The Temporary Detective

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  “I don’t know, I—what do you want me to say? That’s my voice.”

  “Goddamn sopranos,” muttered Delphi.

  “Well, at least your audition wasn’t a complete disaster.” Isobel proceeded to tell Delphi how she had behaved in front of the auditioners. “So, you see? I’m not getting a callback, either.”

  “What makes you think I’m not getting a callback?” Delphi’s eyes flashed.

  Isobel flapped her arms helplessly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Hey!”

  Sunil was striding toward them, his leather shoulder bag bulging with sheet music. Clearly, he knew to bring his whole book.

  “What? Did they start a waiting list already?” he said, stopping at their grim looks. “I’ve heard crappy things about this company, so I figured it wouldn’t be too crowded.”

  “If it’s not a good gig, why are you here?” Delphi asked.

  “Practice. Besides, probably only a lousy outfit like this would consider hiring an Indian to play Noah, even if I am Jewish.”

  “Very funny,” Delphi said.

  “No, I’m serious,” he said. “I’m Jewish.”

  “I’m Jewish,” snapped Delphi. “I know one when I see one. And you’re not.”

  “You’re cranky, that’s what you are,” Sunil said. “But I really am. There aren’t a whole lot of us.”

  “I didn’t know there were Indian Jews,” Isobel said.

  “We eat really well,” Sunil said with a wink.

  Delphi looked closer at Sunil, and it seemed to Isobel that she was suddenly considering him in a slightly different light.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be insulting,” Delphi said, after a moment.

  “Believe me, that barely registered on the insult scale.” He looked down the hall. “It doesn’t look that crowded. Is it really full?”

  “No,” said Isobel. “You’ll get in.”

  “What’s up with you two, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Isobel and Delphi said together.

  Sunil raised an eyebrow. “You guys need some acting lessons.” He walked over to the monitor.

  “He’s cute,” Isobel said, trying to rescue them from the awkwardness they had created.

  “Thanks, Yente,” said Delphi. “I noticed.”

  “I should have sung that other song from Wonderful Town.”

  “Which one?”

  Isobel smiled ruefully. “‘One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man.’ Only I could have sung ‘One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Job.’”

  Delphi couldn’t help but laugh. Isobel held up her hand. “Okay, to enumerate: rule number one, don’t piss off the monitor. Rule number two, don’t lecture the director.”

  “Rule number three, tell your friend if you’re singing the same song,” Delphi added.

  “And rule number four, bring all your music,” Isobel finished.

  Sunil came back. “I just put my name on the list. Shouldn’t be too long.” He looked from Delphi to Isobel. “You look a little happier. If you wait for me, we can hang out afterwards. There’s a flea market downtown I want to check out.”

  “Really?” Delphi asked.

  “Yeah, I love to shop,” said Sunil.

  “Don’t tell me you’re gay!” Isobel blurted. Delphi poked her in the ribs, but Sunil just laughed.

  “Nope. Two minorities is my limit.”

  “Well, thanks for the invite, but I’m apartment hunting today,” Isobel said.

  “You don’t have a place?” Delphi asked.

  Isobel shook her head. “I’m staying at the Evangeline Residence on Gramercy Park South. You get breakfast and dinner, and there’s a rooftop garden and a parlor with a piano. But it’s run by Mrs. Danvers, so I have to get out of there.

  “Wow, I didn’t even know such a thing existed,” Delphi said.

  “It’s not bad. But you have to say good night to your date in the parlor, which I imagine could become a problem after a while. At least I hope so. I pulled a few online listings to check out.”

  Delphi twirled a stray curl around her finger. “Listen, I know we only just met and we don’t really know each other, but I’ve been staying on my friend Jason’s couch, and it’s time I moved on, either to another couch or my own place. We could try to find something together.”

  Isobel thought back to their little disagreement a few moments before. Living with another actor was probably a terrible idea. How could she be an encouraging friend when they were in competition, especially when Delphi’s singing left so much to be desired? But Isobel liked her, even if she was a little prickly. And despite any potential conflicts, it had to be better than sharing with a stranger.

