by Sala, Sharon
No smile.
Steely eyes.
Square jaw.
He knew he scared the shit out of her.
“Good morning, Mr. Dodge.”
“Who’s the ambulance for?”
“It’s not for your wife. She’s in the solarium,” Pinky added.
Charlie signed in, then strode past the desk, still dripping water, and stopped at the door, waiting to be buzzed in. As soon as he heard the click, he went inside, moving past the patients wandering the halls without making eye contact, ignoring the ones slumped over in wheelchairs and cursing beneath his breath as he passed the woman crying in the hall.
Once, he’d asked what was wrong with her, and they’d told him when she wasn’t sleeping, she just cried because it was all she remembered how to do. He couldn’t imagine Annie ever being in that condition, and yet he knew it was only a matter of time.
The solarium wasn’t as bright as usual because of the rain. The dark red blooms on the crape myrtle, visible from the windows, drooped heavily on the limbs from the added weight. Today the heavens cried for Annie and others like her, and tomorrow the ground beneath those same bushes would be red with blossoms—a little bloodshed in the residents’ names.
An old man sidled up to him, staring intently into his face.
“Are you Marty?” he asked.
“No, I’m not Marty,” Charlie said.
“Are you Marty?” he repeated.
Before Charlie could answer, an aide came after the old man and walked him away.
Charlie swallowed past the knot in his throat. He hated this part of coming here. His heart was pounding now as he scanned the room until he saw her sitting at one of the long tables with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered before her.
He approached her with a calm he didn’t feel, thinking as he came closer that she still had the same pretty curve to the back of her neck. Same ash-blond hair as the day he’d met her, and she was wearing blue, her favorite color.
He had a dream of her that recurred often.
The one where she turned in her chair and smiled at him.
The one where she laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck.
That dream.
His gaze slid from her to the table.
Annie loved jigsaw puzzles—at least she had in the time before. Today she was picking up pieces, then putting them down in another spot on the table or in her lap and repeating the process over and over—picking them up, putting them down, unable to remember what to do with them next.
As he slid into the seat beside her, he wanted to lean over and kiss the spot behind her ear that used to make her sigh. Instead, he began picking out the pieces that made up the border and putting them together.
“Do I know you?” Annie asked.
She always asked him the same thing, and it was a bloodless gutting every time he heard it.
“You used to,” he said.
She picked up a piece of the puzzle from the pile in her lap and handed it to him without making eye contact.
He took it without comment and laid it aside as he continued to search for pieces of the border. The more pieces he fit in, the more she gave him, until she’d handed him the one that finished the border.
She leaned forward, staring intently at the puzzle and all the empty space yet to fill in, then looked at him and smiled.
“It fits,” she said.
He watched her eyes, trying desperately to hold on to that brief moment of cognizance, but it was already gone. She’d forgotten the puzzle, like she’d forgotten him, and was looking through the windows into the garden.
His cell phone rang. He glanced down and saw his office number on the caller ID. Damn it! He’d told Wyrick not to call him. He ignored it.
A moment later he got a text.
Answer your fucking phone. We have an issue.
He sent back a text.
I’m with Annie.
There’s a gas leak at our building because the one across the street is on fire. What do you want saved most—your computers or your hard copies?
“Shit,” he muttered and sent back a text.
Computers and I’m on the way.
Annie was still staring out the window when he got up and paused long enough to whisper in her ear, “I remember us.”
He walked away, trying not to focus on how much it hurt to breathe.
Pinky looked up as he strode past the front desk.
“You didn’t sign out,” she called.
He kept walking. By the time he got to the car, he was running. Despite the rain, he could already see a black cloud of smoke billowing above the Dallas skyline as he headed for the office.
* * *
Wyrick was in recovery mode and making what was probably her third or fourth trip, carrying computer equipment to her Mercedes, when Charlie pulled into the parking garage, parking in the slot beside her.
Not for the first time did Charlie wonder how she could afford a Mercedes like that. They started at 115 thousand dollars, went from zero to sixty miles per hour in 5.3 seconds, had a 536-horsepower engine and 560 pounds of torque. He knew because he’d Googled it in a moment of curiosity. It had more gadgets inside it than something out of a James Bond movie.
He drove a Jeep.
“I have one more trip to make for the computer stuff,” she yelled as he got out. “The hard-copy files are boxed. You get them.” She ran back into the building.
The urgency in her voice shot through him, and he lengthened his stride as he ran inside behind her.
“I thought we were leaving the hard copies,” he said.
“I wanted both.”
“Where is everyone?” Charlie asked, staring at the office doors all standing ajar.
“They began evacuation soon after you left,” Wyrick said.
He frowned as he stacked two boxes of files. “Then what the hell are you still doing in here?”
“Same thing you are,” she snapped. “Hurry up. We can finish this in two trips now that you’re here.”
