Kill the Competition

by Stephanie Bond

  He looked down at his notes. “Ms. Janes, you stated that Ms. Hennessey seemed ‘flustered’ at the time.”

  “I wasn’t flustered,” Belinda said with a frown.

  “You were shaking like a dog’s hind leg,” Libby declared softly.

  That was vivid.

  Truett cocked an eyebrow. “It’s time to tell us, Ms. Hennessey, what was so important that you had to talk to Ms. Campbell.”

  Belinda squirmed. “It’s confidential. I must discuss it with Mr. Archer first.”

  His eyes narrowed. “As long as we can sit in.”

  “F-fine.”

  “So skip to the part where you were getting ready to leave. You said Ms. Campbell received a phone call. An internal call, you could tell by the ring.”

  “That’s right, although I don’t know who it was. I walked out of her office and left by the back stairs, and fell. I went to the lounge to clean up, and you know what happened from there.”

  “You ran into Julian Hardeman.”

  “Yes.”

  “We talked to Julian Hardeman before he left town,” Detective Salyers said. “He said you were agitated when he saw you.”

  Surprise and anger barbed through her that Julian would say something to implicate her further—although she’d done a good job of implicating herself all by her lonesome. “I had just taken a bad spill, so perhaps I was jittery.”

  “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Hardeman?”

  Not here. “I told you—we’re acquaintances.”

  “That’s not what he said.”

  Next to her, Wade shifted in his chair. Belinda set her jaw. “We had lunch twice.”

  “And a sexual encounter in the sauna in the bottom floor of this building.”

  This could only be better if her mother were here. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with the murder.”

  “Because you told your friends here that Ms. Campbell might have been jealous over your relationship with Julian.”

  She glanced around the table. “I didn’t say that.”

  “What Belinda said,” piped in Carole in a squeaky voice, “was that Margo saw her in the gym with Julian and made a snide remark.”

  “Regarding Julian Hardeman’s taste in women?”

  Carole nodded.

  Salyers tapped her pen on the notepad in front of her. “Didn’t that make you angry, Ms. Hennessey?”

  “No, because I knew it was Margo’s nature to be cutting and because I wasn’t as involved with Julian Hardeman as she assumed.”

  Truett grunted. “Ms. Campbell wasn’t a very nice person, was she?”

  Belinda decided to let that one go unanswered.

  “Ms. Janes,” he said, turning in his chair, “let’s get back to you. Why didn’t you and Ms. Marchand simply wait Monday afternoon until Ms. Hennessey had finished her discussion with Ms. Campbell so you could all ride home together?”

  Libby splayed her manicured hands. “Belinda said she needed to meet with Margo and told us to go on. I assumed it was going to take a while.”

  “And you had something planned that you wanted to do?”

  Libby looked at Belinda with a flash of accusation. “Yes.”

  “What was it, exactly?”

  Libby’s mouth tightened. “Carole and I were concerned about Rosemary.” She gave Rosemary an apologetic look. “We were afraid you were sick and not telling us, so…we were going to follow you to your appointment.”

  Rosemary’s eyes widened. “Follow me?”

  “But we didn’t get the chance. Carole was late getting to the car—”

  “I was only a little late,” Carole interjected, wagging her finger. “But the car wasn’t where it had been parked. I waited there for maybe twenty minutes, then Libby drives up, saying she’d been waiting for me on the bottom floor.”

  Truett leveled his gaze on Libby. “Is that true, Ms. Janes?”

  Libby fidgeted. “I figured I had time to drive to Bloomingdale’s for a quick look around. They’re having a big sale,” she added in her defense.

  “Did you buy anything?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “We’re going to check, Ms. Janes.”

  “A pillow,” she whispered. “Goose down, thirty percent off.”

  Belinda’s mouth went dry.

  “Why buy only one pillow?” Salyers asked. “Why not a set?”

  “It was for a daybed in our bonus room.”

  “And I assume you can produce that pillow?”

