Death of the Office Witch (17 page)

17

“I sure hope I'm not going to turn out like you,” Libby said over dinner at the diner that night.

“Me too.” Charlie looked down at her side order of mashed potatoes, cream of cauliflower soup, and glass of milk. “You'd have to give up eating again.”

“I don't want to go to college and have a career and end up working myself sick.” Libby pointed a ketchup-tipped french fry at her mother. “Women should get married and stay home and have babies.”

“Libby, have you been talking to Jesus?”

“You mean church or ‘Hey-zeus'?”

“The friendly gardener. You know, the Mexican stud.”

“You are so prejudiced. It's embarrassing.” Libby picked the lettuce and tomato off her cheeseburger and took a big bite off the front end of it. Condiment and meat juices mingled to drip out the back end.

Charlie fought a bout of nausea. “You didn't answer my question.”

“I don't even know where he lives. I haven't seen him since Saturday. But you're right, he does know how to fill a pair of Levi's.”

Charlie ordered her voice to stay down at a normal, controlled octave. “So … your ambition is to become a happy housewife. Name me two couples since your grandmother's generation who've made a success out of that.”

“Lori's folks, and … Mrs. Hefty. And she has kids to support too, just like you. But she doesn't make a huge deal of it because she has a husband to help.”

“Are their last names Hefty? The kids? Was this her only marriage?”

“I don't know. They're little. She just talks about them by their first names. You're weird.”

“Yeah, well you better warn your good friend Doug of that, because I'm taking his father to an agency party at Richard's house tomorrow night.”

“You are? Really?” Her daughter came alive so suddenly Charlie worried the kid would swallow her Coke straw. “When did this happen?”

“When the
Alpine Tunnel
deal jelled again, but because of the murder at the agency we couldn't celebrate it then and so—”

“No, I mean when did you invite Ed?”

On the way home Charlie had to pull the Toyota over. She got her door open just in time to spew cream of cauliflower soup and something dark that wasn't mashed potatoes or milk all over someone's carefully tended rocks and cactus. Probably some Jesus would have to come along and clean it up while he wasn't impregnating the daughter of the house.

“Mom? What are you doing?” her own daughter whispered when Charlie sat back and closed the door. Libby's tan had turned a sick orange under the yellow glow of the sodium vapor streetlight. “You can't be sick.”

“How do you figure that?” A welcome breeze moved air into Charlie's window, and palm-leaf fans shifted the shadows on the windshield and hood.

“You're all I've got.”

Charlie's mouth had acquired a coating that tasted like Tuxedo's kitty litter smelled. Prickly sweat coated the rest of her.

“I mean, I can't drive us home. Well, I could but … I don't have a license.”

The sign on the lamppost in front of them said,
NO CRUISING
.
THREE TIMES PAST THE SAME POINT WITHIN FOUR HOURS IS CRUISING
.

“Besides, you have to go to that party tomorrow night.”

“You'd sell your own mother just to get into the yacht club?”

“Mom, Ed's rich. You wouldn't have to work so hard for us and worry so much you make yourself sick. Do you think it's more than just indigestion?”

“I'm seriously beginning to wonder, honey. I can get us home. Just let me sit a minute.”

“I mean like … stomach cancer?”

“Let's try to be positive and go for maybe an ulcer, huh?”

Maggie Stutzman forced Charlie to down two pieces of dry toast and some warm milk that night. And forced a promise out of Charlie to eat breakfast and call for a doctor's appointment from the office the next morning instead of waiting for the weekend.

Libby even offered to walk to school.

“I should get sick more often.”

“Mom, why do you always have to wreck the good moments?”

“I don't know. I do appreciate the offer. But there's time. Get your stuff. I'm so used to going right by there.”

“Not until you finish your Cheerios.”

Since no one in their family ate breakfast, those Cheerios dated from the Mesozoic era. Charlie continued to regret them all the way up on the 405. By the time she hit the Santa Monica Freeway, Charlie remembered that Maurice Lavender had thought he had an ulcer some months ago. He'd found a doctor somewhere close enough to the office but still out of the Beverly Hills fee area.

