Where The Bodies Are Buried (The Jeri Howard Series Book 8)

by Janet Dawson

  “Good morning, Jeri,” Alex said. His voice was pleasant enough, but he looked preoccupied. He held out several sheets of paper. “I need five copies of this for the meeting.”

  “Will do.” I headed for the copy machine. Someone else was using it. While I waited my turn, I grabbed the staple remover someone had left on top of the bookcase that held the copy paper. I yanked out all the staples, reading through the document, trying to get a sense of the contents.

  It was a three-page letter from the manager of a mutual fund, with a two-page chart attached. On my second read through I realized it had something to do with the Bates Inc. retirement plan. Bates had money invested in this fund, lots of numbers behind the dollar signs.

  The fund was losing money. In fact, it was hemorrhaging. And the fund manager was scrambling to explain the blood loss.

  Blood... Suddenly I remembered the scrap of conversation I’d overheard between Hank and Vanitzky last week, when I’d started working at Bates, my second day of listening at keyholes and peering through cracks in the door, like a voyeur or a Peeping Tom.

  “There’s blood all over the floor,” Vanitzky had told Hank. “Mopping it up ain’t gonna be pretty. In fact, you and I are gonna get bloodstains all over our hands.”

  What had sounded then like a cryptic remark now made some sense. Vanitzky knew about the problem with the mutual fund. He was warning Hank that solving the problem would be messy. Hank had said something like “the first I’ve heard of it.” Was he unaware of the situation until Vanitzky clued him in?

  I read through the letter again, focusing on words like “shortfall” and “discrepancy.” What the fund manager was saying between the lines was far more interesting than the words he’d used. It sounded as though he’d come quite close to accusing someone at Bates of dishonesty and mismanagement. He hadn’t named any names, though.

  I looked at the dollar signs on the chart and all the numbers after them. That was a lot of money. Other people’s money, the employees who had a stake in the retirement plan. And someone in authority was playing with it as though it were Monopoly money. Who had the clout and access? Ed Decker did. And so did David Vanitzky.

  My turn came at the copy machine. I punched in the user code and department code and made six copies of the letter and its attachment, rather than five. I put the original and the five copies on top of the papers I’d taken from Alex’s out basket and concealed the extra copy in the pages of another document. Then I walked back to the general counsel’s office.

  Four members of the committee had already assembled. As I set the papers on the desk, I saw Alex talking with Tonya Russell, the new human resources director. This was the first time I’d had a close look at her. She was a large, well-proportioned woman with pale blond hair and a complexion to match. She favored pastel suits, and today’s number was blue. Her band-box appearance contrasted with that of Ed Decker, the senior vice president who headed human resources, at least for now. He was red-faced, bulky through the torso in his gray suit, and his hairline had receded halfway up his shiny dome of a head. His head was inclined slightly as he stood listening to another man I’d never seen before. He was frowning, then I saw him scowl, as though furious at what he was hearing. He started to interrupt the other man, who raised a placating hand and kept on talking.

  I knew who the other meeting attendees were, so this must be Morris Upton of public affairs, the man responsible for damage control at Bates. He was short, with a wiry frame. He also wore a blue suit, this one with a red power tie glaring against the background provided by his white shirt. He had a full head of dark hair shot with gray and a round face with a mouth that was at the moment mobile. I had no trouble at all picturing him in front of a TV camera giving a statement to a reporter.

  As he talked with Decker, Upton toyed with the corner of one of the file folders, as though the folder’s placement on the table didn’t suit his sense of order. He sensed my eyes on him and looked up. His own dark eyes held only a modicum of curiosity as they flicked over me. Then, his curiosity satisfied as he identified me as office help, he dismissed me. He looked pointedly at his watch, with an air of impatience.

  As I turned to go, I glanced at the brass carriage clock on the corner of Alex’s desk. It was six minutes past nine o’clock, past time for the meeting to start, and David Vanitzky hadn’t yet arrived. Late, or he knew how to make an entrance.

