Death of the Office Witch (15 page)

“Ed, what about your current?”

“Dorothy? It would just be for a week or two. She'll understand when I explain why we're doing it.”

Boy, what Ed Esterhazie didn't know about women. Charlie could only stare at the man.

15

“Charlie, who are you talking to?” Luella Ridgeway said, and Charlie very nearly choked on her Maalox tablet.

“I was just talking to myself.”

Luella peered down the stairwell at the end of the back hall on the fifth floor of the FFUCWB of P.

“Luella, can I borrow your nail file?”

“Sure. Listen … we've talked Richard into calling in Dr. Podhurst. This whole thing has been wild. Why don't you talk to him? I'm going to.… Charlie, what are you doing? That's the janitor's closet.”

“Gloria has decided she's in a trash can in the closet. I figure it's this closet.”

“Gloria is at home in an urn.”

“I know that. You know that. Gloria does not know that.”

“Much as I ache for some free counseling, I think you, Charlie, should be the first to talk to Dr. Podhurst.”

And much to Charlie's amazement, the janitor's closet could be unlocked with a simple nail file, but since there was no knob or handle, she broke Luella's file in the lock pulling it open.

“Sorry.”

“No problem.”

And no Gloria and no trash can in the closet. There was a portable broom-closet trolley on a metal frame with a heavy canvas bag hanging from it. A mop, a bucket, a push broom were attached at one end—spray bottles of cleaners, paper towels, and heavy-duty rags at the other. Charlie wheeled it out in the light and peeked over into the canvas bag. It was empty now, but easily big enough to hold a doubled-over body with maybe a few baskets of paper waste spread on top. Industrial-strength bearings made it roll with silent ease.

Luella was nearsighted like Charlie and wore contact lenses for distance but then couldn't see close up to read. She'd had a new haircut and color job since the murder, and her eyebrows arched up under puffy bangs as she peered over the tops of the little half-glasses she wore around the office. Curls curled onto her face to cover the sun wrinkles—bright blue eyes, bright red lipstick, pale sage-colored suit with flashy blue costume jewelry and pumps.

You could easily move a dead Gloria in this thing, but it wouldn't wheel down the stairs. The canvas part was meant to unhook and throw over your shoulder like a duffel bag and carry out to the dumpster in the alley. But even the security guards probably wouldn't notice if you slid around the concrete block wall with it. And from there you might take Gloria out and toss her up into the bush tops to hide her.

Luella looked twenty years younger than she had when she'd come home from her unpleasant tasks in Minnesota.

But you'd have to be big and strong, and dressed like somebody who would look normal carrying out bags of trash to the dumpster. There was a dumpster just behind the end wall sheltering the parking barn. Why hadn't the murderer thrown Gloria in it? It would have been closer and easier. No extra uniforms in the closet. Charlie pushed the janitorial rig back and slammed the door on it.

Nice try, Gloria, but you obviously still don't know what you're talking about.

Then again, if Luella had committed a murder, that would have taken its toll on her looks—that is, if it bothered her. And it would have bothered her. She was small and could be fierce when bargaining for what she believed in, but Charlie couldn't imagine her being mean, knowingly. She was kind of a neat lady, really.

“Hello?” Luella folded her arms and tapped the toe of her tiny blue pump. “Larry told me you were going to play detective again. Charlie, are you sure it's what you want to do?”

“No. It's what everyone else wants me to do. I don't have time for this, Luella. I pay through the nose in taxes for a police department to solve crimes. But if I don't at least make an effort, nobody lets me work at the job I get paid to do. Can you please explain this to me?”

Charlie asked Dr. Podhurst the same question. He had a new hearing device in one ear. It was so small Charlie couldn't really tell which ear, but he kept turning his head to catch her words just right. It seemed to her he was concentrating more on the novelty of how he was hearing them than on the sense of the words themselves.

“How would
you
explain it, Charlie?” Even sitting down he looked gangly and all wrong for his clothes and the chair, too. But he didn't look strong enough to carry a body in a duffel over his shoulder down four flights of stairs and past the security guard and parking valet attendants. Then out into the alley, around the concrete wall. Then throw her up into the bushes. And he was so strikingly odd that even disguised in a janitorial coverall he'd be recognized in a minute. Disguised in anything but a total gorilla costume or as Abraham Lincoln, he would look exactly like Dr. Evan Podhurst, no question.