He ran without thought, dumped the boxes in the backseat of his Jeep and was on his way back to the office as a work crew from the gas company pulled up inside the parking garage. They followed Charlie and Wyrick inside, shouting as they went. “You’re not supposed to be here!”
Charlie came back out carrying another stack of boxes.
“Tell her,” he yelled and kept running.
He heard the sharp tone of Wyrick’s voice, but not what she said to them. When he turned around, the men were gone and she had the last box of files. He took them from her, tossed them into the Jeep and pointed at the Mercedes.
“Get your ass into that fancy ride and get out of here.”
“Where do you want me to take these?” she asked.
“I’ll call you,” he said. “Just get the hell out.”
They drove out of the parking garage in haste and quickly steered into the flow of moving traffic. As soon as he could get his wits about him, he called her.
“Head for my town house. We’ll figure something out there.”
He was ten minutes from home when he heard an explosion. It was so powerful that it rocked his Jeep and the street on which he was driving. He saw the fireball in his rearview mirror, followed by another huge cloud of black smoke. The office was officially closed.
Then his cell phone rang. It was Wyrick.
“Yeah?”
“The building and the block are gone.”
“How do you know that?” Charlie asked.
“I have connections,” she said and hung up.
He dropped the phone back in its console and thought about the people who’d had the coffee shop next door to the office building, and the bakery down the street, and wondered how long it would take to clean up something l
ike that, and how many of the displaced owners would start over somewhere else.
His phone rang. Had to be Wyrick again. His tone was clipped. “Yeah, what now?”
“Mr. Dodge! It’s Jason Dunleavy from Colorado again. I called you this morning. Please don’t hang up. I apologize for intruding on your personal space, but my family needs your help, and money is no object.”
Charlie frowned. The Dunleavy guy was persistent and he’d said the magic word. He decided to give him a break.
“Look, I’m in the middle of a situation. Call this number tonight and we’ll talk,” Charlie said.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” he said and disconnected.
Charlie dropped the phone in his pocket as he drove into the parking garage attached to his building. He was home.
Wyrick followed him in, parked in the guest slot beside him and got out of her car talking.
“I’ll set the computer stuff up on your dining room table for the time being, and we can just leave the files boxed up. If I need something, I’ll dig it out.”
“Who are the Dunleavys of Denver, Colorado?” he asked as he grabbed a stack of boxes.
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? Carter Dunleavy... DunTech Industries. PolarDun snowmobiles. DunStar Studios? Need I go on?”
“Oh, that Dunleavy,” he muttered.
“You have no idea who he is, do you?”
“I guess my next question is, why do you?”
And with that, she clammed up and picked up a PC monitor.
“Let’s get this stuff unloaded,” she said, and while she was waiting for him to grab some more boxes, she added, “You do know Carter Dunleavy is missing? Some people are already presuming he’s dead since no one received a ransom call. I have to believe you watch national news now and then.”
He ignored her snide tone.
“If you’ll remember, I was down in Houston’s Chinatown on a stakeout last week. National news was not my top priority,” he said, but now he was intrigued.
“Presumed dead” was not the same thing as “we have a body.” He wondered how many heirs the man had, and who inherited what.
Charlie made for the elevator with Wyrick behind him.
“How did he go missing?” Charlie asked as he pressed the button to take them up to his apartment.
“He left his office for a meeting and never showed. They haven’t found his car or received a call for ransom. Why do you ask?”
“Because someone named Jason Dunleavy wants to hire me.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. I hung up on him the first time, and relented when he called back a little while ago and said money was no object.”
She made no attempt to hide her shock.
“You need a keeper.”
“I have one,” he muttered and left the elevator with her on his heels.
* * *
Charlie was stressed to the max by the time Wyrick went home, but the dining room table was now a fairly decent replica of their desks in the office, and the file boxes stacked along three sides of the dining room wall would have looked like Christmas was in the works, except the boxes weren’t wrapped, and there was no tree, and it was only August.
Charlie made himself a roast beef sandwich smothered with horseradish sauce, added lettuce and garlic dill pickles, and for good measure dropped a mound of potato chips onto the side of the plate. He took a dark lager from the fridge as he headed for the living room, intending to watch television as he ate.
As fate would have it, he caught the tail end of an update on the missing Dunleavy, and a fifteen-second clip of Jason Dunleavy offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward to anyone with information leading to the recovery of his uncle.
“Judging from the phone call to me, the family already has him dead. All they want is a body to bury, which is where I would come in,” Charlie said, frowning.
He was developing a habit of talking to himself.
He washed down the last bite of the sandwich with a swig of the lager, then carried his plate back to the kitchen. He was banging cabinet doors, hunting for one of the Snickers candy bars he routinely hid from himself, when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the clock. Almost 8:00 p.m.
