Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 04 - Country Comes to Town

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “Then he got Dee to go talk to him alone, and he said something to upset her. She wouldn’t tell me what, but I could tell. I could understand his not wanting to lose his job, but he didn’t have any business picking on Dee. You know how sensitive she is.”

  Actually, I had never thought of Dee as sensitive, but naturally her husband would see her differently. I nodded sympathetically.

  “After that, I decided the hell with him. I didn’t want him bothering Dee anymore.” Then he lowered his voice. “What gets me is that the way I figure it, Dee must have voted for him despite his being an asshole. That’s how sweet and forgiving she is.”

  Again, that was a part of Dee’s personality I’d never seen, but I said, “That was nice of her.” Of course, I knew her real reason was the threat Philip had been holding over her head, but I didn’t mind letting Dom think the best of his wife.

  It was then that I glanced outside his cube and saw a shadow the right size and shape to be somebody standing outside, listening to our conversation. Whoever it was moved away just then, and I wasn’t sure if there really had been somebody there or if somebody had just walked by. It did make me uneasy enough to want to change the subject. We talked about programming for a little while and then I went back to my own cube.

  Though Dom had answered all my questions, now I had a whole new batch. If he was telling me the truth about how he’d voted, either Inez, Vincent, or Murray had changed sides to vote for Philip. Which one, and why?

  And who had been outside Dom’s cube? I didn’t think I’d told any one person enough for anybody to figure out what I was up to, but if somebody had overheard me asking Dom the same kind of questions I’d asked him or her, it wouldn’t take a whole lot of brains to put it together. If that shadow had been the murderer, would he or she be worried enough to come after me?

  Chapter 23

  I should have realized that something was cooking that afternoon, but I got involved in working through the suggestions from the QA log and didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the office. After seeing that shadow outside Dom’s cube, I was afraid somebody might be getting suspicious, and I thought I ought to play possum for a while.

  So it wasn’t until around five that I noticed that the office seemed quiet. I leaned over to look into Dee and Dom’s cube, but there was no one there, and I didn’t hear Neal or Sheliah tapping away at their keyboards, either. The whole office had that empty, after-hours feeling, and it was starting to give me the creeps. Which is why I jumped when my phone rang once, meaning somebody was calling me from inside the office.

  I picked it up. “This is Laura.”

  “Laura, this is Jessie. Could you come into the conference room for a minute?”

  “Sure.” Since it was rather late in the day, I saved my work and shut down the computer first. If whatever she needed me for took long enough, I’d be able to go home afterward, and goodness knew I was ready to go. I figured that not even Murray could say anything about my leaving early, since it looked like almost everybody else had already gone.

  When I opened the door, the conference room was dark, and I stood there a minute, trying to decide if I should go inside or run as fast as I could. Then the lights came on, and there was a yell of, “Surprise!”

  I know I must have jumped back three feet, because everybody started laughing. And I do mean everybody. All of the SSI crowd was there, even Dee, which meant that she must have come into the office just for this.

  “We got you!” Jessie crowed.

  “You sure did. What’s this for?” I asked.

  “A welcome home party,” Jessie said, pointing at a white cake that said just that in red icing. “Well, sort of. Welcome back to the group.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I said.

  “There’s pizza on the way, too,” Neal said, “so I hope you don’t have plans for dinner.”

  Jessie handed me a can of Coke and said, “We tried to get your cousin so he could come, too, but he wasn’t at your apartment.”

  “I’ll call him later. I think he’s got a date tonight.” If not, I felt sure that Michelle would take care of him.

  “In town less than a week, and he’s already got a girlfriend?” Inez said with a raised eyebrow.

  “I introduced him to a friend of mine, and I think they’ve hit it off,” I explained.

  “You should have told me he was available,” she said. “It’s impossible to find a good man in this town.” She looked pointedly at Vincent.

  Vincent promptly announced, “I’ll go downstairs to wait for the pizza.”

  Inez grinned.

  “Come sit down,” Jessie said to me, ignoring the two of them. “This is like old times, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” I said. I did think about Philip, but wasn’t about to bring that up. “I can’t believe you guys did this.”

  “It was Jessie’s idea,” Dee said, but I could have told her that. This kind of thing was always Jessie’s idea. Jessie’s own birthday was forgotten most of the time, but she made sure nobody else’s ever was.

  “Thank you, Jessie,” I said, toasting her with my Coke.

  She looked embarrassed. “No big deal.”

  Inez said, “So tell us about Richard and what he’s up to. Does he know you’re working here?”

  Answering her took a few minutes, and then Vincent came back up with the pizza and we dug in.

  Everybody looked settled in for a good long stay, and as the guest of honor, I didn’t think it would be very nice for me to leave. So as it got close to the time I would have left work, I went back to my desk long enough to call my apartment, and when there was no answer, I called Michelle at GBS.

  Fortunately, she hadn’t left yet, and I explained that I was going to hang around SSI a while longer.

  “I’ve already talked to Thaddeous about getting together for dinner. You want us to meet you there?”

