How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  “Hi, Charley!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Should I call you Charley?” she stage-whispered as I got closer.

  “You might as well.” I plopped down in the chair next to her and set the laptop bag on the floor between us. “Jack and I didn’t really finish discussing it.” I could have told her that we’d been distracted by a bout of crazed lust, but it was probably too early in the morning for that kind of sharing.

  “Discussing what?” Simon asked.

  I jumped, not having noticed him on approach. Then I looked around for Flank. He’d taken a seat at the tall table where he could see us, the door, and just about everything else in the room. He nodded at me without disturbing his facial muscles. He was in position.

  And he hadn’t attacked Simon. That showed progress.

  “What didn’t you and Jack discuss?” Simon persisted. “And why aren’t we drinking lattes?”

  “The whole fake name thing,” I explained. “And I don’t know.” I looked over to the busy counter. “Is this a stand-in-line sort of place?”

  “It is,” Brenda said. “And I stood in line before you got here. I didn’t know how horrendous the bridge traffic would be, so I left plenty of time.” She handed Simon a slip of paper. “They should call our number any minute. Would you…?”

  He sighed elaborately and took the number. “Nothing ever changes, does it? Except my costume.” He fiddled with the sleeves of the pinstriped Roberto Cavalli blazer he wore over distressed Diesel jeans and a pristine white shirt until we made sufficiently appreciative noises. Then he sat and leaned forward across the table conspiratorially. “And, of course, my name.”

  “You’ve decided to use a cover name?” Brenda grabbed his arm. “What?”

  “Rex,” he said, rolling the R a bit and savoring the word. “Rex Bannister.” He grinned. “I thought I’d use my same surname in case anyone notices I look like that infamous local man-about-town Simon Bannister. I can claim to be a cousin or something if the subject comes up. But in the meanwhile I’m Rex.”

  He sat back, clearly pleased with himself.

  “Why…Rex?” I hesitated to ask.

  He blinked. “Isn’t it obvious? So I can have the nickname Sexy Rexy.”

  Obvious. Sure.

  Simon was spared our full reaction because our number was called. He went off.

  “Are we all here?” Eileen’s voice cut through the babble of the increasingly crowded café.

  “All present and accounted for,” I told her. “You, me, Brenda, Flank, and Sexy Rexy.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Morgan Stokes stood in front of the stainless-steel-and-green-glass receptionist station. The lobby of the building was vast, with one ubiquitous brick wall providing a backdrop to an enormous fish tank, and three curving, swooping walls in deepest shades of red, purple, and yellow-gold—the colors of the Zakdan logo.

  It was a space designed to impress, not only with how-successful-we-are, but with how-cool-and-funky-we-are as well.

  “Hello, you must be Harry Van Leewen’s team of consultants.” Stokes” greeting was apparently for the benefit of the receptionist. It occurred to me that we probably should have come up with a name for our fake consulting firm.

  Eileen held out her hand to shake his. “That’s right. We’re the team from SFG.”

  From where? Had I missed a page in the Fake Book?

  “Great.” Morgan handed her some VIP badges, and spoke to the receptionist, who looked roughly seventeen and wore the most severe eyeglasses I’d ever encountered.

  “Lara, these folks will be here for the next week or so. Make sure they get everything they need.” Then he hustled us onto the elevator before she could respond with anything other than a nod.

  “The staff meeting is in ten minutes.” Morgan checked his watch to be sure. “I’ve arranged for you to work from a conference room, so you can have some amount of privacy. Everyone at Zakdan works in cubicles, except the execs on the fourth floor, but I assumed you’d want a sort of a bull pen together. You’ll need to wear your badges at all times. They’re your keys for getting around in the building.”

  He illustrated this when the elevator doors opened on the third floor and we stepped out into a bright turquoise lobby. There were three doors, each with electronic card readers. He passed his badge in front of the reader at the door to the right, and ushered us in.

