CHAPTER NINETEEN

I still couldn’t find Lawrence anywhere, which was probably the least surprising thing that has happened in this, or perhaps any, book. Lawrence, I was quickly realizing, made it his business to not be found. Because being found meant that possibly, just possibly, someone might make you do something that vaguely resembled work.

Even with that, I wasn’t exactly sure how or when he had left. Presumably he must have ducked out while I was in Tyler’s office, or Vanetta’s. I sat down at my workstation and decided to call his cell number, which had been helpfully printed and tacked to the corkboard next to my computer. I did this almost idly, because I did not expect him to pick up. This would defeat the entire purpose of ducking out.

But lo and behold, he did. I was a little speechless, actually.

“Cynthia?” he said. “Are we calling you Cynthia now? I can’t remember. Maybe that’s disrespectful to the dead.”

“Cynthia is not dead,” I said. “Remember? That was Joyce, and it is disrespectful to the living, to me, for you to not call me by my actual name.”

“What was your name again? Maude? Shirley? Agnes?”

“Dahlia,” I said, grumbling despite my best intentions not to. “I don’t know why you’re persisting in saddling me with an old woman name.”

“I guess it just suits you,” said Lawrence. “Anyway, what kind of crisis is going on there now? Let me guess: I can’t come back to the office because Vanetta has been run through with an awl?”

“No,” I said.

“Quintrell has been consumed by a fire?”

“No,” I said.

“Jason has been devoured by mice?”

“There is no Jason, and I’m not aware of any mice.”

“Twenty-four hours without a murder,” said Lawrence. “You should type that up and put that on a sign. Maybe it would raise morale.”

Having lived with Charice and dated Nathan, I was used to people who enjoyed the sound of their own voice. I knew how to speak their language, which generally means letting them make whatever jokes they want, and then cut in with relevant questions and information. It does no good to try and prevent whatever ridiculous jokes they have in mind, because it only makes them cranky. And, like trying to stop a leaky faucet with your finger, only makes the tomfoolery come out elsewhere.

So I let Lawrence have his moment, as I suspect everyone did.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” I said, not bothering to express the opinion that an “X Days Since Last Murder” sign was probably not likely to raise morale, nor would it make a good talking point when Ignacio Granger came through. I was expecting to have to reorient Lawrence to the topic at hand, as I might with Charice, when he surprised me by taking up the subject himself.

“So, what’s the crisis? I assume there’s a crisis. I assume that you wouldn’t just call me to see how I’m doing.”

“It’s not how you’re doing,” I asked. “It’s what you’re doing. Vanetta wants to know what you’ve been working on this morning, and where you went.”

“I hope this doesn’t sound callous,” said Lawrence, in a voice that sounded completely callous, “but I’m being wherever the fuck I want to be and doing whatever the fuck I want to do. As per usual.”

“Can you be less broad?” I asked.

“I don’t answer to Vanetta,” said Lawrence, who was suddenly surprisingly peevish about this. I had expected him to be a little breezier. “Or to you.”

What was the likelihood that this clown was the father of Vanetta’s proto-baby?

“You ought to treat Vanetta with more respect,” I said, which wasn’t at all what I had planned or intended to say. Maybe having been surrounded by all the talismanic belongings of Cynthia had summoned up the old woman inside me. “She works so hard trying to keep this place together. She’s not asking for you to give up your personal secrets—as if she doesn’t already know them—she just wants to know where you are and what you’ve been up to.”

Lawrence, to my even greater shock, sounded sad. Reproached, even.

“I know she does. Believe me, I know how much Vanetta wants this. Anyway, I’m at the Beechwood.”

“That’s a restaurant?”

“At the moment, I prefer to think of it as a bar.”

“You’re day-drinking now? You’re gonna have to pull your shit together before this journalist comes here tomorrow.”

“I am a big believer in tradition,” said Lawrence. “I’m practically superstitious about it.”

“You have a drinking tradition?” I asked.

“I have lots of drinking traditions. I have a tall glass of kefir before an important negotiation, and then if it goes well, I follow it up with a shot of Jägermeister.”

“That’s a disgusting combination of beverages,” I said.

“Tradition is frequently disgusting,” said Lawrence, which was a fair observation.

“So you’re out because your negotiation went well,” I said.

“I haven’t finished telling you about the tradition,” said Lawrence. “If it goes very badly, I have bourbon on the rocks. And if it goes very, very well, I open a bottle of champagne.”

“The details of this are unnecessary to me.”

“If it goes very, very badly, I drink ouzo. Into oblivion.”

“So what are you drinking?” I asked.

“Bourbon on the rocks,” said Lawrence. “Did Vanetta get the bad news yet?”

“That Quintrell and Gary can’t make last week’s build work?”

“No,” said Lawrence. And now that I had been clued into it, I noticed music in the background—Steve Winwood, from the sounds of it.

“You mean about the second whistle-blower’s letter?” I ventured.

“Jesus, no. There’s a second whistle-blower’s letter? Garçon! Get me some ouzo.”

“Apparently so,” I said. “That’s partially why I’m checking on your whereabouts this morning.”

“What, Vanetta thinks I did it?”

“I doubt it. But it’s like Ronald Reagan said: ‘Trust, but verify.’”

“It’s like Winston Churchill said: Fuck you, Vanetta.”

I did not like being told off by Lawrence in this way, but neither did I feel that it was out of character for him. I suppose this could have made me suspicious—what was he trying to hide?—but mostly I thought that this was his general response to being called out on anything.

