Liberty or Death (44 page)

"Don't think I haven't tried. She said I was also a consultant paid to provide certain services to the association, and as an employee, I owed her... well, anyway... we damned near came to blows. Reasoning with her is like trying to talk to a cinder block. You ever have that experience?"

"There's this girl, uh, woman... I sleep with sometimes, and trying to talk with her, when she's tired, or has her mind made up, is a bit like that."

"Andre..." I didn't point out that he was occasionally less than perfect himself. He'd been a stone-hearted bastard when I first met him—the cop investigating my sister Carrie's murder. We've come a long way since then.

"Sorry. You've talked about Martina before. You were expecting this. But remember—"

"No one can make you do something if you don't let them," I finished.

"Right," he said, "so tell her to handle it herself and then you go out and sit in the sun. You've got to come home with tan lines."

"Why?"

"So I can trace them with my—"

Someone banged on the door and I missed the last word. "Hold on a sec. Someone at the door. It's probably her. The wicked witch."

"Don't answer it."

"I wish." The banging increased. If I didn't answer it, the witch would wake my neighbors. Not that she cared. Spoiling paradise for as many people as possible was right up her alley. She was as self-centered as a two-year-old. "But she won't give up. She makes persistence into a four-letter word. You going to be home later?"

"I am home. It is later, remember? It's eleven here. Trying to do my damned homework but I can't seem to work up much enthusiasm." Andre was on temporary leave from the Maine State Police, doing a course in Boston. A gift from his boss, Jack Leonard, who for some reason had decided to help smooth out the bumps in our relationship. Bless Jack. We had just had four wonderful months together, in my condo, deliciously domestic. No one had fired a shot at either of us. Both of our lives had been blissfully free of death. We started the day jogging together and ended it in the same bed. I had never been so happy. It was an idyll that would end soon, but I didn't want to think about that. For now, the compulsive consultant from Massachusetts and the zealous homicide detective from Maine were taking it one day at a time. One lovely day at a time. Only now, because my partner, Suzanne, had gotten sick, I was wasting five of them here at this conference.

"I'll call you," I said. "You can tell me more about tan lines."

"I'm going to start in the middle of your back, and... hey, do you know what day this is?"

"Later." I didn't want to let him go. I wanted to flirt and giggle. Tease and play. I could have spent an hour just listening to his voice, long-distance rates be damned. But the banging wouldn't let up.

"Later," he agreed. "Miss you. I don't care if you're knee-deep in bodies by noon, you call."

"I'll call. Come hell or high water." If the banging was Martina, hell was a likely prospect. I disconnected, limped to the door, and jerked it open, wondering what he'd meant by what day it was.

It wasn't Martina Pullman, the wicked witch, it was Rory Altschuler, her pallid acolyte, officially titled executive assistant. Black hair, dark eyes, black clothes, frog-belly skin, the only spot of color was her glistening red mouth, pursed in a fretful O as though the frog had been stabbed with a pen. "Thea! Thank goodness. I was afraid you were still asleep."

"After all the banging you did, I doubt if anyone on this floor is still asleep."

Unlike her boss, she had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry. I forgot. I've been up forever, getting those damned hand-outs printed out and copied. It practically took an act of God. For a place that promotes itself as a conference hotel, they have a remarkably casual attitude toward business... but that's not why I came up...." She pulled a lank strand of hair out of her eyes and jammed it behind her ear. "Something's wrong."

"What now?" I sighed. This was supposed to be a fun, upbeat conference of the principal women—and men—involved in promoting single-sex education for girls, sponsored by the National Association of Girls' Schools, which lent itself to the unfortunate acronym, NAGS. So far, the wrangling, backbiting, and political maneuvering behind the scenes, mostly orchestrated by Martina, had made the term seem fitting. Maybe we were all sisters but we came from a dysfunctional family, while the men at the conference had been remarkably self-effacing. What we needed were a few of those droning, self-centered, conversation-dominating guys—the ones who dominate most conferences—to take our minds off each other and give us back our focus. I looked around warily, expecting the wrath of the PC gods to fall upon me for even entertaining the thought.

