Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy (10 page)

Snooks took a swallow of red wine and made a face; it was the house wine and she'd been overly optimistic in ordering it. The psychiatrist was having a late supper at an Oakland restaurant near her office; Megan had ordered a bowl of soup to keep her company but had let it get cold.

“You're worried about losing your memory,” Snooks said. “Why? Because of the weekend?”

“Well, yes. Wouldn't you be?”

“But if you were hypnotized that weekend, what resulted was an
induced
memory loss. You certainly can't attribute that to the workings of your own mind.”

“Snooks, I don't know how these things work. But couldn't I have acquired, er, a pattern of forgetting? I mean, could I have been given a posthypnotic suggestion just to start forgetting things now and then?”

The other woman shook her head. “Too vague to be effective. You'd have to be told specifically what to forget. And your unknown hypnotist couldn't have anticipated Bogert's coming along and—”

“Those are two different things,” Megan protested. “If it is Bogert who's sabotaging me, that's one thing. But if I'm wrong about him and I did it myself and I don't remember …”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” Snooks scowled at the carafe of red wine. “That stuff tastes like fermented Kool-Aid. All right, let's rule out Bogert for the moment. Say you did send all that Lipan to California and then blocked it out of your mind. You're worrying about not being able to remember doing it. Seems to me the real question is why you would send the stuff to the wrong distributor in the first place.”

Megan fiddled with her soup spoon. “I was putting off thinking about that one. I have no explanation for it—none at all.”

“Hmm. One shipment going to the wrong place could be dismissed as simple error. But four? Too much for coincidence.”

“Five, actually. Chattanooga, Greenville, Macon, Athens, Birmingham.”

“That's even worse. How disruptive was all this to the smooth and efficient functioning of Glickman Pharmaceuticals?”

“Nuisance value. It's already straightened out.”

“How much was the Lipan worth?”

“Well, we supply it to our distributors at three hundred ninety dollars per case. There were eighty-four cases altogether that mistakenly ended up in Stockton … let's see.” She did the numbers in her head. “That comes to thirty-two thousand, seven hundred sixty.”

“Sounds like a nice piece of change.”

“But it wasn't lost, Snooks! All eighty-four cases were sitting right there in Stockton, where the computer said they'd be. The only thing we lost was the expense of shipping them there. That's wasted money, of course—but Glickman absorbs that kind of goof all the time. It won't hurt the company.”

Snooks forgetfully took a swallow of wine and made an unpleasant sound. “Arkansas burgundy. You know, Megan, it could have been an attempted hijacking that didn't work. Your weekend hypnotist could have instructed you to misdirect those five shipments to Stockton—interesting that they all went to the same place, isn't it? And then, oh, I don't know … maybe they planned on hijacking the delivery trucks in California before they reached the distributor and something went wrong.”

“No, Snooks, it doesn't make sense. Lipan isn't a hard drug that can be pushed on the streets. There's no reason to hijack it.”

“Black market?”

“There's no black market for Lipan. That'd be like having a black market for vitamins. Who'd buy them?”

“Okay, no black market. What about a competitor who wants to analyze Lipan?”

“Then all he has to do is walk into a drugstore and buy a bottle. Which has already been done, I'm sure. Believe me, Snooks, Lipan isn't one of our hijackable products.”

“Hijackable?” Snooks smiled. She signaled the waiter to bring the check. “Well, then, since you're so certain there was nothing to be gained—it does end up sounding like an act of spite. But not a very effective one, was it? Since you've already corrected the error.”

“Maybe it's only the first step in a campaign.”

“Is Bogert the kind of person who holds a grudge a long time?” The waiter brought their check; they got up to leave.

“I would say so. He's a pretty nasty man, Snooks.”

Snooks knew of Megan's deep-seated hostility toward the security chief; it had come out under hypnosis. “Megan, if he's a dangerous person to have for an enemy, perhaps the best thing you could do would be to come to terms with him.”

