Murder in the Marketplace

by Lora Roberts

  Mindy frowned, bewildered. “Notebook? Jenifer’s notebook, you mean?”

  At Jenifer’s name, Clarice moaned. “I can’t stand it.” Her voice was thick with emotion. Mindy offered the tissues again, and Clarice helped herself liberally. When Mindy put the box back on my desk, Clarice saw me— really saw me. She sat up straighter.

  “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute here.” Her voice grew even shriller. “You—aren’t you—?”

  “I’m the temp.” I tried a smile. “We met yesterday, remember?”

  “You’re the census taker.” She jumped to her feet. “I know you are. I remember you.”

  Clarice wasn’t as well put together this morning. Her makeup had been less than careful; there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. Her hair, too, hung limp and uncoiffed around her thin face.

  She clutched her bag, staring at me with loathing. “I remember—you touched her—and now the notebook’s gone—” Her voice had risen and crescendoed until her last words were a scream.

  Door Number One popped open and Drake tore out. When he saw Clarice confronting me, he relaxed a little. Behind him, Jason peered curiously through the door. Suzanne reemerged.

  Drake strode up to Clarice and shook her briskly. When that didn’t work, he took the untouched glass of water Angel had procured for Jason, and dashed it into her face. She broke off, sobbing and gasping.

  Angel rushed into the room, concern etched on her face. “Poor Clarice,” she crooned. “This has all been such a terrible shock.”

  Clarice, still gasping, pointed at me. “She—she—”

  “I’ll need to talk to you, Ms. Jensen.” Drake put an arm around her and led her toward the office. “Then I’ll finish with you, Mr. Paston. If you’d wait?” He swept the reassembled crowd with a resigned expression. “Your turn comes later, folks.”

  People drifted away. Mindy followed them, darting little looks at me. Jason plumped down in the chair. For a few minutes he gazed blankly into space, his hands rigid on the chair arms. Then the phone trilled, and he jumped. While I transferred the call to marketing, he stared at me.

  “What did Clarice mean, you touched her? Were you there last night? Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m just the temp,” I said, rather helplessly. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be talking.”

  “So what? He suspects me anyway.” He jerked his head toward Door Number One, behind which Drake presumably grilled Clarice. “Thinks I made her do it, probably. But it wasn’t me.” He put his hands to his head, as if it threatened to fly apart. “What does it matter? How could any of it possibly matter? Jenny’s dead. I can’t really believe it. I was just talking to her Tuesday night. How can a person be alive one minute and dead the next?”

  “That’s the way it usually happens.” This bit of comforting didn’t seem to hit the mark. I told myself to shut up.

  He wasn’t really listening to me anyway. “We took care of each other—we had no one else. Now I’m alone.”

  Door Number One opened and Drake ushered Clarice out. “What’s done is done, Ms. Jensen. No use worrying about it now. If you happen to see the notebook or remember anything about it, please let me know right away. Wouldn’t it be better if you went home now? You’re not in any shape—”

  “Home?” Clarice stared at him. “You mean, the place where poor little Jenifer died? I’m not going back there.” Her mouth worked. “I have no home.”

  Jason straightened his shoulders. “You’re not the only one, Clarice.”

  She turned to look at him, and something passed between them, a consciousness or knowledge that needed no words. “That’s true,” Clarice said. “You’re by yourself now.” There was savage satisfaction in her voice.

  Jason flinched. “Clarice—”

  “Don’t speak to me,” she said, her voice low and intense. “Don’t try to get in touch with me. You’re vile, Jason. You deserve to suffer.”

  Drake just stood there, watching, his face intent. I felt things were getting out of hand.

  I hadn’t realized Suzanne was listening. Now she came into the reception area. “Clarice.” Her deep voice was still harsh, but there was sympathy in it. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t take your grief out on this poor fellow.”

  “Poor fellow. Poor Jason.” Clarice shook her head. “He fools you, doesn’t he? But Jenifer remembered, Jenifer knew. Not that he would admit it—oh, no! Ask him what he told her, the last time he saw her! Why don’t you?” She turned on Drake.

