Death of the Office Witch (7 page)

“I overheard you talking to a dead woman, Miss Greene.” His omelet was finally gone, and he wiped his lips carefully, folded the napkin, and placed it beside his plate so it looked like it hadn't been used. He took out his little spiral notebook again. “‘You said you were in the garbage can, not in the bushes.'”

“I was just talking to myself.”

“I don't think so. And another thing. You have never once asked me about any of the details of Gloria's murder. I would think natural curiosity would lead to questions here. Whether you liked her or not, this is a woman you actually knew.” The mild-mannered homicide detective was going on the offensive. And he had all the clout in this deal. “One explanation for that could be that you already know the answers.”

“It's only been two days, and there's been a lot else going on. And sure, I have questions, but I figure that when the proper authorities find the answers, we'll all know. You're not going to answer them until you're ready anyway. Why waste the effort? All I can tell you is I did not kill Gloria and I am not psychic. I was involved in a murder investigation last year, Lieutenant. In Oregon. And all I did was mess things up by asking questions. I learned my lesson. I will leave it all to you.” Like the good little citizen that I am. If you think I'm going to go through all that again with the
Alpine Tunnel
deal pending, you're out of your mind.

“Yes, I phoned Sheriff Bennett of Moot County this morning. He spoke highly of you and sends his warm regards.”

David Dalrymple waited for Charlie to respond to this easy opening. Actually, she had some warm memories of Sheriff Bennett that she figured were warming up her complexion about now, which probably said it all anyway. She must be on some interpolice computer thing just for having been involved in that murder at Moot Point last summer.

“So what are the questions you would ask me if you thought I'd answer them?” he said. “About the murder.”

“I don't believe this. You're the expert on murder.”

“But I didn't know Gloria alive. Help me, Miss Greene.”

“My questions have nothing to do with knowing Gloria. They're the same you'd ask yourself if you had as little information as I do. What was Gloria hit with and where is that weapon? I mean in front of all of us Richard mentioned she'd been bopped, and you didn't contradict him, so I assume someone hit her with something. How did she get from the private hall on the fifth floor, dead, past all the people who are around that time of the day, to that back alley entrance and then up into the bushes? Where were her friends and relatives at this time, like her husband, Roger, for instance? What do the guys down on valet parking have to say about all this? There's nearly always an armed security guard hanging around somewhere, too. What about the people in the coven she claimed to be part of? I mean she was into séances, Ouija boards, you name it. The questions are endless, Lieutenant, and unless you've got all the answers, you have your work cut out for you. And so do I. Please? Unless you've decided to arrest me this minute, I need to get back.”

“On one condition.” He picked up the check. “I want you to walk with me to the end of that fifth floor hall again.”

Much to Charlie's relief, Gloria, or someone pretending to be Gloria, did not speak to her when she and the lieutenant walked to, stood around and waited in, walked from, turned back and repeated the process, and then left that particular VIP hall on the fifth floor of the FFUCWB of P building. David Dalrymple was noticeably disappointed. But as far as Charlie was concerned, David Dalrymple was seriously weird.

Thank God Irma Vance was at the front desk when Charlie snuck behind her by way of the back hall with an unseen salute. Charlie, having come in via the VIP stairs, was now officially back on the premises unnoted, which might mean she might get something done—like work.

“Has Keegan called? Get me a line to Keegan. Hold everything else except McMullins, Ursa Major,
Alpine Tunnel
things. Line up how many calls I need to get through to New York otherwise. And, Larry, hurry, that damned Dalrymple has put me so far behind already—”

Charlie was actually through his cubicle and behind her desk, her pumps kicked off, her computer booting up, before she registered what her eyes had seen while her mind had been so organized. She rushed back to the cubicle that protected her office. “Larry? What's wrong? Larry?”

