The Hidden Things

by Jamie Mason

  Owen Haig was from the same mold. She appreciated that about him. He knew the utilitarian value of isolation in this type of job, the checking of one’s conscience at the door. But he was better suited to it in some ways than she was. Owen did it with fewer boxes. And without the conscience.

  He performed some of the same tricks of acquisition and facilitation as Samantha did, but for only one small, albeit substantially wealthy, client, where Samantha’s employers were myriad and often at cross-purposes. So Owen got to say yes more often than she did, or he had to say yes, depending on how you viewed it.

  “No” could be such a luxury. Such a solid lock for the boxes.

  Samantha had expended no small amount of unpaid effort to keep the Owen Haig box and the Marcelline Gossard box unmingled for these last four years. Now here she sat, fingers under the figurative lid of each, at Marcelline’s own request.

  Samantha didn’t have a lot of friends. Most of them were in the group of regular people who thought she got paid to make a chain of medical centers look good. But Marcelline’s friendship was entirely unique in her life. Samantha didn’t have a husband or kids. She didn’t have pets. Her houseplants had to be the hearty kind. So it was the one outstandingly single time she’d ever gotten to play the rescuer, the caregiver.

  From their work together in the gallery and the oddness of some of the transactions and transactors, M had known enough to think of Samantha in a crisis that couldn’t be handled by calling 911. At the outset, this budding alliance was different from all the other people she might think of as friends. She didn’t have to keep M at arm’s length.

  It was a special case, an exception, something she could keep, if she chose to. Which she had. And Samantha wanted it still. Funny that she and Owen had this attachment to Marcelline in common, if in very different ways.

  The Flinck was always going to have gone through Owen. He would have found it eventually. The Anningers would have insisted. They had insisted, in fact. It wasn’t even unlikely that Samantha might have been a part of it, however it inevitably happened.

  The trouble for her involvement was that, whatever Owen’s personal woundedness in all of this, his fury at Marcelline was unfounded. She hadn’t betrayed him. Everyone but Owen knew that. And the Anningers didn’t care. They only demanded that he fix it.

  Marcelline would look even worse to him once he knew what role Samantha had maintained in her disappearance all these years.

  Odd Man Out Syndrome was Owen’s favorite malady. Sickness as a superpower, really. Except when it came to Marcelline. If there was even more whispering behind his back than he’d imagined, that insult was something he might sink his teeth into. And Samantha had never once convinced him to unlock his jaw off anything.

  She picked up a little plush box, colorful beads over turquoise silk. A gift from M. She wasn’t thrilled about putting Marcelline in jeopardy. But considering the Flinck was in the wind again after all this time, and that Owen was tangled in it once more, it was better for them to meet on purpose than by accident.

  • • •

  Owen picked up right away. “Samantha. Always a pleasure to see your name pop up on the screen.”

  “You just want me to ask you what name you’ve saved this number under and I don’t want to know.”

  “You might. It’s hilarious.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re not really a funny guy, Owen. Sorry.”

  He chuckled down the line. Warm-ups. Both of them oiling up their most pleasant voices with all the smiles in them. This is what they did because when Samantha called Owen, or Owen called Samantha, one or the other or both would be reasonably likely to have something negotiable to say over the next minutes.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

  “Well, it’s about the Flinck.” In the expected pause, Samantha petted the smooth lavender finish on her squared manicure.

  “Hmmm. It’s fairly coincidental that you would bring that up right now.”

  “I’m almost positive you don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Don’t I?” A resigned anger crept into his voice. “I have to, because this is one hell of a coincidence. As it happens, I’m picking up that very thing here in just a couple of hours.”

  Samantha wasn’t afraid of Owen’s anger. Not for herself, anyway. “Except maybe not.”

  Owen sighed. “So, what am I doing then? Go ahead. Say it. What has that pointless little ratfuck done now? I know he wants more money, but, really, Samantha? How did you link up with that piece of shit? It’s beneath you.”

  “It’s not him. It’s Marcelline.”

  She knew he’d need another second with that one. She waited, turning the box on her desk and watching the light play through the glass beads, throwing a patchy rainbow onto the wall beside her.

  “Oh, I see. Ah. Right.” Owen went a stormy kind of quiet again. “It was you. You made her a ghost. That’s why I could never find her. Wow. Of course. You’ve known where she was this whole time. And now you bitches are playing me, all the way down to this.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy. You sold me out. I’m this close and you just told her right where she could find it. Why would you do that, any of this, and think you could tell me to take it easy?”

  “You know, Owen, we don’t usually interrogate each other. It seemed like a respect thing, but at the very least it let me tell you to go to hell less often. No, I didn’t tell her where it was. I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. You don’t have to believe me, but as a matter of fact, she found it first.”

  “So, that’s not much better. You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

  Samantha scowled. “Funny, I didn’t think you cared about the Anningers’ collection that much.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I can’t help but notice the past tense.”

  “I don’t care about their hobbies. I have my own. They send me on their errands, but this was mine. Work backward from the Flinck and I find Marcelline. Because I have questions.”

