“Here’s another guest room.”
She glanced in at the masculine room with lots of wood and deep red carpet and accents. It was a bit overpowering, and she wrinkled her nose as she backed out of it.
“It can be a bit much,” Joseph said with the ghost of a smile. He paused outside the next door. “And this is the room where I keep all the things I don’t know what else to do with.”
She glanced in. The walls were decorated with plaques, display shelves held awards and what looked like at least two keys to cities, and on the floor there were a dozen signs and displays, including one full-size cardboard cutout of him.
“Wow, that’s… weird.”
“Tell me about it. The awards are great. Some of the displays are a little strange, but people give them to me and then I don’t know what to do with them. It seems a little ungrateful to destroy them or toss them out, so I put them in here. I guess it’s kind of a memento room.”
“It’s like a giant, three-dimensional scrapbook.”
He tilted his head to the side. “You know, I think you just hit the nail on the head.”
“You know, there are groups for this sort of thing,” she joked. “If you need a support group, I’m sure I can find you a number.”
“Careful, or I’ll hire you to go through the tens of thousands of family photographs I’ve got stacked in closets around here.”
Cindy groaned. “I think I’ll pass.”
“I can’t say that I blame you. If I don’t want to do it, why would anybody else?”
“If they really are family photos, you might consider contacting the historical society. After all, your family practically founded this town.”
“You know, that’s really not a bad idea. I’ll definitely think about it. Okay, moving on,” he said, ushering her to the next room. “Here’s Derek’s office.”
They stepped into a large room lined with a couple dozen filing cabinets. A massive wooden desk dominated the center of the room.
“This was Derek’s office?”
“Yup. Before him it was Tina’s office. She was my last assistant. She was really good too. She got married to a guy on the East Coast and moved. This is where I keep all the files. My office is where I work but not where I store things. I find so many containers filled with paper to be a bit oppressive, certainly depressing.”
“Given the sheer volume, I can see why,” she said. She squared her shoulders and refused to despair over the task at hand. “Please tell me you have at least an idea of where I can start,” she said. When she volunteered for the job, she never dreamed what an enormous task lay before her. It might take her through the long weekend to find what she was looking for unless she could figure out Derek’s filing system.
“I wish I could,” Joseph said grimly.
He walked over and indicated three filing cabinets standing side by side. “As you can see from the labels, these are supposed to be for charity work. That was how my last assistant set them up. However, I haven’t been able to find a single thing in them about Friday’s event or Animals to the Rescue.”
He opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a set of keys. “These unlock the filing cabinets if you need them.”
Cindy grabbed a scrunchie out of her purse and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Her purse she stowed on the floor under the desk.
“Is there anything I can get you?” Joseph asked, his voice sheepish as he stared from her to the filing cabinets, where she would be looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
“Yeah. A Coke.” She gazed around the room. “Better make that a twelve-pack. I have a feeling we’re in for a long night.”
A minute later when Joseph returned with the soda, she was bent over inside the first of the charity filing cabinets.
“Anything?” he asked, his voice hopeful.
She looked up at him. “Seriously, after less than a minute?”
“Sorry,” he said, setting the drink down on the desk. He pointed to the phone. “If you dial 14, it will activate the intercom system and you can talk to me anywhere in the house.”
“Cool feature.”
“It’s convenient.”
“Okay, get out of here, I’ve got work to do. I’ll call when I find anything or when I run out of soda.” She was likely to be calling for soda long before she called to say she had found something.
Half an hour later she had skimmed through the three charity filing cabinets and concluded that Joseph was right. There was nothing in them relating to Animals to the Rescue. On a hunch she pulled out a file labeled YEARLY CHARITY RECEIPTS FOR TAXES. She had to give credit to Tina; she had set up a highly functional system.
Cindy flipped the folder open. The top paper was from March 24. She looked at the one behind it. March 21. She went slowly through the folder and found nothing later than March 24.
She put the file away and then moved to a different filing cabinet labeled BILLS. She slid the top drawer open and pulled out the file labeled CABLE. She opened it and found statements for cable television from January, February, and March. The first two each had a canceled check stapled to it for easy reference. The third one had PAID 3/15 stamped on it, but no check was attached.
She replaced the file, opened the third drawer, and pulled out the file labeled PHONE. It was the same with that file— nothing past March. She closed up that cabinet and then pulled files at random from two of the other filing cabinets. Nothing was filed past March.
She picked up the phone and dialed 14. “Hello?” she said after a second.
There was a click, and then Joseph asked, “Hi, you need more soda?”
“Not yet, but I have a question. When did Tina leave?”
“The end of March,” he said. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you when I finish figuring it out.”
“Okay, do you need me to come in?”
“No, I’m good,” she said. “Bye.”
She hung up and, starting on the left-hand side, systematically opened every drawer, looking for files that didn’t look like those put there by Tina. When she had finished, she turned toward the desk and began opening the drawers. She yanked the bottom one on the left-hand side open and saw a towering mound of loose paper in it.
