“Yours isn’t back yet, Tessa?” Wendy asked.
Tessa shook her head, embarrassed. “I broke mine,” she
explained to me. “Caught the clasp on something and pulled it right off. I kept forgetting to take it in, now I have to remember to go pick it up.”
“Garth’s Girls. Is that a name he gave you or did you choose it yourselves?”
“Who can ever remember where an idea starts,” Tessa said quickly. “We work as a group, think as a group, take credit as a group.”
“We are the Borg,” Wendy suggested. She seemed eager to stand out from the crowd and even more eager to get this gathering over with. I couldn’t tell whether she felt she had other things to do or if she wasn’t eager to discuss the topic at hand.
“I appreciate all of you taking the time to talk to me.”
“Command performances are our specialty,” Wendy said, earning a dark look from Tessa.
“Emile called this morning and let us know you wanted to talk to us about Gwen taking the helm here at GHInc. Of course, we’re delighted to have the opportunity to discuss it with you,” Tessa said smoothly, like she was drafting a press release as she went along.
Helen was more tart. “We love Gwen and we’re thrilled she’s going to be our new leader. She even has a bracelet, if she wants to start wearing it again.”
“Garth gave her one of these bracelets?”
“He said he owed it to her for getting Emile to move over here,” Tessa explained. “And because she’d been his ‘main girl’ for so long.” Not exactly a winning term of endearment, especially because the infidelity stories had gotten so much play during their separation. Was he complimenting her or insulting her by lumping her in with the women in his office?
“I don’t think she wears it anymore,” Francesca said. The quick exchange of glances around the table said they didn’t blame her for that choice.
“Their split, then the merger, then losing Garth—it’s been a crazy year,” Lindsay offered.
“But still very profitable, so far,” Francesca said.
“Have you been spending a lot of time with Gwen in her new position?” I asked.
“We’ll have her up to speed in no time,” Tessa said.
“She and Ronnie Willis have been working very hard to set up a smooth transition, so we’ve just been pushing on ahead,” Lindsay explained.
“Which we’re quite capable of doing,” Wendy said, her voice growing more brittle with each pronouncement. There was barely contained fury in her, but it was hard to determine whether it was directed at someone in particular or there for all to share.
“This must be incredibly awkward.”
“Replacing the dead guy, you mean?” Wendy leaned back in her chair as though she were peering under the table to see if her legs were long enough to kick me. “Of course it’s awkward. It’s hideous. And I’m betting it’s not exactly her idea of a good time either.”
The rest of them continued to look at me with polished smiles, waiting for the next question. It was the Thanksgiving dinner dynamic: Everyone knows Uncle Fred gets a little crazy when he has his sherry, so no one reacts to it anymore. Still, I had to wonder if this was how Wendy always comported herself or if part of her fury stemmed from Garth’s death. Perhaps she was one of the palm-inscribers Gwen had spoken of so disdainfully.
“I would’ve done anything for Garth,” Lindsay said with quiet firmness and most of the rest of them nodded in pained agreement. Only Wendy got up and turned away, studying the view of Seventh Avenue through the window behind her. “We’re all looking forward to working with Gwen but, as you can imagine, it will take some time for us to feel the same way about her.” She yanked on her newest strip of paper with a little extra firmness.
“’Cause if she can have us that easily, then we’re just sluts, right?” Wendy said. She was still looking out the window but I could hear the tears in her voice.
Megan did cry, dropping her head into her hands. Helen slid a comforting arm around her. “Knock it off, Wendy,” Helen requested.
“It’s been very difficult. He was the heart of our process,
we’re still trying to learn how to exist without him,” Lindsay said. The others nodded, even Wendy.
