Death of the Office Witch

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Death of the Office Witch

A Charlie Greene Mystery

Marlys Millhiser

For Irene Webb

May she never have Charlie's problems
.

1

Charlie Greene turned off the engine and rolled down the car window. When her eyes began to water from the fumes, she rolled the damned thing back up again.

Palm fronds peeking out from an expensive neighborhood on the other side of a privacy fence were drooping in the freeway air, too. Orangy-red roofs of new clay tile showed between the fronds in slices. They relieved the bleakness of a rush hour morning with slashes of color.

Charlie punched the office on her car phone and tried hard not to think of two-hundred-dollar Rollerblades. She tapped on the gray Toyota's gray steering wheel.

Five lanes of traffic sat idling poisons into the air on Charlie's side of the road, while all the cars in the opposing lanes zoomed by unobstructed. She'd left the fog behind shortly after leaving Long Beach, now it was just the usual haze clouding the air. But the sun was beginning to heat up the car through it, causing Charlie's pantyhose to start sticking uncomfortably.

“Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc.,” Gloria's New Jersey twang finally came over the line, and Charlie could hear the relentless soft click of the keyboard continue without hesitation. Anybody else would have left off the Inc., but not Gloria. Precise was Gloria.

“This is Charlie. I'm stuck in a grid on the 405 and won't make the Universal breakfast on time. Can Richard cover for me?”

“He left already to do that, Charlie, swearingeh under his breath. Is it really gridlock, or just Libby?” Gloria's conceit at being unencumbered by children was only one of her irritating traits. Nothing encumbered Gloria but her fingernails. Long, fire-engine red, with different tiny fake jewels set into each one, they were Gloria's glory. “Or did something odd and unexplainable happen to you like I've been saying? I'm tellingeh you, Charlie, it can't be long now. I can feel it.”

The only odd thing happening to me is Gloria Tuschman. “Is Larry in yet?”

Charlie dared to turn on the engine and the air conditioning, knowing she shouldn't keep throwing pollutants into the smog. But she needed to look good today.

“Everybody coming in this morning is in except you,” Gloria pointed out ominously. “And everybody but me has left again on some errand or other.” Larry, Charlie's assistant, had gone across the street to the Chevron to buy Gloria and himself Hostess Ding Dongs for their coffee break.

As soon as the receptionist started detailing the whereabouts of every last person at the office, Charlie cut her off. “I'll do my New York calling now and be in as soon as I can.”

New York was three hours ahead of time, and it was a nightmare to reach everyone before they went home. Of course, Charlie had found it equally difficult getting hold of the West Coast when she'd worked in New York.

Charlie Greene was the literary agent for Congdon and Morse. She handled screenwriters for the agency and served as contact with East Coast book publishers. She managed to complete calls now to a literary agency and a New York producer, and leave a message at McMullins Publishing before the gridlock suddenly opened up as mysteriously as it had closed in. As usual, she didn't pass a wreck or a tow truck or any sign of road construction to account for the traffic holdup. And, as usual, she wasn't as fresh as she would like to have been when she reached the office.

A talent agency on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc. wasn't one of the best-known or more prestigious, but it had a few older stars on its roster, along with a fair number of up-and-comers. Although many more powerful agencies maintained their own imposing buildings, Congdon and Morse shared the fifth floor of the first Federal United Central Wilshire Bank of the Pacific building, a seven-story white stucco structure with black windows. Fortunately, tall palm tree stalks, sticking out of the sidewalk in front of it, didn't produce any small poofs of fronds until reaching the level of that fifth floor. The FFUCWB of P sat on a corner facing Wilshire with its drive-through banking across the side street, a paved alley running along the other side, its first floor halved in size to provide covered parking in back and two levels of parking underneath.

Charlie waved away the parking valet, swooped the Toyota down into its own stall on the first level, took the elevators up to the fifth, followed the carpeted hall until she came to a discreetly marked door, and buzzed the intercom. There was an even more discreet rear entrance that Richard Morse shared with a shrink at the back of the building's fifth floor, but the help had to use the front door.

“What do you want?” Charlie heard Larry's harried-sounding voice instead of Gloria's familiar insulting one. Gloria's voice could discourage more wannabes than a math teacher's.

