My Boss is a Serial Killer (9 page)

“
Dear boy, you don’t have to be a slave
to your schedule. I watch TV shows on DVD. I am the master of my
own fate.”

“
Back in my youth,” said Gus dreamily,
“an episode was an episode, and everything at the end was back to
the status quo. The next week, they started fresh as if nothing had
ever happened.”

“
I remember those days. What a romantic
notion, starting fresh every week.”

Gus chuckled at me, looking unexpectedly
pleased.

We were eating strawberry shortcake before
Lyvia made an appearance. She peered around the corner of the
kitchen and said, “Sorry, can I just come through for some
tea?”

Gus motioned her in. He had some whipped
topping on his lip that rendered me momentarily speechless, Barry
White music floating into my fantasies again, but unfortunately he
wiped it off before he said, “Lyvie, do you want some cake?”

“
Hell, yes,” she said.

“
Sit down with us,” I offered
sincerely, able to summon coherent thought now that the whipped
topping incident had passed. “Take a break. I have been trying to
explain to your brother why lawyers are required to bill so much
for their time.”

“
He told you about the letter, didn’t
he?” asked Lyvia. She sat and helped herself to a double portion of
strawberry shortcake. At her age, she could probably do that
without immediately gaining twenty pounds. In a fairly good
imitation of her brother she said, “That guy charged me two hundred
dollars for writing a letter that I could have written
myself.”

I shrugged good-naturedly; Gus had mentioned
the complaint he had about a little property dispute and the
attorney who had solved it for him. I didn’t mind. People were
always asking me to explain the reasons why lawyers cost so much,
as if I were invited to top-secret meetings where, through some
ancient and dangerous ritual, lawyers chose high numbers to call
their hourly billing fees.

I was curious at the moment about the age
difference between these two, Gus was thirty-five and Lyvia was
probably only slightly over twenty, so I asked about it.

“
We’re the alpha and omega,” said
Lyvia. “Gus is the oldest, I’m the baby, and in between us are
Jules and Ty.”

“
Being the only girl and the baby
hasn’t spoiled her, though,” said Gus, handing her a
napkin.

“
Wait a minute.” I puzzled through
their names in my head. “Your brothers are actually Julius and
Tiberius, aren’t they?”

Lyvia and Gus exchanged looks. They were
rather impressed with me. Maybe I had just earned my own gold
star.

“
I, Claudius
,” I said, to
explain my knowledge of Imperial Roman names. “Everything I know, I
learned on television.”

I was having such a nice time just looking at
Gus Haglund and humming Barry White under my breath (“Can’t Get
Enough of Your Love, Babe”), that I forgot all about Adrienne
Maxwell until Gus asked what it was like working for Bill. Like
most others, Gussie assumed that Bill was a handful.

“
Yes, he’s a handful,” I said, “but
that’s not always a bad thing. At least, with him, the handful is
always the same and he’s not high-maintenance.”

Gus cocked his head.

“
Code word,” I said. “High-maintenance
is the code word for asshole. Bill is a handful, but that’s not the
same thing. If a secretary goes to an interview and is told that
the attorney is high-maintenance, she’d be wise to run the other
way.”

“
That’s the second time you’ve given me
a code word. Detail-oriented was the other one.”

“
Legal clerical work is lousy with code
words. It’s considered in poor taste to just say what you mean. I
suppose down at the KCPD, you guys just say what you
mean.”

“
Words that would curl your
hair.”

“
Looks like they did,” I said, and
nodded toward his head. He ran a hand through the natural wiriness
of his hair and I thought,
oooo, I want to do that
. But the
conversation had brought us around to Adrienne Maxwell. “So can you
talk about the case?” I asked.

“
Not really. Not much.” Gus wasn’t
upset at me for asking. He actually seemed to feel bad that he
couldn’t share more.

“
Well, speaking generally, then,” I
coaxed. “She seemed at first like a suicide. What made you police
change your minds?”