“Right on time,” he said, then glared at his reflection in the hall mirror as he went to get the phone. “And stop talking to yourself, damn it. You’re turning into an old maid.”
He grabbed the phone. “This is Dodge.”
“Mr. Dodge, this is Jason Dunleavy.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“My uncle Carter Dunleavy is missing and we’re on the verge of presuming he could be dead. There’s been no ransom call, no contact from him, and it’s now going on two weeks. He has literally disappeared without a trace. Uncle Carter has no wife, no children. Only an elderly brother who went blind a few years ago, a brother in Dallas, who’s your wife’s doctor, and a sister, who is my mother. I kept the family last name because I’m this generation’s only heir. He had a meeting on the other side of Denver but never arrived. There were no emergency calls. No sign he was in any kind of trouble. His cell phone is off, and no calls made on it since before he disappeared. The authorities have him on traffic cameras on his way to the meeting. The last sight we have of him was going through a traffic light—and then nothing. Of course we’re all devastated. But there is also a bigger issue than our personal grief. He has many holdings, and the livelihoods of thousands of people are hanging in the balance. We need to find him, or we need a body to move forward legally to protect the family holdings. The police are still running leads but so far, nothing.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to go look for a man the entire Denver Police Department couldn’t find?”
“Please, Mr. Dodge. Uncle Ted, the doctor, assured me you’re the best in the business.”
Charlie sighed. He heard the nudge of guilt in Dunleavy’s voice. It was the mention of Annie that swayed the deal, but he wasn’t going to tell him that.
“It’s going to cost you. I’ll require the daily rental of a car, and any other vehicles I might need. Five thousand dollars a day, and I want a flat twenty-five-thousand-dollar deposit before I start searching. Also, if I find him, it’s an extra hundred thousand for the recovery. If I don’t find him, the aforementioned fees will suffice.”
“Done.”
“Okay...so my first question is, does he have any enemies? Who in the family is on the outs with him?”
“Most everyone who did business with him could be considered an enemy,” Jason said. “He’s ruthless when it comes to business.”
“What about your family? Who hated his guts?” Charlie asked.
Jason hesitated. “No one hated Uncle Carter. He wasn’t mean. Just hard, which was what made him a good businessman.”
“Who among you benefits in his will?”
This time, Charlie heard an edge in Jason’s voice. “All of us...equally, and I would become CEO, which he’s been grooming me to be since I was twenty-one. Look, Mr. Dodge. I asked you to find my uncle, not turn this into a game of Clue, where everyone in the house is a suspect.”
“Well, technically, all of you are, and believe me, the Denver PD are working that angle, too. If you don’t like my methods, call someone else,” Charlie snapped.
“No, no, you took me by surprise, that’s all,” Jason said.
“I’ll need access to his personal computer,” Charlie said.
“You can have anything you need. Just find him.”
“Where’s his office? That’s where I’ll begin.”
“Here in Denver. I’ll text you the address and a person to contact.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Charlie said and disconnected.
* * *
Wyrick was sore all over as she drove home. She needed to work out more, focus
ing on her upper body strength. It was a shame about the explosion. God only knew how big a hole that blew in the downtown area. It would take months to clean up.
She was thinking about the Dunleavy family as she turned off the street into her garage and drove up to the fifth level.
She pocketed her Glock and keys, then got out, slid her phone into the back pocket of her leather pants and headed for the elevator.
Her stride was long and the heels of her boots made a clacking sound that echoed inside the garage, giving her the false impression that she was being followed. Even though she was used to that misconception, she didn’t like it. But the walk from the garage to the elevator was short and the ride up to her apartment even shorter.
There was a note on her door from LaRue, the woman who lived across the hall.
A package was delivered to you today. I signed for it. Knock and you shall receive.
Wyrick almost smiled. LaRue was a character.
She knocked on the door and waited.
The door opened. LaRue squinted at Wyrick, then handed her a padded manila envelope.
“I love what you’ve done with your hair,” she said.
Wyrick rubbed her bald head as LaRue closed the door in her face. Wyrick liked the old woman because she didn’t ignore the obvious.
She entered her apartment, tossed her keys and the envelope on the kitchen counter and began the usual routine of checking every room and window until she was certain no one had been inside. Then she went back to the kitchen, curious about the delivery.
There was no return address and no postal markings, which indicated messenger service. She turned it over three times before she decided it was safe to open, then ran a knife beneath the flap and turned the envelope upside down.
The contents slid out.
She saw the old photo first. It was of a little girl in a white ruffled dress. The man holding the child was named Cyrus Parks. The child was her. Cyrus Parks was the head of Universal Theorem, where she used to work, and he called himself her father. But she knew better now. He’d only donated sperm to fertilize the eggs donated by Janet Birch, the woman who’d raised her. Her heart was pounding as she opened the letter that came with it.