breath.
The crunch of a breaking branch carried a long way in the night. Spooked, she flicked the locket open, focused on its depths, and steeled herself to face the coming hangover: She really didn’t want to be out in the woods at night-at least, not without a lot more preparation.
The next morning-after phoning Andy at The Globe and securing a commission for a business supplement feature on VC houses, good for half a month’s income, with the promise of a regular weekly slot if her features were good enough-Miriam bit the bullet and phoned Paulette. She was nerving herself for an answering machine on the fifth ring when Paulette answered.
“Hello?” She sounded hesitant-unusual for Paulie.
“Hi, Paulie! It’s me. Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday, I had a migraine and a lot of, uh, issues to deal with. I’m just about getting my head back together. How are you doing? Are you okay?”
A brief silence. “About as well as you’d expect,” Paulette said guardedly.
“Have you had any, uh, odd phone calls?”
“Sort of,” Paulette replied.
Miriam tensed. What’s she concealing?
“They sent me a reemployment offer,” Paulie continued, guardedly.
“They did, did they?” asked Miriam. She waited a beat. “Are you going to take it?”
“Am I, like hell!” Miriam relaxed slightly. Paulette sounded furious. She hadn’t expected Paulie to roll over, but it was good to get this confirmation.
“That bad, huh? Want to talk about it? You free?”
“My days are pretty open right now-listen, are you busy? How about I come over to your place?”
“Great,” Miriam said briskly. “I was worried about you, Paulie. After I got past being worried about me, I guess.”
“Well. Should I bring a pizza?”
“Phew…” Miriam took stock. Just a bitch session together? Or something more going on? “Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll lay on the coffee right away.”
“That’d be wonderful,” Paulette said gratefully.
After she’d put the phone down, Miriam pondered her motives. She and Paulette had worked together for three years and had hung out together in their off-hours. Some people you met at work, socialized with, then lost contact after moving on; but a few turned into friends for life. Miriam wasn’t sure which Paulie was going to turn out to be. Why did she turn the reemployment offer down? Miriam wondered. Despite being shell-shocked from the crazy business with the locket, she kept circling back to the Monday morning disaster with a rankling sense of injustice. The sooner they blew the lid off it in public, the sooner she could go back to living a normal life. But then the locket kept coming back up. I need a sanity check, Miriam decided. Why not Paulie? Better to have her think she’d gone nuts than someone whose friendship went back a long way and who knew Iris. Or was it?
An hour later the doorbell rang. Miriam stood up and went to answer it, trying to suppress her worries about how Paulette might be coming. She was waiting on the doorstep, impatiently tapping one heel, with a large shopping bag in hand. “Miriam!” Paulette beamed at her.
“Come in, come in.” Miriam retreated. “Hey, what’s that? Have you been all right?”
“I’ve been worse.” Paulie bounced inside and shut the door behind her, then glanced around curiously. “Hey, neat. I was worried about you, after I got home. You didn’t look real happy, you know?”
“Yeah. Well, I wasn’t.” Miriam relieved her of her coat and led her into the living room. “I’m really glad you’re taking it so calmly. For me, I put in three years and nothing to show for it but hard work and junk bonds-then some asshole phoned me and warned me off. How about you? Have you had any trouble?”
Paulette peered at her curiously. “What kind of warning?”
“Oh, he kind of intimated that he was a friend of Joe’s, and I’d regret it if I stuck my nose in any deeper. Playing at goodfellas, okay? I’d been worrying about you… What’s this about a job offer?”
“I, uh-” Paulette paused. “They offered me my job back with strings attached,” she said guardedly. “Assholes. I was going to accept till they faxed through the contract.”
“So why didn’t you sign?” Miriam asked, pouring a mug of coffee while Paulette opened the pizza boxes.
