Murder in the Marketplace

by Lora Roberts

  “And the temp job really grew out of our connection with you.” Bridget brightened up a little. “The jungle drums thing. It’s really pretty powerful, isn’t it? Emery may need some help if you’re free.”

  “It’s nice of Emery to think of me, but he can’t afford to make up jobs for me, and you know it.”

  Bridget looked abashed. “I know. But he always does need help.”

  “I’ll spend full time on the census. And Saturday I have Claudia’s garden work. Don’t worry about me.”

  “That’s the ticket. Maybe you’ll get the whole register done this weekend and be through with it.” Bridget’s nice face was worried. “I don’t like you going around to houses where homicidal lunatics might be living. You need some quiet temp jobs where you have time to edit your manuscripts.”

  “First I have to write some.” I thought of my pile of projects. “And with Amy around, that’s going to be difficult.”

  “Amy? Oh, yes, your niece. Poor Liz. It never rains but it pours.” Bridget tossed her trowel into the rickety bucket that held a rusty collection of garden tools. Moira stirred in her chair. “Just be sorry for me. School’s out next week.”

  No wonder it had been so quiet. Second-grade Corky, kindergartner Sam, and preschooler Mick were safely incarcerated in their various learning situations. After only twenty-four hours of surrogate motherhood, I had a new appreciation for what Bridget went through. “Boy, that is a shattering thought. Will they go to camp?”

  “Maybe a couple of the recreation programs, but we’re having a financial crisis right now, so they’ll mostly be home.” Bridget clutched her flyaway hair. “I’ll be up to my ears in children!”

  “Okay, you have it the worst.” I grinned at her. “Amy’s going to get a job as a stockbroker or investment banker or something, so I’ll probably never see her.”

  “You’ll have fun with her. It sounds like you enjoy her, actually.” Bridget picked up the chair with Moira in it and tucked it under one arm. She reached for the bucket of tools, but I took it and led the way to the parking lot. Bridget’s old Suburban was parked beside my VW bus. She went through the ritual of putting Moira’s chair thing in and strapping it to the car several different ways. Moira still hadn’t opened her eyes. She was a cute baby, nine months old, with plump, rosy cheeks and a halo of curly red hair like her father’s.

  Bridget finished securing Moira. “I wish I’d met Amy last night.” She shut the car door carefully and took the bucket of tools from me. “Maybe you should bring her over for dessert tonight. Claudia’s thinking of looking in again. Your niece might have fun.” She thought, then she shook her head. “Boy, that makes me feel old—realizing that my friends and I would be boring to a teenager.”

  “I’ll come, anyway,” I said. “Amy can do as she likes.”

  I felt a little qualm when I said this. Amy was probably counting on my inattention so she could go off and act like a teenaged jackass.

  “Around eight,” Bridget said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “I’m going to try to have the kids in bed by then.”

  I watched her drive away and then went back to carry my weeds to the Dumpster. My gardening equipment is not much better than Bridget’s, though I clean it carefully to make it last. I loaded up the bus with the tender lettuces, basil tips, the last of my potatoes, some beets, carrots, and scallions, and headed for home.

  It was a little past noon. I figured Amy and Barker would be home, expecting me to produce lunch out of my hat. She was there, sitting on the front porch while Barker slept in a nearby patch of sunlight.

  There was someone sitting with Amy. At first I thought it might be Eric or Randy. They were chatting comfortably as I drove up; I was glad she had sense enough not to let one of the boys into the house when she was there alone.

  Then I recognized the man. It was Ed Garfield.

  Chapter 12

  Amy bounced off the step when I parked the bus. She was reddened by the sun, her hair sticking up all over her head in a wild, wind-styled disarray. “Aunt Liz!” She hung on the bus’s open door while I collected my produce.

  “You locked the door! I couldn’t get in!” She lowered her voice, glancing mischievously over her shoulder. “Your friend couldn’t get in either. He’s pretty eager to talk to you.”

