Stop and Stare

19

"Told you to cut her loose," Sarah said to Brad after he had recounted his little episode with Lisa.

"I don't have much time left to come up with a plan for damage control," Brad said. "The worst I can think of if I don't report this I'd be booked for accessory after the fact."

"I hate to say it like this but—no shit," Sarah said. Sarah stared at the crackling fire they'd started for the evening, the late Autumn chill was biting, even more so after hearing Brad's disconcerting encounter with Lisa. "We both better have solid alibis for around the time Mahony quit, if we suspect what has happened to Mahony to be true," Sarah finally said.

"She screamed 'he is dead', nothing ambiguous about that," Brad said.

"Innocent until proven guilty, remember? But it's always prudent to hope for the best and prepare for the worst," Sarah said. "The worst scenario, you'd be implicated as an accomplice fearing I might find out of your affair and you went along with it. How long has it been since Mahony 'quit'?" Sarah asked.

"A couple of weeks now," Brad said.

"Strange how no one reported him missing," Sarah said. "Does he not have any family?"

"I wouldn't know, Mahony wasn't, I mean isn't, I really shouldn't be talking about him in the past tense. He isn't exactly the sharing type," Brad said.

"It's even more odd that your company just accepted his resignation in a moment's notice without at the very least an exit interview," Sarah said.

"The company isn't exactly operating at peak efficiency. It's on its last leg. I'm surprised that the company managed to hobble along for this long," Brad said.

"Still, it made no sense," Sarah got up from her seat to shift the logs in the fireplace, adding space between the logs that had collapsed, the fire sprang to life as more oxygen fueled the fire. The imagery wasn't lost on Sarah, she wondered if they should poke at the matter or let it peter out ... no one seemed to have missed Mahony. Sarah hovered on indecision. However, an old saying came to mind, when it's too good to be true, "Better give Alan a call first before you report this, we've got to cover ourselves legally."

"Yeah, I thought about giving Alan the heads up," Brad concurred. "What time is it?" He reached for his phone and turned it on to display the screen. "Damn, it's way past midnight."

"Call him anyway," Sarah said.

It was three weeks after Brad reported the incident with Lisa that a fifteen second news blurb about Lisa being brought in for questioning regarding a suspicious disappearance surfaced. This made it to the news only because of Lisa's associations with the McMahen group. The media so far was polite, only circling and making small bites at the surface. Brad wondered if anything would come of it, no doubt, Lisa lawyered up with the best money could buy; all the better for Brad, he didn't want the fuss either. Brad had done the smart thing and quit his job and disassociated with Lisa before he reported the incident. He saw nothing of Lisa since. Although judging by their last interaction, Brad knew it was all over between them anyway.

Brad's client got what they wanted with the help of the information fed to them by Brad. They managed to outbid on the company Dan was working to acquire and turned around and made the deal with the McMahen group at twice the price. They found out Dan was brokering the deal for the McMahen group in the background and why not cut him out and take the profit that the McMahen group was originally going to capitalize on.

Lisa took the helpless female act to the extreme, pushing the feminist movement back for decades. She claimed that she was a victim of malicious character assassination from her social circle, the green-eyed monsters were at work making something out of nothing. Lisa figure this'd all blow over when people see things from her perspective, the social elites ostracizing their inferiors, punishing a commoner that should've known better than to infiltrate their ranks.

What Lisa failed to reason from basic criminology, people don't just up and vanish without a trace. Granted Mahony had next to no social media presence but no presence didn't equate to no life, not even surfacing to purchase basic necessities like food.

When Lisa was first summoned for questioning, the entire time she only cared about who had implicated her. Her thoughts went immediately to Brad but reasoned that he wouldn't be this stupid, him having an affair with her would make him highly suspicious in all of this. Lisa failed to consider who was to know if she didn't volunteer that information, and she'd be the last person on earth to volunteer, not if she wanted to keep the share of the McMahen fortune that's due her.

The overpriced lawyers hired by the McMahen's keptthe police at bay but as much as Dan wanted to support Lisa through thisunexpected event, he couldn't help feeling disconcerted. According to Lisa,David Mahony was only a work colleague, not even working in the samedepartment. Why then would they single Lisa out for questioning? The policemust've something that pointed to Lisa. Plus, Lisa's nonchalance was beginningto slip when he started to ask her more details after she got back from beingquestioned. And, why did she think that this was the work of other women thatshe always harbored this strange love and hate dynamic. The more Dan thoughtabout Lisa's role in this strange disappearance of David Mahony the less itmade sense.