Constantine frowned. He wasn’t buying anything. “Maybe I should stay. Or at least come back.”
Maggie sighed in mock irritation. “I’m a big girl, Gus. I can take care of myself. Plus, I have tons to do. We’ll hang out soon, I promise.”
Constantine looked at her for a moment. “Okay.” He folded himself into the Datsun. “Call me later and we’ll figure out a time to go visit Travis, my sort-of friend from Reincarnated Phones.” He tooted the horn as he drove away.
Maggie went inside and dropped her purse by the door, then headed into her bedroom where her laptop computer sat charging on the desk her father had made for her.
She gathered her hair into a high ponytail, booted up the computer and opened her Chrome browser window. Her phone rang. Maggie ran back to the hall and fumbled for it in her purse. Fiona.
“Did you do it?” Fiona asked.
“Do what?”
Fiona sighed in exasperation. “Turn in that scoundrel that tried to take advantage of you. I’ve been absolutely sick with worry.”
Maggie cringed. Feck. She’d forgotten to call back. Or send a check. Double feck. She made a mental note.
“Oh. Right. Actually, I did talk with my boss.”
“And?” Fiona demanded. Maggie could practically see her aunt tapping her foot.
“And he, um, he said he’d talk to the guy.”
“Talk to him?” Fiona harrumphed. It sounded like a whale mating.
Maggie waited for the remonstrations, the rants, the homily that Maggie needed to do more, but Fiona had pulled away from the phone. There was the muffled sound of a hand being placed over the receiver. Then Fiona said into the phone: “Your father’s picking up the extension in the office. He wants to say hello.” She paused, then added quietly, “I didn’t say anything to him about what happened with that awful man or your help with the you-know-what.”
There was a click. “Maggie,” he boomed heartily. “How’s my best girl?”
“Great, Pop. I’m doing great.” Maggie imagined her father in his office, entombed within the mess.
“That sister of mine says you’re working too hard. Burning the midnight oil. You’re not going to make yourself sick with too much work, are you?”
Maggie silently cursed Fiona for worrying her father. In addition to acting as a human news ticker, Fiona was president of the Pessimist’s Club, always looking for the downside. The worse things were, the happier she seemed.
“I’m great, Pop,” Maggie repeated. “Long hours are a side effect of pharmaceuticals, but it’s no worse than school.”
“Did you tell her about the message?” Fiona interrupted on the extension.
Her father cursed exuberantly. “I’m getting to it, Fi. I’m getting to it. Maggie, someone called looking for you. Said he was an old high school friend. Something about updating student records for the next reunion. I gave him your new address so he could send an invitation. He said to tell you he’ll see you very soon. Wanted to make sure you got the message.”
Alarm rang through Maggie. “You gave out my address? Who was it? Did you get a name?”
“I don’t think he mentioned his name, come to think of it,” Fiona interrupted. “But he sounded real nice. Handsome, too.”
“You can hear handsome over the phone?”
“It’s an art, dear. Maybe if you tried it, you’d have a boyfriend.”
Maggie’s eyes ached from rolling. “Thanks, Aunt Fiona. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Come visit us, will you?” Jack said. “I know you haven’t been gone long, but it sure is quiet around here without you.”
“I’ll come home soon,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t. Being busy was only part of it. She didn’t want to see how much her father missed her, couldn’t stand the thought of him holding her chin in his hand, his eyes growing soft as he looked into her face. She knew he never really saw her. He saw her mother.
Maggie wondered if that made her a ghost.
Maggie spent Monday morning Googling the strangers who had disappeared from the earth as quickly as they had appeared on her phone.
Work wasn’t the ideal place to conduct this sort of research, but the city workers who had replaced those on strike had inadvertently cut the cable line that connected her entire block to the internet. Constantine hadn’t gotten around to getting his internet hooked up yet. “The cobbler’s children have no shoes,” he’d said when she called about it. “And the IT geek’s home office has no internet. Not yet.”
