As she walked toward the conference room, Ellen thought warmly of Guy Adams, the single person in this company other than Gail Freeman—who was, after all, her boss—to seek her out and express concern and sympathy. This man who had been so charmingly at ease yesterday—with whom she had discovered, through several elegantly bound volumes she had noticed in his bookcase, a mutual love for the English poets—had been today scarcely able to speak and had looked ill, she thought, the gentle green eyes stricken and dull. But then he was obviously the kind of man who would be more upset than most by what had happened.
As she reached the door of the conference room she felt a pull of curiosity about the detective waiting for her, and smiled again at Gail Freeman’s sardonic description: “Kojak’s a lovable marshmallow compared to this lady. Warmest thing about her is her corduroy jacket.”
Ellen opened the door. “Detective Delafield,” she said.
The woman sitting across from her at the conference table, her dark hair salted with gray, her corduroy jacket a light soft green, was examining a sketch, holding a leather-bound notebook sideways in strong square hands. She looked at Ellen with light blue eyes that were cool, level, and candid.
Ellen stared at her. Stephie can talk all she wants about not being able to tell for sure, but if this woman’s not a lesbian then neither am I.
At the sight of Ellen O’Neil, Kate felt a twisting sensation, an excruciating pleasure-pain that became mostly pain. The same height—give or take half an inch. Hips only a little thinner, well-shaped breasts like Anne’s, the contours outlined by the soft beige blouse. Lips a little fuller, nose straighter. Prettier. But then Anne had looked like no one else with those features that all tilted upward—delicate bow lips and eyes darker than Ellen O’Neil’s—slanty like a Chinaman’s, Anne had always said…Anne’s hair lighter and not so neat as Ellen O’Neil’s, with those unruly curls clustered at the nape of her neck …
Ellen was startled, puzzled; the detective had looked up from her notebook, her eyes swiftly traveling up Ellen’s body to focus on her face, the light blue eyes narrowing in what appeared to be pain.
“Detective Delafield,” she said again.
Not much different from Anne’s voice, that low throatiness of Anne’s…
“Detective Delafield?” Ellen looked at her intently, in concern.
Kate cleared her throat. “Excuse me, you reminded… I was thinking about something else.”
“With great concentration.” Ellen smiled, to coax softness into that strong face, those grim features.
Oh God, it’s so unfair…her smile is like Anne’s. She smoothed a fresh page in her notebook and cleared her throat again. “Sit down please, Miss O’Neil. I know this has been hard for you, I know you’ve told your story several times already, had it recorded. But I’d like you to go over it again. Very slowly. Include every detail you can think of. Starting with where and when you parked your car.”
Ellen relaxed. She had always been comfortable around people—especially women—like Stephie, like Kate Delafield, with authority in their voices, strength in their faces, deliberation in their gestures and manner. “Well, I parked in the garage at twenty after seven—”
“How did you know the time?”
She spoke glibly, having already answered this question twice, “I was listening to the news on KFWB. They announce the time constantly in the morning. And I was annoyed I hadn’t figured the time better, I could’ve slept a little longer. This is my first job in more than a year. I’m not used to getting up this early.” She thought, if she pursues this she’ll find out I live with a woman…
But Kate Delafield said, “I see. Was there anyone in the garage or lobby that you recognized?”
“No, but I’m new. I know hardly anyone.”
“What about the people that you do know? Did you see any of them?”
“No.”
“Who would you recognize? Name them.”
In expanding warmth and pride, she was absorbing the knowledge that this impressive and highly professional woman was the detective in charge of this murder investigation—and a lesbian. “Well, Gail of course. And Guy. Guy Adams. I’m not used to calling managers by first name but that’s the custom here—” She broke off her attempt at conversation as she met the cool blue glance, and continued hurriedly, “I was introduced to Luther Garrett yesterday. Some people from the service bay and word processing. I don’t know their names but I’d know their faces. Billie Sullivan. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
After a moment’s pause, she nodded.
“Positive?”
“Positive.” She was annoyed.
“What about Judy Markham?”
“Oh. Yes. I forgot about her.”
Knowing Kate Delafield’s silence was deliberate, Ellen felt heat rise to her face.
Kate watched her; her face had a slight ruddiness like Anne’s, natural healthy color without need of the sun. Kate allowed herself to briefly wonder about Ellen O’Neil’s “roommate,” as Taylor had termed her. She said, “That’s why I want you to take your time with your answers, Miss O’Neil. Give them thought, reflection. Something may have registered in your mind that you’ve simply forgotten, something obvious, like Judy Markham. And at the present time you’re our single witness, the only source we have.”
