Motion for Murder (15 page)

"Can I talk to you for a moment?" she hissed in my ear.

Around the table, conversation ceased.

As soon as my chills had passed, I followed her into the ladies' room, which was a little too isolated for my taste, although it was a beauty of a room, with shiny marble and granite, and lots of benches with rose-colored upholstery so you could take a rest from the exhausting task of relieving yourself.

Hilary ignored the benches, and since I made it a practice never to look up to Hilary, I did the same. We stood in front of the sinks, Hilary primping in the mirror and me ignoring my reflection and both of us inching up to something big.

"The reason I wanted to talk to you," she said while she added another layer of paint, "is you're the only one at Parker, Dennis, and Heath I can trust."

"That's not true," I said instantly. "What about Ken?"

Her surgically petite nose wrinkled. "Ken would sleep through his own murder."

Interesting choice of words. "Howard, then."

Her eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead. "Howard can't see past his own ego."

"Wally?" I knew I was reaching, but I didn't want to be Hilary's confidante.

She stopped fussing and fixed my reflection with a glare. "I trust you."

That sounded like a threat. I swallowed hard and kept quiet.

"The police tell me my husband was murdered," she said after a frosty pause. "I want to know who did it. You're going to help me."

Oh, God. I was shaking my head before her mouth had closed. "You should let the police handle it," I said. "They know what they're doing."

"So they say." Hilary put away the makeup and brought out the comb and hairspray. I inched carefully to the right because I despised hair spray, and I wasn't too crazy about Hilary. Another two hundred inches or so, I'd be home free. "You, however, are an insider," she went on. "You see what goes on in that sorry little place day after day."

That sorry little place had bought her a Mercedes, but maybe it wasn't the right time to point that out.

"For the life of me, I don't know how you can work there." She picked and cajoled her hair back into a helmet. "Didn't you go to college?"

"Well," I began. "When I
"

She shook her head, picked up the hair spray, and engulfed both of us in a sticky cloud. I closed my mouth before my lungs took on a touchable but firm hold. "I mean, don't you have any marketable skills other than making coffee?"

Gee, she was a master motivator.

Mercifully, the fumigation stopped. Hilary shoved the comb and can back in her purse. When the mist had settled and she was as close to perfection as she could get, she moved in for the kill. "Tell me who you think did it."

"I think you should let the police do that."

It was the safe answer, but Hilary wasn't buying it. "Was it that bitchy Paige girl? Or that weird little quiet one, Darma?"

"Donna," I said.

"Or Melissa." Hilary tapped her front teeth, thinking. "She was his personal secretary, wasn't she?"

"Not really," I said. "We operate as a pool. Whoever's free
"

"Don't give me that crap," she snapped. "You think I don't know when it came right down to it, she was his favorite?"

The door opened, and an elderly white-haired woman shuffled past us into a stall while Hilary urged her along with an arctic glare. After an eternity, the lock slid into place, and Hilary turned back to me. "Don't try to deny it, Jamie. For God's sake, he asked me to pick up her Christmas gift last year."

That was a twist, the wife picking out gifts for the girlfriend.
If
Missy had been Dougie's girlfriend. And I didn't know that for sure, although it felt uncomfortable enough to be true.

"What'd you get her?" I asked, since I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"That," she said, "is not important. I want you to look through her desk, find anything incriminating that you can."

I pushed myself away from the counter in alarm. "I can't do that." Suppose I found something. Suppose Hilary had planted something for me to find. Suppose I got caught and fired or arrested for attempted theft. Visions of orange jumpsuits and cavity searches sprang to mind.

Something else sprang to mind. Hilary was crying, or at least she was trying to. Her eyes were glistening and she managed to squeeze out a single fat tear that sluiced through the layers of foundation and powder and blush on her cheek. Her mouth was twitching with the effort to control herself. Her hands were clenching and unclenching. It was painful to watch, and it hit me hard somewhere in the area of my heart. Here was a woman who had just lost her husband and was trying to struggle along as a newly-minted widow, and she was asking for my help. I supposed I'd done worse things in my life than snoop through someone's private papers. Really, it wasn't asking all that much. Five minutes, just long enough to assure her that Missy wasn't harboring anything incriminating, and I'd have Hilary as a friend for life. For all the good that would do me.

"All right," I said, "I'll do it. How will I contact you?"

The lone tear dropped off Hilary's jaw. Her hands relaxed, and her mouth resumed its normal hard line. Hilary the Bereaved Widow had morphed back into Hilary the Horrible. "I'll contact you," she said. "And you won't regret it," she added, but she was wrong. I regretted it already.

*  *  *

"Where've you been?" Missy demanded as soon as I got back to the table. "We were about to send out a search team."

"I was in the ladies' room." I slid into my seat.

She nodded. "I know what you mean. This food is terrible."

My lunch had been delivered in my absence, and someone had pilfered the side salad. I glanced around with narrowed eyes, noticing Janice's salad bowl was overflowing with baby carrots. The hell with it, she could have them. I was through wrangling with tough and scary women for the day.

The old woman from the restroom suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision, heading for our table. I'd forgotten all about her. When she got there, she put a gnarled hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't do it, honey. Pride is all we've got."

