Chameleon Uncovered

by BR Kingsolver

He chuckled. “No smoking guns lying out in the open?”

  “Nope. It wasn’t as neat and clean as the mystery script for your favorite vid. Not a stolen painting in sight.”

  “Rather uncooperative of her.”

  I agreed.

  Mid-morning the next day, I took an invoice down to Deborah’s office for the work I’d done so far.

  “No. You can’t go in there,” Jess said, trying to step in front of me.

  I brushed her aside, but as I put my hand on the doorknob, I heard sounds from inside that made me pause.

  “Is Malcolm in there?”

  Deborah’s assistant blushed scarlet.

  “How does that make you feel?” I asked. “Or do you get off on hearing them together?”

  Jess’s face turned even redder, and a visible shiver ran through her body even as she shook her head.

  “Why don’t you go take a break,” I suggested. “That way you won’t get blamed when I surprise them.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed a couple of times, shot panicked glances at the door, then nodded and fled, closing the outer door to the hall behind her.

  I knew there weren’t any security cameras in the office, so I blurred my image, blending into the background. Turning the knob, I quietly pushed open the door to Deborah’s office. Peering through the narrow opening, I could tell that neither of the inhabitants of the office could see me. Malcolm’s back and bare butt faced me, and he blocked Deborah’s view. All I could see of her were her legs pointed toward me from the top of her desk.

  Slowly and quietly, I slipped into the office and sidled down the wall away from the door. In a small nook created by a corner and a file cabinet, I held completely still. I had to wait another five or so minutes for them to finish.

  They sorted their clothing out, and she attempted to put her hair in order using a small mirror from her purse.

  “Why is it taking her so long?” Malcolm asked. “I thought the buyers were all lined up.”

  “She said we need to wait for things to calm down.” Deborah replied. “Right now, the Chamber and the insurance company are checking all shipping out of the area.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” he said. “You can’t tell me that I’m going to get checked if I drive my private car to Kansas City. Deborah, tell her to quit stalling. I need that money.”

  “I can give you a loan. How much do you need?”

  I perked up my ears. I knew Donnelly was over extended, but of course, the amounts due on his gambling weren’t reflected in his bank accounts until he actually made the payments.

  “I don’t think you can cover this,” he said. “At least she can deliver the Modigliani. Tell her to get it done.”

  With that, he stalked out. Deborah watched him go and shook her head as the door closed. She grabbed her purse and followed him.

  I put the invoice on her desk where she couldn’t miss it. Opening the door to the outer office, I saw it was empty and unblurred my form. On my way down the hall to my office, I saw Deborah come out of the washroom and go back to her office.

  The thought struck me that I’d just missed a perfect opportunity to bug her office. Considering the two conversations I’d overheard, I decided I really should do that.

  That evening I checked my recordings of Margarita Martinez’s computer and office bugs. The first audio from the office recorded around noon.

  A phone rang and I heard a woman’s voice, “Hello?”

  “Yes. Why are you calling? I told you to just let things sit for another month.”

  A period of silence, evidently listening to the caller.

  “No. Absolutely not. You don’t understand. You’re not in charge here, and neither is he.”

  More silence, for a shorter period.

  “I’m sorry. I told you how things work. You can’t get in a hurry with this sort of thing. Goodbye.”

  Chapter 17

  The following morning, the news feed on the screen in my hotel room told of Malcolm Donnelly’s wife Winifred filing for divorce. She charged him with adultery, named Deborah and seven other women as co-respondents, and asked for one hundred million credits and the house as her due for a twenty-five-year marriage.

  Although the corporations controlled the news, celebrity divorces were open spectator sports. The reporters gave the divorce more time than they had any of the restaurant bombings. They reported her alcohol use, along with rumors of his affairs. Then they speculated on his wealth, and how the divorce might affect Tarden Corp. One reporter discussed their children, including in-depth profiles of all three. It was the sort of thing I normally avoided watching, but that morning I poured myself another cup of coffee and wished I had some popcorn.

  Surprisingly, no one mentioned his gambling. Considering that his mistresses’ lingerie and kinks were open game, I had to believe he’d somehow managed to keep his gambling secret.

  He must have known the divorce was coming. No wonder he was in desperate need of money. The lawyer bills alone would be huge.

  The employee parking lot at the museum was closed to visitors when Mike and I arrived, but at least a dozen news media vehicles sat in front of or near the main building. I was naturally camera shy, and it didn’t improve my disposition to have photographers shoving their weapons in my face.

  “Why the hell do they want my picture?” I asked Mike as we fought our way into the building.

  “They’re probably taking pictures of everyone who goes in or out. It relieves their boredom, and who knows, you might be a secret number nine on the philandering list. Then they’ll have your picture all ready to go.”

  I wanted to smack him with something to wipe the snide grin off his face. Instead, I said, “Unfortunately, I could be tied to Deborah if they start listing her sexual conquests.”

  The grin slid off his face.

  We saw Jess in the hall, and I mentioned the rabid badgers of the press.

  “Deborah didn’t come in this morning,” Jess said. “I talked to her and told her not to.”

