As Schelling walked to the back stairwell, he saw Jill Klein far ahead of him near the front of the building, turning to go down a different staircase. She looked in his direction, but it was only for a second, and her face was utterly blank. She was timing her descent to coincide with his so it was not possible for anyone downstairs to see them both.
Schelling went downstairs, skirted the group in the living room, went outside to the garden again, and dialed his phone. He heard the voice of Dale, his personal trainer. “Dale here.”
“Hi. It’s Scotty. Are you alone? Can you talk?”
“Sure. I’m at home doing my own workout. What’s wrong, Scotty?”
“I’m in Santa Fe, and I’ve only got a minute or two to talk. You really were a marine, right?”
“Yes.”
“You were trained to kill people?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. That’s what war is. It’s for your country, for the rest of the people, but they train you to fight.”
“Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Me? No. When I was in Desert Storm, they kept me in Kuwait, making newly arrived National Guardsmen do push-ups and squat-thrusts while they got used to the heat. I was sent to Haiti and Liberia, and I didn’t get even that close. Most of that time I was on a ship outside the harbor.”
“But you knew how. And you were ready, right?”
“Sure, but I don’t get why you’re asking.”
“I need a huge favor.”
“Wait a minute.”
“I’ll make it worthwhile.”
“Scotty—”
“Look, I’m in terrible trouble. I’m in Santa Fe tonight on business, but tomorrow I have to get on a plane and go back home. These people have already killed some people who work for me. I’m in danger. It’s a self-defense situation. It’s self-defense.”
“Have you talked to the police about this?”
“Dale, this is way beyond that stage, and I don’t have time to explain it all.”
He heard a deep sigh. “Scotty, I can’t help you on something like this.”
“Please.”
“What?”
“I said please. If you can’t do it, then give me a name. I can take it from there. If you don’t want to have me use your name, I won’t.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t do that kind of work, and I don’t know people who do.”
Scott laughed. He decided the sound was no more false than any other laugh he had given. There was silence on the other end, so he said, “Got you! It was just a joke, Dale. I was just yanking your chain. You fell for it, though. Admit it.”
“Scotty, if you’re in some kind of trouble, I think you’ve got to go to the authorities. If you’re not, and this really is a joke, then your sense of humor is really sick.”
“I’m sorry, buddy. I was just calling to tell you I won’t be back in time for our workout session tomorrow, and the idea came to me, so I went with it. If it wasn’t funny, I apologize. It seemed funny at the time.”
“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth now?”
“Of course I am. Look, I’m in a hurry right now, but I’ll give you a call when I’m free to slip a workout into my schedule. Take care, Dale.”
“All right. Call me.”
Scott Schelling stood motionless for a moment with the dead phone in his hand, every muscle rigid with fear and regret and humiliation. What if he hadn’t convinced Dale that he’d been joking? No, he decided. He had to stop that train of thought now. He couldn’t spend any time worrying about Dale. What was he going to do—hire somebody else to kill Dale? He had to keep from getting crazy.
As he let his brain concentrate on the problem of the Turners, he fought his fear and anxiety and forced himself to think about what he was going to do. He had hired the Turners, promised them a million dollars in cash to kill Wendy Harper. When they had succeeded, he had tried to have them killed, but the Turners had survived. The only person he had left that he could trust was Carl, and Carl couldn’t fix this alone. But Scott still had one other asset—the million dollars. It was in a suitcase in the trunk of his car in Los Angeles.
He heard music, and looked back through the French doors into the hallway and the living room. There was a group of mariachis at the edge of the cocktail party, strumming instruments and singing. There were no signs the guests were going in to dinner yet. He punched Carl’s number into his cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Carl. It’s me. The two jerks who met with the Turners got killed.”
“Holy shit! When?”
“A little while ago, but Tiffany says it’s already on the radio. I want you to talk to the Turners. Tell them I want to pay them what I owe them, but I’m out of town until tomorrow. Tell them those two were trying to turn on me, kill the Turners, and keep the money for themselves. Got it?”
“Yes. I’ll try to reach them.”
“Carl, this isn’t a time when you give it a try and see what you can do. You have to succeed. I’m trusting you with my life here.”
“Okay, Scotty, okay. I didn’t mean it like that. You know I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Thanks, Carl. I’ve got to go now.” He hung up and looked inside again. He was ashamed that he had panicked and tried to hire Dale to kill the Turners. Carl would use money to succeed with the Turners. Nobody wanted a half-second of revenge more than they wanted a million dollars. Once Carl paid them off, then he would be safer than he had been at any time in the last six years.
But there was one more problem that was nagging at him: the terrible mistake he’d made upstairs. He couldn’t have Jill Klein as an enemy. She was his boss’s wife, even if his boss slept with somebody else now and then. She could sour Scott’s reputation with the board of directors of Aggregate, who were virtually all presidents of other big companies. She could squash somebody like Scott Schelling in a week.
He slipped indoors and began to search for her. He moved through the crowd, looking in every direction until he spotted her. She was at the far end of the big living room, standing with another lady and laughing at something the woman had said, her head back and her too-perfect teeth on display. Her eyes were always rolling to see how people around her were looking at her, but when she saw Scott Schelling, her laugh lost its energy and died.
He stood patiently a few feet off until she had to notice him or risk causing a scene. She nodded and stepped away, and he moved to intercept her. “Hello, Mrs. Klein.” He held out his hand to her. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m Scott Schelling, Crosswinds Records. We met at the party a few months ago when Aggregate bought us up.”
She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Schelling? Yes, I believe I do remember. Nice to see you.” She took a step to his right, to move past him.
“I sent you a small present, and I wondered if you had opened it.”
Her eyes moved from side to side to be sure nobody was listening. She whispered, “What are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to start over. I want to apologize for answering my telephone. It’s a line I use only for emergencies. My mother has been hospitalized for over a week with a stroke, and the hospital wouldn’t connect me with her room earlier. My secretary was calling to tell me she got through and my mother’s doing better.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m very sorry she’s been ill.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Klein.”
“Jill. Please call me Jill.”
“Jill, then. I wondered if you would be willing to show me where you’ve hung the map.”
She looked around with the alertness of a deer. “There’s not enough time now. I told the caterers to call everyone in to dinner in five minutes. Where are you staying?”