Hardscrabble Road(90)

She had heard the news at noon. She had listened to it on one of their own radio stations. At noon they were saying that the body of Sherman Markey had been found in the alley, and she remembered thinking that was good. Now that they’d found Sherman Markey, it wouldn’t matter anymore about Ellen Harrigan’s suspect list.

“Listen,” she’d told Frank just yesterday. “You think it’s funny, but you’re not on it. I’m on it. Why that idiot woman thinks I’m more likely to kill Drew Harrigan than you, I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “It’s just a red herring. If you don’t want the police looking at you, you point them at somebody else.”

She really couldn’t breathe, but she had to be breathing. She really couldn’t move, but she had to be moving, because she was sitting down, backing into one of those horrible ergonomic chairs with the wheels that always threatened to shoot the thing out from under her. She was also crying. The tears were coming down her face in sheets. She hadn’t realized it until they dripped down onto her skirt and then through, making her thigh wet.

She looked up and the two secretaries who had been working at their desks only a moment ago were standing beside her. She couldn’t remember either of their names, and that was ridiculous. She knew the names of everybody who worked in the office. Hell, she knew the names of everybody who worked for LibertyHeart Communications and had anything to do with scheduling, anywhere in the country. They weren’t that big a company yet that she could afford not to know people’s names.

One of the secretaries was tall and young and African-American and looked as if she could have walked into any stray modeling agency on any stray day and picked up enough work so that she’d never have to use a word processor again. The other was a middle-aged white woman in a red dress that was much too young for her. What did it mean that clothes were much too young for somebody? Marla didn’t know.

It was the African-American woman who spoke up. “Was that—I know this is ridiculous, but we thought that looked like, you know, like Mr. Sheehy.”

“It did look like Mr. Sheehy,” the white woman said.

“I thought it looked like Mr. Sheehy, too.” Marla rubbed her palms against the sides of her face. She could breathe now, and know she was breathing, but that didn’t seem to be much help.

“Are they saying Mr. Sheehy is dead?” the African-American woman asked.

She had to make a decision, Marla thought. That was what she was paid for, making decisions. What would it mean, if Frank was really dead? What would happen to LibertyHeart? Who would own it? Frank had a large and extended family, scattered everywhere. He was the only one of them who worked very hard or did much of anything, but they all had money. When she had first come to work for this company, she had been endlessly fascinated by the parade of Ivy League colleges that seemed to be somehow attached to people Frank was related to. Later, she learned to be more impressed with the private high schools. It was odd, what people cared about, and what you learned to care about along with them. She wasn’t afraid for her job. She was the best scheduler in the business. Other companies tried to head-hunt her three or four times a year. She was afraid for herself. If she had had a motive to kill Drew Harrigan—and she still didn’t think she’d really had one; she couldn’t imagine what it would be—she must have had an even better motive to kill Frank Sheehy. Didn’t the employees always want to kill the boss?

“We have to call the police,” she said.

The room around her was very quiet. The two other women were very still. The whole thing sounded absurd, sounding like an echo against the walls of this enormous room. You called the police if a disgruntled employee showed up with a shotgun. You called the police if you arrived in the morning and found that the place had been broken into. You called the police if the assistant with the abusive husband was getting beaten to a pulp on the front doorstep. You didn’t call the police to tell them you thought that the homeless man who had been found dead in a shopping cart behind the District Attorney’s Office was your boss and the owner of the company you worked for, and had at least ten million dollars in a trust fund that kept him happily on the mailing list of every good tailor in town.

“I have to call the police,” Marla said again. That was when she realized that just being able to breathe, or just being able to move, didn’t necessarily mean you were going to get anything done.

“You can use my phone,” the African-American woman said, tugging at Marla’s elbow. “Come on. I’d make the call myself, but under the circumstances—”