Death of the Office Witch

by Marlys Millhiser

  Yeah, you. “No.”

  “May I use your phone?” But he already was.

  David Dalrymple took Charlie into the back VIP hall while two cohorts scoured the agency for the device that listened to, and perhaps recorded, what the bug picked up in Charlie’s office. All Charlie could think of was the conversation she’d had in that office just before lunch with Larry Mann. She hugged her middle even tighter, but the comfort was gone.

  “What I really came here to discuss with you is what you might have learned in your informal, insider investigation into Gloria Tuschman’s murder and Mrs. Leffler’s disappearance—which we might assume are related until we learn otherwise. Apparently, I’m not the only one interested.”

  “I haven’t learned much. How could I? I don’t know alibis, times, motives—I don’t even know what Gloria was hit with. And are you sure she actually died here?” They stood at the end of the hall by the tinted window. From up here the bushes and their red flowers flouncing on top of the white brick wall looked undisturbed by murder. “I mean it would be awfully hard to get her down there unnoticed.”

  “Gloria didn’t tell you?”

  “Now she thinks she’s in the closet,” Charlie heard herself say, but this time knowing why she said it. Anything to keep from talking about Larry’s secret. Anything to keep from thinking about who might have overheard it.

  “Closet?”

  Charlie pointed to the door of the janitor’s closet. “She’s a dip, always was. Lieutenant, we all know she’s been cremated but Gloria. It’s typical.”

  He turned his back on her and did something fancy, because, without Luella Ridgeway’s nail file, he had that door open in no time. The inside of the closet and the inside of the canvas trash bag looked about the same as when Charlie had broken in.

  “So, she gets knocked out by something, dumped in that bag, carried out to the wall and the bushes—by who?”

  “Whom.”

  “Past the security guard and the parking valet guys, and we’re talking in the morning—busy time. It just doesn’t play, Lieutenant. But say I killed her up here. How would I get her down there? I couldn’t.”

  “Not in those shoes,” Dalrymple agreed with only a hint of the sardonic behind the owlish glasses.

  “The only way would be to push her through the office in that trolley and out into the public hall and down in the elevator, halfway across the parking garage, past security and valet people, to the alley—at that time of day there could be people in the halls, the elevator, everywhere. And if you’re dressed for the office you’re going to look pretty silly pushing one of those things around. And somebody’s going to remember it.”

  And somebody bugged my office. How long has that device been there? Did someone want to overhear what I said about business instead of about Gloria’s murder? Could it be another agency? Or another agent in this one?

  It all seemed farfetched, but Charlie suddenly felt threatened around here by more than just Gloria. And it dawned on her how odd it was that she hadn’t felt afraid before. Here in the place murder had happened. It had simply not occurred to her that it could happen again. And since she didn’t know why it had in the first place, she couldn’t know the casting requirements for a future victim.

  She did know it must seem odd to the man standing next to her that no one at Congdon and Morse had shown much fear at the terrible, sick thing that had happened in their daily lives. Was everyone really that remote, estranged from Gloria? That busy and self-centered? That jaded by the violence everywhere around them? Or were they all so sure it wasn’t one of them who had done it, that it was someone in Gloria’s life outside the office, the motive unconnected to them?

  “Murdering your receptionist is one thing,” Dalrymple said softly, “but someone bugging your flowers does rather get your attention, doesn’t it? Let’s try your idea.” He pulled the cart out into the hall. “How often do you see someone pushing these around during the day?”

  “Now and then, I guess. Most of the cleaning is done at night when the offices are empty, but I suppose there’d have to be someone around during the day. I assume the janitorial work is privately contracted, but I don’t know that, either. Haven’t you questioned whoever manages these things? Let’s try what idea?”

  David Dalrymple heaved a leg over the side and crawled into the canvas bag. “Let’s continue to pretend you murdered Gloria. I am Gloria and you want to take me out to the alley.”

  “Why would I do that? Why wouldn’t I just leave you in there and in the closet and pretend someone else did it? I mean, when we were looking all over for Gloria, we didn’t look in that closet.”

