Constantine pulled up in front of his apartment. He rounded to her side of the car and put an arm around her as they climbed the steps.
“Don’t worry, Mags. We’ll figure it out. I’ll whip up something I call Spam Surprise for dinner while you chase down MediPrixe info on my shiny new internet connection.”
He unlocked the door, disappeared into his bedroom and emerged, laptop in hand. “For your interwebbing pleasure.”
She sat on the couch, opened the laptop’s lid and pressed the power button. The machine hummed, whirred, then emitted an alarming string of grinding thumps. Maggie looked at Constantine.
He waved a hand. “It always sounds like it’s trying to eat itself,” he said. “Here, let me see that.” He plopped down beside her, turned the laptop toward himself and attacked the keyboard with flying fingers. “There. It’s all yours.”
He disappeared into the kitchenette. Maggie began combing the internet.
MediPrixe’s digital footprint was small. Size one small. Beyond the company website, Maggie found little else other than un-updated social media properties, a few CVs posted by former employees on job sites and an old article penned by one of the company’s researchers.
Undeterred, she checked the state website to find out who owned the corporation. She pointed, clicked. And groaned.
“What?” Constantine called from the kitchen. “Are you smelling my cooking already?”
“Ugh. No. The business registry site is down. I can’t find anything about MediPrixe. Yet another dead end.”
Constantine emerged with two steaming plates and sat beside her. “No worries. I’m sure it’ll be up and running tomorrow. Besides, we have other leads to chase, no? Mia’s workplace, Carson’s shelter. Et cetera, et cetera.”
Maggie shrugged. “I guess.” She took the plate Constantine offered and peered under her stack of browned meat squares with a fork. “Is that…?”
“Yep,” he said with his mouth full. “Mashed potatoes from a box. That’s the surprise.”
Maggie watched him eat, then shoved a forkful into her own mouth. It was surprisingly good.
“Let’s take our mind off all this badness, shall we?” He picked up an ancient remote and pointed it at a small tube TV. A picture flickered into view, stabilized.
He frowned. “Hang on. What’s this?” He jabbed the volume button. The speakers sounded tinny and overmodulated.
“Thank you, Brett,” a woman in a cherry red pantsuit said to the camera. “The search for answers in the murder of an Eastside woman continues as this quiet yet vibrant neighborhood grieves the loss of one of its own.”
Maggie squinted at the screen, which was embellished with a giant yellow banner that shrieked “Eastside Murder.” She noted with alarm that the reporter was standing in front of Zartar’s apartment building. The camera panned to a pair of transvestites who simultaneously sobbed and vamped for the lens.
“The police are hoping to question this woman”—Maggie’s work ID badge photo flashed up on the screen—“Magnolia O’Malley, who fled the scene of the crime and a subsequent traffic stop.”
Maggie breathed in sharply. The images on the screen swam in front of her, the reporter’s undulating voice hollow and muffled as if it were coming from inside a deep well. Maggie gripped the denim fabric of the couch to steady herself. The reporter consulted her notes. “The women reportedly worked together at a pharmaceutical company, Rxcellance. According to an anonymous source, Ms. O’Malley was terminated from her position shortly before Ms. Nazarian’s death. This source also told us that Ms. O’Malley disappeared with nearly $100,000 from a charity fund she managed on behalf of Rxcellance. Police urge anyone with information to call the tip line. Brett, back to you.”
Constantine punched the power button on the remote and the newswoman and her stiff bobbed hair collapsed into a tiny bright line in the center of the screen. Maggie’s breathing had become ragged. Her vision narrowed, vignetted around the edges like she was looking through a pay telescope at a distant landmark.
Put in another quarter. Watch your life disintegrate.
Maggie buried her face in her hands. Light and dark blobs popped behind her eyelids. “God, I am such an idiot. I should’ve stayed at Zartar’s, I should’ve stayed until the cops came so I could explain what I found. What I saw. What I know.”