“I’ve seen nondisclosure agreements, Miriam. I used to be a paralegal till I got sick of lawyers, remember? This wasn’t a nondisclosure agreement; it was a fucking straitjacket. If I’d signed it, I wouldn’t even own the contents of my own head-before and after working for them. Guess they figured you were the ringleader, right?”
“Hah.” There was a bitter taste in Miriam’s mouth, and it wasn’t from the coffee. “So. Found any work?”
“Got no offers yet.” Paulette took a bite of pizza to cover her disquiet. “Emphasis on the yet. You?”
“I landed a freelance feature already. It’s not going to cover the salary, but it goes a hell of a way. I was wondering-”
“You want to carry on working the investigation.”
It wasn’t a question. Miriam nodded. “Yeah. I want to get the sons of bitches, now more than ever. But something tells me moving too fast is going to be a seriously bad idea. I mean, there’s a lot of money involved. If we can redo the investigative steps we’ve got so far, I figure this time we ought to go to the FBI first-and then pick a paper. I think I could probably auction the story, but I’d rather wait until the feds are ready to start arresting people. And I’d like to disappear for a bit while they’re doing that.” A sudden bolt of realisation struck Miriam, so that she almost missed Paulette’s reply: The locket! That’s one place they won’t be able to follow me! If-
“Sounds possible.” Paulie looked dubious. “It’s not going to be easy duplicating the research-especially now that they know we stumbled across them. Do you really think it’s that dangerous?”
“If it’s drugs money, you can get somebody shot for a couple of thousand bucks. This is way bigger than that, and thanks to our friend Joe, they now know where we live. I don’t want to screw up again. You with me?”
After a moment, Paulette nodded. “I want them too.” A flash of anger. “The bastards don’t think I matter enough to worry about.”
“But first there’s something I need to find out. I need to vanish for a weekend,” Miriam said slowly, a fully formed plan moving into focus in her mind-one that would hopefully answer several questions. Like whether someone else could see her vanish and reappear, and whether she’d have somewhere to hole up if the anonymous threats turned real-and maybe even a chance to learn more about her enigmatic birth-mother than Iris could tell her.
“Oh?” Paulette perked up. “Going to think things over? Or is there a male person in play?” Male persons in play were guaranteed to get Paulie’s notice: Like Miriam, she was a member of the early thirties divorcee club.
“Neither.” Miriam considered her next words carefully. “I ran across something odd on Monday night. Probably nothing to do with our story, but I’m planning on investigating it and I’ll be away for a couple of days. Out of town.”
“Tell me more!”
“I, um, can’t. Yet.” Miriam had worked it through. The whole story was just too weird to lay on Paulie without some kind of proof to get her attention. “However, you can do me a big favour, okay? I need to get to a rest area just off a road near Amesbury with some hiking gear. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it’s the best way to make sure nobody’s following me. If you could ride out with me and drive my car home, then put it back there two days later, that would be really good.”
“That’s… odd.” Paulette looked puzzled. “What’s with the magical mystery tour?”
Miriam improvised fast “I could tell you, but then I’d have to get you to sign a nondisclosure agreement that would make anything The Weatherman offered you look liberal. And the whole thing is super secret; my source might spike the whole deal if I let someone in on it without prior permission. I’ll be able to tell you when you pick me up afterward, though.” If things went right, she’d be able to tell a more-than-somewhat-freaked Paulie why she’d vanished right in front of her eyes and then reappeared in front of them. “And I want you to promise to tell nobody about it until you pick me up again, okay?”
“Well, okay. It’s not as if I don’t have time on my hands.” Paulette frowned. “When are you planning on doing your disappearing act? And when do you want picking up?”
“I was-they’re picking me up tomorrow at 2 p.m. precisely,” said Miriam. “And I’ll be showing up exactly forty- eight hours later.” She grinned. “If you lie in wait-pretend to be eating your lunch or something-you can watch them pick me up.”
Friday morning dawned cold but clear, and Miriam showered then packed her camping equipment again. The