  “You encouraged her to believe those lies.” Jason stepped closer to Clarice. “You manipulated her—took advantage—”

  Clarice stood her ground. “You were so angry, remember? You said she’d broken up your engagement by telling your fiancée. You said she deserved what was coming to her—”

  “Officer.” Suzanne took Clarice’s arm, cutting off her spate. “Can’t you do something?”

  Drake stepped forward, reluctantly, it seemed to me. “I’ll talk to you now, Mr. Paston,” he said, gesturing toward Ed’s office.

  Jason seemed relieved. “Fine,” he said, moving across the room. He turned at the door and looked back at Suzanne. “She’s crazy, you know. My sister was the most important person in the world to me. I would never have hurt her. Never.”

  Drake ushered him inside and closed the door. Clarice’s shoulders sagged.

  “Where are you staying, Clarice?” Suzanne put an arm around Clarice and drew her toward her office. “Can I help you find a new place? We’ll get the movers for you.”

  Clarice shuddered and stepped away. She obviously still had a temperament to vent. Her wild gaze alighted on me. “Is it true, what the policeman said?” She advanced toward the desk. “This is some kind of incredible coincidence?”

  I nodded, aware of Suzanne’s puzzled look. It was all going to come out, I could see. I would miss the paycheck, but the worst thing would be not knowing how it all ended.

  “I don’t believe it,” Clarice declared flatly. There was a feverish glitter in her eyes. “You’re plotting something. You’re in this.”

  “Clarice.” Suzanne was alarmed now. “You’re not making sense here. We’ll get you some counseling or therapy.”

  “She didn’t tell you?” Clarice turned back to Suzanne. “This woman was there, last night. When I found Jenifer.”

  Suzanne stopped dabbing ineffectually at Clarice and looked at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She was there, I tell you. She was right behind me when I found the body.” Clarice put her hands over her face. “The body.” Her voice was muffled. “I called Jenifer the body.”

  “Is there someplace for her to lie down?” I got to my feet.

  Suzanne divided a suspicious look between me and Clarice—I could see her wondering who was crazy. “In my office.” This time she managed to herd Clarice through Door Number Two. “You’d better come as well. We’ll put this whole thing to rest, if possible.”

  Suzanne got Clarice onto the shabby sofa in one corner of her office and poured her a glass of water from the fancy water-purifying carafe on her desk. Clarice gulped it, while Suzanne turned to me. “What’s happening?”

  “I do a lot of odd job-type stuff to earn money. One of the jobs is census taker. One of the housing units on my list is their place—her place.” I jerked my head toward Clarice, who took a sobbing breath. “Last evening I’d made an appointment with Jenifer to fill out the census form. I got there just before this lady. When we went in, she was dead.”

  “How gruesome! Incredible.” The suspicion was still in Suzanne’s eyes. “That was after the party last night? I noticed you there. Ed was talking to you.” Her expression gave nothing away, but I got the feeling that Suzanne would always notice who Ed was talking to.

  “I’m a friend of Emery Montrose. He mentioned to Ed that I do temp work, which is why Angel called me in yesterday morning to do some data entry for you. In the afternoon, I went through my cens
us register, and came back in the evening for people who weren’t there earlier.” I glanced at Clarice. “It truly is just coincidence.”

  “I see.” Suzanne looked thoughtful. The phone rang, and she went out to the reception room to answer it herself.

  Clarice blew her nose and wiped her face with one of the tissues she still clutched in her hand. “You don’t expect anyone to believe that story, do you?”

  “Why not? It’s true. I’d barely met you and Jenifer. What reason would I have to interfere?”

  “How should I know?” Clarice sank back on the couch. Though she looked spent, her voice was strong with venom. “But I think you should just get out.”

  The words were strongly reminiscent of something. It took me a moment to place them as having been said by a couple of uncooperative anti-census people.

  “She’s not here permanently.” Suzanne was back in the room. “We need someone to handle the phones. You’re not up to it, Clarice.”

  “It’s not my job.” Clarice drew herself up.

