The Curse of the Holy Pail #2 (14 page)

"What?" I said again in the same high pitch. Now Wainwright was on his feet and looking worried, no doubt scouting for something from which to protect me. "And Steele? What about Steele?"

"Mike Steele was taken to the hospital," Joe announced excitedly. "Tina said he must have surprised the intruder and was knocked unconscious."

My mind was spinning at the news. I had just talked to Steele a couple of hours ago.

"Who found him?" I asked.

"Dunno," Joe said. "Tina was real closed-mouth about details."

My call waiting beeped. "Hold on, Joe," I said to him and hit the flash button on the phone.

"Hello," I said to the other caller.

"Odelia, it's Tina Swanson. Thank God, you're still up. Something terrible has happened."

"Hold on, Tina, I was on the other line." I clicked back over to Joe. "Joe, I have to go. Tina's calling me."

"Okay. I'm on my way to the office now. But don't tell Tina I told you anything, okay?"

"No problem," I assured him and clicked back to Tina.

"What's up, Tina?" I asked, trying to sound relaxed.

"Odelia, someone broke into the firm tonight."

"What?" I asked, but this time the word lacked the hysterical surprise of a moment ago.

"Someone broke into Wallace, Boer tonight," Tina said in a rush.

Christina Swanson never referred to the firm as Woobie. She was a tall, nervous woman close to my age who had come on board as our office manager about six years ago. She managed the staff professionally, fairly, and competently, which was not easy with all the different personalities housed at Woobie, and half of them attorneys at that. But in spite of her expert handling of her job, Tina never seemed relaxed. Her eyes always displayed a bit of wild fright, not unlike a small animal trapped on the edge of a high cliff by a pack of hyenas.

I never envied Tina her job. The partners had offered it to me when the last manager left, but I declined and stayed with Mr. Wallace and my paralegal work. I got a snoot full of management woes working for Mr. Wallace, and I was unofficially Tina's understudy when she went on vacation. I definitely did not want that kind of stress full time.

"Why?" I asked her.

"Who knows," she said, still forcing the words out in a torrent, "but they really trashed the file room and work areas, especially your office, Odelia. It happened around nine thirty. I'm at the office now."

"What?" I said once again, the shocked tone of earlier returning. I was careful with my next words. "Was anyone there at the time?"

"Yes, Mike Steele. He must have surprised him or them, because he was hit and knocked unconscious." Tina's voice became shaky. "He was taken to the emergency room with a nasty cut on the back of his head and a broken forearm. They're going to keep him a day or two."

I did an involuntary intake of breath, and Tina must have heard it.

"Don't worry, Odelia, they just want to make sure he's okay."

"Who called you and the police?" I asked her. "I spoke with Steele tonight about eight. He was working late. Who else was there?"

Tina hesitated a long time. My imagination ran wild, and I prayed I was wrong.

"Someone from the firm called me at home, Odelia," she finally said, slowing her speech down from frenetic to almost normal. "I called the police."

I took a deep breath before asking my next question. "Was Trudie there with him, Tina?"

Again Tina paused a long time.

"Damn you, Steele," I whispered into the air with a hand over the phone.

"Tina, was Trudie there with Mike Steele?" I asked again, even though I already knew my answer.

"Yes," Tina finally admitted. "They were working late. Trudie said Mr. Steele had a filing due in court tomorrow. After it happened, she called me and I called the police."

Steele's calendar was closely linked to mine. I always checked them both, as well as the firm's main calendar, carefully and daily to keep track of deadlines that were on the horizon. Steele did not have a court filing due until the end of the following week. And he never worked on anything very far ahead of time.

"The only briefs they were working on were Steele's designer briefs," I told Tina in disgust.

There was a big pause following my comment.

"Odelia," Tina finally said, "I know I don't need to tell you how important it is to keep rumors from flying." She tried to keep her voice very low and professional, but her anxiety flavored it with a slight hysterical whine. "Your utmost discretion is a must."

I thought about that. "I agree, Tina. Do you want me to come down to the office tonight?"

"No, I've called Joe in since most of the damage was to the file room. But could you come in early tomorrow? And you'll need to dress casually. Also, I would like to meet with you first thing to discuss the ... uh ... the sensitive situation."

What she meant was damage control.

TWELVE

IT WAS SEVEN A.M. on the dot when, dressed in jeans and a pullover knit shirt, I stepped off the elevator and into the foyer of Woobie. My eyes were barely open. I held a cup of designer coffee in one hand and a bagel with cream cheese in the other. Immediately, I was intercepted by a private security guard. He was a surly older man whose gunmetal gray uniform barely covered his well-rounded gut. While he inspected my Woobie photo ID and my face to make sure they matched, he rocked his weight back and forth on his feet like they were killing him. Giving a slight snorting sound, he handed the identification back and grunted his approval for me to pass into the main part of the office. It made me feel better to note that fastened on his belt was a truncheon but not a gun.

I walked cautiously down the hall toward my office. There appeared to be no one around. My first clue that something was amiss, besides the not-so-secure security guard, was that the closer I got to my little office, the more disheveled the overall office appeared. Files that were once lined up on counters and shelves like sentries were helter-skelter, and loose papers, thousands of them, were piled in hasty stacks on the counters bordering the secretarial bays. Although a mess, it did not look like anything a vandal would take the time to do, and I suspected that during the night someone had picked up a great deal of the mess.

The door to my office was open, giving me a glimpse of the chaos awaiting me. I broke into a trot the last few yards, sloshing coffee as I went and not caring that the special brew had cost me almost as much as a half tank of gas.

