Death of the Office Witch

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Just because she won, she says. Knowing Irma, she wouldn’t want to risk her earnings by staying. Then again Irma knows she has more than enough will to quit when she wants to. I’m not sure it holds water, but it sure doesn’t lead to murdering Gloria.” She told him about Mary Ann Leffler. “Far as I can see, her worries are groundless. I’m amazed that Gloria and Roger would do such a thing, but it’s no motive for murder, either. I can tell by your expression that you have news that can hardly wait. Run get us some coffee first, okay?”

  “On my way, boss.”

  Charlie-hated it when he called her boss. But at the same time she kind of liked the idea of it.

  But before they could get to his news or the coffee, the phone rang again. This time it was Richard Morse. He wanted Charlie up to his house on the double. He gave a ghoulish laugh, “The phantom is arising. Grab your file, have Irma collect mine, and bring her along. Put The Kid or Tweetie on the phones.” Tweetie was Tracy Dewitt’s office name. If you walked her too fast her breathing made chirping sounds.

  Larry ended up on the front desk. Like he said, he was low man on the totem pole now that Gloria was gone. “When you have her alone in the car, ask the Vance about the famous party at Gloria’s house,” he whispered with knowing nods and winks to Charlie while Irma was still off collecting Richard Morse’s paper file on previous Alpine Tunnel negotiations.

  “I can remember getting a call like this seven years ago,” Irma said, clutching the Toyota’s armrest and pumping the rider’s phantom brake as Charlie careened through traffic heading for Bel Air. “And guess who was sitting in Mr. Morse’s living room when I arrived? Mitch Hilsten.”

  “Is he that gorgeous in real life?” Charlie had never met him, but she’d had the fantasy hots for him most of her adult life.

  “Oh ho, the silver screen does not begin to do that man justice, Charlie dear.”

  Charlie, not being the detective her assistant wanted her to be, and thinking about Mitch Hilsten the superstar, forgot all about trapping Irma into divulging guilty secrets about some party at the Tuschmans’. She couldn’t imagine Irma mingling socially with the office receptionist anyway.

  The Beverly Hills police drove black and whites, but Bel Air had its own private security force driving white cars. The fences and privacy hedges bordering plebeian thoroughfares here were as forbidding as the chain link fences around maximum security prisons. The lawns fronting the winding inner streets were as precisely kept as the homes behind them. The only people on the sidewalks were Hispanic gardeners and Oriental cleaning ladies.

  “I wonder how much of this we pay for by not demanding a raise,” Charlie quipped to the executive secretary as the Toyota swept between stone pillars to join the lineup of far more impressive cars on the paved semicircle of drive. She received an icy stare for an answer.

  There was no Mitch Hilsten at this meeting. But there was fresh-ground coffee, fresh chilled fruit, hot breakfast rolls with real butter, and mimosas to celebrate. And no, it wasn’t what a lawyer or a real estate agent would call a closing, but in fantasyland it was a lot closer to a done deal than could be said to happen ninety percent of the time.

  9

  Unlike Ed Esterhazie last night, Richard Morse was not dressed for the occasion. He lounged at poolside in shorts and sports shirt, tanned and gregarious, passing fresh strawberries and hunks of pineapple and melon to the producer and the money men and Edna Thurlow’s daughter and grandson and their lawyer, all of whom were dressed for success. So were Charlie and the Vance, the only females present except for the daughter and the Vietnamese maid with the coffee and the mimosas.

  Talk about a coup—to have the head of an agency hosting this at all and at his home to boot. Charlie scanned the holes in the prickly hedge guarding the huge pool and tiny lawn for the legs of a reporter from Variety or the Reporter. She gazed at her boss with new respect.

  And he noticed. An eyelid notched three-fourths of the way down one protuberant eyeball and stayed there as if stuck. He was the only nonanimated creature she had ever seen who could do that. It said, “Stick with me, kid.”

  “Are you his wife or … something?” Edna Thurlow’s daughter, Tessie, asked Charlie behind her hand. Tessie’s body had grown middle-aged lumpy, but her complexion made you want to reach out and stroke her cheek.