As it turned out, Maurice didn't have an ulcer—or even, God forbid, stomach cancer. He had indigestion. That sounded like a good kind of doctor to go to.

Charlie was so caught up in her survival fantasy that by the time she reached Congdon and Morse she wasn't thinking logically and rushed into Maurice's office unannounced. An easy thing to do since his new assistant had not yet been hired.

She came to a skidding stop in front of Ellen Maxwell. Maurice smiled wryly but rose to hug Charlie. “Ellen, you remember Charlie Greene, our talented literary agent? And, my dearest lady, the very one to suggest you as the perfect actress to play the part of Thora Kay, the retired veterinarian detective.”

Ellen was every bit as gracious, grandmotherly, and sweet as she appeared on recent commercials and occasional guest shots. On those she'd worn a gray wig to cover her hair. In real life she wore it beige. She'd had just enough neck tucks and face and eye lifts to look lively for her age, yet still softly feminine—without resorting to that scraped look.

Legend had it that Ellen Maxwell had danced on Broadway, but she was best known for a string of sweet wifely roles in comedy films and a long series of supporting roles after that. She'd won an Oscar for one of the latter, had done some theater work in the boonies, and begun to fade away like all the rest when American Express picked her for the traveling grandmother who knew how to make the most of her golden years by seeing exotic places while kept in comfortable safety by that magic little card. And she had been chosen because of the recognition factor of her face rather than her name. She'd appeared often enough on the screen that she was familiar, trustworthy.

“Of course. Charlie, how can I ever thank you?”

“Things are all still at the talking stage, aren't they?”

“Yes, but oh, I have just such a good feeling about this. I just know it will come to pass and I will be Thora Kay. I've just been to my astrologist, and the signs are all there, Charlie. Darling Maurice here and I were just discussing whether or not to commit to any more commercials at this point. They would pay so much more if I were the star of my own series, you know. It's just all so exciting.”

Ellen gushed on and Charlie waited it out, making all the right nods and faces until she could interject the request for the doctor's number and
just
get out of there. Astrologist? Oh boy.

Between a deluge of phone calls and regular office business, Larry was able to get her an appointment with Dr. Williams for the next day and then continue his little spiral notebook report.

Irma Vance had gone to a party at Gloria's, and there was some flap over it Larry couldn't tease out of anyone. “Everybody stonewalled me on that one. But I overheard Tweety mention it to Gloria weeks ago, maybe months.”

Irma refused to divulge even to Richard how much she had come away from Las Vegas with. It was enough, she said. Charlie had never heard of anyone winning anything in Las Vegas they hadn't lost again before they left. Except for the Vance.

“I can tell Richard the Clever is worried about losing her,” Larry said. “He keeps pestering Irma to find out how much she won. She loves this job so much he needn't worry. She'd stay here if she won the lottery, but I'd be willing to bet she's gonna get your raise, because she's his right arm. The law being—the more you have the more you get.”

“Larry, that's all supposition. You can't know any of it.” But Charlie hadn't been offered a raise. She'd settled for an unspecified bonus if she was instrumental in clearing up the irritation of Gloria's murder. Which was really just another commission. Charlie had to admit the boss
was
clever. Heartless but clever.

“Oh but I can sense, intuit, and reason this by pausing long enough to be sensitive to the vibes around this place, Charlie, which you are too work-oriented and self-centered to bother with. Let's face it, you need me as much as Richard the Lionhearted needs the Vance.”

Nobody could quite pin down the office name for Richard that would stick.

Keegan might have a motive to knock off Mary Ann, but not to kill Gloria. Mary Ann might have a motive if the Tuschmans had threatened some form of blackmail to force her to share the proceeds from
Shadowscapes
. Anybody could have a motive that Charlie didn't know about, a relationship with Gloria that Charlie didn't know about. Larry was right, Charlie had not paid close attention to the office gossip.

“What if Gloria stepped out to the private hall to use the john and saw something happen there and got bonked on the head to keep her from telling anybody what she saw?”