“All right,” she murmured, chastened.
“Go on, Miss O’Neil.”
“I took the elevator up. The first elevator as you come into the lobby,” she added, attempting a grin.
Oh God she is so like Anne, Kate thought wrenchingly, and closed her eyes for a moment against her pain. “Back up a moment. Was there anyone in the building lobby? Anyone at all?” She watched Ellen O’Neil bend her head over her lap in thought, the soft dark hair separating into currents of subtle browns.
“No. No one.”
“What about the guard?”
“There was no guard. The first time I saw Rick and Mike was when they came up on the elevator to get me.”
Ellen O’Neil had lifted her head; her gaze was direct, the voice quavery but decisive. “Go on,” Kate said. “You got off the elevator.”
“I stayed out there for a minute or two, just looking around.”
“What did you look at? Describe it to me as well as you can.”
Kate held up a hand twice to slow her as she made meticulous shorthand notes of descriptions of furniture and color and fabric; she would check the accuracy of Ellen O’Neil’s memory from these notes. Some women pay attention to the damnedest things, she thought; they can describe the most intricate weave in a fabric… She asked, “Did you smell anything?”
“Not that I remember,” she said after a moment.
“Perfume? Men’s cologne?”
“No. Men’s cologne I’d remember. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either,” Kate said with a smile. “Go on.”
Ellen was surprised by the smile—magnetically attractive on Kate Delafield’s strong face—and surprised by the remark, which made her seem not nearly so bloodless. “I went back to my office—”
“How much time had elapsed by now?” Kate interrupted. “Since you parked your car?” She watched Ellen O’Neil raise both hands, slender, prettier than Anne’s, and touch to her temples long fingers tipped with clear polish.
“Three or four minutes.”
“Okay. So now it’s seven twenty-five. Go on.”
As Ellen O’Neil reviewed each move she had made, Kate drew dotted lines on the drawings in her notebook. She tapped her Flair pen on her sketch of the conference room. “Why did you stop here? Why take the long way back around to the kitchen?”
Memory formed vividly in Ellen’s mind of her introduction to Fergus Parker. He had leaned back in his immense leather chair, lifted a fat black shiny shoe to one corner of his black slab of a desk, then inserted a black cigar between his wide thick lips, clicking flame from a gold lump of a lighter, holding the cigar between porcine fingers, jowls quivering as he puffed clouds of odoriferous smoke at her. His voice had rumbled out of a chest ringed in fat and encased in a pale yellow suede vest. But she had not heard his words, only seen his eyes: gray and protruding and fixed on her, fixed precisely between her legs.
“Well,” Ellen said to Kate Delafield, “I, uh, don’t know my way around the office yet.”
Kate noted her hesitation and said mildly, “Understandable. But still, why retrace your steps? Why not just continue?”
The hell with it, Ellen decided. “Well, to tell you the truth—”
“Please do.”
She doesn’t give an inch. In irritation Ellen met the dispassionate blue eyes shaped somewhat like Stephanie’s. Irritation intensified at the thought of Stephanie. Damn her, treating me like some powder puff excuse for a woman… “I didn’t want to run into Fergus Parker,” she stated. “I didn’t want to risk being alone with him.”
The ever-charming Fergus Parker, Kate thought. “I understand you met him only yesterday.”
Ellen said dourly, “With some men it doesn’t take long.” When Kate smiled, the unexpectedness of it again warmed her.
Indicating with her pen on the sketch, Kate said, “So you came back along this way to your office, down the north corridor …Did you smell anything?”
“Coffee. Just as I got to the kitchen.”
“The coffee pot, Miss O’Neil. Concentrate. Picture it as you walked into the kitchen, as you walked over to pour yourself a cup. How full was the pot? How much coffee was left?”
She touched the slim fingers again to her temples. “Better than half.”
“Which means how many cups would you say were gone?”
She sighed, thinking, her unseeing eyes on the green-gold painting covering the wall behind Kate. “Well, Styrofoam cups, maybe four. Two or so, if you’re filling a mug.”
“But a person could make half a pot, isn’t that true? Wouldn’t someone be more likely to do that early in the morning when no one else was due in till eight o’clock?”
