Murder in the Marketplace (13 page)

I could hear the sullen groans of the water heater from the back porch. It wouldn’t last much longer.

“Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour or so.” Life was taking on a hectic tone. Office work for the next two days. That evening was Bridget’s hen party. Then there was grocery shopping, laundry to do, puppy training, and garden tasks.

“Thanks, Liz. Ms. Sullivan.” Ed had his face under control again. “We’re all too busy to gossip right now. Probably no one will even notice you."

That sounded like famous last words.

Barker roused as we came into the living room. He stretched and scratched, and I added flea patrol to my list of tasks.

Ed stared at him. “Isn’t that—” His expression was ghastly.

“It’s Jenifer’s puppy, yes.” Barker came prancing over, his tail waving. I moved quickly to open the door. “He’s still being trained.”

“Why do you—” Ed broke off, backing away.

Barker started growling. He certainly didn’t like men— first Curtis, then Drake, now Ed.

“Clarice didn’t want him—at least for now. Don’t you like dogs?”

“I like them,” Ed said, breathing deeply. “But I’m allergic to them. They sense that, don’t they?”

I picked Barker up and shook him by the scruff. “Stop it.” He stopped, but he didn’t put down the fur on the back of his neck.

“Well, I’ll see you at the office later.” Ed was out the door. “Tell your niece I enjoyed meeting her.”

“Okay.” I held Barker until Ed was out of sight at the end of the drive.

Amy came into the living room, toweling her hair. She wore a torn T-shirt and leggings.

“Your friend didn’t stay long.” She sat cross-legged on the couch.

“He’s not my friend. He’s my employer.”

Amy looked roguish. “If you say so, Aunt Liz.” Barker ran over to her, wriggling and licking until she picked him up. “Yes,” she said, snuggling her face into his soft fur, “we had a fun time at the beach, didn’t we, boy?” She gave him a squeeze, and he settled down on the couch next to her, sighing the deeply satisfied sigh of a dog on a piece of forbidden furniture.

“He was such a sweetie, Aunt Liz.” Amy stroked the silky fur of Barker’s ears. “You should have seen him biting the waves, and running into them after the stick—what a smart boy!” Barker put his head on her lap, raising his eyes to her face adoringly.

“I’m glad you both had fun.” I headed for my bedroom. “But I don’t want him on the furniture, Amy.”

“I know.” She put him on the floor and made him sit. “No, boy. You can’t be up here. I’ll sit with you.” She slid down to the floor, combing her hair with a kind of
über
comb that had the most immense teeth I’d ever seen.

Her voice filtered through the door of my bedroom, filling me in on her morning. “The ocean is, like, incredible. I had no idea. It goes forever, you know? I was, like, totally overwhelmed by it, and it went up and down, and pretty soon I thought I was going to hurl, but Elise and Kimberly and me climbed up a cliff and from up there it was okay, and the guys were so radical surfing, I mean, they were like sea gods or something, only Eric kept wiping out and once the surfboard hit him on the head and Randy had to kind of drag him in, but he was okay. They said they only go with buddies because of that. It was awesome, and I’m going to learn how, Aunt Liz, only maybe I’ll start with a boogie board or something, or maybe just bodysurf, Eric said . . ."

I stopped listening. Her voice was soothing, somehow, like incomprehensible radio waves from a distant galaxy, and I had a lot on my mind, not just whether I could get the pantyhose on again without starting another run. When I came back in the living room, dressed for what passed for success in my life, Amy stopped talking.

“I’m going back to work,” I said, taking advantage of the silence. “What are your plans for the afternoon?”

“Well, I guess I’ll have some yogurt for lunch and hang,” Amy said after a moment.

I fished around in my wallet and handed her my library card. “There’s a library downtown; they have
Barron's
and those stock market rags as well as books.” I pulled out a five-dollar bill and tried not to look too reluctant when I gave it to her. “There’s a grocery store a few blocks from the library, on Emerson. Maybe you could get us something inexpensive for dinner.”

She took the money, looking troubled. “Aunt Liz, five dollars—well, thanks, I’ll try, but you know that’s really nothing these days. I mean it’s like a nickel in the olden days.”