Charlie hadn't realized how high the stacks of screenplays, treatments, teleplays, manuscripts, and proposals had grown since last she'd noticed. Larry was a large person. There was his chair behind his computer keyboard, a small visitor's chair just inside the door, a towering drop-leaf file cabinet alongside it stuffed with proposals filed alphabetically by author, and a narrow path to Charlie's office door. Every other inch of space was stacked with material as yet unread and unalphabetized.

Larry was slumped over a pile of submissions next to his keyboard, his head buried in folded arms.

“We'll call in Harry and Lucinda to screen some of this, and I'll help you organize the rest right away. Hey, this is doable, trust me. Larry?” Harry and Lucinda were outside readers the agency hired on contract to help Charlie and Larry paddle through the flood. Most of the paying business came from contracted work like Keegan's, but every now and then there was a possible
Alpine Tunnel
in the pile worth wading through the muck to get to.

She closed the door to the hall. “I just hate to see a beautiful man cry.”

He finally raised his head to stare at her dry eyed. “And I just hate people who say things like ‘doable.'”

“It's not the backed-up work load, is it?”

“No, it's Gloria.”

7

“The backed-up work load would have been easier.” Charlie slumped into the visitor's chair.

“I don't see how you and Richard can just blow this off and continue working like nothing happened. A woman we know was murdered right here in the building.”

“That's work for the police, Larry. When I think of something I can do about it, I'll stop and do it. What do you want me to do, just be upset or what?”

“When you didn't know she was dead, but were worried about her being missing, you were upset enough to be hearing voices in the back hallway. Then when you find out she's murdered, you seem to feel better about it.”

“Well, I could have maybe done something about her being missing. I can't do anything about her being dead.”

“You're fucking pragmatic for a woman.”

Charlie was never sure how to take him and didn't want to hurt or insult him. A good assistant was worth his weight in yen, and Larry was good. So now she said carefully, “Larry, you and I are just different. We're neither one right or wrong, just different. You see, to me pragmatic is a compliment.”

He worked up a grimace. “You know, don't you,” he said, “that you're everything I detest in a man?”

“Hey, if you want to take the rest of the day off, I'll fight it out with the Vance.”

“There you go again trying to avoid things. What I want to do is talk about Gloria, not go home and stew about her murder alone. I don't understand you, Charlie.”

Charlie didn't understand him, either—why would you want to talk about something you were helpless to influence instead of something exciting like a megadeal you could participate in? But she had Irma hold her calls and took her assistant to the couch in her office so they could discuss Gloria in comfort. Maurice was right, Richard should get some counselors in here. But Charlie couldn't picture him spending the money. “Excuse me for sounding pragmatic again, and I'm not questioning your feelings, but Larry, you were not that immensely fond of Gloria.”

“And you know it could have been one of us who killed her. Her husband was probably at work and has witnesses to prove it. I don't think the police are going to buy the theory that a coven of witches waltzed in here unnoticed to do her in. You'll notice this Dalrymple is spending a lot of time hanging around the office.”

“Around the building. There're all kinds of offices in it. Larry, what's really bothering you?”

He had a male model's square jaw. When coming into the office he usually wore stylish cotton pants and a white shirt, with the sleeves carefully rolled up above the elbow and the neck open. A lightweight sport coat with patches on the elbows and a necktie in the pocket hung behind the open door to the hall for the occasional dressy lunch. He looked indefinably mussed and rumpled today, and his tan had taken on an unhealthy hue.

“I don't believe anybody at the agency has the airtight alibi they think they do. And I'm the only one strong enough to heave a body up into the bushes like that. I'm scared, Charlie.”

“You had no motive. And it was not necessarily just one person involved. Do you know who Richard was talking to in his office earlier that morning when Tracy heard voices?”

“Mary Ann Leffler and Keegan Monroe.”

“Before the breakfast at Universal?”

“Yeah, and that meeting didn't last a half hour. Charlie, when I left to go over to the Chevron practically everybody was here.”

“But Gloria told me over the car phone that most everybody had come in and then left on business.”