  As the temp who’d delivered the copies, I was now even more superfluous than usual. I made my exit to the corridor. A few steps beyond Alex’s office, I once again came face-to-face with Bates’s chief financial officer, who had just come through the fire door that led to the stairwell near the elevator.

  Vanitzky looked dapper, but then he had every time I’d seen him. The dark gray pinstripes looked as though they’d been cut specifically for him, and perhaps they had. His tie was dark gray silk. No doubt the small red stone that glittered from his tiepin was a ruby. It looked for all the world like a drop of blood.

  He glanced at me and smiled. It was a friendly smile, far more intimate than I would have expected for an encounter between a secretary and the company’s second in command. Then his gray eyes moved past me, toward the closed door leading to the general counsel’s office. The smile changed. Now Vanitzky looked like a shark, ready to consume its prey. Hand on the knob, he opened the door. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, stood surveying the other men who’d assembled for the meeting.

  I was right. Vanitzky knew how to make an entrance.

  “I see we’re all here,” he said, his voice taking on a chill. “Let’s get started.”

  Vanitzky closed the door. I had an irrational desire to listen at the keyhole. A picture flashed in my mind. Jeri on her knees with her ear to the door. Now wouldn’t that attract a lot of attention.

  Besides, this was my chance to get into Rob’s office. As I walked down the east hallway, past the door to Cube City, I looked to make sure no one saw me, then I pushed open the door of Rob’s office. Since it was on an interior wall, I had to turn on the light in order to see clearly. That was unfortunate, since it might tip someone to my presence. But that couldn’t be helped. I had to be able to see what I was doing.

  The office looked different than it had when I’d first glimpsed it, last Thursday. The tall stacks of folders representing work in progress were now mostly gone. They had covered the surface of Rob’s desk and the tops of the filing cabinets. Now only one stack remained on the desk, and the tops of the cabinets were clear, with lines of dust outlining where the folders had rested. Four white cardboard file boxes sat on the carpet, in a semicircle to the left of the desk, all of them about half-full of folders.

  I knew what had happened. Both the police and corporate security chief Buck Tarcher had examined the office. Now Nancy Fong was sorting through the folders, filing them into the boxes, probably by subject matter.

  I searched the desk first, feeling as though the trail was already far too cold. But perhaps something in this office would tell me what Rob had been so concerned about at the time of his death. I’d take any clue I could find, however small and insignificant.

  The desk was a typical secretary’s desk with a typing return on the right-hand side, giving the whole affair an L shape. Since the advent of computers, typewriters were few and far between, so the return now held Rob’s monitor and keyboard. The computer itself was a tower model, tucked into the kneehole under the surface. The desk drawers yielded little beyond the usual things that clutter a desk—pens, pencils, paper clips, notepads, rubber bands, and a lot of dust. I even looked under the plastic divider trays that held all of these things, to see if Rob had hidden something there. Maybe I was too late. But maybe not. If Tarcher had found anything during his internal investigation, surely he would have told Sid. And Sid hadn’t said anything to me about new leads in the case. Or maybe he was holding out on me.

  I turned on Rob’s computer, not expecting to get far. The temporary password I�
�d been given when I started work at Bates got me into the network, but it wouldn’t enable me to get into Rob’s files.

  I switched off the computer, frustrated, and turned my attention to the files in the cardboard boxes, and those that remained on top of his desk. The labels on the folders at least told me the scope of Rob’s job. Since Rob’s position as a paralegal meant he worked for all the attorneys, his work had covered the whole spectrum of cases handled by the legal department. He’d done research, looking up statutes and case law for the employment law matters that were Alex’s specialty, as well as the regulatory law that was the focus of Patricia’s work for the company. For Hank, Rob had done most of the paperwork on trademarks, filing applications, renewals, and use affidavits.

