The Girl in the Face of the Clock by Charles Mathes

Mannerback, his voice even louder and more unnatural. “Is that so?”
    â€œYes, that’s so.”
    â€œCome on,” he said, abandoning his search and walking hastily to the door. “Aunt Eunice is probably having a conniption. She’ll have to find out about sex chat rooms on her own. I’ll have Leonid take you home after he drops me off.”
    Jane followed him back through the vast living room filled with clocks, the smiling red dogs bringing up the rear. Perry began chattering about Aunt Eunice, clock dials, Mars Bars—obviously anything to change the subject.
    But now Jane knew for certain that Perry Mannerback knew more about her father than he was telling. What did he know? Why was he lying? And who was the woman sitting naked on Aaron Sailor’s stairs?

Six
    The next day, Perry Mannerback arranged for Aaron Sailor to be brought from the nursing home in Great Neck to the head trauma unit of Yorkville East End Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for tests.
    On the way to Aunt Eunice’s apartment at the Dakota the previous evening, Jane had mentioned in passing how the aide at Royaume Israel had dropped Aaron Sailor out of bed and that he had mysteriously begun to speak. She had done so merely to make conversation and break the tension that had developed between her and Perry because of the painting in his study. Naturally, she hadn’t revealed what her father had been saying, only that he had begun to talk. Perry hadn’t even seemed to have been listening.
    Jane had arrived at the OmbiCorp office at ten o’clock the next morning—her second Friday on the job, the first being last week at the circus—ready for another day of philanthropy and fun, fully prepared to pretend that the incident with the painting had never happened.
    Instead of dashing off as usual, however, Perry had sat her down on his big office sofa, fixed her in a serious, puppy-dog gaze, and asked if she would permit him to get Aaron Sailor the medical care he deserved.
    Jane’s first reaction was horror. Aaron Sailor was gone. Nothing would bring him back, certainly not more doctors, more tests. What could she say, however? Please don’t try to help my father? Don’t even go through the motions, just leave him there in Great Neck, warehoused in the dark?
    Dealing with all the bureaucracy that such a move required would take forever, Jane had protested. It was already taken care of, Perry had answered. It would cost a fortune, she had said. Perry had replied that he had a fortune. Miss Fripp then promptly appeared with some papers for Jane to sign. By the time the feature at the Armex Patterson Fifty-seventh Street Cinema got out at three o’clock, Aaron Sailor had been brought in by ambulance from Long Island for a week at one of the foremost cranial-injury treatment centers in the world.
    â€œNow, don’t you worry about a thing,” said Perry as they pulled up in front of MoMA, where he had a board of directors’ meeting that afternoon. “I’m sure the doctors at Yorkville East End will be able to help. They took out my tonsils and Dad’s gallbladder. They’re the best.”
    â€œI’m sure,” said Jane uncertainly, as he got out of the car. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
    â€œOh, I forgot to ask,” he said, leaning in the window. “Can you go out of town with me next week?”
    â€œGo where?”
    â€œSeattle,” said Perry excitedly. “I’ve just learned about a clock there that I may want to buy. Very rare. We have to act fast, before the competition gets wind of it. Seattle’s a really neat place. We’ll see the Space Needle, Pike’s Market, all kinds of fun stuff. We’ll stay overnight. Or maybe a few days if we feel like it.”
    Jane frowned. Perry Mannerback was already paying her a ridiculous salary to do practically nothing. He was treating her father to a series of