  “I know you do. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Obviously.”

  “What, are you two in love? Decided you don’t like dick anymore?”

  “You know, Owen, the whole heart-on-your-sleeve thing over Marcelline was always kind of creepy.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Are you done with your tantrum?”

  Samantha heard a muted bang and a clattering crash. Owen really was having a fit.

  “Hey! Will you listen? Owen! She’s not screwing you over. She never did. She was going to give it to you. She wanted to buy her life back with it. To prove to you that it wasn’t her.”

  “Oh, convenient. That you’re in a position to tell me all this now doesn’t really give it that ring of truth, Samantha. In fact, it sounds a whole lot like bullshit. This was almost finished. I was just about done with it. You took it out from under me.”

  “Not as such. It sort of fell into her hands. And up until a few minutes ago, she didn’t even know you were in the picture. I didn’t tell her anything other than to be careful. I’m not screwing you over either.”

  Owen didn’t say anything for almost a full minute, but she could hear that he was still there huffing and fuming. “What happened to Jonathan?”

  “I think Marcelline can explain this much better than I can. Can you keep it together and hear her out? She’s worried about the girl and her mother. If you look at this a certain way, with the exception of you getting to lose your shit on your own terms, this isn’t that far off from what you wanted in the first place. And not to mention, what you are employed to do. Two birds, one stone.”

  She instantly regretted her choice of illustrative image.

  “I want to meet in person.”

  “Naturally. But I would consider it a personal favor if you would give me your word that you won’t hurt her.”

  “We’re not in the personal favors business, Samantha.”
<
br />   She wished they had more time for Owen to cool off. He was still angry. But her reach was longer than his, and he knew it. She’d had enough of his attitude.

  It wasn’t a habit of hers to draw a red line. Only two times in all her career. One confrontation had ended agreeably and they were still colleagues. The other ended with a burial at sea.

  “Then let me put it this way, you gorilla. I have a pair of your gym socks. Think back. Where did I get them? Where did the blood come from that is all over them now? No matter what, she’s still a missing person, OJ. Don’t cross me. I don’t ask much, but this time, I’m not really asking.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  * * *

  Owen had kicked the leg of the desk in his hotel room, upending the full water glass over the remnants of his breakfast tray and reducing the juice glass to shards against the plate.

  The mess taunted him. Owen wasn’t the glass-breaking sort. Tsk, tsk for boiling over. He gritted his teeth. The dripping water splatted into the puddle on the carpet at irritatingly uneven intervals. He called the front desk to report the mess. The desk clerk said she’d send someone. The patient weariness in her voice briefly inspired him to break more shit just to make this worth it for everyone.

  Instead, he took out a $20 bill for the tip and waited. Waiting while angry was his least favorite thing to do.

  In the last few days, he’d come to believe that Marcelline hadn’t set him up for a stooge four years ago. The relief was both wonderful and terrible. Mostly terrible. Poorly spent time was the one thing you could never fix. He’d scared her, practically held her hostage. But it was probably worse than that. If she hadn’t run away, he might have done something bad. Something irrevocable.

  Talking with Jonathan had convinced him enough of her innocence to feel glad that she’d gotten away. He’d even set a longer game to see the end of Jonathan because of it. To avenge her. And that idea hadn’t been unpleasant either.

  If it had worked the way Jonathan had wanted it to, with him delaying the sale by screwing over Marcelline, it would have been a problem of more like the leg-breaking variety. Maybe some lost teeth. Some teachable moment for Jonathan that would have healed eventually.

  But after everything, it was too much to have him sit across a table and shrug off the admission that he had, as far as he knew, let Marcelline die like a dog in the road for his own convenience.

  Owen wasn’t forgiving enough to let that sort of thing go—losing years to an error of thinking, and falling out of standing with the worthless people who paid him. The Anningers had made Owen’s days about regaining what they’d lost and then some.

  He had ended up dangling at the whim and greed of an overreaching, underwitted asshole who didn’t know what to do with a stroke of good luck. And that just wouldn’t cut it.

  So Owen’s schedule for the day had been to first get the painting off the Anningers’ shopping list, then to get right on with removing Jonathan’s heartbeat from his chest. That was the plan.

  But his certainty had started shedding.

  Jonathan had Owen convinced that he really did think she was dead. But then all of a sudden, Jonathan revealed that he knew she wasn’t. He claimed that the two of them had even spoken in the last day or so. Then Jonathan changed the deal. He dangled the chance to talk to Marcelline as some sort of condition of doing what he’d already agreed to do.

  And now Samantha, the closest thing Owen had to a colleague, to someone who could imagine what it was like to be him and to have his life, had the bad manners to reveal that she’d known the whole time; that she had played monkey-in-the-middle with his peace of mind for years. She’d threatened him over Marcelline’s disappearance.

  He paced the shallow carpet between the bed and the dresser. The spilled water squished under his shoe.

  He didn’t know what to think.

