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Clarisse said, “My take is that either Trask did it or paid someone to do it becausePottingerscrewed him over fairly recently, as you suggested. The writing on the wall might be mumbo-jumbo, or it might have some meaning between Trask and Pottinger. Or Trask is not involved, and someone else killed Pottinger for recent dealings.”
“Or,” Gibson said, “thisdoesdate back to Langhorne’s screwing the mob over.”
Oh, Mickey, you missed an obvious one, babe, but that’s for me to know and you hopefully never to find out.
Gibson continued, “If the latter, then I can start digging into the mob from back then.” She paused. “Langhorne might have escaped with a shitload of mob money. The mob, at least the one today, may have discovered that, and wanted it back.”
Oh, how right you are, at least partially.“The question becomes, did they find it?”
“Is that what you want, too? The mob treasure?”
She analyzed the screen and saw that Gibson had been remarkably calm when uttering these lines. Clarisse automatically wrote some thoughts in her notebook.Her anxiety goes down when she believes she’s right about something.
“I could lie and say it never crossed my mind, but what would be the point? Besides, don’t girls multitask really well?”
“I’m glad you can see it that way,” muttered Gibson.
“Are you? It brings me no particular joy.”
Her other phone silently buzzed. She looked at the screen. It was Greenville.What now?
Frowning, she said, “I’ll have to get back to you.”
Only in her hurry, her finger didn’t hit the right button.
She answered the call. “Yes? I already said I would be there as soon as I could.”
The woman’s voice on the speakerphone was trembling. “Ms. Frazier, I’m afraid—”
“Afraid? Don’t tell me she died already.”
“No, ma’am. But it seems that…that…”
“Oh for God’s sake. It seemswhat?”
“It seems that she’s gone missing,” the woman said.
It was only then that the other line disengaged, as Gibson clicked off her phone.
CHAPTER25
T?HE HARD BED, THE HARDchair, an empty bottle of Ensure on the nightstand, the cheerless room cluttered but now without its occupant. Her mother had come here with basically nothing and had now left with the same.
Clarisse sat in the chair and gazed around.
The management had groveled at her feet for an hour, begging for mercy, pleading for her not to sue their asses off. The police had been called and looked around and asked some questions. They came back to meet with Clarisse when she arrived. They told her that her mother might have simply wandered off. They had started a search. No foul play was suspected, they told her. Just an old woman wandering off. She would turn up soon. The weather was nice, not too hot, not too cold. She couldn’t have gone far. They’d find her soon enough. They left, their boredom barely concealed.
Clarisse slipped one glove off and then the other. She had gotten off the jet dressed to the nines. She wanted them to know who was in their presence. She wanted them to quake.
Though I’m really a nobody, I can act like SOMEBODY better than any other person on the planet.
The manager poked her head in the doorway. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, Ms. Frazier?”
“Mymotherwould be nice. See what you can do about that, why don’t you?”
The head disappeared like it had been jerked away, and the door closed.
Her mother had not gotten up and walked away, although it would have been easy to do so in this place. Except for the memory unit, the facility had not been built to prevent old people from fleeing. It had apparently never occurred to the dolts here that their charges ever could or would.