“Not with that kind of coffee maker.” She was decisive. “The coffee’s premeasured. And the pot of water you put in to make the coffee doesn’t make that same pot, but the one after it.”
Pleased, Kate paused to complete several notes. “Now, you walked out into the hallway carrying the coffee pot, thinking Guy Adams was in. Why did you think so?”
“Since there were only two offices I hadn’t walked past, and the rest of the office doors were closed, that left him and Fergus Parker. And I didn’t think Fergus Parker would make coffee.” It occurred to her that she had lost personal awareness of Kate Delafield. What was going on had nothing to do with either of them as lesbians.
Kate tapped her pen on her sketch. “What about these people in word processing? You didn’t walk past this room. Any of them could be in, couldn’t they?”
“Well, yes. Possibly. If they got here early for some reason. But Gail told me yesterday their overtime is pre-approved by him. And one of my duties is to send overtime reports daily by teletype to Philadelphia. He approved overtime yesterday for only two people in credit who had to work last night.”
“But someone could have been in there.”
“Someone could have been in any of the offices. Working behind a closed door.”
“Was Guy Adams’ door closed?”
“Uh, yes.” She bit her lips; her response had been pure impulse.
Kate looked at her in surprise. Training and experience, every instinct told her Ellen O’Neil was lying. The eye shift. The change in facial set, vocal intonation. And she had been unprepared for the question, had not taken enough time to consider it if she were genuinely uncertain. Kate watched her, allowing silence to accumulate.
What did Guy have to do with this, Ellen thought. Why should I put him through all this? Why should I give that dear man a problem?
Kate thought: She’s looking at me the way people do when they’re lying. Why in God’s name would she want to protect Guy Adams? Maybe Taylor’s wrong about her and her roommate. Maybe they’re just that, roommates. “How long have you known Mr. Adams?”
“Just since yesterday, of course.”
Belligerence had been in the tone. Hesitating, Kate looked down at her notes. Her training told her to bring all the weight of her authority upon Ellen O’Neil’s stiffening resistance, back her into a corner, suggest—no, threaten—a charge of obstruction of justice, of perjury. That worked with the majority of witnesses in the world of crime and criminals, and certainly would work here in Amateur City, as Taylor had termed it. It would also change—chill—her tenuous relationship with this woman, a witness with a strong appearance of honesty and credibility if and when a case was put together to present for prosecution. She would come back to Guy Adams; perhaps later Ellen O’Neil would correct her story voluntarily. Strictly a judgment call, she told herself.
A scrupulous inner voice asked, is it a judgment call, or are you avoiding confrontation because she reminds you of Anne?
She said, “What made you first think something was wrong?”
“Thudding sounds, vibration under my feet from somebody running. A door slamming. Loudly.”
Ellen O’Neil had shifted in her chair with the new direction of the question, and Kate noted the easing of her posture. “At what point did you hear the thudding? Where were you exactly in the hallway?”
“Right outside Guy’s office.” Ellen sat up again, remembering that she had been looking at that moment through Guy’s window at the green of the mountains, the mist over the ocean.
“And the slamming door?”
“The same. It was only a few seconds later.”
“I see. What did you do then?”
“Nothing. It came from Fergus Parker’s direction, so I figured it was his office door and none of my business.”
“But did you move at all? Where were you in the hallway? Had you gone back toward the kitchen?”
She concentrated. “I might have taken a step in that direction. But then I heard glass breaking and I ran down the hall.”
“Ran?”
“I was carrying the coffee pot, but I moved as fast as I could. I slowed up as I got to his office.”
Deliberately, Kate stared at her. Then she said, injecting a note of cold skepticism into her tone, “You decided not to investigate thudding feet and a slamming door but yet you ran down the hall because glass was breaking?”
Those ice-blue eyes—like being on a skewer. Does she think I’m making this up, for God’s sake? “Look, the noise was so loud. There was a kind of…I don’t know, violence to the way it was smashing, like something awful was happening.”
“Something awful was happening,” Kate said quietly, seizing the moment. “A man was dying. Miss O’Neil, have you left anything out that you heard or saw in that hallway? Anything?”
Ellen hesitated; the blue eyes held hers, the voice was compelling. But anything she said now would only compound matters, and Guy had been so kind to her… “That’s all I can remember now,” she said. “But I’ll give it—give everything more thought.”
“Good.” The moment was gone, but the answer had been temporizing. “What happened next?”
