Kill the Competition

by Stephanie Bond

  The tall woman seemed flustered, but she managed a small smile in return.

  Down the hallway and to the right, Rosemary sat adjacent to Juneau Archer’s office in her own work area, identical to the Margo/Brita setup. Rosemary nodded to Belinda with wide, bright eyes and seemed to be telegraphing something to her, but when the door opened and Mr. Archer stuck his head out, Rosemary busied herself with the filing cabinet behind her. Trying not to read anything into the behavior, Belinda offered Mr. Archer a smile. “Hello, sir.”

  He didn’t smile. “Come in, Ms. Hennessey.”

  Not a promising start. She gulped air, walked through the door he held open, then balked. Detectives Salyers and Truett sat in the matching visitor chairs. Wade stood in the back of the room, arms crossed, looking at the floor. Another bad sign.

  “Mr. Archer,” Belinda said, “I was hoping we could speak in private.”

  He settled into a chair behind a massive desk. “Have a seat, Ms. Hennessey.”

  So much for privacy. An odd chair had been set out—pea green, in her honor. She sat.

  Mr. Archer clasped his long hands together on his desk. “Ms. Hennessey, the detectives and I want to talk to you about something.”

  She folded her hands to keep them from shaking. “I’ll answer whatever questions I can.”

  Truett shifted in his chair. “We want to know why you went back to Ms. Campbell’s office last Monday.”

  Belinda cleared her throat. “Mr. Archer, this is what I wanted to talk to you about.” Her voice sounded hollow in her ears. “I went back to Margo’s office to talk to her about some concerns I had with the Payton acquisition.”

  Juneau Archer’s gray eyebrows met in a frown. “But the previous week you told me and the other board of directors that everything was in good shape.”

  Belinda wet her lips. “To be honest, sir, I was concerned all along that Payton might be hiding debt in its capital expenditures. When I pointed out those discrepancies to Margo, she, um, convinced me to overlook the problems to accelerate the acquisition.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Convinced?”

  “You mean bribed?” Salyers prompted.

  “Y-yes.” Belinda exhaled. Her face was on fire. “In return for not raising questions that would stall the deal, she offered me the position of CFO.” Her back prickled from Wade’s gaze. What must he think of her?

  Mr. Archer’s face turned a mottled shade of red, and all she could think was that if he stroked out, she’d have two deaths on her hands.

  “I’m not proud of what I did,” she added quickly, “and I regretted it. I knew the contracts were signed and on the verge of being executed, so I went to Margo’s office late Monday to tell her that I’d changed my mind.”

  “You argued?” Truett said.

  “No.” Belinda shook her head. “At first she wasn’t happy that I was reneging on our deal, but I persuaded her that we could postpone the deal long enough for me to dig into the numbers. If things were on the up and up, then we would go forward with the acquisition as planned.”

  “So she agreed to hold the contracts?” Salyers said.

  “Yes. She said we’d revisit the Payton financials when she returned.”

  “Where are the contracts?” Juneau Archer asked.

  Yilk. “I’m sorry to say, sir, that they’re…lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “When I called in Tuesday to see if anything needed my attention in Margo’s absence, I talked to Brita, and she said that the contracts had been mailed by mistake. I called APS and had the packet intercepted.”

  “And?”

  Her intestines twisted. “And the contracts seem to have gotten…waylaid…in the delivery system.”

  Mr. Archer dropped his head in his hands.

  Her career was over. Here lies Belinda Hennessey. She was incompetent.

  Salyers leaned forward in her chair. “So you’re saying that when you told Ms. Campbell you had changed your mind, she just caved? That sounds out of character from everything else we’ve heard about the woman.”

  Belinda lifted her shoulders. “I guess she knew it was the right thing to do.”

  “But you must have expected a confrontation when you went to her office?”

  “I knew she’d be angry with me, but it was something I had to do.”

  Truett narrowed his eyes. “Why the sudden change of heart, Ms. Hennessey?”