“
At first there was just the coroner
and the crime scene investigators. When they turned up a couple of
odd details, the case was turned over to our department, and my
supervisor, Sergeant Jackie Paige, handed it over to
me.”

“
And the odd details? The witness who
saw the unsub, and something about the drugs?”

“
You know Clarissa, right? Adrienne
Maxwell’s daughter?”

“
I know of her.”

“
Well, Adrienne died from an overdose
of combined over-the-counter medications. Stuff she could have
easily bought on her own. But Clarissa said Adrienne didn’t use
medications. She believed in herbal remedies only. Other than that,
I can’t say more.”

“
Probably better that you don’t,” I
admitted. “Where I work, information is passed by osmosis. If you
told me, whether or not I said a word, it would be known for three
cubicles in each direction before Monday lunchtime.”

Gus laughed at my joke. By this point he had
so many gold stars that we could film an episode of Star Trek in
the starry final frontier he’d created in my mind. Carol’s Little
Book of Dating had never seen such a triumphant performance.

Gus told me, “I’ve got to be careful what I
say. I got reamed a couple years ago for speaking out of turn. I’m
not anxious to go through that ordeal again.”

“
Understood. I’m sorry. It’s just that
we knew her at the office. And everybody there is so bored, they’ll
do about anything to pass the time. A murder investigation, well,
that’s almost as interesting as The Time a Car Hit the Building and
We Thought it was a Bomb.”

I could see I was going to have to explain
that one.

I tried not to whine like a disappointed kid
when Gus told me that he had to take me home at six. How we were
going to run off to Vegas for a quickie wedding if he had to take
me home at six? He confessed that he had many errands to run and
had to be at work early Sunday morning. To his credit, he added
that if he’d known things were going to go so well between us, he
would have kept more of his evening free.

Before we left Gus’s house, I went upstairs
to wish Lyvia luck on her term paper. She looked a little
bleary-eyed and didn’t seem pleased with her work so far. I might
add here that I won major brownie points when I paused to help her
use the auto-number feature in her word processor. Occasionally the
skills of a secretary, which seem so mundane and repetitive when
you perform them forty-five hours a week, look like incredible
magic to the inexperienced. If there was one thing I can do, it’s
work a word processor. Pleased that I could contribute to the good
of others, I wrote my phone number down for her. “If that thing
gives you any more trouble,” I said, gesturing to the computer’s
screen, “feel free to call me. I’ll make it behave.”

“
The hell with Gus,” said Lyvia. “I
think I’m going to ask you out.”

I walked outside with my afternoon date,
squashing the desire to ask what he had to do that evening. That
was none of my business unless he offered. I got a clue, though,
when he opened his garage to retrieve a gas can. It was possible
that his big Saturday night plans involved mowing his yard. My
relief—secretly I had feared he might have another date lined up, a
lingerie model with a degree in nuclear physics, or hooker with a
heart of gold, something like that—anyway, my relief was bright but
also brief, because in his garage I saw that he had a Harley.
Nothing fancy, but hard and sleek, well loved and cared for. It was
one of those great black motorcycles that tough, misunderstood bad
boys ride, straight out of a movie. I damn neared swooned.

“
Oh, Lord,” I said weakly. “Oh my God,
you have a motorcycle.”

“
Eh.” I’d made him shy
again.

“
What kind is it?”

Gus looked fondly at the bike. He said, “It’s
a Softail Deuce,” with a throaty undertone that made me dizzy. “I
like to ride when the weather’s good. I’m not a Hell’s Angel or
anything. You’re not afraid of them, are you?”

It was hard for me to speak through the
aneurysm—or was it an orgasm? Felt a little like both. Yeah, I’m
one of those women who get a little light-headed over a motorcycle.
“One of those women,” in that I think there are only five women in
existence, probably holed up in some Quaker town, who don’t love
motorcycles. And the big devil hadn’t told me up front, “I own one
of your fantasy toys, wanna see me sit on it?” Oh, no. He’d let me
see the dowdy sedan first.

