Fatal Impressions (14 page)

On Monday morning, when Loretta unlocked the door to the little office at DDD&W, she nearly stepped on an envelope lying on the floor. She leaned over and picked it up. Bethany, close behind her, whispered, “I bet it’s another anonymous letter. Is Dinah’s name on it?” She closed the door to the corridor.

“Yep,
Dinah Greene, c/o her friends
. It must be from somebody who knows Dinah’s been banished from here,” Loretta said.

“That could be anybody who came in last night or early this mornin’. Look what I grabbed from a desk we passed.” Bethany handed Loretta an interoffice memo from Hunt Austin Frederick to all employees, dated and time-stamped the previous evening. Dinah Greene would continue to be in charge of the new art installation, but she would manage the project from her office at the Greene Gallery. Members of Ms. Greene’s staff would complete the hanging of the prints. The Greene Gallery staffers working at DDD&W weren’t named, and Dinah’s absence wasn’t explained.

Loretta and Bethany exchanged glances. “I bet Jonathan’s lawyers warned those slugs that if there was a single negative word about Dinah or her business in this memo, he’d devote the family fortune and the rest of his life to ruinin’ them. A lawyer wrote this,” Bethany said.

Loretta nodded. “Yeah. But I reckon not naming us was Massa Frederick’s idea. Dissing us, wouldn’t you say? And he may not even know yet we’s colored folks.”

“Poor fool,” Bethany said. “What’s in the envelope?”

“A note telling us to look in all the drawers and cupboards in this office and in the store room ASAP, and make sure they’re empty. It’s typed, but there’s a PS in tiny handwriting:
Look for the horses
. That doesn’t make sense. No room for horses in here, not even room for mice. Could it be in code? It’s signed
A Friend
.”

Bethany looked around the tiny room. “About the first part there’s no problem: there’s not much to search. The ‘Friend’ couldn’t be talkin’ about the horses in the Stubbs photocopies—they’re at the gallery. Could there be other copies in here somewhere?”

“I’ll check,” Loretta said. “Look, all these desk drawers are empty, just a few supplies. I’ll take pictures of the empty spaces. If some of the people here are as rotten as they sound, and if the cops on the case are crooked, they might try to plant something. The bookcase has nothing in it. Ditto the top file-cabinet drawer. Oh, look, there’s a tool kit in the bottom drawer.”

“That’s Dinah’s. She used it to hang the prints in this office. She must have forgotten it. Remind me when we leave, and I’ll take it to her. We’ll check the storage room later to see if anything’s in there, but right now we should get down to business. I’ll lock the door while we fix up the office,” Bethany said.

They’d taped wires under their sweaters early that morning at the gallery, and one of Rob’s men had hooked up the recorders in the suite provided by Greg Fry. On their way in, they’d installed listening devices in the storage room and in the restroom on thirty-two. All they had to do was put a listening device behind one of the flower prints Dinah had hung, and one in the telephone. They’d barely finished when someone banged on the door.

“Open up that door! We know y’all are in there!”

“I recognize Dinah’s description of that dulcet voice,” Bethany said. “It’s the infamous Patti Sue.” She folded the note they’d found, pocketed it, and unlocked the door.

Patti Sue, beet-faced, stormed in on a tidal wave of Jungle Gardenia. Detective Harrison, reeking of tobacco, loomed behind her, and further back, nearly hidden by Harrison’s bulk, lurked a scrawny bald man in a short-sleeved white dress shirt. A big-haired brunette clasping a clipboard against her enormous breasts stood nearby. Detective Quintero, who appeared to be half-asleep, sat on an unoccupied desk across the corridor.

“What are y’all doin’!” Patti Sue yelled. “Why are y’all in here?”

Zeke had told Bethany when he’d dropped her off outside the Fry Building that morning that she looked like a princess in her bronze wool suit and the gigantic topaz earrings he’d given her for Christmas. Keeping his words in mind, and feeling his ring hanging on a chain under her blouse (she’d explained that she couldn’t wear it openly until they’d received her Aunt Mary Louise’s permission to marry), Bethany held her head high and tried to think like royalty. She proffered her Greene Gallery identification and a pass card signed by Hunt Frederick. Loretta took hers out of her bag and held it out, too, but Patti Sue ignored both of them, and kept yelling.

“Get outta here! You got no business in here!”

Bethany put her hands—one of them still clutching her ID—over her ears. “Please lower your voice. You’re hurtin’ my ears. Hunt Austin Frederick authorized us to continue the installation of the prints. We intend to do so. The hangers will arrive at eight.”

