“Oh, man, Fritz,” Rex said as he swiped an electronic key over the lock on Jane’s office door. “Bummer.”
“You know him?”
“Sure. I used to be in his part of the building. We got tight, old Fritz and me. I hope he’s going to be all right.”
I plunged onward. “Our little town has had quite a few tragedies lately,” I said somewhat inanely.
“I guess,” Rex said. He opened the door and took a step back so that I could enter Jane’s office.
“Like Fritz and that terrible murder at the newspaper. Kate Weston.”
The expression on Rex’s face morphed from pleasant to something I couldn’t identify. Shocked? Upset? Angry? Possibly a combination of all three. “Did you know Kate?” he asked.
“Actually I work at the paper,” I said. “Kate was my boss.”
Rex sat down in a chair, a stricken look on his face. “I knew her too.”
“You did?” I asked innocently. “How? Were you friends?”
“You could say that.” Rex shook his head. “Phew, this still gets to me whenever I hear her name.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said gently. I really hadn’t. What I’d meant to do was pump him but that seemed somewhat callous to me now. Rex was truly distraught. Maybe there was more to their relationship than I’d suspected since what I’d suspected had been shallow, cheap and vulgar.
“It’s okay,” Rex said, brushing a big hand across his eyes. Good grief, was he crying? The guy looked like he ate bricks for breakfast and washed them down with tequila. My guilt increased. I hadn’t expected this kind of reaction.
“I take it you two were close?”
“We were more than close, Mrs. Pearson,” Rex said in a husky voice. “I was in love with her.”
“Please, call me DeeDee,” I urged. I paused for a second as my mind tried to unscramble what he was telling me. How could a good looking and apparently nice young man like Rex ever be in love with someone like Kate? Not to speak ill of the dead but Kate was rude and nasty and not at all attractive. What had Rex seen in her? Besides all that, she was married. True, in name only, but she was still a married woman. “Um, would you like to talk about it?”
Rex considered for a second or two before saying, “Yeah, I would. I don’t have anyone I can talk to. My mom lives in Honolulu and my grandma’s dead. Would you mind if I did tell you about it?”
Although I didn’t mind being compared to his mother, the grandmother allusion was a little annoying but I brushed it aside. Rex was about to open up to me in a big way so he could compare me to Lucretia Borgia for all I cared. “I’d be happy to listen,” I said sincerely. I sat down in the chair next to his and opened my ears wide. I thought about taking notes since my memory can be a tad sketchy but decided against it. “Go ahead, Rex.”
“Well, it all started about four months ago,” Rex said, his eyes taking on a faraway gleam. “Kate and I met when I went down to the newspaper to put an ad in the classifieds. I was going to do it online but I didn’t have a credit card. I don’t have any credit cards. I don’t believe in them.”
Thinking of my stack of unpaid credit card bills, I wished that I could make the same statement. “All right, so you went down to the newspaper to put in an ad. How did you meet Kate? She works—worked—upstairs.”
“I went to the wrong door and she opened it for me. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to use the back entrance. I was pulling on it and cursing up a storm when she opened it and stepped outside. I swear, DeeDee, I felt like I was looking at an angel when I saw her. The light hit her in exactly the right way and she had a kind of glow all around her, like an ember.”
I swallowed as I remembered my late boss with her oversized glasses, mousy features and prominent upper teeth. Whoever said love is blind sure knew what he or she had been talking about. Well, maybe Kate behaved differently with Rex. She must have or he wouldn’t be so broken up. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Rex nodded. “Thank you. We started talking and I told her how I work here at Kutrate and she asked me out for a drink. One thing led to another and…” his voice trailed off leaving me to fill in the blanks. I did. Yuck.
“Excuse me for asking but you did know Kate was married, didn’t you?” I asked gently.
“She was going to leave her husband. She told me that the first night we met.”
