The Ex

32

Traci Mack hung up the phone and sat back in her desk chair. Around her in her small office at Link Publishing were stacks of manuscripts, her computer, some shelves of published books she’d edited. A sign behind her desk said IF YOU CAN’T LEAD AND YOU DON’T WANT TO FOLLOW, SIT DOWN AND LET’S TALK.

She’d just been on the phone with Winston Delacort, the author of Architects of Desire. He’d called to complain about Molly’s breaking up his run-on sentences in the portion of the copyedited manuscript Traci had sent him to work on. He maintained that the prose was more fluent his way and better able to express architectural lines. Traci had been diplomatic, but she felt like sending one of Link’s hard-boiled crime writers to bump off Winston Delacort.

But that wasn’t the way the game was played. Instead, she would talk to Molly about fixing the run-on sentences by inserting conjunctions whenever possible. A safe, middle-of-the-road solution that should leave everyone only slightly miffed. That kind of philosophy had come to Traci early enough to help her professional life, but she still hadn’t gotten around to applying it to her personal affairs.

She leaned forward and used a pencil eraser to peck out Molly’s number.

The phone rang six times without an answer.

Traci hung up. She’d try again this afternoon, after lunch. Or maybe she’d talk to Molly about this the next time they met. She was almost finished with the manuscript anyway, and what were a few more revisions, one way or the other? They were slightly ahead of the production schedule now, thanks to Molly’s fast and reliable job on the manuscript, and the art department supplying a jacket illustration that had thrilled Winston Delacort.

She slid the manuscript she’d been reading into a drawer then stood up to leave. There was a new restaurant over on Lexington she wanted to try. Well, it was more of a bar, really. But they did serve food.

She told Jock the receptionist she was leaving for lunch, then pushed through the heavy wooden door out into the hall and walked to the elevators.

Plenty of other people in the building must have decided to go to lunch early. The elevator was packed. Everyone edged backward uneasily as Traci wedged her way inside far enough for the door to close.

The elevator stopped again on the fifth floor, but the man and woman standing there wisely decided not to try to board.

When the elevator reached the lobby, Traci was practically propelled out of it.

The lobby was large, with street entrances at each end, and lined with shops. All hard, marble or wood surfaces, it echoed with footsteps and voices. It was crowded not only with the building’s occupants on their way to lunch, but with pedestrians cutting through to the next block.

Traci was bumped by a large man in a blue suit. She made sure she still had her purse, then turned to make her way through the mass of people toward the East Fifty-sixth Street exit. A woman walking in the opposite direction, part of the flow of the crowd, caught her eye, but it took a few seconds for recognition to register on Traci.

She stopped and looked in the direction the woman had gone, craning her neck. Almost at once she spotted the woman’s green dress only about twenty feet away.

“Molly!” she called. “Mol!”

The woman didn’t turn around. Instead she glanced at her wristwatch and began walking faster, elbowing her way through the crowded lobby.

“Molly Jones!” Traci yelled. “Hey! Molly!”

Still she wouldn’t turn around.

Traci took a few running steps then stopped, realizing the hopelessness of trying to catch Molly or attract her attention. Actually breaking into a run in this mob was impossible, Traci thought; they were likely to turn on her if she tried. And maybe the woman wasn’t actually Molly. Traci really hadn’t gotten that good a look at her, and she’d been thinking about Molly because of Winston Delacort’s phone call.

Either way, by now the woman would be out on East Fifty-fifth Street, lost in an even larger mass of people.

Someone clutched Traci’s elbow.

She jerked away with surprise, then turned and saw it was Beverly Malcolm from the art department.

“Sorry, Trace,” Beverly said, dropping her hand from Traci’s arm. “Didn’t mean to stop your heart. I need to talk to you about that Civil War manuscript when you get back.”

“Sure, Bev.”

“Who were you shouting at?” Beverly asked.

“I don’t know for sure. Somebody I thought I knew. Guess I was wrong”

“Guess so. See you later.”

“I’m going to lunch at a new place around Fifty-seventh and Lex,” Traci said. “They’re rumored to serve food with their drinks. You want to come?”

“I’d like to, but I’ve got a meeting. Next time.”

Traci nodded, then continued on her way toward the exit opposite the one used by the woman in the green dress.

Molly stood before her closet and shuffled through her clothes, first slowly, then so fast that the wire hangers sang on the metal rod.

She withdrew an empty hanger from the end of the closet she only half-jokingly thought of as her dress-up side, where her more stylish and expensive outfits hung.

Feeling anger, puzzlement, and a creepy kind of fear that itself alarmed her, she stood holding the empty hanger and staring at it. She was positive it was where her green dress had hung.

The dress that was definitely missing.

The dress she was sure she’d seen Deirdre wearing earlier that day.