  “Good point. But let’s try this, and maybe something will occur to us.” He had scrunched down so far in the bag that he was only that soft voice.

  Charlie felt silly, but she pushed the cleaning trolley along the hallway to the agency door, surprised at how easily, smoothly, and quietly it rolled with a whole man in there. The cart had handles on each end, and the agency door opened inward. All she had to do was open the door and pull it through.

  “How we doing?” came the disembodied voice from the canvas trash bag.

  “Piece of cake.” She went back to pushing. Past Tweety’s cubicle. Her workstation was slanted to see people coming the other way. Charlie looked over her shoulder but Tracy Dewitt was calling in a caller into one of her agents’ offices and was looking over her shoulder, too. Next, the little utility niche with sink, coffee pot, copier, fax, and small refrigerator, but no one to see Charlie pushing a cleaning cart. Down at the end of this hall, Irma Vance’s door was open, but only a corner of her desk showed. There was no assistant in the cubbyhole shielding Maurice’s office to see her. She turned into the reception area, where Larry sat with his back to her in the semicircle of Gloria’s desk.

  “Don’t ask,” was all she said when he looked up as she passed. It didn’t take any release switch from Gloria’s desk to get out of the agency, and they were soon in the public hall.

  “What’s this?” Dalrymple asked when she threw a manila envelope in on top of him. It had been leaning against the door. “Don’t you people ever open these things?”

  “If we did we’d be mobbed. It’s probably a video demo and stills, or a screenplay or book proposal, that kind of thing.” He suspected her of murdering Gloria, or they wouldn’t be going through this. Wouldn’t you know? The highest point of her career and she had Dalrymple, an ulcer, and Jesus Garcia to contend with.

  “How do you know there isn’t another Gone With the Wind in one of these things, or the next Mitch Hilsten working out in the buff?” the bag asked as she pushed the trolley into the elevator.

  “If it is, they need to learn about marketing. And if they still need to learn, they aren’t ready for us.”

  “Isn’t that a bit pompous?”

  “Look, you start your own agency and run it your way. We have eighty percent more talent than we can keep working now. Product is not our problem, and we cannot afford to hire someone to weed out all the unagented stuff thrown our way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because anybody capable of doing that has their own agency.” Charlie pushed the trolley and the cop out into the first floor hall of the First Federal United Central Wilshire Bank of the Pacific. “And once we open these unsolicited envelopes we can be royally sued for stealing someone else’s work and giving it to our contracted writers.”

  “I just opened this one. In fact we’ve opened many, in hopes someone was offering evidence anonymously.”

  “We’ve made it from the fifth floor back hall to the first level parking, and Larry was the only person who noticed us.”

  “Stop talking and look natural. Don’t make any more eye contact than you need to, to see if you’re being noticed.”

  A valet glanced at her to see if she wanted a car brought up, must have decided the cleaning cart wouldn’t fit in one, and glanced away. He said something about the Oilers to the secu
rity guard, who laughed derisively, his eyes skimming over Charlie to something beyond her. She heard a car engine and stepped up her pace. If the guard had thought there was anything odd about her pushing a cleaning cart outside the building and in a dress and heels, he didn’t let his expression show it.

  The drive-in area for the building was covered by part of the second story. At the outside edge of that was reserved parking for bank VIPs and then a high protective concrete wall. Charlie pushed the trolley to the alley, rounded that end wall, passed the dumpster and the parking indentation for the first residence behind the bank building, and then the wall dividing it from Mrs. Humphrys’ parking area and garage. She stopped and leaned over to look in the canvas bag. “Do you want me to throw you up in the bushes now?”

  Having received permission to leave the trolley in the care of Dalrymple, who was studying the bushes, Charlie hurried back to the office, thinking one day could hold no more surprises for her and her stomach than this one had already. She was wrong.

  Larry held up one of Gloria’s phones as she stepped through the public door. “It’s your mother.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Thought you gave up swearing because of Libby.”

  “I’ll take it at my desk.”

