Authors: Clea Simon
‘Never mind my dull old routine,’ she’d said, before giving Dulcie a vague reply; something about research and a colleague from Duke. ‘We’ve got to figure out your life first.’
Dulcie knew Suze would spill eventually, if there was anything to spill. So she let herself be comforted, moving on to the spotlight that Priority had focused on her. ‘I mean, they told me to sit there. And like a fool, I just sat.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Suze tended to clip her sentences when she was angry. As a lawyer who would one day charge by the quarter hour, this habit would save her clients plenty. ‘The point is – countersue. We’re fighting back. If they pursue, it
will
cost them.’
Dulcie’s mood dropped a notch. ‘If they
pursue
it? But I thought you said their case was groundless.’
‘Probably is. But they can argue circumstantial. You were on the server without permission.’
Another notch.
‘They don’t have much, but they might pursue it to warn people off, convince their insurance carrier that they’re doing something.’
Two notches.
‘But I’ve been keen for you to talk to a lawyer, anyway, due to the whole – ah – Tim thing.’
Three notches, at least. ‘Suze, I’m broke.’ Dulcie was whispering, her voice gone with her spirit.
‘Legal aid, Dulce, legal aid.’ Suze must have heard something, because her voice warmed up as her sentences expanded. ‘The clinic is open to everybody, free of charge, Dulce. I’ve been going through my files, trying to figure out who’s working there this summer – and who is any good.’
Dulcie whimpered.
‘Dulcie, you’ve got to. Even if you do end up spending a couple of thousand.’ She must have heard Dulcie swallow. ‘You know I’ll lend it to you, but you’ve got to do this. I mean, being in debt is better than being in jail, isn’t it?’
‘At this point, Suze, I’m not sure.’
It wasn’t Suze’s fault. She was only trying to help. Still, Dulcie never expected to be able to get to sleep after that final crushing blow to her sense of self, security, and general all-round worth. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell her old friend about Bruce or the mystery of the mascara. But the endless Monday must have simply worn her out. She fell asleep dreaming of a warm, purring animal beside her. In her dreams, Mr Grey appeared on her computer screen again. Only this time, he was able to talk to her, and he was saying something about magic:
Spells most potent for their proximity
. There was more, she remembered watching his whiskers move, the way his tufted ears flicked back and forth for emphasis. But the rest of the dream was confused, computer viruses were created by evil spells and the third-floor bedroom looked out on to a wintry, windswept peak.
The dream had been so compelling that when Dulcie awoke she was surprised to see sunshine, rather than snow, through her open window. A gentle breeze promised a pleasant day. Birds chirped and chattered, and Dulcie snuggled into her pillow, forgetting for a moment that she had moved to the city. Was that a cardinal she heard? From her bed, she could see one fluffy cloud, like a child’s drawing, floating across the sky. She yawned and stretched and turned toward her clock.
‘Oh, hell, it’s eight thirty!’ Dulcie jumped out of bed and was halfway into yesterday’s skirt before the realization hit her: she had no job anymore; there was nowhere she had to be. Only two months before, on such a beautiful morning as this, that would have been a wonderful realization, money be damned. But today . . . she sank back down on to the bed. All it meant was that she’d have more time alone with her worries. Outside her window, that one puffy cloud must have moved. The bright sun was replaced by shadow.
‘Great.’ She’d become so used to talking to Mr Grey that speaking her thoughts out loud had become second nature. But as she heard her own voice, she felt again the one-two punch. Mr Grey was gone. And Tim, who used to tease her, had been stabbed to death in her own living room. For a brief moment, she contemplated crawling back under the covers. Maybe she could sleep until the cops came for her or everybody just went away.
Dulcie . . .
Talking to yourself and your deceased cat was one thing; hearing your cat respond was too much. Dulcie sat back up. She’d been letting herself drift into some fantasy-fueled dreamland for too long. No wonder the police had doubted her sanity. No wonder no man was interested in her. If she wasn’t careful, she could end up just like Lucy.
