Pulse

45

“M eeding is getting impatient,” Jody heard Jack Enders tell someone in his office as she walked past the door.

The words made Jody slow down, then stop a few feet beyond the closed door.

She went back and stood near the door and pretended to be shuffling through the papers she’d been taking to the printer, listening and watching. It wouldn’t do for a lowly intern to be caught eavesdropping on one of the partners.

She could neither see nor hear clearly. The standing figure she assumed was Enders’s visitor was a dark shape on the frosted-glass window in the door. The two voices were muddled and barely understandable.

Jody stayed very still, trying to tune in. Hearing but not comprehending. Sometimes catching phrases she wanted to hear.

The voice that definitely wasn’t Enders’s did say clearly, “She has a cat, right?”

Enders said something about the cat keeping her spirit up. The “her” might well be Mildred Dash.

“It’s keeping her building up, too,” the other voice said.

“What if-”

“Lose something?” Dollie the receptionist asked Jody. She’d approached Jody unheard.

“I might have.” Jody shuffled through the papers faster, the transcript of a boring deposition in an illegal corporate takeover case. “I need to make a copy of this.” She held out the sheaf of papers. “You do that while I go back to my desk and see if I forgot or dropped one.”

Dollie wasn’t quite sure if an intern outranked a receptionist, but she couldn’t take a chance. Her expression made obvious what she thought about Jody giving her instructions. That was fine with Jody. Dollie’s irritation was what Dollie would remember most about their encounter in the hall near Enders’s office door.

Dollie visibly fumed for a few seconds, then snatched the papers from Jody’s hand and strode away in the direction of the copy machine.

Jody returned to her desk, in what was more a cubicle than an office. From where she sat she had a glimpse of the hall, but when Enders’s visitor left she caught only a brief look at him from the back. He was average height if a little on the short side. Slender but fit. His body contained strength. In the few seconds that she saw him, Jody thought his walk was vaguely familiar. She thought, but couldn’t imagine who the man might be. Someone with Meeding Properties? More likely, someone who couldn’t be traced to Meeding Properties. Or to Enders and Coil.

Jody noticed Dollie approaching with the copies and originals of the deposition transcript she’d handed her. Dollie kept her expression neutral as she laid the neatly stacked papers on Jody’s desk. “I wasn’t mad at you a few minutes ago,” she said. “It’s just that seeing you like that…”

“Like what?”

“Somebody else kind of sneaked around here like you for some reason.”

“I wasn’t sneaking.”

“She’d have said that, too.”

“Who we talking about here?”

“You know… Macy Collins.”

Jody felt a tremor run through her body. “You saying Macy-”

“I’m not saying anything about anyone,” Dollie interrupted, and then turned and left the cubicle.

Which didn’t prevent Jody from finishing her sentence.

“-found something that got her killed?”

At lunch that day, Jody sat in bright sunlight at an outdoor table at a corner restaurant. She picked at her Cobb salad, mulling over the brief snatch of conversation she’d heard wafting from Enders’s office. Something beyond Mildred Dash’s cat had been mentioned-possibly. Jody had heard the muted exchange just before Dollie had approached in the hall.

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d made out the words Waycliffe College.

She’d overheard those words in an earlier conversation at the firm, but in a hushed manner, and not in any context she understood. There seemed to be some kind of need for secrecy that excluded even a future alumna like her.

Maybe, she thought, she was making a fool of herself, sneaking about eavesdropping and leafing through files. She could do the simple and obvious thing and ask Jack Enders or Joseph Coil what work the firm was doing for Waycliffe.

But she had a strong suspicion that would be a mistake. Instead she would keep studying the files that she’d copied from the firm’s computers. Most of it was stultifying legal boilerplate, but now and then a crack of light shone through.

She did know what she had to do about what she’d overheard today. Jody had something like a photographic mind and remembered Mildred Dash’s phone number from the Meeding Properties file.

