Death of the Office Witch (24 page)

“It's just a sample, Charlie. He'd be willing to work on anything to get a foot in the door. Without an agent he can't even get his calls returned. I mean, it's not fair.” When Charlie didn't answer—“Okay, what's the condition?”

“That you tell me everything you know about Gloria using the agency to get inside information and promotion for Roger's newsletters and mail-order courses for wannabe actors and screenwriters, and why you and Luella wanted Richard to fire her.”

Pause, breath, chewing something … “You know what Gloria told me once, Charlie? She said you were sensitive to psychic phenomena and attracted paranormal stuff without knowing it. She said it's a natural gift, and if you'd quit fighting it, you could learn to use it to your advantage. And if you don't cultivate it, you'll lose it. If you cultivate your gift, you could probably figure all this out yourself.”

“Good-bye Tweety and good-bye James.”

“No wait … it was just a suggestion.” Tracy took another crunch and used the chewing time to think.

“Don't lie to me,” Charlie made her voice low and spooky and threatening. When in Dipsville.… “I'll know.”

“My uncle hit boiling when he came across one of Roger's show biz newsletters and blamed me for it, thinking I'd used the agency that way.”

“Why you?”

“My mom mentioned in a letter a few months, maybe a year, ago that Uncle Dan was talking to some big deal writer who did vampires or something about maybe producing one of her books. You know, making it into a movie and—he's her brother, and she thinks he shits gold bricks.”

“Anne Rice?”

“Kind of sounds like it. Anyway, nothing came of it, but I sent him one of Roger's witchcraft newsletters thinking maybe it'd give him some ideas. I mean if he was into crazy, why not? He must have kept it, because he noticed it had the same editors and address as the actor-wannabe newsletter and that one named the agency so …”

“Don't think you've won my cooperation yet,” Charlie prodded.

“The name Tuschman means nothing to him, see? He doesn't even know about Gloria. She's just the receptionist. I mean, he never comes here. So he decides it's me. He makes a copy of the damn thing and sends it to me with a nasty letter. So I go to Luella with my problem. Well, I'm hardly going to get any sympathy from Himself-the-Dorian-jerk-off. Who else would I go to, you?”

“So you showed Luella the copy of the newsletter, and she showed it to Richard.”

“And Gloria was murdered.”

“But why did you and Luella go to him with some story about Gloria's casting spells over the agency?”

“She was. She had to be. Charlie, she knew things she couldn't have otherwise. Okay, maybe not casting spells. We were just trying to make a point, but some kind of magic—”

“You've worked the front desk enough to know how much information goes past here. It's hard to tell from the offices if someone out here is listening in on the calls.” I've learned more this afternoon than I would have thought possible. But why the change in you, Tweety, and when did it happen? Charlie was willing to bet it happened since Gloria's murder. She used to enjoy Tracy Dewitt. David Dalrymple was right, murder was changing them all in subtle ways. “Tracy, were the Tuschmans blackmailing you?”

Tracy answered in a muffled voice and hung up. Charlie thought she'd said, “Not for money.”

That last was tantalizing enough that she couldn't dismiss the beckoning of the little chimes and blinking lights and just walk out right away. If Charlie ever won big in Las Vegas, she'd lose it all before she left town for sure.

Elaine Black called wanting to speak to her husband. When Charlie informed her Dorian hadn't come in today she said, “Bastard,” and hung up in Charlie's ear.

Irma called. “Where's Larry?”

“I sent him with Keegan Monroe's screenplay over to Goliath. Richard called in and said we should all just go home, but I don't know how to turn the phones over to the answering service. Are you coming back?”

“It's after five. If no one answers, the service will take over automatically.” Irma had a lot in common with Dr. Podhurst. They could both make you feel like an imbecile in seconds. “And no, I'm not coming in. Get out of there now.”

“Wait, Irma. Was Gloria blackmailing you, too?”

“You've been warned, Charlie.” Congdon and Morse's executive secretary left Charlie with a dial tone.