  “It’s not Mindy’s, either.” Suzanne stared at me. “I don’t even know your name.”

  I was getting angry. I didn’t really blame them for their suspicions—the circumstances were bizarre. But I felt, however unreasonably, that it was unfair to victimize me because of those circumstances.

  “Why should you need to know someone’s name to fire them? Peons don’t need names.” I walked to the door. “Go ahead. Take away my livelihood. I despise office work anyway.” Clarice stared at me, her mouth open as if an insignificant mosquito had suddenly become Kafka-ized in front of her. “You all just reinforce what the census has been teaching me—even the lowest opinion of human nature is too high.”

  “Wait,” Suzanne said. “Look, this is awkward. But leaving won’t make it better.”

  “Sure it will, for me.” I jerked my head toward Clarice. “I won’t have to listen to accusations of wrongdoing that are totally off the wall.”

  “At least think about coming back tomorrow.” Suzanne followed me to the door. “Our phones are going nuts.”

  That was, true. They were ringing again—two lines, brr-brr, brr-brr. It was maddening. I stalked to the console and put both of them on hold.

  “There. See you.”

  “Wait—what about your check?”

  I stopped at the door. “Forget the check,” I said grandly, although it cost me a pang. “The morning is on me.”

  Chapter 11

  Amy and Barker were still at the beach when I got home. The house was blessedly quiet, the hide-a-bed neatly folded away. I sat on the sofa for a little while, letting the silence sink into me and remembering that, not so long ago, I’d led a tranquil life.

  I needed dirt. I changed skirt for jeans and drove to my garden.

  The community gardens are one reason why I put up with some elitist crap to live in Palo Alto. I tended a plot behind the main library. The city will probably build on the garden site someday—open space is just too valuable for vegetables to use. I picture it, all our wonderful dirt trapped under buildings and asphalt. But for now it’s a fecund, burgeoning place where gardeners weed and mulch and water amid towering tomatoes, vast walls of raspberries, tracts of corn.

  There was no corn in my ten-by-twenty-foot space—it took up too much room; I did have beans and tomatoes, peppers and herbs, eggplant and artichokes. Gardening is a tranquilizer—the smell of dirt and compost and crushed herbs, the satisfaction of winning, for a brief space, the ongoing Bermuda grass war. I like the feel of that loamy earth I’ve helped create against my bare fingers.

  This bright June day there was a lot of weeding to do. I worked gradually through the beds, uprooting the evil Bermuda grass, pulling out mallow and lamb’s-quarters and purslane, adding mulch around the tomatoes and peppers, pinching back the basil and inhaling its wonderful fragrance. I saved the little flowering tips I pinched off; they were fabulous in salads and omelettes.

  After twenty minutes of this I was able to regain perspective, and admit that, although it bothered me to leave SoftWrite before finishing the job, I was most upset by Jenifer’s death and my own unwilling involvement in it.

  Something about the alert way Drake had looked around that morning made me doubt that Jenifer had taken an overdose of her own volition. Strangely, that was a comforting thought. I had found her youth and niceness appealing. Suicide tarnished her in a way murder didn’t. It was a gruesome distinction, but somehow comforting.

  Silicon Valley is a hotbed of nervous businesses. Evidently SoftWrite was one. There was a kind of Greek city-state air about it—intertribal warfare that closed ranks against outsiders. A few months before, I’d temped at a design firm; there are hundreds of them around here, all staffed with incredibly creative people who are always on edge about keeping their jobs in the face of the incredibly creative unemployed designers who constantly buzz around. Three times in the course of the two days I’d spent at their switchboard I had heard raised voices, and I’d witnessed an episode of arm-waving, stomping-out temperament and a couple of shoving matches. However, at 4:30 P.M. on the second day, a Friday, they’d all gathered in the foyer and headed for the bar down the street. When I’d walked past half an hour later, they were still in a big, laughing clump. Go figure.

  Some of the unpleasant vibes at SoftWrite could be attributed to the new product. That’s a tense time for a company, large or small. But the two founders, facing off from their opposing doors, signaled that something more was amiss.

