Murder in the Marketplace (19 page)

“I’ve come to clean out Jenifer’s desk,” he announced.

Mindy and I exchanged looks. “Um, Jason,” she said. “Would you—like a sandwich?” She was talking fast. “I’ve got extra. We can sit on the back porch in the sun and have a bite before you have to tackle that job.”

"Thanks.” Jason passed a hand over his head. “I haven’t had lunch yet.” He looked tired. "That sounds nice.”

Mindy led him away.

They were hardly gone when Ed looked out of his office. From behind him came multinational chatter and laughing. Ed crossed the room, nodding absently at me, and stuck his head in Suzanne’s office.

“We’re leaving for lunch soon.” He made the announcement baldly.

I couldn’t hear Suzanne’s reply, but Ed’s face tightened. “Well, as soon as you can, then.” He shut her door with a snap and went back into his office, saying something that brought on a gust of laughter before he closed the door.

A moment later he popped out of his office again, holding the coffeepot. “Would you bring us some more coffee? Sorry to ask you, but there’s no one else.”

There was him. He could get his own damned coffee. “Sure,” I said, manufacturing a smile. He didn’t even stick around to see it.

The pots were empty when I got back to the coffee area. Mindy was taking her lunch out of the little refrigerator. I looked thirstily at the bottles that crowded it, wondering what they were—exotic cola? Tea? Prune juice?

"That’s Ed’s tonic,” Mindy said, noticing what I was staring at. “Some kind of foul Chinese stuff he swears by. There’s some soda in there somewhere, though, if you want one.”

“I’ll stick with tea.” The back door was open, leading out to the sunny landing. I could see Jason through the open door, sitting at a table wearily holding his head in his hands.

"I’ll do the coffee,” Mindy said, after watching me fumble with the filters and spill the grounds. She darted an anxious look at Jason’s back. “He could use a little time alone. It’s rough on him, coming here. He’s really broken up.”

“Thanks for the help.” The phone was doing its buzz-buzz. I ran up to the front to put a series of callers on hold. When I ran back, Mindy was filling the vacuum bottle. Jason stood next to her, fiddling moodily with a saltshaker. I thanked her again, seized the carafe, and dashed back to my desk..

Suzanne came out of her office just as I got there. Gone were the faded corduroys and baggy T-shirts. She wore a perfectly fitted linen suit in a pearly gray-green with a teal silk blouse. Her hair was still pulled back from her face, but she’d put on some eye makeup and clipped a bow to her ponytail. She was even wearing stockings and expensive-looking heels. The clothes looked as comfortable on her long, lean body as the grubbies she usually wore.

She pulled a face for me while I stared at her. “Behold the corporate honcho.”

“You look the part. Watch out—he’s got a Frenchman in there.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath.

I followed her into Ed’s office, carrying the coffee carafe. His room was very different from Suzanne’s. The decorator had been all over it, from the beautiful Oriental rug on the floor to the softly draped valance at the window. His furniture was heavy, dark wood. A door in one corner opened into a white-tiled bathroom. I was glad, for the Frenchman’s sake.

The same Frenchman had seized Suzanne’s hand, bowing and grinning. I set the carafe on Ed’s desk. He was watching Suzanne, but he noticed the coffee.

“More java, anyone?”

One of the Germans glanced at his watch. “Is it not lunchtime?”

I turned to leave, and they started crowding after me. First the Frenchman, leading Suzanne, with the Asians and Germans on their heels. Ed brought up the rear.

After they left, the phones took a lunch break, too. I got out a rough draft and did some editing while I finished my yogurt. It was quiet behind me, where people crouched in their cubicles eating sack lunches, or faded out the back door to get something downtown. I had time to go to the bathroom and get myself some more hot water. There was no sign of Drake. Mindy and Jason still sat on the back landing, talking earnestly.

The phones started up again around one, but less heavily. At one-thirty Ed and Suzanne came back, without all the other suits. They went into Ed’s office and shut the door. A few minutes later, after the intercom light had flashed, Larry ambled past, leered at me, and went into the office.

Jason Paston came out to the front, escorted by Mindy, whose eyes were soft behind her big-lensed glasses. “I guess I’ll come back Monday to get Jenifer’s stuff,” he told her, taking her hand. “Thanks so much for listening. I—I’d better get going now.”