  Ed stood by the porch steps, glancing at his watch. “He’s hunky.” Amy whispered while we approached. I nodded stiffly to Ed and unlocked the door. Amy swooped down on Barker and danced inside, carrying him. Ed hung back.

  “You must be wondering why I’m here,” he said. His presence on my doorstep didn’t exactly rank with the mysteries of the universe, but I was curious.

  “I have to put my vegetables away,” I said. “Do you want a glass of water or anything?”

  He followed me into the kitchen. Amy was already there, rooting through the refrigerator. “We don’t have any food,” she announced.

  “We haven’t gone shopping.” I poured the veggies out of my garden basket into the sink, and scrubbed the beets and carrots and potatoes.

  Amy got herself a glass of ice water and offered one to Ed. “Aunt Liz doesn’t do sodas and things,” she said, gulping thirstily. “She’s, like, into healthy stuff.” She snatched a radish and crunched into it. “This is good.” She sounded surprised.

  I scrubbed and trimmed the rest of the radishes and put them in a little bowl, with some salt in another little bowl.

  “See,” Amy told Ed, who perched uncomfortably on a kitchen chair, “this is lunch, for my aunt.”

  Ed made a strangled sound, and I gave Amy a look that evidently she recognized.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she said hastily. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Garfield.” She flounced out of the room.

  I was hungry, but damned if I was going to offer to feed Ed. There wasn’t much to eat, anyway, as Amy had noticed—it would be a choice between couscous and scrambled egg. One egg. I added some tiny carrots to the dish of radishes and joined him at the table with my own glass of water.

  “I guess you really needed the work.” He looked at the kitchen, his shifting weight making the elderly chair creak. “I’m sorry you decided to leave.”

  Pity is worse than suspicion. “Nobody does temp work except for money,” I pointed out, crunching another radish.

  “Suzanne said you were doing census stuff, too—is that how you—found Jenifer?”

  “I was there, yes.”

  Ed shook his head. “I had no idea—look, Liz. Ms. Sullivan.” He leaned forward, gazing at me earnestly. “Let’s let bygones be bygones. Clarice is going to be gone the rest of the day. We still need someone to answer the phone. I hate for callers to get just the voice mail, especially with our new release coming up.” He passed a hand over his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “How about your coming in just for today and tomorrow? That finishes the week, and Monday our receptionist should be well again. You were doing a great job. In fact, I think we could throw in a little bonus, since the phones are so heavy.”

  It made me feel strange to be offered extra money, as if I was a commodity, easily purchased. And yet, the person answering phones does work just as stressful as the person making decisions. More, because the phone answerer is often treated like nothing by the people who use her services. So I deserved more money, of course; most of my pink-collar sisters do. I just didn’t care for the context in which it was offered.

  “Why did you come over? Why didn’t you just call?” I knew he hadn’t wanted to scope out my degree of poverty. Bosses never think about that stuff until it looks them in the eye.

  “I did, but I kept getting someone’s answering machine.” He picked up a radish, turning it in his fingers as if it came from the alien Vegetable Planet. “And—well, there were things I wanted to ask you face-to-face. About Jenifer.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Clarice wasn’t able to be coherent at all after you left. I want to know—how Jenifer looked, and all. You see, I
had a special feeling for her.” He looked up with the ghost of a smile on his face. “Despite what Jason said today, I’m not that old.” The smile faded. “I can’t help but wonder—can’t help but blame myself.”

  He fell silent. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. The water hissed and banged in the pipes. Through the half-glass door that led to the little back porch, I could hear the ancient water heater light up with a whoosh.

  Ed spoke again. “Was she—did she look—peaceful?”

  I still didn’t know what to say. Was I supposed to tell people about the scene of the death? If I didn’t tell, would Clarice? “She looked very peaceful,” I hedged. “No trauma.”

  He turned away, but not before I saw the glint of moisture in his eyes. “Stupid,” he muttered. “It’s just been one hell of a day, that’s all.”

  I cleared my throat. “It would be uncomfortable to work at SoftWrite after what Clarice said this morning.”