I wondered if she meant it or if she’d just been telling Rex that to keep him interested. This was a more peculiar story than I’d expected. On the surface it sounded like love at first sight and that in itself was downright unbelievable from Rex’s point of view but it was also pretty unbelievable that someone like Kate would be interested in someone like Rex. True, he was handsome and had a nice body but Kate struck me as something of a snob and not the kind of person who would date a janitor no matter what kind of job title was used to describe his line of work. “How long were the two of you together?”
“Right up until the end. As a matter of fact, we were talking about going on a vacation together when she died.” Rex’s eyes filled with tears. “We were going to go to a resort in Cancun where we could sit on the beach and sip Mai Tai’s together. It was all-inclusive.”
“I wonder who killed her,” I said, watching Rex closely to see his reaction.
“I wonder that every second of every day,” he answered fiercely. “If I ever find out, they’re going to pay for taking my darling Kate’s life, I promise you that.”
Yikes, he sounded like he meant it. “Did Kate ever visit you here at Kutrate?”
Rex blushed. “Funny you should ask. This was our favorite trysting spot. Right after we met, Kate asked me to show her around the whole place. She was especially interested in the labs. I think it was that incredibly brilliant mind of hers that wanted to know everything about everything, you know?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Did Kate know Fritz Scheider?”
“I’m not sure but she seemed to like his lab the best. Especially his secret lab.”
“His secret lab?” I sure hoped Rex never got kidnapped by some enemy government. He wouldn’t have to even be tortured to spill his guts. The guy apparently had been born without any kind of filter.
“Yeah, it’s way down in the bowels of the building. He used to work on all his top secret inventions down there. Kate really liked to see that.”
“I wonder why?”
“Who knows? Like I said, just incredibly curious in addition to being brilliant and beautiful.”
Oh, this poor delusional man! He needed to get back to reality as quickly as possible. I only hoped he met a nice woman who could snap him out of his fantasy world. “That must be it,” I agreed. “I’ll have to ask Jane about Fritz’s secret lab.”
“I doubt she knows about it. Not many people here do.”
“So Kate never said that she knew Fritz?”
Rex shrugged. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Well, I’m an acquaintance of Fritz’s and he told me that there was a connection between Kate’s death and Kutrate Kemicals although I’m starting to wonder if maybe the connection isn’t between the newspaper and Kutrate.” Maybe it was stupid of me to share that with Rex, a man I’d known for all of ten minutes, but I didn’t see much point in keeping the information to myself. I suppose I should hope that I never get kidnaped by an enemy country since I don’t seem to have a filter either.
“Come to think of it, I guess they did know each other. I’d forgotten about it until you said that.” Rex looked a little alarmed. “It was like the second time we came over here for a visit and we ran into Fritz in the vending machine room. I was buying Kate a king-sized Snickers bar and I bought myself some sweet and sour beef jerky.” He sighed deeply over the memory.
“How did they hit it off?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, did they act like they knew each other?” Truly, I didn’t know what I was searching for but there had to be something memorable about the me
eting. Fritz had said that they used to be business partners. “Like they’d met each other before?”
“Let me think. She said she liked his tie and he said he liked her thin ankles. She did have cute ankles. Does that help?”
“I don’t know. How did Kate react when Fritz said that about her ankles?”
Rex thought for a moment. “She laughed and said, ‘you would.’ I didn’t know what she meant so I asked her about that later. She said that Fritz struck her as the type of man who liked his women very thin and very rich. Then she said, ‘like all men.’ I didn’t get that because I personally don’t care how much money a woman has and I also like girls who are a little on the hefty side. Kate was beautiful but she would have been even more beautiful if she’d added a few pounds. We ate out constantly but she never gained an ounce.”
“She didn’t?”
Rex shook his head. “I had to work out to compensate for all the rich meals we had but Kate stayed mean and lean.”
It sounded as if Kate might have had access to a can of ‘Fat Off’ of her own. “How interesting,” I said. Suddenly we heard footsteps in the hallway and we both jumped up as if we’d been doing something immoral or illegal.