  The brown plastic wastebasket under Rob’s desk had long since been emptied by the cleaning crew. However, in the corner of the back wall, I saw another wastebasket, this one red plastic with white letters that read “RECYCLE—WHITE PAPER ONLY.” It was half-full of discarded sheets of paper, most, but not all, white. I pulled the contents from the recycling bin and placed them on the surface of the desk, in a rough stack, and started skimming through them, one by one. I found a memo to all employees about corporate giving and how the company was cutting back on its donations this year. I already knew this from my weekend visit with Joe Franklin, but I hadn’t expected the company to cry poor mouth and announce it.

  Farther down the stack I found a photocopied page streaked with black toner from the copy machine, no doubt tossed into the recycling bin because words here and there were unreadable. It was a copy of a memo from Alex to Jeff Bates and David Vanitzky, on the subject of the union’s multiemployer pension fund.

  I quickly read through the memo. Like many employers, Bates contributed to a pension fund for its union employees who worked in the food processing plants and drove the trucks. The fund got contributions from more than one employer. It sounded as if Bates wanted to pull out of that fund and set up its own pension plan for union employees. As the company’s labor and employment lawyer, Alex was giving the CEO and CFO his take on the possible consequences of that action. Alex couched his words in a lot of legalese, but his meaning was clear. The unions would go on strike.

  I found nothing else of interest in the recycling bin, so I turned my attention to the filing cabinets. I moved quickly from drawer to drawer, but nothing caught my eye. The bookcases held a variety of publications one might usually find in a corporate legal department, the subject matter ranging from intellectual property to hazardous waste to antitrust.

  I was about to give up my search when I saw a piece of paper stuck between volumes of the state’s Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the California Regulatory Law Reporter. I tugged on the sheet with thumb and forefinger, gently working it from its hiding place.

  It was a photocopy of an article dealing with foodborne pathogens, in this case Escherichia coli 0157:H7, commonly known as E. coli. Had it been placed here inadvertently? Or on purpose?

  Whatever it meant, I’d have to figure it out later. I folded the single sheet several times, until it was a small square, then stuck it into the pocket of the skirt I wore, glancing at my watch at the same time. In my zeal to search Rob’s office, I’d lost track of time. How long had I been here? Twenty minutes, half an hour, or more? Long enough, I feared, for someone to notice I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

  I flicked off the light, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor, colliding with a large moving body. I stepped back, muttering, “Excuse me.”

  Then I focused on the face that was glaring at me suspiciously, the eyes whose interest in my surreptitious activities signaled trouble.

  It was Buck Tarcher, the corporate security chief.

  Twenty-four

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?” TARCHER DEMANDED.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said politely, wide-eyed with innocence and stalling for time.

  Tarcher had no intention of letting me pass without an explanation. “I asked you what you were doing in that office.”

  “Looking for a file.”

  It was the truth, in a way. I gave him a baffled look that asked what else a secretary would be doing in an office. Of course, I was no ordinary secretary. And the office in question was that of someone who’d been murdered.

  At that moment the cavalry arrived. Gladys rounded the corner from the south hallway, looking monumentally pissed off. If I’d had to make a guess as to why, I’d say she was irked because I’d disappeared for awhile.

  “There you are,” she snapped, putting hands on her hips and a lot of emphasis on the first word. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I need you to do something, right now.”

  “I’m on my way.” I sidestepped Tarcher and headed toward Gladys, hoping my smile put a better spin on the situation. Tarcher’s glare didn’t reassure me. And Gladys was feeling overworked, underappreciated, and ready to bitch at the first target, namely me.

  “Where did you disappear to?” she grumbled when we entered Cube City.

  “I was looking for something. I thought it might be in that paralegal’s office.”

  “Well, leave it for now. Patricia just dumped a load of stuff in the rush box. With Nancy out of the office today, it’s hard enough keeping up with all this work. I’m up to my ears in dictation tapes, and I can’t be expected to do them all.”

