Crystalline Crypt

by Mary Coley

  Poor Mike. She had dragged him into this fiasco, and he was paying the price. First his head, then his truck. The Denali had been a battering ram. It had left the scene, while Mike’s truck had been towed off so an insurance adjustor could determine if it was totaled.

  When Mike was finished at the police station, she’d pick him up and take him to his apartment.

  Hopefully Mike would tell them everything, including about last night’s drive-by and his head wound. The police might consider last night’s event random, but they’d file a report, creating a record of the incident. Mike would get a lecture for not going to the hospital for treatment and for not reporting the shooting immediately.

  Mandy passed her assistant Billie without a glance. She wasn’t in the mood for meaningless greetings.

  Billie cleared her throat. “Mr. Germaine is looking for you, Mandy. Better go by his office. ASAP. He isn’t happy.”

  “Good,” Mandy said. Germaine might have questions for her, but she had questions for him, too.

  On the sixth floor, a new employee sat at the desk Barnes had occupied earlier. After the assistant announced her on the office intercom, Mandy pushed through the glass double doors and into the huge white-walled office. Germaine, the CEO of the company, Phil Macon, the COO, George Young, Director of Marketing, and Barnes were seated at a table in front of the bank of windows on the far wall. Their looks followed her as she crossed the room.

  “Ms. Lyons,” Mr. Young said. “This morning, top representatives of the Straightaway firm came to meet with you. You were not here to update them on their marketing campaign. They received no analytics. Therefore, they have declined to exercise their option to renew their marketing contract. Where were you?”

  Mandy sucked in a quick breath. She’d completely forgotten the meeting. Earlier in the week, she’d worked on the Straightaway analytics and prepared their report. It was in a folder on her desk, easy enough for Billie to have found and provided to the client. She probably hadn’t been asked.

  She stared pointedly at Barnes, and said, “The report was on my desk. Billie could have retrieved it.” She swallowed. “I apologize for not being here. My best friend, Jenna Wade, is missing. According to Mr. Barnes, she no longer works here. Her cell phone has been disconnected, and I can’t reach either Jenna or her husband. I’m concerned. I want to know what happened to Mrs. Wade.”

  “Mrs. Wade resigned late yesterday. Her departure had to be handled immediately for security reasons,” Mr. Germaine said. “Mr. Barnes, who is highly qualified, will step into her position.”

  All four men turned stone faces toward her. The scent of cigar smoke wafted past as the air conditioner kicked on.

  “But—”

  “You were absent this morning without authorization,” Mr. Young lectured. “And you jeopardized an important client relationship. If you don’t get this account back for us today, we’ll have to let you go. Is that clear?”

  Cold spread through her body. “Absolutely.” Mandy left the room, chewing her lip.

  Straightaway was one of her borderline accounts. The owners were condescending and arrogant, but they’d been pleased with both the marketing plan she had developed and the initial ad slogan. If they were shopping around and had found someone else they wanted to work with, there wasn’t much she could do. The marketing/advertising business was cutthroat. Clients came and went every day of the week. How could they hold her completely responsible for this client’s decision to move on? Mr. Young knew she’d been working on that analytics report. He could have asked Billie to find it. He could have handled the meeting.

  She stomped to her cubicle. If she’d had an office door, she would have slammed it. The message light blinked “2” on her desk phone.

  She retrieved the messages by speaker phone.

  “Mandy?” a voice whispered. “I need your help. Please. Go to Jandafar. Find Lamar. By Saturday—” Jenna’s voice cut off.

  Jandafar? Lamar? She had no idea what—or who—Jenna was referring to. Saturday was three days away.

  Message two played. Silence, and then a click as the caller disconnected.

  Jandafar. Was that a place? And who, or what, was Lamar?

  She grabbed her large carryall, stuffed it with the personal items from her top desk drawer, and marched out of her cubicle.

  In the hallway, she stopped. She returned to her desk and flicked on her computer.