Also, I doubted that Winston Churchill had a lot of opinions about Vanetta one way or the other.

“So,” I said. “Like I was getting at—what were you doing earlier this morning?”

“I was on the phone with DE, actually. Getting the bad news that led me to this bar.”

I was getting off topic, but I was curious.

“Okay, fine, what’s your bad news?”

“Morgan Freeman is out.”

“He’s alive, right?” I asked, because at this point you never know.

“Of course he’s alive,” said Lawrence. “But his people say that he’s turned down the project. Apparently, he doesn’t do video games.”

This did not seem like the most terrible news I had heard in the past week, or frankly even the past hour, and I told this to Lawrence.

“Oh yeah? Wait until Vanetta finds out.”

I got off the phone with Lawrence and checked Archie’s office, which was empty. It was possible that he was still putting away sound equipment downstairs, although this would have required moving at a glacial pace. It seemed somehow more likely that he was at the Beechwood himself. I should have asked Lawrence to keep a lookout for him.

As it happens, I did not have Archie’s cell number helpfully printed out at my desk, probably because he was less inclined to disappearances than Lawrence was. So, I gave up on Archie for now, and headed back to Vanetta’s office to report.

Vanetta was clearly on the phone with DE, and from appearances, was having one of those conversations that a Bond villain henchman has with his boss shortly before getting bumped off. I could only hear one half of the conversation, but this is how I imagined it going:

Vanetta, actual dialogue: “It came as a shock to me as well, Frank.”

Man on phone, imagined dialogue: “AT OUR ORGANIZATION, WE DON’T CARE FOR SHOCKS, VANETTA. WE RELY UPON YOU TO BE OUR EYES AND EARS. PRAY THAT YOU DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME A SECOND TIME.”

Vanetta, actual dialogue: “We’re doing everything we can to solve this problem.”

Man on phone, imagined, cracking knuckles. “SEE THAT YOU DO. I’D HATE TO SEE SOMETHING … HAPPEN TO YOU.”

“We’re working on it right now. I can promise you that there won’t be another letter.”

“EXCELLENT. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN MY FAVORITE, VANETTA. I’D HATE TO … STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH YOU.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll keep you abreast of the situation.”

White cat, in man’s lap: HISS.

Vanetta put down the phone and stared at me, although her face was, for once, completely unreadable. She was looking at me, but in a dreamy and oddly assessing way, as though my head were a Bob Ross painting. I didn’t much care for it, actually.

“You all right, boss?”

I actually called her boss, and this came out in a goon-like manner, as if I were suddenly from New Jersey and the next phrase out of me would have been “you want I should whack this guy?” I guess my James Bond fantasia had put me in a mood.

“I’m fine,” said Vanetta, sounding Not Fine. “DE is not happy about the leak, but I had expected them to be not happy about the leak. Why should they be?”

“They want someone’s head, I take it?”

“You take it right,” said Vanetta. “No one fessed up to it, did they?”

“No,” I said. And thinking over it, I was doubtful that anyone had actually done it. Tyler had the means, I suppose, but no particular motivation, and I didn’t think that he was that great an actor. Gary and Quintrell certainly had the impression of people who had been working all morning, and besides which, Quintrell HAD WILLINGLY COME HERE FROM JAIL, and thus did not seem like the sort of person inclined to complain about working. Quintrell could be fired, and he would probably still be working. Lawrence could have done it but seemed genuinely surprised by the news and had no motivation besides.

That just left Archie, which was possible, hypothetically, but also felt like the sort of theory that a cop would use on some awful Netflix documentary about a wrongfully imprisoned man. You could technically line up the facts so that it worked, but if you spent much time thinking about it at all, it was bound to fall apart. Even more so if you played dramatic music behind it.

I told all this to Vanetta, even the Netflix part.

“We know it’s someone from here, though,” she said. “It must be a spouse.”

“There aren’t a lot of spouses,” I said. “Quintrell’s got some sort of proto-girlfriend that he sees on a semimonthly basis. Tyler is imminently single. Archie’s ladyfriend is you—”

“Among others—” said Vanetta.

“I don’t know what Lawrence’s situation is, but he doesn’t seem like someone you’d fight to spend more time with.”

“Ha!” said Vanetta. “And also, true.”

“That just leaves Gary’s wife.”

“Call her,” said Vanetta.

“That seems really invasive,” I said. “And would that even be legal? Like, from a Human Resources standpoint?”

“CALL HER,” said Vanetta again. “I’ll email you her phone number. Her name is Maura, I think. Or Laura. Maura or Laura.”

This conversation sounded like a nightmare, but I was getting reasonably good at nightmares these days.

“You realize that whoever wrote the whistle-blower’s letter could be someone who already left,” I said. “Cynthia, or Jason, or whoever used to work here before me.”

Vanetta sighed. “Of course I realize that. But this isn’t even really about figuring out who the writer is. It’s about assuring DE that we’re doing everything we can to figure out who the letter writer is. I’m not ready to start harassing old employees.”

“Gary’s wife it is, then,” I said. At least I had legit work to do.

“Actually,” said Vanetta. “I just remembered. It’s Cora.”

“Great,” I said. “Although I’ve got some bad news from Lawrence. Morgan Freeman does not do video games.”

Vanetta said nothing and sat down. I had expected fireworks from her, at least a raised voice, but she was completely quiet for a long moment, whereupon she slowly got into her chair, and said, very quietly:

“I want to be alone.”