  “I work at his agency. I was your mother’s agent in New York when we sold Alpine Tunnel.” And Charlie could hear Edna’s soft Louisiana blurring in her daughter’s speech. Why an elderly lady from Louisiana would choose to write a first novel about narrow-gauge railroads in the Colorado Rockies had always been a mystery to Charlie. “Why did the family change its mind about this?”

  “My brother passed on. He was the one who never liked the way the story was going to be changed. My sister and I have too many children needing college. Mama would understand. She’d always wished Flora and I had gone to college. It was one of her greatest disappointments when we married right out of high school. Now we’re both divorced with nine children between us. Earl was an attorney and only had one son, so he could afford to be fussy.”

  Charlie would never understand how a mother survived more than one teenager. Tessie’s son, Sonny, looked a little older than Libby—and essentially wholesome, responsible, healthy, mature, boring, safe. Charlie wondered what it would take to get him to Long Beach for beanie wienies on the patio.

  “What do you think, Charlie?” Richard Morse asked, and literally everyone turned to her expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Do you think Keegan Monroe will be finished with his current project in time to be considered a possibility to script this project?”

  “Oh absolutely,” Charlie lied happily, “no doubt about it.”

  While Richard went on to sing Keegan’s praises and list his credits, she paused to run close-ups of Keegan’s recent moods through her mental camera lens. Something was bugging him. Something besides Mary Ann Leffler and her adverbs. Something neither he nor Charlie needed right now.

  And then without warning the conversation turned to the recent murder at the agency. Apparently, Congdon and Morse had made both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, and for all the wrong reasons, and the witchcraft angle was being played to the hilt.

  “Don’t worry,” Richard assured Murray Goldstein, from Ursa Major. “It had nothing to do with business or the agency. It was a fluke. And Beverly Hills’ finest are hot on the scent, and besides, we have our own in-house detective. Matter of days, maybe hours, and poor Gloria’s murderer will be named and we can all forget about it.”

  Charlie thought those last a poor choice of words and tried to smile reassurance at Tessie and Sonny.

  “Yeah, Charlie here solved a murder case up in Oregon just last June. She’s got a sixth sense about these things. She’ll probably finger the murderer before the cops, huh, Charlie?”

  “Finger the murderer?” Charlie yelled at her boss when all but she and the Vance and the maid had left. “What was that all about? I was the prime suspect in that case, not a detective.”

  “Charlie, baby, relax. You realize how close this is to coming together? A little exaggeration at a time like this is not going to queer the deal. And you are the only one in the agency who’s ever been near a murder investigation, let alone a part of one.” His head nodded in accelerated motion, and his knee kept time. “Wouldn’t hurt if you’d help out a little, you know. Not like the rest of us never did anything for you.”

  “Richard, Lieutenant Dalrymple and the men with him are professionals. And if you want a private investigator, you can hire one. I’m a literary agent.”

  “You already work for me, why hire somebody? Just promise you’ll keep your eyes and ears open and think about our problem a little. Never know what it’ll turn up. You got a good head. You just need to focus it better. You let it scatter like buckshot.”

  “Only if you’ll tell me how you got this morning put together so fast. Got Edna’s daughter out fro
m Louisiana and everybody else who was here? It’s only been two days.”

  “Only been two days. Your time, it’s only been two days. By the time McMullins found out about it the whole thing was already in the works out here. Murray and Ursa Major were lighting fires in three different places before your little editor friend in New York knew there was smoke in the air. And the daughter was already out here.” He was forever pointing out to her how uninfluential were her contacts in New York. “Listen, I’ll take Irma back to the office with me. You go scare up Keegan, see what you can get burning under him. Get him excited, Charlie, take him out to lunch, whatever—but if you get him worked up over this project—not that it’s an offer yet—maybe he’ll get off his can and wrap the script with the Leffler woman. He got anything else besides his novel lined up? This thing’s made for him. And you got anything better to do?”

  “No, but I promised Tina I’d go with her when she pitches CBS Monday. For moral support. I can’t let her down.” And before that a weekend with not enough hours. When am I going to read, damn it? And who in the hell has time for murder?

  But Charlie jumped back in the Toyota and headed for Coldwater Canyon sucking antacid tablets. And practicing her own pitch to Keegan. “You’re getting a belly full of working with book authors, right? Alpine Tunnel will be all yours. The author’s dead. And there’ll be lots of nice money. This is going to be big, I just know it.”