Maggie wasn’t worried. She was always one of the first to arrive at work. She’d have the place to herself to research Elsa, Carson and Mia in peace.
A search for “Carson Parks” had yielded a pittance of data: an eight-year-old college graduation photo, a bio on the staff page of the homeless shelter where he worked and the obligatory obit that highlighted his life and glossed over his death.
Elsa Henderson and Mia Rennick, on the other hand, did not seem to embrace the concept of low-profile.
A mountaineer of capitalism’s highest peaks, Mia Rennick had scaled Microsoft, GE and Dean Witter before summiting financial planning house, Capital Ideas. She had been the topic of reams of press releases covering mergers, IPOs and mega-estate management. In her spare time, she adorned the arms of older men at museum openings and art galas. Her hair was coiffed. Her taut body was buffed and bronzed. Her eyes were cold, appraising with the precision of a ten-key calculator. Together, the articles formed a mosaic of a Mia who was smart, calculating and ambitious.
Information about Elsa Henderson was as voluminous, yet decidedly warmer. Elsa had amassed an impressive stockpile of ego-stroking articles proclaiming her expertise at Getting the Story. She’d won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for her undercover work in human trafficking and had been nominated for an Edward R. Murrow Award for an exposé on a senator’s proclivity for underage aides. The way the newserati saw it, Elsa Henderson was bigger than the Second Coming. With better hair.
The search engine’s indiscriminate datamongering also disgorged such important details as Ms. Henderson’s marital status (recently divorced), hobbies (playing vintner with a friend at a jointly owned Napa vineyard) and humanitarian efforts (on the board of a women’s shelter called Saving Grace). And finally, a breathless teaser on what would have been her final story: an exclusive that promised corporate conspiracy, government bribery and crimes against society’s most vulnerable. The exposé was slated to hit newsstands August 30. She died in a hit-and-run on July 23.
Maggie stood and stretched, her eyes scanning rows of cubicles for prairie-dogging workers who might pop up at any moment. She saw no one. Maggie sat back down and printed out the information she’d found on the victims. She rose and walked quickly toward the printer.
“Hey, Maggie.” Roselyn jumped in front of Maggie like a jack-in-the-box. “Oh my God,” Roselyn trilled. “What a morning. I got here early, but someone had misfiled the psoriasis study yesterday, so I had to…”
Maggie licked her lips and glanced over Roselyn’s padded shoulder at the printer. No pages had printed. Yet.
“Then Susan from accounting shows up wanting to know why we ordered additional binders,” Roselyn continued.
“Uh-huh,” Maggie said, nodding. “Wow, that’s a bummer.” She watched the first page emerge from the printer’s inner workings.
“Can you believe that?” Roselyn showed no signs of slowing down. Maggie kept her eyes fixed on the printer. Paper began collecting onto its tray.
Maggie’s nods became faster. “Right,” she said. “Man, sounds like you’re off to a rough start. Hey, let’s talk about this tonight at The Office.”
“The Office?” Roselyn considered the idea. Slowly. “I don’t know. I’ve been going out a lot. I should really be saving my money. Plus all the calories…”
The door on the elevator parted, e
xpelling a half-dozen early birds. The printer became obscured by a flurry of white coats and corporate casual, then reemerged. From where she stood, Maggie could see Elsa’s photograph on the top of the machine.
“My treat,” Maggie said quickly. “We can see if Zartar can join us.” Maggie jogged lightly toward the printer, trying to look like she was infusing exercise into her busy day.
“Zartar just left. I just saw her walk out the door with Ethan.”
Maggie stopped. She spun to face Roselyn. “Zartar left with Ethan?”
Small red circles blossomed on Roselyn’s cheeks and spread. “Well, uh, I’m not sure they left together. Maybe they just left at the same time.”
Maggie stared, immobilized. As if trying to work out a bizarre math problem.
