Only a scattering of cars occupied the big F&N parking lot. They were huddled together as if intimidated by all the empty space. I found the door to the wing where I’d worked locked and had to go around to the main front entrance. A uniformed guard . . . a guard! . . . stood beside it. He checked my ID and called up to Letty’s office before he let me pass.
I found my way up the stairs and down the hall to the section of cubicles where I used to work. Everything seemed the same, except that the desks were abnormally uncluttered, the phones silent, and Letty the only occupant.
She stood up and held out her arms. “Andi! It’s so good to see you!” She gave me an enthusiastic hug.
We’d never socialized outside the F&N setting—Letty’s grandchildren kept her busy—but I’d always considered her a good, dependable friend. She’s my age, widowed, plump and energetic, a cheerful mile-a-minute talker. Her skin is enviably unlined, and there’s always a flowered barrette in her buttercup yellow hair. Today it was my favorite, daisies.
“Good to see you too. What’s with the guard?”
“They hired him after Mr. Findley found some homeless guy washing his feet in the sink in the executives’ restroom. He’d just wandered in.”
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“So’s sitting here alone day after day. It feels like a deserted island, without the ubiquitous palm tree.”
Ubiquitous. I’d forgotten Letty’s determined system for improving her vocabulary. Pick a new word or phrase and use it at least once a day for two weeks. It was from Letty that I’d learned such words as salubrious and rubescent, although I hadn’t yet found any particular use for any of them.
“How’s everything going here?” I asked.
“I can’t believe they expect one person to finish up every-thing for the entire department.” Letty waved both arms as if fighting off work hurtling at her from all directions, like strange creatures in some video game.
“How much longer will it last?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe a month or six weeks. I’ve been trying to get them to hire someone to help out, but you’d think I was asking for my own private Rent-a-Hunk. But I’ve made up my mind. Once I’m finished here, I’m through. I’d planned to work till I was sixty-five before taking my Social Security. You get more if you wait, you know. But now I’m just going to run. I’m thinking about expanding my herb garden and starting a small business selling herbs and spices.”
“Great idea. I’ll be an eager customer.” I was a little short on basil and thyme right now, since the sheriff’s department had custody of mine.
“Oh, but I should have called you. I was so horrified when I heard what happened to Jerry. Murdered! Here, sit down.” She pulled a chair from a neighboring empty desk as if the murder must have tired me. “I just made fresh coffee.”
She’d moved the shiny metal coffeemaker stand into the aisle closer to her desk. She bustled around, pouring coffee and setting out packets of creamer and sugar. “And how traumatic for you, having it happen right under your nose. Though I’ve never understood what a limousine was doing there.”
I explained about my inheritance, which brought an appreciative “Oooh!” Then a hopeful, “Are you giving rides to old friends?”
“I’d like to, but the sheriff’s department impounded the limo. Actually, the reason I’m here has to do with the murder. As you may recall, you were the one who introduced me to Jerry at the company Christmas party—”
“And now I feel so guilty about that! But it wasn’t as if I’d planned it. It was, well, you know, propinquity. I just happened to be talking to you when he came up. And at the time, I thought it was so wonderful that the two of you right away got started talking about a hiking trail out by some lake and seemed so taken with each other. But now, considering the circumstances . . .”
“The circumstances of his death?”
“Well, that too, of course. But also the circumstances of his life. I guess you know now, he was still married?”
“His brother told me.”
“I had no idea when I introduced you.”
“You found out later?”
“Not while he was alive! Or I’d have warned you. What happened was, I decided I should come in on the next day after Free Fall Friday to get organized for working alone. I was just walking in from the parking lot when the police arrived. They said they needed information from our personnel files about his next of kin.”
“Did they tell you why?”
“No, but I knew it had to be something serious. I tried to call Mr. Findley and then a couple of other executives, but I couldn’t reach anyone. I didn’t think I could access the personnel files to find out anything for them—I never could before. But San Diego had given me a new computer password a couple days earlier, and it worked. So I got into Jerry’s file and gave them the information.”
“About his wife being next of kin.”
“Right. Which was a shockeroo, I can tell you. And I knew you had no idea he was still married. But it’s a very handy little password,” she added in a sly way that suggested she’d done some extracurricular browsing of her own.
The thought occurred to me that if the police also figured out I hadn’t known Jerry was married, they might consider it another black mark against me. Unstable woman goes berserk upon learning boyfriend still has a wife.
“The deputies came back on Monday and questioned both me and Mr. Findley, since he’d been Jerry’s boss here. Then they came back again with a search warrant and took a lot of stuff from Jerry’s office.”
“His computer?”
“Yes, although I don’t know why they’d want that.”
I did. They were looking for whatever had been on Jerry’s home computer that the killer had apparently been desperate to conceal. I doubted they’d found anything. I was sure he wouldn’t have put any of his Web site information on the com-pany computer system where someone else might access it.
“How is Mr. Findley taking Jerry’s death?”
“After the deputies left, he came in here looking kind of lost and dazed, as if he needed someone to talk to. He seemed pretty broken up. He kept saying how much everyone liked Jerry, and he couldn’t understand how anyone could kill him. Jerry was going to be his assistant down in San Diego, I guess you knew.”
“Yes, Jerry told me.”
Over the months I’d known him, Jerry’d had various unkind things to say about his boss, including a wickedly accurate parody of Mr. Findley’s stuffy speeches at company award ceremonies. More importantly, however, he’d also claimed he did more of Mr. Findley’s work than Findley did. With the different perspective I now had on Jerry, I couldn’t be sure there was any truth in that. But Mr. Findley must have held Jerry in high esteem if he’d wanted Jerry to be his assistant in San Diego.
