Death of the Office Witch (22 page)

Predictably, Beverly had not been asleep and answered on the first ring. “How could you wait so long? I've been calling all night and worried sick. It's after three in the morning.”

“I just got home and found her here and the light blinking on the answering machine.” The kids had apparently listened but chosen not to answer.

“Just got home? But—” something in Lori's mother's long-suffering sigh and longer pause suggested she was visualizing Charlie swinging at singles bars and humping truck drivers. “Poor little Libby. Poor, poor—”

Charlie hung up and poor, poor little Libby pushed herself to a sitting position, squinting in the light of the lamp. “Mom? Lori's run away from home. I told her you wouldn't mind if she lives with us till she gets a job. Okay?”

22

Charlie stumbled into work very late the next day. Stumbled from lack of sleep. Very late because she'd been to see Dr. Williams first.

“So, is it terminal or what?” Larry sat at the front desk instead of in his cubicle where she needed him. He handed her a sheaf of phone slips.

“No results yet. I have to go in next week for more tests.” Of what she couldn't imagine. The gremlins at the lab in the “medical arts” building where Dr. Williams tortured people had already taken juice and pulp from every orifice of her body and enough blood from her arm to feed a family of vampires for a week. It had been degrading, embarrassing, humiliating, uncomfortable, awful, and expensive. No wonder people had to be worried sick about their health to go to a doctor.

“Going to ream you out at both ends and X-ray what's left, right?” There was a certain lack of sympathy in Larry's ghoulish smile. What were her medical problems stacked against what he could be facing? But Charlie's blood would be tested for HIV, too. Dr. Williams claimed it was standard now.

For the first time in her career, Charlie would use up her and Libby's health deductible on herself and before the year was half over. The agency insurance plan carried a “healthy” deductible. She sure hoped Keegan's fix on the script would go over at Goliath. Keegan wouldn't murder anyone—Ed just didn't know him. Charlie was beginning to wish she really was psychic so she could simply stare at the murderer and identify him and get this all over with.

Keegan was one of her callbacks this morning, but before she started on the phone slips, Charlie poured herself a cup of coffee and had it halfway back to her office before she remembered she wasn't allowed it. Swearing, she poured it down the sink in the little utility niche. How was she supposed to work without coffee? She wasn't even allowed Diet Coke. She stalked back to her office, picked up the pink slips, put them down and called Bev Schantz instead, offering to take Lori in for a few days until she cooled off.

“I don't consider you an especially good influence for my daughter,” Beverly said hesitantly, Lori's little brother screaming happy mayhem in the background, the family dog barking itself apart at the seams. “I can't imagine what's gotten into that girl. I never acted that way as a teenager.”

I did. “The offer's open. Give it some thought.”

“But there's no supervision at your house.”

“I have no plans to be gone tonight. I do have plans for tomorrow evening.”

“Well, we did, too. Her father and I had planned to have Lori sit with her brother—but now.…” The old conundrum—who's to supervise the baby-sitter? “But
we
would have been home well before midnight.”

“The decision's up to you. Maybe someday you could return the favor.”

“We would be happy to take in poor Libby any—”

Charlie hung up on Beverly Schantz for the second time that day and raised the back of a second finger to the nodding palm fronds outside her window. She returned the New York calls of importance, ignored the rest of her messages for now—including one from Keegan—and informed Larry she was out of the office. Her priority now was reading the
Shadowscapes
script.

She was still immersed in it when Larry brought her a paper carton of Mom and Pop's homemade chicken noodle soup with the tiny aromatic green things, newly reheated in the office microwave.

Charlie had been unable to face breakfast that morning, having had to confront two teenage girls and force one to clean up the pizza barf the cat had left at two-foot intervals all over the tiny house.

“But UM, Tuxedo loves pepperoni and cheese.”

“Does he love All Hallows' Eve? Scrape it up and flush it. Your cat, your puke.”

