The Case of the Missing Department Head

by David Staats

  “You’re the head of the libraries, right?”

  “I am. How can I help you?”

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” he said. The man was heavy set, stood about five feet, eight, and had thick, dark, wavy hair which seemed to be held in place with some shiny substance.

  Mrs. Houlihan put on her suave, accommodating, public relations persona. “Yes, Mr. . . .?” she said, smiling. “Won’t you have a seat.”

  “Snodhuis. Bruno Snodhuis.” The man did not sit. “The County Rules – I’ve looked them up – say that any community group can use the library meeting rooms. We had a group of Greenback Party members meeting at the Walnut Street branch, and the head librarian kicked us out. I’m here to complain about it.”

  “Well, County facilities are not supposed to be used for political events.”

  “The rules say political organizations can use the facilities, just they cannot hold campaign events there. We were doing no campaigning, just meeting to discuss issues and Party business.”

  “As I said, County facilities are not supposed to be used for political events.”

  “Not what your rules say.” The man’s voice was becoming loud.

  “I’m sorry. I am not going to interfere with the librarian at the site. I’m sure she knows what she is doing.” Mrs. Houlihan’s voice rose in volume to match that of her visitor.

  “I’ve looked you up,” the man said, yet louder. “You and the whole lot of you are Reform Party, as is the county commissioner. the whole government is corrupt. You just want to harass Greenback Party members.”

  “You keep your voice down!” shouted Mrs. Houlihan. Regaining control of herself, she said, “The rules apply to everybody.”

  “YOU’RE A LIAR! You and your corrupt one-party rule . . ..”

  “Mr. Snodhuis, I don’t have to put up with this. I’m about ready to call security.”

  “You go ahead. You tin-pot dictators are going to keep on until there’s . . ..”

  “Until there’s what?”

  “You’ll find out,” the man growled. His face was red. He turned and stomped out of the office.

  At home that evening, Mrs. Houlihan mentioned the incident to her husband. “I’m a little bit scared of that guy,” she said. “He looked crazy in the eyes.”

  Mr. Houlihan made a pretense of appearing interested and sympathetic, but he was preoccupied with getting ready for a money-making trip with his shave-ice trailer and making sure he did not forget anything.

  The next day, Friday, he pulled out of the driveway with his Hawaiian shave-ice trailer. It was about a quarter past one, just after lunch. He was headed to a gun show some fifty miles away for the weekend. As he slowly accelerated, he stuck his whole arm out of the truck’s window and waved to Mr. Loveless, his next-door neighbor, who was out doing yard work. Whether it was the growl of the truck’s powerful engine, or the large motion of Houlihan’s arm, something caused Loveless to glance towards the street. He straightened up, leaned with one arm on his rake, and raised the other arm in a return greeting. He tossed his chin up as an acknowledgment and smiled.

  * * *

  Dawn Parker worked at her husband’s real estate office. Sometimes she manned the reception desk, but more often, she worked in her own small office, which was separated from her husband’s large, corner office by a long corridor. Her desk was a disorganized mess. Towards the back of the desktop, surrounded by sloping piles of papers, was a lime-green bowl half filled with old and rotting fruit, evidence of her failed endeavor to eat a healthy diet. The fruit did not smell too pungently because it was mostly dried out. She was making phone calls, but distractedly. Between calls she thought about non-work related matters. Sighing, she twisted in both hands the pen she was using.

  Exhaling heavily, she picked up the telephone receiver again and began to punch buttons on the key pad. She put the receiver to her ear, but abruptly hung it up. She rose from her desk and walked the long corridor to her husband’s large office, passing as she did so a number of small offices, the doors of which stood open, showing vacant desks.