  “No, that’s okay. I don’t know how long I’ll be here.” I lowered my voice to add, “Maybe I’ll hear something useful.”

  “Yeah? Well, you be careful with those people. Only eat that pizza if they eat a piece first.”

  I wasn’t sure how one would go about poisoning a pizza after it left the pizza parlor, but I said, “You bet. After pizza and cake, I know I’m not going to want anything else to eat. Why don’t y’all go ahead? I’ll see y’all at my place later.”

  Michelle said, “If you’re sure you don’t mind.” I could tell that she didn’t mind a bit.

  While eating pizza, I tried to think of intelligent leading questions to ask. After all, with all my suspects together, it should have been an excellent time to try to dredge up some information. But I couldn’t come up with any, and the truth was, I didn’t want to do any investigating. It felt so nice to be welcome that I just couldn’t bring myself to ask about alibis and motives.

  I did try to pay attention to what everybody was saying, but even though we spent a lot of time talking about old adventures at MIT, Philip’s name didn’t come up. I don’t know if it was reluctance to talk about a recently deceased friend, or guilt at how SSI had very nearly fired him, or something more sinister.

  I finally relaxed and gave up thinking about the murder. Instead, I laughed at old jokes that were still funny only because we all knew them, listened to old stories that were interesting only because we all knew how they were going to end, and made fun of professors I hadn’t thought of in years just because we’d always made fun of them.

  And I had a good time, too, at least for a while. It was only after a couple of hours that I had a strong sense of déjà-vu. I looked around the room, thinking about how many times I had been with the group just like this. And even though everybody was older and it wasn’t exactly the same set of people, it felt like I had never left, and for some reason, that really bothered me. I was relieved when the party broke up not long after that.

  Chapter 24

  Thaddeous and Michelle were still out when I got back to my apartmen
t, and that was fine with me. It meant that they were having time alone and that I had some time to myself, too. The uneasy feeling from my surprise party was still with me, and I didn’t think I’d be good company.

  Richard and I have joked before that we’re psychic about each other’s moods, and maybe we are, because after I’d flipped through every TV channel three or four times, the phone rang.

  “I call, in kindness and unfeigned love, to do greetings to thy royal person.”

  “Richard!”

  “The one and only. Paraphrasing from King Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene 3, of course.”

  “Of course. How’s it going?”

  He reviewed the latest plays he’d seen, then I told him about my first couple of days at SSI. He wasn’t at all happy to hear about the shadow I’d seen outside Dom’s cube.

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know. The only ones I’m sure it wasn’t are Dee and Dom. Which isn’t much help, because I don’t know that the eavesdropper had anything to do with Philip’s death. He could just have been nosy.”

  “As the Duke of York warned, ‘My liege, beware; look to thyself. Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there.’ King Richard II, Act V, Scene 3.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been careful, and I’ll keep on being careful.”

  “You better be. I expect to find you hale and hearty when I return.”

  “You will.”

  “Okay. Now, so far we’ve got Philip leaving booby traps for Neal, blackmailing Dee, insulting Murray, harassing Sheliah, and getting Dom mad. Not exactly a serene work environment, is it?”

  “Not hardly. It’s going to be so much better with Philip gone.”

  “Do you think that’s the reason he was killed? To create a better atmosphere?”

  “Actually, I think that one of his blackmail schemes backfired.”

  “Does that mean you suspect Inez or Dee? Those are the only two being blackmailed.”

  “They’re the only ones I know about for sure, but don’t forget what Dom said about changing his vote. That means that somebody else changed sides, too. That had to have been another case of blackmail, because whoever it was continued to speak against Philip publicly.”

  “So you’ve eliminated the people who aren’t on the board of directors.”

  “I’d like to,” I said, “but I can’t. Sheliah admitted that Philip had been sexually harassing her, and for all we know, it could have been worse than she said, meaning that she’d have a pretty good motive. She’s not a big contender because I think it would have been easier for her either to quit or to report Philip to the EEOC.

  “As for Neal, he knew Philip for years and they were roommates, so there could be something there. I don’t know where he’s been these past few years, so maybe he’d kept up with Philip while working in California. But until I know something, I’m going to put him on the second list, too.”

  “What about Roberta?”

  “What about her? Michelle didn’t mention her showing any particular animosity toward Philip.”

  “Maybe not, but I find it interesting that Roberta was the one to collect ballots both times, and that while the numbers should have changed the second time when Dom voted against Philip, they stayed the same. You’re assuming that somebody else decided to vote for Philip, but what if Roberta stacked the vote herself, and then denied knowing who voted what?”

  “That’s twisty,” I said admiringly, “but wouldn’t she have just faked it so that Philip got all the votes?”

  “Not if she wanted to get away with it. This way, nobody knows for sure who changed his or her mind.”

  “Are you thinking that Philip blackmailed her into doing this?”

  “Or sweet-talked her into it. Or even bribed her. Maybe he didn’t resort to blackmail right off the bat.”

  “Maybe not. I’ve just gotten used to assuming the worst of him.”