  Mandy clicked onto the internet and typed “Jandafar.” The screen filled with possible search results, including several foreign sites. She scrolled down through the list but found none that indicated any such place in the United States.

  Maybe the name wasn’t a city. It could be the name of a school, or a hotel, or even a development. How was she going to find it?

  Jenna’s office was empty. Her belongings could be anywhere. But Jenna’s personal items would still be in her home; there could be something about Jandafar there. Did Sean know about Jandafar, or had she also hidden this from him?

  Mandy made a snap decision, and it seemed right. She didn’t like this work atmosphere. She had savings, enough to hold her for a few months. Right now, she couldn’t see past what was happening with Jenna. Her friend was the closest thing to a sister she’d ever had. She couldn’t lose her.

  Her cell phone rang and the caller ID flashed Animal Control Tulsa.

  “That large shaggy dog you called about earlier today? Still no lost dog reported. I’ll keep your info for three days in case we get a call. If you want to bring him in, that’s what we’re here for. Otherwise, if you like the dog, I’d keep him.”

  She hung up. What would she do with a dog? It had been years since she’d had a pet. What would Will think? She tucked the picture of her and Will into her bag, as well as a few books and a glass apple paperweight.

  Jandafar. The name tickled her brain. She’d heard it before. Where? Mandy rubbed her temples.

  Jenna Wade was the first person she’d met when she’d started work at Empire Marketing Strategies. The two of them had literally bumped into each other when she’d come for orientation and had ended up having lunch together. During that conversation, something had passed between them, a spark of like minds and possible friendship. They seemed to have enough in common, emotionally or intellectually, to be friends.

  Jenna Wade lived in the present. That first day, she’d made it clear: except for the immediate past, the past didn’t matter. She and her husband Sean had been married ten years after dating a short time. Love at first sight. She’d shared that her parents were both deceased and that Sean was her only family. Mandy had wondered what had happened, but she didn’t ask.

  Now, Mandy reflected that in the years she’d known her, Jenna had never so much as mentioned her parents in passing. She’d called her life “boring” and insisted that nothing important had ever happened.

  But somewhere, at some time, Jenna had mentioned Jandafar. When?

  ~ Chapter 11 ~

  Jenna

  Dark clouds still loomed above the rolling prairie landscape outside the car, leaving the grasslands in shadow. An occasional mercury vapor light on a thick pole shone in the false twilight. Animals grazed in verdant pastures. Farm trucks and SUVs drove the road with her. Jenna constantly checked the rearview mirror for headlights, potentially someone following.

  She considered what could lie ahead of her and shuddered. She might not survive this confrontation. But she wouldn’t live as she had been. For twenty years, she’d been looking over her shoulder. For the first ten, she’d remained aloof from the world. Then, she’d found Sean. She didn’t want to lose him or the life they’d built. She had to confront the past. And then she had to tell Sean.

  Unable to go forward to the unknown, her mind scurried back over the past thirty-six hours.

  The note arrived with a small bouquet of daisies from a local florist. Jenna looked up the sender’s address in the reverse directory. Paducka’s Funeral Parlor? What was he doing there? F
or that matter, what was he doing in Tulsa?

  As the enormity of it hit her, her hands shook. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have contacted her. After twenty years, she’d never expected to see him again.

  She carried the flowers into the ladies’ room down the hall and stuffed them into the trash bin. She couldn’t look at them, and she couldn’t risk that anyone else would see them and ask about the sender. Mandy especially.

  Jenna closed her eyes. Her heart hurt. Pain pulsed up to her head. She didn’t want her friendship with Mandy to end. She didn’t want her marriage to Sean to be over. She didn’t want this phase of her life to end. She’d made a big mistake coming back to Oklahoma. The past had caught up with her.

  Immediately after she received the note, she knew what she had to do. There was no way to save what she had built. Once the truth was exposed, she couldn’t risk being anywhere her face might be recognized and then tied to the crime she had supposedly committed.