If pride was all I had, then I truly had nothing. I turned to thank her for the unsolicited advice but she was already on her way back to her own table. I could feel the eyes on me before I turned around. Just great. My first foray into espionage and I already had four witnesses.

"Don't do what?" Missy asked, suspicious now. "What did Hilary want?"

I shrugged and picked up my fork. Very casual. My hand was shaking. "She wanted to talk about Dougie, that's all."

"Uh-huh." I didn't like that look. She was watching me like a dog watches a porterhouse. "And instead of her own kids, she chose you to confide in."

"She claims she trusts me." I nibbled at a piece of chicken and forced myself to swallow. "Give her a break," I added, for effect. "She's a widow."

"She's a piranha," Missy said. "Never forget it. Look at her. The poor widow seems pretty dry-eyed to me."

Give her a second, I wanted to say, but of course I didn't. What I said was, "People express grief in different ways."

I actually felt a wave of heat coming off Missy. "What are you, the U.N.?"

Suddenly I was finding it easier to understand Hilary's request. There was no reason other than a guilty conscience for Missy to dislike her so intensely. Instinct told me she must be hiding something, and I meant to find out what it was.

The office was eerie at six-thirty in the morning. Lots of shadows and silence and plenty of room for the imagination. I knew I was alone, since mine was the only car in the parking lot, so I wasn't worried about being caught. Well, I was a little worried, but I planned to do my dirty work and be back home before the early risers showed up for the day. I would have been more worried about Adam Tiddle making an appearance, but Dougie's death had probably removed that possibility.

 I sat in Missy's chair and opened her kneehole drawer. Pens, pencils, erasers, tape, spare change, her notary seal and stamp in their little black pouch. Nothing incriminating there. I moved to the first of the bigger drawers on the left. It was filled to near capacity with manila file folders. Missy had labeled some of them in obscure legalese like RFPs and Form C Rogs and Sub. D.T., and those I interpreted and passed over, concentrating instead on the blank tabs. One by one, I pulled those files out and flipped them open, finding only that Missy had surprisingly inadequate organizational skills.

The next drawer was half filled with office supply catalogs. That made sense, since she was more or less the office manager, so I closed that drawer and moved on. Computer manuals, a collection of software CDs and jumpdrives, a half dozen candy bars. Hilary was going to be sorely disappointed. As far as I could see, Missy wasn't hiding anything except a sweet tooth.

I closed the last drawer with a relieved sigh and stood up, and that's when I noticed the little photograph taped to the far side of her computer monitor. It showed a thirty-something man with a thatch of dark hair, wearing a white lab coat and a goofy grin. Must be Braxton Malloy, the pharmacist. Missy's standing Monday night date and a man with access to and knowledge of any number of potential poisons.

Huh.

I stood there looking at the photo for a little while, alternately condemning Missy and exonerating her. She'd cared for Dougie and loathed Hilary, but then she'd worked with Dougie longer than any of us, and everyone loathed Hilary. It was only natural to develop affection for a person you worked with day after day, and to be upset if something should happen to him or her. I turned it every which way and it made no sense for Missy to have killed Dougie. Which made me wonder if she had.

Something did occur to me while I was studying Braxton Malloy's photo: I had the perfect opportunity to check out Dougie's office. I was up the steps and at his doorway in seconds. With traces of Dougie scrubbed away, the office looked and felt enough like Wally that I was reluctant to enter. Chances were good that Dougie's personal papers had been collected or shredded or removed by Hilary–or Missy—but I was there, so I began looking. Fifteen minutes later, I stopped looking. There was nothing but Wally's things there, and if he had secrets, I didn't want to know what they were.

I was on my way downstairs when good judgment failed me outside Donna's office. She'd been shooting me dirty looks for days now, and part of me wanted to snoop just to get even. The other part of me was simply nosy. I put the two together and stepped over the threshold.

Donna seemed to be starting her own law library. Books were stacked knee-high on the floor, with torn strips of yellow legal paper serving as bookmarks. Piles of paper smothered the blotter. Her laptop was sitting open on the L-shaped wing of the desk, a copy of the red hardbound Law Diary lying closed beside it. This was a place where important work got done. I felt like I was treading on sacred ground.

Then I noticed the receipt, a tiny white strip of paper floating on a sea of yellow papers. $26.99 plus tax to Health Concepts for a can of protein powder. Dougie's protein powder. Donna went to go buy the new can. And Dougie had asked Donna not to come back to the courtroom.

Another day, another suspect.

I headed back home with the feeling that things were about to get even more interesting at Parker, Dennis, and Heath.

*  *  *

I was back at the office shortly after nine o'clock, yawning and clutching a large hot chocolate. A furniture delivery truck was parked at the curb, and two men in dark blue uniforms were inching toward the front door with an oak-colored credenza. Wally's new furniture.

Missy was at her desk, tapping away at her keyboard, looking diligent. Maybe she was typing her letter of resignation. I put my hot chocolate down, powered up my own computer, and headed to the kitchen for a slice of toast. Paige was there, working over a bagel sandwich. She didn't look up when I came in, which was just as well, since I was focused on the cabinet over the sink. While my bread was toasting, I opened the cupboard door and found an empty space where Dougie's protein powder had been. The police had confiscated both cans. One of which had my fingerprints all over it. A chill shook me as I closed the door.