Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [77]
“It’s Marshalk. He insisted on taking me to dinner last night and—”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing wrong with going to dinner with your boss. It’s what he said that bothers me.”
“I’m listening.”
“He—he basically threatened me, Jonell.”
“Threatened you? With what?”
“About what I’ve learned about Marshalk Group since I’ve been here. He’s afraid that by going back to work at Justice, I might use my inside knowledge of how things work here to bring some sort of legal action against him and the firm.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“He doesn’t think it is. It was creepy, really creepy. He was all smiles and happy talk during most of the meal. But then he got serious, very serious, and gave me this lecture on how he expected me to treat what I know as sacred, and that…”
“And that what?”
“And that he’d hate to see something terrible happen to me.”
“He said that? I mean, those were his words?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he said. Oh, he couched it with lots of flowery talk about what a great career I have in front of me, and how much he’s appreciated the work I’ve done here. But when he said that—when he threatened me—my blood ran cold. Jonell, the Marshalk Group breaks the law every day.
That’s one of the reasons I’m leaving. This place is a legal train wreck waiting to happen.”
“Come on, Camelia, it can’t be that bad.”
“It’s worse, Jonell. Want some good advice?”
“Sure.”
“Listen to Marla. She wants you to leave. You don’t want to be on this train when it goes off the rails.”
Parish turned off the recorder. His office was silent.
Marshalk, whose mouth was empty, moved it as though chewing something.
Parish looked at his boss.
“Nice, huh?” Marshalk said. “There’s no honor anymore. You do the right thing for people, give them the best jobs they’ll ever have, and they stick it to you in the back.”
Parish returned the cassette recorder to the cabinet and locked it.
Marshalk got up and went to the door. He paused, turned, and said, “Traitors get hanged. They get strung up because they violated a trust that can take down a country. Nobody’s taking me down, Jack. Nobody!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Emma Churchill, caterer to Washington’s A-list, liked to arrive at events at least two hours early to size up and set up at her leisure, and planned to do so for the party at the Marshalk town house. But as sometimes happens—fortunately not often—the stars in catering heaven had gotten out of alignment. Her roster of regular help had started calling earlier in the day to inform her that they wouldn’t be available that evening. The bartender claimed he had the flu, although Emma suspected that he’d landed a better-paying job. One of her assistant chefs, a young woman, almost sliced her finger off doing prep work, and Emma ended up running her to the ER to be stitched and sedated. And a server, a dedicated animal lover, called to report that she had to rush one of her dogs to the vet. All this meant frantic, last-minute scrambling to find replacements.
With her patchwork crew finally assembled at the town house, and with an hour before the start of the party, Emma picked up the pace of preparation. The substitute staff worked fairly smoothly with her, although there were a few snags because of their unfamiliarity with her routine. But everything was eventually done to Emma’s satisfaction, and she went outside to enjoy a few minutes of peace before the crowd started to arrive. She did what she always did at such moments, wanted a cigarette. It had been ten years since she’d stopped smoking, but certain triggers remained. The lull between getting ready for an event, and the event itself, was one of them. Theater intermissions were another.
She saw two limos turn the corner and head for the town house. Time to get inside, she thought, and returned to where her staff stood ready. “Showtime,” she announced as people began coming through the door; the jazz duo, a pianist and bass player, launched into “Make Someone Happy.”
She knew many of the Marshalk staff from previous events, and some