Death of the Office Witch (3 page)

Having nearly wrecked the Toyota berthing it in its special stall under the FFUCWB of P, Charlie raced to the public elevators only to find them out of order. She noticed the shrink from her floor heading for the private VIP stairs, which were almost hidden beyond a concrete slab that presumably helped hold up the building.

“Dr. Podhurst? Can I go up your way? Elevator's down again.” And I can't wait to chew out my boss.

Dr. Podhurst turned to study her with a perplexed expression. His coat sleeves always seemed too short. He reminded Charlie of a balding Abraham Lincoln.

“Charlie Greene,” she reminded him. “With Congdon and Morse down the hall? I'm in kind of a hurry and—”

“Charlie, yes.” He shook his head but didn't smile. He never smiled. It was creepy. “I was a million miles away. I shouldn't be driving,” he joked forlornly, holding open the VIP door for her.

Charlie hoped Gloria was back at her desk. The place was a zoo without Gloria. Was her car still downstairs? Charlie hadn't thought to notice this time. She and Gloria didn't get along that well, but her workdays certainly ran a lot smoother with someone on the front desk to help organize them.

Besides, I need Larry.

She was still so heated up over the fiasco at the Polo and Richard Morse's underhanded conniving she could hear her shoes stomping instead of stepping up the stairs. She was panting by the third floor landing. The good doctor was humming under his breath. His private door was across the hall from the fifth-floor entrance, and when she turned to thank him someone whispered, “Charlie, I'm in the trash can. Help me.”

Charlie grabbed the shrink's short coat sleeve, and stopped them both mid-step. “Did you hear something?”

“Hear something, did you say? I don't think so … but I'm afraid my hearing is deficient. In fact I've just been to see a specialist—Charlie, your color isn't looking too good. Perhaps you took the stairs a bit too fast. Here, come into my office and sit.”

“Do you happen to have a trash can in your office? Is there usually one sitting at this end of the hall?” That's the second time I've heard that call for help. Could I have imagined it twice?

Podhurst and Linda Meyer, his sole office staff, had waste-baskets. He'd never seen a trash receptacle out in the hall, and when Charlie knocked on the locked door of a janitorial closet and called out for Gloria, he began to study her with far too professional an interest. He was one of those guys who could make you feel like a complete idiot merely walking across a room anyway.

“It's just being one of those days.” Charlie completed her embarrassment with her inane giggle and scurried off down the hall, knowing he was standing at his door watching her. Charlie had several giggles, but the inane one was the hardest to control. Women on their way up in the world did not giggle.

And I'm going to go in and blow off at the man who controls my livelihood, lose my job and our home because of wounded pride, aren't I? she warned herself.

Having come in the back way, Charlie peeked into the reception area and saw that Gloria was still not at her desk. Tracy, Dorian Black and Luella Ridgeway's assistant, had taken over. Charlie made her way down the office suite's hallway toward the front of the building and her own office. Because of the slant of Wilshire and the slant of the building, Congdon and Morse had four offices with prestige views. Maurice Lavender's, then Richard Morse's—which was on the corner and had the best view, with windows on two walls. Irma Vance had a large office in front of his and a window of her own. She was over fifty, formidable, and in reality second in command. She was presently on vacation, or Gloria would never have dared leave her post without telling anyone. Turning the corner, the next office was Charlie's, and it fronted full on Wilshire.

And last, and Charlie presumed far larger than hers, was Daniel Congdon's. The door was always locked, and she had never seen either it or Mr. Congdon. Richard Morse explained to her shortly after she joined the agency that Congdon was ill. Dorian and Luella had offices with windows that faced the windows of the building across the alley. And that was the lot. It wasn't much for Beverly Hills, but everything was far nicer and more plush than it had been in New York.

And more exciting and more fun and better paying, even though costs are higher, which is why I should not dash into Richard's office in a confrontational manner.

All the assistants had cubicles off the hall guarding the agents' offices. Charlie stormed into Larry's. He looked up, both hands on the computer keyboard and the phone mouthpiece trapped under his chin.