I’ve had good bosses, I’ve had hideous ones. I’ve even had bosses die on me. But I’ve never had a boss who came close to inspiring this level of emotion in me. Had I been unfortunate or were these gals nuts? Gwen had used the word “cult.” “Coven” seemed to fit even a little better. Part of me wanted to laugh in anticipation of the punchline I hoped was coming, but between Wendy’s agitation, Megan’s tears, and Lindsay’s paper tearing, and the general air of anguish in the room, I couldn’t deny that this emotion was uncomfortably real.
I also couldn’t be sure how reticent they’d be about talking about the actual murder. “It must be hard to get past what happened to him, to stop thinking about it,” I said, trying to ease into it.
Megan’s sobs deepened, but no one else rushed to respond. After a moment, Tessa said, “We miss him every day, so we can’t help but think about it.”
Wendy finally turned back from the window. “And now we’re working with her, which is also a pretty pointed reminder.”
“Wendy, don’t,” Lindsay said quietly.
I immediately looked back to Wendy to see if I could figure out what she was doing that she wasn’t supposed to be doing. Thankfully, Wendy cleared that right up. “Sorry. I’m not supposed to accuse the new boss of murder.”
Tessa rocketed to her feet. “Wendy, she doesn’t know you well enough to recognize your poor attempts at humor.”
Wendy stiffened. “Don’t sweat up your pretty little blouse worrying she’s going to write something about my accusing Gwen. Come off it, Tessa, she’s not even going to mention the word ‘murder’ in her article. Gwen will be referred to as ‘the former wife of the late Garth Henderson’ or some elliptical crap like that, right? I mean, no offense to you,” she swung her napalm gaze in my direction, “but we’re all in the image business, right? We might as well be honest with each other, even if we aren’t going to be honest with the public.
This is one of Emile’s parlor tricks to make Gwen look good and I defer to his clout. But I want it known that this is bullshit and I’m here under duress.”
A series of looks ricocheted around the room like that insane drinking game where you wink at each other and whoever misses the sequence has to do shots. They were checking on each other’s reactions, trying to silently decide who was going to react and how strongly. A fascinating sociological exercise, but it was moving too fast for me to keep up. I got a sense that Lindsay and Tessa were the locus of the network, but they weren’t looking at each other at all.
As long as accusations were being flung and Wendy was so totally wrong about why I was really there, I thought I’d add my own spice to the stew. “So, Wendy, when you accuse a new boss of murder, it’s Gwen and not Ronnie you’re accusing?”
Wendy’s head snapped back as though I’d thrown my tape recorder at her. “Ronnie Willis?” She laughed gratingly. Francesca tried to pull her back down into her seat and failed. “That’ll be the day. That’s Ronnie’s whole problem, he’s not a killer in any sense of the word.”
“Do you like anyone here, Wendy?” I asked.
“Including you?”
I had to smile. Partly because I admired the clarity of her rage, even if it was broadly directed. But mainly because I was sure Tessa would clear the room if it appeared I was taking Wendy too seriously and I wanted to know what else Wendy had to say. Especially about Ronnie.
“What do you really want to know, Ms. Forrester?” Lindsay asked, taking one of the strips of paper and curling it around her finger. There was a certain even pressure to her tone that was calming to the rest of them. Wendy actually sat back down. They were a tightly knit group with convoluted dynamics but the broad strokes were apparent: Tessa was the leader, Wendy the troublemaker, and Lindsay the peacemaker.
What I really wanted to know was what, if anything,
made them worth killing for. But I asked, “As I said, how do you feel about Gwen Lincoln as your new boss?”
This time, everyone waited for Lindsay to answer, even Wendy. But it didn’t feel like deference as much as tiger cubs waiting for the mama to have the first bite before they pounced. “I don’t envy anyone coming in here to fill Garth’s shoes. But if you’re going to attempt to replace the irreplaceable, Gwen Lincoln and Ronnie Willis are an excellent place to start.”
Frustration was nipping at my heels. They were too contained, too polished. Even Wendy. They had circled the wagons and, with the glibness of minds accustomed to creating slick images and phrases, were keeping me at bay. I was about to retreat when the vestal virgin burst in, face flushed and placid demeanor blown to smithereens.