  I apologized for my absence, grabbed the first of several dictation tapes that had to be transcribed yesterday, and put my nose to the proverbial grindstone, trying to get back in Gladys’s good graces. I liked her. Besides, I didn’t want to lose someone who’d proved to be a good source of information. Her verbal explosion seemed to have taken care of her injured feelings, though. As I made a dent in the work that had piled up, her good humor returned.

  My run-in with Tarcher, however, left me with that eyes-on-my-back feeling the rest of the morning. I didn’t think the corporate security chief had been mollified by my explanation for having been in Rob’s office.

  That was only part of the reason for the feeling. The other part was Vanitzky, who I encountered in the hallway as I returned from a trip to the copy machine. The chief financial officer was just exiting the general counsel’s office. I guessed the meeting was over, though I saw no sign of the other attendees. Perhaps he’d stayed to talk further with Alex.

  When Vanitzky saw me, he smiled again. What was it about the sly upturn of his mouth that made me feel as though he knew more about me than I wanted him to?

  I pushed away my disquiet and detoured into Alex’s office to empty his out box. If I was lucky, he’d have written or dictated some notes on the meeting. I was more than a little curious to know what had gone on. But I had no such luck. The dictation tape I spent the next half hour transcribing contained a number of letters and memos, none of which had anything to do with the items I’d glimpsed in the meeting folders.

  One of the letters Alex had dictated was to go to an attorney in Washington, D.C. On the tape the general counsel said the address was in Nancy’s Rolodex. I stopped transcribing, got up, and walked over to Nancy’s cubicle, flipping through the cards to find the one for the attorney, whose last name started with an M. The Rolodex fell open to Patricia Mayhew’s home address. Montclair, in the Oakland hills. I thought of the cable car I’d heard on the tape she’d dictated, and my assumption she lived in San Francisco. Where had she been when she’d recorded those words? Nolan Ward’s place? I flipped Nancy’s Rolodex to the Ws. He lived in San Francisco, all right, on Nob Hill near the route of the Powell Street cable car.

  At twelve-thirty I told Gladys I was going to lunch and headed downstairs. My Franklin Street office, the one where I was Jeri Howard, private investigator, was a brisk fifteen-minute walk from the corporate headquarters of Bates Inc. I’d probably have expended the same amount of time if I drove and parked my car in the lot where I rented a space, so I walked, telling myself the exercise would do me good after being cooped up in an of
fice all morning. That left me with half an hour to bolt down a sandwich from the corner deli and check the mail and messages. Not much time to accomplish what needed to be done, which was why I’d be back after five and early tomorrow morning.

  I’d been working as a temp at Bates for only a week, but that eight-to-four-thirty schedule was taking a toll on my own business. I’d been at my own office at seven this morning, and yesterday morning, before I went to the temp job, but there were things a private investigator needed to do during the business hours when the temp was typing letters, such as the asset search an Oakland attorney had requested. Not being available was disrupting my investigative business.

  I missed the flexibility of being self-employed. Working for myself meant I didn’t have to check in with anyone else concerning the pattern and structure of my day. I could take two hours for lunch if I wanted to, or I could close my office early and head home if things were slow.

  And they would be slow, if I spent too much time being Jeri the office temp instead of J. Howard Investigations. But Rob Lawter had hired me, and paid me, and I owed it to him to find out who killed him, and why.

  I unfolded a letter from the building management and digested the unwelcome news that my office rent was being raised. Great timing, now that buying a house was going to increase my monthly expenses. I thought about that studio apartment above the garage of the new house. It was a good-sized space. As my real estate agent suggested, I could turn it into an office.

  But this downtown Oakland location was far more accessible for my clients. There was also the issue of my privacy. Did I really want some of the people I’d encountered in my years as an investigator knowing where I lived? Last spring I’d weathered a scary incident involving a stalker, one who’d shown up at my apartment and left a calling card. I didn’t want a repeat episode.