Death of the Office Witch Read online

  “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.

  “Bad day.” Charlie ate half her meal and signaled the waitress to come for her plate. She watched Libby eat all her burger and most of her fries. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  “You’re the only mother I know who tells her kid never to clean up her plate. Lori’s mom thinks you’re weird.”

  If Charlie were smart, she’d keep quiet and let her child store calories. Her heart sank to wherever it is that hearts sink, watching Libby struggle to think of a way to pose a question or more likely an “I want.”

  Where Charlie’s hair was a bronze color that looked dyed but wasn’t and was incorrigibly curly, Libby’s was long and straight—a natural platinum half the women in the world would kill for. She’d picked up an even, tawny California tan within weeks of their arrival and never lost it. Her eyes were dark like Charlie’s but larger in her smaller face. Right now Libby’s smile was full of metal, but when those braces came off … if only she’d grow a big ugly nose until she was twenty.

  “Mom, are you having a Maalox moment?”

  Charlie massaged the skin around her eyes, careful not to dislodge contact lenses. “Gloria Tuschman, our receptionist, has disappeared. And I screwed up a deal with Goliath that could get me fired, and I told you this morning I cannot afford two-hundred-dollar Rollerblades.”

  Libby said, with no trace of sympathy, “I’m getting a loan.”

  “For a loan you have to have collateral or at least a job. Who would give you a loan?”

  “I’ll pay it back when I get a job.” The beautiful dark eyes shot sparks. “Grandma told me to call collect if I ever needed anything.” Libby slid out of the booth and headed for the door, leaving Charlie with the check.

  “Edwina’s going to lend you two hundred dollars for Rollerblades?” Charlie asked when she got out to the car.

  “Do you still want me to try out for cheerleading?”

  “You have to have Rollerblades to be a cheerleader?”

  “No, I have to join a sorority, and the two hundred dollars will only cover the Rollerblades.”

  “You have to belong to a sorority to be a cheerleader?”

  “Mom, I do not make the rules, okay? Now can we go home? I have tests tomorrow.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t go out for cheerleading. I just thought it might be fun is all,” Charlie lied through her teeth. She had wanted to go out for cheerleading once, at Boulder High School. But she didn’t, because she discovered she was pregnant with Libby, and her world changed forever in one day.

  “Oh I forgot,” Libby said as the Toyota slid through the gate into the compound. “Somebody named Keegan called.”

  “Keegan?” The Toyota jerked to a stop with its headlights drilling through the back gate into the alley as the front gate closed behind them. “What did he say?”

  “Just told me to tell you he called. No big deal.”

  “Libby, that’s the Goliath deal. Any other calls you forgot to mention?”

  “Some military dude. You’re always telling me I have weird friends. Lieutenant Dimple or something.”

  “Lieutenant Dalrymple?”

  “Sounds like it. Just wanted you to call him. I wrote it down on the phone pad. Why, is that some big deal too?”

  “That’s the Beverly Hills Police Department. I told you Gloria is missing. We called them and they suspect something happened to her because her car and purse are still there.”

  “Gloria the Witch? What do you care, you don’t like her anyway.”

  “My opinion of her has nothing to do with it.” Two small gold orbs blinked on, then off, then on again from the alley where the trash cans were kept. A black, sinewy form with flashes of white slid through the grating. Libby’s cat.

  “Are you going to park or should I get out here? I don’t have the whole night, you know. What’s the matter? It’s just Tuxedo coming home, finally.”

  “She said she was in the trash can. She wanted me to help her.”

  “Tuxedo’s a guy.”

  “Gloria the Witch.”

  “I thought she was missing. If she’s in the trash can, she’s not missing. Probably not too comfortable. Mom, don’t look like that, okay? You scare me. Did she want you to help her before she was missing?”

  “No, after,” Charlie said and killed the engine.

  Lieutenant Dalrymple wanted Charlie at Congdon and Morse no later than eight o’clock the next morning. She was late because Libby wanted a ride to school, even though it was a straight shot up Ximeno to Wilson High (which was a good part of the reason Charlie bought where she did), and because Libby was very unpleasant to wake that early, and because Charlie’s usual trajectory into her parking space was blocked by barricades. So she maneuvered back to Charleville Boulevard and down the alley, only to stop in front of the trash can where she’d seen the woman throw away something red the day before.

  It was silly, but earlier that morning at the usual time when Tuxedo tired of floating with Libby on her waterbed and came in to wrap himself around Charlie’s head and bite it before trying to smother her, she’d been dreaming about that damned trash can and Gloria the Witch putting something red in it.

  Some things you just have to do even if they’re irrational. Charlie was late anyway. She got out and lifted the lid. These were extra big green plastic trash cans provided by the city, and this one was empty. She felt sillier but she felt better. Charlie gave a sigh of relief and turned back to the Toyota.

