Dead End Job (11 page)

“Um, Martin, how are
you
doing?” I asked, cautiously.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he replied, waving his hand in the air as if to swat away a fly. “A little freaked out, you know. But I’m a big guy and even though I am gayer than Elton John, I can beat some ass if I have to. I’m not worried about myself. ”

“I guess so,” I replied, even though I had my doubts. I’d seen Martin cry over seeing a smallish brown spider one day in the kitchen. Toughness didn’t seem to be his forte. I decided to change the subject. “Um, yeah, I know
my
boss is a psychopath, but why are
you
back in the office so fast?” I asked him.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” he replied. “Mr. Curtis was just so nice about it and told me to take all the time I needed, but I wanted to get back to work as soon as possible so I could help him with this merger stuff. You know that we can’t afford to screw this up right now.”

“Sure.” This didn’t make much sense to me. Martin has not always been the corporate cheerleader type—like me, usually he could give two flying fucks about doing extra help around the office. This Sarah thing must have really shaken him up.

Right then, Jenny walked over. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped short long enough to take in Martin’s body splayed out all over the floor of my cube. I could only guess that Jenny was completely panicking at the thought of having to talk to me after the Sarah incident, since she refused to acknowledge that I am actually a human being and she didn’t interact with me unless it directly benefitted her.

“Um, Louisa?” she said, whining.

“Ugh, hi Jenny,” I replied unenthusiastically. Martin looked up at me and rolled his eyes.

“Can we talk about Sarah’s workload? Elaine wanted you to take care of dispersing it within the team.” 

“Oh…yeah. Sure, Jenny.” Not even an acknowledgement of what had happened. Typical. Plus, doing task assignments had always been Sarah’s job. How the hell was I expected to handle that?

“Great, let’s talk after the all-office meeting this morning,” she said, then walked away without waiting for my response.

When she was out of earshot I turned back to Martin in a panic. “What’s with the all-office meeting? I didn’t hear about that.”

“Oh, you must have not been on the invite list because no one thought you’d be here. It’s in the boardroom at ten o’clock. Mr. Curtis and Emily from HR are going to talk about the Sarah thing.”

“Oh. No. No, I didn’t know about it. You know how much I hate these things. I’d better load up on the meds.”

“It’s going to be a long one. Take a handful.”

Martin tried to look sympathetic as he laboriously rolled himself onto his stomach, then slowly scooted on his knees up to a kneeling position, and finally reached up and made an attempt to look graceful while pulling his enormous body up slowly on the corner of my desk. It didn’t work –he looked like he was in the middle of having a heart attack while crapping his pants. I did the charitable thing and ignored his struggle, instead rummaging in my purse for my Ativan. I popped a pill in my mouth. Watching Martin shuffle back to his desk, I thought about it for a second and then swallowed another pill.

Office meetings were my real-life version of hell. The confined quarters and social pressure to be quiet and act normal pushed me into a frenzied state of anxiety, where I could not pay attention to what was being said, but instead imagined myself either freaking out or passing out. Thank you, Christ, for my anxiety pills. I was convinced that it was only because of the miracle of chemistry that I avoided this fate.

Thanks to science, by the time ten o’clock rolled around, I was feeling way more relaxed and actually pretty tired and quite a bit loopy. When Martin and I walked into the boardroom, he went straight to the front to sit near where Mr. Curtis and Emily were standing, and I sat down in the back (closest to the exit) while the rest of the office employees filed in. In the haze of my Ativan, I watched listlessly as the swell of grey and black-suited men and women from all of the different departments of Merit entered the room and sat down. The normal chit chat of the semi-annual office meetings was absent, and the overall tone was hushed and reverent, as if we were entering a church or other sacred space. I looked around and saw a couple of the legal department’s associates, Priti and Maya, sitting on the right side of the room near the windows beside Clark, who was looking just as hot as ever, fiddling with his phone.

