Death of the Office Witch (5 page)

Maurice Lavender 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.

“Uh, Lieutenant? You got this all wrong, you know?” Dorian straightened a perfectly straight tie and gestured around the conference table. “You're supposed to question each one of us separately, see? Then at the end get us all together. You oughta watch more television.”

“The end of what?” the lieutenant asked quietly.

“Well, of … the story.”

“This is not a story.” He gazed around the table, lingering on each pair of eyes in turn until the owners squirmed. “It is not television. It is not a moving picture, Disneyland, make-believe. It is real, cold-blooded murder. Make no mistake, no matter your opinion of or relationship to Gloria Tuschman, her violent death will alter your lives forever. Nothing will ever again be the same for any of you. And for whoever murdered her, there will never again be true peace of mind.”

“Aw come o-on.” Richard Morse at the head of the table rolled slightly protruding eyes, flattening beautiful hands on its glossy surface. “Some dopehead bops a total stranger in an alley and he's going to lay awake nights feeling guilty about it? Probably won't even remember.”

“The victim was not ‘bopped,' as you call it, in the alley, but at the end of the private hallway on this floor.” The lieutenant glanced at Charlie when her breath squeaked on the intake.

“Well, you're still gonna be one busy man. That hall is accessible from any floor in the building except the first, and that includes the first level parking. That's all the bank offices on second, third, fourth, plus the floors above.” Richard Morse was a well-built man. He looked Greek, Italian, and Jewish and—like Gloria—sounded New Jersey. He had a prominent nose and long eyelashes, hair that was short and curly black with gray patches artfully preserved at the temples.

“Then there's the valet parking staff, and I understand the turnover there is horrific. Cleaning staff have keys. Hoo boy, are you going to be tied up forever if you're looking for your culprit in-house. This is one hell of a big house.”

“I've known bigger,” Dalrymple said patiently.

But Charlie's boss was on a roll. She could feel the throb in the floor as his knee jumped like he was keeping time to his own private music. “Plus which, Gloria had a life, you know? A husband, neighbors, enemies? She could have buzzed them in the front door. And meantime,” Richard continued as if the policeman were not the man in charge here, “you've got my whole agency in this room and this is a business day.”

Ironically, most of them would have been sitting in this room at this time on this morning anyway. Beginning with the second, each floor of the First Federal United Central Wilshire Bank of the Pacific had two common conference rooms. One small for staff meetings and another larger one for workshops with related businesses or product displays for sales conferences or whatever. They came with the lease and had only to be reserved. This, the smaller of the two, was reserved by Congdon and Morse on a regular basis two mornings a week. No one was about to tell Dalrymple that.

“Then the sooner we get under way the better,” the homicide detective said, unperturbed and, Charlie would guess, unimpressed. “Now, I would like to ask a few questions. The first being, why the late, and seemingly unlamented, Gloria was referred to as a ‘witch.'”

5

Charlie looked around at her colleagues, who were doing the same. Had one of them murdered Gloria at the end of the private hall, carried her down four flights of stairs, dragged her past the valet parking attendants—and anyone else using the rear entrance—and out into the alley and around the wall, and thrown her up to the top of the bushes? Wouldn't that take more than one person? Wouldn't there be a trail of blood? Nobody could do all that and clean up the traces completely without arousing notice at that hour of the morning on a business day.

Charlie sat across from Luella Ridgeway—small, quick, wired, ambitious, nice. She had just returned from Minnesota after spending her vacation putting her aging father in a nursing home and closing up the family house. She looked exhausted. She kept herself slim and young-looking to survive, but there were gray roots in the part of her beige hair this morning. Charlie wondered what she'd ever do if she had to put Edwina in a home and close up the house in Boulder. At least Luella had siblings. You didn't return from an ordeal like that and murder a receptionist.

Then there was Dorian Black—cocky on the outside, insecure within. He watched Richard Morse for cues in this most unusual staff meeting. He might be dapper, but he was not muscular.

Next was Tracy Dewitt, a big girl. She was Dorian and Luella's assistant and a funny, pleasant person, but not too efficient. She was apparently a distant relative of the absent partner Daniel Congdon, and if it's who you know instead of what you can do that's likely to get you a job in the world in general, it's the law in Hollywood. Charlie did not know Tracy well, but she couldn't imagine what she'd have against Gloria worth killing for. And although Tracy was a large woman, her size was due more to fat than muscle.

Then there was Larry Mann, Charlie's assistant. His bulges were muscle, yet he was the kindliest, gentlest of people, incapable of harming another.

Maurice the Lover, a handsome gentleman—but really past the age where he could drag bodies around and heave them into bushes. He might love some woman to death, but …

And Richard Morse had been covering for Charlie at the Universal breakfast with Keegan Monroe and Mary Ann Leffler and the frantic Goliath producers at the time of the murder. (Charlie's outrage over the misbegotten Polo Lounge lunch had seemed trivial after viewing a dead Gloria.)

She couldn't imagine what Dr. Podhurst could have against Gloria, or his receptionist, Linda Meyer. Linda had often had lunch with Gloria, though.