  “Looking for this?” Lieutenant Dalrymple stepped out from behind the concrete block wall, one of Gloria’s red spike heels in his hand.

  4

  Lieutenant Dalrymple stood next to Charlie up on the fifth floor landing of the VIP stairs, looking out the darkened glass of the nearly floor-to-ceiling window. She was trying to explain how she had known where to look for Gloria’s shoe.

  Down below a man took pictures of Gloria the Witch sprawled in the bush tops like she’d been spread out to dry.

  From that far away she looked a little puffy, maybe, but really pretty normal. Well okay, she looked dead—but other than that …


  The tops of the bushes had been trimmed back to expose the body. Some of the fake jewels glued onto the corpse’s bright red fingernails sparked in the camera flashes. An ambulance and a gurney waited in the alley.

  Gloria seemed to be staring straight up at Charlie. Staring accusingly. (Mary Ann Leffler would have probably said “with a look of accusation” or something else long-winded but pure.)

  “You said you were in the trash can, not the bushes,” Charlie defended herself, and then realized she’d said it aloud.

  “Would you tell me again, please, what you were doing up here when you saw Mrs. Humphrys put Mrs. Tuschman’s shoe in the garbage can?” the lieutenant asked apologetically and with just the right trace of vagueness. This guy was good.

  On second thought, Gloria didn’t really look believably dead. She looked stage dead, the scene playing more like a movie.

  They had found the shoe last night, but not Gloria until this morning. Maybe if you were looking for a body you would automatically be looking down. The wall and the bush tops were higher than a man’s head. Still, wouldn’t someone have smelled Gloria? Or seen drops of blood on the other side of the wall? Or whatever?

  The homicide detective was soft-spoken in a sincere, not a silky, way. He was angular, with a pleasant face marred by thick glasses and thin lips. Baldness started exactly halfway back on his head as if drawn up that way by an engineering draftsman, the sideburns long and exact. If Charlie had been asked to type him without knowing, she’d have guessed him to be a college professor in the humanities long before she’d have suspected a Beverly Hills cop. His nonthreatening, slightly bumbling manner invited confidences. He could be a real comfort to a victim’s family, a real trap for a suspect.

  Right now anyone connected to Gloria was a suspect. Charlie answered him slowly. “I was looking for her, checked the ladies first, then came over here to check the stairwell, and looked out the window to see a woman pick up something off the ground, look around, shrug, walk to the alley, and throw it in the trash. Something red. The way she held it I didn’t realize it was a shoe.”

  “Mrs. Humphrys was on her way to get her car from her garage when she found it. She’s lived in that house for over five years.”

  “This is where I work, Lieutenant. We don’t interface with the people who live in the neighborhood. I’d never seen her before.”

  “You never go out and walk around the block over your lunch hour?”

  “In these shoes?” Today Charlie wore high navy blue pumps, sheer navy-tinted pantyhose, navy and white striped seersucker skirt, navy seersucker blazer, and white blouse with navy bow tie. Even her earrings were navy and white. She’d figured a no-nonsense outfit would give her added confidence. It wasn’t working. And the lieutenant’s eyes hadn’t risen any farther than her legs. So much for dressing for success.

  “Ah … yes.” He looked up finally. “So … you didn’t recognize it as a shoe when Mrs. Humphrys threw it away but as merely something red. But when I showed it to you just now you knew it immediately as belonging to Gloria Tuschman.” He paused to feign confusion, obviously not as distracted by her legs as he’d like her to think. “Why would you stop to inspect a garbage container this morning because you’d seen a complete stranger throw something red in it yesterday morning? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “I think my subconscious had picked up on more of this than I had. While I was standing here noticing Mrs. Humphrys put something in the garbage can, I was also noticing something glitter in the sunlight when wind fluttered the leaves of the bushes on top of the wall. I didn’t register it as anything to do with Gloria consciously, but Gloria wore a lot of red.”

  Charlie was trying to be as straightforward as possible without incriminating herself unintentionally, which if you thought about it was probably hopeless. “But when I was talking to her on the car phone I could hear the clicking of her keyboard and had a sort of mental picture of her bright red nails with the fake jewel strips on them.”

  He flipped a page in his little breast pocket notebook. “That would have been about nine yesterday morning.”

  Charlie was the last person to admit talking to Gloria the Witch alive and Larry the last to admit seeing her that way.