Charlie groped around with her stockinged feet for her pumps. Edwina said she'd get claw feet from wearing them. The pointy toe of one had caught under a corner of Gloria's desk, and in trying to extract it with her foot Charlie snagged her hose and could feel the resultant run snake up her leg to and then over her knee. It was like a ribbon of relief.

She stared at the thrown pencil halves but thought of other things instead. Three other things at once. First, in one way or another, a lot of people had warned her of the dangers of being alone at the agency.

Second, something in her head was beginning to see a pattern to all the odd bits of information she'd collected while sitting in Gloria's chair. Not collecting psychically. Collecting rationally.

Third, this was a semicircular desk, U-shaped, and so was the little cave for the captive receptionist to scoot her lap, legs, and feet under.

Charlie knelt to grope first for her shoe with her fingers and then for the reason why there was a corner where none should be. A square, plastic-feeling thing with sharp edges, probably less than two and a half inches off the floor. Too dark in this receptionist hole to see, but she found a part of the thing's center that moved and then another. She jiggled, explored, and worried them with blind fingers until they pulled out far enough to come free.

Charlie pushed herself backward out of the hole and stood to look at what she held, hurried to fetch her purse, slipped the tapes into it, and headed for the door. Gloria had not only listened in to office business, she'd recorded it. Had she bugged Charlie's flowers, too?

The elevator was on its way up, and she was surprised when it stopped at the fifth floor. The door opened on a phalanx of men, all of whom she knew. But only one appeared happy to see her.

“Miss Greene, I was hoping to catch you before you left. Your phone lines have been busy.” Lieutenant Dalrymple leaned over her, Dr. Evan Podhurst on his left, Larry Mann on his right. “We've found Mary Ann Leffler.”

At the back and outer edges of the phalanx, Maurice Lavender looked old and ill. Dorian Black looked mussed. Murder was changing them all.

Charlie didn't want to hear about Mary Ann. She wasn't ready. She told Maurice about the call from ZIA and that Ellen was being considered for the part of Thora Kay. He revived enough to brush her hair with a kiss of breath. “My client thanks you, I thank you. I didn't expect word so soon, but I knew you would pull this off, you gorgeous creature.”

“Well, Tina Horton wrote the thing,” she reminded him.

But Maurice had his card out and was already trying to get into the agency to call Ellen. Then he would call ZIA and explain how full Miss Maxwell's schedule had become, the many scripts she'd already been asked to read and consider. And the dealing would begin.

“Elaine called for you. I told her you hadn't been in all day and she called you a bastard,” Charlie informed Dorian. He hadn't quite gotten all the lipstick off his face.

He ignored Charlie and asked Dalrymple, “So where
is
the famous writer lady?”

“I remembered Irma probably wouldn't be coming back in and didn't feel right about leaving you here alone, Charlie,” Larry whispered. “Glad to see you're okay.”

Dr. Podhurst scowled at Larry and Charlie. “Yes, Lieutenant tell us. I hope she's all right.”

“You know, don't you, Miss Greene?” Dalrymple asked.

“No, but I bet you're going to tell me.”

“I'm going to go one better. I'm going to show you.” He guided Charlie into the elevator and punched the button.

“Well,
is
she all right?” Podhurst persisted as the door began to close on the three men still grouped in the hallway.

“Hardly,” came their answer, and the door shut them away. “Seems to be quite a sudden gathering on your floor, doesn't there? And your assistant implied you were alone inside.”

“Lieutenant, I have to get home. My daughter may have a friend staying over who's run away, and her mother will never forgive me if I leave them unsupervised. I don't think I got more than three hours sleep last night, and I had to see a doctor first thing this morning. I don't feel well. Do we have to do this now?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Charlie had an inkling of what Luella Ridgeway must have felt the day before. A black and white, with a uniform driving and Detective Gordon in the passenger seat, waited at the rear entrance. Dalrymple crawled in back beside Charlie, and they were off with screeching tires and sirens, playing havoc with the rush-hour congestion. Avoiding clogged freeways, they followed a tortuous route that soon had Charlie lost. But they angled generally north and west. The sun came filtered through a haze of looming moisture.

“Just got the call. Stopped to pick you up on the way.” Detective Gordon leered pleasantly over his shoulder.