The Congdon and Morse staff had very little contact with the legal beagles and their support staff across the public hall. They had their own private VIP entrance.

Charlie probably had the weakest alibi, on the face of it. She couldn't prove she'd been in her car on the road on the way at that time. Unless the valet staff had noticed her come in. And that would be iffy. They saw little else but cars coming in and going out all day. Larry at least would have been seen by whoever sold him the Ding Dongs.

It had to have been someone from outside. Charlie relaxed. She liked some of these people better than others, but she still didn't like the thought that the agency could harbor a murderer. Was it the murderer who kept whispering to Charlie? Who else would know where Gloria died?

Her colleagues were looking to Richard Morse to answer the lieutenant's question. Richard was looking at the ceiling, choosing some thoughts. The homicide detective was looking at Charlie.

“It's not that no one laments Gloria's death,” Charlie offered. “It's just that murder is hard to take in right away. I don't think we've quite digested it yet. And joking and fooling around is one way to avoid coming to terms with it.” She couldn't believe Dalrymple hadn't seen enough of this behavior to know that.

“She's right,” Maurice agreed. “And Richard, I think you should consider getting a counselor or two in here. When this really hits all of us it could be pretty bad.”

“I expect the health insurance would cover it,” Luella said, as if she'd be the first to sign up for counseling. “Wish Irma were back. She'd know.”

“Irma is back,” Tracy spoke for the first time. She was getting used to contact lenses and looked about to cry—her face screwed up, her eyes blinking like strobe lights. “I came in early yesterday morning,” she blinked pointedly at Luella and Dorian, “to get some extra work done. She was at her desk. I don't know when she left. And you were in your office, Richard, talking to somebody. Gloria came in while I was making coffee. And then Larry.”

“People pick up pet names in offices, Lieutenant. Bet they do in yours, too.” Richard had finally selected a thought and ignored the implications of Irma being back in town after all. “Gloria was called Gloria the Witch because she had those god-awful fingernails and a tongue to match—and because she was actually a witch.”

“She practiced witchcraft?” Dalrymple glanced at Charlie yet again.

“She practiced everything. She was certifiable. But a receptionist's job is not going to attract a Ph.D. in physics, you know what I mean?”

“She was insane?”

“She was insane.” Richard's head bobbed in time with his knee and with Tracy's blinking. “Let me assure you that insanity is not a unique trait in this town.”

“Oh Richard,” Luella scolded, “she was not insane. She was odd, that's all. She was into the occult and astrology—things like that, Lieutenant, and tarot and, yes, witchcraft. But I don't think Gloria was focused enough to actually be said to
practice
anything.”

Charlie wondered who her boss had been talking to in his office and why he'd come in before Gloria, who usually opened up. And why Irma was back from her yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas, but not back at her desk. Every year for three weeks Irma Vance, Richard's executive secretary, changed personalities and lived it up in Vegas. And every year some crisis came up while she wasn't running the office. But it had never before been murder.

Charlie also wondered why Lieutenant Dalrymple kept checking her reactions to everything. Did he suspect her above most? Because she looked in that garbage can this morning?

It was obvious why he wanted them all together now, though. Now, before they could get their stories straight with each other by talking on their own. Now, when they could trip each other up. Charlie disagreed with Dorian. This police detective knew what he was doing.

By the time he let them go, the phone lines were flashing. Tracy and Larry worked to steer calls where they were needed. That's why Charlie took the one from McMullins directly.

When she hung up, she let out first a single yip and then a series of them. She could hear Larry's answering howl from the front desk and knew he'd stayed on the line. Charlie met him halfway.

Everyone, including David Dalrymple and two uniforms, converged on them just as she and her assistant high-fived, Charlie leaping up and down on stockinged feet, having slipped out of her heels the minute she'd placed them under her desk. Dalrymple's prosaic expression reminded her how ridiculous she must look and that murder had happened here just over twenty-four hours ago.

It was so easy to get carried away in this business. Most of the time it was pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams that petered out after great amounts of fantasizing, energy, and planning. But every now and then something jelled, sometimes something grand, producing the same kind of juice that probably kept an Irma Vance going to Las Vegas once a year.

“So? So?” Richard Morse peered into her face, then into Larry's. “You want to share this? Do I have to beg? Do I have to tell you who it is who works for who around here?”

“Whom,” Dalrymple corrected and was ignored.

“Hell, you're acting like the
Alpine Tunnel
deal went through,” Dorian said. “What's up?”

“It is the
Alpine Tunnel
, isn't it?” That lazy, knowing smile lighted Maurice Lavender's face.

“I thought that was dead long ago,” Luella said.

“They turned it down cold last October,” Richard told her. “What, Charlie, what? You do not have my permission to do this to me.”

“McMullins talked the author's estate into reconsidering Ursa Major's offer.”

Now it was Richard Morse dancing Charlie around the crowded confines of the hall until they waltzed up against Dalrymple's expression. “Lieutenant, this is special, you know?” Charlie's boss gave a triumphant hoot. “We're talking history in the making here. We're talking another
Gone with the Wind
, another
Dances with Wolves
.”