Death of the Office Witch

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Uh, Lieutenant? You got this all wrong, you know?” Dorian straightened a perfectly straight tie and gestured around the conference table. “You’re supposed to question each one of us separately, see? Then at the end get us all together. You oughta watch more television.”

  “The end of what?” the lieutenant asked quietly.

  “Well, of … the story.”

  “This is not a story.” He gazed around the table, lingering on each pair of eyes in turn until the owners squirmed. “It is not television. It is not a moving picture, Disneyland, make-believe. It is real, cold-blooded murder. Make no mistake, no matter your opinion of or relationship to Gloria Tuschman, her violent death will alter your lives forever. Nothing will ever again be the same for any of you. And for whoever murdered her, there will never again be true peace of mind.”

  “Aw come o-on.” Richard Morse at the head of the table rolled slightly protruding eyes, flattening beautiful hands on its glossy surface. “Some dopehead bops a total stranger in an alley and he’s going to lay awake nights feeling guilty about it? Probably won’t even remember.”

  “The victim was not ‘bopped,’ as you call it, in the alley, but at the end of the private hallway on this floor.” The lieutenant glanced at Charlie when her breath squeaked on the intake.

  “Well, you’re still gonna be one busy man. That hall is accessible from any floor in the building except the first, and that includes the first level parking. That’s all the bank offices on second, third, fourth, plus the floors above.” Richard Morse was a well-built man. He looked Greek, Italian, and Jewish and—like Gloria—sounded New Jersey. He had a prominent nose and long eyelashes, hair that was short and curly black with gray patches artfully preserved at the temples.

  “Then there’s the valet parking staff, and I understand the turnover there is horrific. Cleaning staff have keys. Hoo boy, are you going to be tied up forever if you’re looking for your culprit in-house. This is one hell of a big house.”

  “I’ve known bigger,” Dalrymple said patiently.

  But Charlie’s boss was on a roll. She could feel the throb in the floor as his knee jumped like he was keeping time to his own private music. “Plus which, Gloria had a life, you know? A husband, neighbors, enemies? She could have buzzed them in the front door. And meantime,” Richard continued as if the policeman were not the man in charge here, “you’ve got my whole agency in this room and this is a business day.”

  Ironically, most of them would have been sitting in this room at this time on this morning anyway. Beginning with the second, each floor of the First Federal United Central Wilshire Bank of the Pacific had two common conference rooms. One small for staff meetings and another larger one for workshops with related businesses or product displays for sales conferences or whatever. They came with the lease and had only to be reserved. This, the smaller of the two, was reserved by Congdon and Morse on a regular basis two mornings a week. No one was about to tell Dalrymple that.

  “Then the sooner we get under way the better,” the homicide detective said, unperturbed and, Charlie would guess, unimpressed. “Now, I would like to ask a few questions. The first being, why the late, and seemingly unlamented, Gloria was referred to as a ‘witch.’”

  5

  Charlie looked around at her colleagues, who were doing the same. Had one of them murdered Gloria at the end of the private hall, carried her down four flights of stairs, dragged her past the valet parking attendants—and anyone else using the rear entrance—and out into the alley and around the wall, and thrown her up to the top of the bushes? Wouldn’t that take more than one person? Wouldn’t there be a trail of blood? Nobody could do all that and clean up the traces completely without arousing notice at that hour of the morning on a business day.

  Charlie sat across from Luella Ridgeway—small, quick, wired, ambitious, nice. She had just returned from Minnesota after spending her vacation putting her aging father in a nursing home and closing up the family house. She looked exhausted. She kept herself slim and young-looking to survive, but there were gray roots in the part of her beige hair this morning. Charlie wondered what she’d ever do if she had to put Edwina in a home and close up the house in Boulder. At least Luella had siblings. You didn’t return from an ordeal like that and murder a receptionist.

  Then there was Dorian Black—cocky on the outside, insecure within. He watched Richard Morse for cues in this most unusual staff meeting. He might be dapper, but he was not muscular.