  Ed touched my arm briefly. “Listen, she wasn’t making any sense at all. We’re so busy right now, nobody has time to think. And the phones are going crazy.” His jaw was rigid, his hands tense. When I looked closely, I could see the strain in his face.

  It was rather satisfying to be begged to come back to a job. That had never happened to me before. “Can’t you just get another temp?”

  “We did manage to find one girl. She couldn’t hack the phones. She left after twenty minutes and said she wasn’t coming back.”

  So this was the secret of my attractiveness. He added, “I wangled your home address out of Emery’s secretary and came up to ask you back.” He looked at his watch again and stood up. “Whatever it takes. Double what you usually get from temp work. Look, I don’t have much time. I’m in the middle of important negotiations. I can’t put them on hold, I can’t even take time to realize that Jenifer—” His voice broke. He turned away.

  I could hear the sullen groans of the water heater from the back porch. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour or so.” Life was taking on a hectic tone. Office work for the next two days. That evening was Bridget’s hen party. Then there was grocery shopping, laundry to do, puppy training, and garden tasks.

  “Thanks, Liz. Ms. Sullivan.” Ed had his face under control again. “We’re all too busy to gossip right now. Probably no one will even notice you.”

  That sounded like famous last words.

  Barker roused as we came into the living room. He stretched and scratched, and I added flea patrol to my list of tasks.

  Ed stared at him. “Isn’t that—” His expression was ghastly.

  “It’s Jenifer’s puppy, yes.” Barker came prancing over, his tail waving. I moved quickly to open the door. “He’s still being trained.”

  “Why do you—” Ed broke off, backing away.

  Barker started growling. He certainly didn’t like men— first Curtis, then Drake, now Ed.

  “Clarice didn’t want him—at least for now. Don’t you like dogs?”

  “I like them,” Ed said, breathing deeply. “But I’m allergic to them. They sense that, don’t they?”

  I picked Barker up and shook him by the scruff. “Stop it.” He stopped, but he didn’t put down the fur on the back of his neck.

  “Well, I’ll see you at the office later.” Ed was out the door. “Tell your niece I enjoyed meeting her.”

  “Okay.” I held Barker until Ed was out of sight at the end of the drive.

  Amy came into the living room, toweling her hair. She wore a torn T-shirt and leggings.

  “Your friend didn’t stay long.” She sat cross-legged on the couch.

  “He’s not my friend. He’s my employer.”

  Amy looked roguish. “If you say so, Aunt Liz.” Barker ran over to her, wriggling and licking until she picked him up. “Yes,” she said, snuggling her face into his soft fur, “we had a fun time at the beach, didn’t we, boy?” She gave him a squeeze, and he settled down on the couch next to her, sighing the deeply satisfied sigh of a dog on a piece of forbidden furniture.

  “He was such a sweetie, Aunt Liz.” Amy stroked the silky fur of Barker’s ears. “You should have seen him biting the waves, and running into them after the stick—what a smart boy!” Barker put his head on her lap, raising his eyes to her face adoringly.

  “I’m glad you both had fun.” I headed for my bedroom. “But I don’t want him on the furniture, Amy.”

  “I know.” She put him on the floor and made him sit. “No, boy. You can’t be up here. I’ll sit with you.” She slid down to the floor, combing her hair with a kind of übercomb that had the most immense teeth I’d ever seen.

  Her voice filtered through the door of my bedroom, filling me in on her morning. “The ocean is, like, incredible. I had no idea. It goes forever, you know? I was, like, totally overwhelmed by it, and it went up and down, and pretty soon I thought I was going to hurl, but Elise and Kimberly and me climbed up a cliff and from up there it was okay, and the guys were so radical surfing, I mean, they were like sea gods or something, only Eric kept wiping out and once the surfboard hit him on the head and Randy had to kind of drag him in, but he was okay. They said they only go with buddies because of that. It was awesome, and I’m going to learn how, Aunt Liz, only maybe I’ll start with a boogie board or something, or maybe just bodysurf, Eric said …”

  I stopped listening. Her voice was soothing, somehow, like incomprehensible radio waves from a distant galaxy, and I had a lot on my mind, not just whether I could get the pantyhose on again without starting another run. When I came back in the living room, dressed for what passed for success in my life, Amy stopped talking.