“
Not afraid of motorcycles,” I said. My
knees were weak.

“
Great. Well maybe…when it gets a
little warmer, we can, you know, go for a ride.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
That was really nice, what you did for
Lyvia with the computer.”

“
Piece of cake,” I said. “I do that
stuff every day.”

“
I can tell. It all looks like voodoo
to me.” Gus put his hands in his pockets, a little insolent and
challenging.

I just couldn’t help it. He was the finest
thing I’d laid eyes on in years and the nicest thing that had
happened to me since I found Bill Nestor. Three steps brought me
flush against his impressively broad and immensely hard body, and I
kissed him. Firm at first, hardly more than affectionate, just in
case he recoiled in horror, but as soon as I felt that he wasn’t
recoiling, things softened between our lips and I wound an arm
around his neck to pull him closer. Gus Haglund was a thorough
kisser, and all that lopsided menace I’d imagined in his smile was
alive and well when he kissed me. He took my lower lip in his
teeth, and he parted my mouth with his tongue. He took his time and
let the blood rush into my head, and after a few seconds, I could
feel a hard pulse thumping in every dark corner of my body.

He kept his hands in his pockets. Clever
devil.

Finally I let him go, dropped dreamily back
to the ground, and was able to focus again. “That wasn’t all about
the motorcycle,” I assured him. “The motorcycle just made it
unavoidable.”

“
My God,” murmured Gus. “What would you
do if I showed you my lawnmower?”

On Monday, my great date story was in danger
of being overshadowed by a Kay’s Mother Is In The Hospital story.
Kay’s mother was an eighty-something-year-old woman who spent so
much time in the hospital that I believed she had actually died
several years before and her corpse was simply reanimated every few
weeks. That’s a terrible thing to say? Well, maybe, unless you knew
Kay. Kay believed that the illnesses of herself, her family, her
extended family, her friends, her neighbors, their families and
their pets, and their pets’ families, were of concern to everyone
at MBS&K. Get enough people together, and someone will always
be sick or hospitalized. I could have done the same thing if I’d
wanted, but I didn’t because I knew that others simply didn’t care
if my auntie was having an MRI of her bladder.

Kay’s Mother Is In the Hospital. What was the
matter with her this time? I’m sure that the ailment was gruesome
and mysterious, as they always were with Kay’s family of perpetual
hypochondriacs. The word spread around of its own volition. Someone
wondered if we should send a card. The firm could go bankrupt
sending cards to Kay’s sick family.

Over the fabulous weekend, I not only forgot
entirely about Adrienne Maxwell and the Bonita Voigt file; once I
was at my desk, shutting away my possessions, glancing at the
weekend mail, I realized that I’d more or less forgotten what my
job was. What was I, some kind of number cruncher? I inspected the
desk and found indications that I was somebody’s secretary. Oh,
yes. Bill had left a tape of dictation and a list of documents to
prepare while he was out in a meeting.

At 8:30, Charlene appeared magically before
my cubicle, as she was wont to do, and ducked silently inside. She
had a file in her hand, which was good. Junior Gestapo Brent was
probably already patrolling the floor, making sure nobody was up to
mischief. If we heard him coming, we could revert to our generic
business talk. We had a standard set of emergency comments to make:
“So have you ever worked on this file?” “No, that file has not been
in my workload.” “Who do you think I should ask about this file?”
“I think that asking about that file is a good idea.” Junior
Gestapo Brent wasn’t that bright, and it sounded like work, so he’d
go away to find other evildoers.

When I began working for MBS&K, there was
only one secretarial supervisor, and that was Donna. As far as
supervisors go, she was a good one. She trusted us to get our work
done and, provided that we did that, she didn’t bother us about
much else. We could go to her with any problems and she’d try to
help. She was also effective at mediating between the secretaries
and attorneys when the need arose. But she was one person in charge
of twenty secretaries, plus overseeing the office management, plus
dealing with the endless supply of nonsense that attorneys can
generate, and so she was extremely overworked.