Brainstorm (5 page)

I spent most of the night listening for suspicious noises,
and imagining Danny Stearns creeping up my stairs. Around 6 a.m. I gave up and
got out of bed, showered, dressed, and dropped a frozen waffle into the
toaster. I picked up coffee on the way to the office and wondered how open I
should be with Miller, who would be installing my security system in a few
hours. Should I let him know what being added to my dwindling roster of active
clients could mean for him? I didn’t know. I’d play it by ear.

Once in the office, I started going through Harley’s
desk, looking for anything that would tell me why she’d been lying to me since
the day she took the job as my assistant.
Grandmother
my ass!
That “grandmother” was the reason she’d given for taking the job
with me, instead of at a large firm in Chicago where she’d been offered the
moon. Harley was good at what she did. So if no sick old lady was holding her
back, why work here, where she had no chance of stretching her wings?

And who was this guy she was living with? A husband? A
boyfriend? There had only been one bed; whoever he was, he was
living
there. There were too many
clothes, too many male toiletries, to be left for the occasional overnight. Was
it his house? Or hers?

I stopped long enough to attach a sticky-note to my
computer screen, reminding myself to meet Sean at noon for his press
conference, and then checked my phone messages. The most disturbing, was the
one from the airport – no names of private pilots would be forthcoming.

I began the tedious task of phoning the general managers
of the stations in Tony’s network, to give them the bad news. By the time I’d
finished, I was pretty sure his career had come to an end; the stations would
find another way to deliver traffic reports. It also meant that a huge chunk of
my income was now just flat-out gone.

Okay then, back to Harley’s desk. I pulled out her chair
and started with the top left drawer. The search netted me nothing more than I
would have expected; client folders, website access codes, and a list of
florists, caterers, and our utility providers. In another drawer I found
printer paper and a small assortment of makeup items - a tin of what looked
like pancake foundation, lipstick, aspirin, and not much else. I sat back in
the chair to think about what I would say to her, but within a few minutes,
Miller knocked on the door.

He made two trips to his vehicle to bring in the tools
and all the crap he needed for the installation. He most likely expected me to
stay after he finished to discuss when I would take over his advertising, but I
couldn’t do that today. “You have to be done by 11:30 – is that do-able?” I
asked, “I have to be somewhere at noon.”

“Not a problem,” he said, and he went to work, “but we
need to set up a meeting pretty soon to get started on my marketing.”

His credit check had been stellar. “Absolutely,” I said.

At 11:30 on the dot, Miller was packed up and had
launched into an explanation of the ins and outs of my shiny new security
system. I put in the code, using the last four digits of the office phone
number; the same code we used on everything around here, because Harley was
awful with numbers and could only seem to remember the one. “The alarm will
automatically react to smoke and fire,” he said, “but it will also go off if
the temperature in the building falls below 45-degrees. And if the glass is
broken on any of the downstairs windows, the alarm will also be triggered, even
if you forget to set the code at the panel next to the door here.” We made an
appointment to meet the next day and drove off in different directions.

When I got to the police department, the microphones for
the press conference were all set up, and I waved to Sean, who indicated with a
backwards wave that he wanted me to stand close to the podium. “Hi,” he said.
“Thanks for coming – you’re the only person I know here and I’m a nervous
wreck.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just speak from your heart.
The police will do some of the talking; you won’t have to do all of it.”

Precisely at noon, the press conference began. TV cameras
from the local affiliates were there, panning the folks on and near the podium,
zooming in on the police chief as he spoke. Then, flanked by two police
officers, one of whom was Officer Morey, Sean pleaded for his brother’s safe
return. One of the officers spoke directly to the captor or captors, stating in
no uncertain terms, that letting Fergal Finnegan go was in their best interest.
Sean returned to the microphone and offered a $100,000.00 reward to anyone who
could provide information leading to the safe return of his brother, then,
choking back tears, held up a large photo of Ferdy.

