CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dahlia,” said Charice.

“I’m Cynthia,” I yelled through the closed door, although who knows why at this point. Charice opened the door, and, my God, she was looking resplendent. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me earlier, maybe because she was sitting down. But she was beautiful—utterly beautiful. Speaking of hokey ’80s movies, there’s often this moment where the dad sees the daughter in the wedding dress and suddenly gets choked up. Or sometimes it’s the husband. I can’t recall the maid of honor ever doing it, but it happened now.

“My God,” I said. “You’re getting married.”

And Charice knew what I meant. I felt like it was a nice little moment until Charice said:

“You’re covered in vomit.”

She said it in an amused way, but it still broke the moment, which was probably just as well, because I did not have time for this.

“There are some things happening in there,” I said.

“Bring me a cell phone,” said Lawrence. “Call my sister!”

“Bring him nothing, and call no one,” I said.

“Okay,” said Charice, cheerfully ambivalent. “I hate to bother you, but you’ve got a visitor at the desk.”

There were few phrases that I wanted to hear less than “you’ve got a visitor at the desk” at this moment. Even Frank the UPS guy was not someone I wanted to spend a moment with, and he had adorable grandchildren photos. I’m not being ironic there. I walked back to the desk to find Cynthia Shaffer staring at me.

Cynthia, I noted, was not dressed for work—by which I mean dog washing. She looked more the part of the secretary than me, with a mauve top and even a red-ruby brooch that looked oddly familiar.

As I saw her, I felt my face collapse like a soufflé, or a meringue pie that you didn’t do a good job of sealing the edges of. God had brought this woman to me to punish me. This is what I got for going to that church-knitting thing drunk.

“Dahlia,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why?”

“Masako was telling me that you’re some kind of secret detective.”

I just looked at her.

“Masako told you this?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia.

“Masako Ueda?”

“I don’t know her last name. Tyler’s girlfriend.”

“She told you I was a secret detective.”

“She said you do odd jobs on the side.”

“Yeah,” I said, confused. “That’s true.”

“There’s something I want to hire you for,” said Cynthia. “I’m still trying to find my old Christmas tea.”

What? I didn’t say that, but it hung over the situation.

“Christmas tea,” said Cynthia. “You know, like Celestial Seasonings. I think Lawrence might have stolen it.”

“You want me to find Christmas tea,” I asked. “You can’t just buy more tea.”

“It’s limited edition,” said Cynthia. “Is this enough?”

And then Cynthia put five dollars on my desk. What the holy fuck. Five dollars. Am I Encyclopedia Brown now? But I took the five bucks, because why not? And hell, we’d practically given Lawrence truth serum, so it would be an easy job.

“As a personal favor,” I said, “I will do this for you.”

“Dahlia,” yelled Quintrell. “Can you come back here?”

“Should I wait downstairs?” asked Cynthia.

I headed back to Quintrell, who was horrified, next to Gary, who looked smug and yet also sort of in shock. Lawrence was sort of draped over the two of them.

“Something has happened to your lovely suit,” said Gary, who appeared happy to see Lawrence taken down a peg, although unhappy that he should be touching him.

“Yes,” said Lawrence. “It’s covered in vomit.”

“You don’t have to sit on us,” said Quintrell.

“I want to apologize to the two of you,” said Lawrence. “I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Quintrell.

“What did you do?” asked Gary.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

“Are you just saying sorry in Latin now?”

“Es tut mir leid,” said Lawrence.

“What did you do?” said Gary.

“Let’s just say that you don’t need to be so worried about the details of this game you’re making.”

“What does that mean?” said Gary.

“We aren’t worried about the details of the game,” said Quintrell. “We are the living embodiments of its hopes and fears.”

“Yes, well,” said Lawrence. “The company is being sold, and DE is keeping Peppermint Planes.”

“What?” said Gary.

“Someone else is going to finish Peppermint Planes?”

“Possibly,” said Lawrence. “It might just be a cartoon and cereal.”

“What cartoon? What cereal?”

“There’s a lot of money in cereal.”

“What happens to us?” asked Gary, who was pushing Lawrence off him.

“Dixon is buying us up,” said Lawrence. “It’s a great deal.”

“For you,” said Quintrell. “What does Dixon make?”

“Hidden object games, I think,” said Lawrence.

And Quintrell and Gary, who had now fused into a single super being based upon sheer oneness of thought, finally pushed Lawrence off the two of them, where he rolled along the floor.

“I say we kill him,” said Gary.

“I knew this was coming,” said Quintrell, eating doughnuts. “I knew this was coming. I’ve known it since I started here. This game has been doomed. DOOMED!”

Quintrell collapsed on his desk. He wasn’t crying, but it was hitting him hard, and this was a man who had been pretty upbeat, all things considered, about getting arrested for murder.

“Our lives are over,” said Quintrell. “Everything I’ve ever worked for is a sham.”