  Rhys and Dawn Parker had been married for six years. Although she still loved her husband, Dawn was dissatisfied with the state of their marriage. It seemed to her that the real estate brokerage was not pulling in as much money as it should. The problem was not with Rhys’s ability or talent – he had plenty of those – it was that he was distracted by his involvement with politics, and, she suspected, with another woman. He spent too much time on politics and not enough on the business. And she wondered if all the time he spent at political meetings was really spent on politics. She felt that Rhys might be spending time with that Houlihan woman on matters other than political. She had been looking out for an opportunity for some time to get Rhys’s phone and check it for text messages or voicemails that might betray him. It’s not like a real estate agent has a super-private life. His face was all over town in advertisements and on For Sale signs. Plus his politicking. He was a quasi-public figure, and if he was playing around, it would be making a public fool out of her. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that Dawn Parker was not going to be made a public laughing stock.

  She entered his office. “Rhys –” she said. When he looked up at her, she stopped speaking abruptly.

  “Yeah, what is it?” he said, business-like, friendly.

  She went further into the office and sat in the client’s chair in front of his desk. She sat at a slight angle, her legs and knees pressed tightly together. She smoothed down her skirt over her thighs, watching her hands. When her hands reached her knees she looked up. “Rhys, what is the relationship between you and Tiffany Houlihan?”

  A look of shock flitted across his face, like a sheet of rain chased by a gust of wind. It vanished and the corners of his mouth turned up. He shrugged his shoulders. “She played a low trick on me about the vice-chairmanship. Even though I didn’t really want it, I’m sore about the way I lost it.”

  She looked at him steadily and intently. She was sitting stiffly upright and did not smile. “You spend a lot of time on politics,” she said. “What do you do at all those meetings?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said, seeming to relax, “talk, talk. Sometimes I think that’s all we do.”

  “Is that all you do? You don’t do anything else?”

  A small laugh burst from him. “Yeah . . . planning, motions, rules. Yada, yada, yada.”

  She stared at him, not saying anything right away. The little laugh lines in her cheeks seemed to be smoothed out by the pull of gravity. “You haven’t answered my question,” she said in a level tone of voice that was tightly controlled.

  “Huh? . . . Oh, she’s . . . a political operative, I suppose,” he said. “I have political ambitions. We work together – with others.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, honey. Something’s troubling you?”

  “No, I’m good.” She got up and walked out of the office. When she reached her own, smaller office, she spent an hour and forty minutes researching on the internet.

  Around noon her husband came by her office and leaned through the door, bracing himself with his arm on the door frame. “Going to lunch?” he said.

  Her eyes were red and there was a little smear of dark makeup around her right eye. “Not hungry,” she said. Her voice was hard and she did not look at him.

  2.

  Another Monday. Kara was the only one in the office. She had finished all of her urgent work, and in the mid-afternoon was updating the Criminal Law Reporter with the supplement pages that had come in the mail that day. It was a low-stress job. Mr. Dure was out of the office at a court hearing. He had said he would probably be back about four. But hearings can run long.

  Motes of dust drifted slowly in the sunlight that came through the front windows, antique in appearance, but modern in construction, double-pane glazed windows that insulated the interior from both temperature and noise. The telephone did not ring �
�� in fact it had been quiet for a couple of hours. The only sounds were the quiet riffling of paper as conscientious Kara rubbed up the corners of the pages to the next page that needed to be replaced; and the faint ticking of the clock on the mantel above the non-working fireplace at the far end of the room.

  A single note, soft but clear, chimed from the clock, marking the half hour. It was four-thirty: only half an hour to go.

  The telephone rang. Caller ID showed “Whittaker, Cliff.” One of the bigger jerks in the local bar.

  “Hello,” said Kara as she opened the top right drawer of her desk and took out her telephone message pad.

  “Is he in?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Whittaker. Can I take a message?”

  “IS HE IN?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Whittaker. He is not in. May I take a message?”

  “I don’t believe it. He’s just avoiding me. Put him on.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Whittaker. He is out of the office. May I take a message?”

  “What’s his cell phone number?”

  “If Mr. Dure wanted you to have his cell phone number, you would have it.”

  “How much does he pay you?”

  “May I take a message?”

  The front door to the office opened, and a man walked in.

  “He knows why I’m calling,” said Whittaker.

