A Billion Little Clues (11 page)

Still not quite sure how I had pulled this off, I followed the man out to the elevators, which we rode down to the executive dining room on the twentieth floor. The whole time, Rubinch never stopped talking. It seemed to be his default state. I tried my best to listen, but there was just so much!

"...and I expect that I'm supposed to pick up all the pieces now, is that it? I swear, working for corporate turns you into an absolute shark. Investors, investors, it's all about the investors! And that damn bottom line. You know, back when I started with this, there was more than just that damn bottom line. There were morals, integrity, actually caring about people. But now it's slash and burn, every single place they can get away with it, all to just please the damn investors. Ought to be thrown out on their asses, the whole lot of them. I'm telling you..."

See? Totally just goes on and on. No one could listen to more than fifteen seconds of that without desperately finding something else to think about. I personally began thinking about what I would order from the executive dining room menu. Maybe they had some sort of fish. I bet that the fish would be really good.

The executive dining room had a baked tilapia with green beans as the day's special, it turned out, and yes, it was quite delicious. I felt a little guilty about cleaning my entire plate, especially when Rubinch's steak had gone nearly untouched (god forbid he stop talking long enough to take a bite). In the end, though, I decided that it would be an even bigger faux pas to leave the food on the plate. Weren't people starving somewhere? It would be so disrespectful to them if I didn't eat every bite.

With my belly now comfortably full, I tried to listen in to Rubinch again. Despite his volume, however, it was still hard. He was still going on about some sort of complaints.

"...and then, as if I don't have enough problems with the staff overhaul, that son of a bitch Silvers has to go and get himself offed!" Rubinch stabbed his fork down into a piece of steak and waved it about like a wand to emphasize his point. "The absolute nerve of that guy, getting himself murdered! And at the absolute wrong time! It's like he's just trying to make my life as much of a living hell as possible!"

Wait a minute. That didn't sound like the bragging of a murderer. "So you're upset that Silvers is dead?" I asked, speaking quickly to slip my words into the split second of silence while Rubinch took another breath and bite of steak.

"Upset? I'm downright steaming, I am!" he shouted back at me. "You know that we have a big investor meeting coming up, right?"

"Um, sure," I hedged. But I could have told the man that I was a zebra print handbag and he wouldn't have stopped.

"So Silvers has some announcement for it, and he's telling us that it's big, and not good. Not giving away any more than that, though, because the man always has to keep things in close to his damn vest. 'Corporate spies,' he says. My fat ass! He just likes being the smartest dick in the room."

"The meeting," I prompted at the next breath. Rubinch had a habit of getting lost on a rant and picking his way across the conversational landscape by ear.

He nodded. "Yeah, the meeting. Silvers had some big announcement, but since he's dead now, they're all expecting me to figure out what it was. Tripled my workload. If I could find out who killed him, I'd wring the sonofabitch's neck myself. Eating up all my spare time reading over his crappy notes and I still don't have any idea."

Geez, it sounded like Rubinch was even more upset that Silvers was dead than Roman! And even though I thought that this could be a cover, and was pleased that I remembered this obviously detective-style word, he sounded pretty serious. He also kept on referring to Silvers in the present tense, which I remembered a psychologist on some show once saying that it meant he didn't think the man was dead. Probably not how the killer would talk.

On one hand, this meant that I had eliminated one potential suspect from my list!

But on the other hand, this meant that I now didn't have any more leads, and thus nothing to report to Roman. I had been vaguely entertaining the notion of coming into his office with the good news that I had found the real murderer, and he would be so overwhelmed with gratitude that he'd sweep me up and start kissing me right there!

Of course, it would start with us pressed against each other, but then he'd do that grand romantic gesture of sweeping everything off of his desk and down onto the floor to clear a space for us, just like in the movies, and he'd pick me up and lay me down on top of the glass desk. And then, still kissing each other all over, we'd rip off each other's clothes and ravenously devour each other, me writhing on the desk as his lips ran down between my breasts, working down towards between my legs as I stared out at the grand view through his window...

My elbow slipped a little on the table, and my eyes shot open. I had almost totally lapsed off into fantasy, and I shot a quick look at Rubinch to see if he had noticed. He had clearly not caught my slack attention, however, and he now had half his entire steak on his fork being waved back and forth. Little drops of steak sauce were staining the white tablecloth.

"Well, this has been really informative," I cut in when the man next paused for breath. "I have a lot to go back and report to Roman - er, Mr. Wayland." Oops. "Do you mind picking up the tab for lunch?"

The man looked a little put out that I wasn't going to listen to him rant any longer, but he nodded. "Just make sure that Roman hears my complaints, okay?" he demanded. "And get him to figure out this whole 'murder suspect' thing. It's going to cast a huge shadow over the investor meeting."

That also didn't sound like he was hoping that Roman would end up in jail. I quickly said goodbye and hurried out of the restaurant, leaving Rubinch at the table. Over my shoulder, I saw the Head of Operations tear into his steak. He even ate as if he was angry!

But as I stepped back into the elevator to go back up to the office, I was feeling distinctly depressed. My lead was gone, and I didn't know what to do next. Maybe Roman would have some sort of idea.

I really hoped so. If not, my dreamy new target of my affections might be headed off to prison for a long time.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The entire elevator ride back up to Roman's office, I couldn't stop playing different scenarios in my head. Maybe he would have found some new lead on his own, and it wouldn't even matter that Rubinch had been a bust! Maybe he wouldn't believe that I had been on to anything at all. And worst of all, what if Roman decided that even including me in this little investigation was a mistake from the beginning? I couldn't even bear to think about being sent back down to an angry Keith and my old job of making sure the coffee maker remained stocked at all times.

