I suppose the truth was that I was too big a part of an ugly incident. This business with Charlene and the dead clients was going to be far-reaching, most likely involving lawsuits and investigations, and there was no guarantee that the firm would survive as a business. Think about it. Would you want to be a client of the firm where other clients had ended up victims of a serial killer? Well, maybe you would. Whatever floats your boat. The point is, the mess with Charlene was by far the worst thing that had happened here, even worse than “The Time That Gail Went into Labor in the Bathroom and Didn’t Tell Anyone and Almost Had her Baby in There.” No one much wanted to speak to me.
I figured they might more logically be angry with Charlene, who was, after all, the one who had been offing clients.
I was under an oath not to speak of matters pertaining to Charlene Templeton. I wished I could, though, because it peeved me to be shunned as if I were the cause of all the trouble. As if things would have been better, if I’d just left Charlene to her serial killing and minded my own business. I wanted to remind these folks that my participation in her downfall had been almost totally passive.
Oh, never mind. I’d never worked here for the social life, anyway.
I moved slowly through the office, my half-lame state giving me plenty of time to notice how little attention was being paid to me. Upon reaching my cubicle, I found it empty. I’d heard that it had been upended, but empty? I went to Bill’s office and saw that it was practically empty itself, stripped down of everything that belonged to him, with only the furniture and his little bonsai tree remaining. Hell, it was probably a minimalist look he would appreciate. No clutter whatsoever. Bill wasn’t there, but I remembered, from normal life a thousand years before, that often I got to work before he did.
Hobbling back through the office, I went in search of Donna. It took what seemed like six hours to make it to her, and I was delighted to see that she was at her own desk, instead of Junior Gestapo Brent being there and pretending importance.
After I’d let her express her doubts that I should be working and ask after my well-being (I’m sure they feared that severe psychological trauma would be part of my worker’s comp claim), I finally got to ask, “What happened to my desk? Surely the police didn’t take my chair and stuff.”
“No, they didn’t. But I took the liberty of moving your things for you. We put you in the empty cubicle next to Melinda. It’s closer to Aven’s office.”
Yes, indeed it was. Though what Aven had to do with my cubicle, I was unsure.
She saw the look on my face. “Now, it’s nothing you have to rush into. We insist that you take your time. Aven is looking forward to working with you, but he knows what you’ve been through.”
They do this at offices. They break news to you, by talking about the news as if it has already been broken and letting you fill in the details in your head. They are hoping you’ll feel too stupid to actually ask what you “missed,” and that saves the supervisor from having to say something unpleasant out loud. Like “You’re not working for Bill Nestor any more. Now you’re going to work for Aven Fisher.”
Well, no thanks. I had been through quite enough baloney lately, and I felt entitled to some respect. Of course, I understood the logic in assigning me to Aven Fisher, since I was in part responsible for sending his secretary Charlene to prison, but I was not interested in karma at this time. I said, “Back up, and tell me what happened to my job with Bill Nestor.”
“Bill has turned in his resignation,” she said, as if I should have known.
“He didn’t mention this to me.” I waited, challenging her to suggest that Bill didn’t have to clear his comings and goings with me. She didn’t quite dare. “When did this happen?”
“This morning,” said Donna.
“It’s 8:15,” I countered, pointing to her clock.
“I mean that he’s in Terry Bronk’s office now, turning in his resignation.”
“And you’ve had time to move my desk already,” I said.
Donna couldn’t maintain eye contact.
“Oh, come on,” I begged her. “Come on, Donna, you’ve always been a really decent supervisor. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
She sighed. “Terry Bronk is asking Bill to resign.” Before I could yell something foul, she continued. “Carol, we just have to. This whole mess with Charlene looks bad enough for the firm, and these were all Bill’s clients. Maybe we should have noticed what was happening, but he especially had an obligation.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“It’s better than firing him,” said Donna, trying to convey that Bill was being done a favor. “This way, he can go somewhere else—”
“Excuse me,” I said to her, and turned on my heel.
Funny, but I don’t remember feeling any pain as I hauled ass down the long hallway to Terry Bronk’s office. Maybe righteous indignation is a hell of a painkiller. I was loose and strong and fast. I plowed past the cubicles and right past Terry Bronk’s ass-kissing secretary and flung his office door open before I’d even thought clearly about what I was planning to do.