Patti Sue and Harrison opened their mouths like a pair of goldfish, but before either could speak, the bald man pushed them aside and stepped into the room. “I’m Mark Leichter, office manager at DDD&W. I don’t think we’ve met?”

“Bethany Byrd and Loretta Byrd from the Greene Gallery.”

He raised his sparse eyebrows above rimless spectacles. “May I see your identification, please?”

Leichter examined their passes and smiled, his thin lips revealing pointed little teeth. “As you can see, your presence here is a surprise. Please be good enough to leave the premises while we verify these documents with Mr. Frederick and the lawyers.”

Bethany shook her head. “Not unless you hand us a check for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. If you force us to leave, you have to pay in full for the art project. I have a copy of the contract with me, and the appropriate page is marked. But if you’re the office manager, I’m sure you know all about it?”

“I know the terms of the contract, but these are special circumstances, and asking you to leave while I check the validity of your papers with Mr. Frederick and the lawyers is a reasonable request,” Leichter insisted.

Loretta handed him the memo Bethany had picked up. “We don’t think so. I don’t understand why you’re surprised to see us. Here’s Mr. Frederick’s memo informing staff that Greene Gallery employees will continue to hang the prints. Surely this memo and our passes—signed by both Mr. Frederick and one of your lawyers—are sufficient ‘validity’? Here are our business cards. Here’s a copy of the Greene Gallery invoice for the earlier work, marked paid in full. Here’s another for the balance of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Pay up and we’re out of here. Otherwise, read my lips: we’re hanging prints.”

Leichter gritted his tiny teeth, glanced at the papers, and returned them. “Everything appears to be in order,” he said. He marched away, his neck and back military stiff. The woman with the black beehive stuck her head into the office. “You should leave. No one wants you here,” she screeched, and raced off to catch up with Leichter. She left a discount drugstore aroma in her wake—Listerine, cheap perfume, disinfectant.

Bethany turned to Patti Sue and Harrison. “Now, what can we do for you two?”

Harrison, his face nearly as red as Patti Sue’s, flared his hairy nostrils. “I have a warrant to search this office,” he said.

“May I see it, please?” Bethany scanned the paper he handed her. “Okay, get on with it. We have work to do.”

He leered at her. “You’ll have to leave, Mama, you and the other sister. You mighty fine women, but you in the way.”

Bethany smiled. “One, I’m not leaving and neither is my colleague. Two, call me anything ever again but Ms. Byrd, and I’ll have your—uh—large rear end in court so fast, your tiny brain may not catch up with it.”

Loretta laughed. “‘Mama!’ My goodness, Detective, I think you should consider a little sensitivity training—you’ll be saying ‘Mammy’ next, or ‘Aunt Jemima.’ You might want to do a calendar check, too. We’re in the twenty-first century here.”

Harrison flushed even redder and began opening the drawers and cupboards they’d just searched, slamming them closed when he’d looked inside. Then he spotted Dinah’s tool kit lying on the desk and opened it, revealing her hammer, screwdriver, and the other tools she used for hanging prints. “Hey! What’s this? Just what I was looking for! It’s even got Ms. Greene’s initials on the lid of the kit. Now we know how she fixed the shelves to fall,” he gloated.

Bethany and Loretta avoided each other’s eyes. Hell’s bells, Bethany thought, if only we’d come in over the weekend to clear out this room, or even an hour earlier. No way did Dinah kill that woman, but Harrison’s discovery of the tool kit, and his take on it—well, it was definitely a situation. Why hadn’t she thought of this when she’d seen the tool kit in the drawer? No point in grieving. Even if she had seen it, there was nowhere to hide it, and there hadn’t been time to remove it before the arrival of the enemy.

Harrison searched the rest of the room, peering into every cranny. Was he looking for a place to plant something?

“You won’t find anything else in here. We searched everywhere and photographed inside all the drawers and cupboards. The photos have the date and time on them. If somethin’ new should turn up, we can prove it wasn’t here earlier,” Bethany said.

Harrison looked at her as if he’d like to hit her. Maybe he’d have tried, if Loretta wasn’t watching. Bethany almost wished he
would
attack. She’d excelled in self-defense classes, and she knew every sensitive spot on the male body. She’d have loved kickin’ the man in the googlies, maybe bashin’ him in the ying-yang while she was at it. She bet his brain wasn’t his only tiny organ. Her self-defense teacher had told her that even the smallest male body part could feel huge pain.
Ooh-eee
. What a temptation.