“Mary Ann's dead, isn't she?” What would Beverly Schantz say if they arrested Charlie? Or Richard Morse, or Mrs. Beesom, or Edwina Greene, or Libby? Even the driver watched Charlie in his rearview mirror.

“Yes,” the lieutenant answered with little inflection and less sympathy. “Why were you alone at the agency this afternoon?”

“Apparently, after last night's party, Maurice, Irma, Larry and I were the only ones to show up. I sent Larry on an errand and thought Irma would be back any minute, so I started answering the phones. Maurice had left. I ended up doing it most of the afternoon.”

“Why are you crying?” The man next to her thawed about thirty degrees.

“I'm not crying. What makes you think I'm crying?”

“Well, this for starters.” And he brushed her cheek with fingers that came away wet.

Charlie glared back at the driver in the mirror. As fast as they were going, if he didn't pay more attention to the road, they were all about to join Mary Ann Leffler. “I wear contacts, and sometimes the smog irritates my eyes.”

He waited expectantly, zooming in on her through the lower, heavy-duty portion of his lenses. He must be able to see every pore on her nose. It was an enormously irritating habit of his that somehow forced her to blabber.

“I think I met Mary Ann only twice, and I didn't read her book very closely. Today I read the screenplay she and Keegan created from it and—Keegan's a great writer, you understand, and I know he moved a lot of it around to make it fit film—but some of the real off-the-wall wacky had to be her. I mean, he's very logical.”

“So?” Gordon squinted over the seat back. That was about the extent of his repertoire—leering and squinting.

“The few times I talked to her she was either bitchy or worried, had her own agenda, wasn't … wasn't particularly appealing, okay? I just wish I could have told Mary Ann how much I enjoyed her way of being humorous. I mean, she's in a class that doesn't need laugh tracks. She dared to be different, dared things I probably couldn't sell but would be so proud of if I did.”

“What's the matter with laugh tracks?” Detective Gordon turned back to the terrifying situation facing them as the black and white screamed through a stop light, narrowly missing a terrified woman in a pickup caught in the crosswalk, and swung off onto a side road headed north that Charlie had traveled once before. When she and Keegan had dropped in on Gloria Tuschman's Memorial Séance and Dance.

25

Mary Ann Leffler had not been found dead in her car underwater—a fact Charlie gloatingly pointed out to a certain homicide cop.

Dalrymple's reaction was disappointing, if typical. “Yours is an untrained gift, after all. We can hardly expect you to be a hundred percent accurate, can we?”

Charlie took in huge lungfuls of quickly freshening air in order to tamp rising ire, and stalked back down the road. The road in the orange grove where two dead women and many of Charlie's live friends had danced around a bonfire last Halloween. “It may not be so much what you eat,” Dr. Williams had warned, “but what is eating you. You have to learn to control stress.”

Gloria and Mary Ann would never dance again. Loose-dirt roads were not meant for high heels. Charlie was not meant to view people when they were dead. Charlie was a literary agent, and literary agents were very good—but at other things.

“She did drown, however, Miss Greene,” Dalrymple called after her. “I would appreciate it if you'd come back and have a look for yourself.”

Charlie came up against a waiting ambulance blocking the one-lane road—sitting still, lights still whirling. And up against Detective Gordon and his freckles. Mary Ann drowned in an orange grove? The shallow irrigation ditches to either side of Charlie didn't look as if they'd seen water in months.

“She's not in a car,” Charlie reminded Gordon as he took her arm and they started back. Mary Ann was in the middle of the road, in the middle of the grove, surrounded by lights, even though it wasn't dark yet. And surrounded by people taking pictures, scooping dirt into plastic bags, studying things with their noses almost touching the ground. And people holding onto a canvas waist-high barrier to keep a rising west wind from scattering loose dirt, prints, evidence.

Detective Gordon guided Charlie carefully around a barrier of yellow police tape that protected tire tracks in the road and deposited her beside David Dalrymple and Mary Ann Leffler. Dalrymple removed his sport coat and hung it over Charlie's shoulders. “Look, Miss Greene. Open your eyes. Tell me what you see.”