Three surprised men looked up at me. Terry Bronk; Bill, of course; and Junior Gestapo Brent.
“Are they forcing you to resign?” I asked Bill directly.
Brent rose to his feet, showing all the telltale signs of preparing to say something asinine.
“Sit down and shut your mouth,” I snapped at him. “The Third Reich has ended. You’re going to have to find another outlet to compensate for your sexual inadequacy. Bill, are they forcing you to resign?”
For a terrible moment, the idea occurred to me that they weren’t doing any such thing, and that I’d just done the stupidest act of my entire life. Junior Gestapo Brent did sit down. He looked to Terry, as if hoping that insubordination such as mine were punishable by death.
“Um, Carol,” said Bill, coming slowly to his feet. “Maybe you shouldn’t, um…”
I looked to him desperately. “Please answer my question, Bill. Please.”
“Um, yes.” He glanced at Terry from the corner of his eye. “I am tendering my resignation. But this isn’t something that has to involve you.”
“Well obviously it involves her now,” Junior Gestapo Brent sniffed haughtily.
“Obviously,” I agreed. I looked to Bronk, who lorded behind his great oak desk like he thought it made him a king, like keeping his minions a few feet away made him more powerful because they couldn’t reach over to throttle him. I asked, “Your next chosen scapegoat?”
“Get out of my office.” His tone was almost bored.
I said, “Because he didn’t notice something that no one here noticed, and no one probably would have noticed unless the killer herself had started dropping hints?”
“I’m going to call building security.”
“Go ahead and call him. I don’t think Danny gets here until 9:00 anyway.” I looked to Bill now. “They think that they’ll be sued for not noticing the mortality rate of their clientele. They want to make it look like it was your job and therefore your fault. And if you don’t work here anymore, it’ll make them look better, or so they think.”
“I know,” said Bill, with a shrug that indicated none of this surprised him.
Dryly, Terry Bronk remarked, “Bill, it’s not in your best interest to join in Carol’s histrionics.”
Bill, always earnest, said, “Terry, if you’re finished with me, I think I’ll just let Mr. Miller wrap my severance package up over the phone. Thank you for accepting my resignation.”
He walked swiftly to my side, took me by the elbow and tried to steer me out the door.
“Incidentally,” I said to Terry Bronk, “everybody at the firm knows that you were sanctioned by the Federal Court last year. So your secret-keeping sucks. But good for you, for persevering.”
The look on his face. Ha, if only I had had a camera or something. Junior Gestapo Brent said the only intelligent thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mo
uth. “You, uh, you know that you’re fired, right?” And he didn’t even have the presence of mind to sound gleeful about it.
Bill hurried me out the door and down the hall before I could say anything else about Nazis. I went with him automatically. I was still anesthetized by anger, and our walking was swift.
It hardly bothered me, being fired. I had assumed I was fired last week. I had been amazed to find that I wasn’t fired. I suppose they’d thought that if the firm could rid itself of Bill, it didn’t need to rid itself of me. He was a much better person to blame for their problems, and experienced secretaries were harder to come by than attorneys. I would have been deposited in a new secretarial position with a different attorney and then forgotten about, had I not decided to insult MBS&K’s managing partner and his goose-stepping sidekick. Bill would have placidly agreed to do as instructed, and they knew it.
The whole mess made me sick. And I ranted about it, as Bill guided me through the firm. “You make money for them! Your clients always pay their bills! You bill forty-eight hours a week! I can’t believe that they’re doing this to you!”
“Shhh,” he said as we approached our old stomping grounds. “Are your things here?”
Gruffly I grabbed my purse, which I’d left in my empty cubicle. I could tell that everyone within earshot was listening to us, whether or not they dared to show their faces. The room was so silent I could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Bill announced, loud and clear, “I really appreciate your agreeing to come with me, Carol. I couldn’t find another secretary like you in a hundred years.” Then he winked at me. He was so bad at winking conspiratorially that it made me laugh.
“Come on,” I said, over my chuckles. “Let’s go to our new office and check out the swimming pool.”
“I think we should restock the wet bar,” commented Bill with enthusiasm. He stepped into his office to get his bonsai tree and then returned to my side.
We left together as if we’d meant to all along. On the way out, I told Lucille that I was no longer employed there but that she should call me to get details, which of course she would do because the goddess of gossip would no more go without details than she would go without her make-up.