Gary looked at Quintrell, and he looked at me. Gary seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful, and I sort of hoped that he was going to talk Quintrell down, but instead of saying anything, he picked up his computer monitor and threw it on the floor.

Lawrence asked me: “Are they grateful I told them? They don’t sound grateful.”

I did not remark on this, as I was distracted by the monitor, which was connected via cable to what was apparently a very heavy desktop unit, and so it just hung there over the edge of the table. It looked, in a word, sad.

“Do you know what the worst of this is?” said Gary.

“That you’re too weak to properly throw a monitor?” I asked.

“No,” said Gary. “The worst of this is that I’ve suspected this was coming for a week now. I overheard Lawrence talking about it.”

“Here?” asked Quintrell.

“Of course here,” said Gary. “I never leave. I don’t have a home—I just wander through the earth like some poor ghost seeking vengeance on a man who’s been dead for thousands of years. Of course here.”

“What did you hear?”

“He was all excited to meet with some representative from Dixon.”

“Maybe it’ll be good for the game,” said Quintrell.

“Dixon is going to have us make hidden object games. Where is the trident? Where is the coin?”

“Where is the Christmas tea?” I added.

“Where is the Christmas tea?” continued Gary.

“No,” said Quintrell.

“Yes,” said Gary. “Hidden. Fucking. Objects. They’re not even really games; they’re just activities for old people while they stave off death.”

I actually like hidden object games, which I feel should be said to someone. They’re a lot of fun. Plus, some of them include mahjongg. But I did not interrupt Gary with my mahjongg counterpoint, because it was not the time.

Quintrell calmly and decisively began unscrewing the monitor cable so that it could be thrown more thoroughly:

“Guys—stop.”

“We are men and we want to destroy things.”

“Why don’t you go downstairs for a bit,” I said. “Take a walk, get some fresh air, maybe offer to help wash a dog.”

“Fucking DE,” said Quintrell.

“Fucking Lawrence,” said Gary.

“Now let’s go see Tyler,” said Lawrence. “I must repent to him.”

“Does Vanetta know yet?” asked Quintrell. I initially assumed he was asking Lawrence but then realized: Oh no, he’s asking me.

“I doubt it. Vanetta’s been a little busy with a situation,” I said. “Actually, I thought she was back here with you.”

“Vanetta knows nothing,” said Lawrence.

“Oh God,” said Gary. “Is the journalist coming back here, because I’d like to hit him in the face.”

“What did he do to you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Gary. “I just feel I should hit someone.”

Just then, Charice poked her head in, looking even more resplendent than before, and it was at this point that I began to appreciate her train.

“This place is getting fucking weird,” said Gary as Charice, Radiant Bride of Womanhood, headed toward us. He did not ask who Charice was or why she was here, but just accepted it, as if this were a thing that happened regularly.

“Dahlia, it’s the phone again. A very strange message. Mysterious, you might even say.”

Quintrell squinted at Charice. I assume he was wondering if she were some sort of panic-induced apparition.

“Well, okay. Excuse me, boys,” I said. “Grab Lawrence’s arm,” I told Charice. “We need to get this guy back in the bathroom and out of sight.”

“I am on a tour of repentance!” he exclaimed.

“I’ve got him,” said Charice, although I could tell from her face that she quite liked the idea of Lawrence’s repentance tour.

“So we really have a mysterious phone caller?” I asked, mostly to keep her from thinking about the tour too deeply.

“Check for yourself.”

Charice dropped Lawrence on the floor when we got back to my station, and handed me the phone. Over the receiver was an irritating BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEEP. Repeated over and over again.

“It’s an SOS,” I said. This was technically not true, as it was, strictly speaking, an OSO, which is an SOS delivered by someone who had not looked at their Morse code guidebook since elementary school and had confused their “s”s with their “o”s. But the end result was the same.

“I figured it was an SOS,” said Charice. “But from whom?”

“I don’t know, maybe Vanetta?” I ventured, thinking that she would be due for a breakdown at some point soon. “Have you seen her?”

“No,” said Charice.

“Perhaps some terrible fate has befallen her,” I said. And it astonished me how naturally I was able to deliver this line, which is, to be clear, a batshit crazy thing to say. Someone is out of my sight for three minutes and I assume that something terrible has happened to them. This is what they call in the detective biz an occupational hazard.

“Maybe we should go looking for her,” said Charice. “Daniel is going to be here soon. He’s renting a tux. When he gets here, I can go looking for her.”

This was a ridiculous thing to say, for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that the Cahaba offices weren’t that big. For another, I had just realized who was sending the SOS, and it wasn’t Vanetta.

“Get Lawrence out of sight,” I said. “I’ll deal with our caller.”

I opened the door to Tyler’s office, and sure enough, Ignacio Granger was discreetly pressing buttons on his phone. Also, Tyler was playing some sort of Native American music on his computer’s speakers.

“We’re listening to the CoffeeQuest Two soundtrack,” said Tyler.

Please. Kill. Me, mouthed Igncacio to me.