“You did great,” I told him when the media had drifted
away.

“I’m headed back home,” he said, “but I’ll keep in touch with
the police and of course I’ll come back if there’s something else I can do to
help find my brother.”

After I said goodbye to Sean, Officer Morey approached
me. “Listen,” he said, “would you want to have a cup of coffee? Maybe grab some
lunch?”

Now I have to tell you, this was something that had never
crossed my mind. But how bad could it be, to be seen having lunch with law
enforcement? My faithful paranoia told me that it couldn’t hurt. “That sounds
good,” I said. “We’re not going in your squad car, are we?”

“That would be a no,” he smiled. “We’ll have to meet at
the restaurant.” He had a nice smile. And great Irish eyes. I hadn’t noticed
those features before. How could I? There had always been a crisis happening
when we were together. I felt a little twinge of excitement at the prospect of
sharing lunch with a handsome man, who also happened to be a protector of the
people.

In the restaurant, I stared at the menu, wondering what I
could order that wouldn’t end up waving at him from between my teeth.

“What looks good?” he asked.

“Maybe just a salad,” I said, as I polished the fork with
my napkin.

“I always get beef on a wick when I come here,” he said.

“Oh, that sounds good, maybe I’ll try that.”

“You seem nervous,” he said, as he watched me rub the
tines.

The word is
anxious
,
I thought. I began to breathe slowly and put down the fork. “Do I? Well, I
guess you’re asking me out to lunch was kind of unexpected. Did you want to
talk to me about the incident at my office? Or Tony? Ferdy?” Heat pickled the
back of my neck.

“No, I think I just got used to bumping into you, and
then realized that I was
hoping
to
bump into you again. I figured you might be at the press conference, so I
traded duties with a guy who was supposed to be there.”

“Well, that’s very sweet,” I said, “but you have me at a
disadvantage. You’ve learned a lot about me, but I don’t know
anything
about you, except what you do
for a living; what your first name is, where you live, you already know those
things about me. You’ve been to my place, seen me in my
pajamas
- and don’t get me wrong, you seem like a nice guy, but the
way my luck is running, you’re probably up to your neck in debt, have three
ex-wives, and are a couple of hours away from popping out a gigantic cold
sore.”

“Wow,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “where did
that
come from?”

I shook my head. “My life; my big, fat, mess of a life.
My clients are being picked off one-by-one, in one way or another, which means
I’ll be out of business soon, my assistant was roughed up by some thug - she’ll
be okay, but now I’m wondering if she’ll sue me because it happened at the
office. I can’t afford that. Absolutely
nothing
is going right, so it seems that the last thing I should do is get mixed up
with someone who carries a gun.”

“First,” he said, “my name is Jack, so please call me
that. Second, I live on Tip Hill. Do you know that area?”

I loved that section of the city. Tipperary Hill had a
wonderful zoo, an arboretum, and Irish pubs and shops. It was the section of
the city where so many people from the Old Sod lived, that its main traffic
light had the green on top. I smiled, and relaxed a bit. “You must love it
there.”

He nodded. “So tell me,” he said, “does your family live
around here?”

“I don’t have a family.”

He looked surprised. “No one?”

I shook my head. “My father died when I was a baby, my
mother when I was six.”

“Aunts? Cousins? Siblings?”

“No, no, and no. No one.”

“Sorry to hear that. What did your father do?”

“He was an investment banker. The only reason I have any
idea of what he looked like, is because my grandmother gave me this gold
locket,” I said, as I pulled it out from under my shirt. “She could have put a
picture of anyone inside; I wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“So your grandmother raised you after your mother
passed?”

“Until
she
died, and then I went to live with my aunt. Money from my parents’ life
insurance, as I was told, went into a fund to pay for my upkeep. The money
apparently followed me as I was passed from my grandmother to my aunt.”

“Is she still alive? Your aunt?”

“No. Can we talk about something else, please?”