In the elevator, I asked Bill, “Are you all right? No chance you’re going to start a little freak-out session?”
“I feel fine, all things considered,” he replied.
“Because I’m in no mood to try to unstick you, and I don’t have any shortening.”
But he did look fine. A little disoriented, maybe, but who wasn’t on that lovely spring morning? He certainly didn’t seem on the verge of scraping leaves out of a gutter. Maybe he wasn’t truly stressed by this. Maybe, like me, he wasn’t a bit surprised.
As our descent slowed, he said, “I wish you hadn’t quit for my sake.”
“Yeah, well, screw them.”
The elevator deposited us on the parking garage level, and we wandered out toward our cars. My bruised body, which had responded well to adrenaline and rage, now began to throb again in this aftermath of impotent disgust.
“They’re only doing what they feel is best for the firm overall.” Bill was being far more forgiving than I was, and he made me feel like a petulant child.
But I couldn’t stop myself. “Why are all these people missing the point? A serial murderer has been offing our clients for fifteen years, and they’re worried about the employee handbook, the order of reporting work-related grievances to supervisors, and whose job it was to notice the unusual suicide rates among people we hadn’t seen in years. The only thing they care about is covering their collective ass.” I felt like stamping my foot. My words echoed off the garage walls around us.
Bill tilted his head at me. “You do know you’ve been working for a law firm, right? And that 99 percent of the field of law is about covering your ass.”
Aw, he’d made me laugh again. “Well, if I didn’t know it before, I know it now.”
I found that we were standing by Bill’s BMW, and I realized that I was waiting for him to put down his bonsai tree and tell me what to do. But why should he? Why should I wait for him? He was no longer my boss, and for the moment at least, I was nobody’s secretary.
Or was I? Had he been joking upstairs, or was that a serious job offer?
“Say, Bill,” I said, “did you mean what you said about coming with you and still being your secretary?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. My heart sank. But Bill wasn’t very good at bluffing, and it only took me a moment to see that he was teasing me. He explained, “I was thinking that with my ‘severance package’—which is a code word for ‘hush money’—I might hang out my own shingle and start a small practice of estate law. I could use a good office manager.”
“Oh, I see. And ‘office manager’ would be the code word for the person who does everything you don’t want to do?”
Now it was his turn to look disappointed. He thought I was refusing, and I was a better bluffer than Bill. He thought fast and then said, “I’ve seen you eyeing those plasma-screen TVs in the electronics circulars. How about I throw one in as a signing bonus?”
Plasma screen. I thought I heard angels singing.
His face lit up. “We can write it off as an entertainment expense!”
He didn’t need to bribe me. I had been more or less willing to keep working for him even when I suspected him of murder. But then again, those plasma screens were truly beautiful things.
“No,” I said reluctantly. “Bill, I was kidding. You know I’d work for you for nothing.” I hesitated, then added, “Or for roughly the same salary that I was making before.”
Bill broke into a wide grin. “Sorry. The offer is on the table, and if you work for me, that plasma screen is yours.”
“Maybe we should actually have a law firm before you start talking about signing bonuses.”
“Good idea! Now we have an action plan.” Bill inspected the bruise on my cheek and asked, “Do you feel well enough to take a ride with me?”
I checked and found that, despite my soreness, I was doing better than expected. I admitted with some surprise, “I feel remarkably liberated.”
With a bit of exaggerated drama, he checked his watch and then said, “Our schedule for the day seems to have freed up. How about we go look at office space and televisions?”
Who was I to argue? Bill was my boss, after all.
The End
About the Author
Christina Harlin has worked for ten years as a legal secretary and paralegal in Kansas City, Missouri, law firms and is a member of the National Association of Legal Professionals. She has been involved in medical malpractice, workers’ compensation, real estate, employment, and estate/probate cases, among many others. In her spare time, in addition to writing, she enjoys games, puzzles, and great television as well as mystery, thriller, and romance novels. She is an avid movie fan who writes reviews under the pseudonym Fearless Young Orphan at http://www.themovieorphan.com. She lives in the Kansas City area with her family and is currently working on the next two Carol Frank novels, My Boss is a Dead Man and My Boss is a Wanted Woman. You can visit Christina at http://www.christinaharlin.com.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
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