  Belinda lifted her chin. “It was a change back to the real me, Detective. I got caught up in the promise of success, but then I realized that I couldn’t lie, not when so many people’s jobs were involved.”

  “Even if reneging on the deal with Ms. Campbell jeopardized your own job?”

  She nodded.

  “Mighty noble of you,” Truett said dryly, and she realized with a sinking heart that he didn’t believe a word she’d said. “Show her the memo, Mr. Archer.”

  Her nerves fluttered. “Memo?”

  Mr. Archer stood and extended a sheet of paper across the desk. “We’ve been going through the files on Margo’s computer, and we came across this memo. It was created Monday afternoon but went undelivered. Apparently, she was having some misgivings about your credibility, Ms. Hennessey.”

  Bewildered, Belinda took the memo. It was addressed to Mr. Archer. In one short paragraph Margo explained that she had raised last-minute issues with items on the Payton financials and had been concerned about Belinda’s pat response to those questions. The memo went on to say that the exercise, while not reason enough to halt the acquisition, had shaken her faith in Belinda’s abilities and she would, in Margo’s opinion, have to be let go.

  A lump lodged in Belinda’s throat, and her hand holding the memo started shaking. “I think I know what she’s referring to here.” She told them about Margo couriering over a set of financials for her to review on the previous Sunday, and her opinion that the items Margo questioned had seemed self-explanatory.

  “This set of financials?” Mr. Archer asked, pushing forward a set of papers held by the red rubber band Belinda had put around them when she’d finished.

  “Yes.” She flipped through the pages and frowned. “No. These aren’t the questions Margo had for me—these are the questions I had for her early on.”

  But the generic way Margo had asked her to respond to inquiries by item number had allowed Margo to change the source document so that Belinda’s answers seemingly corresponded to different questions. Her mind raced—Margo had covered her bases in the event the Payton financials would come back to haunt her. Betrayal hit Belinda like a slap in the face. Tears pressed behind her eyes. Moisture left her mouth. How stupid could she have been not to have seen she was being used?

  “Ms. Hennessey,” Mr. Archer said, steepling his fingers, “I’m not as involved in the day-to-day activities as I used to be, but Margo certainly would have had to obtain my approval before offering you the CFO position of my company, and I assure you, the subject never came up.”

  Confusion flooded over Belinda, and her chest heaved. “I don’t…understand. She told me you had already agreed.”

  Juneau Archer pursed his mouth, looked at the detectives, and shook his head no.

  Belinda blinked, trying to grasp the ramifications of what Margo had done to her.

  “Let me sketch a scenario,” Truett said to her, leaning forward. “During your performance evaluation Monday afternoon, Ms. Campbell alludes to the fact that she’s going to reveal the discrepancies in your recommendation. You go back later and, according to her assistant, practically force your way into her office. The two of you argue, one thing leads to another, and she winds up dead. You think you can blame it on Jim Newberry because you were there when he burst into Ms. Campbell’s office. The problem is, no one else heard Newberry threaten to kill her.”

  “Th-that’s ridiculous,” Belinda whispered, forcing air past her parched throat. “And besides, Margo gave me an outstanding evaluation.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she remembered t
he evaluation was missing.

  Truett must have read her mind. “We found a copy of the evaluation, too. Let’s just say it reflected her wish to fire you. Did you destroy the original?”

  “No.” Belinda gripped the arms of the chair. “Don’t you see? Margo tricked me. She…set me up.”

  “Isn’t that what you told us Jim Newberry said?” Truett asked with a sad little smile. “Ms. Hennessey, you’d better hope that we find Julian Hardeman and that he makes a complete confession.”

  The crushing revelation of Margo’s treachery was bulldozed by another more formidable realization: She now had a concrete motive for murdering her boss.

  Chapter 30

  Belinda didn’t make eye contact with Wade as he and the detectives left Mr. Archer’s office. She didn’t want to see the censure in his eyes, although no one could possibly think as little of her as she thought of herself at the moment.