Tears sprang to Ellen O’Neil’s eyes. Kate allowed her to speak uninterrupted, not taking notes; she listened without moving to the details of discovering the body; the realization that a killer might be anywhere on the floor; her actions in the lobby; the arrival of the guards. As Ellen O’Neil described the two guards backing toward her with guns drawn and then the descent to safety on the elevator, her voice broke.
“Many people—most people—would have screamed, run in panic, perhaps—probably—gotten themselves killed.” Kate spoke slowly, turning and smoothing pages of her notes to allow Ellen O’Neil time. She had always considered her lack of reaction to tears an advantage she held over male detectives, most of whom dissolved in the presence of a sobbing woman, and conversely treated a sobbing man with cold contempt. Tears were a healthy manifestation, that was all; she envied anyone, male or female, who could do something she could not do at all. “In most crimes of murder,” she said, “the killer will protect himself at all cost. You handled yourself with the kind of presence of mind we teach to police officers.”
Flushing with the pleasure of a compliment from this forbidding woman, Ellen murmured, “Thank you.” Then she stared as Kate Delafield buried her face in her hands and took a deep shuddering breath, ran her hands through the graying hair. Could she be suffering from some illness?
Like a swimmer coming up from a depth and gasping for air, Kate surfaced from the agony of memory—Anne’s face flushed after lovemaking. “Miss O’Neil?” Her voice seemed to echo in her chest. “I know this has been very difficult. But would you show me in the office what you’ve described to me?”
“Of course,” Ellen said gently.
They went into the lobby, through the far doors and into Ellen’s office, then down the corridor. Ellen paused before Matt Bradford’s office. “I came in here first.”
A balding portly man, jacketless, a well-loosened tie hanging from the unbuttoned collar of a white shirt, was bent over his desk examining blueprints. He did not look up. Kate took Ellen’s arm and led her along the corridor.
“Miss O’Neil, Matt Bradford’s office. Was it open?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t in yesterday and it was open all day.”
“Do you know why?”
She shook her head. Kate jotted a notation to ask Gail Freeman.
“Then I looked in here.” She pushed open the door to Customer Service and Credit.
“Hi Cagney!” shrieked Judy Markham.
Activity halted; a sea of faces turned up to them. People nudged one another, pointed. Ellen stepped back, let the door swing shut.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Kate said calmly, “Who was it that predicted everyone’d be famous for twenty minutes?”
“Andy Warhol,” Ellen answered automatically, still stunned by the staring faces.
“In a day or two everything will be back to normal. Try not to let that part bother you. Let’s go on.”
Kate verified a few notes as they walked slowly past open offices, and she looked in. Fred Grayson glanced up, then bent over his work. Harley Burton’s office was empty. Duane Fletcher, broad yellow-shirted back turned to them, hands behind his bald head, sat with his feet up on his credenza and stared out the window. Gretchen Phillips talked on the phone in low calm tones as she searched through mounds of paper burying her desk.
Billie Sullivan passed them with her dipping, loping gait, stringy carrot-colored hair swaying. She had added a new element to her costume of khaki skirt and fuzzy aqua sweater: her legs were covered by ripply gray leg warmers.
“That’s Billie Sullivan,” Ellen said, chuckling at the amazement on Kate Delafield’s face.
“Yes, I know.” Kate watched Billie Sullivan until she vanished around a corner. “Unreal.”
Remembering the events of this day, Ellen said soberly, “Gail wants to fire her.”
“Yes, he told me,” Kate said thoughtfully. Billie Sullivan could be an interesting interview. Perhaps two interviews—one before, one after her termination.
At the conference room Ellen said, “I came only this far.”
Kate glanced back down the hallway, then walked toward Fergus Parker’s office at the end of the corridor, to a lighted EXIT sign; she pulled open the heavy metal-weighted door that led to a staircase, let it swing shut, cushioning the momentum with pressure from her foot. She moved briskly across to Fergus Parker’s office, pacing off the distance.
The door of the executive washroom was flung open and Harley Burton strode into the hall, rolling down the sleeves of his chalk white shirt. He nodded curtly as he came toward her; she felt pierced by his dark stare. He continued down the corridor toward his office. She heard Ellen murmur a greeting and Harley Burton’s gruff-voiced rejoinder.
