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“Lock the door!” Bryn called back. “And turn on the alarm!”
“Yes, Mom. ”
Joe held his tongue until they were in the van, buckled in, and driving away. “Do I even need to tell you what a terrible idea this is?” he asked. “Or how incredibly pissed off McCallister will be?”
“Nope,” she said. She felt oddly very much steadier now. Annie might be a doofus sometimes, but she was an anchor to her past, to her family, and Bryn needed one right now.
Joe was a good guy, but there was no substitute for that.
Chapter 9
The day passed. Bryn kept her e-mail in-box active, waiting for something, anything from her mysterious would-be supplier; nothing arrived. She’d fielded about twelve calls, eight of them certainly pranks, three legitimate customers, and one from her sister about dinner.
She was checking out a suspicious e-mail message when her phone rang again; the e-mail, it turned out, was legitimate, but trash.
The phone call was odd.
At first, Bryn thought it was a prank call; she’d gotten used to those fast. Lucy called them their sex-chat clients, and joked that they needed to start charging $9. 95 a minute to make some extra money off of it; they usually started out with breathing and vague noises, and that was exactly what this was. Some kind of labored, wet gasp, and undefined sounds.
“Hello?” Bryn said, just to be sure. “Not funny. I’m hanging up now. ”
Usually, that either brought some kind of obscene proposal, or a hang-up. She got neither, just more of the breathing. On reflection, it didn’t sound sexual. It sounded slow and tortured.
“Hello?” Bryn glanced at her phone. Caller ID had brought up a name, which was unusual for a sex caller.
And the name seemed familiar.
Bryn felt a sinking sensation, listening to that whispering breath. She tried again, but got no response to her questions.
She hung up and called Lucy on the intercom. “Lucy, can you look up a contact for a customer for me?”
“Sure. Which one?”
“Sammons, first initial V. I think someone was trying to call from her number and got cut off. ”
“We get a lot of hang-ups, you know. ”
“I know. But look it up, would you?”
“Just a sec. ” Lucy put the phone down, and Bryn listened to keys clicking. “System’s always so slow— Oh, there it is. Sammons, Violetta. She wasn’t a customer, though. She was a client. ”
“A client. ” The difference, in Fairview terminology, was that customers wrote checks; clients f
illed coffins. “You’re sure about that?”
“Maybe somebody kept the number switched on? Could have been a relative; she had a husband who made arrangements. She only passed a couple of weeks ago, right before you arrived here. One of Mr. Fairview’s last personal preps, poor man. ”
Personal prep. Fairview seemed to do personal prep only on his special clients.
The ones who kept on paying.
She couldn’t talk, Bryn realized. Violetta Sammons was too far gone to talk, but she was trying to ask for help. My God. She’s been without a shot for … how long? Why didn’t her husband try to call us?
The implications made her sick and light-headed. “Thanks. Can you read me the address?”
“Sure. ” Lucy recited it, and Bryn wrote it down. “You need anything else?”
“No,” Bryn said. Her knuckles had tightened around the phone. “No, thank you, Lucy. ” She hung up and rang Joe’s extension. He didn’t answer at once; when he did, it was clear the call had switched to his cell. “Joe? Where are you?”
