"Yes."
"Good. Mr. Bone, I think you should leave your apartment in ten minutes and meet me at the bank in fifteen. You should be here before anybody else."
"I’ll be there. And listen. Call Gene McClure and tell him to get his ass in there. We’ve got to start looking at what Susan was doing. If there’s anything about the murder in her computers, we’ve got to know about it. I’ve been thinking about it all night."
"Yes. That’s good."
"Fifteen minutes," he said. He hung up the phone, looked at it for a moment, said, "Whoa," and headed for the shower. No shave? Motorcycle jacket and cowboy boots? Wonder what that was about.
Bone carried the suit and tie with a white shirt and a pair of black dress loafers into the elevator, and was met by Baki on the twelfth floor.
"Good," she said, taking the clothes. She was dressed in a tack-sharp blue suit and her hair was perfect. "Gene McClure is on the way in. He should be pretty quick. I scared him a little."
"Good. Get him to me as soon as he comes in. Now: What’s this about the boots and jacket?" He looked down at himself.
"We may want to reflect the image of a man who has been working all night to keep the bank going. Nobody else is in. I checked on McDonald, and he hasn’t been in, so as far as anybody knows, we’ve been working all night. Not even McClure knows you’re just coming in. I told him you were out for coffee."
"I see… Listen, you gotta start calling me Jim."
"Not yet," she said. "Go get your computers up, and get ready for McClure. I’ve got to mess up my hair."
"Here…" He reached out and pulled a few strands over her eyes, a couple out at the sides: "My God, you look different," he said. And he thought that in the six years she’d worked for him, this was the first time he’d ever touched her, in any way. "But you’ve got to try to look a little tired."
"I am tired," she said.
McClure arrived ten minutes later, wearing a rumpled suit over a clean shirt; the skin on his face was a scuffed pink, as though he’d scraped off his beard with an emery board. McClure was technically O’Dell’s second-incommand, although his position was bureaucratic rather than executive, and he had not been part of her inner circle. Pushing sixty, he was simply waiting for retirement and enjoying himself. But as O’Dell’s technical second-incommand, he was now running her department, if only for a few days.
"Jim. Kerin told me about Susan. My God…" Bone peered at him and realized that he was really shocked. He liked that.
"Murdered," Bone said. "I’m as upset as you are, but we’ve got some things to get straight. We’ve got to balance everything out, tear through everything Susan was doing. We’ve got to make sure she wasn’t up to something… unusual."
"Shouldn’t we wait for the board?" McClure asked doubtfully.
"No. There’s an emergency board meeting this morning at ten o’clock, and they’re gonna need this information to put together some kind of response," Bone said. Baki walked into the room with a piece of paper in her hand. "If there’s anything unusual in the record, they’re going to want to know ASAP."
"All right," McClure said. "I’ll get some of the computer cowboys on the way in."
"They’re on the way," Baki said, lifting the sheet of paper so they could see a list of names. "All of them."
McDonald was shaken out of bed at eight forty-five; Audrey was up with a cup of coffee.
"What?"
"Board meeting at ten. Nancy Lu called an hour ago. I let you sleep as long as I could. You’ve got to be good," she said.
"Coffee?"
"Yes," she said. "You go get cleaned up. I’ll get your suit… the charcoal one, I think, since O’Dell’s dead. Wouldn’t that be appropriate?"
"Whatever…" And he staggered off to the bathroom.
The Polaris Bank’s board of directors met at exactly ten o’clock in emergency session. All the members were present, plus Bone and McDonald. Bone showed up at the last minute wearing jeans, a motorcycle jacket, and cowboy boots. Wilson McDonald raised an eyebrow at the costume, and turned to see if Brandt had gotten it.
Before anyone else could say anything, Oakes blurted, "What in the Sam Hill is going on here? Jim? Wilson? Anybody?"
Wilson McDonald steepled his fingers: "There’s no reason to think that the O’Dell incident is related to the bank. I understand drugs were discovered in her apartment last night…"
"Drugs?" Brandt buried his hands in his face. "Sweet bleedin’ Jesus. Is the press gonna find out about this?"
"I would think that the police would make every effort to keep this private. However, I think there’s a good possibility that Susan, as with any drug user, was involved with very unsavory people…"
"Bullshit," Bone snapped. He was chewing on an unlit cheroot, scowling. "It’s gonna get in the papers. I’d be surprised if it’s not out by tomorrow. And her dealer was a waiter at The Falls."
"How do you know about this drug thing, anyway?" Anderson asked querulously, looking from Bone to Mc-Donald. And to Bone: "How do you know her dealer?"
"The police told us about the drugs," Bone said. " Several of us were questioned last night. Another person told me who her dealer was. Told me in confidence."
"We may have to know who it is," McDonald said.
"If the cops ask, I might tell them," Bone said. "But right now, nobody knows that I know, except the person who told me, and the people in this room. If it gets out of this room, it’ll hurt the bank and I’ll want to know why it got out." He looked straight at McDonald.
"What kind of drugs?" asked Bose, toying with a string of pearls.
"Just an old piece of hash and a little pot," Bone said. "Nothing serious."
"Nothing serious?" McDonald said. This time his eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "Nothing serious? How can you say it’s nothing serious?"
"Because it’s not," Bone said.
"I’d disagree," McDonald said. "I think this must be handled very carefully…"
"More bullshit," Bone said. He looked at McDonald over the walnut table, his eyes glittering. "And I’m getting pretty goddamned tired of your bullshit, Wilson."
"Listen, pal," McDonald said, but Bone’s voice rode over his.
"First, it’s not important," he told the board. "If it were heroin or cocaine or crack or methamphetamine, it’d be much more important. With this, it’s a misdemeanor, and we simply issue a press release saying that we were unaware of any drug use on O’Dell’s part, say it may have been related to her glaucoma."
"Glaucoma," McDonald said. "I didn’t know she had glaucoma."
"Neither do I, dummy, but by the time the newspapers find out for sure that she didn’t, nobody’ll give a shit."
McDonald was half out of his chair: "You’re asking to be hit in the mouth, Bone. I’m no damn dummy and I want an apology."
Bone waved him down into his chair, closed his eyes: "I’m sorry, I apologize. But I’ve been here half the night, ransacking O’Dell’s files with Gene McClure. We’ve established that her department is apparently completely on the up-and-up. Everything is absolutely clean."
Brandt said, "Good going. I worried about that all the way in from the farm."
"And we’ve got to stay on top of it," Bone said. "My assistant has prepared a press release…" He opened his briefcase, took out a sheaf of papers, and started passing them around. "It’s all very standard, full cooperation with police, the glaucoma thing, an overnight review of her department with her top subordinates indicates exemplary management with no hints of any banking issues in the murder."
Brandt was reading the paper, put it on the table and said, "Excellent."
"We’re going to have to tell Spacek at Midland," said Constance Rondeau.
"I already did," Bone said. "Kicked him out of bed at seven o’clock this morning, briefed him. He’s issuing a press release that says that Midland is standing behind the merger proposal and that he has full confidence in the integrity of Polaris."