“I should be getting back to work,” Rex said.
“Thanks for talking to me, Rex. Just one more question.”
“Sure.”
“Do you know what kind of business connection Kate and Fritz had?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about business.” Rex blushed. “We just talked about life and how much we loved each other.”
Poor Rex. While it was possible that Kate wasn’t as loathsome as I thought, I still had a hard time convincing myself that she returned his feelings quite as sincerely. Rex continued. “Thank you for listening to me, Mrs. Pearson. I needed to talk about Kate.”
“It was my pleasure,” I assured him. We left Jane’s office together and Rex pulled the door shut behind us, giving the handle a good tug to make sure it was locked. He nodded at me before heading back toward his equipment cart and I started for the elevator. I was almost there when I practically ran into Bernard Morton. Rats, I thought as I looked at my daughter’s boss. I had almost been home free.
“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Pearson!” Bernard said in a loud, hearty voice. “Fancy running into you again. You know, we’ve really got to stop meeting like this. People are going to start talking about us pretty soon.”
“I was just getting something from Jane’s office,” I said lamely, shoving my empty hands into the pockets of my jacket.
“What?” Bernard asked.
Feeling around for something, I detected a piece of gum, what felt like a crumpled lottery ticket and my car keys. Deftly pulling off the BEST MOM EVER keychain Tyler had given me on Mother’s Day when he was ten, I held it out for Bernard to see. “This. I dropped it in here the other day. At least I thought I dropped it in here—I’ve been searching for it for days when I remembered that I’d visited Jane and maybe it was in her office. Rex was nice enough to let me in and I found out.”
Bernard stared down at the inexpensive keychain. “You spent days looking for that?”
“It has a lot of sentimental value to me,” I told him. “My son gave it to me. I’d be very upset if I lost it.”
“What is it?”
“A keychain.”
“How did you get home if you left your keys in your daughter’s office?” Bernard asked in a very triumphant tone of voice.
“I had another set in my purse.”
Bernard raised a bushy eyebrow but dropped the subject. “Did you have a nice chat with Rex?”
“He just opened Jane’s office for me,” I lied. I didn’t want to get Rex in trouble and I had the feeling that a janitor or caretaker or whatever term Kutrate Kemicals used for the hired help talking to an outsider on company time was not going to go over too well with the Big Boss.
“Oh?” Bernard said, that one eyebrow still cocked like a furry comma in the middle of his forehead. “I happened to be glancing at one of our security cameras when Rex let you into your daughter’s office and I noticed that you were in there for a good five minutes. You didn’t talk at all during that entire five minutes?”
“We chatted a bit,” I relented.
“About what?”
My father always used to say N.O.Y.D.B. whenever I asked a question he thought was None of Your Damn Business. I hadn’t heard that expression for years but I longed to say it to Bernard at that moment. “Just things.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t really remember,” I said. “Now I’ve got to run. My husband is home cleaning out his gun closet and he gets quite upset if I don’t have dinner on the table at precisely six o’clock on gun cleaning day.” Steve doesn’t even own a pellet gun but Bernard Morton didn’t know that.
Bernard didn’t look scared or impressed. “Are you sure you have to go?” he semi-snarled. “There are a few things I’d like to discuss with you, DeeDee.”
No more Mrs. Pearson. Not that I minded that too much—Bernard and I were roughly the same age and it always made me feel old when someone around my age called me Mrs. Pearson. Especially when they said it in a snotty, sarcastic tone like the one Bernard Morton was using. “Perhaps some other time,” I said sweetly. “My husband can be a real bear if I’m not home on time.”
Bernard put out a hand and put a firm grip on my lower right arm. “I can be a bear sometimes too, DeeDee. Especially with my employees. Did you know that Jane’s annual review is coming up? I’d certainly like to give her the best review possible.”
