The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [87]
“Yes?”
“This is Leonard.” His voice was a toneless rasp.
“Yes?”
“You wanted a report on everyone who talks to this Christine.”
“And?”
“Well, a big fat woman just left. She got here about forty-five minutes ago.”
“Mr. Vincent, your instructions were to call as soon as she met with someone, not to wait until they had left.”
“Hey, you don’t sound like Dahlia. Is this Dahlia?”
“Mr. Vincent, please. When Hyacinth paid you, she told you to call this number and report. Now you will either do exactly as instructed or I promise you trouble. Big trouble. Is that clear?”
The threat was effective. Leonard Vincent feared nothing that he could see, but an icy, disembodied voice was something else. He cursed himself again for taking the job. “Yeah, it’s clear,” he said.
“All right. How long did you watch the house after the woman left?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes. I don’t know exactly. Long enough, though. She’s staying put.”
“Very well. Return to your post, please.”
“What about sleep?”
“You are being paid, and paid well, to watch that woman and report on her movements, Mr. Vincent. Now return to your post. And remember, we wish to know the minute she talks with anyone—not after they have already left. Call this number at two o’clock, and we shall discuss your sleep. Oh, one last thing. Before she paid your advance money, the woman who hired you did some checking around. She learned of your tendency to hurt people, sometimes without provocation. No one is to be touched without our say-so. Is that clear?”
Vincent shrugged. “Like you said, it’s your money.” He hung up the phone, stared at it for a moment, then spat on the receiver. A reflex check of the coin return and he drove back to watch the house.
The only lights in the apartment shone through the blinds of the living room window. Every few minutes Christine’s silhouette appeared, then vanished. Leonard Vincent picked up his whetstone and began clucking a one-note melody as he withdrew another knife from the glove compartment.
Christine had been unable to sit since Dotty Dalrymple’s departure. She paced from room to room, tapping the unopened envelope against her palm. Suddenly she looked down, as if noticing it for the first time. Then she tore it open.
Inside were five neatly banded packets of hundred dollar bills—ten in each.
“The choice is clear,” she said out loud, testing her nursing director’s words. Again the image of David’s face formed in her mind. She stared at the packets, then threw them on her bureau.
“The choice is clear,” she whispered.
CHAPTER XVII
On Thursday, the ninth of October, as on the previous three days, Boston forecasters predicted an end to the tenacious low pressure system and the rain. For the fourth straight day, they were wrong.
In Huddleston, New Hampshire, ninety minutes north of the city, a one-hundred-fifty-year-old covered bridge washed away before Crystal Brook—-little more than a trickle in August.
Accidents on frenetic Route 128, never a rarity, more than tripled.
On David Shelton, however, as on most in the area, the effects of the unrelenting downpour were even more insidious. It was more than a mile from his apartment to the financial district and the law offices of Wellman, MacConnell, Enright, and Glass. Irritable and frustrated by inactivity, he chose to defy the storm and walk to his appointment with Ben. Within a block he was soaked beyond the consideration of turning back. “Wet is wet,” he pronounced testily, trudging head down into the wind.
The suite of offices occupied most of the twenty-third floor of a mirror-glass building whose name and address were both One Bay State Square. “No wonder he charges $10,000,” David muttered as he approached the reception area. Three women were handling traffic with practiced calm in a space nearly as big as David’s whole office.
He looked and felt like a drowned rodent. For a moment he thought of asking the severe receptionist for some towels and a change of clothes, but nothing in her expression encouraged that kind of frivolity. “Mr. Glass,” he said meekly,