Dulcie shuddered. That thought got her out of bed. If she was losing it, slipping into some kind of heat- or grief-induced dementia, she could at least fight it; assert some kind of control, make some kind of discipline for herself, to slow the inevitable decline. A shower and a proper breakfast would be a start. And then she would go right down to the law school’s legal aid office and begin dealing with her problems. That’s rational, Dulcie told herself, that’s behaving in a reasonable, adult manner. Still, as she lathered up her thick brown curls, Dulcie couldn’t fight the feeling that, sitting right outside the shower, in his usual post on the top of the toilet seat, a large grey cat was watching her, purring, his tail coiled neatly around his front paws.
A bagel with low-fat veggie cream cheese and two large iced lattes later, Dulcie had mustered the courage to proceed with her plan. Taking the T into Harvard Square, she made her stride brisk and purposeful as she marched the remaining four blocks to the legal aid office. Suze had warned her the night before that the office where thirty-odd students and a handful of actual lawyers worked would be easy to miss. But although the small white house blended in nicely with its surrounding neighbors, Dulcie liked the look of it. The neat little colonial was set back from the street behind a small lawn, but its tall, open windows and dark-green shutters looked inviting; less threatening, less corporate than a cool glass-and-steel office.
And far less organized. Although Dulcie had let the brass fox-head door knocker fall on the wooden front door before letting herself in, she was almost run over by a set of boxes with legs. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ The front entrance way, built for colonial-era occupants, wasn’t made for them both, and Dulcie found herself pressed against a wall of wooden cubbyholes, from which envelopes and flyers poked. As the boxes squeezed past her, a male voice emerged from beneath them. ‘Sorry! ’Scuse me.’ The boxes were marked with sections of the alphabet: A–F, G–P, T–Z.
‘Did you lose a box?’ Dulcie couldn’t imagine carrying a higher stack, especially if the boxes were even halfway full, but she couldn’t help calling after the retreating form.
‘Sorry? Oh, no. We don’t need those today.’ A round face emerged as the boxes leaned briefly against a fax/copier. ‘Are you one of the new interns?’
‘I’m a supplicant,’ she replied. Then, catching the confused look, ‘I mean, I need help.’
‘Oh, sorry. A client.’ He hoisted the boxes back up, and raised his voice to carry over them. ‘Go down that hallway to the right. Sorry for the mess. August 1. New interns start today. Everything is crazy.’
‘I gather.’ But he’d already gone, leaving Dulcie to pick her way over more boxes and into what must once have been a formal dining room. The layout was familiar from other university offices, a good number of which were housed in equally old, quaint, and impractical converted homes. In this building, every available inch had been turned to office use. Cubicle-like desk spaces lined the walls, leaving only a narrow walkway around a central table that was itself covered with papers. Three women were pecking away at laptops, not even bothering to look up as someone – the round-faced young man? – dropped something heavy in the next room. The entire house – admittedly, not particularly big – shook slightly, and the low, muttered sound of cursing filtered through the wall into the room.
‘Dulcie!’ At the sound of her own name, Dulcie spun around. There, in the open doorway, stood Luke. He was smiling. ‘I left a message for you last night.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ She felt flustered and fought it. She would
not
care that this man was handsome and smiling. She would
not.
‘I had just the worst day. Which – well – is why I’m here.’ She gestured at the activity going on around her, and realized she was saying more with her hands than with her voice. ‘I mean, I ran into some issues yesterday that made it seem like I should get some legal advice.’
‘Follow me, then. We can talk back here.’ He opened a door she hadn’t seen before.
‘No, I mean, from legal aid.’ She wasn’t making herself clear. Luke was a law student, but she wasn’t asking him, personally, for help.
‘I figured that out.’ He was smiling more broadly now. ‘I’m working here for the rest of the summer.’ He saw her puzzled look. ‘I’ll be a 3L when I go back to Stanford, my seminar doesn’t take that much time, and one of the August interns fell through. So,’ he gestured again to the open door, ‘would you like to chat?’
It wasn’t like she had a choice, she thought to herself, as she walked past him into the back office. Dulcie wasn’t sure it could even be called a room. Almost windowless, with one high cut-through that let in some air and the sound of soft chatter, the tiny space must have originally been a pantry or even a large closet. Small as it was, it had been divided into three workstations, each barely big enough for a computer. Bookshelves climbed up the wall and a filing cabinet behind the door kept it from opening entirely. Luke motioned for her to roll one of the chairs toward a lit computer screen, and took a seat beside her. After the bustle out front, this space felt quiet and intimate.
