Death of the Office Witch (34 page)

Chapter
1

Charlie Greene ignored the hooting of an owl somewhere behind her and brought all her weight down on the lug wrench, breaking a fingernail when the last nut gave. Heaving the heavy tire with one flat side into the Corsica's trunk, she pulled out the spare.

She'd always lived in horror of this happening on a crazy Los Angeles freeway. Hard to believe it had happened on an empty desert instead.

Well, the desert wasn't quite empty. Twilight shadows—long and surreal—dotted it, some moving with the light wind that blew Charlie's hair across her face.

A chilly wind so free of pollutants it smelled alien.

Hey, this is cool. I can handle this.

There was something seriously abnormal going on with Charlie's mother. Most people wouldn't have noticed—Edwina never having been what her daughter thought of as normal anyway. But it was the kind of abnormal you could hear over the phone hundreds of miles away without the words being any different. Not something a daughter could put her finger on, but something that created a cold place deep in her viscera that Charlie couldn't have pointed to either.

She'd left the car door open in case one of those shadows moved in her direction. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt quite this alone.

Charlie was a literary agent for Congdon and Morse Representation, a talent agency on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, and had much better things to be doing. Important things.

But when you're an only child and your only parent calls for help you don't have much choice, right?

Edwina, if I lose my job over this little outing, I'll never forgive you.

The wind whispered an odd whirring plaint in the stunted juniper and pinyon pine, arranged like evenly spaced shrubbery—nature's way of assuring each its claim to scant water rights.

“Lug wrench, jack, spare.” The man at the car rental had pointed out each article, speaking in the bored tones flight attendants use when explaining survival procedures in case of a crash—knowing as well as you do that if you need them you're dead meat anyway.

Ignoring the rustling in the scrub bushes beside the road, Charlie tightened down the last of the remaining nuts on the spare. She'd lost only one. She tossed the lug wrench into the trunk and stood staring at a low tree corpse. It hunched black and gnarled, aiming its several dead fingers at the darkening heavens as if in warning.

Oh,
will
you get a grip?

A small rat or a very large mouse staggered out from under the tree corpse and headed her way in an erratic course. Like it had stopped in for twofers this Friday afternoon on the way home from work. Halfway across the road it reared on its hind legs and came down on the run to ram headfirst into a front tire and bounce off. It repeated the crazy antic over and over, as if intent upon ramming the car out of its way.

Charlie was not particularly fond of rats but didn't particularly fear them either. Still, this one could be rabid. It was an unusual time of day for it to be out even when sober. She slipped into the safety of the Corsica until the poor creature admitted defeat and staggered away into the desert. Then she jumped out to lower the jack, throw it into the trunk with the flat, and head the rented Chevy down the endless road. As she drove, she tried to stop obsessing about the bumpy cattle guards irritating the tire on one rear wheel with the missing nut.

And if the nut behind the wheel wasn't missing a few screws she wouldn't be here to begin with.

Edwina Greene was a professor of biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, specializing in rodents of the high-desert plateau. Which meant she was heavy into rats and bats.

How old was I when I flat out refused to tag along on her field trips? Long before Howard died.

Dusk deepened to evening. Charlie imagined giant bulls ramming the little car like the rabid rat and the spare failing her here in a vast nowhere. She preferred strange cities to strange landscapes. You could get off the plane, pick up your luggage, and hail a taxi. If you had the great good fortune to speak the same language as the driver (increasingly less likely in this country), you could be ensconced in a cozy hotel in under an hour without glancing at a map.

Instead, Charlie had driven three hours across Utah from the closest jet-age airport in Grand Junction, Colorado. It would have been four and a half hours from Salt Lake.

Cows wandered along the side of the road now, eyeing her with passive dislike. Did cows ever get rabies? The campground couldn't be much further. A sign loomed ahead next to the first turnoff she'd seen.
APC PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING
.

Charlie and the Corsica continued down the main road.

And it was night. A few zillion stars snapped overhead like city lights upside down in the sky. What if a rabid rat bit a big bull on the ankle and … Charlie wished the little Chevy wasn't red.