  “Forget it,” Delphi said, when Isobel didn’t respond. “I’m sure you have a better—”

  “That would be great!”

  “Are you sure?” asked Delphi, looking pleased. “I mean, for all you know, I could be an axe murderer.”

  “No, for all you know, I could be a scissors murderer,” returned Isobel. Delphi gave her a look, and she held up her hands in self-defense. “Kidding!”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” muttered Delphi.

  TWELVE

  James disengaged his bulk from Jayla’s endless, dark chocolate legs and stood up.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry? It’s Sunday morning,” Jayla purred from the mass of brown silk sheets that cascaded around her like the train on a wedding dress.

  “Shower.”

  “Mmmm. C’mon and lie here with me a bit. Where’s the fire?”

  “You’re the fire, baby,” James said reflexively. He knew a cue when he heard one. “That’s why I need the shower.”

  “I thought I put your fire out already,” she murmured.

  Here we go, James thought. Do I have to turn on the sweet talk right now? I just want a goddamn shower.

  What he really wanted, of course, was a drink, but a shower would have to suffice. He needed to clear his head. Something strange had happened while he and Jayla were having sex. Right at the critical moment, an image of Isobel had flashed through his mind, completely unbidden and definitely unwanted. She looked pissed off as hell, which he knew she had been the last time they spoke, but the weirdest part was that the fury he’d imagined on her face had turned him on.

  He stepped into the shower and ran the water as hot as he could stand it. He did not want to be thinking of Isobel that way. He knew he was the envy of his friends, dating the gorgeous and talented Jayla Cummings, who had two business degrees from NYU and was on the fast track at a hot new consulting firm, but who could still turn on the neighborhood when she wanted. In every sense.

  But as much as he was into Jayla, she was starting to smother him. She’d been the one to get him into AA, and while he knew he should be grateful, he couldn’t escape the feeling that she was tracking his every move. Worse, she had Plans, with a capital P. At twenty-seven, newly and barely sober, James was nowhere near ready for marriage, but it was hard to take Jayla’s comments about single black mothers as anything other than big-ass hints.

  He soaped himself vigorously and found himself thinking again about Isobel. Of course she hadn’t killed anyone. What had he been thinking? He was a patsy for buying into the detectives’ suspicions. Isobel was right, he was chickenshit. When was he going to start thinking for himself?

  He needed to sort her out in his mind, like his mother used to do when she separated eggs. The yolk (Isobel’s infuriating perkiness) in one bowl and the white (her safety) in another. He had a sudden picture of her swimming in a life-sized bowl of egg whites, slipping under the surface and calling to him to save her, in her best Bond-girl voice.

  He shut off the water and wrapped himself in a towel. There was one more thing he could do to set his mind at ease. He had finally confirmed Isobel’s extended employment, but why not ask Felice Edwards to lunch? He could find out what kind of people Isobel was in with. Felice might even have a sense of what direction the investigation was taking and
how seriously the cops suspected Isobel. Ginger Wainwright was always urging her staff to take clients out to lunch to solidify their relationships. Other recruiting firms didn’t bother, but that was what made Temp Zone different, she always said. Relationships.

  Yes, he thought, jumping onto the scale, where the needle bounced and landed just above where he wanted it. First thing Monday, he’d call Felice. Isobel would never have to know he was checking up on her.

  Neither, he reminded himself, would Jayla.

  THIRTEEN

  By the time Monday morning rolled around, Isobel was exhausted. After rejecting one apartment the size of a walk-in closet, another with room for only one bed (although Isobel was pleased at the thought of rooming with Delphi, she didn’t exactly want to sleep with her), and a third whose eat-in kitchen was undermined by suspiciously chewed-up baseboard moldings, she and Delphi had finally taken a sublet in Hell’s Kitchen. It cost more than either of them had budgeted, but it was too good to pass up: an L-shaped studio with a galley kitchen on the fourth floor of a brownstone. It had two large windows overlooking a weedy courtyard and somebody’s rusting Hibachi, but more importantly, it was in midtown, convenient to all the audition studios.