  From behind his desk, Mr. Archer radiated disapproval. “Ms. Hennessey, you have put my company in a precarious situation.”

  Feeling as if she had little to lose, Belinda stood and pulled her shoulders back. “I accept full responsibility for my behavior, but it seems to me that you, sir, are the one who has put your company in a precarious situation by turning the reins over to a tyrant like Margo Campbell.”

  His mouth opened in outrage.

  “I’ve heard that Archer was a great place to work before Margo was given carte blanche around the office. Pardon my boldness, sir, but this company needs a strong leader right now, and everyone wants you to come back full time, at least until a new senior management team can be put into place. Meanwhile, I’m willing to stay until you can find a replacement for me, or as long as you need me, sir, to facilitate the transition. Although I would understand if you wanted me to…go.” She swallowed hard, waiting.

  He sat back in his chair and studied her until she squirmed. She had a vision of him ten, twenty, thirty years younger and suspected he once had been a rock of strength for the people around him. It would be a shame if everything he’d built fell apart.

  “Ms. Hennessey,” he said finally, “I expect you to stay long enough to straighten out this holy mess with Payton. Then we’ll see.”

  She exhaled. “Brita agreed to help me put together a report on Margo’s outstanding projects.”

  “That would be helpful,” he said in a tone that suggested he realized that without Jeanie Lawford, Jim Newberry, Margo, or the interest of his own son, the ranks were growing slim and business still needed to be conducted. “Meanwhile, find those contracts.”

  She exited on taffylike legs and glanced at Rosemary, who was possibly as pale as she felt.

  “I heard,” Rosemary murmured, pointing to a small vent in the wall between Mr. Archer’s office and her work area. “What are you going to do?”

  Belinda shuffled closer and lifted her hands—they were numb, like the rest of her. “I’m going to do my job. Everything else is out of my control, unless the four of us can think of something to help the case.”

  Rosemary sighed. “So Margo set you up?”

  Belinda nodded. “She was going to use me to cover her tracks on the Payton financials. She told me she was going to hold the contracts, but she’d planned to mail them all along. By the time she returned from vacation, the deal would be done, then I would be fired.”

  “And no one would be around to ask questions?”

  “Right.”

  Rosemary’s mouth tightened. “Makes me wonder if she was setting up Jeanie, too. Maybe pressuring her to do something, and when she wouldn’t…”

  It was a terrible thought, but Margo had proved her ruthlessness.

  “Are you going to hire an attorney?” Rosemary asked.

  “I don’t want to. Anytime I hear about someone hiring a lawyer, I think they must be guilty.”

  “Me, too,” Rosemary admitted. “But maybe Julian will turn up soon. You have to admit it’s pretty suspicious that he wouldn’t take a lie detector test.”

  “Although maybe the radio station advised him not to.”

  Rosemary angled her chin. “You don’t think he’s guilty, do you?”

  Why was it so hard for her to accept that Julian was somehow involved? Because she didn’t want to be wrong again? “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  Belinda returned to her desk, feeling disembodied. She was moving and walking, but it was almost as if an energy field separated her from the people she passed in the aisles. Perhaps it was a physical manifestation of that “arrogant independence” Vince had accused her of using to shield herself from others. Maybe so, but the auto-defense part of her psyche realized the nice, hazy buffer was keeping her from falling completely apart.

  In desperation, she dialed Hank Baxter’s cell phone number. When his voice message kicked on, she spoke with as much calm as she could muster. “Hank, this is Belinda Hennessey, checking again on the lost Archer package. I’m assuming you didn’t find it over the weekend, but please call me as soon as possible and let me know.”

  She returned the receiver and sat quietly, trying to wrap her mind around events that had occurred at Archer—Jeanie’s death, Margo’s murder, the stolen money, the random breakins. Were they arbitrary events or somehow connected?