And so Dulcie dived right in. ‘Well, Luke, I’m here about two legal problems. The first is criminal. I seem to be under investigation for Tim’s murder.’
Luke blanched, but when he spoke his voice was calm. ‘I should give you the legal aid spiel, Dulcie. First, we don’t actually handle criminal cases. Work, housing, various forms of discrimination – that’s it. But, off the record, tell me more.’
Dulcie felt herself flush. Her obnoxious room-mate had been this man’s brother, after all. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just dropped that on you. But, well, the police have heard that he and I didn’t get along. They brought me in for questioning on Saturday and they implied that I went over the edge.’ She didn’t want to add that they’d also suggested that she might be jealous. Her lack of a sex life was not Luke’s business. She swallowed. ‘I want to make it clear, Luke. Tim and I did have our disagreements. But I did
not
– I could never – have killed him.’ She paused. That sounded odd. ‘I mean, I couldn’t kill anyone.’
He smiled. ‘I believe you, Dulcie. It’s just still hard to get my mind around what happened. But I can’t seriously imagine the police are considering you as a suspect. You’re too gentle.’ He looked away from her, down at the keyboard.
‘Thanks.’ This was awkward. Why couldn’t they be out in that busy front room? ‘Suze, my room-mate, says they’re probably talking to everyone and that if they don’t call me back, I’m in the clear.’
‘That sounds reasonable.’
‘I just hate waiting.’
He nodded. ‘It’s like you want them to make a positive declaration of your innocence. You don’t want to feel like you escaped.’
He got it. Dulcie breathed a small sigh of relief. ‘Anyway, the other problem I’m having really might fall under your jurisdiction.’ He raised an eyebrow at her phrasing and they both laughed. ‘I mean, maybe you can help me?’
As succinctly as possible, she explained the Priority Insurance situation while he took notes on a yellow legal pad. Although she’d felt embarrassed at first by the very nature of the job – temping in a clerical position! – he put her at ease. Asking simple, direct questions and nodding as he listened to her answers, Luke seemed as much like a counselor as a soon-to-be-attorney, and she found herself warming to him. She even told him about the apparent theft of her sweater.
‘So what you’re saying, to use a technical term, is that your boss is a bitch?’ He looked up at her, pencil poised, face serious. But then he broke into another wide grin and they both laughed.
‘Yeah, that about says it all. But seriously, Luke, what can I do? I mean, I need this job – or at least I need to not be totally discredited with the temp agency that sent me there. And I really do
not
need to be accused of embezzlement or computer malfeasance.’
‘Computer malfeasance, I like that. Sounds Victorian!’ They shared another smile.
‘Why me, though? I’m just a temp.’
‘That’s a good point.’ He drummed his pencil on the pad. ‘Do you think that could be why you’ve been accused?’
Dulcie nodded and explained Suze’s theory; that perhaps the company was simply looking for a scapegoat, for insurance purposes.
‘I’m afraid to say it makes sense, in an awful sort of way. I mean, unless you think someone has it in for you personally.’
Dulcie shuddered. ‘God, I hope not. But . . . why?’
‘To cover for themselves, obviously.’
Himself – or herself, Dulcie silently corrected him. Grammar aside, Luke’s logic made her shiver. Still, she forced herself to focus. It was Joanie who had shown her how to get on to the server, and Joanie definitely had an anti-authority streak. But she was a friend, wasn’t she? Or at least a kindred spirit? Dulcie knew her instincts had been off recently, but she liked the kohl-eyed Goth girl and shook her head. ‘No, I can’t think of anyone.’
‘Let’s tackle this from another angle, then.’ Luke looked down at his notes. ‘How are you supposed to have hacked into the system? Does your terminal have a disk drive or even a USB port?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Dulcie grimaced and tried to recall exactly what her workstation looked like. ‘I just go in there and type. I mean, I’ve never noticed. But I think they were accusing me of getting the virus in through the email.’
‘That doesn’t sound likely.’ He bit his lip as he thought it through. ‘I mean, I don’t know for sure, but doesn’t it seem likely that a large corporation, an
insurance
company, would have all sorts of firewalls and virus detection programs at work?’
‘You’d think.’ Dulcie was feeling better by the moment. And the privacy of the little room had grown much more comfortable, too. ‘You know, I never asked them and I should have – I mean, I will. I’m going to confront them about my so-called methodology.’