Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Who?”

“Marshall Kemper. He’s one of our custodians.”

“I need to talk to him.”

She hesitated. “Follow me.”

She led me out of the lobby, down a hallway, then down a flight of stairs to the basement, and then through another hallway of pipes and ductwork and the industrial sounds of air conditioners and pumps. When she got to a door marked OPERATIONS MANAGER, she knocked, and a second later a short, stout black man answered.

“Yeah?”

“Manny,” Mrs. Delaney said, “we’re looking for Marshall. Where would he be this time of day?”

“Normally he’d be getting the trash pickup ready, but this turns out not to be a normal day. Marshall phoned in sick a while ago.”

Mrs. Delaney looked at me.

“I need an address,” I said.

“There’s a problem,” Bill Gaynor said, speaking into the kitchen phone while Matthew, in his high chair, stuffed dry Cheerios into his mouth.

“What kind of problem?” Dr. Jack Sturgess said.

“I got a call. Someone wanting money. Blackmail. The guy was a goddamn blackmailer.”

Gaynor turned his back to his son and kept his voice down. He didn’t want Matthew to hear foul language. He worried the kid would be spouting expletives before he could say “Daddy.” A word, Gaynor thought sadly, his son was likely to utter before “Mommy.”

“Who was it?”

“It’s not like he said, ‘Hi, I’m Joe Smith, your neighborhood extortionist.’ He didn’t identify himself. But he must be someone who knows Sarita.”

“Why?” Sturgess asked.

“I’ve been thinking about this. Rose had been funny these last few weeks. I think she knew the truth somehow. I think it was weighing on her. I can’t say for sure, but it was little things she said, the way she was acting. And I’ve been trying to figure out, if she did know, who might she have found out from? Who might have helped her put it together?”

“Sarita?” the doctor said.

“Yeah. I’m wondering if she could have been in a position to know something.”

Sturgess thought about that. “It’s possible.”

“It would explain a lot. The way things have gone down. This guy who called me, it sounds like maybe he’s got it figured out.”

“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.”

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.