  I finished digging out Bermuda grass. The carrot seedlings raised their feathery plumes, uncrowded by weeds. The sun was hot on my shoulders; the scents of herbs and tomato foliage surrounded me. A few other people were working around me. The peaceful, humming quiet was composed of wind in the tops of the plum trees that surround the garden, and traffic swishing by on Embarcadero Road and in the library parking lot. It was so quiet that I was surprised when I picked up a pile of weeds to carry to the Dumpster and saw Bridget in her garden plot, two over and three down.

  Not that it surprises me to see Bridget. It was just that the air of peace hadn’t been shattered by the shrill noises of her numerous offspring.

  She waved a dirty hand at me and set out another cucumber. She was late for that, of course, but Bridget’s garden is always a haphazard, last-minute thing that somehow manages to produce vegetables at an astonishing rate. Sleeping near her in a small Barcalounger-type seat was a baby—Moira, the fourth and last Montrose child.

  “Hey, Liz. I thought you were working at that temp job.” Bridget firmed the dirt around the cucumber plant and stood up, stretching. She was nothing extraordinary to look at—a bit matronly as to figure, a couple of years older than me, with flyaway hair and warm brown eyes, as clear and dancing as dark amber. Her beauty is inside, for the most part, shining out through those eyes and her bright, infectious smile. She was my only friend in Palo Alto for a while, and a great help to me in getting my freelance career off the ground. Because of her, I got to teach a writing workshop at the Senior Center from September through May that paid enough to take care of my postage bill.

  “I did temp yesterday morning and for a couple of hours today.” I clutched my weeds gloomily. “I’m off now because of the body.”

  She laughed, then looked closer. “You’re not joking.”

  ‘‘Nope.”

  “Oh, no. Not again!” She turned a bushel basket over beside the baby chair and sat. Moira slept on, shaded by an awning thing on the chair. “What happened?”

  I dropped my pile of weeds. “Maybe you can fill me in. Remember that guy at your party last night, the one who poured the beer on my arm? Ed Garfield.”

  “Yeah. He’s the one Emery told about you, when he was complaining about the temp shortage last week.”

  “What do you know about his company?”

  “SoftWrite? That’s not just Ed, it’s both of them, Ed and Suzanne.” Bridget peeked beneath the sunshade to check the baby. “Suzann
e is so quiet, she’s often overlooked. But Emery thinks she’s the brains behind that screen saver—their first product, you know.”

  “Aren’t they competitors of Emery’s?”

  Bridget squinted against the sun. “Not directly.” She put her hand over her forehead to look at me. I moved around so my shadow shaded her and she smiled gratefully. “Emery is doing custom applications, real-time analysis.”

  “Is there some other kind of time?”

  She laughed. “For the techies there is, evidently. Emery’s got his own niche. He’s not too worried about the other small companies. They tend to respect each other’s territories. But if the big guys sound like they’re getting into the same field, then he worries.” She wrinkled her forehead. “SoftWrite, now—their new product is something to do with personal assistants. A lot of big companies like Apple and Oracle are jumping into that. It’s risky—those big guys like to squash the little players.”

  “A newspaper reporter asked about MicroMax today. Some rumor or other.”

  “Really?” Bridget looked interested. “I’ll have to ask Emery about it. There’s more gossip in Silicon Valley than in the Valley of the Dolls.” Moira made a little noise in her sleep, and Bridget smoothed a lock of fine red hair away from the baby’s face. When she looked up, her smile faded. “Now what about this body?”

  I told her about Jenifer, getting myself worked up again while I went through it. Suicide or murder—whatever it was, it was wasteful. Young people should be getting on with the business of saving the world. It’s their main job. Knocking themselves off or being killed doesn’t do a thing for the universe.

  “So SoftWrite has employees whose address is on your census sheet.” Bridget looked thoughtful. “What are the odds of that happening, I wonder?”

  “Not as weird as it sounds, probably. I had several people on my register in different apartment buildings in that same neighborhood who worked for the same law firm at Palo Alto Square, a place where I also temped a few months ago. Of course, it’s a big law firm.”