Elaine and Mark entered the room conspicuously late. Elaine was talking loudly on her Blackberry and waving her arms wildly, either oblivious to or simply ignoring the respectful calm in the room. Right behind her was Mark, looking frustrated and embarrassed, trying to direct Elaine to a seat while balancing the ungainly load of Elaine’s laptop and purse, her folder, a couple of pens and her usual drink, a Dixie cup of hot tea.  Directly behind them, Michael walked in trailed by Jenny, then the three analysts, Laura, Michelle, and Nathan. They sat directly behind Elaine and Mark in the middle of the room, who had found a seat next to Jenny.  The last person to enter from our group was Ari, who usually sat with Sarah. Now that she was gone, I guess he was keeping to himself—I felt terrible for him. When he spotted Elaine, he wisely settled on the opposite side of the room.

When everyone was settled in, Mr. Curtis walked up to the front of the room and stood at the podium. He waved his arm purposefully and another small group of people entered from the back of the room, as if on cue. I saw that this group included Detective Wang and the Latina detective whom I had not yet met. Even through the drugged haze, my heart jumped for a minute. I scanned the back of the room for Rocky, but he was absent. The detectives walked to the front of the room and Mr. Curtis shook their hands. He stepped off of the podium and Detective Wang stepped up, pulling the microphone down to address the group of employees. 

“Good morning,” she started. “For those of you who I did not meet yesterday, my name is Detective Wang. This is Detective Lopez. We are heading up the investigation surrounding the wrongful death of Mrs. Sarah Lieber, which occurred on these premises on Tuesday evening. At this point in the investigation, we have determined the death to be a homicide.”

There was a collective gasp from the crowd. Even though
I
knew that Sarah had probably been killed, judging from the reaction, my guess was that the other employees hadn’t been informed. It wasn’t like all of them had experienced the horror of running into her dead body. That special moment had been reserved just for me. I hadn’t heard the office gossip, but it seemed that the general hope and consensus was that a tragic accident had befallen Sarah Lieber. It seemed to me that Detective Wang had come here today with the intention of quickly and efficiently bursting that bubble.

She paused for a moment, taking in the crowd. She and Detective Lopez surveyed the room, left to right, back to front, looking at each face. It was the first time Detective Lopez had even acknowledged the people sitting in front of her. I could see her taking mental notes as she observed certain people, judging their reactions. This must have been a tough assignment, because from what I could see, every employee was also looking around the room, also trying to gauge other people’s reactions. Some were in tears, some were shaken into silence. Because I was in the back, I didn’t have to look behind me to see what other people were doing. Face after face in the crowd turned and looked at me. A few people whispered to each other as they stared in my direction. My eyes darted back and forth, looking for an escape, and finally settled on staring down into my lap.

“The Seattle Police Department is going to dedicate every possible resource in finding the perpetrator of this crime,” Detective Wang continued. “Therefore, you are going to notice a police presence at Merit in the coming days and possibly weeks. Please cooperate fully with the officers and do not hesitate to impart any information, even the smallest detail that you might have, in order to assist us in solving this crime. Thank you for your time.”

With that, she delicately stepped off the podium and she and Detective Lopez marched straight down the center aisle of the room and exited.

The swift exit of the Seattle PD caused a nervous murmuring in the crowd, so no one was really paying attention when Mr. Curtis immediately took the podium and Martin got up and awkwardly pulled down the white projection screen. I saw Martin take one of the conference room’s many remote controls and aim it towards the back of the room to dim the lights. Immediately, the screen flashed bright blue, then showed a large evergreen tree outline circled in black, the logo of NorCom.

A couple of seconds later, the screen changed again, this time focused in on an elegant older woman with grey hair cut flatteringly short around her face. She was wearing scant eye makeup under thin purple wire-framed glasses, dark red lipstick that was perfect for her mocha skin tone, and a sharp, black suit jacket, accessorized with an expensive-looking pale yellow scarf. She was sitting in a small conference room in front of a huge NorCom PR mural, which featured more evergreen trees, amongst which were scattered iconic images from around the globe, including the Eiffel tower and the Taj Mahal.