They were still standing there when the door to Ed’s office burst open.

Suzanne ran out, awkward in her high heels. From the office behind her came a terrible sound of retching and gagging, accompanied by thumps and crashes.

“Get the paramedics, quick!” Suzanne’s face was white. “Get Poison Control. Get help!”

I dialed 911 while Mindy ran for the phone in Suzanne’s office. Jason sank into the client chair, looking pale. Suzanne rooted around in the lower drawers of my desk, finally finding the first-aid kit she wanted. The 911 operator was asking me questions I couldn’t answer. I shoved the phone at Suzanne, but she was no help. “Get someone here right away,” she yelled. "They’re dying!” She flung the receiver back at me and ran back into Ed’s office.

“Some kind of poison, she thinks,” I told the operator. “All I know is someone’s retching like his guts are coming out.” I could hear that much.

Sirens sounded outside—University Avenue is close to Stanford Hospital and a fire station, but the traffic often makes the ambulances slow in the streets. This one sounded like it was puffing up on the sidewalk right under the windows. If they hadn’t been so high, we probably could have seen flashing lights.

Mindy came back as the paramedics charged up the stairs. Drake ran into the room, his big case banging against his leg. He dropped it beside my desk and disappeared into Ed’s office without a word. I held the glass doors open, pointing the paramedics’ way.

Jason grabbed Mindy’s hand. “What happened?” His skin glistened pallidly. “Who’s ill?”

“Ed and Larry, I guess.” Mindy nibbled at her lower lip. She took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on.” She turned to me, but I shook my head.

There was a lot of seething action in Ed’s office. Suzanne stood against the wall just outside the door, her hands clutched tightly in front of her, the tendons standing out like a weightlifter’s. Her eyes were closed, her whole face tight with agony.

EMTs rushed in and out; the sounds of frenetic activity came from the office. The retching noises had been succeeded by groaning. Then the paramedics charged into the reception room with their burdens.

Larry was strapped onto a stretcher, his pudgy body arched despite the restraint around his chest. His eyes looked glazed and dull; his face was fixed in a horrible kind of grin. Ed was also strapped on; he quivered with convulsions and his mouth, too, was open in a wide grimace. Only his eyes looked human, and they were horribly frightened. Suzanne ran beside the stretcher, but she got left behind at the glass doors. As the stretcher passed, Ed saw me, and his eyes changed. His tongue pawed desperately at the air, trying to make contact with his widely stretched lips, trying to say something.

Then the glass doors swung shut, and Suzanne collapsed onto the edge of my desk, weeping into her hands. “He’s going to die,” she moaned. “I know he’s going to die.”

Chapter 20

The reception area was crowded with exclaiming, anxious people. Suzanne made an effort to pull herself together. “We have to do something—tell someone. The police.”

A few of the engineers melted discreetly away when they heard that.

“Yes, we should.” Jason glanced at me and looked away.

Suzanne looked at me, too. “Can you—”

“The police are here.” I nodded at Ed’s office. Drake stood there; his face was blank, but I could see that his mouth was held tight.

Everyone stopped milling around and looked at Drake. He came over to my desk and picked up his case. “Call Bruno,” he said.

I started dialing.

“We’ll be taking statements from everyone. It may take a while. If you were in here when it happened, stay. If not, go back to your desks. Nobody leaves.” He sized up Suzanne, whose white face was streaked with tears, and turned to Mindy. “Lock the back door. Nobody goes in or out.”

“Here’s Detective Morales.” I held the receiver out to Drake.

“I’ll take it in the other office.” He put his case under my desk. “Keep an eye on that for me, will you? And Liz? The same thing up here, okay? Nobody gets past you, in or out.”

People left to go back to their cubicles, except for Angel and a few others who clustered around Suzanne. Jason stood uneasily beside the double door.

Drake came back out of Suzanne’s office just as a crew of people bustled in through the entrance doors. Bruno Morales was in front.

He greeted me gravely. “So, Miss Sully. Another death you’re involved in."

“Not really, Detective Morales. I’m just answering the phone here.”

He lifted an eyebrow at Drake. “You’ll get Paolo all worked up.”

Drake snorted at that, but let it pass. He turned to Suzanne. “We’re going to be busy in Ed’s office for a while, and when we’re done it will be sealed. The other fellow’s office, too—what’s his name?”