Zartar plus Ethan. Carry the one…
“I did hear them say something about taking Ethan’s car,” Roselyn blurted out into the silence. “But they were carrying files, so I guess she’s working offsite. With Ethan. For the rest of the day. And night, maybe?” Maggie said nothing. “Um, I need to go. I’ll see you later, okay? Um, bye.”
Roselyn turned on her sensible ballet flats and headed for the door, her relief palpable.
Maggie shook her head, trying to clear the jumble of images that jumped through her brain like snow on an untuned television. Then she remembered.
Oh, God. The printouts. She ran toward the printer. Stopped. Voices drifted from down the hall. Rising. Falling. Quilted conversation of a man and woman snarling from behind a closed door.
She knew she should grab the printouts and hightail it back to her desk, but she felt herself pulled toward the voices. Felt the sense of something familiar and terrible.
Maggie padded down the hall and found herself in front of three small conference rooms. Two were vacant and sterile, striped with vacuum tracks and scented with cleaner. The third had its door buttoned shut.
Zartar’s voice, shrill and slicing, drifted from behind the door. Maggie froze. What was Zartar still doing here? Didn’t she leave with Ethan?
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Zartar demanded.
“I’m just doing my job,” the man replied.
“Bullshit,” Zartar retorted. “You’re enjoying this. You’re getting off on every second. And I’m sick of it. Sick of the lies, the secrets. I’m done. Got it, meathead? Finished. Finito.”
Maggie glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone else overheard the conversation. Coworkers milled around in the cube farm, oblivious to what was happening out of earshot.
“No one likes a quitter, Zartar,” the man said. “And there are incentives to consider. I’m told I can be very persuasive.”
The conference door swung wide and Miles stepped into the hallway. Who else? Maggie couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized the ever-present sneer in his voice.
He spotted Maggie staring at him, kissed the air with his full, almost feminine mouth, then strode down the hall, arms bent in a permanent bicep curl.
Zartar burst from the room, her face streaked with tears and reddened by fury.
“Oh my God. What happened? I thought you left with Ethan.”
Zartar wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I was on my way out when Montgomery Junior insisted on an impromptu meeting. And nothing happened. Nothing other than not being able to buy back my soul from the devil.” She looked up at the acoustic ceiling tiles and fanned her eyes in a futile attempt to stem the flow of navy blue mascara. “Turns out there are no refunds.”
Zartar bolted for the ladies’ room. Maggie watched, her heart thudding sickly in her chest. She swiveled around to find Miles.
He was standing at the end of the hall, one hand behind his back, his face turned up in a smug grin.
She was on him in seconds, her anger building with each step. Her heart was jack-hammering now, threatening to break through her sternum. She felt an overwhelming desire to bash Miles’s head against the door.
“You stay away from her,” Maggie growled. Her face was so close to his she could see every pore in his skin. His breath smelled like rotting meat.
Surprise flitted through Miles’s eyes, but was quickly replaced by something malignant. He pulled himself to his full height, expanding as if he were filled with helium. “Who’s gonna make me?”
Maggie felt something give way in the back of her mind, a dam bursting, flooding her with emotions she’d always carefully kept in check. Her fear of Miles was drowned beneath a red-hot river of rage. Rage over his unwanted advances. Rage over the craigslist ad she was almost certain he was behind. Most of all, rage over his treatment of Zartar. Maggie had only a few friends. She’d be damned if she was going to let Miles push any of them around.
Maggie moved even closer. At this distance, she could see that Miles’s face had taken on a mushy quality, his muscles running to fat beneath his skin. “Me,” she whispered. “I’m going to make you.”
Miles hesitated. Confusion flashed across his face, illuminating his dawning realization that a woman—a small young woman—was daring to challenge him.
He recovered. Smiled. “I’d like to see that.” He took his arm from behind his back. “Oh. I almost forgot. I found these on the printer after my conversation with Zartar.” Miles waggled a thin pile of papers between stumpy fingers. “Header says they came from your machine. Tracking printouts is part of management’s efforts to monitor communications.” He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “We have a mole, you know.”
