Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [69]
Perhaps Martin had been meant to help his clients all along.
The logical and calculated side of Martin dismissed this notion immediately, and not surprisingly. In the more than sixteen years that he had been in this business, Martin had never entertained any such thoughts. His methodical approach to business had earned him his success, and he was well aware of that fact. Involving himself unnecessarily in the lives of his clients would have been the last thing he might consider. But that rose, and those two simple sentences written on a card from husband to wife, had begun to make him wonder.
And now he wondered if he was somehow meant to help the Ashleys as well.
Without much fanfare, Martin decided that he would try. The only question was how much action he dare risk.
The first decision that Martin made, while still standing in the living room and staring at the gift through the window, was not to allow anything he might do to jeopardize the Ashleys as clients. Helping the couple made sense to him only if it did not place his relationship with them at risk. Whatever he might choose to do, it had to be done without uncovering his identity or his reason for being inside their home.
Next he looked at his watch. 12:35. The Ashleys wouldn’t be home until at least 7:00, so he had more than enough time to act. It would mean eliminating scheduled visits to the Sullivans and the Pearls, but those visits could be made up later. This emergency took precedence.
Martin moved to the Ashleys’ kitchen and sat down at the butcher-block table, concealed by drawn shades and a dirty window, and began running through his options. The simplest solution would be to erase the message from the machine and confiscate the gift. This would eliminate the immediate danger to Justine Ashley’s surprise, but doing so would also leave evidence of his presence in the Ashley home. When Laura and the Ashleys spoke (later that night in all likelihood), the gift and phone call would certainly come up in conversation, and it would quickly become apparent that someone had been in the home.
Even if Martin chose to forsake the Ashleys as clients in favor of protecting Justine Ashley’s hard work, erasing the message and confiscating the gift failed to eliminate the danger to the surprise entirely. According to her message, Laura was planning to call later that evening, and if Daniel Ashley answered the phone, the surprise would surely be ruined, even if the message and gift had been eliminated.
Martin saw his options as very limited.
Option #1 was to eliminate the evidence (the message on the machine and the gift) but also to alert Laura to her error, so that she would not call about the party later that evening. He would have to do this without endangering his anonymity, which meant that even if he managed to find and contact the woman, he would have to inform her of the error in a way that would keep his identity a secret and explain how he knew of her error in the first place.
Not an easy task in Martin’s immediate estimation.
After some thought, he briefly considered calling Laura (provided that he could find her phone number), posing as the Water’s Edge banquet manager. He would tell her that he was calling to confirm her meal choice for Saturday night, claiming that their computer had crashed and the meal choices for the Ashleys’ guests had been lost. Martin had seen the invitations (and had even photographed one), and he knew that Justine Ashley had offered her guests three different meal choices. He could even go back to the digital record to determine which three options were available, if necessary. Upon receiving the call, Laura would be alerted to the actual date of the party and would undoubtedly call Justine Ashley and admit to her error, giving Justine enough time to get home and eliminate the message and gift before Daniel found either.
This idea initially appealed to Martin, but in the end he decided that it would not work. A phone call from a banquet manager to a guest would be highly unorthodox and suspicious