“Sweeney is leaking blood into Jackson Square and Nielssen couldn’t find his ass with both hands and Google Maps. We’re fine.”
He laughed, but it was small and forced. “So, I guess Sweeney was your little bird?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That won’t be the end of it, you know. They’ll keep sending people until someone succeeds. They won’t stop, Billie. Not until they eliminate all four of you. You have to know that.”
“So it’s either us or them is what you’re saying.”
“No,” he replied, his voice grave. “I’m saying it’s them. I know the Museum isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still an elite organization. They know what they’re doing, Billie. And there are only four of you. Without resources.”
“Well, it sounds less than ideal when you put it that way,” I said.
He sniffed hard. “Billie—”
“It’s okay, kid,” I said. “This is where I say it’s been nice knowing you and you tell me that you can’t risk talking to me again because they’ll come after you too.” I rattled off a number. “That’s an answering service I use for emergencies.” Not so much an answering service as Max, a phone sex operator in Scottsdale who was happy to collect a little extra money just for letting me have the occasional use of one of her lines. “If you ever need to get in touch, leave a message at that number. I’ll call in once a week, okay?”
I heard a noise like a sigh down the line, and I didn’t know if he took the number or not. “Good-bye, Martin. Thanks for everything.” Before he could answer, I hung up the burner phone. I told the others what he’d said—and more importantly, what he hadn’t.
“So we don’t know who put together the dossier on our ‘activities,’?” said Natalie, making air quotes with her fingers.
“Nope,” I replied. “And we don’t know why the board has gone so hard, so fast.”
“What do you mean?” Helen had been sitting quietly, hands tucked between her knees, but she stirred to life to ask the question.
“I mean, a kill order is extreme. Why not haul us in to question us? Or send someone else to do it?”
“The Museum is an international organization of assassins,” Mary Alice put in dryly. “They’re not exactly known for giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
“Of course they do,” Natalie said. “Nobody is targeted without extensive research from the Provenance team. Months, sometimes years of surveillance and intelligence work go into each hit. But somebody gives them a piece of paper saying, ‘Oh, the old bitches aren’t playing nice,’ and suddenly they put us in the crosshairs? That’s insane.”
“It does seem a little premature,” Helen agreed. “They might have done as Billie suggested and at least asked us.”
“Because we’d just roll over and tell them if we were on the take?” Mary Alice was skeptical. She turned to me. “Call Naomi.”
“She’s Provenance,” Natalie protested. “For all we know, she’s the source of the dossier.”
“Martin doesn’t think so,” I said, putting out my hand for Helen’s address book. I punched in the number and waited.
“Ndiaye.” The voice that answered was clipped and none too friendly. I identified myself and waited. A TV was playing in the background and I heard theremin music.
“Is that Midsomer Murders?” I asked politely. “Old Barnaby or new?”
“New,” she said shortly. “You watch English murder shows?”
“Well, sometimes I need inspiration for work,” I said. “I’m pretty pissed they thought of using a wheel of cheese to kill somebody before I did.” She didn’t laugh, and any thought I had of bonding with her over cozy village homicide fell flat.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Because I need some information and you’re the only person I can ask,” I said.
“I am not having this conversation,” she said. But I could hear the episode still playing in the background. She hadn’t hung up yet, which meant she was listening.
“Naomi, I know there’s a dossier on us and I have a good idea what it says. I just want to know why the board decided that was worth a kill order instead of bringing us in alive for questioning.”
She made me wait a good bit before answering. “I’m on medical leave, you know. I’m not supposed to be getting stressed.”
“Well, if the idea of four women being targeted for something they didn’t do stresses you out, good news. You can help fix it,” I replied. I heard the clinking of a spoon and a bowl. “Are you eating?”
“Pho. It’s all this baby wants.” The spoon clinked again. “Alright. Pick one.”
“Pick one what?”
“One question. You can ask about the dossier, the kill order, who has been sent after you. But only one. That’s all I have time for because I’m hanging up in fifteen seconds.”
I thought fast. We had a good idea of who had been sent after us—basically anybody who wanted to collect a bonus. What we needed to know was if there was a way to call the order off.
“Ten seconds,” she said, her voice muffled—from the noodles probably.
“Is there a way to rescind the order?” I asked.
“Nope.” She slurped another spoonful.
“That’s it? Just ‘nope’? We’re under a death sentence?”
“Pretty much.” She paused. “Can you go into hiding?”
“For the rest of our lives? No, thanks. I’d rather handle this. Why are they so set on terminating us instead of letting us clear our names?”
She paused. “You know what a gibbet is?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A gibbet? Kind of like a cage on a pole? The law set them up at crossroads and used them to hang murderers, pirates, sheep thieves. And they left them there, chained up and rotting, for everybody to see while they went about their business. You know why?”
“To discourage other people from committing similar crimes,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
“So they want to make examples of us?”
“More that they want to make everybody else too afraid to ask questions. They want to be left in peace, and you four are in danger of rocking the boat.”
I gripped the phone. “Left in peace to do what?”
“You’re well past your fifteen seconds,” she said. I didn’t answer and she sighed. “I heard a rumor. Someone is on the take, arranging murders for pay. I don’t know who. But they’re determined to cover it up. If word gets out, the entire organization is in jeopardy.”
“Bullshit. We didn’t know anything about that before they decided to come for us.”
“Billie,” she said patiently. “Think.”
“The only reason to come for us—” I broke off. “Holy shit. They’re going to blame it on us and let whoever is actually responsible walk free.”
“Well, it took you a minute, but you got there in the end,” she said. “You’re expendable to the board. Whoever is arranging the freelance hits isn’t, so the board has decided to protect them.”
“Why?”
“They could be too highly placed to lose. They could be blackmailing the board. They could have cut the board in on the hits. Those are just the first possibilities that come to mind. I could think of about a dozen more.”
“And none of it matters because we’re still under a termination order,” I finished. “Who is it? Who is arranging the freelance hits?”
“I already told you, I don’t know. It could be a member of the board.”
“It could be someone from Provenance,” I said, my voice heavy with insinuation.
I heard the sound of a spoon dropping into an empty bowl. “You want to accuse me of something, go right ahead. I’m done with this conversation. Your time is up.”
I related what she’d told me to the others. Mary Alice sat with her head in her hands while Helen covered her mouth and Natalie swore up a blue streak.