“I know it’s a challenge, Amy.” I shouldered my tote bag. “But think of it as a game—how much food can you buy for just five dollars? Remember, we have fresh vegetables, so lentils or beans or some grain could be the protein.”

She clutched the money. “Yeah,” she said, unconvinced.

I strode on out in my high-tops, heading downtown to answer phones, hoping I wouldn’t be asked to answer questions.

Chapter 13

I could hear the phones ringing from the other side of SoftWrite’s plate glass doors. Angel got up from the desk when she saw me. “Long lunch.” Her voice was tinged with accusation.

“You could say that.” I slid into the chair and put someone on hold. “Everything under control?”

“No.” She didn’t sound like the soft-spoken woman I’d met before. “Everything’s horrible. Suzanne’s holed up in her office, acting really weird; Clarice was taken away in hysterics; that policeman and his partner were here for almost an hour, upsetting everyone; and Ed is just beside himself with grief and worry.”

I sat there, listening to her tirade and wondering what it had to do with me. By the end of it, she was glaring at me as if I personally had caused it all. I would have replied, but she just took a breath and went on.

“I don’t care about the stories. People are saying you’re some kind of bad-luck Jonah. Someone even said you were Ed’s new girlfriend, and you went and told Jenifer, and that made her commit suicide.” She was disbelieving. “As if Ed would—well . . ."

 “Take up with me when he had a cute young thing like Jenifer around?” I touched Angel’s shoulder. “I’m just a bystander, really. Just trying to make a living.”

Angel sniffed. “What I care about is that if you say you’re going to do a job, you show up to do it. The phones are driving us crazy. The reporters are getting past this desk and hassling people. Do you know, one of the programmers said he’d been offered money to spy around?” She stopped, breathing heavily, glaring even more because I was giggling. True, it was nervous laughter.

“I believe you. I was offered money, too.”

“Well!” Angel calmed down a little. “Luckily you don’t know anything. But this has to stop. Can you screen the calls, Liz?”

“I’ll try.”

"Thanks.” The lines of stress smoothed away from her forehead. “I’m sorry to yell at you,” she said gruffly. “Honestly, I don’t know what this place is coming to. It was better when we were just starting—just Ed and Suzanne and Tess and Clarice and me. There was a spirit then—we had such confidence.” She walked away, shaking her head.

I fielded some more calls, wondering how I was supposed to screen. Would anyone identify themselves on the phone as a reporter looking for corruptible employees? Most of the calls were for marketing anyway, and they must have known how to handle the situation.

When a call came in for human resources, I did ask who was calling—Larry was just the type to enjoy the role of corporate mole. A few minutes after the call went through, Larry’s shiny dome peered around the partition.

“So you’re back.” He sauntered into the room, smiling benevolently.

“Finishing my day,” I said, hunting in the center desk drawer for a new pad of sticky message forms.

“I’m surprised, after the scene Clarice made. Does Ed know?” His nose quivered like a truffle-hunting pig’s.

I nodded, responding to the flashing light on the phone console. It was for Suzanne; the phone kept ringing while I transferred the call, and for a few minutes I was busy putting people on hold and then trying to retrieve them, a task not made easier by Larry’s hovering presence. As soon as there was a lull, he was at me again.

“Clarice seemed to think you were involved in Jenifer’s death. Is that true?”

“I see no possible reason to answer that question.”

“Really?” He came a little closer. “She told Angel you were at the door when she got home, probably coming out after suffocating Jenifer. And you’d only met the poor girl once. Don’t you think it sounds fishy?”

“So Clarice told Angel all this guff in front of you? Or did you just make it up?” I stood up, trying to be imposing. “Ask the police if you want to know more about Jenifer’s death. Don’t bug me.”

Larry inflated his chest. It did wonders for his waistline. “I am head of human resources here. It’s my responsibility to know about employees’ backgrounds.”

“I’m not your employee.” I put another call on hold and glared at him. “I’m a temp. I don’t have to answer any of your questions. Stop bothering me, or I’ll walk out and leave you to answer the phones.”

Larry looked outraged. He started to reply, but someone else spoke first.

“She’s got a point,” Suzanne said from her office door. Larry turned, his face going red. Suzanne’s lips were twisted in a wry smile. “You don’t have to take responsibility for the temps, Larry. You probably have enough to do without worrying about that.”

