CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Just a brief recap, in case you’ve lost track, we have the following elements running around the offices at Cahaba. They are:

A poisoner

A whistle-blower

A saboteur, possibly?

Vanetta, missing

Archie, missing

My roommate in full bridal garb, missing

A police detective

A drugged journalist

A drugged and presumably naked CEO, also missing.

At that point, I was thinking that having a hit of that kefir maybe wasn’t such a bad idea. Having put all of these things together, I tried to manage triage. Naturally my phone rang, and naturally it was Emily, which was probably the worst possible option, although I don’t think I would have relished my mother calling either. I decided, however unwisely, that I would decline this call from Emily. This was a risk, of course, as she was my employer, and I did not want to tick her off. But she should have known better than to call me while I was at work.

“I’m going to check on the detective,” I said, and left Daniel in the room with Ignacio.

“Detective Tedin,” I said. “Everything okay?”

“Haven’t found Vanetta anywhere?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I was just dealing with a different problem,” I said. “I’m going to call her cell now.”

“I don’t have all day,” said Tedin, and I tried to look appropriately apologetic and secretarial.

“Of course you don’t,” I said. “I’ll make sure she comes in here first thing. And if I can’t reach her, I’ll let you know.”

I had mostly poked my head in on Tedin to make sure that naked Lawrence was not in the room with him, although in retrospect this seems like the sort of thing that Tedin would not silently endure. But I also wanted to check in just to make sure that Vanetta hadn’t slipped in there during the chaos, because I frequently find that when I lose things, such as keys or corpses, they are usually in the most obvious place.

Unsurprisingly, Vanetta did not pick up her cell phone when I called. I then tried to make a mental list of the places she could be, but this was not helpful, because the list was predominated by things like “in a cab driving quickly away” or “aboard a plane to Mexico.” I checked Tyler’s office, which was absurdly calm, given the circumstances. Lawrence’s office was empty. And Quintrell’s workstation was as chaotic as you would expect.

The break room contained Cynthia Shaffer, of all people, who was standing precariously on a chair, pulling something out of the top shelf of the cabinet. This would look suspicious, on some level, were it not for the friendly way that she greeted my arrival.

“Oh, hello there, dear,” said Cynthia. “You didn’t reorganize the cabinets, did you? I decided I’d look for the tea myself.”

“No,” I said.

“Well,” said Cynthia. “Now that you’re here I can describe them to you. Of course, they are all Christmas teas. Sugar Plum Fairy and Gingerbread Cookie, and I think there’s one called Sleigh Ride, although I might be confusing that with a candle. I’m sure Lawrence took them. Who else would want tea that tastes like a gingerbread cookie?”

This was a reasonable question, albeit posed in unusual circumstances. Cynthia had told me that she didn’t want to be seen by anyone, and raiding the office for Christmas teas seemed to go against this idea. Also, she answered the question herself, because she apparently wanted a Gingerbread Cookie tea, as she was here. Stupidly, I pressed on the latter point.

“Says the lady standing on the chair,” I said. “Do you want me to spot you?”

The last thing we needed was a Cynthia with a snapped neck in the break room. This would have really ruined the day, which was saying something, as the day was already a Dumpster fire.

“No, no, I’m fine,” said Cynthia, and I immediately put her in the category of old people who never wanted to admit to any infirmity. I went over to hold the chair steady anyway.

“You must want the Gingerbread Cookie tea pretty badly,” I said. “I thought you said that you didn’t want to be seen by anyone.”

“Oh well,” said Cynthia. “I want the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Gingerbread I would give away. Terrible tea. Even at Christmas, where I feel that drinking ridiculous teas is a sort of time-honored tradition. Joyce would get them for me, you know. She once got me this Candy Apple tea that was so positively awful that it took us six years to get through.”

Cynthia got off the chair and suddenly looked sad.

“It’s not up there,” she said.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said, and I was suddenly alarmed that I hadn’t said it earlier. I even tried going in for a hug with Cynthia, but she—elegantly—pushed me off.

“Is it weird to say that I think she would have liked it better this way? Going out like this? She’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and her number was up. It’s not a pretty death, pancreatic cancer. It’s a lousy cancer.”

It struck me that poisoning wasn’t a pretty death either, but maybe death is one of those things like dancing. Everyone worries so about it, but ultimately the details aren’t important. I didn’t share this thought with Cynthia.

“I thought you were in hiding.”

Cynthia was still on tea, however. I suppose she must have wanted it because it was something of her sister’s.

“Of course, I haven’t seen my holiday tea stash in nine months. Other people could have drank it, or thrown it out. Maybe I should ask Vanetta if she remembers seeing it. She’s the only other person who drinks tea.”