“Help!” she squeaked.
“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked. She and Lindsay got up immediately, hurrying over to the receptionist. The others rose more slowly.
“Mr. Douglass …”
“Jack Douglass is here?” Tessa asked. The receptionist nodded frantically. Tessa looked at Lindsay. “Do we have a meeting?”
“No,” Lindsay answered, but it didn’t really matter because at that moment, Jack Douglass, CEO of Douglass Frozen Foods, stepped into the room and while he may not have had a meeting, he did have a gun.
“AM I INTERRUPTING?” CASSADY ASKED breezily, then continued before I could tell her that she actually was. “And feel free to hang up on me, since I deserve all the righteous snarks you toss my way because I was selfish and impetuous last night and I’m actually sorry.”
“Much as I enjoy the rare treat of you apologizing, this isn’t an ideal time to chat,” I explained.
“Then meet me for lunch and I’ll still be full of remorse, I promise.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be free for lunch. In fact, I think the detective I’m with would like me to get off the phone right now.”
Cassady sighed lightly. “Tell Kyle to be patient and learn to share.”
“It’s not Kyle.”
Cassady sighed deeply. “Molly Forrester, what have you done?”
Yeah, well, what I had done was get just the slightest bit carried away by the sight of Jack Douglass with a gun in his hand. Most of the Harem had frozen in horror. Megan had started weeping again, Francesca had screamed, and Wendy had uttered a very colorful, convoluted exclamation that began with “Holy” and ended with “Mother of God,” but went some decidedly profane places in between.
“Mr. Douglass,” Tessa had attempted, but at that, the paunchy but still dapper man in the doorway had raised his small but vicious-looking gun higher, as though he were drawing her attention to it because she certainly wouldn’t have spoken had she seen it when he first stepped into the room. Absurdly, I was checking the reflection of the wall sconces on his balding head, noting that he didn’t seem to be sweating in the least. I figured that was good because it meant he was somewhat calm and wasn’t sweating bullets, as it were. It had to be to our benefit that he was calm. Didn’t it?
Lindsay tried next. “Mr. Douglass, there’s no need—”
“I’ll decide what I need!” His voice was much tighter than I would have hoped for; “calm” was definitely on its way out. With his free hand, he dragged a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped it across his bald spot. He wasn’t calm, he was just buffed dry. “You people pretend to know, but you don’t! And now look!” He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket as he strode into the room. We receded from him like a wave pulling back from the beach.
There was a telephone designed for conference calls sitting on the middle of the table. It looked like something off the
Star Trek
bridge—some synthetic spider perched in the middle of the table, awaiting orders. I stepped in close to Lindsay, so we were shoulder-to-shoulder and blocking Douglass’ view of the phone. Sneaking one hand behind my back, I flailed my fingers at it, hoping Wendy or someone else on the far side of the table would see the gesture. After a moment, I heard the faint squeak of the phone being moved on the table.
Unfortunately, so did Douglass. He turned in our direction and I stepped forward to distract him. I’d like to say I was being brave and cunning, but it was blindly instinctual and when both he and the gun turned in response, my stomach went liquid with regret. But once I was committed, there was nothing to do but improvise and hope someone behind me was dialing 911.
“Mr. Douglass, let’s discuss this.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“A neutral party.”
“Then get out of here. Now. I have business to attend to.”
Lindsay stepped up beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder again. I was impressed and grateful. “Mr. Douglass, whatever your concern—”
“My concern? How about my work, my life? My board of directors wants to get rid of me. Because I was foolish enough to listen to you.” He swung the gun slightly past us at this point and I turned my head just enough to see Wendy was the one in the line of fire. She responded by going alarmingly pale.
“The campaign’s tracking very well,” Lindsay said gently.
“But they’re embarrassed. They doubt my moral rectitude. You told me it would work!”
