How to Succeed in Murder (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

The offices of Zakdan, Inc. were deserted by three o’clock the next afternoon. The entire company had been invited to a memorial service for Jim Stoddard. Whether they’d all actually gone to Trinity Episcopal was a matter of speculation, but they’d certainly cleared out by the appointed time, and that left us with an opportunity. One that I was having a hard time convincing Brenda and Eileen to take advantage of.

“But Charley,” Eileen reminded me, “Mike and Jack already searched everyone’s offices.”

“But they don’t know everyone as well as we do,” I argued. “We might be able to notice something they missed.”

Simon joined us in the conference room, closing the glass door behind him. “Don’t bother,” he said. “I had the same idea. I’ve been up on the fourth floor, and everything interesting is locked up tight.”

“You actually tried to break into someone’s office?” Eileen’s eyebrows went up.

“Morgan’s.”

“He’s not a suspect!” Brenda looked shocked.

“Why not?” Simon demanded. “I mean, why is it that we’ve never suspected his motives in all of this?”

“Mainly because he’s the one who asked us to investigate it,” I reminded him.

“Still.” Simon slouched into a chair. “I have a feeling about him.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Brenda said. “I was reading another of those business books last night, and the main thesis was that, regardless of how well we delude ourselves into believing we’re all critical thinkers, most of us make up our minds about most of the important things in life in a split-second, gut-instinct flash.” She looked around the room.

“I read that book a few months ago,” Eileen said. “It certainly explains some things about politics. Do you realize—”

“Politics aside,” Brenda interrupted. “I want to try something. I’m going to ask each of you a question, and I want you to answer—don’t think, don’t justify, don’t do anything but answer—with the first thing that pops into your head.”

Why not? Nothing else had worked.

Brenda stood, and did a good imitation of a cobra about to strike.

“Eileen, who killed Jim Stoddard?”

“Bob Adams.” Eileen answered immediately, then gave Brenda an astonished look. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“But you did,” Brenda answered. “Simon, quick, who wrote the software virus?”

“Jim Stoddard,” Simon replied. “I know it makes no sense, but if you want my gut reactions—”

“Charley,” Brenda cut him off to turn to me. “Who killed Clara?”

“MoM,” I answered. Then my jaw dropped. “But I really don’t think she did, I mean…why would she?”

Brenda sat down again, looking defeated. “I have no idea. According to the book, that should have given us a really clear indication.”

“It did that,” Eileen said. “It just gave us all different ones. And probably one of us is right—but which one?”

We were not a cheery group.

“Well, I have one clear indication,” I stated. “And it’s that we should pack up our stuff and finish this sham of a presentation at my house over big sloppy martinis.”

“That seems appropriate,” Simon agreed. “Now, if only we could think of a way to get everybody drunk tomorrow when we deliver the bloody thing as well.”

I stood as my laptop was shutting down. “Flank, will you go get the car while I run to the restroom? We have a lot to bring home with us tonight, and we parked miles away.”

Which was a slight exaggeration, but he roused himself from his station in the corner and made a noise that I decided to interpret as “No problem, Charley.”

I went with him as far as the elevator, then used my card key to get into the ladies room. Reflecting, not for the first time, that perhaps Zakdan took the whole security thing a little too far.

The room contained three sinks and a vanity, with a door leading to the bathroom stalls beyond. The door was closed. And on the vanity was a book.

I looked at it for a minute before it clicked into place. A green suede day planner. And every time I’d seen it before, it had been in the possession of its owner, Millicent O’Malley.

MoM.

I didn’t think. I didn’t plan. I went on pure gut instinct.

I took the book and ran.

***

“What in the world are you doing?” Brenda looked at me with wide eyes.

I’d burst through the door from the hall, gesturing wildly through the glass for the length of the conference room, until I got to the door on the far side.

“Open your laptops and put them in a line.” I came in and started positioning the computers to shield the back corner of the table from any prying eyes.

“Why? What are we hiding? And who’s left in the building, anyway?” Eileen asked.

“MoM.” I held up the book. “And we’re hiding her planner.”

“Oh, well done, darling!” Simon pushed his laptop over. “Let’s have a look.”

“I can’t believe you did that!” Brenda reached for it.

“I know,” I admitted, putting the book on the desk, concealed from any casual observer by the laptops. “I can’t either.”