Mr. Curtis spoke into the microphone. “I wanted to share with you a quick word from Carla Stanton, CEO of NorCom PR. Carla?”

The woman on the screen blinked, then began in typical corporate-speak fashion:

“Thank you, employees of Merit, for taking the time to meet with me today. We at NorCom are devastated over the recent tragic losses of both your fellow employee, Sarah Lieber, and our employee, Leila Carson. We send our deepest condolences.   However, we also want you to know that NorCom PR is 100% committed to the upcoming merger with Merit. We are now just days away from the joining of our two companies, and we know that together we are going to be a global force in public relations consulting. Our combined resources will enable us to deliver an outstanding product to our clients, as yet unseen in the current marketplace. The board of directors here at NorCom, as well as the management team at Merit, is determined that despite this tragedy, we will not be deterred, and our merger will go through successfully.  Please do not hesitate to contact your management team with any issues or concerns that you might have. In addition, I have provided my own personal contact information.”

She finished, then the screen abruptly flashed away from her to a screenshot of her address, phone number and email, then back to the NorCom logo, and lastly back to the blue screen. Martin stood up again and aimed the remote to the back of the room and the lights flashed back on.

Emily from HR got up with an attractive man in a light grey suit who she introduced as Dr. Michael Castro, a professional grief counselor who would be camped out on our floor in an empty conference room. He would be available at the office through the end of next week as a resource for any employee who wanted to talk about what had happened. I looked up at him long enough to swear he was glaring directly at me. I made a mental note to avoid that conference room. With that, the meeting ended.

I saw the detectives and Mr. Curtis huddling together in the front of the room, but Martin ran to catch up with me as I was following the line of employees to the elevator on the way back to our desks.

“Hey, do you want me to pick you up tomorrow for Sarah’s service? We can carpool.”

“Oh, sure, thanks,” I mumbled, distracted. Something else was bothering me.

“OK, I’ll be there in the morning. I have to go to a lunch with Mr. Curtis then into a meeting now with all of the board head honchos, so I won’t be around for the rest of the day.”

‘”Hey, wait, Martin!” I called out. He paused and turned around. I waved him over and spoke softly, not drawing unwarranted attention from the huddle of suits walking nearby. “Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that Leila from Portland had an ‘accident’ at almost the same time that Sarah was killed? I mean, doesn’t that seem really bizarre to you?”

Martin tilted his head and looked at me sympathetically. “Oh Louisa, I know you’re upset about Sarah, but you have to remember that Leila Carson was a drunk. There was so much alcohol in her system when she died, she could’ve drowned a horse. It might seem weird, but there’s no way they are related. You know that Sarah never drank.” He patted me on the shoulder a couple of times, then without waiting for me to reply, he hurried away against the flow of the employees, back into the conference room.
              “I guess,” I mumbled to no one. Martin had a point, but I still couldn’t brush off the feeling that Leila and Sarah’s deaths were somehow related—and somehow related to the merger. When I got back down to my desk I was still obsessing. I reached into my purse and fingered Detective Wang’s business card, debating for a second whether I should call her and share my thoughts. I almost picked up my phone and dialed the number when my rational mind took over.
Don’t be such a stupid-ass, Louisa
, I told myself. These people are professionals, if there was any relation, they would find it—they didn’t need an over-excitable admin trying to jump into the investigation. I thought about talking to Elaine, before almost laughing out loud at myself when realized what a joke that would be. Finally, I made a mental note that when the drugs wore off I would go talk to Ari about my concerns. I can’t be the only person who put two and two together on these deaths. Plus, Ari always seemed to have good advice, and even if there was nothing I could do, he would say the right thing and make me feel better. 

Chapter 8: Put a Steak on It

The next morning was the day of Sarah’s funeral, and to my surprise Martin knocked on my door uncharacteristically early. Equally uncharacteristically, he was holding two double lattes and a brown paper bag filled with scones and muffins. I was not thrilled to see him half an hour early, but I was more than happy to see the coffee and breakfast.