  “Libby says you’re sick enough to vomit blood,” Charlie’s mother bellowed from Boulder. A smoker’s voice like Mary Ann Leffler’s. “Libby says you’re going to a party with some jerk named Ed. How can you get to be over thirty and not learn any better than that?”

  “Edwina, what do you two do, call each other every day after school?”

  “She calls collect only when she needs me. You never call at all.”

  “Where are you? Are you home from the University already?” Charlie’s mother was a professor of biology at the University of Colorado.

  “Down with the flu. Didn’t go in today.”

  “Well, see?” Charlie said. “You get sick, too.”

  “I’m not vomiting blood. I’m not at work. And I’m not going to party tonight.”

  The conversation went downhill from there, with Edwina ordering her daughter to stay away from coffee and booze until she’d seen Dr. Williams the next day, and left her with the usual guilt load.

  She’d no more than slipped out of her pumps and queried Mom and Pop’s homemade chicken noodle soup for forthcoming opinions than Maurice startled her by knocking on the doorjamb.

  “Hi, sweetie, how’re you feeling?”

  “Oh Maurice.” Charlie was soon in tears, snuggled against him on the office couch, telling him all about her stomach cancer. And she, a single mother. And Libby would have to go live with Edwina, who never understood a teenager sixteen years ago let alone now. “Teenagers have come a long ways since then. Maurice, did you ever throw up blood? When you thought you might have an ulcer?”

  “I vomited something dark once I could have sworn was blood because I hadn’t eaten anything dark. But it turned out I wasn’t bleeding, so—Dr. Williams is good, Charlie, trust me and trust him. Just stay away from diet soda, chili peppers, raw veggies, coffee, and booze until after you’ve talked to him.”

  Was Maurice studying the flower arrangement on the table in front of them now? Would Charlie ever trust anybody again?

  19

  Maurice Lavender brought Ellen Maxwell to Richard’s party that night, and they made a stunning couple. They looked like money, expensively preserved. Or perhaps they were talent. Heads turned trying to identify which. Ellen, of course, they knew they’d seen, but many couldn’t place her.

  It was Richard Morse, however, who stole the show, greeting his guests with Cyndi Seagal on his arm. Cyndi was the agency’s hottest name at the moment, and Charlie decided he’d try to convince Ursa Major and the money to consider her for Alpine Tunnel’s female lead. Cyndi had cropped black hair and large black eyes and the cutest nose doctors could build. She’d sprouted breasts since her last picture. They crowded up against each other in the slit of a snazzy white metallic number that ended just below her navel and accentuated her tininess elsewhere. She could look mischievous, helpless, angry, and sexually vulnerable. That pretty much summed up what she’d need for most of the work out there for female leads.

  Charlie could not afford to sprout breasts and restricted her cleavage to the back of her dress, a shimmery emerald green thing she’d brought with her from New York. It left her spine exposed to the chill wind a change of weather had decided to inflict the moment it discerned what she would be wearing.

  Everybody was there and nobody was there. What did Richard expect, calling up a dressy party this late and on a week night? Charlie recognized the Hollywood Reporter and Variety and maybe the L.A. Times, but what would there be to report? No network or syndicated gossip types that she could see. The only money and entertainment law there was that already committed to Alpine Tunnel, the only studio brass Ursa Major, the only stars other than tiny Cyndi—aging Congdon and Morse soap types or up-and-coming unknowns.

  Was Richard Morse that desperate to cover up Mary Ann’s disappearance? Did that mean he was behind it, and maybe Gloria’s death as well? Panic can lead to bad moves, and this sure looked like desperation to Charlie. And desperation in Hollywood invited sharks, feeding frenzies, and a sudden retreat of the money fish. But Mary Ann wasn’t even Congdon and Morse’s client.

  Charlie even had to work to keep from suspecting Edward Esterhazie of masterminding not only all her trouble at home (it wasn’t Charlie’s fault he belonged to the yacht club and had a live-in housekeeper) but the trouble with Gloria Tuschman and Mary Ann Leffler as well. Pretty soon she’d turn on him for giving her stomach cancer. Calm down, Charlie.