  “I’m going back to work,” I said, taking advantage of the silence. “What are your plans for the afternoon?”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have some yogurt for lunch and hang,” Amy said after a moment.

  I fished around in my wallet and handed her my library card. “There’s a library downtown; they have Barron’s and those stock market rags as well as books.” I pulled out a five-dollar bill and tried not to look too reluctant when I gave it to her. “There’s a grocery store a few blocks from the library, on Emerson. Maybe you could get us something inexpensive for dinner.”

  She took the money, looking troubled. “Aunt Liz, five dollars—well, thanks, I’ll try, but you know that’s really nothing these days. I mean it’s like a nickel in the olden days.”

  “I know it’s a challenge, Amy.” I shouldered my tote bag. “But think of it as a game—how much food can you buy for just five dollars? Remember, we have fresh vegetables, so lentils or beans or some grain could be the protein.”

  She clutched the money. “Yeah,” she said, unconvinced.

  I strode on out in my high-tops, heading downtown to answer phones, hoping I wouldn’t be asked to answer questions.

  Chapter 13

  I could hear the phones ringing from the other side of SoftWrite’s plate glass doors. Angel got up from the desk when she saw me. “Long lunch.” Her voice was tinged with accusation.

  “You could say that.” I slid into the chair and put someone on hold. “Everything under control?”

  “No.” She didn’t sound like the soft-spoken woman I’d met before. “Everything’s horrible. Suzanne’s holed up in her office, acting really weird; Clarice was taken away in hysterics; that policeman and his partner were here for almost an hour, upsetting everyone; and Ed is just beside himself with grief and worry.”

  I sat there, listening to her tirade and wondering what it had to do with me. By the end of it, she was glaring at me as if I personally had caused it all. I would have replied, but she just took a breath and went on.

  “I don’t care about the stories. People are saying you’re some kind of bad-luck Jonah. Someone even said you were Ed’s new girlfriend, and you went and told Jenifer, and that made her commit suicide.” She was disbelieving. “As if Ed would—well …”

  “Take up with me when he
had a cute young thing like Jenifer around?” I touched Angel’s shoulder. “I’m just a bystander, really. Just trying to make a living.”

  Angel sniffed. “What I care about is that if you say you’re going to do a job, you show up to do it. The phones are driving us crazy. The reporters are getting past this desk and hassling people. Do you know, one of the programmers said he’d been offered money to spy around?” She stopped, breathing heavily, glaring even more because I was giggling. True, it was nervous laughter.

  “I believe you. I was offered money, too.”

  “Well!” Angel calmed down a little. “Luckily you don’t know anything. But this has to stop. Can you screen the calls, Liz?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Thanks.” The lines of stress smoothed away from her forehead. “I’m sorry to yell at you,” she said gruffly. “Honestly, I don’t know what this place is coming to. It was better when we were just starting—just Ed and Suzanne and Tess and Clarice and me. There was a spirit then—we had such confidence.” She walked away, shaking her head.

  I fielded some more calls, wondering how I was supposed to screen. Would anyone identify themselves on the phone as a reporter looking for corruptible employees? Most of the calls were for marketing anyway, and they must have known how to handle the situation.

  When a call came in for human resources, I did ask who was calling—Larry was just the type to enjoy the role of corporate mole. A few minutes after the call went through, Larry’s shiny dome peered around the partition.

  “So you’re back.” He sauntered into the room, smiling benevolently.

  “Finishing my day,” I said, hunting in the center desk drawer for a new pad of sticky message forms.

  “I’m surprised, after the scene Clarice made. Does Ed know?” His nose quivered like a truffle-hunting pig’s.

  I nodded, responding to the flashing light on the phone console. It was for Suzanne; the phone kept ringing while I transferred the call, and for a few minutes I was busy putting people on hold and then trying to retrieve them, a task not made easier by Larry’s hovering presence. As soon as there was a lull, he was at me again.