  Next was Tracy Dewitt, a big girl. She was Dorian and Luella’s assistant and a funny, pleasant person, but not too efficient. She was apparently a distant relative of the absent partner Daniel Congdon, and if it’s who you know instead of what you can do that’s likely to get you a job in the world in general, it’s the law in Hollywood. Charlie did not know Tracy well, but she couldn’t imagine what she’d have against Gloria worth killing for. And although Tracy was a large woman, her size was due more to fat than muscle.

  Then there was Larry Mann, Charlie’s assistant. His bulges were muscle, yet he was the kindliest, gentlest of people, incapable of harming another.

  Maurice the Lover, a handsome gentleman—but really past the age where he could drag bodies around and heave them into bushes. He might love some woman to death, but …

  And Richard Morse had been covering for Charlie at the Universal breakfast with Keegan Monroe and Mary Ann Leffler and the frantic Goliath producers at the time of the murder. (Charlie’s outrage over the misbegotten Polo Lounge lunch had seemed trivial after viewing a dead Gloria.)

  She couldn’t imagine what Dr. Podhurst could have against Gloria, or his receptionist, Linda Meyer. Linda had often had lunch with Gloria, though.

  The Congdon and Morse staff had very little contact with the legal beagles and their support staff across the public hall. They had their own private VIP entrance.

  Charlie probably had the weakest alibi, on the face of it. She couldn’t prove she’d been in her car on the road on the way at that time. Unless the valet staff had noticed her come in. And that would be iffy. They saw little else but cars coming in and going out all day. Larry at least would have been seen by whoever sold him the Ding Dongs.

  It had to have been someone from outside. Charlie relaxed. She liked some of these people better than others, but she still didn’t like the thought that the agency could harbor a murderer. Was it the murderer who kept whispering to Charlie? Who else would know where Gloria died?

  Her colleagues were looking to Richard Morse to answer the lieutenant’s question. Richard was looking at the ceiling, choosing some thoughts. The homicide detective was looking at Charlie.

  “It’s not that no one laments Gloria’s death,” Charlie offered. “It’s just that murder is hard to take in right away. I don’t think we’ve quite digested it yet. And joking and fooling around is one way to avoid coming to terms with it.” She couldn’t believe Dalrymple hadn’t seen enough of this behavior to know that.

  “She’s right,” Maurice agreed. “And Richard, I think you should consider getting a counselor or two in here. When this really hits all of us it could be pretty bad.”

  “I expect the health insurance would cover it,” Luella said, as if she’d be the first to sign up for counseling. “Wish Irma were back. She’d know.”

  “Irma is back,” Tracy spoke for the first time. She was getting used to contact lenses and looked about to cry—her face screwed up, her eyes blinking like strobe lights. “I came in early yesterday morning,” she blinked pointedly at Luella and Dorian, “to get some extra work done. She was at her desk. I don’t know when she left. And you were in your office, Richard, talking to somebody. Gloria came in while I was making coffee. And then Larry.”

  “People pick up pet names in offices, Lieutenant. Bet they do in yours, too.” Richard had finally selected a thought and ignored the implications of Irma being back in town after all. “Gloria was called Gloria the Witch because she had those god-awful fingernails and
a tongue to match—and because she was actually a witch.”

  “She practiced witchcraft?” Dalrymple glanced at Charlie yet again.

  “She practiced everything. She was certifiable. But a receptionist’s job is not going to attract a Ph.D. in physics, you know what I mean?”

  “She was insane?”

  “She was insane.” Richard’s head bobbed in time with his knee and with Tracy’s blinking. “Let me assure you that insanity is not a unique trait in this town.”

  “Oh Richard,” Luella scolded, “she was not insane. She was odd, that’s all. She was into the occult and astrology—things like that, Lieutenant, and tarot and, yes, witchcraft. But I don’t think Gloria was focused enough to actually be said to practice anything.”

  Charlie wondered who her boss had been talking to in his office and why he’d come in before Gloria, who usually opened up. And why Irma was back from her yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas, but not back at her desk. Every year for three weeks Irma Vance, Richard’s executive secretary, changed personalities and lived it up in Vegas. And every year some crisis came up while she wasn’t running the office. But it had never before been murder.

