ELEVEN

John Sweet was propped up in the corner of the stairs. A small black pistol like the one I’d found in Alice’s storage locker rested in his hand. I doubted he’d fallen in that spot. If suicide was initially a possibility, the careful arrangement of his body immediately discounted it. I stared at the floor. Unlike the first level, it was free of dust and debris. Whoever was responsible for John’s death hadn’t simply shot him and walked away. They’d cleaned up any evidence of what had happened.

The idea turned my stomach. I raced past Tex, down the stairs, past Rocky. I bent over the first receptacle I found, which was the large bin of fabric in the aisle. I threw up the banana I’d eaten that morning, thankful I hadn’t eaten more. I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped. Tex held out a bottle of water.

“I called it in. You’re going to have to wait out front.”

I took a swig of water from the bottle and swished it around my mouth, and then looked for a place to spit. Tex tipped his head to the same bin of fabric that held my former stomach contents. Might as well.

“That’s John Sweet,” I said after I’d wiped my mouth. “He’s Alice’s grandson. He’s the one who met me here to tell me about the inheritance and who gave me the letter with the key to the storage unit.”

“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“Yesterday. He called to talk to me about the memorial.”

“What time?”

“Morning.” I kept one hand on the bin of fabric to steady myself. “Give me a second. I’ll come back up there with you.”

“Sorry, Night. This is no longer a walk through a time capsule. It’s a crime scene. That means you and Rock have to get out.”

“Are you going to call me later and tell me what you found out?”

“Not my job.”

I pointed toward the door through which we’d come. “There’s a news crew out there. As soon as I exit this building, they’re going to start asking questions. What do you want me to say?”

“Use your judgment.” He crossed his arms.

I picked up Rocky, who had been bounding around my feet, and carried him outside.

I knew Tex was right. I knew it. But that didn’t make me like the situation any more. I had respect for Tex and the task ahead of his department, but I still hated the feeling that I had nothing to contribute to his investigation.

Sid was in front of the building with the newsman. “What happened?” he asked when I walked past him. “Did you find something? Evidence? I knew it! I’m calling the rest of the Truthers. No, I’ll tell them later. I’m going inside.”

“No, you’re not,” Tex said from the front doors. In the background, sirens grew closer. I didn’t stick around to see how it all played out.

I drove away from the factory. I was on fire, but not because of the bright sunlight. Anger, helplessness, fear, and a mounting sense of despair blended into a level of anxiety that left my hands shaking on the steering wheel. I drove without knowing where I was going. Before I knew it, I was parked outside of the law offices of Stanley & Abbott.

John Sweet had been alive as recently as yesterday when he called about Alice’s memorial service. He’d had her house keys on his desk the day he’d handed over the letter she left me and said he was making up a second set that I could pick up today. I didn’t know how long his body had been at the factory, or why someone had killed him. He shouldn’t have even been at the factory. There were so many things I didn’t know about what I’d just seen. My brain sent up a warning flare. Alice’s death, though unwelcome, wasn’t entirely unexpected due to her age and declining health. And Suzy’s death, while unfortunate, had taken place before I was born and had been ruled accidental.

But John was a healthy professional on his way to becoming a lawyer who’d been interested in executing his grandmother’s estate and collecting his inheritance. True, he’d seemed a little annoyed that a stranger had been given what he’d expected would become his, and his specialty hadn’t been estate planning, but he’d let his boss oversee the various job machinations to eliminate the appearance of impropriety. And now he was dead inside the factory he’d told me was mine.

I got out of my car. Rocky followed me across the driver’s side and stood on his hind legs with his paws on the door. I didn’t plan to be more than a minute or two, but I wasn’t willing to leave him alone. I opened the door, and he stepped down. Together we approached the front doors of Stanley & Abbott. They were locked. Inside, Frannie, the same woman who had been vacuuming the day I’d assisted with the broken printer, was running her vacuum over the lobby carpet. I pointed to the doors and then clasped my hands together in a please gesture. Frannie switched off the vacuum and pushed the doors open.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m a client of the firm. I left a set of house keys here yesterday. John told me I could pick them up today. Is he here?”

“Nobody’s here,” she said.

“If nobody is here, how’d you get in?”

“The doors were unlocked, and there was a note on them. I figured John had to run out for something, but he knew I was scheduled to come here.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

“No. Seemed a little strange, if you ask me.”

“Do you have the note?”