We crowded around, in Flank’s usual position. If anyone came through the hall door we’d see them through the glass in plenty of time to hide the book.

“This is all my fault,” Brenda said. “If I hadn’t asked you all those stupid questions—”

“Never mind,” I told her. “What’s done is done. We’ll just take a look at it, and when we’re finished, Simon can go put it up in the fourth floor kitchen. She’ll think she left it there.”

“That’s assuming it doesn’t contain her diary, in which she confesses to being a homicidal maniac,” Simon said. “And why am I the one carrying the incriminating evidence all over the place?”

“It’s hardly incriminating.” I was leafing through months of neat writing on calendar pages. “At least so far.”

“That’s because you’re looking in the wrong place.”

I yelped, Brenda screamed a little, and Eileen slammed the book shut.

MoM stood at the door.

Chapter Thirty-five

“Act casual,” Simon whispered. “She can’t have seen what we’re doing.”

It was worth a shot.

“Hi,” I said too brightly. “We were just packing up. Are you going to Jim’s memorial service?”

“That would be a little hypocritical.” She closed the glass door behind her and leaned back against it, putting her hands in the pockets of her raincoat.

“Oh, really?” Brenda’s tone was too bright as well. We were overacting.

“Were you on your way out?” Eileen asked.

“Yes, but I need my book first.”

We assumed various looks of blank incomprehension.

“Book?” Simon enquired politely.

“The one somebody just took from the ladies room. Probably you.” She looked at Eileen.

Why probably Eileen? Why wouldn’t she think I’d done it? I mean, what did that make me?

“Sorry?” Simon tried a slightly befuddled smile.

She stood up straighter. “I’m not an idiot. I came around the back way and I could see my planner perfectly well behind your computers.”

The back way. Great.

Eileen was quietly and almost motionlessly tapping something on her laptop, and Simon, giving up the pretense, began leafing through the book. He stopped when he got to the Accomplishments tab.

“Good lord.”

There was a pocket on the back of the divider page, and in the pocket was a plastic card. He pulled it out.

Clara Chen’s gym card.

***

It took us all a minute to remember to breathe again. Then I spoke.

“You killed her.”

MoM’s expression didn’t change.

“But why?” Brenda asked. Then, angrier, “
Why?
”

“Don’t get carried away,” Mom said impatiently. “It wasn’t my fault. She had an accident. I liked Clara. I’m the one who hired her. I was her mentor.”

“So…” Simon still held the ID card. “What happened?”

Her face twisted. “It was a bad day, all right? It was late, and I’d found out that the project I’d been working on was getting cancelled. I’d been killing myself, and for what? So they could throw everything I’d done for them away?
Again
?”

Brenda spoke. “But Clara wouldn’t have been the one to cancel your—”

“Oh, no.” MoM cut her off, her voice bitter. “She never did anything. She just floated up through the ranks, everybody’s darling, never doing anything wrong—”

“You were jealous,” I said.

“Don’t oversimplify,” she snapped. Then she took a deep breath and straightened her coat, pulling the belt a little tighter.

“Look, I just ran into her in the garage that night. We’d both been working late. I’d gone jogging before it got dark, and then gone back to the office to finish some work. Clara and I hadn’t had a chance to catch up for a while, and she said she wanted to ask my advice about firing that idiot Krissy.”

She looked at each of us. “Clara still needed me. She still turned to me when she had a problem.” It seemed important that we acknowledge this.

“What happened then?”

She shot me a hostile look. “After we talked about Krissy, she started telling me how happy she was. How everything was going so well for her. That she was getting married.” MoM spoke the word with distaste. “That she was being promoted.” She compressed her lips.

“And you couldn’t stand it,” Brenda said softly.

MoM ran a hand through her cropped gray hair. “Nonsense. I was delighted for her. I told her if I hadn’t still been in my running sweats I would have taken her out for a drink to celebrate. But as she was on her way to the gym…” She shrugged.

“You manipulated her into asking you along,” I finished for her. “And then you killed her in the steam room.”

“It was an accident,” MoM insisted. “We were just relaxing and talking, and she got up to push the button for more steam, and she slipped.”

“I don’t believe you,” Brenda said.

“I don’t care,” she answered flatly. “That’s what happened.”

“And she hit her head on the bench?” I asked.

Had the coroner been right all along? Was there really no murder?