That sounded like a threat to me, a threat that if it came true would result in Jane not only losing her job but never speaking to me again for the rest of my natural life. “I guess I could find a few minutes to talk to you,” I said.
“Then let’s go to my office,” Bernard suggested, his iron grip still on my arm. “It’s two floors up. I’m sure you remember that from your visit here with Bob Meredith.”
We rode up to the top floor of Kutrate Kemicals in a strained silence. I was desperately trying to figure out what I was going to tell Bernard about my conversation with Rex and also how I could gracefully get out of his office and off the Kutrate Kemicals grounds as quickly as was humanly possible.
Bernard walked purposely toward his office while I trailed a step or two behind, glancing into every office we passed, desperately hoping to see another human being but I didn’t see a soul. Maybe Rex would appear to vacuum or another caretaker would show up.
“Have a seat,” Bernard said after he pushed open the heavy mahogany door of his office. “Want a drink?”
“Oh, no,” I demurred although I could have really gone for a nice big glass of wine at that moment.
Bernard shrugged and went to his bar and poured a tumbler full of scotch. He added a single ice cube and the tiniest splash of soda I’d ever seen. It was like a Barbie-sized splash of soda. Carrying the glass to his desk, he sat down. “Now,” he said after taking a long gulp. “Let’s chat. I’d like to know exactly what you and that lame brain Rex were talking about for seven minutes and forty-three seconds.”
“How do you know how long we were talking?” I questioned.
Bernard pointed at his computer screen and touched his mouse pad. The screen lit up and I saw that it was focused on Jane’s office. Rex came into view pushing a vacuum cleaner. The noise from the cleaner was horrendous, a hundred times louder than it was in reality. “That’s how I know,” he said.
“If you were listening, you must know what we were talking about.”
“I couldn’t hear everything. When you went into Jane’s office I couldn’t hear a thing. Rex was mumbling and you’ve got a very soft voice, DeeDee. You should really work on that.”
“To make it easier the next time a private conversation I’m having is being listened to by a third party?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” Bernard agreed. “That wasn’t thoughtful of you at all, DeeDee, a
nd you strike me as a very thoughtful person. The kind of woman who bakes cookies for new neighbors and takes care of lost puppies. Am I right?”
“Pretty much.” I made a show of looking at my watch.
“Tell me what you and Rex were talking about and I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Why are you so interested?” I asked although I already knew the answer. Bernard obviously had a paranoia complex working overtime inside his head, hence the cameras and microphones. Just like Kate Weston had.
“Because I’m interested in every facet of what is going on in my company,” Bernard replied. “Take, for instance, your daughter. Jane is obviously a go-getter and could go quite far at Kutrate Kemicals. Provided there aren’t any roadblocks thrown in her way.”
Not being a complete idiot, I was able to read between the lines of what Bernard was saying. Either I told him what Rex and I had discussed or he’d start sharp shooting Jane. Great. I was going to get Jane in trouble without even trying. For a split second I vacillated between coming up with some big fat lie or telling Bernard the truth. The truth won since it was so much easier. I don’t think that fast anymore and I’ve always been a lousy liar. “Rex and I were talking about Kate Weston.”
Bernard flinched like I’d just slapped him. “Why?”
“Because we both knew her. She was my boss at the newspaper and Rex was her…friend.”
“But why would you be discussing her?”
“I just told you. We each had a connection to her and she was murdered. It’s shocking when someone you know dies but it’s even more shocking when they’re murdered. And then what happened to Fritz––”
“Fritz Scheider choked or had a stroke or something. Once he pulls out of that coma he’ll be fine.”
“We don’t know that,” I replied. “He might have been poisoned for all we know.”
“He choked on whatever he was eating,” Bernard insisted. “I was there and I saw the whole thing.”
“I was there too,” I reminded him. “I was sitting at the same table as Bernard but I don’t know for sure that he choked and neither do you.”
Black and White and Dead All Over: A Midlife Crisis Mystery (Midlife Crisis Mysteries) Page 18