But when I arrived back up on the twenty-eighth floor (this time just breezing right past Eleanor, straining to keep my eyes up and not make eye contact with her), the sight that I found in Roman's office was not at all what I had been expecting.

When I had left, only a couple of hours previously, the man had been dressed in a very snazzy suit. I remembered how it had been very well fitting on his figure.

Now, however, Roman seemed to have traded out the suit for a pair of stretchy pants and a compression shirt. He was squatting down on a yoga mat spread out in the middle of his office, his ass up in the air as he walked forward on his hands and feet. And with that outfit, trust me when I say that everything was visible.

I managed to make it to his open door, but then I paused, struck dumb by the sight of that perfectly shaped ass sticking right up at me in the air. Down at my sides, I felt my fingers twitch, all of their own accord. I just wanted to reach out and touch it!

Almost without conscious thought, I began to creep forward, trying to move on tiptoes to stay silent. What in the world was I thinking? I really couldn't say. This must be how guys feel when they see a woman with her shirt off, I realized. It was like a gravitational pull, tugging me in towards that fine booty!

The carpet did a fine job of muffling my steps, but it must not have been enough, because suddenly Roman dropped back down into a more normal position. He turned, staring back at me, but his face broke into a smile after a moment. "Melinda!" he greeted me, now sitting in a cross-legged position on the floor. "What's the good news!"

I had to lick my lips, trying to rid pictures of his butt from my mind. "Um, I don't really have any," I confessed. "I thought that I had a lead, but I don't think it pans out."

Roman leaned back and put his arms behind him, thrusting his hips slightly upward. I tried and failed to not blush as I stared at this blatant display. The guy had to know how arousing he looked, didn't he? It was like he was aiming pelvic thrusts right at me! "Well, let's hear your theory anyway," he said. "It might still be helpful."

How in the world did his voice sound so reasonable, when his body was on display like that? "Sure," I stammered. Eyes up, Melinda! Look anywhere but down at his crotch. Oh my god, is that a bulge? "I, uh, I went down a couple floors to listen to some of the women gossiping," I managed to get out. "I thought that maybe they might have an idea of who would want you gone."

"A fine idea!" Roman was now twisting his hips side to side, stretching his core. I swore that I could see his muscles flexing beneath the tight, thin fabric of his shirt. "So who did they pin as suspect number one?"

Eyes up! Eyes up! "They suggested Barry Rubinch," I replied. "Apparently you were called in as CEO instead of him, and he's been angry about getting passed over for that promotion ever since."

At this, Roman paused, turning and looking back at me. He had a slight frown across his face. "There used to be some bad blood between Barry and me, sure," he remarked. "But we've long since buried the hatchet. I showed him that Operations is just as important to the day to day life of this company as anything I do, maybe even more so. Does he really still hate me?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. I told him that I was your personal assistant-" I winced at this little white lie, "-and that I wanted to talk to him about recent events over lunch. He then spent the next half hour lecturing me on how terrible it was that Silvers is dead, because it means more work for him to do. If he's the murderer, he's doing a really good job of seeming to be inconvenienced by the whole situation."

"So your final verdict is..."

I hated the words, but they were the truth. "I don't think he did it," I told Roman, bracing for his disappointment, maybe even anger.

Instead, however, Roman rose up lithely to his feet. He walked in towards me, invading my personal space, and I flinched before I could stop myself. But although his arms reached out for me, they weren't hard or angry. I found myself enveloped in a hug from the man, pressed into his slightly sweaty shoulder.

Mmm. He smelled good. Like, really good. Like, it should be illegal for a man to smell like this. It had to be breaking some convention of war somewhere. I wasn't quite sure why he was hugging me, but I definitely didn't intend to complain.

"Relax, will you?" Roman whispered into my ear, as he gently held me. "I know that I'm innocent. You know I'm innocent. One way or another, we'll prove that to be the truth to everyone else."

"I know!" I protested, but the fact that I had my face totally buried into his shoulder muffled my words. Finally, making the toughest choice of my day, I pulled back from that intoxicating musk and looked up at him. "I know that you're innocent, but I just wanted to come back with good news!"

Roman nodded, and his hands loosened up on me. I really didn't want to leave the sanctuary of his arms, but I knew that this was what protocol demanded. As I stepped back, however, I realized that he still had his arms around me. He had dropped them down to the small of my back, but his fingers were still interlaced behind me, holding me up against him.

I looked up at the man's face, and saw that he had the slightest of smiles. "You really do want to prove me innocent, don't you?" he murmured in quiet tones.

"Yes, I do!" I insisted, nodding. Oh god, his lips were really close to mine. I could feel the heat of his body against mine as they pressed together. This was not at all good for my focus or concentration. Other thoughts kept on worming their way into the forefront of my head, thoughts of deliciously naughty things that were totally not appropriate for the setting.

Then again, we were in a private office - and Roman was the boss of this entire company, after all! Who would even think of interrupting us? That receptionist, Eleanor, might come wandering back again, but I kind of liked the thought of her walking in and catching us in a passionate embrace. That would show her, with her model body and long legs perfectly displayed by far too expensive clothing.

Roman was still looking down at me. I didn't have a hope of reading his expression, but I felt that the continued presence of his hands around my waist was a clear sign. He wasn't pushing forward, but he wasn't pulling back.