I caught up with Kennick and Bethany as they entered the office building. They paused in the hall, where a blue mountain bike with thick tires hung on a rack on the wall, with a matching helmet on a hook beside it.
“This was Laini’s,” Bethany said, resting a hand on the bike.
Immediately, I knew I needed to touch it. But Bethany and Kennick were blocking my way.
“I think you should have it,” Bethany told Kennick. “Take it with you when you go.”
She sounded eager to give it to him. Perhaps it pained her to have to keep walking past that symbol of Laini’s vitality. I wished she would walk past it right then, so I could grab a hold of it.
Kennick didn’t seem to want it either. “No, you keep it. Or give it away.”
“I thought maybe your kids …?”
“They’re still on tricycles and training wheels.”
Bethany nodded, and then led the way upstairs.
I lingered behind, laying first one, then both hands on the bike’s handlebars. I got no images and no words, and nothing from the helmet either. Hurrying upstairs, I caught up with the other two outside Bethany’s office, where a round-shouldered, mousy-haired woman with bright-blue fingernails was updating her with messages.
“The printing guy’s on the phone and refuses to go away until he speaks to you,” she said.
“Oh dear,” Bethany sighed. She consulted a square high-tech watch on her wrist, and then said, “Denise, take Mr. Carter to Laini’s office.” To Kennick, she said, “There might be some of her things you’d like to have.”
Bethany disappeared into her office while Kennick and I followed Denise to an office at the end of the hall. It was small and decorated in neutrals with pops of vivid color — an emerald-colored pen holder, a scarlet orthopedic cushion on the typist’s chair, a yellow mousepad on the desk. The room was dominated by an enormous picture window with a magnificent view of the woods and mountain ridges beyond. Unusually, the desk was pushed up against the window so that Laini, when she sat in her chair, would’ve had her back to the door. It wasn’t the sort of setup I’d be comfortable with, especially with odd men like Jim on the premises.
“She chose this office because of the view?” I asked Denise.
“Yeah. She was supposed to get one of the bigger offices, but she wanted this one.”
She handed Kennick a cardboard box for any keepsakes he wanted to take and left us to it.
My gaze gravitated to a two-picture photo-frame on the desk. In one of the photographs, younger versions of Laini and her brother laughed as they high-fived clouds of purple cotton candy. In the other, Laini rode a painted horse on an old-fashioned fairground carousel. She sat sideways on her horse, holding the pole with one careless hand, while the other arm was flung out behind her, where her dress rippled in the breeze. Her face was filled with joy, and there was a wildness there, too. She truly had been exquisite.
“I gave her this,” Kennick said, handing it to me. After a few moments, he asked, “Anything? From touching the picture, I mean?”
“No. Sorry.”
I walked around the office, trailing fingers across surfaces, picking up items that might have carried her imprint — a stapler, pens from the holder, the computer keypad and mouse — but my hunch that she hadn’t been much attached to objects was growing stronger. If only I could grasp the view through the window in my hands.
An object on the top shelf in one corner of the room caught my eye — a soccer-ball-sized globe of the world resting on a brass stand and axis. Standing on Laini’s chair, I grabbed it and gave the earth a spin as I climbed back down. Tiny pearl-headed push pins had been pushed into different spots around the world — Egypt, India, Spain, Iceland. I placed my hand on the globe, blotting out Africa and Europe, then closed my eyes and concentrated. Bright light and colors coalesced into an image of Laini twirling the globe, randomly touching a place and sticking a pin in where her finger landed. A moment later, the image dissolved.
Kennick, rifling through papers on Laini’s desk, hadn’t noticed my absorption, and I decided against telling him what I’d seen, because I hadn’t really seen much. As I lowered the globe into the box, Denise reappeared, telling Kennick that Bethany could see him.
“You,” she said to me, “need to make an appointment.”
In her office, I sat down in a chair and waited while Denise scanned Bethany’s schedule on her computer. My thumb throbbed — could a splinter shard be stuck in there? To stop myself sucking it, I rammed my hands deep into my pockets. The amethyst and lepidolite were still in my right pocket. In my left, the gauze bag of crystals from my mother had spilled its contents so that I now had a bunch of new stones to play with. It was soothing to turn the crystals over and over, feeling their cool smoothness beneath my fingertips.
“I could squeeze you in for fifteen minutes next Friday at seven o’clock,” Denise said eventually.
“In the morning? Anything later? And preferably sooner?”
“It’s next Friday, or April.”