“If Lawrence doesn’t drink tea, why would he steal it?” I asked.

“Spitefulness.”

“You know, I thought you wanted to stay out of sight,” I said. If I kept repeating this, Cynthia would eventually respond.

“I did,” said Cynthia. “I came up the fire escape and thought I would just slip in. I appreciate you smuggling out my things the other day, but I’m afraid you just didn’t do as good a job at it as I would have liked.” Then Cynthia’s face reddened, as if she had made an inconsiderate remark. Although, I didn’t take it that way at all.

“It was my fault to try to farm it out to you, of course. I should have come back in here myself. I was just afraid it would be strange. Although, now that I’m here, it doesn’t seem strange at all. It frankly doesn’t even feel like I was fired. It feels like I never left.”

“This place is on fire without you,” I said honestly.

“It was on fire with me,” said Cynthia. “That’s the danger of naming a company after a doomed flower.”

“It thought it was a river,” I said, remembering that I heard that somewhere.

“It’s a flower on a river. The Cahaba lily is only found there. I’ve been there actually—canoeing with a friend. The blooms only last a single day before they wilt. Central Alabama—it’s beautiful country.”

“You went there with Joyce?” I asked, and Cynthia, I noted, ducked the question.

“It’s just like this place,” she said. “Beautiful while it lasted. Now it’s all wilting.”

“So it is,” I said, privately wondering if she knew about the sale.

“Let me know if you run across my tea.”

“Stay out of sight,” I told her.

I found Vanetta and Charice hiding in Archie’s office, of all places. I probably would not have noticed either of them, save for the train on Charice’s wedding dress, which lingered out from behind Archie’s desk like toilet paper trailing from a leg. With metaphors like that, I should write for Brides magazine, I know.

“Are you actually crouched and hiding behind a desk?” I asked. “Has it come to this?” This question was posed to Charice, who I did not need to create extra problems in this moment. However, the voice that came from behind the desk was actually Vanetta’s.

“She’s not hiding. I’m hiding.”

Charice chimed in. “I wouldn’t say that I wasn’t also hiding. I’m somewhat hiding. But I could have made a better go of it if I really put my heart into it.”

This was undoubtedly true.

I walked around to the other side of the desk, and sure enough there were Vanetta and Charice sitting cross-legged on the floor. It was so casual, and so friendly-looking that I half expected there to be a bong involved. Or at least some kind of incense.

“Sit down,” said Charice.

“There’s kind of a crisis out there,” I told them.

“Sit down.”

I sat down because Charice, when she really puts her heart into something, is hard to stop. Also, despite the impression she gives off, she’s also whip smart, so when she wants something, it’s also worth considering that maybe you should want it too.

“What are you guys doing down here?”

“I was having a brief mental breakdown,” said Vanetta. “But I think I’ve recovered.”

“You shouldn’t let things build up so much,” said Charice.

“The trick is that I don’t have time for a proper mental breakdown,” said Vanetta. “I have to focus it; like a power nap.”

“Do you know the police are here?” I asked. This is certainly the sort of question that would help someone on the cusp of a mental breakdown.

“No,” said Vanetta. “I did not. Are they just running around out there?”

“They’re in your office,” I said. “They want to speak to you.”

I don’t know why I was pluralizing Detective Tedin here. It was, after all, just him. Not that this made a lick of difference to Vanetta.

“Well, we can just line them up after Ignacio.”

“Ignacio has been roofied,” I said. I wasn’t even trying to be helpful at this point, and I could see how this would not make me a very good secretary.

Vanetta took this, of all news, pretty well, and was merely tsking about it. “It’s Lawrence’s damned roofie supply, isn’t it? Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Another way Lawrence is ruining my life.”

I did not think this was a tsking matter, but given her attitude, I suppose Vanetta had come to terms with Lawrence’s drug collection. I don’t suppose this meant that she did it?

“You didn’t drug Lawrence?” I asked.

“No,” said Vanetta.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Dahlia,” said Charice, who was surprisingly scolding. “You’re coming in here and interrupting with your detective stuff when Vanetta and I were having a real human-to-human moment.”

It seemed bizarre to me, even amid the usually bizarre life of Charice Baumgarten, that she would be having a human-to-human moment on the floor with Vanetta Jones.

“What are you having a moment about?” I asked.

“She was telling me about her problems,” said Charice. “And I was telling her about my problems, and as it happened, they sort of overlap.”

“You don’t have problems,” I told Charice.

“Of course I have problems,” said Charice. “Being alive means having problems.”

Yes, but Charice’s problems were, I imagined, things like “How do I keep this ice sculpture from melting before the party ends?” and “Why is it so hard to find really good weed?” The places that this would overlap with Vanetta’s problems, which involved financial ruin, a mystery father, and angry police—it seemed hard to imagine.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said.