Unlike the outer work spaces, no one had attempted to clean up the mess inside my office. The destruction was so complete that there was hardly any room for me to step inside. The open door was partially blocked by a putty-colored four-drawer steel filing cabinet. When I left yesterday for Price's funeral, the cabinet had been upright and standing in a corner of my office. Now it was turned on its side, its contents spilled like the guts of fresh road kill. My bulletin board was askew, my desk drawers open and emptied, and my small bookcase, on which I stored more files on racks, tipped. Even my one plant had been upended and its soil scattered. The only item that seemed undisturbed was my name plate, fastened on the wall just outside the office, to the left of the doorway.

"Pretty bad, isn't it?" a voice behind me said, causing me to jump out of my skin and spill more coffee.

"Oh, Joe," I said, almost crying, "what a mess!" I put the cup down on a counter and grabbed a tissue from a box on a nearby desk to wipe my hands.

Joe was a mess himself. He was dressed in jeans and a faded black T-shirt displaying a rock band logo. Under his eyes were half moons of gray, and he looked as disheveled as the office.

"Were you here all night?" I asked.

He nodded as he ran his hands over his face in a dry scrubbing motion. "Yep," he answered. "Tina asked me to clean up the file room and the stuff from the floor before anyone got in today. I grabbed a couple hours of sleep on Boer's couch." He pointed to the piles of loose papers. "It was so bad it looked like we'd been hit by a blizzard of gigantic snowflakes. The file room was completely trashed, like your office. But other than that, they just emptied files onto the floor. Nothing seems stolen or broken. The computers weren't even touched. Odd, huh?" I stared around in disbelief as he described the vandalism. "Fortunately, the other side of the office wasn't bothered at all," he said, "just this section."

Woobie's offices occupied one very large floor of a modern office building near South Coast Plaza, one of the largest shopping malls in the country. The office was planned in concentric squares, with attorneys occupying the large outside offices with windows. Assistants occupied the inside second tier and were housed in ergonomic secretarial bays with storage for working files. The very inner core of the office held the file room, kitchen, library, copy center, elevators, and reception area. Scattered throughout both the outside ring and inner areas were conference rooms and tiny, windowless, private offices like mine for paralegals and law clerks. When Joe said the other side was not touched, he meant the other sides of the square that comprised our firm's floor space.

"But who would do such a thing?" I asked in complete bewilderment.

Joe shrugged in response. "Lucky for the firm Steele interrupted them. Otherwise the entire place might look like this."

"But why didn't Steele hear the commotion before they did this much damage?"

"From what I can gather, and from what I overheard some of the police say last night," Joe said, yawning wide and stretching before continuing, "the vandals probably began in the file room and had the door shut. You can't hear anything with that heavy door closed. From there, they more than likely worked their way down the hallway just tossing files and papers. The cops think they were looking for something."

"Looking for what?" I asked in astonishment.

Woobie's practice was comprised of mostly corporate and real estate law, some estate planning, and the dull end of civil litigation; nothing glamorous and dangerous by a long shot. For a fleeting moment, it crossed my mind that this involved the Holy Pail, but then I dismissed it as ludicrous. Besides, I had nothing to do with the missing lunchbox.

"And I still don't understand how they got this far without Steele hearing them," I said again to Joe.

Joe grinned sheepishly but said nothing more.

"What?" I asked, taking notice of his amusement.

"You won't believe it," he said, starting to laugh. It was just a titter at first, but threatened to erupt into full-blown belly bouncing.

"Try me," I said, putting my hands on my full hips and giving him a threatening look. He only laughed more.

Joe looked up and down the hallway. Even though no one was in sight, he quickly stepped down the hall and into Steele's office, motioning for me to follow, which I did. Once we were inside, Joe closed the door.

"I really don't want anyone hearing me tell you this," he told me, keeping his voice down in spite of the closed door. My ears went immediately on alert. "Apparently, Mike Steele wasn't alone."

Well, that I had already surmised. "You know who was here?" I asked Joe, wondering how much he knew.

"It was Trudie, his new secretary," Joe whispered. "Surprise, surprise."

I leaned against Steele's expensive, modern desk for support. "Go on," I said, encouraging Joe, knowing he knew a lot more than Tina was planning to tell me.

"I heard Trudie tell the police before they ushered her into a conference room." Joe's boyish face lit up as he spoke. He was clearly enjoying the moment, in spite of the long night and extra work. "She told the police that she and Steele were working late in his office-yeah, right," he interjected sarcastically into his narrative, "when Steele heard a noise in the hall. He went out to check on it and whack," he said, emphasizing the word with a karate chop in the air with one hand.

Joe was really starting to ham it up, and I was simultaneously horrified and entertained by his telling of Steele's fate. As much as I dislike Mike Steele as a person, I certainly did not wish him ill and was very thankful he was not hurt worse than he was.

"Now we get to the good part," Joe said with relish. He was grinning so broadly his small eyes were almost hidden in his plump face. "Seems the intruders didn't know Trudie was here 'cause Steele's door was shut while he investigated the noise. So Trudie hid in here until she felt it was safe to come out. She's not even sure how long it was from the time Steele left his office until she finally came out, but she thinks the creeps left shortly after clubbing Steele."

I thought more about this. "Not sure I wouldn't do the same," I confessed. "But I still don't understand how Steele didn't hear all the noise and why he didn't call the police immediately."

Joe grinned again, pleased with himself. I was impatient to hear the whole story, and his coyness was getting on my last nerve. He had no clue how dangerously close he was to doing an imitation of a chicken leg in a Shake 'n Bake bag. He licked his lips before continuing, savoring what he was about to say.

"It's not like Steele didn't hear the vandals," Joe began slowly, letting the words sink into my thick skull. "He just wasn't in a position to do anything about it."