“Probably just to needle you. She was always trying to make people feel guilty.”

“Richard, Keegan, Mary Ann, Irma?” she asked and he nodded with each name.

“And Maurice, I think. Dorian, I know,” he said. “And Tracy. I'm not sure about Luella. And when I came back the office was completely empty.”

“Have you told Dalrymple all this?”

“I don't want to implicate myself, or irritate a killer, or lose my job.”

“You think Richard did it?”

“All I know is that now that Gloria's gone, I'm low man on both the seniority and the clout totem poles around here. I'm not making any waves until I know what this is all about. And I was gone a little longer than just over to the Chevron for Ding Dongs for Gloria. I slipped in another errand first.”

And if he raised the first alarm about alibis someone else would probably figure that out and call him on it in front of Dalrymple. “How much longer?”

“Half hour, forty-five minutes.” He leaned forward in probably his most endearing pose, the butterscotch hair tumbling across his forehead. “You know, Charlie, I think you and I need to look into this whole business on our own before we go to the lieutenant? We know each other didn't do it. And we'll know better what we're getting into that way.”

Charlie stared at her quiet phone and blank computer screen. All she wanted was to be happy and do the work she loved. Was that so much to ask of the world? “
We
did not go on this errand together,” she said, “so maybe
you
better fill
me
in?”

“I had to meet a friend. It has nothing to do with Gloria or the agency or any of this, I swear.”

“A friend? Larry, I thought you and Stew were solid.” Stewart Claypool was Larry's significant other.

Color flowed back into her assistant's complexion. Anger pushed him to his feet. God he was something—sort of a combination Superman and Mitch Hilsten, Charlie's favorite superstar. “Stew and I
are
solid, Charlie. Just because you don't need anyone doesn't mean you know shit about relationships or that just because I meet someone it has to be about sex.”

He slammed the door on his way out and, having propped her feet on the coffee table in front of the couch, she stared at the run in her hose as it zipped up from a big toenail to a knee. She stared at the lavender and beige dried arrangement in the dark blue pot in the center of the coffee table. When did that arrive? She honestly couldn't remember seeing it before. Hadn't there been something similar but with yellow in it? Irma must see to these things, too. Charlie watched the palm fronds droop outside the wall of window. They reminded her of droopy Doug Esterhazie.

What did he mean she didn't need anyone or know anything about relationships or sex? Why did life have to get so damn complicated just when it was getting so good? Charlie slipped out of her ruined hose and into one of the spare pairs she kept in a lower drawer.

Besides being an irreplaceable assistant, Larry Mann was an irreplaceable friend. “Know why you like him so much, don't you?” Richard Morse had said to Charlie no more than a month ago. “Because he's safe. You, lady, have a problem.”

I do
not
have a problem.

Charlie slipped back into her killer heels and marched out to the cubicle. “You think you're so picked on,” she told her assistant. “You don't have to go home to Stew and hear about cats who kill birds and two-hundred-dollar Rollerblades and sororities, huh?”

“Charlie?”

“You get me Keegan Monroe on the line and no more bullshit, understand? And after that be ready to plug back into
Alpine Tunnel
.”

“And where are you off to?”

“If the good Lieutenant Dalrymple is not lurking nearby, I'm off to beard the Vance about
our
little problem. But the deal is, my friend, that we mix business with snooping or
you
are back on
your
own. Right?”

“Right.” He flashed her that smile. His parents must still be paying off the orthodontist.

Which reminded Charlie that this weekend when she wasn't doing all the other chores she'd promised fate—she'd better pay the bills. Was it any wonder she didn't look forward to weekends?

The Vance—Irma Vance, harridan of the paychecks and the paper clips, and scourge of Las Vegas—was appropriately paper thin with skin dried to parchment, her hair so long dyed that the expected glassy auburn had leaked to pink-tinted puffs resembling rice noodles. But her eyes soon laid to rest any illusion that she might be old-lady fodder for con artists.