  Libby wrung her hands. “I promised my husband I would stop spending so much money. I was so ashamed of myself, I threw the pillow in a Dumpster at the mall before I came back to pick up Carole.”

  The detectives exchanged disbelieving glances.

  “When you returned to the parking garage,” Truett said, “Ms. Burchett had already left?”

  Libby nodded.

  “Ms. Burchett, what time did you leave the parking garage?”

  “Around 6:00.”

  “Where did you go?”

  She pursed her mouth, as if she were physically trapping the words.

  “Does it have anything to do with your probation?”

  Belinda’s gut clenched. Libby and Carole looked shocked.

  “Ms. Burchett?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “For everyone’s information, Ms. Burchett here is on probation for a count of involuntary manslaughter for killing her husband, Stanley Burchett.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” she murmured, her eyes shimmering.

  “The M.E.’s report says he was smothered with a pillow.”

  “He rolled over and was too weak to lift his head,” Rosemary said. “It was a blessing.”

  “You were supposed to be watching him.”

  “I left the room to prepare a bath for him. When I came back, he was already gone.”

  “You accepted probation.”

  “To relieve some of my own guilt for not being there,” she whispered. “And I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do, including seeing a therapist every few weeks.”

  Carole reached over to squeeze the older woman’s hand. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “There was no point,” she said.

  “Maybe you didn’t tell anyone because you were afraid you’d lose your job,” Truett said.

  Rosemary’s mouth tightened, but she remained silent.

  “Did Ms. Campbell know about the probation, Ms. Burchett?”

  Rosemary hesitated, then nodded.

  “When did she find out?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  “When did she first bring it to your attention that she knew?”

  “Monday, during my performance evaluation.”

  Belinda’s breath caught.

  “Did she fire you?” Truett pressed.

  “No.” Rosemary spoke through clenched teeth. “That would have been too quick for Margo, too easy. Better to keep me around to hold it over my head.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Not per se.”

  “Ms. Burchett, Ms. Marchard mentioned that you use a lumbar cushion when you ride in a car.”

  Rosemary cut her gaze to Carole, then back. “That’s correct.”

  “Where is that cushion?”

  “Monday morning, when it was raining, I dropped it in the mud. It seemed easier to buy a new one than to try to save it, so I threw it away.”

  “Monday, the day Ms. Campbell was smothered, possibly with a pillow or some other soft object.”

  Rosemary’s tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. “Coincidence.”

  Truett emitted a humorless laugh and angled his coffee cup in Carole’s direction. “While we’re on coincidences, Ms. Marchand, how’s married life?”

  Carole’s chin dipped. “Fine.”

  “Your husband, Gustav Marchand, he’s just a couple of months away from receiving his green card, isn’t he?”

  Carole nodded.
r />   “Ms. Marchand, we checked Ms. Campbell’s phone records, and guess what we found.”

  The blood drained from Carole’s cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you? Margo Campbell called the INS office last Friday and had a conversation with a Mr. Penley. Do you know the topic of that conversation?”

  Carole was silent.

  Truett expelled a long-suffering sigh. “Mr. Penley told me that Ms. Campbell informed him that your marriage to Mr. Marchand was a farce, that you had done this twice before. Mr. Penley said he planned to talk to Ms. Campbell when she returned from vacation.”

  Carole had apparently been struck mute. Belinda’s mind reeled at the revelations.

  “And you know what else?” Truett leaned forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the table. “We were able to trace that call Ms. Hennessey told us Ms. Campbell received just before she left—it came from the mailroom.”

  Belinda’s heart clenched.

  Carole seemed to sway, then she recovered. “I…did call Margo, because I had a confidential envelope for her. She told me to bring it up, that’s one of the reasons I was late getting to the parking garage.”

  “Ms. Campbell was in her office when you delivered the envelope?”

  “No. But her briefcase was on her desk, so I assumed she was still in the building, perhaps in the ladies’ room.”