“Larry Dortmunder.” Suzanne’s voice was dull. “What do you want me to do?”

Morales gestured to one of the people who’d followed him up the stairs. “Ms. Horton will be interviewing everyone who was in the office at the time of the occurrence. If it’s convenient, we’d like them to leave after their interview. Can you close down early?”

“I guess so.” Suzanne looked at the policewoman without interest. “You can start with the programmers if you want. I’ll take you back.”

They went out together. The rest of the police team vanished into Ed’s office. Angel followed Suzanne.

Jason shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “What about me?” He looked from Morales to Drake. “I was here, but I spent the whole time with Mindy.”

“Why were you here?” Drake fired the question briskly. Jason reddened. “Well, I—I really came to get Jenifer’s stuff, but—Mindy had an extra sandwich and we got talking—”

Morales and Drake looked at each other in the kind of silent communion married people sometimes have. “You can go, then,” Bruno said in his gentle voice. “We shall call you if we want to talk to you, Mr. Paston.”

Jason left. Bruno disappeared into Ed’s office. Drake and I were alone in the room.

He stood where he was, staring into nothing. I took a couple of calls. One of them asked for Ed. I said he was out of the office.

“I can’t get over it.” Drake perched on the edge of my desk. He rubbed his eyes and put his glasses back on. “Right under my nose. I was right here, and someone slips two people a mickey.”

“Whoever did it probably didn’t even know you were here.” I switched the phones onto the automatic answerer and took off my headset. “Did anyone see you back there in Jenifer’s cube?”

He waved his hand impatiently. “One or two programmers, maybe.”

“Even Jason didn’t know. Mindy was keeping him away from Jenifer’s cube until you were done.”

Drake stood up. “Well, looks like I won’t be done for a while. Can you show me this Larry’s office?”

I took Drake through the maze. “He’s got a door,” Drake remarked. “Guy must have really rated.”

“He had a good opinion of himself, certainly.”

“You didn’t like him.” Drake tried the doorknob. It turned, and he let himself in.

“No. He had an unattractive personality—always snooping and eavesdropping. Tried to weasel my phone number even though he didn’t need it.” I remembered something. “He was strange when Suzanne raked him down. Said he was sure he’d have a job here as long as SoftWrite existed, or something like that. It sounded threatening.”

Wearing his plastic gloves, Drake opened Larry’s desk drawers. A couple of them were locked, as was the brief case sitting on a side table. Drake didn’t bother with the drawers, but be did something to the briefcase locks that popped them right open.

“How did you do that?”

“You don’t need to know.” He rifled the papers, flipped through a pocket diary. Then his hands stilled. “Eureka.” He lifted a small leather-bound book.

“What’s that?”

“Hmm? Oh, Jenifer’s notebook, looks like.” Drake turned the pages delicately, hardly touching them. "Clarice found it under the sofa, near Jenifer’s hand. She noticed some juicy bits in it about Jason, and was going to use it to ‘prove’ that Jenifer’s allegations of abuse were true.”

“Some proof.” Jason’s denial the day before had rung true to me. A young girl whose parents suddenly died might eventually turn her own repressed guilt and anger against her brother, and there are some therapists around eager to cash in on vulnerable people’s confusion. “So Larry's the one who took it out of her bag when she made such a scene. He was sitting near where Mindy found it for her. Did he just want to snoop in it, or what?”

Drake sealed the notebook in a plastic bag. “Probably.” His voice was the noncommittal one that says he won’t tell.

“You’re taking it away?” I watched him put the notebook in his big case. “Can you do that?”

“As it happens,” Drake said, his wire-rims flashing at me, “I have a search warrant. Why don’t you tell me everything you did after I went back to Jenifer’s cube.”

Already it was hard to remember. I tried to get things in the right order—Jason’s arrival, Ed’s request for coffee, Suzanne’s change in appearance, the exodus of the suits and the return of Suzanne and Ed, Larry’s summons. Drake had his little tape recorder on to listen for him while he sifted papers from Larry’s in-box, but he listened, too, and asked questions.

“Jason was standing right there when you went back for the coffee?”

“Yes.” I pictured the scene. “So I guess Mindy, Jason, or I could have poisoned it.”

“You took it up front. Did you take it right into the office?"