  There was a field of cubicles ahead of us, a glass wall revealing a kitchen to our left, and a glass wall looking into a conference room on our right. Morgan led us down the hall and around the corner to the conference room door.

  “You can put your things here for now—unless you’ll need them for the meeting upstairs. Do your laptops have wireless? You should be able to get onto our network. There’s a copy machine down the hall, and—”

  “Morgan,” I cut him off for his own good. The man had to breathe sometime. “We’ll be okay.”

  I tried to believe it as I said it. And he seemed to buy it, at least briefly. He focused on the tabletop.

  “Did you hear about Lalit Kumar?” he asked quietly.

  Brenda and I exchanged swift glances.

  “Just what we read in the paper,” I answered.

  “I’m so sorry,” Brenda offered.

  Morgan nodded, still looking down. “It wasn’t a suicide.”

  “Are the police—” Eileen began.

  “Don’t talk to me about the police,” he cut her off, his voice harsh. Then he looked at each of us, making eye contact one by one. “Clara didn’t have an accident and Lalit didn’t kill himself, and the only way I know how to find out what really happened is to trust you people.” His voice cracked.

  “You can trust us,” Brenda said softly.

  “We’ll find out who’s behind this,” I heard myself promise.

  He nodded and straightened his shoulders. “Right. Are you ready?”

  As we’d ever be.

  ***

  The executive boardroom on the fourth floor was sleek and elegant, with lots of pale wood and huge wall-mounted flat panel video screens at either end. The table was shaped like a giant oval with the short ends chopped off. It had built-in speakers and a horrifying assortment of technical gear running the length of it, presumably for teleconferencing and video conferencing and all the other types of conferencing these people do.

  I’d expected them to be…what? Tense? Depressed? Grieving for their two lost colleagues? Instead, I found the large leather chairs surrounding the table to be occupied by the most hostile-looking group of individuals I’d ever stood before. And for someone who’s been in the theatre as long as I have, that’s saying something.

  “All right, everybody.” Morgan ushered us to our seats. “Let’s get started. I’d like you to meet the consulting team from SFG.” He gestured to each of us in turn. “Eileen Scoto is the team leader. She’ll be your primary technical liaison. Brenda Gee is our change management expert—”

  Simon slipped him a note while everyone was acknowledging Brenda. Morgan glanced at it and went on smoothly. “Rex Bannister will be focusing on long pole issues…”

  Okay, Morgan had taken the name change right in stride, but what the hell was a long pole issue? I didn’t have time to figure it out, because it was my turn to give a little finger wave next.

  “And Tess McGill is the project manager.”

  Tess McGill? Who the hell was that? From the way Morgan was looking at me I assumed he meant me, so I smiled in the general direction of the rest of the table, wondering where he’d gotten the idea.

  And then it hit me.

  Jack.

  He’d come up with a false name for me. And it was vaguely familiar.

  “Oh!” One of the Zakdan people squealed. It was a painfully young woman with straight blond hair and angular black glasses. “Tess McGill—that’s Melanie Griffith’s name in Working Girl!” She looked around the table and seemed to sort of shrink back into herself. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean…”


  “It’s okay,” I told her. “Don’t worry. Everybody thinks it’s funny.”

  Particularly my husband.

  Hilarious.

  ***

  I told myself to focus as Morgan Stokes introduced the Zakdan cast of characters and invited each of them to make a few remarks. I mentally matched each person to what I already knew about them.

  Jim Stoddard: He sat at Morgan’s left. Medium height, medium build, bald spot. Dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt with the Zakdan logo on the pocket. Looked annoyed to be stuck in this meeting. He was the executive vice president of Engineering. He was also the only one besides Lalit Kumar who knew about Clara’s proposed promotion, and he had a history of drunk driving. I’d last seen him speaking into his cell phone at Clara’s funeral.