  “You didn’t see her at all?”

  “No.”

  “Did you touch anything in Ms. Campbell’s office?”

  “No.” But Carole answered much too quickly; even Belinda could see that.

  Truett held up his fat index finger. “Careful, Ms. Marchand. I’ll ask you again. Are you sure you didn’t touch anything in Ms. Campbell’s office, didn’t take anything with you?”

  Carole was completely white now, and trembling. She glanced at Libby and Rosemary, who were darn near colorless themselves.

  Truett set down his coffee and opened one of the thick folders in front of him. “Ladies, I have here some sort of manuscript that the four of you were working on.”

  “That’s private,” Libby said, shooting an angry look in Belinda’s direction.

  She could only return a remorseful expression and lament her sloppy eating habits that had left the suspicious red stain on the back page.

  Truett flipped to one of several pages marked with a colored tab. “I’d like to read a few items.” He cleared his throat. “ ‘DO have the courage to cut harmful people out of your life.’ The passage that follows suggests that a person ‘get rid of’ the people in their life that are keeping them from achieving their goals.”

  “You’re taking it out of context,” Belinda said.

  “Right,” Libby said. “This is a book about men, not murder.”

  Truett pursed his thick lips. “Here’s another one: ‘If a relationship isn’t working, DO kill it quickly.’ Sounds like some kind of code to me.”

  “It is,” Libby said dryly. “It’s written for women.”

  He almost smiled. “Okay what about this one: ‘DO develop a system for keeping your lies straight.’ The passage that follows explains how to master the art of telling a good lie and covering your tracks.” He closed the manuscript with a smack and looked back to Carole.

  “Ms. Marchand, I’m asking you one more time—did you touch anything in Ms. Campbell’s office?”

  Carole teared up and nodded.

  Belinda sucked in a breath and held it.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Evaluation forms,” Carole said miserably. “I took mine and Libby’s and Rosemary’s.”

  He withdrew forms from the folder in front of him. Belinda recognized them as the final evaluation sheets. “Why?”

  “B-because Margo gave us all bad evaluations—we each got a five.”

  “On a scale of one to five, five being the lowest.”

  Carole nodded. “A five means you don’t even get a cost-of-living increase.”

  “What did you do to the forms?”

  She swallowed. “I altered them. I changed the fives to fours so we would all get a tiny raise.” She sniffed. “We deserved it—Margo had it in for all of us.”

  Belinda cringed inwardly—the young woman was only giving the detective more ammunition. But at least now she knew what the women had been keeping from her.

  On second thought, they’d been keeping lots of things from her.

  “But Libby and Rosemary didn’t have anything to do with it,” Carole said tearfully. “I did it all on my own and told them later.”

  “She meant well,” Libby said softly. “Changing our reviews from a five to a four wasn’t going to give anyone a promotion or a huge jump in salary. To Archer, the dollars would have been negligible. No one would have known.”

  “What made you think Ms. Campbell wouldn’t notice that you’d altered the papers?”

  “She had already signed them,” Carole said. “I knew they would go to HR next. I used correction fluid to change the forms, then took them to the copy room and made a duplicate of the corrected forms. Those are the copies I put back in the folder. I took the originals with me and shredded them.”

  Truett nodded. “Didn’t you think that Martin Derlinger would remember you had been there and would tell us?”

  Carole shrugged. “I’m in the copy room all the time—it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Except it was around the time that Ms. Campbell was murdered.”

  “I didn’t see her,” Carole said, shaking her head. “I swear. I took the duplicated forms back to her office and left.”

  “Was her briefcase still there when you went back?” Detective Salyers asked.

  Carole squinted. “I can’t remember—I was in a hurry.”

  “I have another question, Ms. Marchand,” Truett said. “Why didn’t you change Ms. Hennessey’s evaluation? Isn’t she a friend, too?”

  Belinda’s skin tingled—how was she supposed to feel about being excluded from a cheating sisterhood?