“You were scared,” Constantine said gently. “You were in shock. Besides, you called the police when this whole thing started, then tried to tell the detective what was going on when you got that video. It’s not like you’re trying to get away with something.”
“Tell that to Candace Mullen and the Channel 12 News team,” she said. She felt her old friend nausea return. “Not only am I the last person to have seen Zartar alive, I’ve been painted as a drug-using embezzler who bilked a charity out of 100k.”
Maggie placed her plate on the coffee table, stood and walked to the window. The darkening sky was a bruise of purple and blue. “I should’ve known that Montgomery had a reason for asking me to administer Rx’s NTD foundation. I was so flattered that he noticed me. I felt special. Chosen. But it was all a setup, a game.” Maggie ripped at the cuticle on her thumb with her teeth. “Now no one will believe me. No one will listen to my conspiracy theory about hidden cures, corporate blackmail or a phone that shows who’s next to die.”
Constantine rubbed his neck. “Can they make it stick? The embezzlement charge, I mean?”
“Probably. I made deposits into a special account. I assumed everything was legit. I was so eager to please, to prove that I was a superstar, I didn’t ask any questions. I just made the deposits and turned in the slips to Montgomery.” She groaned. “How could I have been so blind?”
“It’s not your fault, Mags. You didn’t know. The account was probably manipulated by Montgomery or Miles from the moment you stepped up to the plate. And I’m sure one of them is the ‘unnamed source’ mentioned in the news clip.”
“Even if there’s no way to prove anything, as far as the police and the press are concerned, I’m a drug-addled, thieving murderer who evaded the cops.”
She sagged against the wall, overwhelmed by all that had happened and all that was surely to come. Then she jerked to attention. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“Pop. He watches the news like it’s his job. He probably saw Candace Mullen string me up on live TV and is worried sick.”
She grabbed her cell and powered it up, something she hadn’t done since she’d found Zartar. She watched CSI, knew about triangulation. If the cops wanted to find her, all she had to do was leave her phone on. But now it was a risk she was willing to take. Maggie dialed voicemail, input her security code and waited. Three messages, the first from her father.
“Maggie?” Jack O’Malley barked into the phone. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I just got a phone call from some woman at the TV station. Something about you being in trouble. I’m sure it’s a bunch of BS. Damn liberals always making—” Maggie held the phone away from her ear as he ranted about the media. Jack took a long, wheezing breath. The storm blowing over. “Give me a call, will you?” He recited his phone number as if she’d never heard it before.
Feck.
Maggie advanced to the next voicemail. Nyberg. She skipped the message without listening to it.
The last message was from Fiona.
“Hello, dear.” She spoke with the measured calm of someone on the verge of a breakdown. “I’m wondering if you can tell me where your father is. He got what you young people call a ‘wild hair’ and decided to go see you in Collinsburg. I suppose he went to your apartment. But that was hours ago. Could you call me when you get this? Please, honey.”
Maggie closed the voicemail app. She sat down hard on the couch and dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, God,” she groaned. “My dad got a call from that newswoman and d
ecided to come see me in person to find out what’s going on. But Fiona hasn’t heard from him. She’s worried. She was trying to sound casual, but she’s afraid. I could hear it in her voice.” Maggie lifted up her head and looked at Constantine. A new worry, bright and hot, began to burn in her mind. “What if they got him, Gus? What if whoever is killing these people decided to come looking for me and found Pop? They could take him. Use him. Hurt him.” She thought about Zartar’s brother. She balled her hands into fists.
Constantine grabbed one of her fists, gently eased it open and put his big hand in hers. “He probably went to your apartment, saw you weren’t there and decided to hit the pub for a pint. He’s okay, Mags. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Even if Pop is at the pub, ‘okay’ isn’t going to happen unless we do something.” Her voice was louder than she had intended.
“Like what?” Constantine asked.
Maggie’s phone rang. She and Constantine jumped. She fumbled to look at the screen, answered.