  “With good reason. He did threaten to ruin Dee and Dom’s marriage. Do you think he’d have gone through with it?”

  “I’m not sure. The threat is bad enough, but I think he’d have had enough decency not to do it. At least, I hope he did.” Then I paused. “I thought I knew Philip, but now I’m not so sure. I can’t believe I ever dated him.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “I know, but it feels like it was just yesterday. Especially after the party this afternoon. That really felt weird. At first it was nice, like old times. The stories we used to tell, and the same old jokes. I was thinking how sweet they all were. Then suddenly it felt weird.”

  “Because Philip wasn’t there?”

  “Not just because of that. All of a sudden it was like I was back in college, like a time machine had grabbed me and it was seven years ago and these people were still the most important people in the world to me. Other than my family, anyway.” I paused. “Shoot, there were times when they were more important to me than my family was. God forbid my family should ever hear me say that.”

  “College friendships can be very intense.”

  “This wasn’t friendship. This was real darned close to obsession.”

  “This is upsetting you, isn’t it? Why?”

  I shrugged, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. “I’m not sure. Except that I’m not who I was then, and I don’t want to be. And I don’t want to get sucked into that group of people again.”

  “You’re not going to get sucked in. You’re only going to stay at SSI long enough to find out what you need to know, and then you’ll go back to your real life. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not.” I struggled for a way to explain what I was feeling. “Paw used to say that you could judge a person by his friends. He wanted me to be nice and polite to everybody, but he thought I should be extra careful about who I picked to be friends with. I suppose all kids hear something like that.”

  “Even Prince Hal heard it from his father. The king thought Hal was hanging around Falstaff too much.”

  “Did Hal ever feel ashamed of being friends with Falstaff?”

  “Laura, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

  “I feel like I do. Then I feel guilty for being ashamed, because they aren’t bad people. I just don’t want to be close to them anymore.”

  “We all leave friends behind. People change, circumstances change. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It just struck me as such an awful reflection of who I used to be. You should have seen Thaddeous’s face when I introduced him to the group. Not to mention what he must think of me for having dated Philip.”

  “Thaddeous knows you were a lot younger then. He’s not going to judge you by the friends you used to have.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Do you judge Thaddeous by his old friends? Let’s not forget that he was in the Ku Klux Klan. Philip, for all his faults, never wore white sheets or burned crosses on people’s front lawns.”

  “You know Thaddeous never would have joined the Klan if it hadn’t been such a terrible time for him,” I objected. A few years back, Thaddeous had thought a woman he cared for had been raped and killed by a bunch of black men. He was so angry and felt so helpless that he convinced himself that joining the Klan would help. “Besides, he only stayed in for a week.”

  “So? Your first few months at MIT were a terrible time for you. And you only hung around those people for a few years.”

  “Okay, you’ve got a point.”

  “I’m starting to wish that you hadn’t gotten involved in this, Laura. I’ve been worried about you being around these people because one of them might be a killer—now I’m worried because of how you’re reacting to being with them.”

  “I’ll be fine. Today was just weird, that’s all.”

  “Okay, but let me say this again. One, you have nothing to be ashamed of for having been friends with these people. And two, you have nothing to be ashamed of for not wantin
g to be close friends with them now. All right?”

  “All right,” I said, and repeated, “I’ll be fine.” I could tell he wasn’t convinced, but I knew it was late for him and talked him into getting off the phone. And I did feel better, just not all the way back to myself. I couldn’t help but be ashamed of who I had been when I was an MIT freshman. Even worse, for all my talk about my having grown and being different now, sometimes I was afraid that I hadn’t really changed at all.

  Chapter 25

  Michelle and Thaddeous showed up soon after that, in a much better mood than I was in. My outlook did improve when I saw that they were carrying pints of ice cream and hot fudge. As we ate way too much of it, I repeated what I’d told Richard. Like my husband, they were bothered by the eavesdropper outside Dom’s cube, but I soothed them just as I had him. Then I said, “I don’t have any idea of what to do next.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Michelle said breezily. “It’s time to party. I’ve got the weekend all planned.”

  I suppose I could have been offended about her taking over, but I wasn’t. I’d done enough thinking for one week, so I was perfectly content to let her lead me and Thaddeous around Boston, and I was pretty sure that Thaddeous would be, too.

  Saturday was spent at the Museum of Fine Arts, not the first place I’d have picked to take Thaddeous, but he seemed to enjoy it. I don’t think he was terribly impressed by the Impressionists, but he did like the Egyptian exhibits.

  Then we walked to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of the most charming places in Boston. Isabella Stewart Gardner and her husband were wealthy, eccentric art collectors. After his death, Isabella became even more eccentric and collected even more art. She built a house to hold it all, and then made it into a museum.

  Isabella had a good eye for art, but she also collected things just because she liked them. After Thaddeous wandered through the floors of Spanish masters, Sargent portraits, tapestries, and a Venetian sedan chair, he said, “I bet Aunt Maggie would have liked this lady. She liked digging for stuff, just like Aunt Maggie does.”