Charlie made hair-tearing motions and continued storming on into her office.

“Sandra at McMullins has been trying to return your call, went home centuries ago, and will try to get back to you tomorrow,” he called to her when he was off the phone, then listed four million and two other people who had tried to contact her today. When she didn't answer, he stepped into her office and closed the door.

Charlie was curled up on the couch in a fetal position.

“Three guesses,” Larry said. “The meeting at the Polo Lounge bombed, Libby is four months pregnant, or it's PMS.”

“The meeting at the Polo Lounge bombed, Libby had better not be four months pregnant, and I don't get PMS. It's degrading.”

He sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, crossed his legs, steepled his fingers, and peered over the tops of glasses he didn't wear. “So tell Dr. Larry vot it is dat is the matter, Liebchen.”

“Strangely enough, I think it's Gloria the Witch.”

3

Charlie's office had too much furniture for the space—a couch and two chairs grouped conversationally around a coffee table, a large desk with floor-to-ceiling cabinets and shelves behind it, and a computer station. The client chair faced her, and her chair faced the window onto Wilshire.

Except for one of her author's bookstore posters Charlie had hung herself, the color scheme was soft blues and pale grays, with accents of lavender and yellow. The whole effect sounded worse than it looked. It had all been done before Charlie's arrival, and the only thing that bothered her was that there wasn't enough room to pace.

Outside the window, palm fronds frisked in a breeze unconnected to the controlled air of the office. A sparrow was busy stripping strings from the emptied sockets of fallen fronds to carry off for nestmaking. Charlie knew all about this because her neighbor, Mrs. Beesom, was seriously into birds. Mrs. Beesom was decidedly unhappy with Libby's cat, because it had decided to get into birds, too.

Charlie leaned against the front of her desk, one pump off and the sole of her bare foot resting up against the other inner foreleg. Charlie did not like funny things of a certain type, and funny things of a certain type had been happening to her today. Gloria would call them unexplainable. But Charlie new better.

It reminded her uncomfortably of a situation last year in Oregon. But Oregon was foggy and misty and fey and full of the mysteries of nature, so anything could happen there. Here in the land of make-believe, everything was phony and unnatural for profit, planned that way. It might well be inexcusable, but it made sense.

Larry leaned in the doorway. “Can't seem to scare up Richard. Her car's still down there. And, yes, her purse is in her drawer. And, no, no one notified building security until I did just now, and there is no answer on her home phone, and as far as I can determine no one has seen her, including her husband at the print shop.”

The sun hung low over the Pacific when Charlie pulled into the drive of her minicondo complex in Long Beach. It was a good five blocks from the ocean but in a prized old neighborhood. Once a street of modest working-class homes, it had given way to the vagaries of the southern California housing market. Small homes had been built onto, above, and around—filling up small lots with lots of house selling for lots of money. Larger homes had been divided into condos.

Charlie's condo was really a small house attached to three others by a common security wall, driveway, and central courtyard. It was an off-white stucco in a pseudo-Spanish style with arched entryway and windows and a red tiled roof. Stately palms graced the parking area, and a huge bushy one dominated the tiny front yard. This weekend Charlie had to get out and clean up the dead fall around that palm and trim things. Everyone else's yard looked so neat they made hers an eyesore. Hers was one of two fronting on the street. There was a pair in back of the large lot as well.

Maggie Stutzman was an attorney and soulmate whose pink stucco house sat across the drive and was attached to Charlie's by an arched wall with an ornate but heavily reinforced iron security gate. It opened only by private keys inserted in a vandal-proof obelisk or in key boxes in the condos, and closed automatically after a very short interval.

Guests were expected to use street parking, and a little sign next to the drive said so. The little sign had to be replaced about every other week because it was stolen, as was the larger sign that informed criminals that the property was guarded by the dreaded DOG Private Security System. Which told them that anyone messing around on that lot would receive immediate attention from guards armed with Dobermans armed with teeth on instant twenty-four-hour call, and potential perpetrators would not have the luxury of getting in, swiping what they pleased, and leaving before an overworked police department could respond. It also probably told the pro exactly what kind of system it was he had to disconnect before entering.