“Pop?” she blurted into the phone.
“Maggie, thank God I got you. Where the hell are you? I went to that damn apartment of yours, but no one’s there. Do you know what time it is? And what’s this about a murder? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Maggie took a breath and steadied her voice. “I’m fine, Pop. I just—” she paused. “I’m at a conference in Springfield for work.”
Her father grunted. “Conference? So all this about the police wanting to talk to you is BS?”
“Just a misunderstanding, Pop. They have me confused with someone else.”
The line went quiet as Jack considered this. “You’re sure? Everything’s okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I’ll get it all straightened out when I get back to town. How’s everything at O’Malley’s?”
It was a conversational punt, a verbal Hail Mary pass designed to direct Jack’s attention elsewhere.
It worked.
“Restaurant’s actually doing pretty well. I didn’t want to worry you, but we’d had some rough months. We’re in the black now. Guess things picked up without my noticing. Last night was the best we’ve had in…well, I don’t know when.”
“That’s great, Pop.” And she meant it. He didn’t know about her contributions to keep the restaurant afloat and the bank at bay. Now it seemed people were discovering O’Malley’s unusual charms on their own. Luck? Divine intervention? Maggie would take either.
“You’ll call me when you’re back in town? Let me know you got everything worked out?”
“Absolutely.”
Her father mollified and her conscience soothed, Maggie hung up and turned her phone off.
At least something was going well. At least her father was safe.
Chapter 33
Breakfast was Pop-Tarts and more rotspleen from Constantine’s overworked coffeepot. He decided to play hooky from work so they could get an early start on their day.
“What did you tell them when you called in?” Maggie asked.
“I told them I had a raging case of scurvy. Or maybe it was syphilis. I can’t remember. Ready to hit the road?”
“Just as soon as I put on my disguise.” Maggie plopped a wide-brimmed hat on her head and pulled on oversized sunglasses. “I found these in the trunk of the Studebaker.”
Constantine gave her a thumbs-up. “No one will recognize you, Mrs. Howell, especially since we’re not on Gilligan’s island.”
“Let’s get this three-hour tour started.”
The Datsun put them in front of a high-rise of steel and glass just as rush hour began in earnest. Constantine craned his neck to take in the city’s latest monument to greed. “Nice,” he mused, “in an I’ve-got-mine-screw-you kind of way.”
Constantine parked in front of the building, killed the engine and reached into his shirt pocket. He produced a nose-wriggling, whisker-twitching Miss Vanilla.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You’re not seriously thinking of taking her inside, are you?”
“It’ll sell the Richie Rich look. Hamsters are the new Chihuahuas.”
Maggie was already shaking her head. “No, Gus. This is a place of business, not Miss Percy’s Pedantic Petting Zoo.”
“As impressed as I am by your alliteration and intrigued by the idea that there’s a Miss Percy with a petting zoo, I really need to take her. It’s too hot to leave her in the car.”
Maggie regarded Miss Vanilla, who looked as if she was trying very hard to be generally adorable. Despite the stripper name and the fact that she peed in Maggie’s hand, Maggie had always secretly loved the hamster for softening the edges of Constantine’s grief when his beloved dog had died. After fearing Miss Vanilla had been impaled to her door and lost forever, she loved her all the more. “I don’t understand why you brought her in the first place, but fine, bring her. But make sure she stays in your pocket.”
“It’s only her favorite place to be.”
Maggie walked ahead of Constantine, pressing her lips together to redistribute her lipstick. “Do we have a script for this little adventure?” she asked.
He paused with his hand on the handle of a glass door adorned with the words Capital Ideas. “Script? Who needs a script? Just follow my lead.”
“I think I’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t like how it ends,” Maggie muttered.
Constantine opened the door and they stepped into a plush lobby that looked as if it had been copied and pasted from a Pottery Barn catalog. Constantine elbowed Maggie and jutted his chin in the direction of a steamer trunk-style coffee table. “Aye, matey, I’ll wager there be pieces of eight within.”
