AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She takes one step backward, then two, then trips over her own foot and sits down hard on the futon. She cries out in the pain of her bruised and outraged ribs. The earring drops from her hand.
She waits for Emily.
16
Barbara barely glances at the woman who passes her in the lobby of the Frederick Building. She’s thinking of Deduction, Please, a series of children’s detective books that Jerome read as a kid and then passed on to her. She doesn’t know if her and J’s fascination with Holly’s chosen field (his especially) originated in those books, but it might have.
There were thirty or forty mysteries in each Deduction, Please, each only two or three pages long. They featured a sleuth with the unlikely name of Dutch Spyglass. Dutch would come to the scene of the crime, observe, talk to a few people, and then solve the mystery (usually robbery, sometimes arson or a clonk on the head, never murder). Dutch always concluded the same way: “All the clues are there! The solution is in your grasp! Deduction, please?” Jerome was able to solve the cases some of the time, Barbara almost never… although when she turned to the back of the book and read the case summary, it always seemed obvious.
As she goes up in the elevator, she thinks the disappearances Holly has been investigating are like those mini-mysteries she puzzled over when she was nine or ten. Nastier, more sinister, but essentially the same. All the clues are there, the solution is in your grasp. Barbara almost thinks that’s true. She wishes she could turn to the back of the book and read the solution, but there is no book. Only her missing friend.
She goes down the hall and opens the door to Finders Keepers with her key. “Holly?”
No answer, but Barbara has the queerest sensation that either someone is here or has been not long ago. It’s not a smell, just a feeling that the air has been disturbed recently.
“Anyone?”
Nothing. She takes a quick look into Pete’s office. She even checks the coat closet. Then she goes to the door of Holly’s office. She pauses there for a moment, her hand on the knob, afraid she’s going to find Holly dead in her chair, eyes open and glazed. She forces herself to open the door, telling herself she won’t see Holly but if she does she mustn’t scream.
Holly’s not there, but Barbara’s sense of a recent presence doesn’t go away. She looks at Holly’s desk and sees nothing but a blank pad, the one she uses when she’s doodling, taking notes, or both. It’s neatly centered, and that’s Holly all the way. Barbara pushes a key on the computer’s keypad and frowns when nothing happens. Holly almost never turns her computer off, just lets it go to sleep. She says she hates even a short wait while it boots up.
Barbara turns it on and when the starter screen appears, she uses the notebook app on her phone to find the password that opens all the office computers: Qxtt4#%ck. She types it in. Nothing happens except for the quick annoying shake that means the Mac has rejected the password. She tries again in case she’s entered it wrong. Same result. She frowns, then barks a small exasperated laugh as she gets it. The password changes automatically every six months, a security feature that means Qxtt4#%ck became obsolete on July first. Holly has neglected to give her the new one, and Barbara—busy with her own affairs—has forgotten to ask. Jerome may have it, but she’s guessing he doesn’t. He’s also been busy with his own affairs.
Deduction, please?
Barbara has none. She gets up, starts to leave, then, almost on a whim, takes down the Turner landscape print on the wall. The company safe is behind it. And although it’s shut and locked, Barbara sees something that adds to her disquiet. When Holly uses the safe, she always resets the combination dial to zero. It’s one of her little compulsions. Pete wouldn’t bother if he used the safe, but Pete’s been out almost all month.
She tries the handle. Locked. She doesn’t know the combination, so she can’t check to see if anything has been taken. What she can do is reset the dial to zero, put back the painting, and call her brother.
17
Emily parks in the driveway and gets out of the Subaru a little too fast. Another bolt of pain goes through her back. It’s becoming harder and harder to believe they’re holding back the tide of senescence, a thing they’ve taken as an article of faith since dining on Jorge Castro.
Not faith, she insists. Science. The science is there. These are just nerve spasms brought on by tension. They’ll pass, and once they do I’ll continue my recovery.
She goes up the front steps, palms pressed into the lumbar area at the base of her spine. Roddy is no longer on the porch; nothing there but a half-empty coffee cup and his notebook. She looks down at it and is distressed to see his formerly neat handwriting has begun to sprawl and shake. Nor has he kept to the notebook’s blue lines. His sentences go up and down as if he’d written them on the Marie Cather in a heavy swell.
She expects to find him in the living room or in the downstairs office, but he’s in neither, and when she goes into the kitchen she sees the basement door is standing open. Emily feels a sinking in the pit of her stomach. She goes to the door. “Roddy?”
It’s the woman who answers. The wretched snooping woman. “He’s down here, Professor, and I think he’s given his last lecture.”
18
Jerome tells Barbara he won’t be flying home after all. There was a flight scheduled at 12:40 PM, but when he called to book a seat, he was told it has been canceled because of Covid. The pilot and three members of the cabin crew had tested positive.
“I’m going to try and rent a car. It’s just shy of five hundred miles. I can be home by midnight. Earlier, if the traffic isn’t too bad.”
“Are you sure you’re old enough to rent one?” She hopes he is. She wants him with her, wants him bad.
“As of my birthday two months ago, I am. I can even get a discount with my Authors Guild card. Crazy, huh?”
“You want to know what’s crazy? I think someone’s been in the office. I’m here now.” She tells him about how she had to turn the computer on instead of just waking it up with a keystroke, and how the combination dial was set in the 70s instead of at zero. “Do you have her password? The one that kicked in at the start of the month?”
“Gee, no. Haven’t been there at all. My book, you know.”
Barbara knows. “She might have turned her computer off, I’ve told her they suck power even when they’re asleep, but forgetting to set the combo dial to zero? You know Holly.”
“But why would anyone go there?” Jerome asks, then answers his own question. “Maybe someone’s worried about what she’s been finding out. Wants to know if she’s written a report, or talked to her client. Barb, you have to phone the Dahl woman. Tell her to be careful.”