“You puked the other night all over somebody's rocks and cactus and didn't stick around to clean it up.”

Charlie had once scanned the novel
Shadowscapes
. The writing was powerful, but the story was so silly she couldn't get into it. She needed to know only enough to speak coherently about it in Hollywood-ese. Truth be known, reading or even thinking in depth was more alien in L.A. than in D.C., and the project was already sold. Charlie had only to connect one of her writers with the folks at Goliath when it was determined that, but for one small problem, everything was wonderful. The problem was simply the adaptation was totally unworkable. No big deal, just call in another writer.

So reading Keegan's take on the script—knowing him, he'd completely rewritten it his way—was the first time Charlie had concentrated on the story line. Fortified by the marvelous soup and licking real butter off her fingers from the fresh bread that accompanied it, she finally called him.

“Okay, my friend, how much is you and how much Mary Ann, and who did the nude dancing scene? It's a great job, by the way, but that won't get you off the hook around here. I mean, there's black witches and there's white witches—you can't tell me Elaine and Dorian allowed their children to dance nude.”

“But the script works by itself even if you never heard of the book, Mary Ann, or me—doesn't it?”

“You know it does. It's brilliant.” Which didn't mean the hundreds of people that would turn it into celluloid could bring it off. But Keegan, using Mary Ann's incredible if warped imagination, had certainly done his share. “I'll messenger it over to Carla and start hounding Goliath for your money.”

Charlie had no more than sent the screenplay off to Goliath when Sheldon Maypo called from downstairs wanting to know if he'd be allowed up. “Let's take a walk in the alley instead, Shelly. I'll meet you at the elevator.”

“No kidding? Your office was bugged? That explains some of what I overheard last night, then.” He pulled the bill of a baseball hat low over his sunglasses in the harsh light raging off white buildings and concrete as they strolled out from under the bank's overhang and into the sun. Shelly was a night person. He tossed a wadded up candy wrapper into the dumpster on the other side of the concrete end wall as they passed it. “Dalrymple was talking to his buddy with the tight crew cut and explaining he didn't think you were in any danger at the office, although the search would have tipped off the murderer you and the police knew what was afoot.”

“So it's one of us, or someone connected with us, for sure.”

“I wasn't clear from what I heard that they actually found a receiver or whatever, though.”

“Why won't Dalrymple tell me anything? How can he expect me to help if I don't have any information?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Charlie. He was telling this guy—”

“Gordon. Detective Gordon.”

“This Gordon wondered the same thing, see? Why ask you to help and then keep you in the dark? And Dippy Dalrymple says because he wants you to come to a psychic solution on your own to see if it matches the solution they build by laborious investigation. And that you are still on the list of suspects yourself, which says they aren't much closer than we are. And let's see, there was a third thing—oh yeah—if you come up with the same answer psychically that they get their way, it'll prove people like you can be helpful in police investigations. He thinks Gloria had some psychic talent herself, and this is the first time he's ever investigated the murder of one person like that with another one involved. Said it was the chance of a lifetime.”

“What did Detective Gordon say to that?”

“Not a thing. Stunned silence, I expect. It's frightening there's someone like that in such a position of authority.”

“Well the lieutenant did break down and tell me last night that Gloria died from a blow by a blunt instrument.” She told Shelly about the witches' party in the orange grove. “Apparently, most of the suspects attended. You may be wrong about witchcraft having nothing to do with this. But I ran it all past that guy I was with last night, and he thinks it's irrelevant, too. Ed thinks Keegan Monroe and Mary Ann Leffler killed Gloria and then Keegan killed Mary Ann so she couldn't rat on him.”

“I sure hope he's wrong about Monroe. Kid's one hell of a screenwriter. I did overhear a few other things.”

“I want to know everything, Shelly.”

“Your boss got stewed last night and wanted to know where the hell someone named Luella was.”