  Carole looked at her across the table. “Of course Belinda is a friend. But Libby told me on the phone that Belinda said her evaluation went well. I didn’t even look for her form.”

  “Then why is it missing?”

  Belinda frowned. Missing?

  “I don’t know,” Carole said, wide-eyed. “I didn’t touch it.”

  “Maybe you don’t regard Ms. Hennessey as a friend at all. Maybe the three of you conspired to kill Ms. Campbell and frame Ms. Hennessey.”

  Belinda sat back in her chair, while the other women leaned forward.

  “That’s not true!”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “That’s just plain crazy!”

  Truett leveled his gaze on her. “Or maybe Ms. Hennessey did it knowing the rest of you had issues with Ms. Campbell that would shift the blame—maybe she set up the rest of you.”

  Belinda felt all eyes turn in her direction. Her chest felt as if it might explode from the air she couldn’t seem to exhale. Starbursts went off behind her eyes. “Th-that simply isn’t true. I had no reason to want Margo dead.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Truett said with a shrug. “Maybe you didn’t get the good evaluation you told us you did. Maybe the woman simply insulted you, and you snapped. A person doesn’t need a good reason to commit a crime of passion.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Belinda murmured. “And I have no idea where my evaluation form is. I didn’t see it, and I didn’t take it.”

  “But you haven’t been completely truthful with everyone, have you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you told everyone you were divorced, but when we checked, we found no record of a divorce, and no record of a marriage.”

  She held on to the edge of the table, mortification rolling over her in waves. The women were giving her suspicious looks. Her entire right side burned from Wade’s scrutiny.

  “I can explain,” she murmured.

  “Please do,” True
tt said.

  She swallowed and looked for her voice. “I had a wedding April 5 of this year in Cincinnati. But after the ceremony, the m-man I married…”

  “Yes,” Detective Salyers prompted.

  “Refused to sign the marriage certificate.” There. There it was, laid out for everyone to snicker at: Belinda Hennessey, the laughingstock. A dress, a cake, a ceremony, and nothing to show for her trouble.

  “So why did you tell us you were divorced?” Libby asked.

  “It seemed…easier.” And less humiliating.

  “So you’ve never been married?” Carole asked.

  Belinda shook her head.

  Wade broke his silence by suddenly shifting forward. “What does all this have to do with murder? Especially when Hardeman—”

  “That’s enough, Lieutenant,” Detective Salyers said with a stern look. “We’ll discuss that outside of this meeting.”

  “Right,” Truett said, adding his own warning look. “My point is that Ms. Hennessey moved to Atlanta to start her life over. Maybe she was a little desperate for things to work out.”

  This was worse than being naked in public—this was being naked in public and wearing a polka-dot neck scarf.

  “Maybe she clashed with her boss one too many times,” Truett continued, now looking at her. “On top of the anger she was already feeling over the derailed marriage, maybe it was too much.”

  What could she say? Hadn’t she practically ripped a little innocent embroidered pillow to shreds? Tossed out the photos and cards Vince had given her? Been on the verge of chucking her wedding gown? “I was angry and hurt over my breakup,” she admitted carefully. “And it is the reason I moved to Atlanta. But I didn’t kill my boss. Call me crazy, but the state penitentiary is not my idea of starting over.”

  Truett nodded. “Ms. Hennessey, do you watch a show called”—He consulted his notes—“The Single Files?”

  “Occasionally,” she said, puzzled.

  “We all watch that show,” Carole offered.

  “I don’t,” Rosemary said. “Not regularly.”

  “You do, too,” Libby insisted.

  “Wasn’t there a recent episode where a woman was locked in a trunk?”

  Belinda could see where this was leading, and it wasn’t a happy place.

  “Yes,” Carole said. “It’s one of our favorite episodes.” When she realized what she’d said, she balked. “But on the show, the lady in the trunk isn’t dead. She locked herself in…by accident.” Her voice petered out, but the damage was done.