“Charlie?”

“Humm? Oh, well I'd explain it the same way I'd explain hearing Gloria Tuschman speaking to me in the hall. It's nuts. Either that or it's a conspiracy.”

“Are you telling me that a murder in your office and the fact that the homicide division of the Beverly Hills Police Department is pressuring you into solving the crime for them strikes you as either nuts on their part or a conspiracy?”

“Sounds paranoid, doesn't it?”

“Or as though you had not thought this through too clearly. Or perhaps have misinterpreted the intentions of the police in this matter. But let's come back to that, Charlie, let's talk about your home life. Is there anything there that could account for your self-admitted paranoia or such fantasies?”

They discussed Libby Greene and her grandmother, Edwina Greene, for three times as long as they'd devoted to the effects of murder and the Beverly Hills P.D. on Charlie's personal and working life.

Charlie did not feel better when she left Evan Podhurst's office. She felt like a crazy paranoid whiner who couldn't look at anybody involved without suspecting them of murder.

“So what happened yesterday between Tracy and Larry?” she asked Dorian Black when she found him alone in his office on her way back to her own. “I can't get him to talk about it.”

“He called her a pig and she called him a fag.” Dorian faced her over a desk as neat as his clothes. “Don't know what the problem is. They were both right.”

“Anybody ever tell you you're a real sweetheart, Dorian?”

“Ay, can I help it?” But Dorian was pretty sure it started over who had to man the front desk. “I mean hell, Tweety's got two agents to carry and fetch for. We can't spare her out there on the phones.”

Dorian possessed a captive housewife, and they had two children. He doted on the children, but Elaine could do no right. Elaine was a lot younger than he, and Charlie figured the abuse was only verbal. But once Elaine grew up, Charlie hoped she'd shuck this guy. He womanized openly, yet all his clients were male. Still, she couldn't see him doing anything so messy as murder.

“So what, Charlie, what? You going to just stand there and stare at me? Since Tweety is on the desk right now I don't have time to sit and watch you stare at me. You want to do a strip or something, doll, I'll reconsider.”

“Dorian, how well do you know Mary Ann Leffler?”

“Seen her around here a couple of times, read about her—but don't know anything you wouldn't know a lot better. Famous novelists are your meal ticket, remember?”

Tracy Dewitt was no happier about the fact she was manning the phones and the door buzzer than was her co-boss. “Charlie, Irma Vance has the whole office to oversee plus the business of the head of the agency. I am the lone support group for two very busy and important talent agents. Larry is responsible only for your office work, and all you handle are writers. I mean, it's obvious to anyone with eyes that in an emergency he should take over the receptionist job so the real work of the agency can continue with the least disruption. But here I sit doing Gloria's job while mine piles up. Even Irma serves a shift out here. It's lunacy.”

“Well, Larry takes a turn out here.”

“Right. He takes a turn. He should replace Gloria full-time until her permanent replacement is hired, since his work is the least vital to the entire agency on a minute-by-minute basis. I've written to my uncle about this.” Tweety watched Charlie for a reaction, squinting, and one eyelid twitching. Why would anybody listen to an eye doctor and opt for hard lenses? “You can bet if he weren't a guy this whole problem would never have arisen.” She took a bite off the top of a Snickers, crunched the peanuts, pulled in a stray string of caramel with her tongue.

“Maurice Lavender handles as much business for this agency as both Dorian and Luella put together, and he is currently without a secretary. And as far as I can see the agency is still afloat. You want to explain that to me, Tracy?”

“Secretary? You think I'm just a secretary around here? Well I have news, Charlie Greene, I—”

“Did I say secretary? I meant assistant. But that doesn't change the—”

“Do you know lovely Larry, your sec-tar-eee, practically accused me of murdering Gloria Tuschman? Huh? Asked all sorts of personal questions? Told me you had asked him to?
You
want to explain that to
me
, Charlie?”