  “Why are people looking at me so strangely?” he asked as they approached a table laden. “Am I dressed wrong?”

  “Ed, you’re impeccable. These people are just trying to figure out who you are and where you perch in the pecking order. Pretend you’re home at the yacht club.”

  “Don’t forget you promised to accompany me there Friday night.”

  “You sure Dorothy’s going to go for this? Tell me she’s not from Kansas.”

  “She’s not from Kansas. Is that Ellen Maxwell over there? You do travel in exalted circles, Charlie. Next we’ll be seeing Mitch Hilsten strut in the door with a babe to die for on each arm.”

  Charlie picked out some liver pâté, deviled eggs, oysters Rockefeller, creamed herring, lobster puffs, and crackers topped with creamy cheese. She avoided the low-cal things she usually went for while watching good old Ed unerringly choose them. More reason to resent him.

  “Some of us must watch our diets,” he said smugly.

  Yeah well, some of us have stomach cancer.

  Charlie ate slowly, testing the mood of her middle, washing it down with bottled water instead of champagne. Things felt pretty good. Maybe she was in remission.

  “You okay, boss?” Larry whispered in her ear, then said, “Hi, you must be Ed. I’m Larry, the guy you always get on the phone when you need to get her at the office.”

  Charlie frantically scraped deviled egg off her front teeth with her tongue, while witnessing the most original choreography she’d ever seen at a cocktail party. Ed automatically balanced his champagne glass on his plate to free a hand to shake Larry’s in answer to Larry’s self-introduction, with Stewart Claypool intercepting it just as Larry said, “Oh, and this is Stewart Claypool, a good friend of Charlie’s and mine.”

  Stew returned Ed’s handshake, smiled a greeting, and passed in front of Larry to encircle Charlie with his other arm. “Any friend of Charlie’s is great to greet.” And in his John Wayne persona he added, “Hear the gremlins are gnawing at your gut, little lady. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s all in your head, got that?”

  He and Larry quizzed Charlie about what she was eating and drinking and moved on.

  “Something’s eating your gut?”

  “I’m not well, Ed,” Charlie said bravely. “Libby thinks I have stomach ca
ncer. Even Mrs. McDougal should get turned off by that. Hey, we might not have to do the yacht club thing, although I was sort of planning to expire there.”

  Ed stared at her over his champagne glass, probably still caught up on stomach cancer. He’d want to be the hero-provider, and that wouldn’t work. Which put him out of the running, should he have wanted to be in it, and mellowed her mood toward him. She selected one last creamy cracker and set her glass on a passing tray.

  “Don’t worry, tonight I feel wonderful.” And she did. Charlie gave Ed her thirty-five-millimeter smile. He drained his glass in a gulp.

  You’ve been through a lot of mood changes in the last two hours, Charlie. What time of the month is it?

  Oh shit.

  They crossed the tiled floor and were heading for the patio and pool when Elaine Black popped up in front of them and in front of Dorian’s back as he tried to sell—himself, an idea, a used car?—to an Oriental gentleman gripping a martini glass like a shield.

  “Charlie,” Elaine gushed, “you look stunning. I envy you so. I wish—”

  “Elaine, this is Edward Esterhazie, a good friend,” Charlie interrupted. “Ed, would you excuse us a second?” She practically lifted Dorian’s wife out of her shoes to gain them a private word. “You don’t happen to be carrying any plugs in that suitcase, do you? I think I’m in trouble.” Elaine’s purse resembled a diaper bag and totally negated her attempt to look businesslike in a dress that would have been suitable for the office about ten to fifteen years ago. For a party like this, never.

  “Guess what? I’m going to work.” Elaine bubbled in the hall outside the bathroom. “I’m so excited. And for myself, too.” She rummaged through the bag. “Here, take two. I always carry lots of everything.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Charlie said. “Real estate.”

  “I just got my license, but how did you know?” Elaine was small and thin with a distinctive overbite and blond hair darkening naturally to dishwater. Disappointment dragged the lean features downward in a preview of what the years would bring. “Dorian told you. I wanted to myself.”