  After his callback for Two by Two, Sunil had taken them first to the flea market and then to the giant Salvation Army store on Forty-sixth Street, where he proved to be an expert haggler. With his help, they came away with a barely-used futon and frame, an almost-new air mattress, a small table with two chairs, two bookshelves, a filing cabinet, and assorted pots, pans and dishes, all for three hundred and fifty dollars. It had taken Isobel and Delphi all of Sunday to move, and with Sunil’s help, they’d unpacked, organized, and rearranged the furniture until late.

  Isobel had trouble falling asleep in her new surroundings. When she finally nodded off around two, she dreamed that they were still apartment hunting, but Doreen kept turning up dead in every bathroom. After a few hours of fitful slumber, Isobel was awakened at six by what sounded like a nuclear apocalypse but turned out to be garbage trucks, and that was the end of her night.

  Now, armed with the largest coffee money could buy, Isobel settled at her desk at InterBank Switzerland and, since nobody was looking, put her head down. Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation the night before that had precipitated her bad dreams.

  “Do you think the murder was premeditated or spontaneous?” Sunil had asked, wiping down their new kitchen cabinets.

  Delphi had looked up from arranging her scripts alphabetically on one of the bookshelves. “Does it matter?”

  “If it was a cold-blooded, calculated murder, Isobel is marginally safer than if it’s somebody with a hair-trigger temper who might flip out if she misplaces a comma.”

  “I’m the one most likely to do that, given the grammatical skills of this bunch,” Isobel pointed out.

  But it was a good question. Had somebody followed Doreen into the bathroom in a rage and just let fly? Or was it planned ahead of time? If it was the latter, then the person who killed her knew there was going to be an emergency drill—and that Doreen would be in the bathroom at that particular moment. But who could possibly know a thing like that? Even Doreen couldn’t have predicted exactly when she’d have to pee.

  Something else struck Isobel, and she stopped inflating her new air mattress to pose a question to Delphi.

  “When you go into a bathroom stall, do you lock the door?”

  “If I’m the only one in there, I don’t always bother,” Delphi answered. “Then if I hear someone come in, I lean over and lock it. Why?”

  “When I went into the bathroom, the stall door was ajar,” Isobel said. “I was rushing and didn’t look, and I just pushed it in without thinking anyone would be there.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Delphi asked.

  “I might not lock the stall if I knew there was going to be a fire drill and nobody would be coming in. And if Doreen knew about the drill in advance, maybe somebody else did too. So the murder could have been premeditated.”

  Sunil nodded thoughtfully as he wrung out a dirty dishtowel. “Makes sense,” he said. “What better time to slip into a bathroom unnoticed than when everyone is running around in a panic saving their own asses?”

  Delphi shook her head. “I don’t know. It still seems a little dicey. I think the person was just waiting for an opportunity and grabbed one when it came along.”

  “Like they grabbed my scissors,” Isobel said. “Maybe the emergency drill just happened to coincide with his or her last straw.”

  “Or maybe the person planned to strangle her and changed his mind when he saw the scissors lying out. And maybe the lock on the bathroom stall was broken. None of this matters,” Delphi had said. “Premeditated or not, it’s still risky for you to be there, and I really don’t want to have to find another roommate.”

  And that was the end of the conversation. Isobel opened her eyes and looked at the scuffed laminate of her desk, wondering anew who might have known in advance about the emergency drill.

  “Napping, are we?”

  Isobel jolted upright to see Paula Toule-Withers, her arms sagging under the weight of a banker’s box spilling over with papers. She dropped the box onto Isobel’s desk.

  “Doreen handled all the filing for the department.” Paula wiped her hands together dismissively. “And you’re the new Doreen.”

  Isobel looked at the overflowing box and a fresh wave of fatigue washed over her. “Where do they go?”