“Do you think anyone here at F&N was particularly angry or resentful that Jerry was given a transfer and this other per-son, he or she, wasn’t?”
“You mean someone who might be angry enough to kill him?” Letty looked shocked when I nodded, but then she leaned back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. Finally she said, “I can’t think of anyone who was ticked off at Jerry specifically, but plenty of people were angry and resentful about the whole situation. But isn’t it always the quiet, inconspicuous person, the one nobody notices, who suddenly goes off the deep end and does something like committing murder?”
Someone like me was my thought, but what I said was, “If you think of anyone, let me know, okay? Although what I really came for is, I’m wondering if you know about any other girl-friends Jerry had, either while he was dating me or before?”
“Is that important?”
“Possibly. I’m afraid the police think I may have killed him. And I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t!” Letty’s smooth forehead wrinkled above shocked blue eyes. “How could anyone think that?”
“So now I’m wondering if some other woman could have been angry enough to kill him. Maybe someone he’d dumped, or maybe someone who’d just found out he was also seeing me.”
“Oh dear, let me think. You know me. Gossip just goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t pay that much attention.”
“Yes, I know,” I agreed with more tact than truthfulness. Letty’s idea of keeping a secret was to tell only two or three people, not send out a global e-mail. That was the big reason I’d come to her. She always had the latest scoop.
“I don’t remember hearing rumors about Jerry and anyone here at F&N.” In spite of her claim to being a nongossiper, she sounded apologetic, as if not knowing was a shortcoming on her part.
I was disappointed she didn’t have any information, but at the same time relieved. From all I’d learned about Jerry so far, I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so naive and foolish as to be attracted to him, so it was good not to hear any more to add to his sleaze quotient. But there was still the woman Joella had seen him with.
“Have you ever heard of someone named Elena?”
“Elena? No . . . oh, wait. There was an Elena who used to work in the publicity department. But she quit several months ago to do publicity for some pet food company in Olympia. I never heard anything about her and Jerry. She was married anyway.” She put her fingertips over her mouth. “Oh dear, you don’t suppose—”
Yes, I suddenly did suppose. It was a jolting thought, but ripe with possibilities. If Jerry had been seeing a married woman, and her husband found out . . .
“What did she look like?”
“Very attractive. I heard once she’d been a model down in California before she came up here. Tall and slender. You know, that willowy type?” Letty wrinkled her nose.
Letty is not the willowy type.
“Dark hair, looked like one of those shampoo ads. Do you ever wonder how they get their hair so shiny in those ads? Personally, I think it’s all in the lighting. Do you really think she and Jerry could have had something going?”
“Do you remember her last name?”
Letty’s forehead scrunched under her buttercup hair, but she finally shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Though I think it was something kind of exotic sounding. The only reason I even remember the Elena name is because I have a cousin named that.”
I stood up and dropped my Styrofoam cup in the waste-basket. “Well, I’d better be running along. It’s been good see-ing you again.”
“Sorry I don’t know anything helpful. Oh, we’ve been chattering along and I haven’t asked. Have you found another job yet?”
“No, I’m still in free fall. But looking.”
“That’s what I’m hearing about almost everyone. Hey, if you want to come to the house and use my computer to get on the Internet, you’re certainly welcome. You can post your résumé or check job openings on a lot of sites there.”
“Thanks. I may just take you up on that. Hey, if they do decide to hire someone to help out here temporarily, keep me in mind, will you?”
“Oh, I will. Definitely. I’m so glad you came by. And keep me in mind when you get the limo back!”
Down on the first-floor hallway, I headed for the exit. Then a thought occurred to me. Would there still be informa-tion about the willowy Elena in the personnel files, maybe something Letty could access even with only a first name? I made an abrupt U-turn at the corner. If I could locate a last name, an address, a husband’s name—
I rounded the corner in a hurried dash back to Letty’s office and thundered headlong into two men rounding the cor-ner from the opposite direction. In a split second, the fact that one was Mr. Findley registered. The other . . . who? Oh, yes,
Mr. Randolph, head of the public relations department. Public relations? Hey, he’d surely known Elena.
Propinquity! I could just casually ask him—
But in the next split second, the momentum of my dash took over, and I shot past identification and right into collision with the man. We belly smashed into each other like a couple of sumo wrestlers. His feet went out from under him, and he oofed to the hallway floor with a fleshy thud. I reeled and steadied myself with a hand on the wall.
I looked down at the considerable bulk of his figure sprawled on the polished floor of the hallway, like a beached whale in a blue suit. “Mr. Randolph, I’m so sorry!”
He shook his head to clear it, and when it did clear, he glared up at me.
“Are you okay?” I fluttered over him, then offered a hand.
“Get away from me,” he growled and slapped at my hand as if it were contaminated. His face had now reddened to the color of his tie, and the thought occurred to me that it might even be described as rubescent.
Mr. Findley helped him to his feet. By now both men were glaring at me as if they suspected I had designs on the executives’ restroom. I wondered if Mr. Findley recognized me. Probably not. Upper-level executives didn’t mingle with lower-level people from other departments. Jerry had taken me to a party at the Findleys’ posh waterfront home, but I doubted he’d have reason to remember me from that. I’d eaten more than my share of shrimp hors d’oeuvres, but I hadn’t crashed into anyone.
“Are you employed here?” Mr. Findley demanded.
“Well, no, not now. I mean, I did work here, but today I just came to see a friend.” I started to give Letty’s name, then realized this might make trouble for her. I also realized, regretfully, that this was probably not a good time to quiz Mr. Randolph about Elena. “I was just leaving,” I added hastily.
I started toward the entrance, peering back once. The two men were still watching me. I suspected their topic of conver-sation was about instituting a tighter screening policy at the door to keep clumsy older females as well as dirty-footed homeless persons out.