Linwood Barclay: The Accident

The man shook his head. “Try her,” he said, pointing deeper into the rabbit warren of shops.

Pam went to the next kiosk and, after giving the bags a cursory look, asked the elderly Chinese woman, dressed in a brilliant red silk jacket, where they were hiding the good stuff.

“Huh?” the woman said.

“The best bags,” Pam said. “The best knockoffs.”

The woman gave Pam and Edna a long look, thinking that if these two were undercover cops, they were the best she’d ever seen. Finally, she said, “You go out the back door, go left, look for door with number eight on it. Go down there. Andy’ll help you.”

Pam glanced excitedly at Edna. “Thank you!” she said, and grabbed hold of Edna’s arm, tugging her to a door at the end of the narrow mall.

“I don’t like this,” Edna said.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay.”

But even Pam was caught up short when they went through the door and found themselves in an alley. Dumpsters, trash strewn everywhere, abandoned appliances. The door closed behind them and when Edna grabbed it she found it locked.

“Great,” she said. “Like that accident didn’t freak me out enough.”

“She said go left, so let’s go left,” Pam said.

They didn’t have to walk far before they found the metal door with an “8” painted on it. “Do we knock or just go in?” Pam asked.

“This is your brilliant idea, not mine,” Edna said.

Pam rapped lightly, and when no one came after ten seconds, she pulled on the handle. The door was unlocked. They were met with a short set of steps leading down a dark stairwell. But there was a glimmer of light at the bottom.

“Hello? Andy?” Pam called out.

There was no answer.

“Let’s go,” Edna said. “I saw some purses at the other place that were perfect.”

“We’re already here,” Pam said. “Might as well check it out.” She went down the stairs, feeling the temperature drop with each step. She peered into a room at the bottom, then turned and looked back up at Edna with a huge grin on her face. “This is so the place.”

Edna followed her into a dense, cluttered, low-ceilinged room that was jammed with handbags. They were on tabletops, hanging from hooks on the walls, hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Maybe because it was cold, it reminded Edna of a meat locker, but instead of sides of beef dangling from above, it was leather goods.

“I must be dead,” Pam said. “We’re in Purse Heaven.”

Tubular fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed above their heads as they began picking through bags on the display tables.

“If this is a fake Fendi, I’ll eat Phil’s hat,” Edna said, inspecting one bag. “The leather feels so real. I mean, it is real leather, right? It’s just the labels that are fake? I’d love to know how much this one is.”

Pam noticed a curtained door at one end of the room. “Maybe that Andy guy is in there.” She started walking toward it.

Edna said, “Wait. We should get out of here. Look at us. We’re in some basement, off an alley, in New York City, and no one has any idea whatsoever where we are.”

Pam rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so Pennsylvania. ” She reached the doorway and called out, “Mr. Andy? The Chinese lady said you could help us?” As soon as she’d said “Chinese lady,” she felt like an idiot. That really narrowed it down.

Edna had gone back to examining the lining of the fake Fendi.

Pam reached out and pulled aside the curtain.

Edna heard a funny sound, a kind of pfft, and by the time she’d looked over, her friend was on the floor. Not moving.

“Pam?” She dropped the purse. “Pam, are you okay?”

As she approached she noticed that Pam, who was on her back, had a red dot on the middle of her forehead and something was running out of it. Like Pam had sprung a leak.

“Oh my God, Pam?”

The curtain opened and a tall, thin man, with dark hair and a scar over his eye, stepped out. He had a gun, and it was pointed straight at her head.

In her last remaining second, Edna spotted, just inside the room beyond the curtain, an elderly Chinese man, seated at a desk, his forehead resting on it, a rivulet of blood draining from his temple.

The last thing Edna heard was a woman-not Pam, because Pam was done talking-saying, “We have to get out of here.”

The last thing Edna thought was, Home. I want to go home.

If I’d known this was our last morning, I’d have rolled over in bed and held her. But of course, if it had been possible to know something like that-if I could have somehow seen into the future-I wouldn’t have let go. And then things would have been different.

I’d been staring at the ceiling for a while when I finally threw back the covers and planted my feet on the hardwood floor.

“How’d you sleep?” Sheila asked as I rubbed my eyes. She reached out and touched my back.

“Not so good. You?”

“Off and on.”

“I sensed you were awake, but I didn’t want to bug you, on the off chance you were sleeping,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. The sun’s first rays of the day filtered through the drapes and played across my wife’s face as she lay in bed, looking at me. This wasn’t a time of day when people looked their best, but there was something about Sheila. She was always beautiful. Even when she looked worried, which was how she looked now.

I turned back around, looked down at my bare feet. “I couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time, then I think I finally nodded off around two, but then I looked at the clock and it was five. Been awake since then.”

“Glen, it’s going to be okay,” Sheila said. She moved her hand across my back, soothing me.

“Yeah, well, I’m glad you think so.”

“Things’ll pick up. Everything goes in cycles. Recessions don’t last forever.”

I sighed. “This one sure seems to. After these jobs I’m doing now, we got nothin’ lined up. Some nibbles, did a couple of estimates last week-one for a kitchen, one to finish off a basement-but they haven’t called back.”

I stood up, turned and said, “What’s your excuse for staring at the ceiling all night?”

“Worried about you. And… I’ve got things on my mind, too.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I mean, just the usual. This course I’m taking, Kelly, your work.”

“What’s wrong with Kelly?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her. I’m a mother. She’s eight. I worry. It’s what I do. When I’ve done the course, I can help you more. That’ll make a difference.”

“When you made the decision to take it, we had the business to justify it. Now, I don’t know if I’ll even have any work for you to do,” I said. “I just hope I have enough to keep Sally busy.”

Sheila’d started her business accounting course mid-August, and two months in was enjoying it more than she’d expected. The plan was for Sheila to do the day-to-day accounts for Garber Contracting, the company that was once my father’s, and which I now ran. She could even do it from home, which would allow Sally Diehl, our “office girl,” to focus more on general office management, returning phone calls, hounding suppliers, fielding customer inquiries. There usually wasn’t time for Sally to do the accounting, which meant I was bringing it home at night, sitting at my desk until midnight. But with work drying up, I didn’t know how this was all going to shake down.

“And now, with the fire-”

“Enough,” Sheila said.

“Sheila, one of my goddamn houses burned down. Please don’t tell me everything’s going to be fine.”

She sat up in bed and crossed her arms across her breasts. “I’m not going to let you get all negative on me. This is what you do.”