“It's me, Charlie.” She had her own little card that would slide into the metal box next to the intercom and allow her entrance, but it was simply easier to buzz Gloria. She noted only two manila envelopes lying up against the door.

“Where is she?” she demanded as soon as Larry had let her in.

“Phone's driving me crazy. Our Gloria has disappeared on me.” Larry was petulant, California bronze, and big. Charlie often had to stop herself from hugging him. “She did it on purpose, the witch.”

“She didn't go far, her car's still down in the barn. Did she leave any Ding Dongs?” It was too late to even try to make the Universal breakfast.

“When I got back with them she was gone. More and more I like Richard's idea of installing voice mail,” Larry said, returning to the phones. The last time Gloria left on vacation, the temp had somehow shut down the system, and Richard (the Morse in Congdon and Morse) had threatened to replace the receptionist with voice mail.

Charlie grabbed a gooey cake and headed for the staff bathrooms down the private hall. There was no sign of Gloria in the ladies. It wasn't like her to leave her desk that long. When she took her lunch break she even turned the phones over to an answering service.

The hall was long, narrow, and dimly lit. At its end were the stairs to the VIP exit and a tinted window. Charlie peered into the stairwell, wondering briefly if Gloria had felt ill and had a sudden need for air. She couldn't imagine Gloria choosing anything but the public elevator, no matter how awful she felt. The spike heels she wore were bone crunchers. Charlie called down into the stairwell. Her voice echoed back to her from the floors above as well as those below.

Though the window looked dark from outside, she could see clearly into the alley that ran along the side of the building, the white tiered business buildings running along the other side to Charleville Boulevard, and the off-alley parking spots for the residences incongruously snuggled in behind the bank. A high concrete brick wall painted white with tall flowering bushes hanging over it ran parallel to the bank's rear and separated two parking spaces from the next residence. Just beyond it was the rusty-red of old tiles on a garage roof. A breeze set the leaves to fluttering on the wall, shadow-dappling the concrete below. Something in the bushes caught the sun in tiny glints before the breeze moved on across the alley to play with a discarded food wrapper.

A woman dressed for the office stepped out of a gate and walked toward the garage. She stopped partway there and picked up something red, looked around her, shrugged, and then stuck it in one of the huge garbage cans that lined the alley all the way to Charleville Boulevard.

Charlie turned back to the agency offices, catching herself on the metal railing that lined the stairwell as her heels slid on the gloss of the newly waxed floor. She stopped at a whisper behind her, but when she looked there was no one.

“Someone call me?” It had really been more like a sigh than a whisper. It almost sounded like someone had whisper-sighed, “trash can.” Charlie had extra-sensitive hearing, and often heard sounds that weren't there. She hated it.

She expected to find Gloria back at her desk, but Larry, still looking harried, motioned to her with a “we've got trouble” expression on his face.

Larry was one of the best-looking men Charlie had ever seen, with butterscotch-blond hair that kept flopping over onto his forehead and huge watery blue eyes that compelled unquestioning sympathy. He also had a lean, lithe body with muscles built up in all the right places. So far he'd failed in his quest to become a star, although he'd appeared in some very appealing commercials and bit parts on TV. Growing tired of waiting tables and parking cars, he'd found steadier employment at Congdon and Morse. When Charlie had taken her job and moved out from New York a couple of years ago, Larry had come with the office.

Now he held one of the phones above his head, letting lights flash on the other lines. “It's the boss for you. You find her?”

“Not yet. Richard, hi. Sorry I was late this morning. It was the freeway this time, honest, and not Libby.” Charlie seemed to be in trouble about every other day around the office, and it was no joke. She had car payments, a killer mortgage, and a kid to raise. “How'd the meeting go?”

“I have no time for excuses, Charlie, and where the hell is Gloria?” It was his dangerous, ever-so-patient-and-put-upon voice. “I am a busy man. I cannot stay in the office every minute to manage it. That is why, Charlie, I spend good money to hire people to help me.”

“She must have stepped out, but her car's still downstairs. I've been running around looking for her, and poor Larry's answering the phones.” The door buzzer was about as subtle as a smoke alarm, and both she and Larry started when it went off. He pressed a button under Gloria's desk and released the lock for Dorian Black. “Here's Dorian now. He can help us look for Gloria.”