  But when she pulled off onto the secluded drive, she found Lieutenant David Dalrymple had beaten her there.

  Coldwater Canyon had growths of huge pine—so different from those she’d grown up with in Colorado—the better to secrete pricey little houses. Charlie wondered if she’d ever be able to afford such a neighborhood. She had two writers who could. It kept them busy working for her instead of on their novels, though. Keegan’s house was larger than Charlie’s, but it was small for Coldwater Canyon. Built into the hillside, it was made of natural rock and glass. Instead of redwood decks it had rock terraces connected by stairs along one end.

  Lieutenant David Dalrymple leaned over the metal-pole railing that reminded her suddenly of the ones in the back hall at the agency. He stood on the middle terrace and watched Charlie approach. The lower level was given up solely to writing. Keegan had walls removed to make it one large den with a storage room at the back. The middle level held kitchen and living room. The upper level was for sleeping. Keegan moved a girlfriend in every now and then, but she’d inevitably begin to make demands on his writing time and he’d move her out again. He was such a lamb, women tended to mistake his innate politeness and good nature for wimpdom. Even though he considered himself a hack, and even though he grew impatient with the treachery in show business, he was devoted to his craft.

  “Well, well Miss Greene, how interesting to find you here. Doing a little sleuthing after all?” The sun lit up the exposed front part of his scalp through holes in the tree branches. He still looked nothing like a cop, and the ones on television certainly didn’t talk like this guy.

  “Just visiting a client on business matters, Lieutenant. What brings you here?”

  “Murder, Miss Greene, as always.”

  There was something familiar about his speech pattern, what was it? “I don’t see the point. Keegan hardly knew Gloria.”

  “But, if I’m not mistaken, he worked closely with Mary Ann Leffler.”

  “Mary Ann’s been murdered?”

  “Mary Ann is missing. And it doesn’t look promising.”

  “Oh shit.” Charlie grabbed a rail and swung around to sit on a stone stair.

  “Your client’s words exactly.” Dalrymple sat down beside her and took out his little notebook. “Now I would like you to describe to me completely your last meeting with Mary Ann Leffler. Leave out nothing, even if it seems unimportant.”

  When she’d described the conversation she’d had the day before with the novelist and Keegan on their stroll off Wilshire, he stopped writing long before she’d finished. He’d already gotten this from Keegan.

  “Witchcraft again.” He raised his head to peer sternly at her down through the magnifying arches at the bottom of his glasses. “Why didn’t you come to me right away with this information?”

  “There is so much going on at the agency right now, other than murder, and I just didn’t think it was all that important.”

  “That’s for me to decide.”

  “Oh come on, Lieutenant, you know people aren’t going to come to you with every little thought, suspicion or half-formed uneasiness that crosses their minds. You’re getting ready to charge one of us with murder. You made it pretty clear you don’t think it’s an outside job.”

  “Sheriff Bennett said you’d put it something like that.”

  “I suppose he also told you I’d just run out and do my own detecting. That’s why you keep setting me up for it.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, Mr. Morse at your agency informed me that if I didn’t hurry and ‘wrap’ the investigation so that business can get on as usual, he’d sic his own in-house detective onto the case and clear it up in hours. I realize this is show biz, Miss Greene, but does everybody in that place live in a fantasy world?”

  His bewilderment was obviously genuine this time, and Charlie bumped his shoulder gently with her head and laughed. “We probably all seem nuts, huh? The frenetic energy, bursts of excitement, incredible optimism, improbable dreams?”

  He peered down at her from the tops of his lenses now. His eyes were still huge. “That was very well put. Right on the money, as they say. Perhaps you should consider writing instead of agenting other writers’ work.”

  “Nah, that came straight from a manuscript somewhere. As I remember it had to do with football.” But she suddenly had a take on what was so familiar and yet incongruous about his speech. She’d bet the mortgage he watched mysteries from England on PBS.

  “If you come across anything else, I would appreciate your passing it on promptly.”

  Charlie smiled and promised him nothing.

  He rose to leave and turned back several steps down. “And, Miss Greene, the insider’s view, the mind unclogged by routine and past failures, the fresh approach, is often quite helpful. Obviously there’s much I can’t divulge, but if I can help you in any way I’ll try.”