  “Right. And when I went back to her desk after looking out this window I noticed the shortened pencils with the eraser ends she used to type with and press phone keys—to keep those nails so perfect—sitting sort of slantwise as if she’d dropped them in the middle of something and planned to come right back but didn’t. Gloria was pretty tidy and usually put things like that in a little trough container gismo. But I’m connecting this now, you understand, now that I know … I didn’t then. But right after that, on my way to a business lunch, I was thinking about the people I was going to meet there and the business to be conducted, yet still seeing those pencil ends on Gloria’s desk.”

  “Lunch at the Polo Lounge.” He checked his notebook again.

  “Right. And then I came back and she hadn’t shown up yet, so I asked Larry to check if her purse and car were still here and if anyone had notified building security.”

  “She disappeared from her desk sometime between nine and just after ten in the morning, and no one raised the alarm until approximately three in the afternoon. Is it just me or do you find that strange?”

  “If Irma Vance wasn’t on vacation, everybody would have figured out something was wrong the minute Gloria stopped fielding phone calls, and a search would have been on. Irma’s the office manager as well as executive secretary. But right now we’re short-staffed because Maurice’s assistant quit and Maurice isn’t due back from vacation until today. The rest of us were pretty much in and out, which isn’t unusual. Luella just got back from Minnesota. We were all coming and going, and Gloria wasn’t here to be a central communication source. It just took a while for anyone to stop long enough for it to sink in that she was really gone and to start checking. I mean just because someone’s not at her desk, you don’t automatically assume she’s been murdered and … I forgot the question.”

  He smiled, keeping his lips together as if he couldn’t help himself. “Why you stopped at the garbage can this morning.”

  “Last night I saw my daughter’s cat come through the gate in front of the car lights, and his eyes flashed like we just saw the jewels in Gloria’s fingernails do, and we keep the garbage cans in the alley on the other side of that gate. And then he woke me about two and I was dreaming that Gloria was putting something red in the garbage can. How am I doing?”

  “And that’s when you decided to check the container in the alley behind this building when you came to work this morning?”

  “That wasn’t until I actually got here and drove up next to it. If the main entrance hadn’t been blocked and I hadn’t come down the alley and seen the garbage can, I probably wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  He paused to stare at her as if his mind was working to catch up with her logic. And then, still playing for time, he said, “Uh … I’d like you please to show me just how those pencil ends were lying on her desk.”

  They were almost past the ladies’ room when someone behind them whispered, “Charlie, I’m in the trash can. Help me.”

  And then, Charlie thought with resignation, there’s always that. She leaned against the wall, weak-kneed, aware she looked nothing like a career woman on her way up to the fabled glass ceiling.

  “Do you believe in the supernatural?” Dalrymple asked, ignoring her sudden stop yet almost as if he too had heard the whisper. But his expression was too bland.

  “No, why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Not scientific.” Charlie, realizing she’d answered her own question, stared back at the stairwell. Obviously someone alive had figured out how to send a voice recognizable as a dead Gloria’s up from below. Someone who knew Charlie’s hearing was more acute than most people’s. Or perhaps Dalrymple’s wasn’t any better than Podhurst’s.

  Maurice L
avender was a compulsive womanizer. Or he wanted every woman in the world to think he was. Charlie liked him but wasn’t sure whether or not his charm was the reason, or was it just that he was so different from her distant father. His hair was white but luxuriant, his dress casual. His speech slow, Southern, and suggestive. His face unlined and his smile warm, welcoming, intimate, reassuring—whatever you might order. He would have been insulted to know she thought of him in the same generation as “father.”

  “I have no idea how old he is,” Maggie Stutzman, Charlie’s neighbor confidant, said after meeting him at a party Charlie had given in Long Beach. “But those eyes—gawd, you just want to strip and jump in. Not that there’d be anything to land on.”

  Maurice’s specialties at Congdon and Morse were aging female stars and character actresses of daytime soaps and nighttime sitcoms. Generally they were actresses who had gained their initial audience identification in film. He was shrewd, but gently so.

  “And how is darling Libby’s little mother? I’ve missed you so, sweetie,” he said now, enfolding Charlie in a forceful embrace against a broad, slightly plump chest. Maurice was a boob man, and Charlie barely had any, but he didn’t seem to mind. Then he began swirling her around the conference room in a clutching dance step and whispered in her ear, “Dorian tells me the witch is dead. Ding dong the witch is dead. Which old witch? The wicked—”

  “Here, you two, none of that in the office,” Richard Morse scolded. He’d just breezed in an hour late, his way of one-upping the Beverly Hills P.D.

  Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dalrymple watched the gathering together of Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc. with apparent bewilderment.

  Charlie gave Maurice a kiss on the cheek and wiggled out of his grasp. “How was Cancun?”

  By a bare raising of the brow, a faint constriction of the nostrils and lips, a nearly inaudible moan, and a look of glassy-eyed helplessness Maurice Lavender managed to impart memories of an orgasmic delight beyond comprehension.