The obelisk might be vandal-proof (although it was heavily spray painted with obscenities) but the gate lock wasn't, and twice in the time Charlie had lived here all the condo owners had had to divvy up for a new one. And it had been the Long Beach Police Department that had responded to the scene when Mrs. Beesom dialed 911. Apparently the DOG dogs only rushed over when an alarm was set off inside one of the houses. Roving gangs were blamed both times for smashing the lock but were gone when police arrived.

This evening the gate opened obediently. Covered parking for two cars on each side filled the spaces between walled and trellised patios. Charlie pulled into the slot next to Mrs. Beesom's Olds 88, and by the time she got out, the gate to the big bad world had closed her in with Mrs. Beesom, Maggie, and Jeremy Fiedler, who lived in the condo behind Maggie.

Another gate gave access to Charlie's sunken patio, where flowers planted by a previous owner seemed to flourish in spite of Charlie. The back door opened directly into the kitchen, from which vantage point she could hear the sound of television instead of studying. Charlie walked through to the dining room and dropped her shoulder bag and briefcase on the dining room table, which caught all the tiresome details of their lives and so was too crowded to eat on. She stepped out of both pumps and then down into the sunken living room. (Sinking things was supposed to make tiny expensive places worth the expense.) She slumped onto the couch next to her daughter.

“Hi, thought you had tests tomorrow.”

“I'm hungry. You didn't say you'd be
this
late.”

“There was a whole deli chicken and some coleslaw in the refrigerator. I told you this morning. Didn't you even look?”

“We ate it after school. That was hours ago.”

“The whole thing.”

“The whole thing.”

“We.”

“Lori, Doug, and me. We were hungry and started snacking and pretty soon it was all gone. I didn't have lunch, that was my lunch. There is nothing to eat in this house.”

“Last week your health and sex education teacher said you should eat a banana a day and you'd be healthier than an old granola girl. Last weekend I bought bananas. As I remember, just now passing through the kitchen, they're all still there.”

“Bananas taste like snot.”

“Libby—”

“Mo-om, I did not say I wanted bananas. All I said is what Mrs. Hefty said. But no, you make all these … these guesses about what you think I mean.”

“Assumptions.”

“Don't do that.”

“Sorry. Let me change, and we'll make a run on the diner.”

“You're mad at me.” Huge beautiful eyes turned to Charlie. “Because my friends ate all the food.” Huge beautiful eyes filled with tears.

Charlie didn't buy it. This kid was as hard as reinforced concrete. But she said, “You probably eat more at their houses than they eat here.”

Hell, one of them has a live-in housekeeper and the other a live-in mother.

Curiously enough, the Long Beach Diner was done in pink and green just like the Polo Lounge. There the similarity ended. The waiters were waitresses, for one thing. They wore shorts and green T-shirts instead of black pants, white shirts, and black bow ties. The soup was canned, the lettuce iceberg, the salad dressing bottled, the bread white, the clientele lower-middle and fixed income, the prices a fraction.

After the day she'd had and the one obviously coming up, Charlie needed comfort food. She ordered the day's special—hot beef sandwich with canned string beans, Jell-O, and a glass of milk.

“Bad day, huh?” Libby ordered her cheeseburger, fries, and Diet Coke. For nine months after they'd moved here from New York, Libby had been a vegetarian. Greenpeace came through the school with some appealing pictures and some appalling horror stories. The intentions were laudable. The problem was Libby Greene would not eat vegetables, nor was she terribly fond of fruit. Pasta, potato chips, and aspartame will take you only so far. Being Libby, she wouldn't cheat on fish, milk, eggs, cheese, or chicken.

A social worker alerted by the school called on Charlie to discuss eating disorders, nutrition, child abuse, and the consequences thereof. Charlie never knew what happened, but one weekend Libby asked to order in pizza. Pizza with everything. She hadn't been able to get enough hamburger, pepperoni, bacon, or hot dogs since.