  “Sensible,” I responded. “Did she okay that invoice I left on her desk yesterday?”

  Jess nodded. “Yeah, I got it. I’ll send it on to accounting today.”

  I thanked her and we proceeded to my office. Mike fell asleep in an old overstuffed chair he’d found and brought in, while I started on the improved security for the inventory database.

  About two hours later, I took a break to go get some coffee. My route to the cafeteria took me past the main entrance, where I saw a woman in the middle of a profanity-laced tirade against the guards. I stopped and listened, and figured out that the problem was her handbag. They wanted to send it through a scanner, and she didn’t want to let them.

  The woman looked familiar. Short, stacked, carrying a little extra weight, with silvering blonde hair and blue eyes. She was expensively dressed and I guessed her to be around fifty. Out of curiosity, I moved closer.

  Then it struck me. Winifred Donnelly. I had met her once, briefly, a few weeks before, and seen her on the news that morning.

  “Ma’am, we have to scan the bag for security reasons. No one is exempt,” a guard patiently tried to explain.

  Winifred wasn’t having it. “Do you know who I am?” she screeched. “I’ll have your job. I’ll sue your ass and own this whole damned pile of rocks. You just enjoy bullying a woman. Protecting that damned slut who runs this place.”

  I don’t know why, maybe it was the fact that particular guard was unvaryingly cheerful to everyone and greeted me with a smile every morning, but I took pity on him.

  “Mrs. Donnelly?” I said, stepping forward. “I’m Elizabeth Nelson, security consultant. What seems to be the problem?”

  “He’s trying to steal my purse!”

  “Oh, now, I don’t think he needs your makeup,” I said. “I imagine his job pays him enough to buy his own.”

  “I don’t want his grubby hands in my stuff,” she grumbled.

  “I can understand that, but
he doesn’t have to touch your purse at all.” I had been moving toward her, but when I got within range of her breath, I stopped. It was amazing that she could stand with that much vodka in her.

  “Why don’t you put your purse on that conveyer belt, and let the machine scan it?” I proposed. “No one will touch it.”

  “Why? Do you think I have a bomb in there or something?”

  “Mrs. Donnelly, I don’t think you have a bomb.” I wouldn’t have put it past her to carry a pistol, but I would have bet my last credit that what she was trying to hide was her bottle. “It’s the rules. Even I have to go through scans. You know about the robbery, don’t you?”

  She swayed on her feet and squinted at me.

  “Are you here to see Director Zhukoff?” I asked.

  “Give that bitch a piece of my mind,” Winifred muttered. “She doesn’t have a piece of mind.” She broke into a semi-hysterical giggle. “Nothing but a piece of ass.”

  “Director Zhukoff isn’t here,” I said. “She called in sick today.”

  “Ha! Sick of lying and whoring around, most likely.” She stood there swaying for another minute, then looked up at the security guard. “Lucky for you I’m in a good mood today.” Then she turned and wobbled out the door.

  The guard turned and looked at me, his eyes wide.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Imagine what kind of hell on wheels she’d be if she was PMSing.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Thank you, Miss Nelson. I appreciate the help.”

  I shrugged. “No problem.” When I turned, I saw Jess watching me from the hallway. I continued on toward the cafeteria, and she fell in beside me.

  “You have to deal with her much?” I asked.

  “Every time she can’t find her husband, or, like today, she gets a load on and decides to come see Deborah.”

  “Lovely couple. I wonder why she decided to divorce him?”

  Jess shot me a look, then dropped her voice. “I heard Malcolm tell Deborah that there might be a buyout for Tarden.”

  “You’d think ol’ Winifred would wait for the money,” I said.

  “Not if she knows an audit would knock down his house of cards.”

  I stopped and faced Jess. “His gambling.”

  She nodded.

  “How does that affect the corporation?”

  She took a deep breath and looked away.

  “He’s cooking the books,” I said. “Embezzlement.” In the corporate world, you were better off raping and killing babies on the town square than screwing up a stock’s price. The investor class took their money very seriously.

  “How in the hell did he get that deep?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head. A look of fear blossomed on her face. “Oh, God. I’ve said too much.”

  “Yes, you have. Don’t say it to anyone else.”

  That night, I sent my mother an email suggesting that a forensic accountant might find something of value in Tarden’s books. If I’d had the time, I would have researched it myself. Trading stocks on inside information could be so lucrative.

  Deborah didn’t show up for work the following day, either. The second morning after the divorce announcement, my phone rang as I was getting dressed.

  “Libby?” It was Wil.

  “Yeah. How’s it going?”

  “Lousy. Deborah Zhukoff’s dead. Her body was found in an alley this morning.”

  “Oh, my. Let me guess. My DNA was under her fingernails, she was holding the missing necklace, and my name was written in blood next to her body.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Libby, I know you have every right to be mad at me. I handled things completely wrong. I need your help, and the Chamber is willing to pay for it.”

  My turn for silence. “That almost sounded like an apology,” I finally said.

  More silence, then, “Libby, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry for being an ass, sorry that I called your case for being an ass, or sorry for every doubting and suspecting me?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Gee, you know how us blonde bimbos are. I completely forgot already what all of the above entailed.”