Harrison shoved Loretta out of his way and, with Dinah’s toolbox in his hand, strode out of the office.

“If you’re takin’ that tool kit, I’ll need a receipt,” Bethany called after him. “In case you weren’t plannin’ to give me one, my colleague took a photo of you walkin’ off with it in your hands.”

He stopped, his back toward them, and scribbled on a scrap of paper he tore from his notebook. He passed it over his shoulder without looking back. Loretta, who had followed him into the corridor, took the paper and passed it to Bethany.

“Thank you,” Bethany called after him, her voice syrupy. Harrison and Quintero disappeared down the corridor without a backward glance.

Patti Sue, who hadn’t moved or uttered a sound while Harrison was searching the room, stared at them. “Are y’all Negroes?” she asked.

Bethany raised her eyebrows. “You could say so, although most people wouldn’t,” she said.

Patti Sue guffawed. “If y’all are Negroes, what’cha’ll doin’ in here? Why don’t y’all go pick some cotton?”

“She’ll sound good on tape,” Loretta murmured.

Bethany nodded. She knew all there was to know about Patti Sue after seeing her and hearing her talk: white trash. Dinah had been too mannerly to say so, but that’s what Patti Sue was. Vulgar, stupid, bigoted, and pig ignorant. Bethany had mostly been spared meeting the Patti Sues of the world, but she’d seen them on TV and in films.

“Neither of us has had to pick much cotton since we graduated from college,” Bethany said. “Educated people don’t need that kind of work these days. Those folks you see out in the fields are redneck crackers who barely made it through fifth grade.” She turned to Loretta. “Didn’t Dinah say she heard someone called a redneck cracker in the ladies’ room the other day? I wonder who that might have been?”

Patti Sue, shrieking a mixture of obscenities and racial epithets, charged toward Bethany, who was standing behind the desk at the back of the room. Loretta, nearer the door and in Patti Sue’s path, moved her foot slightly. Patti Sue tripped, crashing to the floor and hitting her head on the edge of the metal desk. Loretta smiled and said, “So sorry! It’s hard to get out of the way in this tiny office.”

Blood poured from a cut under Patti Sue’s straw-like hair. She struggled to get to her knees but was handicapped by her tight pink leather skirt. Just as she pulled it up to her waist—exposing a purple thong with ‘Monday’ scrawled across the crotch—an enormous man in red suspenders appeared in the door, trumpeting like an enraged elephant.

“What the fuckin’ hell is going on in here? Sounds like a goddamn riot. Patti Sue, what the hell are you doin’ down there on the floor exposin’ yourself? You ain’t a pretty sight. Or sound. Shut up! Some of us are tryin’ to get some fuckin’ work done! I got four chocolate bars and six tea bags waitin’ in a conference room, all dyin’ to fork over some gold if they get a chance to hear me speak.”

When Red Suspenders spotted Bethany and Loretta, his shiny full moon face lit up. “Hi-dee! ‘Scuse me and my language. I din’t know ladies were present. What are you Tootsie Rolls doin’ here?”

“‘Tootsie Rolls,’” Loretta repeated. “Excuse me, sir. Is that an allusion to our color?”

Red Suspenders howled, his big belly shaking. “No, Babycakes, I’d say that color-wise you’re more like a Caramel Chew. I call all the girls Tootsie Rolls, like I call the Swiss chocolate bars, and that sure ain’t an allusion to their color. They’re white as snow, which ain’t surprisin’, seein’ how as they live ass-deep in it. Who are you, anyway? You sure as hell dress up the place. For God’s sake, Patti Sue, stop that caterwaulin’ and go wash your face—you’re bleedin’ all over the effin’ rug.”

Patti Sue managed to stand up, pulled down her skirt, and fled, bawling like an abandoned calf.

Bethany contemplated their latest visitor. Coleman had described Harrison as a caricature cop; wait till she met this cartoon investment banker. “We’re from the Greene Gallery, here to oversee the art installation. I’m Bethany Byrd, and this is Loretta Byrd.”

“Greene Gallery? Bird gallery, I’d say—tropical birds. Parakeets? Love Birds? Lordy, Lordy, what a treat for these sore ole eyes. Say, Patti Sue dint attack you, did she? Her and one of the other dames here have fist-fights when they think nobody’s lookin’, mostly in the girls’ privy. Y’all better watch out for her. Well, Love Birds, I gotta get back to work. My name’s Michael Shanahan. Folks call me Moose. If you purty things need help, speak out. I’m a partner—I got pull here. Toodle-loo.”