  The man carefully closed the door behind him and approached Kara’s desk – almost timidly. His large head, weighed down by a mop of seriously gray hair, drooped forward, and he was dressed in faded jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.

  “My job is to take a message – if I can. If it’s something important, Mr. Whittaker, Mr. Dure might give the call priority – of course, I can’t promise; he does have a number of messages on his desk already.”

  “I’ll bet. Maybe I’ll have to come over there.” Click!

  Kara hung up the receiver, took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. The man who had entered was standing halfway between her desk and the door. His stance was an odd slouch. “Yes, sir. May I help you?” said Kara.

  The man’s head bobbed up, as if he were startled, and he approached Kara’s desk. He wore a heavy leather belt, smooth and shiny, like seasoned saddle leather; a roll of belly fat bulged out above it. On the right leg of his jeans, over the thigh, was a large brownish stain that in outline resembled a skull.

  “Hi. Is Mr. Dure in?” said the man in a loud voice. His wide open brown eyes blinked and his face flinched. In a more subdued tone he added, “I really hope I can see him this afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry he’s not in at the moment. Did you have an appointment?”

  “Oh, no! No, I haven’t spoken with him. No, I just really need to talk to a good attorney . . ..”

  “I didn’t know if maybe you had spoken with him directly and had gotten an appointment that I didn’t know about.”

  “No, no.”

  “He’s not in right now, but I expect him soon. Your name is . . . ?”

  “Houlihan. Howard Houlihan.”

  “When he comes back, I know he has a number of things waiting for him. I don’t know that he would be able to see you. He usually sees clients by appointment. Can I look at his calendar for you, in case he can’t see you when he comes in?”

  “No . . . no, I don’t know what I’d do . . . if it’s alright, I’ll just wait over here?” he indicated by pointing his head and his shoulder, already taking a half step towards the waiting area.

  “Sure. Okay . . ..” Kara wanted to say something more, but the man was scooting over to the waiting area, keeping his head down and his legs bent, as if he were ducking under a low door frame, or trying somehow to make his way without being observed. It did not seem as if anything she might say would make a difference.

  He sat in one of the two club chairs, ignoring the two upholstered arm chairs and the English roll arm sofa which stood against one wall. Kara resumed her work replacing pages in the Criminal Law Reporter. The quietude set in again. The dust motes swirled for a few minutes, then settled back into their routine of gradual drift.

  “I heard he’s the best lawyer in town,” called out Mr. Houlihan, suddenly.

  Kara shot a questioning look at the man. He certainly seemed an odd one. But, you see all kinds. “If I were in trouble,” she said, “there’s no one I would rather represent me. Of course, if you want a municipal bond financing, there are other lawyers.” Her idea of humor.

  “Right,” said the man.

  The ticking of the clock was audible. Kara snapped the loose-leaf mechanism of the Reporter shut and clicked the lock. She took the pile of superseded pages she had removed and slid it into the waste basket. A shadow crossed the front window and Howand Holihan looked up.

  In through the front door came a large man, heavy of build, but muscular, not fat. On second glance, one would say muscular but with an overlay of fat, like a football player a couple of years after retiring from the game. He came in with a familiar, confident air, as if he were entering his own house.

  “Hi, Kara,” said the husky man in a husky voice.

  Mr. Houlihan was whispering long-distance to Kara, “Is that him?” He exaggerated the motions of his mouth so that she could read his lips even if she could not hear him.

  “Got everything done,” said the large man to Kara, not noticing the potential client sitting in the waiting area.

  Kara nodded and smiled. “Hey, Ralph,” she said.

  Ralph had a large head which seemed to be red all over. The most striking thing about that florid face was the large, vivid blue eyes, which, with white showing all around the iris, gave the man an appearance, somehow, of innocence. He breezed past Kara, opened a door that led to the offices in the rear of the suite, and was gone.

  Mr. Houlihan had by this time gotten up and was half-way to Kara’s desk. He stopped. “That wasn’t Mr. Dure?” he asked.

  “No, no. That’s Ralph, Mr. Dure's assistant,” said Kara.