She pulled it out and dumped it on the desk. She began to go through it piece by piece. Receipts, bank statements, bills, unopened junk mail, and an assortment of invitations were all piled in there haphazardly. The oldest item was two months old.
What kind of personal assistant doesn’t file things? And what happened to all the papers from April through mid-September?
Still, there was nothing about Animals to the Rescue in the whole mess. She finished checking the drawers and then crossed to the closet. She opened the door and discovered office machines and supplies, some of the more common ones like staples and paper were in more disarray than the rolls of ten-key paper and felt-tip pens.
She closed the door and turned to survey the room. There was nowhere else that she could see that he would have been able to stash papers. She returned to the phone and dialed the intercom again.
“Yes?” Joseph asked.
“Can you come up?”
“Right there,” he said.
A minute later he walked through the door with Clarice by his side, a hopeful look in his eyes. “Did you find them?”
“No, but I did find this,” she said, waving her hand at the towering pile of paper.
“What is all that?”
“The filing for the last two months.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t think I do, either, but Derek didn’t file a single thing in these filing cabinets the entire time he worked for you as far as I can tell.”
“What?” Joseph asked, turning pale.
“Yeah. I’m still trying to figure out what he did with most of them.”
“Not good,” Joseph muttered to himself.
“Did Derek actually live here, or did he have
an apartment somewhere else?” she asked.
“He lived here. It’s more convenient that way.”
“Can you show me where?”
“Certainly.”
Joseph led her to the third floor and down to the end of the hall. Clarice bounded past them to the closed door at the end and stood in front of the door, growling low in her throat and scratching at the door.
“Clarice, stop it.”
Cindy saw several scratch marks on the door, more than could have been made in the last few seconds. Clarice clearly didn’t like something about the door. “Does she always scratch at the door?” she asked.
“Not usually. It looks like she’s had at this door, though.” He grabbed the knob and twisted hard. Nothing happened, and a look of puzzlement came over him.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s locked.”
“Derek must have locked it the day of the event. He probably didn’t want to risk anyone wandering into the house and going through his things.”
“You don’t understand. There’s a lock on this door, yes, but the key has been lost since before I was a boy. The lock was disabled years ago so no one could accidentally lock themselves out.”
Cindy felt her pulse quicken. “So Derek must have had the lock fixed without telling you.”
Joseph nodded. “I don’t like this. Why wouldn’t he have told me? And when did he have it done?”
“I don’t know, but you should call a locksmith right now.”
Cindy wasn’t sure what Joseph said when he called the locksmith, but the man was there in less than half an hour. She stood in the hallway with Joseph, waiting as the man worked. When the door finally swung open, she sucked in her breath, wondering what she would find.
A foul stench assaulted her nostrils, and all three of them took an involuntary step back. Cindy pulled her sleeve over her hand and then pressed it to her nose and mouth and forced herself to step into the room. As soon as she did, she regretted it and ran back into the hall, not stopping until she reached the stairs where she grabbed the banister for support.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” Joseph asked as he and the locksmith caught up to her.
“Call the police. There’s a body in there.”
12
WHY AM I NOT EVEN REMOTELY SURPRISED?” MARK ASKED WHEN HE HAD arrived on the scene.
Cindy shrugged but didn’t have a witty comeback.
“Clearly I should stop investigating on my own and just follow you around instead.”
She stared at him, still having nothing else to say.
“You realize the body count is really growing fast, right? It’s starting to feel like Easter all over again.”
“I don’t think it’s a serial killer. After all, a serial killer wouldn’t have failed to kill Harry. I think it’s all about the dogs. Like maybe one of them is special,” she said.
“I get why champion purebreds would be special to someone, but what about the mutts?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “Maybe one of them is stolen, or carrying something.”
“Stolen from some drug lord or Mafioso maybe? Or carrying something? What, a microchip in their collar? Secret blueprints or maybe a treasure map leading to oil or to a buried Civil War payroll, tragically one from the South? Can we stop with the Scooby Doo plots?”
“Okay, and what do you have?” Cindy asked defensively.
“Apparently another body,” Mark snapped. “So let’s see it, so I can get on with my job.”
Joseph, who had stood silent through the whole exchange, led the way to the stairs. As they climbed, Cindy turned to Mark. “Did Harry give you a description?” she asked hopefully.
“He’s still out of it, probably won’t be any help until morning. Man, this place needs an elevator.”
She took a closer look at the detective and saw that he was exhausted. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Any luck finding those letters?”
“No. It turns out Derek hasn’t filed anything in the six months he worked for Joseph. Some papers are just piled in his desk, but nothing we need. I can’t even find the majority of the papers, which is why I asked Joseph to see Derek’s room. I was hoping to find them in there.”
“And instead you found another body. You have the darndest luck.”