“I crumbled it up and took it out with the trash. That’s my job.”

She looked at me like she wasn’t sure if she should trust me. I stood up a little straighter, forced a smile, and willed Rocky to be at his cutest. All I could think about was that someone had wanted John dead. Someone who connected him to the pajama factory. And that my name was on John’s calendar and in a file as the inheritor of the factory. John had died because of my inheritance and I had to know why.

Frannie’s eyes took in my red and white windowpane dress with the patch pockets and then returned to my face. “Come on in,” she said. “It’s creepy being here all by myself. I keep feeling like somebody is watching me.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Somebody very well might have been watching Frannie—watching both of us—at that very moment. I couldn’t just collect the keys and leave her alone. There was no way I would walk away and leave this woman in a potentially dangerous situation, even if it meant Rocky and I were walking into a trap.

I entered. “To tell you the truth, I talked to Mr. Stanley about a job here,” I said. What? It wasn’t completely a lie. “Can you tell me anything about the men who work here? Anything that might help my chances of being hired?”

She shook her head. “They don’t talk very much, not to me, or to each other. Things were different before Mr. Abbott died last year—he was the other partner. Used to have pretty girls working for him, but they’d always quit.”

“Why? What did he do?” I asked, making small talk.

“He was a pervy old man. He used to stand behind his secretaries and put his hands on their shoulders, give them massages when they were typing up memos. I could tell they hated it. Anybody who was paying attention could tell. I caught one crying in the bathroom. The next week, she was gone, and the new guy was here.”

“John,” I said. “Tall, thin, light orangey-brown hair, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” She laughed. She unplugged the vacuum cleaner and wound the cord around the side. “The universe has a funny sense of humor.”

Something about how she said that made me take notice. “What do you mean?”

“John is, you know.” She dropped her voice. “Two weeks after he got the job, he threatened the partners with a lawsuit over sexual harassment. He claimed the other partner made inappropriate suggestions when he learned John was”—she dropped her voice—“gay.”

“You say the other partner died last year?”

She nodded. She looked over her shoulders as if in fear of being caught spreading gossip. “I don’t know what happened with the lawsuit, but John’s sexual harassment claims could have burst the dam of what the former secretaries kept secret. He started here as the secretary, but if Mr. Stanley or Mr. Abbott did one thing wrong, John probably could have owned the firm.”

While Frannie talked, I walked around to the back of the desk and tried to open the top drawer. It was locked shut. I tried another drawer. Same thing. I looked up and found her watching me.

I dropped into the chair and thought about what she’d said. It sounded like Stanley & Abbott were boys-club lawyers who hadn’t adapted to the changing times. They’d had a long run of sexual harassment, at least until John arrived. Even I’d experienced the stereotypical assumptions of Mr. Stanley the day I first came to the firm.

Having John around must have left the partners uncomfortable, especially after John took legal action against them. And after establishing the firm and then maintaining it for decades, the idea of a fresh young face coming in and threatening to take it all away would have left a bad taste in anyone’s mouth.

I wanted to get out of the law offices. “Frannie, how long until you’re done for the day?”

“I just finished the common areas,” she said, and then added, “John asked me not to clean their offices unless they’re here. Something about compromising client privilege.”

I already knew John wasn’t coming back. “Where is Mr. Stanley?”

“I don’t know. I thought one of those men would be back by now. I don’t feel right leaving the place before they return. You didn’t find your keys, did you?”

I tapped the desk drawer. “John put them in here,” I said, “but the drawer is locked. I could wait until Mr. Stanley comes back and ask him, but I don’t think that’s going to look very good for my potential job here.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I know where Mr. Stanley keeps the master keys. I’ll unlock the drawer so you can get your keys, but you have to leave when I do.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.” I stood up to follow her.

“You better wait out here. It’ll only take me a second.”

I felt like I was in a horror movie. Maybe Frannie had just been imagining the sense that she was being watched, but I couldn’t shake the idea that there was something very wrong about the law firm having been unlocked when she arrived.

I picked up Rocky and crept into the hallway behind Frannie. She opened the second door on the left. “Why is it so cold in here?” she said. “Mr. Stanley! I didn’t know you were in the office. Why are you working in the dark?”

He wouldn’t be. Which meant one thing.

I ran after her and barged into the air-conditioned office just in time to see the body of Mr. Stanley tip forward from his chair and face-plant onto his desk.