“Too late for that now,” Megan shivered.

Megan wasn't too happy with either possible explanation of the mystery of the misdelivered Lipan. If she had done it herself under hypnotic suggestion, that meant she'd been forced to do a dirty to the very company she'd invested her future in. Or if Bogert was out to get her, she might not have any future at Glickman at all. She'd changed her access code number in the computer, but Bogert wouldn't give up just because she'd countered his first move.

Bogert or hypnosis? Not knowing which it was began to get to her. She became irritable and suspicious of everybody. She had to remind herself constantly not to read hidden meanings into what people said to her. On the whole Megan tended to accept Snooks's theory that she herself had sent the Lipan to California. Because that theory, at least, included an explanation for her lost weekend.

After a few days of this, Megan found herself driving home from work one evening leaning on the horn and swearing. When she realized what she was doing, she was shocked. She'd always found a perverse pleasure in being a courteous driver in a town where even the police jumped lanes and made illegal turns.

Megan needed help in carrying the burden. So when she got home she went down and pounded on Gus's door. The minute he let her in she started talking and didn't stop until the whole story was out—and then she demanded that he think of something.

Unfortunately, he did. “If it was Bogert who changed the shipping orders,” Gus said, “maybe he's not working alone. Maybe someone told him to do it.”

Megan looked bewildered. “But why?”

“I have no idea. But if somebody is out to get you, wouldn't Bogert make a good inside man? Somebody with access to you?”

“That sounds a little paranoid, Gus.” She sank down in the lumpy armchair and wished she hadn't. “Why don't you get these springs fixed?”

“Listen, Megan. Two unusual things have happened to you recently. Somebody stole thirty-eight hours of your life, and then there's a gross shipping error
that could only have been deliberate
. Is it unreasonable to assume that these two out-of-the-ordinary happenings might be connected?”

“Oh, they're not connected, Gus. Bogert didn't have anything to do with my lost weekend.”

“How can you be so sure? Megan, I'm convinced it was a ‘they' instead of a ‘he.' Whoever got you that weekend, I mean. Look at everything that was done—kidnapping you, driving your car back, slashing the tires of that police car, carrying you to the golf course. It's just too much for one person to handle all alone. There had to be at least two of them.”

She sighed. “You think of the most cheerful things.”

“Megan. I think we ought to go to the police.”

She didn't answer immediately. Then: “We go to the police, and I tell them I think an unknown somebody hypnotized me and forced me to screw up a Glickman shipment. Then what happens?”

“Well, they investigate.”

“They investigate what? More to the point—they investigate whom?”

“Er, uh—oh.”

Megan nodded. “They investigate
me
. Gus, I can't have cops running around Glickman Pharmaceuticals asking questions about me. Not now.” How Bogert would love
that
.

“Are you in trouble at work?”

“No, no—nothing like that. It's only that—well, just take my word for it. Now is not a good time for me to be investigated by the police.” Mr. Ziegler would be most disapproving. Megan noticed the expression on Gus's face and laughed. “Oh, for heaven's sake, Gus! I haven't done anything I don't want the police to find out about! It's just that I'm involved in some heavy office politics right now and I have to tread carefully.”

He believed her—because he wanted to believe her. “Tell me about Bogert.”

“He's a vindictive, power-happy, underhanded bastard,” she remarked without emphasis.

“That gives me a very clear picture,” Gus said expressionlessly. “Now tell me about Bogert.”

Megan grinned. “I don't know anything about him outside the office.” So she told him what she did know, stressing the fact that Bogert was the only one who could have altered her shipping plans if she hadn't done it herself.

“This other man-Unruh?”

“He's out of it,” Megan said. “He even has trouble calling up straight-line information from the machine. He'd never have been able to make the necessary changes.”

“Can I come visit you?”

“What?”

“At Glickman. So you can point Bogert out to me.”

“Gus—are you going to play detective again?”

“Yup. Are visitors allowed?”

“Not without a reason for being there.”

