Mildred became a Meeding tenant on closing; Meeding is held party to the lease, and they want to evict her illegally.”
“Maybe.”
“Meeding must think so, or they would have forcibly removed her,” Jody said.
“She has a point,” Quinn said. “Mildred Dash might not have a chance in hell legally. But every day Meeding doesn’t evict her, her position grows stronger.”
“Playing for time is an accepted and even heartily endorsed legal process,” Jody said.
Quinn doubted that but said nothing.
“How are you getting all this information about the case?” Pearl asked.
Looking at Jody, Quinn tried not to smile.
“You’re snooping around where you shouldn’t be, aren’t you?” Pearl said.
“I’m monitoring the files to see if I might perceive something illegal.”
“ That is illegal, no matter how you pretty it up with obscure language. At the least it will get you fired for snooping.”
“You might call it snooping. I regard it as investigating. Something you and Quinn do.”
“You got some idea of what we do when you went with us to that homicide scene,” Pearl said. “That’s the sort of thing that justifies our snooping.”
“And illegally evicting a poor woman doesn’t?”
Quinn backed his chair away from the table and stood up.
Was he about to run out on his responsibility to help Pearl deal with Jody?
Pearl glared at him. “Where do you-”
“To smoke a-”
“Oh, no, you’re-”
“I’m only kidding, Pearl.”
Jody stood up abruptly, as if to say, I’ve had enough of this! She wiped her mouth with her napkin as if trying to remove her lips, and then stomped out of the dining room and upstairs.
Pearl started to go after her, but Quinn laid a big hand on her shoulder. “She’s only trying get out of helping with the dishes,” he said.
“She’s gonna screw up her internship, with this Mildred Dash crap,” Pearl said.
“That’s how she’ll learn to control her temper.”
Pearl gave him a look and then sat down again and took a sip of her wine. Quinn sat back down across from her.
“You haven’t figured her out very far,” Pearl said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“She wasn’t as angry as she seemed.”
“I know. She’d rather be up in her room in a snit than down here helping with the dishes.”
“That’s not what I mean. She was working us. She cares about the Mildred Dash business, but not that much. She’s using that case for an excuse to snoop at the Enders and Coil offices.”
Quinn didn’t quite follow Pearl. Not a new sensation.
“She’s wants us to know she’s onto something,” Pearl said, “but my guess is it’s bigger than some stubborn woman who might get evicted in the name of progress. What Jody was fishing for was our tacit permission to go ahead and sneak around where she’s working, and you gave it to her.”
“I did?”
“Yes. It obviously amused you that she was taking risks for some youthful empathetic reason she didn’t begin to understand. And remember you bought into that penumbra-of-the-law bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t say I bought into it.”
“Jody would. She’s on to something bigger,” Pearl said. “Believe it.”
Quinn considered what Pearl had said. For it to be true, Jody would have to be a damned good actress. And how could they know how good she was? She didn’t have a track record with them. “Maybe we should talk to her about it.”
“She wouldn’t talk. Remember, she comes already lawyered up.”
Quinn nudged half-eaten ravioli with his fork. “You should know,” he said. “You’re her mother.”
Upstairs in her room, Jody read again some of the Enders and Coil files she’d pirated from the firm’s computers. She’d broken the encryption code easily, and was now trying to make sense of what she suspected.
If it turned out to be true, what did it mean?
“You’re gonna ruin your figure with this pizza,” Jorge, the kid from Mexitaliano, warned Mildred Dash.
Jorge was nineteen and skinny enough that he’d never had to worry about eating too much pizza. The regular deliveryman when Mildred ordered food from the restaurant, Jorge had developed an obvious crush on the hermit-like Mildred, trapped as she was in her apartment.
Mildred, acutely aware that she was almost old enough to be his-my God-grandmother, kept him at a polite distance. Not that he’d have nerve enough to make his feelings known.
She paid him for the pizza, and the soda in its tall white foam cup with its plastic lid, along with a generous tip. He was, after all, one of her only lifelines to the outside world. Though she did sometime
s leave the apartment, she always took great care not to be seen or followed. She didn’t put it past Meeding Properties to have her under almost constant observation.
Jorge gave her a large smile and a lingering look at her ankles extending from beneath her long robe. “Thanks, Missus D.”
“You’re welcome, Jorge. By the way, have you seen Cookie?”
Cookie was Mildred’s large golden tabby, a cat she’d shared her life with for the past several years.
“Ain’t seen him,” Jorge said. “But I’ll watch for him when I leave, bring him back to you if I see him.” The big smile again, meaningful. “Maybe there’ll be some kind of reward.”
Jorge, Jorge…
“He isn’t really lost, Jorge, just not home.” Mildred hoped that would throw cold water on Jorge’s naive sexual ambitions.
“I’ll keep an eye out for him anyway. Anything for you, Missus D.”
Mildred thanked him and watched him pocket the money and go out the door. She locked the door behind him, then went to the window overlooking the street in front.
Jorge came into sight below, mounted his delivery bike, and pedaled away, weaving through construction and destruction debris. It was dusk, and she hoped he’d be clear of the vast and unlit deserted area before it became dark enough to be dangerous.
She stood at the window for a while after Jorge was out of sight, looking for some sign of Cookie, telling herself not to worry, he was probably happily hunting mice or rats.
It wasn’t like Cookie, though, not to appear this time of evening for his regular tuna-flavored meal.
Mildred went to the kitchen and ran the electric can opener, just in case Cookie was hiding somewhere in the apartment. The sound of the opener was usually an irresistible invitation to dine.
No cookie.
She remembered that when she’d called for the pizza there had been a text message on her phone. She went to the phone and read the text.: “if u have a cat don’t put him out.”
The anonymous message was from yesterday. Written in time but read too late.
She waited. Hoping. A lump of worry in her throat.
No Cookie.
Just before midnight Mildred was awakened by footfalls and what sounded like muffled laughter out in the hall. Then something soft but not completely soft slammed into her door and thump ed to the hall floor.