She got her anonymous throwaway cell phone from her purse and pecked out the number. It was no surprise when she got no answer.

Jody knew the number had to be to a cell phone. There hadn’t been landline phone service to Dash’s apartment for weeks. That was part of the strategy of isolating her.

Jody called the number again and texted a simple message: if u have a cat don’t let it out.

When she’d replaced the phone in her purse, she finished her salad and ordered a wedge of chocolate cake.

Diet and dessert in one meal.

Fighting fat to a draw.

But she knew better.

“Ms. Culver,” Fedderman said to the head librarian, “I’m Larry Fedderman, Penny’s husband.” They’d met before, but being in the vicinity of Ms. Culver seemed to call for a measure of formality.

“Of course you are. I congratulated you after your wedding,” Ms. Culver said, from behind a formidable stack of books she was sorting. Her round rimless glasses reminded Fedderman of some kind of military equipment allowing her to see into the enemy’s mind.

“Er, yes,” Fedderman said. “I remember.”

Ms. Culver managed a smile, but it seemed forced. “Penny seems to have made a good choice.”

Fedderman was surprised. “In husbands, you mean?”

“Of course. What did you think I meant? Suits?”

“No, no,” Fedderman said, wondering if he’d just been insulted as well as complimented with one swipe. “What I wanted to talk to you about was Penny’s mood lately.”

“Must we stay in the past tense, Larry?”

“Everyone calls me Feds.”

“You wish to talk to me about Penny’s moodiness.”

“Her fear,” Fedderman said.

“She’s afraid of you?” Ms. Culver seemed to find that less than credible.

“ For me,” Fedderman said. “She fears I’m going to get shot. Or hurt some other way. You know, my job…”

“Ah, the policeman’s wife’s dilemma. I believe we might have that one in stock.”

“I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen it plenty of times in other marriages.”

“What usually happens?”

“Divorce.”

“And the alternative is?”

“Pen needs to learn to live with her fear,” Fedderman said. “To put it aside. Like all of us do about something.” He wondered what fears Ms. Culver might be putting aside, hiding behind her books.

Ms. Culver smiled. “You’ve apparently given this some thought, Larry.”

“Plenty of thought.”

“And you think everyone must learn to set aside some fear or other?”

“Sure. That’s life. There’s risk in everything, which means possible fear. We simply have to learn to live with it.”

“Or divorce it.”

“Or accept it. Like you’re going to have to do with e-books.”

A stiff smile from Ms. Culver. “I’m aware that Penny thinks I’m obsessive about e-books. But they are something to fear.”

“Something to accept.”

“Ha! Shelley and Shakespeare for ninety-nine cents!”

“But you lend them out free here.”

“We lend books. Not bits and bytes of electronic impulses, or whatever they are.”

“It’s text,” Fedderman said. “Stuff people read rather than watch like pictures.”

Ms. Culver stared at him.

“We have to embrace the future,” Fedderman said. “We’ve got no choice.”

“I accepted that you married my friend Penny.”

Fedderman thought that was an odd thing to say.

Ms. Culver adroitly adjusted her glasses, as if bringing him into sharper focus. It made Fedderman uneasy. “I think what you’re suggesting,” she said, “is that I set an example for Penny. I’ll no longer walk around in fear of e-books, and she’ll take my example and no longer walk around fearing that some night you won’t come home from work.”

“Something like that,” Fedderman said.

“Do you think these fears are comparable?”

Fedderman shrugged. “Fear is fear.”

“Is love all the same?”

“More or less.”

Where was Ms. Culver going with this conversation? It seemed to be getting more and more obscure.

“And you’re sure you love Penny?” she asked.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

That creepy stare again. It was unnerving.

“What?” Fedderman asked.

“Nothing,” Ms. Culver said. “Just an unfinished thought. You’re right. I’ll try to set an example. We do have to learn to put our fears aside. We have to learn to do that with lots of emotions.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Ms. Culver said.