  And how pathetically ironic that the first time in her life she had done something unethical, she had incriminated herself so thoroughly into a murder investigation. Note to self: She wasn’t good at being bad, and if she got out of this mess with her sanity and freedom, she would never break another rule, not even remove a mattress tag.

  Her phone rang, and she yanked it up, hoping for news of the missing package. “Belinda Hennessey.”

  “Belinda,” a man’s voice said, “this is Perry.”

  She pulled back and stared at the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, sorry, Perry, I’m just surprised to hear from you. Is something wrong?”

  “I thought you’d want to know that when I came home, I saw somebody sneaking around your place.”

  She swallowed hard. “Was it a man?”

  “I guess so—now that you mention it, I’m not sure. By the time I parked my truck, they’d run off.”

  “They were on foot?”

  He hesitated, and she pictured him scratching. “I didn’t see a car, but it might have been parked on another street. I figured it was some kind of reporter, and in case they left handprints on your window, I didn’t want you to think I’d been peekin’.”

  “Thanks, Perry. You were right to call me.”

  “Well,” his voice swelled with pride, “I figured you must be spooked, since that cop kept watch all night.”

  She squinted. “Excuse me?”

  “Did you burp?”

  She closed her eyes. “No, Perry, I meant, what are you talking about?”

  “A cop sat in a cruiser in your driveway all night. That big fellow who came around asking me questions.”

  A warm tingle found its way through the nice, hazy buffer. Wade. He must have driven up after his shift to keep an eye on things after he found out she wasn’t staying with a friend. She frowned—why hadn’t he rung her doorbell?

  Because he was afraid he would wind up ringing her doorbell?

  Or because he already knew what the detectives had just revealed?

  A pecking noise sounded in her ear. “Belinda? Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Perry. Thanks for calling. If you see anyone else snooping around, call the police and ask for Lt. Alexander.”

  “Sure thing. This is some kind of exciting.”

  She murmured something appropriate and hung up slowly, thinking it was highly unlikely that Julian would be looking for her at the town house during the day—unless he’d lost his grip on reality. More likely, it was a reporter poking around. Or maybe the creeper who’d supposedly been breaking into employees’ homes?

  On a hunch, she walked around the corner and down to Libby’s cubicle. She found the
woman staring into space with a private little smile on her face. “Libby?”

  Libby blinked and looked up. “Yes?”

  “I’m glad to see someone smiling. Would you like to share?”

  “Not yet…but soon. How’d it go with Mr. Archer?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Would you do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Would you call your friend in HR and ask her if anyone in the office is out sick today?”

  Libby dialed the number, had a brief conversation with her friend, then hung up. “Tal Archer called in sick, but my friend said that was nothing new. Diane Bailey in IT is having knee surgery today. And Clancy called in sick.”

  “Clancy?”

  “Said he has a stomach virus.”

  Belinda nodded slowly.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Too many to count, but thanks for the info.” She walked back to her desk, mulling Clancy’s possible involvement, or even Tal’s, although the Archer heir seemed so uncomfortable with his role since Margo had died that she couldn’t imagine him getting rid of the woman who had made his life easier. And the man’s sexual orientation contradicted a scorned lover/stalker theory. Clancy’s too.

  And why either man would be breaking into Archer employees’ homes for no apparent reason, she couldn’t fathom.

  Her phone was ringing when she walked back into her cubicle. At the sound of Hank Baxter’s cheerful voice, her hopes rose.

  “Ms. Hennessey, I just got a call that a package matching the description of yours has been located.”

  Her shoulders fell in relief. “Thank God. Where is it?”

  “Tulsa.”

  “As in, Oklahoma?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. But I’m having it overnighted to me, so hopefully, it’s the one we’re looking for.”

  Hopefully—the catchphrase of her life. Here lies Belinda Hennessey. Hopefully.

  “Thank you, Hank, for all your trouble. Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.”

  She hung up and considered calling Wade. She even picked up the receiver, but she changed her mind. What would she say—I’m not a bad person, I just did a bad thing? Was there really a difference once a person passed their tenth birthday?