“You think I do?” asked Vanetta.

“I’m getting married in an hour,” said Charice.

“Who else knew about Lawrence’s roofie collection?” I asked.

“Who knows,” said Vanetta. “Archie, I assume. I mean, Archie is the person from whom he got them, I’d imagine. Oh, and Gary.”

“He got them from Archie and Gary?”

“No, Gary also knew about them.”

Either way, this statement seemed baffling to me, because Gary was not the sort of person you would share drug stories and adventures with. He was a grown-ass man, with a baby and a wife. Also, I didn’t think Lawrence had acknowledged him directly in all the time I had been there.

“Why Gary?”

“He roofied Gary one day,” said Vanetta. “As a joke. That was the day our last Human Resources person left. Just walked up and left, laughing as she went out the door.”

This was a lot of information to digest. I could envision Gary, sprawled out at his desk, and I could envision Lawrence, laughing at it.

“Are you going to deal with the police?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Vanetta. “Give me five minutes to make my peace with God. I just never expected everything would go up in flames like this.”

“That’s what you get for naming your company after an ephemeral flower,” I said.

“That damned flower metaphor. Where did that even come from? It’s named for the shower in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“There’s a shower here. But no bath. And when we started the company together, Lawrence and I were sharing an apartment at this place that only had a shower too. So we named it Can’t Have Baths Apps.”

“And you decided it was too long and you shortened it to Ca Ha Ba,” I said.

“No,” said Vanetta. “We never thought it was too long. It was just that the name was already taken. Can you believe that? There’s a Can’t Have Baths film development company in Burbank. So we shortened it.”

I sort of assume that Vanetta was joking about the name being taken, but she did not look or sound like someone who was joking, so who knows? Life is strange sometimes, and never in the ways you expect.

“It was Cynthia who told me about that,” I said.

“Figures,” said Vanetta. “That woman is wrong about everything.”

“Are you done badgering this poor woman with questions?” asked Charice.

“Just one last one,” I said. “Have you seen Archie?”

And then, as if on cue, “The Lady in Red” began to play again.

I don’t mean to pick on Chris de Burgh, composer and performer of the venerable ’80s hit “The Lady in Red.” But I was at this moment harboring a strong theory that he was somehow an agent of Satan, or perhaps even Satan himself. Even now, it seems not entirely unreasonable to think that after I die, if I’ve lived a bad life, I will hear the dulcet tones of “The Lady in Red” greeting me as I enter the gates of hell.

“I’ll talk to Archie,” I said.

“I’ll go see the police.”

When I got out into the main room, I saw that Quintrell and Gary were taking apart the walls of the Herman Miller cubicle system and were now re-forming it into something else.

“We’re building a Lemarchand’s box,” said Quintrell. “Out of Herman Miller pieces.”

Reader, I will freely admit that I did not know what a Lemarchand’s box was. I assumed it was some sort of fancy math thing, but after asking, I learned that it is, in fact, the evil puzzle box from the Hellraiser movies. Clive Barker, your legacy lives on, albeit in temporary office furniture form.

“You do that,” I said. “I’m going to deal with the music.”

Vanetta ran to her office—literally she was running, just as Ignacio and Daniel sputtered out of the bathroom, whereupon Ignacio collapsed on the floor.

“I’m doing the best I can, Dahlia,” said Daniel. “But he’s slippery!”

“I’ve figured out who you really are, Dahlia Moss!” said Ignacio, who was just sort of hemorrhaging for the door.

“Grab his legs!” I said, and ran down the stairs to stop the music.

Deb was outside, smoking. I’m not even sure if she worked at the dog-grooming place at all, now—she might just have been some sort of smoldering gargoyle.

“What happened?” I asked Deb.

The question was salient because there was no banner. And no Archie. Just a speaker.

“What happened with what?” asked Deb, exhaling one gloriously long stream at me.

She was putting me on.

“With the music?” I submitted.

“Oh, that,” she said. “I only caught the end of it, when the girl ran off.”

“What girl?” I asked.

“Some skinny white girl in a teal dress. I only caught the back of her. Real cute, though.”

Who the hell was she talking about?

“There was a girl?” I asked.

“That’s what I said,” said Deb.

“It wasn’t Cynthia Shaffer.”

“I’d call her a woman,” considered Deb.

“She wasn’t black?” I asked.

“Nope,” said Deb.

“Was her name Adalbjorg?” I asked, stabbing about as blindly as a person can.

“Dunno,” said Deb.

“If you see her again,” I said, “stop her.”

“I’m not gonna do that,” said Deb.

And then I turned off the music and took the boom box. Whoever this girl was, she was going to have to see me in order to get her radio back.