  Charlie also wondered why Lieutenant Dalrymple kept checking her reactions to everything. Did he suspect her above most? Because she looked in that garbage can this morning?

  It was obvious why he wanted them all together now, though. Now, before they could get their stories straight with each other by talking on their own. Now, when they could trip each other up. Charlie disagreed with Dorian. This police detective knew what he was doing.

  By the time he let them go, the phone lines were flashing. Tracy and Larry worked to steer calls where they were needed. That’s why Charlie took the one from McMullins directly.

  When she hung up, she let out first a single yip and then a series of them. She could hear Larry’s answering howl from the front desk and knew he’d stayed on the line. Charlie met him halfway.

  Everyone, including David Dalrymple and two uniforms, converged on them just as she and her assistant high-fived, Charlie leaping up and down on stockinged feet, having slipped out of her heels the minute she’d placed them under her desk. Dalrymple’s prosaic expression reminded her how ridiculous she must look and that murder had happened here just over twenty-four hours ago.

  It was so easy to get carried away in this business. Most of the time it was pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams that petered out after great amounts of fantasizing, energy, and planning. But every now and then something jelled, sometimes something grand, producing the same kind of juice that probably kept an Irma Vance going to Las Vegas once a year.

  “So? So?” Richard Morse peered into her face, then into Larry’s. “You want to share this? Do I have to beg? Do I have to tell you who it is who works for who around here?”

  “Whom,” Dalrymple corrected and was ignored.

  “Hell, you’re acting like the Alpine Tunnel deal went through,” Dorian said. “What’s up?”

  “It is the Alpine Tunnel, isn’t it?” That lazy, knowing smile lighted Maurice Lavender’s face.

  “I thought that was dead long ago,” Luella said.

  “They turned it down cold last October,” Richard told her. “What, Charlie, what? You do not have my permission to do this to me.”

  “McMullins talked the author’s estate into reconsidering Ursa Major’s offer.”

  Now it was Richard Morse dancing Charlie around the crowded confines of the hall until they waltzed up against Dalrymple’s expression. “Lieutenant, this is special, you know?” Charlie’s boss gave a triumphant hoot. “We’re talking history in the making here. We’re talking another Gone with the Wind, another Dances with Wolves.”

  Dalrymple did not look impressed. But Charlie floated through the rest of her day. She did get partially caught up on her phone log, checking the progress of some of her writers. But she wasn’t able to get hold of Keegan Monroe to return his call, although she did make it back to Long Beach in time to pick up buffalo steaks and three bottles of Dom Perignon. If no one could come to her last-minute victory party, she and Libby would eat what they could and freeze the rest. It was that kind of triumph.

  As it turned out, everybody came. Mrs. Beesom brought her renowned pasta salad, Jeremy Fiedler his veggie stir-fry and an airhead named Connie. Maggie brought fruit compote. Libby brought droopy Doug Esterhazie. Tuxedo brought one of Mrs. Beesom’s wild birds, dead. And very nearly ruined the celebration.

  This weekend, she decided, when she wasn’t doing the yard work or the housework, Charlie had to find a way to get rid of that goddamned cat—something she’d been threatening to do for almost a year. She turned from the older woman’s stricken face to her daughter’s unconcerned one. “This is it, Libby. I’ve had it.”

  “Mo-om, that’s what cats do. They’re carnivores like us.” She looked pointedly at the bloody juice on the platter, all that was left of a hunk out of a buffalo.

  Doug then explained with the restrained patience teenagers reserve for adults that Mrs. Beesom’s bird feeders attracted birds. Birds attracted cats. It was all in the nature of things, and Tuxedo shouldn’t be blamed for his nature. Any more than Charlie should be blamed for stopping at the gourmet deli on the way home and picking up buffalo steaks. How that kid always managed to put her on the defensive Charlie would never know.

