WORKING IN SOMEONE else's office is an intimate thing. Sitting in another person's chair you learn how he orders his environment, maybe even see a portion of daily life through his eyes. You smell the brown residue left in his "Virginia is for Lovers" coffee mug, the pencil shavings in the waste basket, the lingering scent of his clothes, possibly even the soap he used to bathe.
Randy Webb's office spoke of a solid Main Line upbringing. Parental expectations oozed forth from the Colby diploma nailed, no doubt with difficulty, to the otherwise empty off-white cement block wall. Male hormones, tastefully in check, pulsed inside the brass bookends depicting skis leaned against an immovable mountain. Inhibitions ordered the paper clips and rubber bands inside his drawer. Chewing gum and breath mints waited upon private vices, whether an occasional martini lunch or a hasty afternoon tryst. The wife and kiddies were nowhere to be seen. This was Randy's space.
I cleared the one long table under the broad, drafty window so I could stuff the envelopes standing up. The hamburger I had eaten while driving bulged against my waistband when I sat down anyway.
With a total of four enclosures I developed a left, right, left, right pattern that allowed me to collate and stuff with maximum efficiency. There wasn't much mental stimulation after I worked that out, so I reverted to the stupor writing the note on the letters had induced.
"I just can't believe it," a voice behind me remarked.
I wheeled toward the sound so quickly I knocked a stack of finished envelopes to the floor.
"Sorry," Kevin Seitz told me. He hurried around the desk in the cramped quarters to help pick up the mess. Our proximity under the table made us both squirm, so he just as hastily returned to his doorjamb.
"What can't you believe?" I asked.
"Randy. Do you think he did it?"
"Not really. How about you?" It struck me that my response was based mostly on instinct. Randy Webb remained a stranger to me, at best an acquaintance. I knew far more about the young man now standing in the doorway, and either one could have killed Richard Wharton for reasons well beyond my comprehension. I hugged my arms close to my body, scrunching my shoulders up to shield my neck.
Kevin shook his head the way he had in Little League when he missed a fly ball. The gesture both warmed me to him and woke me up.
"I don't know, Gin. He could have."
"Hell, you could have. But you didn't." Did he? The police had not worried much about his vague alibi, but it still worried me.
"Nope. But I sure hope it wasn't Randy either."
"Why?" Had they become friends working next door to each other?
"Because I'm not sure I have it in me to try to save another business." On the surface he sounded totally self-involved, but knowing his background I understood his perspective. He'd chosen to work at Bryn Derwyn because he needed an upbeat experience to offset his father's bankruptcy and subsequent suicide, events he had tried to prevent but could not. Now he was suddenly thrust into a comparable situation. If too many students withdrew, Bryn Derwyn would be as impossible to save as his father's building-supply business had been. Kevin's therapy could potentially turn into his problem all over again.
"You won't be doing it alone this time," I reminded him. No honest business manager could make or break a school single handedly, and a dishonest one was probably fairly easy to catch.
Kevin shrugged his beach boy shoulders and pouted until his dimple showed. Then he backed out the door and slipped into his office. I knew because I heard the door shut.
I wagged my head and sighed. I could do without Kevin's pessimism; my own was quite enough, thank you. It was after one-thirty. If I worked a little faster, maybe I could finish my chore and go home.
To be certain Kevin and I had picked up all the fallen envelopes, I checked under the table once again. Back along the wall below the radiator cover was a page of white paper. Bumping my head in the process, I crawled under the table until I could reach it.
A receipt from a printer. Not knowing where it belonged, I set it on the desk. However, something about it piqued my curiosity. I gave it a closer look.
The receipt was from Audubon Offset Printers for 250 letterheads and envelopes, probably a minimal order for that sort of thing. Maybe it was for something special, a one-time school event, or stationery with Kevin's name and title that he didn't expect to use often. Normal enough stuff. Except something looked wrong. "Paid," it said. Then "11/14" and the year.
Suddenly I knew what was missing. The few times I had noticed invoices in the work Rip brought home, they always had a "Received" stamp and the date, plus the initials of the person responsible for approving the purchase. That seemed to be how Kevin knew to pay the bill. This invoice simply said "Paid." Also, old invoices belonged in Kevin's files, not Randy's.
I shut the door and picked up the phone. When the print shop answered I explained that I was calling from Bryn Derwyn and there was some confusion about invoice #10598. "Could you possibly describe that job to me?"
The third person the operator referred to me could. "Got a sample right here somewhere." A drawer rattled on its rollers, some papers were shuffled, and finally the woman came back on the line. I realized I was gripping the receiver like a hammer.
"'Bryn Derwyn, Inc.' and a post office box number for Paoli, dark green lettering on white bond. Is that what you need to know?"
"Yes, thank you. We were confusing this with another order and didn't know which one we paid. You have been paid, haven't you?"
"Oh yes. You'd hear from us if we hadn't."
I thanked her for her trouble, hung up, and stared at the back of Randy's door. As far as I knew, there was no Bryn Derwyn, Incorporated. Private schools were considered non-profit organizations, so the "incorporated" part was just plain peculiar.
Ask Rip? The same reservations I had about confessing my other curiosity-satisfying excursions to my husband applied here, double. Even if he forgave me for interfering with his business, he would never approve of me breathing down the neck of a murderer. I admit I'd pitch a fit if he told me that was what he was doing.
However, this particular suspect happened to be in jail. What harm could it do to follow up on this one little oddity? For the next ten minutes I searched Randy's office looking for the letterhead and envelopes. No luck.
I decided to take a calculated risk and show the invoice to Kevin.
"You know anything about this?"
He studied the page for half a second. "We never deal with Audubon. Must be somebody's personal order." His attention returned to a spreadsheet printout he had been reading, all traces of his depression suppressed by the task at hand. Kevin would be all right, assuming that Bryn Derwyn survived.
Back in Randy's office I punched the automatic dial number marked "Anne" to phone his home. Answering machine—I should have expected that. Reporters were probably ushering Randy Webb's wife to a deeper level of hell.
Trying to sound natural, I left my message. "Annie, this is Gin Barnes. I'm doing a little of Randy's work and I have a question you might be able to answer. If you get home before three, will you please call me in his office? Thanks."
I'd stuffed about four envelopes before the phone rang.
"Gin, it's Annie." Her voice sounded old, as if she were speaking through a washcloth.
"Are you all right?" I asked. "Is there anything I can do?"
"No. No, you're already doing it. It's nice of you to help with Randy's work. I'm sure he'll appreciate it." Her voice broke when she said her husband's name, and I realized I needed to help her hold it together for her own sake as well as mine.
"Listen," I began as if asking something quite mundane. "I've been looking for some letterhead for a mailing, and I wondered if there's any chance Randy has it at home. A small box that says, 'Bryn Derwyn, Inc.' Have you seen anything like that around?"
"Why, yes, now that you mention it. I know just where it is. I noticed it in the hall closet the other day."
"Great. That's great. Would you mind terribly if I stopped over and picked it up?"
"No, of course not." She gave me directions to their home.
Randy and Annie Webb and their two children happened to live in nearby Paoli, Pennsylvania, which no doubt would be a reasonable distance from the Paoli post office, the post office where any replies addressed to Bryn Derwyn, Inc. would naturally go.
I tried. I really tried, but I could not think of one good reason why that post office box should be necessary. Bad reasons, yes. Incriminating reasons, certainly.
Legitimate reasons—no.