Hiding in Plain Sight (5 page)

I added his name to the list, just in case.

Later on, back home and in my room, I looked over the list of employees again, trying to conjure up mental
images of each one. It was silly, but I felt kind of disappointed that none of the names jumped out at me. Mrs. Thompson's descriptions hadn't made anyone stand out as a potential criminal.

The only one who seemed a possibility at all was Joey Sands, partly because he'd designed the program and might view it as belonging to him, and partly because he was the only one who had a noticeable shortage of funds from time to time. It wasn't much to go on, though, and certainly not enough for me to consider him a definite suspect without some actual evidence.

After memorizing as much information from the list as my brain would absorb just then, I folded the paper and slid it into my desk drawer.

As I got ready for bed, I couldn't help thinking of Betts and how trusting and confident she was that I'd be able to figure this whole mess out. Clicking off my light and crawling under the sheet, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.

I
might as well admit that I was nervous when I walked into the NUTEC offices the next morning. My main goal at that moment was to look calm and nonchalant, but if you've ever tried that you know it's not as easy as it sounds. I'm pretty sure the effort made the expression on my face appear mildly insane rather than casual.

“You must be Shelby,” the receptionist said as I approached her desk, trying to walk in a carefree manner and nearly tripping over my own feet in the process.

“Yes.” I searched my brain for something smooth and breezy to add, but came up blank.

“So, you're gonna help out around here for the rest of the summer, huh?”

“Yes,” I said with a smile, knowing it was coming out lopsided, “I am.”

“Cool. I can sure use some help. There's no way one person can handle the phones, do the filing,
and
type letters, but they expect me to. I think they're so used to computers that they think humans can work at the same speed.” She arched an eyebrow as if to ask what I thought of that but went on before I had time to formulate a comment.

“I hope you know shorthand, though I don't suppose you do. What are you, sixteen, seventeen? You don't take that kinda stuff in high school, do you? I know I didn't. Anyway, no biggie, I can take dictation and give you other things to do. It's not like there isn't enough work to go around.” She leaned back in her chair and ran ring-laden fingers through her long blonde-streaked pale brown hair.

“We'd better get you a chair,” she yawned, holding her hands out and looking them over critically, like you do when you've just polished your nails. “You can't stand around all day. By the way, I'm Janine.”

I'd gathered that in the first moment there, but I nodded and said, “Hi, Janine,” as though I were hearing it for the first time.

“Hello?”

I turned to see that the greeting had come from a slender woman with greying hair who looked to be at least a few years older than my mother. She was dressed in a blue suit and short heels that clicked on the floor as
she walked toward me. She held her hand out and I took it awkwardly, feeling a bit silly as she pumped it firmly in a strong handshake.

“Darla Rhule,” she said with a smile that flashed for a second and was gone. “I assume you're Shelby. We're glad to have you here for the rest of the summer. If you have any questions or problems feel free to come and see me. Janine will fill you in on what you're expected to do.”

Without waiting for me to respond to anything she'd said, Darla hurried down the hall, tap-tap-tapping all the way to an office on the left. She closed the door as soon as she'd crossed the threshold.

Voices behind me caught my attention as a man and woman came along. At first I thought it must be the Yaegers, but when they introduced themselves I discovered they were James Rankin and Angi Alexander. Both greeted me in a friendly way but neither stopped to chat before heading to their offices.

“No one's talking much these days,” Janine sighed, looking sad. “Everyone's all nerved up because of the robbery. Well, you wouldn't know anything about that, though, would you? 'Course not. You just started here.”

She leaned forward, fluffing her hair for a second time. “I don't suppose there's any reason I can't tell you about it. There was a break-in a couple of weeks ago. Or it was made to
look
like a break-in anyway. Me, I think it was an inside job.”

The last sentence was delivered in a secretive tone, which almost made me laugh. From what Mrs. Thompson had told me, everyone was aware of the fact that the window had been broken from the inside. It was one of the strongest pieces of evidence against her, and I figured it would be the one that was the most difficult to explain away. After all, if she was the only person with access to the room and safe, both of which had been opened with apparent ease, it was going to be hard to prove her innocence.

That might have been the first time it occurred to me that maybe she was guilty. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I felt horrible, like I'd betrayed my best friend by suspecting her mother.

What if she
was
guilty, though? If I uncovered evidence that proved it absolutely, what was I going to do? I pushed the uncomfortable thought out of my head and tried to pay attention to Janine again.

“It's enough to give you the creeps, all right,” she was saying. “Imagine if there's a criminal right in our midst.”

“Do the police have any suspects?” I asked.

“Well, sort of, but I think they're on the wrong track. It's not like they've arrested anyone or laid charges or anything. See, they can only go by what they find when they investigate,” she said with a wise nod, “but they don't know the person, so they only have part of the story, if you know what I mean.”

“No one ever knows what you mean, Janine.” This remark came from a guy who didn't look to be much older than me, though he had to be in his mid-twenties. My assumption that this must be Joey Sands was confirmed almost immediately.

“Joey, this is Shelby.” Janine jerked her head in my direction. “She's going to be my assistant for the summer.”

“Nice to meet you.” Joey smiled and shook my hand. “I can't imagine what you'll be doing, though, if you're supposed to be assisting Janine. How do you help someone do nothing?”

Janine swatted at him, but he easily dodged her hand, laughed, wished me luck, and sauntered off toward his office.

All I could think was that neither of them seemed terribly concerned about the recent robbery. It was also interesting that Janine was so sure Mrs. Thompson was innocent.

I wasn't about to jump to any conclusions, but it seemed that these details were worth noting. I had a small memo pad in my pocket so I could jot things down throughout the day, not trusting that I'd remember everything if I waited until I was home.

