“What’s he want?” Sturgess asked.
“Fifty thousand.”
“Jesus.”
“I haven’t got it,” Gaynor said. “After I came up with a hundred grand for you, I’ve got nothing left. I’m going to have to put Rose’s funeral on my line of credit.”
“Let me think,” Sturgess said.
“Give me half of what I paid you,” Gaynor said. “A loan. I’ll pay it back. There’ll be insurance money coming in.”
“Rosemary’s million-dollar policy,” the doctor said. “Clearly your blackmailer doesn’t know about that or he’d be asking for a lot more than fifty thousand.”
“So you know I’ll be able to reimburse you once my company makes good on the policy. So help me now with the fifty.”
“That’s... going to be difficult,” Sturgess said. “I don’t have it to give.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Gaynor said, whispering angrily, glancing back at Matthew to make sure he wasn’t choking on a Cheerio. “How could someone blow through a hundred thousand dollars that fast?”
“My financial needs are none of your business, Bill. Sounds to me like if anyone is to blame here, it’s at your end. You need to fix this, and you need to fix it fast.”
“I’m telling you I don’t have the money. Maybe I should just not pay him, let him say whatever the hell he wants to say, to whoever he wants to tell it to. The police’d be pretty goddamn interested.”
“Don’t joke, Bill.”
“Who said I’m joking? If this gets out, all I have to say is I knew nothing about it. Not at the time. That I thought everything was aboveboard. You know who they’ll come after? You, that’s who. Is it the gambling, Jack? Is that where the money went? Did even a dime of that money go to where you said it was going to go? You kept it all, didn’t you, to pay off your debts? How do you think that’ll look when it comes out? What you did for the money, and what you did with it when you got it?”
“Just shut up!” Sturgess said. “I’m trying to work this out.”
“You’d better work it out fast. The call is set for ten thirty. I’m supposed to be at the bank when it opens. And what if when I get there the accounts are frozen or something, because of Rose’s death? Then there won’t be a damn thing I can do about this.”
“Tell him you have the money,” the doctor said. “When he calls you, tell him you’ve got it.”
“But I won’t.”
“That’s okay. This guy, do you think he knows you to see you?”
“How would I know that?”
“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.”
Carol allowed herself a short laugh that sounded more like a clearing of the throat. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Not to my face, you wouldn’t,” Agnes said. “I know what I am, I know how I come across. You can’t run a place like this and be a nice person. And when you’re a woman you have to be even tougher, and you can’t worry about what they think of you. But it doesn’t mean you don’t feel, or that you’re not hurting inside.”