  Mr. Houlihan sat again, this time on the sofa. He sighed.

  “You sure you don’t want me to make an appointment for you? That way you wouldn’t have to wait.” said Kara, sensing that the man was becoming anxious, even though he had been waiting no more than ten minutes.

  “He’ll be in soon, you think?” said Mr. Houlihan.

  “Any time now I expect him.”

  Mr. Houlihan sighed again. “I’ll wait,” he said.

  Ralph came back out into the reception area. He swiveled his head, looking around as if he had lost something. He noticed Mr. Houlihan. “Hi, I’m Ralph,” he said, approaching Mr. Houlihan. “You waitin’ to see Mr. Dure?”

  Kara cringed. She was by now familiar with Ralph’s restless, almost nosy, curiosity. She thought Ralph’s unsophisticated ‘Hey buddy’ attitude was damaging to Mr. Dure's professional image. Not to mention that Ralph seemed to have no concept of client confidentiality and the idea that if you didn’t need to know something about a client, then it was best not to know it. Dure had hired Ralph seven months ago, not quite as an act of charity. Ralph had been a bricklayer who had been broadsided in a car accident. Dure had represented him and gotten a good settlement for him. But Ralph’s back andshoulder had been severely injured in the accident, and he could no longer work as a bricklayer. So Dure hired him as a general factotum. He had a kind of down-to-earth practical mind. Ralph was always chatting up people, including clients, and asking the most awkward questions. She hoped he would not drive this client away.

  Ralph sat down heavily on the sofa next to Mr. Houlihan. “Got a legal problem, huh?” he said.

  “Yes, well, that’s something I’m waiting to see,” said Houlihan.

  “He’s smart,” said Ralph, gesturing with his head towards the back, in the direction of Dure's office and tapping his temple with his finger. The expression on his face denoted that he was a connoisseur of genius on whose opinion one could rely implicitly.

  “Ralph,” called Kara, “would you mind taking these treatises
back to the library?” She was trying to get him out of the waiting area and away from the potential client.

  “Yeah, Kara. Got it, no problem,” said Ralph. But he did not get up. “Ever been in trouble before?” he asked Houlihan.

  Kara stood at her desk. She held her pen between two fingers in such a way that she could make it rapidly oscillate, and she made the top end of the pen whack against the cover of the treatise in the little stack on her desk. taptaptaptaptap . . .. She was thinking to herself, ‘Oh Ra-alph! I’m going to lose my pa-atience . . .’ taptaptaptap . . .

  “No, not really,” said Houlihan, now seeming to want to shut down the conversation.

  Again a shadow passed in front of the window. A tall man wearing a glum expression entered. His head was bent forward in a habitual way of walking as if he were intent on the ground before him. Dure had been remarkably handsome as a young man, tall and ruddy, with thick, dark, wavy hair; but the stress of his hard-driving legal practice had aged him. Now his complexion had a gray tinge, and the large, deep-descending circles under his eyes had become a permanent feature of his face. These dark circles, however, made his luminous hazel eyes appear even more striking than before.

  He took two strides into the reception area and, as if startled by something, stopped dead, his long, slender, wing-tip clad foot landing flat on the floor with a thump. He had sensed the presence of a stranger in the waiting area. He looked up, turning his head to gaze in that direction. Seeing his man Ralph and a stranger, he smiled a smile of straight, even, white teeth that was so perfect that it gave many people the impression of being fake.

  Without putting down his briefcase, he went over to Houlihan, introduced himself, and told him that he could see him in a few minutes.

  * * *

  Kara showed Mr. Houlihan into Dure’s office.

  “What can I do for you?” said Dure.

  “I think I need help,” said Mr. Houlihan. His hands were uneasily resting on his knees. He looked like he wished he had a hat with which he could fidget.

  Dure nodded.

  Mr. Houlihan shook a little as he began speaking. “I came home this morning, just before lunch. When I drove into the driveway, I saw some buzzards in the back yard. I wondered what they could be doing – you don’t see, at least I haven’t seen, buzzards in my back yard.” He cleared his throat.