Dying to Call You Read Online Free PDF

indeed. But she had another money cushion. She unzipped the couch pillows and started counting.
    She had seven hundred dollars stuffed in the turquoise throw pillows. Twelve hundred fifteen dollars in the black couch pillows. Seven thousand and something in the old Samsonite suitcase in the closet. She could survive for months on her stash while she looked for another job. She was going to be fired, but people at her level didn’t need references.
    Helen wished she could get last night’s sounds out of her head. That gurgling scream played in an endless loop. But the police said she’d imagined it. Hot humiliation overwhelmed her. The police had been inside Hank Asporth’s house.
    They’d seen no overturned furniture. No sign of a woman, dead or alive. They told Helen she’d heard a movie. But no movie victim had ever screamed like that. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right.
    She was also sure she was right when she followed her first instinct. Look where that got her. Out of work.
    She was ready to face the firing squad.
    Helen clocked in at seven fifty-eight A.M. on what she knew would be her last day in the boiler room.
    Taniqua was spraying her phone with Lysol. She said she hated when the night shift used her desk and left their trash on it. Taniqua had style. She looked like she walked off a New York runway in her red silk crop top, tiny skirt and sexy four-inch satin heels with rhinestone buckles. She’s young, pretty and ready to party, Helen thought, and she’s stuck here.
    Nick, skinny and jittery, came in carrying his usual breakfast of orange soda and jelly doughnuts. Marina’s toddler, Ramon, was trying to put a hairy pink piece of chewed gum in his mouth. His mother snatched it from his chubby hand, and Ramon burst into loud sobs. Marina swung the howling child onto her hip with an easy motion. The woman has the balance of a tightrope artist, Helen thought, lifting that kid when she’s wearing tight jeans and skinny heels. Ramon cried and clutched his mother’s long dark hair while she soothed him into silence.
    The computers came on at precisely 8:01. This morning, they were dialing New Hampshire. Helen glanced at her screen.
    “Hello, Mr. Harcourt. This is Helen with Tank Titan...”
    Mr. Harcourt had just finished cussing her for waking him when she was called into Vito’s office.
    Vito looked more like a sausage than ever, with a tight red shirt for a casing. He was not his usual chipper self.
    “They want to see you upstairs,” he said. “I hear you called the cops on a survey client and accused him of murdering some broad. Helen, did you have to pick a rich one on the A-list? You’re a good seller. I’d like to keep you. But I hired you. It’s my heinie in the wringer, too.”
    Helen didn’t say anything. It wasn’t Vito’s fault. For all she knew, the New York lizards would come down and fire him or break his legs or whatever those scary guys considered corporate discipline.
    Helen rode up the elevator up to Girdner Surveys, feeling like she was ascending into heaven for final judgement. She would be cast out into boiler-room hell soon enough. When the doors opened, Helen was once again startled by the contrast between the boiler room’s dirt and the survey side’s elegance.
    Melva, the dignified day receptionist, said, “You’re supposed to go to Penelope’s office. Some lawyer’s been in there since seven thirty. And Helen... good luck.”
    “I’ll need it,” Helen said.
    She knocked and went in. Penelope was sitting more rigidly than usual, like an Egyptian stone statue. She did not invite Helen to sit down. Helen stood there like a kitchen maid who’d dropped the best teapot, while Penelope talked about her. Penelope’s buttoned-up suit had a tight bow at the throat, as if she needed to hold in her rage.
    If I get to tell her to go to hell, it just might be worth it, Helen thought.
    A sleek, plump man in blue pinstripes was sitting across from Penelope.