“Couldn't I be someone delivering a package to you?”

“You'd have to have credentials from the delivery service, and then I'd have to go down to the reception desk and sign for the package there. Security's pretty tight.” She smiled ironically. “Bogert's doing.”

“Well, then, when you leave work.”

“I've never seen him leave the same time the rest of us do.”

“Damn it, there's got to be some way for me to find out what this guy looks like.”

Megan thought for a moment. “His picture was in one of the company publications—I remember seeing it. I'll see if I can track it down. What are you going to do?”

“Find out if he's on the take … who else's payroll he might be on.” At that Megan started laughing so hard that Gus's feelings were hurt. “Well, I
might
find out something—you never know unless you try.”

Megan wiped her eyes and let her laughter trail away. “Oh, Gus—it all seems so improbable. The whole thing. But Bogert isn't part of any conspiracy. If he's out to get me, it's for personal reasons. Because I one-upped him. I one-upped him good.”

“You don't know what connections he might have,” Gus said stubbornly. “You don't know anything about him. Megan, you've turned this into an either-or situation.
Either
a hypnotist got to you
or
Bogert is trying to sink you. Bogert could be linked to your missing weekend—it's possible.”

But she was shaking her head. “Bogert wouldn't use a hypnotist to get at me. It's just not his way of doing things, Gus. It's, well, it's too subtle. Bogert goes in for things like name-calling—the frontal attack.”

“I don't mean he thought up the plan. But he could be the other guy who helped the hypnotist, couldn't he?”

Megan still refused the idea. “It
is
either-or, Gus. Bogert or a hypnotist. I'd bet on it.”

You are betting on it
, Gus thought. “Find the picture?”

“I'll find the picture,” she promised.

CHAPTER 7

A week later, Henrietta Snooks looked up from the report lying on her desk and stared at Gus Bilinski in open amazement. “You
hired a detective?”

Gus nodded; it had cost him almost as much as he earned in two months. “If Bogert's the one behind Megan's trouble, then he had to be investigated.”

“But a detective, Gus—”

“I thought of doing it myself. But when I told Megan, she, uh, well, I decided she was right. It was too tricky. So I hired a professional.”

I hope she didn't laugh at him
. “What did you want to find out?”

“Either that he had some connection with a hypnotist, or something that would eliminate him as a suspect altogether. You see, I just didn't believe Megan's lost weekend and the misdirected shipment of Lipan were unconnected. And if Bogert was responsible for the Lipan, then he must have had something to do with the weekend as well. Reasonable?”

“If your original assumption is correct. Lipan and the weekend might not be connected at all.”

“Okay, that's still an if. But Bogert's the only clear enemy Megan seems to have. I was thinking maybe if he was in cahoots with whoever hypnotized Megan, a detective could find out about it.”

“But he didn't?”

Gus shook his head. “He says there's nothing at all in Bogert's life that he could see except work. He lives and breathes security. He's been with Glickman twenty-one years—the very epitome of the loyal and trusted employee. No personal life to speak of. Wife left him. One son, who left home the minute he graduated from high school. That was four years ago and his father hasn't seen him since. Bogert has no close friends—casual drinking buddies in the neighborhood bar, that's all. The detective says he's made no bank deposits outside his salary check from Glickman.”

Snooks raised an eyebrow. “How'd he find that out?”

“Banks don't protect your financial privacy now the way they used to. All he had to do was ask.”

Snooks held up the detective's report and looked a question at Gus.

“I want you to read it,” Gus said, “and see if you can tell if he's the sort of man who could be bought. Frankly, he sounds too straight-arrow to be true. He's one of those guys who drive around with little decals on their cars saying ‘God Bless America.' That makes me not trust him right there.”

Snooks grinned. “You've got a suspicious mind, Gus. Some people are exactly what they appear to be. All right, I'll read it. You understand all you'll be getting from me is a guess? I can't analyze a personality solely on the basis of a detective's report.”