Envy Mass Market

He wasn’t afraid of death. To no one’s knowledge, save Maxine’s, he’d had several recent discussions with a priest. Rosemary had been a devout and practicing Catholic. He’d never converted, but he had absorbed some of her faith through osmosis. He firmly believed that they would enjoy the afterlife together.

He didn’t fear dying.

He did fear dying a fool.

That was the worry that had robbed him of sleep last night. Deeply troubled, he’d been unable to read the nighttime hours away. Morning had brought no relief from this pervasive uneasiness.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something, that a revealing word or deed or demeanor that he would have detected when he was younger and sharper—five years ago, even one year ago—was escaping him.

Was this paranoia valid? Or a symptom of encroaching dementia?

Before his grandfather’s death, Daniel remembered him ranting about his nurse’s thievery. One day he accused her of being a German spy on a mission to assassinate U.S. war veterans. With the conviction of the mentally unhinged, he had claimed that the housekeeper was pregnant with his child. Nothing could convince him that the sixty-seven-year-old Englishwoman couldn’t possibly be with child.

Was that where he was headed? Was this obscure and unnamed disquiet the harbinger of full-blown senility?

Or—and this is what he chose to believe—was it an indication that he had lost none of his faculties, that he was as astute as ever, and that the intuitiveness that had successfully guided him through fifty years of publishing was still reliable?

Until they proved to be untrustworthy, he chose to trust his instincts. They were telling him that something wasn’t right. He sensed it as a stag senses the presence of a stalking hunter from a mile away.

Perhaps he was just overly troubled by Maris’s unhappiness. She wasn’t as good as she believed at concealing her feelings from him. He’d picked up signals of marital disharmony. The cause and severity of that disharmony he didn’t yet know. But if it was disharmonious enough to visibly disturb Maris, it disturbed him.

And then there was Noah. He wanted to trust the man both as a protégé and as a son-in-law, but only if Noah deserved his trust.

Grunting with the effort, Daniel brought his leather desk chair upright and opened a desk drawer. He withdrew his day planner and unzipped it, then removed a business card from one of the smaller compartments.

“William Sutherland,” the card read. No company name or address. Only that name and a telephone number engraved in crisp navy blue block letters.

Daniel thoughtfully fingered the card, as he often had since obtaining it several weeks ago. He hadn’t called the number. He hadn’t yet spoken to Mr. Sutherland personally, but after this morning’s ruminations, he felt that the time was right to do so.

It was a sneaky and underhanded thing to do. Merely thinking about it made him feel deceitful. No one ever need know, of course. Unless—God forbid—something came of it. Probably nothing would. Probably he was overreacting. But it wasn’t within his makeup to be careless. There was too much at stake to let twinges of guilt overshadow prudence. Given a choice between conscience and caution, there was no choice. The adage applied: Better to be safe than sorry.

As he reached for the telephone, he resolved to be more watchful, alert to nuances in speech and expressions, more attuned to what was going on around him. He didn’t want to be the last to know… anything.

He didn’t fear dying. But he did fear dying a fool.

* * *

“You should stay away from it. It’s ready to fall down,” Mike told Maris as he took a swipe at the mantel with a piece of fine sandpaper.

“If it’s that dilapidated, is it safe for Parker to go there alone?”

“Of course not. But try telling him that.”

“Mike…”

Sensing her hesitation, he turned toward her.

“Never mind,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to either you or Parker for me to ask.”

“About…?”

“His disability.”

“No, it wouldn’t be fair.”

She nodded, shook off the solemn mood, and asked, “How do I get there?”

“It could be dangerous.”