“Sure,” he said, “I didn’t mean to pry. Listen, I want to
help you as much as I can with all of the things that are going wrong, but out
of all of it, only your office break-in and Mr. Finnegan’s disappearance, are
within my jurisdiction.”

“So when you came to my apartment…”

“It was an unofficial visit. I came because you called
me; you were upset.”

I smiled at him. “That was nice.”

“One thing I do want to follow up on,” he said, “is what
you told me about Stearns himself. The robbery happened ten years ago, so how
can you be positive that he was the guy who bumped into you?”

“Because I’ll never forget his face – or those eyes,” I
said. “Never. It was him.”

“Well, if that’s true, you could be the only witness.”

“But the police reopened the case because of an anonymous
tip – that means I’m
not
the only one
who knows it was him.”

“Yeah,
anonymous
,”
he said. “They have no idea where the tip came from. It panned out, but an
unknown person isn’t going to be of any help at the time of trial.”

It’s getting hot in
here,
I thought, and I took a deep breath. “Look, I have what’s known as
Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I’ve had it for twelve years. I’ve managed to
control it for the last ten, but the strain I’ve been under with my clients and
Harley – well, I had to start seeing someone again because stress is the one
thing that can bring it back full-on. I don’t want that. That’s why I don’t
want to get involved in the Danny Stearns thing.”

If he was shocked, he didn’t show it. I guess in his line
of work, it wasn’t even close to the worst thing he’d ever heard. “I’m not
familiar with that,” he said, “are you on medication for it?”

I nodded. “To help me sleep and to relieve stress.”

“Ask your therapist, or whoever it is you see, for
guidance about speaking to the police in Rochester. It’s your duty to provide
information that could help put Stearns away.”

Again, what felt like tiny hot teeth nipped at the back
of my neck, and heat built throughout my body. “They already know about me?”

“Of course,” he said, “I couldn’t sit on information like
that.”

I was suddenly fatigued and wanted to go. “I have to
leave.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

Jack reached for my wrist. “Take a day. Talk to your
therapist. I don’t want anything to happen to you, but you’re going to have to
talk to them, Audrey, so you have to find a way. ”

This is not how I had envisioned our lunch going. Not
having been involved with a member of the opposite sex for a long time, I’d
felt the thrill of new possibilities when he’d asked me to join him; I
certainly found him attractive. But now that he’d reported our conversation
about Danny Stearns, fear and trepidation were thrown into the mix. I left the
restaurant with my head spinning.

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to have it out with
Harley, but I headed to the hospital to do just that before she was released; I
wanted her in a confined space where she couldn’t run. I found her still in her
bed. Good.

“Hi Audrey,” she said with a big smile. “I’m out of here
as soon as the doctor comes back and signs my release papers; the nurse said it
should be no more than a couple of hours. I can’t wait. I’m going stir crazy in
here.”

“Not so fast,” I started. “I went to your house yesterday
to check on your grandmother.” I watched as her smile faded. “I was worried
about her because of the storm, but there was no sign of any grandmother
there!”

Harley’s face turned ashen. “I told you a neighbor was
looking in on her. Maybe she was next door.”

“No hard candy, no doilies, no old lady smell,” I said,
feeling mean, “no old lady at all. But there was plenty of evidence that some
guy lives there. Who is he? And why have you been lying to me all this time?”

She covered her face with her hands and started to cry.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You don’t understand.”

“You bet your ass I don’t understand,” I said too loudly.
I had to be careful. I didn’t want a nurse to come in and make me leave. “Out
with it.”

“I had to tell you I lived with my grandmother. I needed
an excuse to leave the office whenever I had to and it was the best, most
logical story I could think of.”

“What are you talking about?”

She dropped her eyes and fidgeted with the blanket. “My
boyfriend.”

“Keep going,” I said, not knowing whether to believe her,
wondering if this was going to be just another lie to cover up the first one.