Larry smoothed the strands of hair across his scalp. “It’s the welfare of the company I’m concerned with, Suzanne. Morale—”

“Morale is low, I’m sure.” Suzanne waved him away irritably. "If your only solution to that is to hassle the temp, perhaps we need to take a closer look at how you do your job.”

His eyes narrowed. “You do that. We’ll have a good, long talk. And afterward, I’m sure you’ll want to keep me on as long as SoftWrite is around.”

He strutted away. Suzanne stared after him speculatively. I thanked her for her intervention and finished transferring my calls. She was still standing there at the next lull.

“Would you go into my office, please, and wait for me?” Despite her worn jeans and straggly hair, Suzanne had authority.

I did as she asked. Behind me, she punched Mindy’s extension and asked her to take the front desk for a little while. I settled into a scuffed wooden chair by Suzanne’s desk and waited for the third degree. It had definitely been a mistake to return. If you can’t go home again, it follows that you can’t go back to the office once you’ve left after a glorious scene.

She came in, closing the door, and took her seat behind the old metal desk. I was struck again by how much her office differed from the sleek, designer-based atmosphere everywhere else at SoftWrite. She stared at me for a moment, then sighed and looked away. “Why did you come back?” Her voice was soft now, not demanding.

“Ed said he couldn’t get anyone else, that you were all too busy to care about any gossip.” I looked at my hands, noticing a line of dirt under one fingernail. It’s an occupational hazard of gardeners. “And I need the money.” I could say that to Suzanne, with her shabby office and non-power clothes.

Her hands were steepled in front of her; the nails were chewed down to the quick. “Did you know Ed and Clarice were lovers?”

I was taken aback. “How would I know that?”

She gazed straight at me for a long moment. “Perhaps I was mistaken. I heard—” Her voice trailed off, then strengthened. “It’s true this hassle over our new product has unnerved us all. Certainly I’m not thinking clearly. Rumor has it that you were Ed’s latest lover.”

“That’s what Angel said, but she realized it wasn’t true.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell. “Look, I only met people here yesterday. I didn’t even meet Ed until Emery’s party last night.”

Suzanne listened to me wearily. “Of course you’d say that. And maybe it’s true. I don’t really know why I called you in here, except to warn you.”

“Warn me?” I was getting the whirlies from all the mental reorganization I had to go through.

“Yes. Admittedly, you don’t look like someone Ed would come on to, because he’s into that male renewal thing right now where he likes younger women.”

I let that unflattering assessment of my charms pass—after all, it was what Angel had said.

“But I thought he was taking an interest in you,” she went on. "That’s how it starts, you see. I should know.” She turned a pain-filled face to me. “We were lovers, too, a few years ago. We started SoftWrite together. My brain and his marketing savvy, he said.” She laughed a little. “He still loves my brain, I guess, although Jenifer . . ." She stared down at her hands for a moment. “Poor Jenifer . . ."

All this revelation made me uncomfortable. I stayed in my chair, fingering the edge of the seat nervously, wondering when I could go back to the phones, or if I should just walk right on down the stairs and back home, where at least I could control the amount of garbage I had to endure from the outside world.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Suzanne said, echoing my thoughts. “I don’t talk about it. Ed said we should keep our relationship quiet, though people guessed. That sure left him with a clear field.”

“Sexual harassment?” I offered the phrase tentatively; it was getting a lot of press in Silicon Valley lately.

Suzanne shook her head in sad tolerance. “Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s not harassment. Women come on to Ed. He resists for a while. If they’re really determined, they can get him into bed. He can’t help himself—he’s not really mature.” She sounded like his mother instead of his ex-honey.

“And Jenifer . . . ?" I asked the question delicately.

Pain crossed her face again. “She was different—she resisted him, although it was clear to see that she idolized him. She scared me—she was smart and good with computers, just like I was, only pretty—prettier than I ever was. And she was too young to see the pattern—maybe too much in love.” Suzanne turned away; her voice was so low and choked I almost didn’t understand her. “I thought he would marry her. I thought she was the one he’d marry.”

She was silent. I wanted desperately to get out of Suzanne’s office. The shabby furniture, the shelves of books and disk holders, all seemed oppressive now. The air was thick with emotion.