She came to a lighted area, darkened buildings off to the side, and a speed limit sign. An arrow ordered her left at a wye and she passed a truck, a pickup camper, and several monstrous motor homes before coming to a stop in front of a fold-down tent trailer. Howard's old Jeep sat in front of it.

The other campsites appeared deserted, their vehicles dark, but a gasoline lantern flickered and flashed back at the night from the fold-down trailer. It had to be cozier than the backpacking tents of Charlie's childhood that sat right on the cold hard earth. This at least had a metal and wood body on wheels, the canvas tent forming its upper half and folding in on itself when it was time to hit the road. The plastic windows were rolled down to permit the night in through the screens and probably the sour smoke from Edwina's cigarettes out.

Charlie couldn't see her mother inside. Edwina was, no doubt, wandering around the desert looking for rats. She worked mostly in research now, but from time to time still shepherded a few promising grad students. One of them had written a book on the effects of human disturbance on the ecology of the Colorado Plateau of southern Utah and northern Arizona. Edwina was listed as coauthor for reasons known only to academe. A small independent film company out of Phoenix had hired her instead of the grad student as consultant for a documentary on the subject. As Charlie's father had always maintained—them that has, gets.

Charlie sat a moment psyching herself up to face her mother. When she did step out into the cold she reached for her jacket before hauling the duffel bag and backpack, borrowed from her daughter, up to the trailer's door.

“About time you got here,” somebody who was not Edwina said behind her. Charlie dropped everything on her foot while trying to smother a startled yip.

A man unfolded from beneath a concrete picnic table. A tall man with a lean face, high cheekbones, sly smile, and possibly the most suggestive eyes this side of the Mexican border. His dark hair was caught in a ponytail tied with a leather thong, and he had on a suede jacket with that corny fringe. “Your mamma's been waiting all day for you, girl.”

Why me? I'm so tired.

He pulled on a pair of cowboy boots and reached under the table for an ax. “Frankly, I was worried she'd bust a few important-type blood vessels in her head.”

His voice was low and suggestive too. Who was this guy? Was the ax supposed to be a threat or what? Charlie decided her best tactic was to go on the offfensive. “What were you doing under Edwina's table?”

“Keeps the dew off. Don't like tents.” Even in the dark he oozed testosterone. “Let's go find your mamma before she kills somebody, okay?”

“Do we need the ax?” It wasn't one of your little kindling-type hatchets but a full-size, chop-down-trees ax.

“Never hurts to have some protection out here at night. Especially with your mamma loose.” But he slid the ax back under the table and held out a hand to shake hers. “Name's Scrag Dickens.”

Figures. If your agent thought that one up, your career's in the toilet. “Charlie Greene, but you already know that.”

“Yeah, ol' Edwina's warned me to stay wa-ay away from you.” His laugh was low and growly too and, of course, wicked. He started off around the corner of the camper. “Now I know why.”

Charlie badly did not wish to follow this guy off into the dark but a sudden thunderous clapping swallowed up the night sounds. Flashing lights descended from above while a dimmer glow lifted to meet them from behind a rock barrier ahead.

Charlie grabbed a handful of fringe and found herself in a protective embrace. Scrag kept them moving toward the outcropping.

She'd just recognized the rhythmic thunder for what it was—helicopter blades—when it swooped on ahead allowing the grit it had raised to settle back to earth and, incredibly, the rasp of Edwina's voice to cut through the clamor. Charlie peered over the rock formation down into a natural bowl, ablaze and colorless with floodlights and two cameras filming the underside of the hovering chopper from different angles. It had a false bottom with circling lights.

But the real scene was Edwina Greene pounding a bald man around the head and shoulders while another tried to fend her off with a clipboard. The second man wore a headset with a speaker bar attached.

“You gotta help us, Charlie,” Scrag Dickens told her with a certain glee. “Can't nobody control your mamma.”