With Janine right there, a mental note would have to do for the moment, but I was sure I'd have lots of chances to keep up with note-taking. It's been helpful to me a few times in the past.

“So, is that everyone who works here?” I asked innocently, wondering where the others were.

“Nope. Besides the ones you met there's Carol and Debbie and Stuart. They're married. Debbie and Stuart, that is. Carol's not in yet, but I'm pretty sure the other two are in their office. They've been coming in early a lot lately. Must be working on some big project.”

Carol didn't show up for another half an hour. Janine had just put a call through to Stuart Yaeger and I was still waiting for instructions for my first task.

“Don't even think about starting with me.” Carol glared at Janine before anyone had said so much as a single word to her. “I had trouble with my car, and anyway, I work harder than anyone else in this building so if I'm late once in a while I shouldn't have to defend myself.”

“I couldn't care less if you were late every day,” Janine retorted. “Don't come in here hassling me.”

“I don't answer to you anyway,” Carol snapped back. She seemed to pause when she caught sight of me but didn't bother waiting for an introduction before she stomped off down the hall.

“Well, that was Carol.” Janine rolled her eyes but didn't say anything more just then.

“Does she have an office?” I wondered aloud.

“Nope. She works mostly in the copy room. Makes copies, shreds things, gets stuff ready to mail, that kind of thing. She's here to free up the computer geeks
from tasks like that so they can concentrate on the important stuff.”

“Is she always like that?” I asked cautiously.

“Pretty much. She's here on some kind of government program for people who aren't very employable. I don't see that much of her, thank goodness.”

“Do you spend much time with the others?” I asked, wondering when I was going to have a chance to see the rest of the place. So far, we'd stayed in the reception area, and aside from a couple of phone calls, which Janine had taken, we hadn't done anything.

Before she could answer me, a red light appeared on Janine's phone. She pressed a button and I heard a female voice tell her she was needed to take dictation.

“You sure you don't know shorthand?” she sighed as she stood up. “Well, you might as well come along anyway. There's not much you can do here.”

She pressed a couple of buttons on the phone, grabbed a steno pad from a drawer, and went off toward Darla's office with me in tow.

The older woman sat behind a huge wooden desk, the surface of which was cluttered with files and books and loose sheets of paper. She offered another brief smile and pointed me to a chair where I sat and watched while Janine scribbled strange-looking symbols on her pad.

The letter being dictated seemed boring, but I forced myself to listen while trying to look fascinated
with the office. Darla sure didn't believe in making her work area too cozy, so there wasn't much to look at. The place was practically bare except for a fluffy fern and a professionally done photo of her with her husband and children, both perched on top of a bookcase along the wall. The plant looked a bit droopy.

“Would you like your fern watered?” I asked once Janine was finished.

Darla glanced up at me with a smile. “Thanks, but I kind of like to take care of it myself, silly as that is. Nice to see that you're taking a bit of initiative, though.”

W
hile Janine typed up the letter back at her desk my thoughts drifted to the conversation I'd had with my parents the night before. It hadn't gone quite as I'd hoped.

They'd been fine with my announcement that I was going to work at NUTEC, but things got a little tense when it became clear to them that I hadn't told them the entire truth. I honestly don't know why I try to hide stuff from them, since it never works. I must have some subconscious desire to embarrass myself.

“How nice,” Mom had said in reply to my news. “It will probably be fun for you — working with Betts's mom.”

“Well, uh, she won't be there, actually,” I stammered, making it abundantly clear that something was up.

“No? Oh, they're on holidays, aren't they,” Mom deduced on her own. “But then, how did she arrange for the job for you if she's out of town?”

“They didn't go away this summer,” I said. Of course that just brought a fresh onslaught of questions. Why hadn't I had any contact with Betts for the past two weeks if her family was right here in Little River? Why hadn't the Thompsons gone away as they do every year?

There were more, but I knew after the first few that there was nothing for it but to tell the whole story and hope they didn't forbid me from getting involved. There'd been plenty of discussion, let me tell you, and it was close, but I managed to convince them that it wasn't a dangerous situation.

A bigger question came at the end of that whole conversation, namely, why hadn't I told them the entire truth in the first place.

“It's hard for us to trust that you're making good decisions when you hide things from us,” Dad pointed out.

I insisted that I was just trying to protect Mrs. Thompson's privacy, which
was
, after all, part of it. Dad looked a bit sad and disappointed anyway, and that really bothered me.

“Earth to Shelby.” Janine's words penetrated my drifting thoughts, and I drew myself back to the present to find her staring at me curiously. I blushed and
cast about in my head for something to say to cover my distractedness.

I was about to blurt out some inane comment when I saw that it wasn't really necessary, since Janine had apparently lost interest almost immediately and gone back to her nails. I was starting to wonder when she was going to get some work done, and more importantly, when she was going to give
me
something to do.

As if she'd read my mind, she nodded toward a pair of stacked baskets on her desk marked
IN
and
OUT
. “You can get the letters in the ‘out' file ready for the mail,” she said. “Type and print out the labels first. You'll find envelopes in the third drawer of my filing cabinet.”

I picked up the stack of correspondence that was waiting to be mailed. “Uh, where will I type the labels?” I asked, since Janine was sitting in front of the only computer in the reception area.

“Oh, yeah,” she giggled and rolled her eyes. “I guess you need something to type on.”

I waited while she thought this problem through. It was obvious to me even after such a short time that there was no hurrying Janine.

“I know,” she said at last. “You can use the spare computer in the conference room. It's probably still locked, since no one has used it yet today. I'll get Darla to open it up for you.”