“It did work. It increased your sales.” Gwen Lincoln had stepped into the doorway behind him, improbably cool and collected and agonizingly alone. I wasn’t expecting a SWAT team, but a little uniformed presence, even the security guys from downstairs, would have been very welcome right now.
Douglass spun on her. “Doesn’t matter if it’s not my company anymore!”
In one of those amazing moments of synchronicity, Lindsay and I looked at each other and dove at Douglass in unison, like we’d practiced the maneuver a thousand times. I aimed for his arms and upper body, she went a little lower, and we all the hit the stone floor with such force that I thought my lower jaw was going to shatter into dust. We slid across the cool smoothness of the floor until Douglass’ head hit the corner of the conference room door, just past Gwen’s feet. I heard the gun skittering away, the other women in the room screaming, and my pulse pounding in my ears. But the sound that surprised me most was the soft giggle coming from Lindsay, a desperate, giddy sound that would have been infectious if I’d had any breath left in me at the moment.
Which is how I came to be sitting across from an unsmiling police detective when Cassady called. At least things were less chaotic than when the police first arrived, with
Douglass streaming blood from a gash in his scalp, Gwen trying to calm the troops, the Harem wailing in various keys, and Wendy hyperventilating over having been the one to pick the gun up off the floor. My hands had even stopped shaking.
Now statements were being collected, so we were all divvied up into various nooks and crannies of the office. I was still in the conference room with Detective Hernandez, a very serious woman with unreadable dark eyes and marvelous dark curls corralled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She’d been polite enough to let me answer my phone when it rang, but I didn’t want to abuse the privilege.
“So,” she said as I put my phone back down on the table, “you were saying you’ve never met Mr. Douglass before?”
“I was here to interview the creative directors for an article I’m doing. I’ve never met any of them either.”
“What were you thinking when you decided you should or could take Douglass down?”
I’d had this sort of question posed to me innumerable times in my adolescence, so I knew the answer. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Detective Hernandez didn’t seem familiar with my father’s favorite line of reasoning. “Excuse me?”
“It just kind of happened,” I explained. “I was worried things were going to escalate before you had an opportunity to respond and he turned his back on us and Lindsay and I just had one of those unspoken agreements and …” The displeasure on her face would have been perfectly easy to understand even if I hadn’t already seen the expression on Kyle’s face more than once. “In retrospect, I see that it was foolish, but at the time, it seemed like an appropriate response.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself or somebody else shot.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Don’t have to apologize to me.”
Yet I felt like I needed to apologize to someone. Maybe I was really just hoping someone would say, “It’s okay,” but
Detective Hernandez had passed on that opportunity. “I couldn’t stand there and not do anything,” I offered.
To my surprise, Detective Hernandez nodded. “Understood. Just don’t make a habit of it, okay?”
There was no point in trying to explain that her advice was a little on the belated side. I just smiled and said, “Thank you.”
Detective Hernandez’s partner, Detective Guthrie, stuck his head in the conference room door. He torqued an eyebrow, she nodded, and he entered. “Visitor from the one-nine,” he told her. He had the bearing and haircut of a man who had served in the military before becoming a police officer, but he gave me an unexpectedly sweet smile.
“What’s he want?” Detective Hernandez asked with a not so sweet frown. Detective Guthrie jerked his thumb at me and both Detective Hernandez and I looked at him in surprise. I took me a moment to realize that Kyle had somehow found out I was there and had come either to make sure I was all right or to drag me out before I could cause any more trouble. Detective Hernandez gave her partner a puzzled shrug and he stepped back into the doorway to signal down the hall.
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware I was apologizing again but not getting any resistance this time. “It’s my boyfriend.”
“What is?” Detective Hernandez turned to me sharply, like I’d suddenly switched languages on her.
“The one-nine. He’s a homicide detective over there and someone must have called him about my being here and he wanted to check on me because,” I said, gesturing to the man walking in the door, “that’s not him at all.”