  Paula pulled back her brightly-sticked lips into what, for her, passed as a smile. “You’re smart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Isobel opened the top folder, which held a jumble of invoices, order forms, memos and receipts. It was impossible to know where to begin. She fortified herself with a big gulp of coffee and dragged the box over to a wall of filing cabinets. She pulled open the bottom drawer and fingered the tabs on the hanging folders. There were designations for receipts, vendor invoices, memos, and just about every other kind of document she had spotted in the box. Pay dirt on the first drawer. She pulled up a small stepstool and began filing. She spent close to two hours sorting documents, taking frequent breaks for coffee and hoping Nikki would show up and provide her with a distraction. When she didn’t, Isobel decided to orchestrate one of her own.

  She stretched her tired arms, rounded the bend to the office area, and peered into Stan Henderson’s office.

  “He’s not in today.” Conchita Perez was sitting primly at her desk. “He called this morning to say he’s ill, Lord help him.”

  Isobel hoped Conchita’s imprecation was a measure of her devoutness and not an indication of the seriousness of Stan’s malady.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I wanted to talk to him about something,” Isobel said.

  “Maybe I can help?”

  “No, that’s okay, I—” Isobel paused. If Stan had confided in Nikki, perhaps he’d confided in Conchita, too. She was his secretary, after all.

  “Actually, there are a few things,” Isobel said, circling around the older woman’s desk. “I’m still not entirely clear on what everybody does in the department.”

  Conchita plumped herself in her chair like an inflatable pillow. “Well, Frank is in charge, but you knew that.”

  “What’s his title, exactly?”

  “Senior Vice President of Procurement Support,” Conchita said. “And Paula is Assistant VP, but you probably knew that too.”

  “Actually, I didn’t,” said Isobel. Conchita beamed with satisfaction. “And you’re Paula’s assistant?”

  “Yes, and Stan’s. Doreen worked for Frank.”

  Isobel noticed there was no “God rest her soul” after Doreen’s name.

  “I gather Doreen didn’t get along all that well with everyone,” Isobel said. Conchita looked at her, as if sizing up whether or not she could be trusted. Isobel continued quickly. “I mean, I only spent one morning with her, but I found her completely intolerable.�
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  Conchita couldn’t resist. “Well, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead…”

  “Oh, go for it,” said Isobel with a confidential wink.

  “She was a first-class bitch,” Conchita said and immediately crossed herself.

  “I’m guessing she was the kind of woman who doesn’t get along well with other women.”

  Conchita nodded. “Paula hated her, too.” She glanced around and then whispered, “But she’s no prize either, that one.”

  “You’re telling me!” Isobel whispered back. “What about Stan? Did Doreen get along with him?”

  Conchita set her mouth in a line and shook her head. “That’s not for me to say.”

  “Nikki told me they were married once. Is that true?”

  Conchita’s mouth dropped open. “Lord help us!” she gasped.

  Isobel was taken aback. “You didn’t know?”

  Tears squeezed out from the corners of Conchita’s eyes. “I—I have to get back to work. So much to do…” She shook her head and fumbled with a stack of pencils.

  Isobel watched the rise and fall of the little knobs of wool on the back of Conchita’s hand-knit sweater. Obviously she’d just dropped some sort of personal bombshell. But what? Was there something going on between Conchita and Stan?

  “Isobel!”

  She looked up to see Frank gesturing to her from the doorway of his office.

  With a guilty backward glance at Conchita, she followed Frank, who closed his office door behind them.

  He rolled his eyes. “Conchita’s like Niagara Falls. She cries when the copy machine breaks. How are you managing?”

  “Fine so far.”

  “Good. Because I may wait a while before hiring somebody permanent.”

  “Really?”

  Frank looked squarely at her. “I know people didn’t like Doreen. I didn’t always like her. But she was devoted to me. Really devoted. I knew I could trust her with anything. And I did. She knew…well, she knew a lot about me, both professionally and personally. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty. I don’t want to rush into finding a new assistant. I need to take some time.”