  Millicent O’Malley: Known by her initials as MoM to all, and I can’t say I blamed her. I mean—Millicent? I looked at her closely, remembering her as the schoolmistress who’d dished out that slap to the hysterical girl at the funeral. Painfully thin with cropped gray hair and tiny silver-rimmed glasses. Wearing a gray turtleneck sweater that looked likely to swallow half her face. Vice President of Engineering Services. I still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. An old-timer at the company, she’d bounced around among various groups on her way to her current position. Morgan adored her.

  Tonya Ho: She sat mid-table behind a barricade of electronic devices. A laptop, a phone, and I didn’t know what else arranged in a semicircle in front of her. Early thirties, with straight black hair parted off center and pushed behind her ears. Glasses that would have marked her as a member of the math club back in junior high, but that seemed to be a popular look around Zakdan. Wearing an outfit I’d seen at Banana, right down to the striped scarf. Vice President of Human Resources, she’d been with Zakdan just under a year. We had almost no information on her.

  Bob Adams: Free of guacamole stains, but still a mess. Shaggy blondish-reddish hair thinning on top and an untamed beard. Wearing a much-faded tee shirt that stretched noticeably across a sizable midsection. I didn’t recognize the logo on the tee shirt, but guessed it was from some software company that had crashed and burned long ago. Either that or his college rock band. Vice President of Quality Assurance. Bob had been with the company for close to a decade, and since his group was supposed to test the software and find any bugs in it, Jack had labeled him a “person of interest.”

  Troy Patterson: A slight build and a twitchy manner. Pale features, and straight blond hair worn in a sleek ponytail. He’d been at Clara’s funeral too. I recognized the ponytail. Troy spent a lot on clothes, and was wearing a Helmut Lang suit and open-necked Thomas Pink shirt, unless I missed my guess. Simon was going to hate him. Or have an affair with him. Vice President of Marketing. Had a history of leaving jobs after three years. He’d been at Zakdan two and a half.

  Krissy Livingston: The one who’d made the Tess McGill connection. And, I realized with a jolt, the one who’d made the scene at Clara’s funeral. She was the only person new to the executive boardroom, which explained why she hadn’t been covered by Brenda and Eileen’s research. She’d been standing in for Clara since her death, but Krissy hadn’t yet received an official promotion. And she didn’t look comfortable in her seat. Acting Vice President of Client Knowledge.

  I looked around at them as Morgan went on with his opening remarks. Did one of these people kill Clara?

  Based on the gym receptionist’s description, almost any of them could have been the figure in the gray sweats that night. Only Bob’s beard made him ineligible. Okay, and maybe his physique. But any of the rest of them…

  I snapped out of my mental lineup exercise when Eileen stood. It was time for her to give the speech she’d worked so hard on.

  “At SFG, we believe that opportunity is the point at which luck meets preparation. Harry Van Leewen is in the position to provide you with a lot of luck. We’re here to see if you’re properly prepared.”

  She sat.

  That was it?

  Apparently it was, because Morgan adjourned the meeting, telling everyone that we’d be talking to them individually over the next few days. As soon as they’d filed out, I turned to Eileen.

  “Three sentences? You gave a three-sentence speech after all that fuss yesterday? What happened to what we wrote?”

  She shrugged. “I was in the moment.”

  Everyone’s an actor.

  “Well?” Morgan looked at us all expectantly. “What do you think?”

  We glanced at each other. What did we think?

  Simon was the one to speak up. “I think we should have gotten some cool glasses.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  We split up after the meeting, each pursuing our designated target of investigation for the day. I went back to our assigned conference room to check on Flank before tackling mine—Jim Stoddard, vice president of Engineering.

  We’d decided to leave Flank out of the introductory meeting on the theory that the less attention we called to him, the better. It turned out that our decision had unexpected side benefits. I was stunned when I saw what the bodyguard had accomplished while we were gone.

  All of our laptops were set up and humming away happily on the large conference table. Flank had positioned them facing the glass wall that ran the length of the room, so when we sat at them we’d be able to see the hall and across into the kitchen, and no casual passers-by would be able to glance in at what we were working on.