  I heard him take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I was an ass, and I’m sorry I ever suspected you. I’m sorry we treated you the way we did.”

  “And you want to make it up to me no matter what it takes or how long it takes. Right?”

  I could almost hear the gears in his brain grinding, even through the phone.

  “Libby, I want to make it up to you.” I could hear his teeth grinding.

  “And you’ll sign that prenup, right?”

  “Damn it, Libby,” he exploded.

  I started laughing. “Okay. What do you need me to do? Remember, though, that you’ve burned all your chances with me.”

  “Yeah, I figured that. Where are you? I can send a car.”

  “Give me the address.”

  Mike and I took the train and then a bus to an area of town a couple of miles from the museum. We hoofed it to the area where Wil told me to go and found a bunch of police and security cars, an ambulance, and policemen in uniform telling us we shouldn’t be there.

  After half an hour, someone finally asked Wil what to do about the loud-mouthed blonde who kept asking for him and refusing to go away.

  “Don’t you know that when you throw a party, you’re supposed to leave a list at the door so the bouncers know who to let in?” I asked when Wil finally came to retrieve us.

  “I’ll make sure my social secretary is informed,” he said, leading us toward an alley.

  I looked around at the neighborhood. “What was she doing here?” We were in an area of middle-class apartment buildings with a few stores, restaurants, and bars at the street corners.

  He shook his head. “Come see.”

  A garbage truck sat in the alley next to a dumpster. Deborah’s nude body lay behind the dumpster. Her front was covered in dried blood, and her face held that look of horrified surprise I had seen too often.

  “Dumped behind the dumpster, not in it?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah,” Wil said.

  “That probably means the killer wasn’t strong enough to lift her.”

  Wil cocked his head to look at him.

  “Mike used to work for my father at MegaTech,” I said and saw Wil nod. I continued, “Deborah wasn’t a lightweight. She probably weighed one forty-five, maybe one fifty. Even most men would have trouble lifting her that high. Cause of death?”

  “We waited for you. I wanted you to see how we found her.” Wil told some of the waiting men to move the dumpster. After they rolled it away, the medical examiner crouched over the body, then eased her onto her back.

  “Stabbed, it looks like,” he said.

  Wil handed us shoe coverings and we put them on, then approached the body.

  “See here?” the ME asked, pointing to her abdomen. A deep wound under her breastbone showed evidence of having bled a lot. I knew if the thrust had been upward, it would have hit the heart.

  “A lot of stab wounds,” Wil said. Indeed, there were multiple wounds to her chest, shoulders, and neck, with a single slice on her left cheek.

  “They all look pretty shallow, with the exception of the lower one,” the ME said.

  Wil looked at me, and I looked at Mike. I didn’t doubt that with his experience, he knew a lot more than I did about murder investigations. I usually didn’t stick around for that part.

  “Looks like a frenzied kill,” Mike said. “Or, the frenzy came after the kill, either from frustration or to make it seem like a crime of passion.”

  “Any idea why anyone would want to kill her?” Wil asked me.

  I turned and walked away. He followed me. When we were well away from everyone else, I said, “How much are you paying me?”

  “Your standard rate.”

  “Twenty-four seven, no questions asked?”

  “Hell, no. Bill me honestly. I have to account for my budget.”


  “You’re no fun.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “How much do you think I can bill the insurance company for?”

  He blinked at me. “You think this is connected to the robbery?”

  “If I tell you, it might hurt my negotiating position with Mr. Chung.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Is money all you think about?”

  I lost it and started yelling at him. “Aren’t you getting paid for standing here arguing with me? How come everyone thinks I look like some damned charity? I spent days playing games with you people instead of working. Who’s going to pay my lawyer bills? I’m fucking innocent, and I have lawyer bills because of you, and you think I’m greedy?” I wanted to hit him. Instead, I unballed my fist, got my temper under control, and said through gritted teeth, “You’re the one who called me this morning.”

  He stared at me, then spun on his heel and walked away, pulling out his phone. He talked to someone for about ten minutes, then came back.

  “Chung will pay your standard rates, but only for hours spent on the robbery, not the murder.”

  “He’ll pay for both,” I said. “It’s a derivative crime, Wil. Deborah and Malcolm Donnelly arranged the theft.”

  He must have had his own suspicions because he didn’t look sufficiently shocked. “Do you have proof of that?”

  “No, but I have leads. I know who the broker for the art is.” He didn’t say anything, just stood there waiting. “A woman named Margarita Martinez.”

  “Great. You’re accusing the director of the museum, the chairman of its board of directors, who’s also chairman of a large and respected corporation, and one of the foremost art patrons in the city.”

  “Why didn’t they inform the insurance company about the robbery? Why hide it from the media? I’d have immediately posted pictures of those paintings on line. Make things as hot as possible for the thieves. And then there’s the method. I know Chung suspects an inside job. Why have David Wilson killed? Deborah tried to tell me that he was dragging his feet on fixing the security issues, but suppose that wasn’t true? I’ll bet he tried to blackmail them.”

  I figured I might as well throw that last part in. No harm in deflecting any suspicions about Wilson’s death.