She turned to shush him when a receptionist appeared behind a counter. Her face was small, nearly elfin, punctuated by frosted pink lips and eyes a shade of blue that only comes from Bausch and Lomb. A snug tank top and three-quarter-length yellow cardigan stretched across generous breasts. Mutton dressed as lamb, as Fiona would say. A placard on her desk announced her as Sylvia Marchesi.
“Hello,” Sylvia said. Her voice was low and husky. “How may we help you?”
Constantine tripped over himself to extend his hand. “Hi, we’re the Millers.” Maggie performed an inner eye roll, annoyed and amazed that he used such an obvious movie reference. “We don’t have an appointment, but a friend referred us to Mia Rennick. And since the wife and I were in the neighborhood—” Constantine put his arm around Maggie’s waist, pulled her close. “—we thought, what the hell? Let’s drop in and see where she tells us to park our money.”
The receptionist’s pink mouth went flaccid, caving in at the corners.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but Ms. Rennick passed away. Janice McAffee has taken over her accounts. Let me buzz her.”
“Passed away?” Constantine gasped. “What happened?”
“She was killed in a mugging,” Sylvia half-whispered, as though the cause of death might be contagious.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Maggie said, self-consciously touching her hat. “I’m sure she’ll be missed.”
Sylvia Marchesi neatened the papers on her desk.
Maggie and Constantine exchanged a look. “Yep, a lot of people will sure miss Mia,” Maggie said again. She shook her head sadly. “Her friends and family must be devastated.”
Sylvia began putting the now-neatened paper into piles. “Ms. Rennick didn’t have much in the way of family.”
Maggie clucked sympathetically. “What a loss for her friends, then.”
Sylvia straightened her piles.
Maggie looked over the top of her sunglasses. “It’s not a loss for her friends?”
Sylvia shrugged. “She didn’t have many friends.”
“Why not?”
Sylvia picked up the handset. “Let me call Ms. McAfee for you.”
“You weren’t friends w
ith Mia?” Constantine asked.
Sylvia pursed her lips. “We were coworkers. Mia wasn’t really the friendly type.”
Constantine nodded chummily. “That’s what I heard. The friend who recommended her said she was a financial whiz, but a bit of a bitch.”
“Honey!” Maggie hit Constantine on the arm with a brochure about annuities. “You’re being rude.”
Constantine gave a rakish grin. “Sorry. Just repeating what I heard. I can’t remember the details. Something about the other girls being jealous of her and…”
“That’s a laugh.” Sylvia replaced the handset a bit harder than necessary.
“Pardon?” Maggie said.
“It’s just that no one was jealous of Mia. Mia was jealous of everyone else.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
Sylvia crossed her arms over a silicone-enhanced bosom. “Okay, maybe not jealous. More like covetous. If she saw something she wanted, she’d take it, no matter who had it first. A parking place. The corner office. A boyfriend.”
“She had a reputation for stealing other girls’ boyfriends?” Constantine asked.
Sylvia put on a prim smile. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Please have a seat and—”
“I worked with someone like that once,” Maggie blurted. “Back in college, when I hostessed at TGI Fridays. My boyfriend was a waiter and we were practically engaged. Then this bar waitress who thought she was so hot waltzed in, and the next thing I knew, they were going out.” Maggie swiped a finger beneath her sunglasses as if brushing away a tear. “Is that what happened to you, Sylvia? Did Mia waltz in and steal your boyfriend?”
“No.” Sylvia shook her head. Tears began streaming down her face. The head shakes turned to nods. “Okay, yes. I don’t know why I’m trying to protect her, why I’m trying to protect him. Everyone knew about it.” Maggie yanked a tissue from the floral box on the treasure chest and handed it to Sylvia. “This is so embarrassing,” she said, dabbing her eyes.
“The only one who should have been embarrassed is Mia.”
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