  Twenty years ago, Idaho had seemed far enough and secluded enough. Survivalists lived there. Everyone respected each other’s privacy. They wouldn’t care what she had done, or what someone said she’d done. She could make a life.

  Waitressing wasn’t easy. Guys hit on her all the time, but one sweet woman took her under her wing, invited her for dinner, and told her all about the online courses she was taking to better herself.

  Jenna signed up for college courses the next day. She excelled at math; that was a logical choice. She couldn’t be the veterinarian she’d wanted to be; that was a clue they could use to find her. She’d been the one who rescued abandoned animals, who nursed injured birds and rabbits.

  But she made a mistake in Idaho. She missed friendly people and allowed herself to be drawn in. Apart from her sweet woman friend, people protected themselves from others, didn’t reach out, maintained a barrier. She thought she wanted the same thing, but she discovered secluded people might have warped ideas. Without the balance of alternative thoughts, people became shuttered in their thinking. Polygamy was illegal in the law books. But her sweet friend’s husband based his life on early Mormon theology, and it turned out her friend was okay with a sister wife.

  The move to Kansas had to happen to finish her degree. A resident summer semester at the university was required. The transition to KU had been easy at first. She liked being around younger people again. She was aloof to men but had girlfriends. The night before graduation, one of them had shyly come on to her during a party and asked if she was a lesbian, too.

  Jenna clammed up and left the party. A lesbian. That was what they all thought? She’d successfully camouflaged what she was. She accepted her diploma and moved to Arkansas the next day.

  Jenna came back to the present. She’d been on her way to Paducka’s to meet him after all these years. She knew it was the wrong thing to do. If he’d found her, the others might find her, too. She shouldn’t go there, shouldn’t let him see her.

  If nothing else had warned her, if her internal warning bells had not pealed loud enough, the crazy weather should have kept her from going. But it hadn’t.

  Hail slamming into her had caused her to seek shelter under that awning. She had no idea the building was an art gallery.

  The painting had scared her so much she hadn’t gone on to meet him at the old funeral parlor, even though it was close by. The paranoia that still lived in a cavity of her brain wondered: had he hoped she would see it when she came to see him? Was there a message in the painting?

  If she hadn’t seen the picture first and had gone on to meet him, what would have happened?

  She couldn’t think about any of those things. She should never have come to Oklahoma with Sean. Dear Sean. What would she do without him?

  She’d fallen for him, and he for her. They’d married. During their years in Little Rock, her silence about the past had begun to eat at her relationship with Sean. She loved him. He’d thought Tulsa might be a better home. She’d never even suggested that it wasn’t. Had she not known deep inside that it would dissolve the fragile life she’d created?

  Once in Tulsa, she’d hungered for friendship like she’d hungered for a lover. Sean had satisfied both needs for years. But finding Mandy, trusting Mandy so completely, had been her saving grace when she’d been getting close to the edge. She truly was her best friend, much more of a friend than Jenna’s sister had been growing up.

  She shouldn’t have told Mandy about the painting. But finding it and knowing the message the artist might be sending her, was too much. At least she’d stopped herself from blurting out everything. Maybe it had been because of fear Mandy would judge her if she knew what had happened, fear that Mandy wouldn’t believe in her innocence. Mandy might abandon their friendship if she knew what Jenna had done.

  Jenna rubbed her forehead. The car whizzed past another light pole.

  A sob caught in her throat. She hadn’t meant for the gun to go off, but her hand had been shaking. Hopefully, she’d cleaned Sean’s wound completely and there’d be no infection or permanent damage.

  Her destination had to be near, and there’d surely be a mom-and-pop roadside motel with a vacancy. From what she’d read, most of those places were inhabited by sex perverts, people who couldn’t reside anywhere near a school or a playground or a place where kids lived. Sleeping in a room for the night with a pervert next door could be tolerated. What choice did she have?