“Luella Ridgeway, represents actors. Richard had ordered all the staff to be there and to bring dates to make it look like a bigger, more important party. You know, I don't remember seeing her last night. What else?”

“I talked to the little Vietnamese maid. She thinks Irma Vance did in Gloria and that Mary Ann Leffler is still alive, hiding out somewhere.”

“Did she say why?”

“Part gut feeling, part observing people who come to the house, and part overhearing her boss's side of phone conversations. She heard him talking on the phone to Irma the night before Gloria's murder. Morse turned white as a sheet and hung up. He told the maid something like ‘Damn that Gloria and her screwy friends. I could lose the agency.' Morse thinks this Luella who didn't come to his party and someone named Tweety did in Gloria because they had both asked him to fire Gloria.”

“Who did Richard tell this to?”

“Me. I'm used to staying up all night. So when the caterers and clean-up crew and security people leave the grounds yawning their way into their vans and cars, good old Shelly's still on duty and spry beyond his years.”

“In the house?”

“In the hedge. And your boss comes out carrying a small bottle and a big headache and parks himself next to the pool under the lemon tree. I think I'm invisible, but he sees me. Motions me over. We pass the bottle. The guy's practically in tears by now.”

Charlie hadn't seen Richard today, but then she'd come in late and holed up with Keegan's screenplay. The only people she had seen were Larry and Irma. “He's drinking it straight?”

“Oh yeah. And talking. Tweety and Luella have explained to him how dangerous this Gloria is because she casts spells over people. She's going to ruin Congdon and Morse because she hates being an underling receptionist, having to answer to people like Luella and Tweety. He thinks Gloria might have some information that would embarrass the agency if it gets out, and if he fires her she'd see that it gets out. Poor Richard tells me being the boss sucks. Me, unemployed, and we're sitting under his lemon tree next to his pool.”

Shelly stood looking up at the broken bushes so apparent from this side of the second block wall, the crushed red petals and leaves on the cement earth beneath had turned black, like old blood.

“What if Gloria climbed up into those bushes by herself?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe you are psychic. I was just wondering the same thing. I was also wondering if you're as safe at Congdon and Morse as Dalrymple seems to think.”

23

Back on the fifth floor, Charlie confronted Larry at the front desk. “Are we the only ones here today? And Irma?”

“Maurice came in. But not until after lunch. Looks like everybody else had too much party.”

“Luella's not in? I don't think she was even at the party last night.”

“I didn't see her, but Stew and I didn't stay very late. Listen, Charlie, when Irma comes back, we need to talk.”

“Not here,” she half whispered, half mouthed.

“We can go in your office.” He had a long yellow pencil stuck behind one ear, and when he shook his head in unison with hers, while making an exaggeratedly quizzical face, it fell to his shoulder and then to the floor.

Charlie used it to write across a memo pad that Dalrymple had found a bug in her office yesterday and that she was afraid to talk about anything important inside the agency suite in case there were more. She showed the note to Larry and handed him his pencil.

“That's why the police search yesterday,” she whispered as an afterthought while tearing the note into ever tinier pieces.

Larry had grown so still he didn't look like he was breathing, didn't even blink. “When?” he said finally, still staring straight ahead at nothing. “Before or after our little talk?”

“After, but don't jump to conclusions. I don't think they found anything.” Charlie was still whispering even if he wasn't.

Larry Mann finally took a giant breath and noticed the pencil in his hand. He snapped it in two like a pretzel stick, flung it on Gloria's desk, and walked out of the office.

Charlie went after him and had almost let the door to the public hall close behind her when she realized she couldn't get in again with no one on the desk, because her plastic card key was in her purse in her office. She called after him, but Larry stepped into the elevator without glancing back.

“Damn.…” Irma must be out to a late lunch or on an office errand. Larry had referred to
when
she would come back. Charlie didn't know if Maurice was still in. He wouldn't answer the door buzzer even if he was. Charlie wouldn't have, either. The soft, but vastly annoying jingle chime announced a caller.