"Something's wrong," Rory repeated. "I was supposed to have a premeeting meeting with Martina at five-thirty. She didn't show up." She made it sound dire and portentous, as though Martina's lateness was rare and unique instead of common. With Martina, though, lateness was a one-way street. She could keep people waiting with impunity but heaven forbid that anyone should keep her waiting.
Her
time was valuable.

"Maybe she overslept. She did have a lot to drink last night." I stepped back into the room. "Come on in. We'll call her."

"I already did that. Three times. She isn't answering." She followed me into the room, the stack of papers she carried held stiffly against her side, moving with the unsure hesitation of a young woman who hasn't spent much time in hotel rooms. I remembered the feeling, that odd, almost illicit sense of being somewhere I wasn't sure I belonged, where no one knew me, where the dominant piece of furniture was a bed. I'd gotten over it. As a consultant, I now spend enough time on the road to make me feel like a traveling saleswoman. Which, as a consultant, I suppose I am. Only what I sell is myself.

She followed me to the desk and hovered there, too close, her eyes darting from me to the phone. Standing beside her, I noticed that she was actually quite tall, maybe five feet seven or so, which surprised me. She had such a tentative way of moving, approaching life with the awkward gait of a wading waterbird, and such a hunch-shouldered, defensive posture, that I'd always assumed she was much smaller. I picked up the phone, dialed Martina's room, and let it ring while Rory watched anxiously.

"Maybe she's downstairs waiting for us," I suggested. "Let's go see." I slipped on my sandals, straightened the bent post and put on my second earring, and grabbed my briefcase. Briefcases in paradise. Increasingly, it seemed to be the story of my life.

We went out into the sunny atrium that formed the center of the hotel. Long corridors ran along the sides of this atrium, separated from the open center by waist-high walls. All the rooms opened off these corridors. Long cascades of hanging plants and a courtyard full of chirping birds, soothing fountains, and lush tropical gardens almost canceled out the "big house" effect. As we hurried through the lobby, I made a face at the sign that insisted bathing suit cover-ups must be worn in the public areas. I had yet to get into a bathing suit.

The conference room was ready for us, set up with coffee and muffins and cups on a tray. I would have poured myself a cup and discussed the situation—I was feeling a serious need for caffeine—but Rory dropped her papers onto the table and faded back against the wall, staring at the center chair as though Martina's ghost sat there glaring at us. "She's not here." Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

Her anxiety was irritating. We were all grown-ups here. The world wouldn't end if Martina overslept. I couldn't help saying so. "Things will be fine," I said. "We really don't need to have a preliminary meeting before every session. That's just Martina's obsession with control."

Rory stared at me like I'd just uttered blasphemy. "How can you say that? Martina is just so fabulous! I've never worked for someone who is such a perfectionist. It's hard, sure, but jeez, Thea, she does such a wonderful job."

I wasn't sure I agreed. Yes, her conferences were supremely well planned and content rich, but both organization and content were achieved through the brutal application of harassment and bullying, with plenty of it aimed at Rory, as well as through the heroic last-minute efforts of the rest of the board. I bit back my comment, "At least she's done a wonderful job of brainwashing you," and bounded into action. Maybe poor Rory was a masochist. I poured a cup of coffee for myself and poised the pot over a second cup. "You want some?"

"We don't have time for coffee right now. We've got to find Martina. She's giving the breakfast speech this morning. In two and a half hours, a hundred and eighty women, uh, conference attendees... are going to be expecting her to perform."

"That's at eight-thirty. This is now." I added cream and sugar and took a sip. Ambrosia. I pulled the wrapper off a bran muffin and took a bite.

Again her look suggested impropriety, as if I'd unwrapped myself and not just the muffin. "I have a bad feeling about this," she said ominously. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her chest, like a diva about to sing something sad. "Maybe her phone isn't working. I'm going to go up and knock on her door." She dropped her hands and marched to the door of the conference room, where she hesitated. "Aren't you coming?"

I would have answered, but my mouth was full of crumbs and we all know what our mothers had to say about that. I made a gesture intended to say that I'd be along soon and sloshed coffee onto the table and the sleeve of my cream-colored blouse. And the coffee was supposed to have improved my mood. I grabbed a handful of napkins, did some damage control, took one last lingering drink, and reluctantly set the cup on the tray. "All right. We'll knock."