  They’d eaten on Charlie’s patio, and she stretched out on the chaise longue with her coffee. It felt wonderful to put her feet up. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Beesom. We’ve been nothing but trouble for you since we moved in.”

  “Well, life has been more exciting, that’s for sure,” the old lady said bleakly. Jeremy and Maggie exchanged snide glances. Mrs. Beesom’s life revolved around her church, her birds, television, and keeping close track of her neighbors. Maggie swore that the woman went through their garbage to discover their personal habits.

  The Beesoms had once lived in an old house in the center of this lot, and when Mr. Beesom died, a developer talked his wife into selling it for one of the new houses he’d build. She was a small woman with a large stomach she kept covered with smocklike tops over polyester pants. Her thinning hair had turned from gray to white, but she seemed to have a fair amount of energy.

  “I saw on the news tonight about the woman in your office that was murdered. It must be awful for you, Charlie,” she led the way to the topic everyone had been too polite to bring up over buffalo.

  “Yeah I know, and here I am celebrating,” Charlie admitted. “But the whole agency would be tonight if it wasn’t for Gloria and the police running around and everybody having to avoid reporters.”

  As she’d told them at dinner, this Alpine Tunnel project was one she’d brought with her from New York when she’d come to Congdon and Morse. The only best-selling author Charlie had ever represented died after one book, and Charlie lost the account to another agent when the estate took over the rights. But the literary agency where she worked in New York, Wesson Bradly, often used Congdon and Morse as its Hollywood connection, and Charlie served as liaison. So when Richard Morse went after Alpine Tunnel for a now-defunct independent production company, he used Charlie to begin negotiations with the author’s estate through the new agent. The publisher got into it and decided on a new huge printing to tie in with the film, but the indie went under, the author’s family hadn’t liked the screenplay, and Goliath had brought out a similar historical that flopped like a beached salmon.

  When Richard talked Charlie into coming out to work for him, the deal had a little life left because McMullins was still interested in the tie-in and had interested another indie, Ursa Major, in the deal. McMullins and Ursa Major brought Congdon and Morse and Charlie back into the picture, another screenplay was written, excitement mounted once more. And last October the family had said no. Flat out.

  Last week the book’s editor hinted that something was yet again in the wind, but Charlie had kept it quiet. And yesterday the deal was on again, but Congdon and
Morse found out a day late because somebody murdered Gloria.

  The night was warm and soft and filled with the sweet, tangy scent of lemon blossoms. Charlie could just hear the ocean over the traffic and emergency sirens. Jeremy sprawled on the other chaise fondling Connie with one hand and Tuxedo with the other. One of them was purring.

  “What’s all this witch business?” Jeremy asked. His eyes were open wide and seemed to glow in the city-dark like the cat’s. “Was it some kind of a ritual murder?”

  “In an alley behind a bank?” Charlie began to see why everyone had accepted her last-minute invitation. Once again she was the center of attention. But not for the reason she wanted to be. “She was always claiming strange powers and going to strange meetings with stranger people. Nobody at the agency paid much attention to it all.”

  Until she starts talking to you from the end of an empty hallway after she’s dead. Is that a strange power or what?

  That was a very alive person playing a very cheap trick, Charlie reminded herself.

  At least she was able to sleep that night. After the heavy dinner and the champagne, and after closing her door tight to be sure it latched and kept Tuxedo out, she had barely closed her eyes before the alarm went off. A short time later, Libby perched on the nearby clothes hamper while Charlie stood in front of the bathroom mirror preparing hair and face to meet the world.

  “Mom, what are you now, thirty-two?”

  “Thirty-one. Don’t make it any worse than it is.”

  “Here you are, thirty-one years old,” Libby drew it out mournfully, “with a fifteen-year-old daughter. Don’t you think it’s time you thought about getting married?”

  6

  “I know you’re under a lot of stress, and I’m sorry if I upset you just now, okay Mom?” Libby blocked Charlie’s exit from the john.

  “I’m in a hurry. We’re late. And what makes you think you upset me?”

  “You just sprayed your hair with bathroom deodorant.”