Charlie knew Edwina to be a royal pain in the ass but the woman wasn't dangerous. “She's probably furious because she signed on for a documentary, not this.”

“
Return of an Ecosystem
's shooting on the other side of the mesa. This is
Animal Aliens
. And the guy ol' Edwina's terrorizing is none other than Gordon Cabot himself.” Again that hint of misplaced merriment.

Gordon Cabot was a renowned director of grade D flicks you tended not to hear of until they turned up in video stores. Charlie'd never met him, but she was in the process of trying to rescue one of his writers from hackdom. Cabot's reputation was so sleazy, even in Hollywood where sleaze had a reputation to uphold, she'd never have believed the man himself would be so ordinary-looking.

Charlie groaned and skidded down into the overlit bowl to rescue the director of
Animal Aliens
. She'd rather be home fighting cute guys off her teenage daughter. Edwina was a highly opinionated person who'd embarrassed Charlie to death most of her life, but this had to be the worst yet.

Edwina and Cabot were nose to nose in a shouting match by the time Charlie managed to grab her mother's arm. The assistant director stood undecided. He had a very full head of hair and the helicopter “breeze” was making it dance.

“What are you? Crazy?” Cabot screamed over the helicopter. “We're going to have to scrap the fucking shoot.”

“You're scaring them all.” Edwina sloughed off Charlie without even looking to see who was tugging on her arm. “All these lights and helicopters at night.… These are night creatures, you asshole.”

“Creatures? I don't see any creatures. Do you see any creatures?” Gordon Cabot asked his AD and then Charlie, showing no surprise at finding a total stranger trying to drag off his adversary.

“This land teems with life and you have no right to interfere with it. You're an ecological disaster. You and your repulsive movies.”

Edwina stomped out the remnants of her long brown cigarette and her enemy pointed at it. “Who's the ecological disaster? I'll tell you who. You. You and your stinking smokes, that's who.”

The helicopter lifted straight up, cameras following its progress, oblivious to the fact that neither the director nor his assistant were exactly on line here. When Cabot realized this he ordered an end to the shoot and the helicopter wandered off.

And Edwina stomped off. “Come on, Charlie, get away from that creep.”

“I'll sue,” the director yelled after her.

“You just try it, dickhead.”

“You the agent? Can you do anything with her? She needs a straitjacket, what she needs.” He wasn't much taller than Charlie, his face bloated with a rage that transformed its bland features. Serious baldness made him look older than he probably was. Altogether an unpleasant little man with piggy eyes and an obviously nasty disposition.

But Charlie, still hung up on
dickhead
, tried hard to assure him she'd do what she could. She had sand in her teeth and in every crevice of her skin. Too bad Edwina's upgraded tent couldn't provide a hot shower.

She was over halfway up the side of the bowl when the floods went out, leaving her blind. As if he'd planned it that way, Gordon Cabot called to her, “Hey, you're with Congdon and Morse, right? I hear they're on the rocks.”

A familiar pricking pain stabbed Charlie's middle. Jesus, had they heard about it clear out here? Already?

Chapter
2

Charlie sat across the tiny table from her mother. Wind flapped the canvas ends of the tent trailer, purred through the dwarf forest surrounding the campground.

“Sorry I didn't have anything better cooked up for you,” Edwina said. “Wasn't sure when you could get here.”

“It's one of Libby and my favorites, honest.” We've learned to cook like you, God help us. “Pass the ketchup.” Charlie had downed a Mylanta cocktail before picking up her fork, but the beanie wienies did taste good after the trials of that endless road and the embarrassment of her mother's confrontation with Gordon Cabot.

“How is Libby?” Edwina asked, her voice softening.

“Who knows? Since I'm not there to monitor things. Because I'm here instead. Edwina,
why
am I here?” Libby was in full revolt. Libby was sweet sixteen and a natural platinum blonde. Libby was pure unadulterated honey and L.A. swarmed with bees. And they both knew that. “Is it Cabot? I thought you were threatening to have a stroke over some problem with the documentary.”

“How about canned peaches for dessert?”