“Wait a minute. Your uncle. Is that Mr. Congdon?” Charlie had always wondered what the relationship was there. “Is he well enough to be bothered by all this? I mean I understood he was … do you see him often?”

“No, he travels.” The telephone tyrant tinkled—soft but relentless. “Congdon and Morse Representation,” Tracy Dewitt answered sweetly. She had a piece of chocolate wedged between her teeth.

By her own admission Tracy Dewitt was in the office the morning Gloria was murdered. She could disguise herself a lot easier than Dr. Podhurst ever could. But Tracy couldn't carry a body over her shoulder down four flights of stairs and out to the alley. Then again there was always the elevator. She'd have had to push the trash cart through the office and out the public door to the elevator and then out to the alley from the first floor hall and then over halfway across the covered area where the parking valets lurked to get to the alley. Certainly wouldn't be easy.

“Tracy, how well did … do you know Mary Ann Leffler?”

“I know she was a famous author, which didn't impress me at all. I think books are for the squirrels myself. If it's any good they'll make a movie out of it, and I'll go see that.”

“
Was
a famous author?”

“Well, what has she written since the Goliath pic? You know, the shadow thing about witches.” But Tweety had hesitated and reddened before she'd answered. A suspicious reaction to a normal question. Unless something had happened to Mary Ann and she knew about it. “Don't you start in on me now. And stop looking at me that way, first the police, then your tame fag, and now you. I don't have to take this, you know.”

“Larry and Lieutenant Dalrymple asked you about Mary Ann?”

“No, about Gloria and witchcraft, and everybody knows Mary Ann was into that, too, and I am not getting snared by that old guilt-by-association thing.” Tweety refused to say another word, but she was clearly shaken by something. Or was that more of Charlie's fantasizing?

Charlie walked thoughtfully down the hall toward her office, stopped when she saw Irma Vance at her desk in front of Richard's closed door.

“Irma, what's the deal with Daniel Congdon? Is he terminally ill or is he a world traveler? And why does he never even pay this office a visit?”

“He is not well, but I certainly hope he's not facing death anytime soon. Still, that is not something any of us can foresee, is it?” Irma pointedly returned her attention to the papers on her desk. Audience over. But Charlie lingered.

“You still haven't told me why he never comes in.”

The Vance's exasperation was evident. And that was unusual—not the exasperation, the showing of it. “Mr. Congdon is what is known in the business world as a silent partner, Charlie. He helped to capitalize the founding of the agency, participates in the profits, is consulted occasionally about business crucial to its survival, but leaves the management up to Mr. Morse.”

“Then why does he maintain an office here?”

“He's entitled to do so if he wishes. The agency does bear his name.”

“So what's so silent about his partnership? He's got top billing. Have you ever seen this guy?”

Irma squinted like Tracy, tapped her pen on the desk, pursed her lips around her reconstituted teeth. But she didn't answer Charlie's question.

Back in her own office Charlie returned some calls and then called Larry in, asking him to close the door.

“Right, chief, I've got the goods on everybody here.” He pulled out a small spiral notebook like Lieutenant Dalrymple's and glanced at the comfort of the couch.

But Charlie pointed at the client chair on the other side of her desk, trying not to linger on the memory of Ed Esterhazie suggesting she loosen her tie. “First order of business, Larry, lay off Tweety … I mean Tracy.”

“That cow? Christ, Charlie, she—”

“I mean it, Larry. No excuses. No explanations. No bullshit. No whining. Just lay off Tracy Dewitt.”

“I hate it when you get macho.”

“I know. But that's the bottom line, so let's cut the crap and get on with your report.”

He licked a finger and turned a page, peering over the little wire spirals of the notebook to see if she might have softened. She hadn't. “First person I questioned was Linda Meyer, Dr. Podhurst's receptionist. She became involved in witchcraft through Gloria Tuschman.”

16

Charlie watched the palm fronds outside her window stand perfectly still. Even the traffic on Wilshire couldn't stir the heat today. Larry had been summoned to his cubicle by the phones, having barely begun his report on the suspects. They didn't dare ask Tweety to take messages for Charlie right now.