  In an essentially desire-free existence, a single want had so much room to grow. And had it ever. It crowded out everything to the point he was kicking desks. Had Marcelline thrown in her lot with that smarmy little fuck? Or had she struck out on her own, saying and doing anything to make Owen useful to her goals? He’d never been good at reading her. Obviously.

  Jonathan, though, was pretty easy.

  • • •

  Owen wasn’t sure that Jonathan wouldn’t let the call just ring through to his voice mail. But he answered it, somewhere near the last possible moment.

  “Yeah?” Jonathan was trying hard for a neutral tone, but there was a hint of lava in his voice.

  “I understand you’re having a rough morning,” Owen said.

  To his credit, Jonathan didn’t make a big deal out of how Owen might know this. They were a bit beyond the smaller details.

  “I’m straightening it out.”

  “The thing is, Jonathan, I don’t think you are. I don’t see how that’s possible. I have a meeting here with Marcelline in a little while that seems to have eclipsed the meeting you and I were supposed to have. Then I’ll be on my way home soon and the painting will be on its way to its new owners. It just seems the payee will be different.”

  “Don’t count me out of this yet.”

  “Oh, how could I? I wouldn’t like you if you were just a tenacious little wannabe. But I like you less even than that. You’re tenacious not because you want it, but because you think you deserve it. I’m sure you’ll still be in it until the end, if you can only find a way. So what are you going to do tomorrow, Jonathan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’ll be sleeping in my own bed. Marcelline will be, I don’t know, wiggling around in a bathtub full of money or something. And you will be? What? Back at home on dandelion row?”

  Jonathan didn’t say anything.

  “Or do you have enough squirreled away to also be somewhere else tomorrow? To get lost like you need to? You don’t have to answer right away. Give me a second of dead air for each thousand dollars you still have from what you stole four years ago.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  There was a knock on Owen’s door. “Housekeeping!”

  He let her in and swept his hand at the desk.

  Owen had wound Jonathan up enough that discerning the truth from a lie should be easier. It should be something he’d be able to compare to what Marcelline would tell him when they met. His pulse sped up at the thought of sitting across from her. Want. Anger. Forgiveness.

  “How did you lose the painting?” Owen put the $20 bill on the newly dried desktop next to the maid as she swept glass into a doubled plastic bag. They exchanged knowing nods and she whispered so as not to interrupt his call, “Thank you.”

  “You were just hours away,” Owen said. “It was right there.”

  “Wait. You don’t know what happened?” Jonathan sounded a little hopeful. The kind of hope that makes a man with his foot in a door think more about the other side of the threshold than the relative weight of doors on ankles.

  Owen sat on the unmade bed and leaned back on the headboard. “No, I don’t know what happened. Let’s just say that, tomorrow, when this is all over—for the second time—I’d like to be able to reflect on your candor in this particular moment. I’d like to see how it matches up to what bullshit story she’s going to tell me when I see her. Then I’ll know how to feel about this. I’ll know if I’m done with this whole thing. Or not.”

  Jonathan took a moment to decide what to say. The maid blotted water from the carpet with a folded towel.

  Jonathan sighed. “My stepdaughter took it.”

  The housekeeper jumped at the laugh that broke from Owen. “You can’t be serious.”

  Jonathan’s confirming silence only made Owen laugh harder.

  “Carly again? Well, isn’t she just karma’s own little spatula.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Five minutes after Marcelline was sure she couldn’t take on another worry, positive that her hea
d hadn’t a square inch of real estate for another problem, Carly spoke up from the passenger seat.

  They’d been quiet, driving in the opposite direction from where they’d end up meeting Owen in a little while. Marcelline wanted to stop looking over her shoulder in the time she had between now and then. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least breathe easy for a bit. And find a place to wash her face.

  “What happens after you’re done talking to whatshisname?” Carly asked.

  “I don’t really know. It’s not afterward that bothers me so much. It’s what happens during.”

  “I know, but what do you think you’re going to do?”

  “Well, if he believes me or gets past being pissed in some other way, and he takes the painting to set things right, I guess that’s that. It’s over. You and your mom are safe. I’m safe. If he doesn’t want it, or if he doesn’t believe me, there’s not much I can do, or if he . . . I don’t know.”

  “But no matter what, you’ll go back to where you live today?”

  Carly’s no matter what included things about Owen that Marcelline didn’t particularly want to tell her. Or think about at all.

  “I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it.” Marcelline hadn’t gotten around to envisioning the actual journey back, how it would start, and under what conditions. She still had the fantasy she always had: Bethany meeting her at the airport. With her cat.

  “What happens to me?”

  Carly’s question, small and worried and gently delivered, landed like a slap.

  “What do you mean?” But Marcelline knew very well what she meant, although it hadn’t occurred to her to picture that part either until it had been laid out in a single quiet, scared question.

  Carly didn’t lift her head. “Whatever happens, whichever way it goes, you leave and John’s still married to my mom. He lives with us at our house. And now he doesn’t have the painting. I don’t know what he was going to do before, but no matter what happens now, his plan is ruined.” She looked out her window, her mouth working to keep steady under the threat of tears. “Because of me.”