They retraced their steps, Ellen moving impatiently ahead, past Gail Freeman who was on the phone and tossed Kate a mock-military salute in passing. In the kitchen, Ellen reconstructed her actions of the morning, pouring coffee and then carrying the styrofoam cup and a half-filled coffee pot into the hallway toward Guy Adams’ office.
Ellen smiled; Guy sat at his desk gesturing emphatically to a thin young woman with mountainous frizzy hair. He glimpsed Ellen and rose, murmuring apology to his visitor, and walked into the hallway.
“Ellen, is everything all right? Are you okay?”
Tension in the voice, thought Kate. And the way he stares at her…
“Is there anything I can do?” He had directed his question at Kate, then focused his gaze again on Ellen O’Neil.
Perhaps tense by nature, Kate thought. And he seems totally smitten by her… “I’ll have questions for you later, Mr. Adams.” When he did not move she added in a tone of dismissal, “Now if you’ll excuse us.”
Obediently, Guy Adams walked into his office, but remained just over the threshold, looking on. Kate said, “Miss O’Neil, I want you to tell me if what you hear is what you heard this morning.”
Ellen turned to face Guy’s office as she had that morning, then glanced back to see Kate Delafield walking down the corridor, straight and trim in her gray pants and corduroy jacket, her walk compact and purposeful. “I was facing this way,” she said in a low tone to Guy. “As I recall, your office door was closed.”
She searched his face; his green eyes stared dully into hers. She turned away to look down the hallway. Perhaps he doesn’t know it was open, she thought; maybe he doesn’t even remember.
Kate had reached the lobby door. She pulled it fully open, released it. Cushioned by an air brake, it closed with stately progress, securing itself with a solid thunk.
“Much louder than that,” Ellen called.
Kate walked across to Fergus Parker’s office, grasped the doorknob, slammed the door violently.
Ellen walked part way down the hall. “It was loud like that, but not quite so close, you made the floor vibrate under my feet. I didn’t feel that before, only from the footsteps. And besides, that door was wide open when I got to it.
Reflecting, Kate absently shifted the holster chafing her hip under her jacket. “The killer might’ve started to come out, spotted you, slammed the door in panic. Then decided you might come anyway, so he opened it again and hid behind it, waiting.”
Ellen O’Neil shuddered, and Kate said quickly, “It’s very unlikely, that scenario. There’d be no reason for him to open the door again. He’d be more likely to wait with it closed.”
Ellen sipped coffee, calming herself and thinking. “Well, no. He might think he’d be more helpless that way, he’d have to judge when to come out and I might see him and escape, there might be someone else on the floor by now to help me. And the way Fergus Parker was killed, I don’t know if he’d even have another weapon, unless it was a bludgeon of some kind.”
Disagreeing with her, Kate nodded in respect for her logic. “Possible. But doubtful a killer would act so deliberately and coolly after committing such a crime. Natural instinct would almost certainly compel him to run. Miss O’Neil, I’d like to try something else. Would you go back to where you were before?”
She waited until Ellen had again stationed herself outside Guy Adams’ office. Adams stood in his doorway still looking on, his frizzy-haired visitor gone. Kate walked around the corner toward the conference room and the EXIT stairway. She pulled the EXIT fire door fully open, released it. Accumulating rapid momentum, the door hit the jamb with an echoing thunder of sound.
“That’s it! That’s it!” Ellen O’Neil shouted.
Kate glimpsed movement; Gretchen Phillips popped out of her doorway, then as swiftly vanished into her office. As Kate rounded the corner of the hallway, Ellen was trotting awkwardly toward her cradling the coffee pot.
“I’m positive that’s what it was. The stairway door?”
“Right. Here, let me take the coffee pot.” Kate smiled. “I won’t need you to show me how you dropped it.” She was pleased when Ellen O’Neil laughed.
“The killer ran down the stairs, then?”
“Probably. Exited in the garage, I would think.”
“But sixteen floors? How would he have enough time? Rick and Mike said—”
“Excuse me.” Gail Freeman had come up to them. “All the info you want, all the files are locked in the conference room.” He tossed a key to Kate, who deftly caught it in her free hand. “They’re confidential.”
Kate pocketed the key. “I’ll see they’re properly safeguarded.” She glanced at her watch. “Miss O’Neil, I’ll have further questions. Let’s say one-thirty. In the conference room.” She turned to Gail Freeman. “If Detective Taylor is looking for me, I’ll be with Mr. Grayson.”
Ellen watched admiringly until Kate Delafield disappeared around the corner of the corridor.