Maggie could feel a vein in her head throbbing. A handful of thumbtacks seemed to be making their way down her throat.
Maggie extended her hand. “Thank you.”
Miles rifled through the stack, making a show of giving each page a thorough review. She watched him pause on a page emblazoned with Elsa Henderson’s photo, her bio trailing beneath it like a long cape of text. Miles’s eyes cut to hers. “Looks interesting.”
“Thank you,” she repeated through gritted teeth.
Miles held the papers out, his eyes locked onto hers. The sweet-sick scent of musky cologne wafted from his polo shirt. She grabbed the stack and pulled. Miles held on, a child’s game of keep-away, before relinquishing his prize.
“Take Elm Boulevard to The Post,” he said. “Traffic can be a real bitch.”
Chapter 20
Anger bled away from Maggie as if she’d opened a vein. She leaned against the wall as dread, cold and thick, chugged through her body like embalming fluid.
She didn’t need to make an even bigger enemy of the president’s son. Miles was already unpredictable and frightening. And she couldn’t afford to rock the employment boat. For the moment, though, it felt worth it, even if the confrontation had scratched an epitaph upon her future.
Here lies Magnolia O’Malley’s career.
Of course, none of that mattered compared with what was going on with Zartar.
Which was what exactly?
There was no love lost between Miles and Zartar, that much was clear. But it was more than garden-variety hatred. Miles was trying to get Zartar to do something. Or pressuring her into continuing what she was doing.
Maggie walked to the ladies’ room. She stared at the door. She knew how Zartar would respond if she followed her inside and tried to comfort her. She’d tell Maggie where to go and what to do with herself when she got there.
Maggie recognized the stubborn self-sufficiency in herself. Wasn’t that why she lived alone? Insisted on doing 100 percent of car repair and maintenance on her own? Hadn’t cried (until recently) since Mrs. Maloney handed her a tuna noodle hot dish at her mother’s wake?
Maggie returned to her desk and slumped in her chair. She began sifting through emails and found she couldn’t concentrate.
She opened a web browser, searched and found the news story about Mia’s death. She was rereading her short b
iography when a pair of hands landed on her shoulders.
“Surfing the internet on company time?” asked a voice inches from her ear.
Maggie jumped and spun around, memories of Miles sending adrenaline into her bloodstream.
Ethan grinned. “That’s a serious infraction, you know.”
Maggie gave an internal sigh of relief. “Does this mean you’re going to turn me in to HR?”
Ethan folded his arms across his chest and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I’d hate for it to go into your permanent record. I’d better put together an action plan to get you back on track.”
He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then spun her ergo-chair until it faced him and crouched in front of her, his large hands clasping the armrests. “Step one: dinner with me at my place. We could watch a movie, have Red Vines for dessert.”
“I thought you were gone,” she said casually. “Roselyn mentioned seeing you leave with Zartar.”
She watched Ethan’s face, waiting for a change in his expression, something that indicated knowledge or duplicity or guilt.
Ethan spread his arms wide. “Nope. Still here. And now I’ve done all my chores and can go to the ball.”
No reaction to the report of him leaving with Zartar. No explanation of where they were going or why or what had changed their plan. No indication of a guilty conscience.
She stared into his eyes and saw her own reflection swimming in the sea blue of his irises. He smiled, his eyeteeth akimbo. She knew she should feel guarded because of Ethan’s lack of candor. But the explanation was most likely very simple. Besides, escape felt good. Someone paying attention to her felt good. And reveling in a feeling that lay in the hinterlands between crush and infatuation felt great.
“You had me at Red Vines,” she finally said.
“My place, eight o’clock? I’ll text you the address.”
“Can’t wait,” Maggie said.
He peered over her shoulder. “What’s so interesting? Did they find Jimmy Hoffa’s body again?”
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