“You didn’t recognize the voice?”
“I’m telling you, Jack, I don’t know who it is.”
“We have to assume he knows what you look like, so you’re going to have to be the one who meets him. Has he said where he wants to meet?”
“No. He’ll probably do that when we talk at ten thirty.”
“We need to think about that. We need to know how he wants to do the handoff. It needs to be in a very public—no, not a public place. Not a place with cameras. Someplace isolated. That’d be better. Soon as you know what he wants to do, you call me. Don’t commit to anything. Tell him you’ve got the funeral home on the other line and you have to deal with it; you’ll call him back. Then we’ll talk, figure out how we’re going to do this.”
“What are you talking about, Jack?” Gaynor asked. “What are you going to do?”
“You won’t pay him, but you’ll make him think he’s going to be paid.”
“What? A briefcase full of cut-up paper? I’m not fucking James Bond, Jack. And what about Matthew? I’m supposed to bring along a baby to pay off a blackmailer?”
“Get a grip, Bill. Listen to me. There’s two things we have to do. One, we have to shut this asshole down, make it clear to him that he can’t pull something like this. And two, we have to find out how he knows what he knows.” The doctor paused. “If he found this out from Sarita, then we have to find her.”
“The police have to be looking for her,” Gaynor said. “I’m betting she’s gone to ground. She’s in hiding.”
“But the police still might find her,” Sturgess said. “We need to find her first.”
FORTY
AGNES Pickens, breezing into the administrative offices of Promise Falls General, shouted into the office of her assistant, Carol Osgoode, as she strode down the hall to her own.
“Yes, Ms. Pickens?” Carol said, getting out from behind her computer and running to the door.
“In my office!” Agnes said.
Agnes was already seated behind her desk, her eyes on the doorway as Carol appeared. She wasn’t out of her twenties, this girl, and there were times when Agnes wondered whether she needed someone older to assist her, but what Carol lacked in life experience she more than made up in dedication. She did what she was told, and she did it quickly.
“What happened after I left yesterday?” Agnes asked, her chin angled slightly up so she could look Carol, whom she had not invited to take a seat, directly in the eye.
“At the board meeting?”
“Yes, of course the board meeting. Did anything happen?”
“Everyone just left. I mean, you were running the meeting, and so they all went off and did whatever it is they do,” Carol said.
Agnes nodded. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. I was worried they might have tried to carry on without me.”
Carol shook her head. “I don’t think anyone would dare,” she said.
Agnes’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
Carol looked panicked. “I didn’t mean anything negative. It’s just . . . everyone knows you’re in charge here, and no one would try to do anything without your knowledge. I told them I figured you would want to reschedule as soon as possible, but of course, that was before anyone had any idea what sorts of things you were dealing with.”
“I suppose my troubles are the talk of the place,” Agnes said.
“Everyone’s concerned,” Carol said. “For you and Marla. And I just . . . I just can’t . . .”
“Carol?”
Agnes’s assistant put her hands over her face and began to weep.
“Good heavens, Carol?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I’ll go now and—”
Agnes came around the desk, put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, and steered her into a leather chair. “Let me get you a tissue,” she said, and snatched several from a box on a shelf behind her desk. She handed them to Carol, who dabbed her eyes and then blew her nose. She wadded the tissue into a ball and surrounded it with her hands.
“What’s going on, Carol?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said. “I just feel . . . I feel so terrible for you and what you’re going through. I mean, I know there’s no end of tragedies in this building every day, but when something happens to someone you know, someone you work for . . .”
“It’s okay,” Agnes said.
“You’re dealing with it so well, and I really admire that. I just don’t know how you do it.”
Agnes pulled over another chair so she could sit knee-to-knee with her assistant. “Believe me, Carol, inside, I’m a basket case.” She put a hand on Carol’s knee. “I can’t believe you’d be this upset about something happening to me.”
Carol looked at her with red eyes. “Why would you say that?”
“Because, my dear, I can be a first-class bitch.” Agnes smiled. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”