  The conference room was rectangular, with the only door located on a second glass wall which looked out on a row of cubicles. So, given the fact that we were in what amounted to a fish tank, we were pretty well fortified.

  Stacks of paper, boxes of assorted pens and pencils, pads of sticky notes, and every other possible office supply we might need were arranged tidily on a cabinet at the far end of the room. Also in the back corner was a high stool, positioned to give Flank a clear view of all approaches to the room.

  The floor-to-ceiling white board on the long rear wall had “SFG Team” neatly lettered on it in purple marker, along with each of our names—fake or otherwise—below it.

  “Flank, this is great! It looks like an office.”

  He mumbled something while handing me a printed sheet of paper. It was a floor plan of the fourth floor executive suites, with everybody’s office labeled. Flank had circled Jim Stoddard’s.

  I took the floor plan and searched it, looking not for the circled office, but for Lalit Kumar’s. Jack had gotten Harry’s call about meeting him at Bix while in Kumar’s office, and might have been overheard by someone in an adjoining room. And that someone had tried to run us into the wall of the Broadway Tunnel.

  I found Kumar’s office. Troy, the ponytailed guy, shared the rear wall, Bob Adams was on the left, and my afternoon appointment, Jim Stoddard, was on the right.

  I handed the paper back to Flank.

  It was time to go to work.

  ***

  “What are your plans?”

  I’d been seated in Jim’s office for all of five seconds before he started asking questions. Luckily, I’d had a lifetime of evasiveness training.

  “We’re just in the evaluation phase now.” A confident smile.

  His left eye twitched a little. “What are you evaluating?”

  I straightened my jacket. “Zakdan, of course.”

  The office was decorated with technical awards and pictures of Jim posing with various clusters of other geeks. Team photos from projects he’d worked on in the past, probably. No family. Was that significant?

  He was looking at me narrowly. “What, exactly, do you think you’ll find?”

  A killer—but that’s not what I said.

  “We want to identify the tipping point,” I said, recalling the name of a book Mike had listed in his bibliography. “We need to concentrate on what’s going to push the needle.”

  That didn’t sound quite right, even to me. Did you push the needle or push th
e envelope? I knew you didn’t thread the needle.

  My smile might have faltered a bit. Time for a change of tactic.

  “What can you tell me about working at Zakdan?”

  He sat back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head, elbows out. It was body language that said he had nothing to hide.

  I didn’t believe it for a minute.

  ***

  “How was your day, dear?” Jack kissed me on the cheek.

  Simon turned to Eileen. “He said it—you owe me ten dollars.” Then, in response to the look I gave him, “What?”

  “I can’t believe you bet on Jack saying that.”

  “I can’t believe I’m that predictable,” Jack said.

  “Nonsense,” Simon told him. “You just always know your lines.”

  We’d rendezvoused at Rose Pistola after work, choosing the North Beach restaurant because it was close to Eileen’s house, so she could pick up her son Anthony on her way there. Harry, Mike, and Jack had been waiting for us at a large table near the back. We’d lost Flank as we passed the massive antipasti bar on the way in.

  “Who’s that?” Anthony was staring at the very large bodyguard, who’d seated himself on a very small stool at the bar. “He looks like the bad guy in Death Squad IV.”

  I looked at Eileen.

  “It’s a video game,” she explained. Then she gave her son a menu and told him it wasn’t polite to stare.

  “God, I need a drink,” I said. “No wonder everyone who works for a living has a substance abuse problem.”

  All the people at the table who worked for a living stared at me.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. Let’s get martinis.”

  Once we’d gotten our drinks and a bunch of antipasti to share, we got down to business.

  “Simon,” Jack kicked things off. “How did it go?”

  “Not terribly well, I’m afraid.” Simon nibbled at an olive. “I know I was supposed to spend the day in the company of the charming Mr. Adams, but I never seemed to be able to track him down.” He picked up his glass, his hand shaking visibly.

  “Do you think he was avoiding you?” I reached for a morsel of house-cured sturgeon.