  ~ Chapter 12 ~

  Mandy

  Mandy zipped her carryall closed. Will wasn’t going to like what she was doing. But she couldn’t see any other course of action. Surely when they talked it through, he would understand and support her decision.

  With her carryall on one shoulder, she left the office. She wouldn’t be back. Billie wasn’t at her desk. For a minute, she regretted leaving without even telling her administrative assistant goodbye, but there wasn’t time to find her, and she didn’t want to run into Germaine again.

  She rode the elevator down to the parking garage and rushed to her car, where she stowed the carryall in the backseat.

  Mandy sat behind the steering wheel for a few minutes, uncertain of her next step. She wanted to return to the Wades’ house to search, but the memory of what had happened to Mike’s truck was fresh. And she needed to go back to her place to let the dog out. She’d left him in the kitchen with a water bowl and several old towels for a bed.

  She called Mike’s number on her cell phone. When his message clicked on, she waited for the beep. “Mike, it’s me. I had the privilege of being called in front of Germaine this morning, right after I came in. I’m officially on notice. Apparently Straightaway is defecting. But I also had a phone message from Jenna and a hang up. Call me.”

  Mandy started the car and zoomed out of the parking garage. Her stomach twisted with sudden anxiety. She checked her rearview mirror, then the side mirrors. There didn’t seem to be anyone following her.

  She drove the few miles across town and turned down the Wades’ street. Ahead, a moving van sat angled into a driveway, partially blocking the street. The Wades’ driveway.

  Mandy drove closer to the house and parked. Workmen were carrying out the living room sofa, and another hoisted Sean’s favorite chair into the van. Yet another man balanced the coffee table on his broad shoulders. She bolted out of the car and onto the driveway.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Mandy demanded.

  One of the workmen glanced at her as he carried a large box toward the van. “Inside, lady.” He motioned toward the open front door.

  Mandy stepped inside. The living room was already bare of furniture. She crossed the room to the kitchen and found two men wrapping dishes and tucking them into boxes on the counter. Another man ripped tape from a roll to seal the box.

  “Who’s in charge?” she asked again.

  The overweight man with bloodshot eyes looked up from the box as he sealed it with tape. Sweat rolled down his face and neck. “That would be me.”

  “Who hire
d you to move this stuff?”

  He studied her. “And you are?”

  “I know the Wades, and as of yesterday, they weren’t moving. I think you are trespassing, and I’m going to call the police.” She took out her cell phone.

  “I have the papers right here. No need to call the cops.” He pulled a thick square of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “Sean Wade. You see?” He turned the paper towards her.

  Sean’s signature looked official, but she couldn’t be sure the signature was really his. “Where are you taking their stuff?”

  “Storage. The Wades are moving out of the state. We’re supposed to pack it all and get it to the storage unit today. A rush job. No time to talk.” He grabbed another piece of packing paper and rolled a glass in it.

  Two men sauntered into the kitchen, picked up the round kitchen table, and carried it out of the room.

  Mandy hurried into the utility room. The wall and floor, where the blood stains had been yesterday, were clean. She leaned against the washing machine. She had no idea where to look for information about Jandafar.

  Down the hallway, the bustle of packing and moving continued.

  Moving out of the state? She didn’t believe it.

  Had Sean found Jenna?

  It was unlikely she’d find what she needed in the laundry room, but it was worth checking. Since the room doubled as a safe room, Jenna might have stored important things here. Mandy opened the cabinet and peered in, then scooted the step ladder over and climbed it to check the upper shelves. Spray cans and chemicals.

  “Hey. Who are you? What are you doing here?” The man who claimed to be in charge eyed her. Mandy stepped off the step stool.

  “I’m Mrs. Wade’s best friend. She borrowed some things and I’m getting them back before you pack them up.”

  “They’re in the laundry cabinet? You should go.” The man jerked a cell phone off his belt and jabbed in a number.