“But you meant to kill her,” Eileen spoke up. “Otherwise, why didn’t you leave your name on the gym guest pass?”

MoM looked insulted. “I see no reason to give every living soul my personal identification information. So when the girl behind the counter gave me a card to fill out, I just waited a moment and handed it back to her blank. She didn’t even notice, she was so busy gossiping with Clara. She just tossed it into a drawer and handed Clara our towels.”

“It’s possible,” I said slowly. “The receptionist said she didn’t really notice you.”

MoM’s eyes narrowed. “Of course not. Who would notice me when the glorious, young, beautiful, brilliant
Clara
was around?”

“Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Eileen said.

She flushed. “Oh, you think you know me?” Her voice held disgust. “You don’t know me.”

She turned a challenging stare on each of us.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a woman over fifty? We’re
invisible
. And working in a place like this? Where I’m older than anyone else in the room every day of my
life
? Where they think of me as their
mother
?” She stopped, shaking with hostility.

“Well, to be fair, dearie, you do rather play into that,” Simon drawled. “I mean…MoM?”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “Don’t you call me that, and don’t you
dare
condescend to me!”

Her voice sent a chill through the room. I waited a beat before going on.

“What happened in the steam room?”

MoM regarded us, her chin held high. It was a moment before she spoke.

“She slipped. The idiot slipped and then sat on the floor laughing about her bruised butt. About how Morgan was going to think it was sexy. About how she hoped it would fade by the time she went on her honeymoon to Maui.”

“So you pushed her,” I said.

“I did no such thing! I reached out to help her—”

“Right. I’ve seen the way you help people. First you create a disaster, so then you can come to the rescue. What did you say to Krissy at Clara’s funeral to trigger her hysterical outburst?”

I was just going on a hunch, but at that moment I was sure MoM had set Krissy up for that slap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about you, and your manipulations. If Clara slipped in that steam room it wasn’t an accident, and if she hit her head it was because you pushed her.”

Her eyes flashed. “So what if I did? So what if I took her by that little-girl ponytail and crushed her skull into the bench? Who’s going to prove it?”

Brenda sank to her chair, her hand over her mouth.

“I think—” My voice came out in a croak. “I think that membership card proves something.”

She froze.

“That was your one mistake,” I said softly. “The missing card was the one thing that said it couldn’t have been an accident. So what I’d like to know is—what was so important for you to take from Clara’s locker? Why did you need her card?”

MoM was still motionless, her face flushing but her eyes growing colder. When she spoke it was like the sound of crushed ice.

“Krissy’s file.”

“Krissy?” Eileen said. “What does she have to do with this?”

MoM glanced at her dismissively.

And suddenly, I got it.

“You knew Krissy would get Clara’s job,” I said. “And you knew she’d collapse under the pressure, leaving the way clear for you to step in and save the day.”

I’d been watching the scenario play out ever since we’d gotten there. I just hadn’t realized what was going on.

“Why did you keep Clara’s ID card?” Simon still held it. “You had to know it was evidence.”

Her mouth twisted. “I’m allowed one mistake, aren’t I?”

But I didn’t think it had been a mistake. She’d wanted to keep the card. She’d been proud of it. Hadn’t she filed it under Accomplishments?

She straightened again, and glanced at the wall clock. “Well, I have to admit I didn’t plan for this today. Which leaves us with a problem.”

“What are you going to do now?” Eileen asked. “Kill all of us?”

She blinked. “If I have to.” The she pulled a gun out of her pocket. “And I think I have to.”

I stared at the gun. And I remembered suddenly that I had a gun too. It was in my laptop bag, which was in front of Brenda on the table. I began to move slowly toward it.

“You can’t possibly plan to murder us all and expect to get away with it,” Eileen said.

“I know that,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”

“Oh, no we’re not,” I said firmly. I’ve seen enough episodes of Oprah on the subject to know that when a crazed killer invites you for a ride, the smart thing to do is decline.

“I have the gun.” She waved it. “That means you’ll do what I say.”

My bag was in reach. “Like hell we will—”

I might have made a mad grab for my gun if the two glass walls of the conference room hadn’t suddenly exploded.

There was an ear-splitting crash as the glass shattered and disintegrated. Everyone in the room screamed and dove for cover. But when the dust cleared and we crawled out from under the desk there was only one person with any serious damage.

And she was on the ground, with Flank standing over her.