  Jesus, he must read the stuff too. Charlie waved as he turned his unmarked car in the driveway, stood, brushed off her skirt, and went to find her writer—realizing she hadn’t even asked the details of Mary Ann’s disappearance. Keegan would know.

  Charlie and Keegan sat on the balcony of the Pane Caldo Bistro on Beverly Boulevard. She picked at the calamari (chewy squid) bits littering her pasta al dente (tough spaghetti). She’d already eaten at Richard’s but wanted Keegan Monroe well fed and happy to hear her pitch. Instead, he wanted to talk about nothing but fucking murder.

  “Thought you gave up swearing because you were a mommy,” he said, and she realized she’d let her thoughts trespass on her tongue again. She had to quit this. Show business was largely subterfuge, and one should never lose control of one’s pitch.

  “Thought you gave up smoking,” Charlie countered and nodded at the ashtray, where he’d left a smoldering butt when his cioppino was set before him.

  “What do you expect? The guy practically accused me outright of killing Gloria and Lady Macbeth and then stuffing Lady Macbeth someplace he couldn’t find her.” He broke open a dripping clam shell and left bloody tomato-goo drops on the tablecloth as if in emphasis. “You got to do something here. Ask around, you know, like you did in Oregon? My dad said you worked it all out before he did, and he knew everyone involved in that murder.”

  First Larry, then Richard, then Lieutenant Dalrymple for God’s sake, and now Keegan. Keegan was a very intelligent person. “It’s got to be television,” Charlie pointed her fork rudely. “Everybody watches too much television, and they’re starting to believe that stuff. Keegan, you’re a writer. You make it up. You know better. You know it’
s make-believe. Don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer her, just dunked a piece of garlic bread in the cioppino broth, glanced around to see who might notice he was lunching with his agent.

  “I mean, having nonprofessional people solve crimes is good for entertainment purposes, but we’re all supposed to know better. It just makes you feel good to think you maybe could. But, Keegan, I didn’t solve anything or figure anything out in Oregon among your dad’s friends. I stumbled, no, bumbled into a nest of amateur killers who any cop will tell you are very dangerous, and damned near got myself killed.”

  And I’m not real anxious to jump into that little sauté pan again, let me tell you.

  But Monday you’re going into CBS with Tina Horton to support her pitch of a television series based on just such a premise—that a little old lady veterinarian in Sun City, Arizona can solve crimes the Phoenix police can’t figure out because she has raised eight children and treated thousands of animals and therefore knows all there is to know about the human condition. You are a fake, Charlie Greene.

  10

  It was a hot day for April, and heat waves shimmered off the Writers Guild building down the street. Traffic noise and exhaust stink swam up from Beverly Boulevard to the Pane Caldo’s balcony. Charlie would have preferred to eat inside where they didn’t have to yell over the Boulevard.

  “Hey Charlie,” a man leaned from a table across the aisle, “what’s Congdon and Morse up to now, knocking off secretaries just to get mentioned in Variety?” He wrinkled his nose like a rabbit. “Just kidding.”

  Charlie couldn’t place him, but his red plaid sport coat and brown pants screamed agent. She gave him a smile filled with a lack of humor and ignored him. “Look,” she said to Keegan, “Mary Ann Leffler probably got her snoot full of the show biz set, and to make a point, lit out for someplace to cool off without telling anybody. She’ll turn up.”

  Mary Ann had been staying at a beach house in Malibu owned by one of the muckety-mucks at Goliath Productions. After she and Keegan talked to Charlie yesterday afternoon, the two writers parted, making a date to meet at the beach house that evening. Keegan was to bring Chinese carry-out, and they planned to stay up all night wrestling the Shadowscapes script into line. (It was a fact that many of Charlie’s writers worked best at night.) But when Keegan and the carry-out arrived, he couldn’t get Mary Ann to answer his knock. She’d always kept the doors and windows locked tight. He waited around until one of the producer’s yes-men showed up to see how they were doing. He and Keegan broke in. No sign of Mary Ann. They warmed up the carry-out and ate it, got on the phone, and started calling. Mary Ann and her rental car were missing, but her things were still at the beachfront house.