“I see,” I said.

I don’t want to comment on the quality of Tyler’s soundtrack work, other than to say it was more atmospheric than something you would actively listen to and also that it was being played on his computer’s tinny internal speakers, and not any fancy sound system, which was not doing any favors to the music.

“Cynthia,” said Tyler. “Is Lawrence ready to meet with Mr. Granger now? I think we’ve just about run out of things to talk about.”

“Sure,” I said, sensing the desperation in both men’s voices. “Just hold on one second.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Ignacio, grabbing my arm, which wasn’t cool, but sort of understandable in the circumstances.

“Okay,” I said, walking out of the room with Ignacio literally in tow and no idea where I was going to take him.

I closed the door behind me and began walking very slowly—exceptionally slowly—toward Lawrence’s office. I could hear vomiting again from the bathroom. This would have worried me greatly except for the fact that the sound was largely covered by the noise of a computer monitor being thrown at a wall.

“What the hell?” said Ignacio.

From our vantage point, we saw the computer monitor sail through the air and hit the wall, but we could not see its hurler.

I wasn’t sure what sort of comment I could or should provide to Ignacio Granger regarding the thrown monitor, but I considered the following avenues:

I didn’t see any thrown monitor. What thrown monitor? You’re imagining things.

It’s part of an art installation, very modern you know, and it’s also some kind of metaphor.

The really genius programmers are all a little eccentric, don’t you think?

But instead I just embraced the gallows humor and simply said:

“And you’ll be meeting with those men later.”

I suppose I was walking Ignacio down to the bathroom to meet with vomiting Lawrence. But as we headed toward my station, I saw that Daniel was there, also looking resplendent, and was in a tuxedo. Charice, mysteriously, was missing, but perhaps Daniel’s presence meant that she had gone out on that Vanetta search party after all.

I was feeling foolish and insane, and so I said to Daniel:

“Lawrence, how are you? I, of course, am Cynthia Shaver, the receptionist here.”

“This is Lawrence Ussary?” asked Ignacio. To be fair, in his tux, Daniel was not someone who looked like Lawrence, really, but was at least vaguely Lawrence shaped.

“Sure,” I said. “Sure it is. Lawrence, why don’t you go into your office and meet with Ignacio, who is a reporter here to interview you.”

Daniel managed to take this particular bit of insanity with the delightful nutso spirit it was given.

“Why, of course, Cynthia Shaver,” said Daniel. “Of course, I will.”

Daniel, for reasons that remain unclear to me—although at this point, who am I to throw stones?—opted to speak in a ridiculous American accent. It was the American accent that British people used when making fun of American accents, as heard on Monty Python, or “Temporary Secretary.”

“Why, yessir, I’m always happy to talk to a member of the press. Sure I am! Why don’t you walk me to my office, Cynthia Shaver, since I always like being escorted places, and it’s not unnatural at all for a man to be taken places by his secretary.”

Right. Daniel had no idea where Lawrence’s office was. I walked him to his office, suddenly feeling giddy and insane, and also having a terrible idea as to where Vanetta had gone. She was probably having the same thought I was having right now. She had probably made a run for it.

“Why are you wearing a tuxedo?” asked Ignacio.

“Always wear them,” said Daniel, who was yes-anding his way into a very peculiar character. “Can never be too overdressed. Makes you stand out in a crowd.”

“I suppose they would,” said Ignacio.

I opened the door, and Daniel looked in at the glass naked woman statue and the fancy desk and chair and said: “Well, what a beautiful office I have. That’s a rhetorical question, of course—what’s your name, son?”

“Ignacio,” said Ignacio. “And I think I’m older than you.”

“Yes, well, it’s a rhetorical question, because I clearly do have a beautiful office. It’s self-evident. Cost a pretty penny too. Now, you’ll have to tell me the story of that name of yours in a second, but I do have a little bit of business here with Cynthia, first. Just sit down anywhere, and make yourself comfortable.”

Daniel walked to the door and said to me, quietly, “What the hell is this about?”

I said: “The real Lawrence Ussary has been roofied. Also Vanetta is missing, the computer programmers are throwing actual computers, and Archie is also missing—” As I thought of this, I considered that possibly he and Vanetta were missing together, and also that Daniel didn’t know who any of these people were regardless. “And I assume that the entire building will be on fire soon.”

I didn’t even mention the financial ruin of the company or that the sister of the murdered woman I had discovered was lurking around the offices in the dog-grooming studio downstairs. Why should I? This was a man who was about to be married and should march into matrimonial life untroubled and happy.

“So,” said Daniel. “Are you still going to be able to slip away for lunch? We’d really like you there.”

He was talking about the wedding, I realized, and I was astonished that he was still that focused.

“At this rate, I assume I’ll be dead by lunch.”

“Well, how about eleven forty-five?”

I understood that this was a joke, or at least what Daniel believed was a joke, and I closed the door.

Honestly, it was going better than I expected.