“Gloria wouldn't have left the phones at that time of the morning,” Larry reminded her. “She'd be fielding half the calls from New York about then, and everybody was in and out of the office. She'd have waited for somebody to come back in and take over for her.”

“Unless she was suddenly sick. Or unless someone lured her out there. Tracy said she was in early that morning. Where was
she
at the time of the murder, I wonder?”

“Says she slipped over to the Chevron to buy some candy bars for coffee break.” He pushed the dark blond hair out of his face, not bothering to hide the bitterness never far from the surface. “I'm sure she's told Dalrymple she didn't see me buying Ding Dongs there. What I can't understand is why he isn't hanging around asking me why.”

“I'm asking you why, Larry. Where did you buy the Ding Dongs? You said you went to meet someone. Who did you see that morning to make you late getting back?”

He stared at Charlie without quite meeting her eyes, his watery blue ones literally swimming now. These weren't actor tears. His jaw muscles twitched dramatically before he managed to whisper, “It's all so unfair, Charlie.”

They sat facing each other across her desk, now both of them avoiding eye contact. It was a long time before Charlie could find a breath and her voice under the weight of a premonition that dropped on her like a piano in an old Laurel and Hardy flick.

She watched his Adam's apple ripple as he swallowed more tears. “Larry, have you … been tested?”

“Have you?” he snapped back and stood to face the tinted window instead of Charlie.

“Oh, please don't do this to me.”

“It was negative.” But he was still choking on something, still didn't turn. “Satisfied?”

“You don't seem to be. Is that where you were that morning, being tested? Or finding out the results? If so you have an alibi, Larry. You don't need to worry.”

“That's not where I was.” The big shoulders shrugged. “I have to be checked again in six months. And so does Stew.”

Charlie left her chair to walk around in front of him, standing close, careful not to touch him. Stew was a contact man, had a hug or a handshake for everyone. But Larry didn't like to be touched by anyone but Stewart Claypool. At least that's what she'd always thought. “Is Stew …?”

“Not that we know yet. But he's been helping take care of a friend of ours who's dying of this … this monster. You know Stew—always thinks of other people first. He may not have been careful with needles and rubber gloves, and who knows? A public nurse finally stopped in on her rounds while Stew was there and went bonkers when she saw his medical procedure. Blew the whistle on all of Terry's keepers and their lovers.”

“When did all this happen? I haven't noticed a major change in you. This has got to be a horrendous thing in your life.”

He drew himself up and stared down his nose at her in that infuriating way. “I'm an actor. Remember?”

And that, amazingly, was what was bothering Larry the most. Word of this could squelch any dreams he might have for future acting jobs, and it might even cost him this one. Richard Morse might cheerfully overlook Larry's sexual preferences—he was only an assistant after all—but the taint of AIDS was a very real stigma in this town, for all its fund-raising campaigns and verbal support for those afflicted.

Stewart Claypool was in the social services, alcohol and drug rehab, as Charlie remembered. He, too, worried this would cost him his livelihood and health insurance.

Charlie carefully slipped Larry's spiral notebook out of his hand and flipped it shut. “Come on, I'm taking you out to lunch.”

She drove him to a mom-and-pop diner off the fast track in West Hollywood that Larry had introduced her to shortly after she'd come to Congdon and Morse. She brought him here because it was homey, and if she tossed her cookies or cried, the proprietors and patrons might be a little less offended.

Larry had pizza. Charlie had homemade chicken soup. The place was called Mom and Pop's.

“Next thing I know,” the gorgeous man across the table from her said, “you'll be sending flowers for my desk.” He batted thick lashes.

“Actually, I was thinking of nominating you for Secretary of the Year. Who did you meet that morning?”

Larry cut a steamy slice of the homemade bread that came with Charlie's luncheon special, spread it thick with real butter, and handed it to her.

Charlie's assistant told her of meeting a man with whom he'd had a “dalliance” to warn him of what had happened to Stew and thus to Larry Mann. “It was not a pleasant encounter. I really did stop at the Chevron across the way for Ding Dongs on my way back, though.”