Detectives Hernandez and Guthrie exchanged one of those partner looks that smacks of “we’re the only sane people in the room” as I frowned at the tall blond walking toward me with a knowing smile. He diverted his glance to Detective Hernandez long enough to shake her hand and introduce himself as Wally Donovan, then offered his hand to me. I shook it automatically, still adjusting to his not being Kyle.
“Hope you don’t mind, but I’m working the Garth Henderson
murder and when I heard things had gotten a little dramatic over here this morning, I thought I’d come over and check out any overlap.”
Detective Hernandez quickly brought him up to speed on the events of the morning, based on the interviews she’d done, while I studied him as surreptitiously as possible. So this was the difficult detective Kyle had wanted to keep me away from. I’d assumed that he was an older detective, someone who’d object to me as an interloper or see me as a distraction in Kyle’s life. Maybe some of that stemmed from guilt. I’d also pictured him as small, dark, and antisocial and that probably stemmed from many Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield movies. He was, in fact, tall, blazingly blond, and almost gregarious. The suit was rather high end for a detective and as he pulled out his notebook, light bounced off his nails. A detective who got manicures. New one on me.
“So, Ms. Forrester, how do you think the events here this morning relate to your probe into Mr. Henderson’s death?” Detective Donovan asked. I didn’t need to see the expressions on the other two detectives, I could fill those in for myself.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Peter Mulcahey led me to believe otherwise.”
I held back the laugh and the sigh. “What’s a nice detective like you doing with a guy like that?”
“He and I go way back.”
“He and I go not so way back and my question stands.”
“If we’re going to start judging each other by the company we keep, let’s talk about Kyle Edwards.”
“Let’s just talk about all the reasons that talking about that’s a bad idea. It’s much simpler.”
“I got a question,” Detective Hernandez interjected. “Why don’t you two go buy each other a drink and let me work my case?”
“You’re not matchmaking, are you, Detective Hernandez?” He grinned at her, but she didn’t so much as think of smiling back. Behind him, Detective Guthrie rolled his eyes.
I didn’t stop to consider any other possibilities why Kyle
didn’t want me around this guy, I leapt at an opportunity to get more information on the murder. Not unlike the way I’d leapt at Jack Douglass—without thinking where I’d land. “Nevertheless, a good idea. What say we visit the scene of the crime. Bemelman’s Bar in the Carlyle at six o’clock, Detective Donovan? We can continue our conversation then.” I scrawled my cell number on a business card and held it out to him.
He pocketed it. “Do they serve dinner there?”
“We don’t have that much to talk about.” I stood, turning to Detective Hernandez. “May I go now?”
“Please do.”
She stood, too, so Detective Donovan was the only one in the room sitting. In fact, he leaned back in his chair. “Detective Hernandez, I’d like to talk to Mr. Douglass. His actions this morning put his relationship with my victim in a whole new light.”
“Why, when they’re actions he took after your vic was already dead?”
“From what I’ve gathered, he’s not too happy with the agency. Maybe he’s been feeling that way for a while.”
Detective Guthrie gave Detective Hernandez another one of those partner looks and she nodded. “You can talk to him when we’re done with him. He’s getting his skull glued back together. You can ride along to the hospital with us if you want.”
“Who cracked his skull?”
I made a beeline for the door, not eager to have that conversation again or to give either Detective Donovan or me a chance to change our minds about meeting up later. “Thank you, nice to meet all of you.”
Out in the reception area, I hesitated, not quite clear on the layout of the offices. I needed to hunt down Gwen and get a reaction from her, but stopped at the sight of Lindsay sobbing in the arms of a handsome young man on one of the stone benches. Unsure whether something else had happened after the police separated us to take our statements, I approached cautiously. “Lindsay?”
They both looked up. He had a lean face dominated by big brown eyes and unruly eyebrows that were drawn together tightly at the moment. Tapping him on the chest, she sniffed and said, “My husband Daniel. This is Molly Forrester.”