“I’ll take Friday,” I said, but I must have looked disappointed, because she gave me a small smile.
“What was it in connection with? I know most of what there is to know about the business. Perhaps I could assist you?”
“I’m helping with the investigation into Laini Carter’s death.”
“Oh? How?” She sounded doubtful.
“I’m trying to find out more about Laini. Can you tell me what she was like?”
Denise pulled a face that might have meant anything. “Beautiful.”
“Everyone says that.”
“I mean, not just pretty, but like a different species kind of beautiful. People would stare at her, like she’d put a magic spell on them. It was funny to watch.”
Denise didn’t sound amused, though. I got the sense that she hadn’t been one of those who’d been entranced. What must it have been like for her, working with two very attractive women, both of whom were probably about as old as she was, but who wore their age so much better?
“That’s why Bethany still had her do the tours even though there was more important stuff to do up here,” she said. “Because the visitors would lap up her every word and then go on to spend a fortune in the store.”
“I need petty cash,” a voice behind me growled.
Startled, I spun around. Jim was standing in the doorway, tugging on the jug-ears set low on the sides of his head. Though he spoke to her, his gaze was fixed on me.
When I was a little kid, maybe five or six years old, we’d played a game called Kingy, which scared me stupid whenever I was tagged as “king.” You had to turn your back on a line of kids standing about twenty yards away and yell out, “K-I-N-G spells king!” before spinning back around. While your back was turned, the other kids could sneak toward you — the first kid who got near enough to touch you, won — but as soon as you spun around to face them, they had to freeze on the spot. If you saw them move, they were out.
Then you had to do it again. Turn your back. “K-I-N-G spells king!” Spin around. And they’d be closer. And closer. I’d been terrified by the shuffling and sniggering behind me, the sense of threat creeping up on me. Dread grew, anticipating the moment I’d be grabbed, possibly engulfed by the whole gang. Even knowing what was surely going to happen didn’t prevent me screaming when a paw clamped down on my shoulder. It had always freaked me out.
I felt like that, now, with Jim. Every time I turned around, he was behind me, standing a little closer.
“For the milk. Three dollars and fifty cents,” Jim said, stepping up to the desk and handing Denise a crumpled receipt.
She grabbed a bunch of keys from her desk, unlocked a drawer and refunded Jim, tossing the crumpled receipt he handed her into her in-tray. Still he lingered, standing right next to where I sat. He smelled of smoke and sweat.
“Was there something else, Jim?” Denise asked.
I jumped as a bell trilled beside me. Jim fished an old kitchen timer out of his chest pocket, carefully reset it, and then melted away out of the office.
“When we’re doing a boil, he has to tend the fires under the evaporators constantly,” Denise explained. “They need a wheelbarrow of wood about every nine minutes so as to keep the temperature even, or the syrup could get grainy.”
“So, Jim, he’s a little …?” I let the question dangle.
“I thought you wanted to know about Laini.”
“Right, yeah, I do. She was the head of marketing here?”
“Uh-huh, and she’s also the VP.” Denise shook her head. “She was, I mean.”
“When did she join the company?”
“Two years ago, it must be. She and Bethany were friends from way back when, but they hadn’t been in contact for years. Then Bethany found her on Facebook. Well, everyone’s on Facebook, aren’t they?” As she spoke, Denise fiddled with her keys, rubbing each one before letting it slide down the ring to join the rest and moving onto the next. The movement of her fingers, with their long, turquoise nails, was hypnotic. “And Bethany just handed her the job on a silver platter — no interview required — even though Laini knew nothing at all about the business. She didn’t even like maple syrup, can you believe it? She told me that once. I mean, who doesn’t like maple syrup?”
“I love it. So … was she good at her job?”
“Yeah,” Denise said grudgingly.
“What will happen now, then?”
She shrugged. “No one’s indispensable.” A slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “And who knows? The next person appointed to that position might be even better.”
The phone on the desk buzzed then.
“Uh-huh, sure. I’ve got it,” she told whoever was on the other end of the line. Dropping the keys on her desk, she rifled through a stack of papers, extracted one and stood up. “Bethany needs me.”
“She sounds like she’d be lost without you,” I said, ingratiatingly.
She nodded. “Sit tight, I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
As soon as she was out of the door, I snatched the bunch of keys and held them between both hands, pushing my mind into their curves and crenellated edges. My body tightened, as though all my nerve ends were waking up and gathering into a single focal point of attention. Light flickered behind my eyes.
Here we go.