I followed her to the elevator, observing, since I was walking behind her, that her shapeless dress concealed quite a nice figure. I'm not into ostentation but I did wonder why an attractive woman in her early twenties insisted on dressing like an Italian grandmother. It wasn't a group that was on the cutting edge of fashion but most of the women at the conference had a pretty good sense of their personal styles. Rory's dress resembled a plastic trash bag with holes cut for the head and arms. Shiny, loose, and boxy. Maybe it was the latest fashion. I wouldn't know. I don't shop.

We drew up outside Martina's door, I, at least, with a sense that we'd been galloping. Instead of knocking, Rory stared at her shoes. "Would you?" she murmured. So I, having the bigger fist and the more elevated title, pounded vigorously, waited, and pounded again. I considered the outrageous yet pleasing possibility that the other board members had had her kidnapped so we could proceed with the conference in peace. The pleasure didn't last long. Rory's uneasy state was contagious.

"You see," she said in a voice that was close to tears. "You see. Something has happened."

"We'll go down to the desk, explain the situation, and get someone to let us in. I'm sure everything is fine. She's in the shower, or talking on the phone and doesn't want to be interrupted...." I didn't add, "or deep in drunken sleep." Rory knew as well as I did that Martina had been drinking heavily last night.

She plucked at my arm with nervous fingers. "I don't think so. I don't think so. Something awful has happened." She seemed almost pleased with the idea.

I rolled my eyes. "You've been watching too much television. Come on. We'll go get the key."

Now she was the one trailing behind. Andre says that I have two speeds—all and nothing. Right now, I'd switched into all. And when a woman my size, I'm five feet eleven, steps into high gear, the world had better watch out. I stopped at the elevator and punched the button, half expecting it to say ouch. Instead, the door opened instantly. We stepped in and were carried, with stomach-dropping speed, down to the lobby. Past the trickling fountains, past the chirping birds, past the omnipresent sweepers. We rushed up to the front desk and explained our dilemma.

They directed us to a banquette, where we were joined by an assistant manager, who needed the story repeated. He, in turn, summoned security, the story was told again, and the four of us marched back to the elevator and rose skyward to Martina's room.

Our little procession hurried out of the elevator and once again came to a halt outside her door. This time it was the assistant manager who raised his fist and knocked, announced himself, paused, and knocked again. Then there was a pause in the action. It seemed that he had fully expected Martina to appear at his official summons, as if our gentler or more meager female knocks hadn't been quite the thing. When the expected result didn't occur, he and the security man consulted briefly and then unlocked the door.

There was a short contretemps, while I waited for management and management waited for me. Then the assistant manager, a rounded, polished gentleman of Hawaiian descent with a broad, solemn face, stepped back and gestured for me to enter. "Perhaps, as you're her colleague, it would be best..."

I stepped past him and into the room, calling, "Martina? It's Thea. We had a meeting this..." Martina, being the VIP, had a suite. A big, beautiful sitting room with the obligatory cellophane-wrapped basket of fruit. The management greeting card was still flying from the top, like a flag, unopened. A table set for two sat before the open doors. Champagne in a bucket. Glasses. A plate of soggy caviar and toast. A bowl of strawberries. I hesitated. Why had she ordered this feast and left it untouched? Although her papers were spread all over the desk, this looked like provisions for a romantic rendezvous, not a late-night business meeting.

Moving more slowly now, I stepped into the dressing room and peered into the opulent bathroom, hoping, as my anxiety grew, that I might find she'd fallen and hit her head. It looked like she'd taken a bath—the tub was dirty, there were towels on the floor and a terry-cloth robe thrown over the edge of the tub—but no Martina. I stepped backward and bumped into Rory. She retreated with a squeak, like a startled mouse.

I stepped around her and went into the bedroom, calling Martina's name again. I called, waited, and called again as I stepped around the corner and the bed came into sight. I stopped as suddenly as if I'd run into an invisible screen. Stopped, stared, and turned my head away. I stopped so suddenly that Rory, hesitantly dogging my steps, ran right into me, gasped, apologized, and stepped back.