When they reached the third floor, Cindy lingered at the top of the landing as the two men walked toward the room.
Joseph handed Mark a CD. “I got those pictures of the protestors and everyone who was there Friday. I didn’t see any homeless men amongst the protestors, though.”
Mark tucked the CD into his jacket and then disappeared inside the room. Joseph stood just outside, looking slightly ill.
There was a pounding on the front door, and Cindy turned and headed back downstairs to open it. Paul and a forensics team stood there, and she let them in. Fortunately, Paul didn’t say anything to her, as she was in no mood to bandy words with him as well.
She pointed them upstairs and then moved into the living room, where she sank onto one of the sofas. She was exhausted and desperately wanted to go home. She knew better, though. Before she would be free to leave, there would be yet another endless round of questions from the detectives. And there were still those missing letters.
Derek, what was your deal? If it had only been the pile of papers in the desk that were out of order, she would have put it down to being too busy with other events to do the maintenance work. To not file a single thing since taking the job, though? That made no sense. That was one of the first things every secretary or assistant learned to do and do well. You needed to be able to put your hands on whatever your boss needed without having to frantically search through piles and boxes to find it.
How had Derek managed to do his job without keeping the files in order? Joseph walked into the room and sank down in the chair opposite her with a sigh.
“Joseph, when you asked Derek for something, a bill, a receipt, or a piece of information, how long did it take him to get it to you?”
“Not very long. Usually only a couple of minutes,” Joseph said.
How were you pulling that off, Derek? Did you have a photographic memory? Did you digitize everything and put it on your computer? She shook her head. He still would have needed hard copies of a lot of those things, and it didn’t explain their absence. Even if he didn’t want to file, he should have been storing the papers in boxes in his office.
She closed her eyes. So how did you get Joseph what he needed? Did you make it up? A shiver went up her spine. What if Derek wasn’t a good guy? What if he wasn’t an innocent victim?
“Joseph, how well did you know Derek?” Cindy asked.
He was so quiet that she opened her eyes to see if he was still awake. His eyes were wide open, and he was staring at the ceiling. “Not as well as I would have liked,” he said after a minute. “Tina was great; she was fast, efficient, and we talked a lot about life, family, politics, religion, you name it. With Derek it was different. He wasn’t very communicative unless it was about work, and he never spoke about himself. He was pleasant and courteous, but in reality I really didn’t know that much about him.”
“Did Tina interview candidates to replace her or did you?”
“A bit of both. I hadn’t chosen someone by the time she left. That was a miserable two weeks.”
“What about Derek?”
“It was funny. I met him at a dog show. He had impeccable references. He had been the personal assistant for Theodore, an older gentleman who bred collies, for six years. Theodore had just passed away, and Derek needed a new position and didn’t have a problem relocating from the East Coast. It seemed like providence at the time.”
It seemed awfully convenient to Cindy. Before she could ask him anything else, she heard steps on the stairs and twisted her head to see Mark coming toward them.
“Who was he?” Cindy asked, sitting up straighter as Mark walked into the
room.
He gave her a weary sigh. “His name was Larry Van Horn. He was a tech at a veterinarian clinic downtown. He was reported missing this morning by a coworker when he didn’t show up for work a third day in a row and they couldn’t reach him.”
“Which vet clinic? It wasn’t Valley Animal Hospital, was it?” Joseph asked. “That’s the one I use.”
“No. It was AA Animal Clinic. They do a lot of work with the Humane Society.”
“The Humane Society? Was it possible he was here on business Friday?” Cindy asked.
“I’ve got a call in to the clinic to see if he was scheduled to be here. Hopefully, we’ll have something soon,” Mark said. “It certainly looks like he’s been dead a few days, so my bet is that he was here on Friday, whether he was supposed to be or not.”
“Didn’t officers search the whole house when they were investigating Derek’s murder?” Cindy asked.
“They were supposed to,” Mark growled. “Clearly someone made a mistake.”
“I only keep the attic and the room with the safe locked during events,” Joseph said. “An officer asked me to open them both, which I did, but no one ever mentioned that Derek’s room was locked.”
“Trust me, heads are going to roll over that one if we find out he’s been in there since Friday,” Mark said.
“Did you find any boxes in there?” Cindy asked.
Mark shook his head. “After what you said, I made sure and checked the closet and under the bed. No papers that I saw.”
“What on earth did he do with them?”
“You got me.”
Maybe he had digitized them and shredded the originals. It seemed absurd, but so did everything else she could think of. She didn’t remember seeing a computer in his office, though.
“Joseph, did Derek have his own computer? I didn’t see one in his office.”
“Yeah, he used a laptop so that he could take it with him wherever he needed to. It wasn’t in his office?”
“No. Did you see one in his room?” she asked Mark.
“No, but I’ll take another look.”
“Thanks. I’m getting a really bad feeling about Derek.”
“What do you mean?” Mark asked.
I Shall Not Want Page 13