Death of the Office Witch

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Keegan, why did you and Mary Ann suddenly decide to cooperate on the script after all the trouble you two had been the day of the murder?”

  “We told you—”

  “Mary Ann told me she worried she could be suspected of the murder because the Tuschmans wanted part of the proceeds from Shadowscapes for assisting in her research, but what was your problem? I can’t believe it was concern for Mary Ann Leffler. You’re the one who thought I should look into things. Did the Tuschmans think you should share the wealth, too?”

  The odor of pool chemicals mixed with that sweet tang of lemon tree to fill the void left by his silence. And lemon blossoms reminded her of orange blossoms, which reminded her of the grove behind the Tuschmans’ condo complex. “Keegan, did you go to Gloria’s All Hallows’ Eve party last year?”

  The nod of his head was nearly imperceptible.

  “That’s where you met Mary Ann, isn’t it? Even before Carla got you two together on the screenplay.” Why was it everyone wanted her to find answers only as long as they didn’t have to reveal their own particular secrets? Somehow Mary Ann still seemed too down to earth to be a witch type. “Tell me about Mary Ann. She’s a stranger to me.”

  According to Keegan, Mary Ann Leffler was simply an ordinary housewife who managed to rise above herself by means of her writing. “And as forceful and cranky as she appeared, she was a very insecure lady. Got herself tied up in knots because she couldn’t think of the word on the tip of her tongue and got furious I could come up with it in a snap. She had mood swings, hot flashes, anxiety attacks—all the things my mother took hormones to avoid. I heard Lady Macbeth talking on the phone a couple of times, and she was driving her family nuts with all this, too.”

  Edwina took hormones and drove Charlie nuts anyway. “Why wouldn’t Mary Ann take hormones?”

  “Said they cause breast cancer. She might have eaten the wart off a newt or something, but she didn’t trust doctors.”

  Keegan’s mother had died of breast cancer some years ago. He and Charlie watched the people across the pool for a while.

  “And she was really unsure of herself,” he continued finally. “You’d think anybody that old who’d published a novel would have a better idea of who she was. All that putting down of L.A. and the industry she was doing at the Polo Lounge was mostly pretense and bluster. Truth is, she was scared to death of L.A., especially since the riots. She’d often pay cab fare rather than drive the rental car Goliath provided.”

  “You seem to think she’s more dead than missing.”

  “She sure isn’t out running around town alone.”

  “So where’s the script?”

  “Out in the car.”

  They walked around the side of the house the way Shelly had come, instead of through it, and to a gate in the hedge. A plainclothes guard nodded, noting their leaving. It seemed like ten percent of the population guarded fifty percent of it from the other forty. And it had been so before the riots. Mary Ann wasn’t the only one afraid in the city. Charlie stopped her client before they reached the ground lights that flooded the drive. “Tell me about that party.”

  Keegan Monroe had been invited to the All Hallows’ Eve party because he subscribed to Mary Ann’s newsletter. “I get all kinds of weird stuff, Charlie, everything’s grist for a writer. I mean, who’s going to throw a better Halloween party than a bunch of witches? I even took Lou, she loved it.” Lou was Louwan, Keegan’s last live-in.

  Nobody bobbed for apples, but there was a ritual circle-dancing around a bonfire and drinking from a chalice. The guests wore white, but no virgins were sacrificed that he saw. Just a dead cat.

  21

  “Dead cat. A black cat? Was it already dead, or did.… They didn’t kill a cat in front of Dorian’s kids?”

  “Actually, it was black and white. I don’t remember how it got dead. Mary Ann was carrying it around doing some kind of mumbo jumbo stuff. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, Charlie. In fact, in the light of the next day, it just sounded silly. But that night it was easy to get caught up in it. Your Maurice Lavender was really coming on to Mary Ann.”

  “Maurice comes on to everybody. Keegan, was Roger or someone taking pictures of the party guests getting too caught up in it and maybe later charging money for the negatives?”

  “Nothing like that, Charlie. I mean, not exactly.”

  “You sound haunted. What is it you’re not telling me?” When he just stood there staring into the darkness she started on a new tack. “Elaine Black says she and her family had a great time at that party. Did you, Keegan?”

  “There’s so much of that night I don’t remember. Lou didn’t, either, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She sort of shrugged it off. You’re right, though, it’s been haunting me. In my college days, I’d get drunk and lose a few hours and it didn’t bother me, and when I broke my leg last year and they put me under, I lost time. I remember enjoying myself in the orange grove. But I’ll bet there’re three hours of that party I can’t account for.”

  “Maybe you drank too much that night, too, maybe they threw something into the bonfire that made funny smoke, maybe there was a substance added to the communal drink in the chalice. Even something in the food. You’d think whoever owns that grove would start patrolling it with Dobermans.”

  “My guess is there was some good stuff hidden in nearly everything to make people happy to party on. And it’s not like the loss of time kept me up nights. It just niggled back there somewhere and wouldn’t go away, and whenever I’d call you and get Gloria first, it would come up front and start full-fledged nagging. But when I started working with Mary Ann, it became more like heavy bugging. And I kept asking her what happened that night, and she kept blowing it off. ‘Don’t worry about it, junior. You got bigger problems. Way you write, for starters.’ You’ve met her, Charlie, you can imagine what she was like to work with. But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Then you think Mary Ann’s not only dead but murdered?”

  “Don’t you?”

  They were protected from the wind here by an extension of the thick hedge, which literally towered over them. But a chill still fingered Charlie’s exposed back. Not because of Keegan’s description of a silly All Hallows’ party—probably tame by southern California standards. No, what she found chilling was how accurately he mimicked Mary Ann Leffler, almost summoning her, conjuring her up. Charlie, too, thought the author must be dead because it was taking her so long to surface. Poor choice of words.

  I am sorry, Mary Ann, and I know this sounds crass, because it is, but could you manage to not be in your car underwater? Anything but that.

  Charlie!

  Well, if she’s dead anyway …

  “Keegan, get me that screenplay, so I can get you some nice money, okay?”

  Charlie convinced Ed to let her drive his Porsche home. He was feeling no pain, and she was. She also convinced him to let her stop by the office on Wilshire, not that far off the route, to drop off the Shadowscapes script, which, if accepted, could help pay her mortgage for a while and set Keegan up for another live-in and some novel-writing time, too.

  She whirled the Porsche into one of the banker’s private spaces. “Look, I’ll just run this in. You wait here. It won’t take a—”

  “No way. I understand your need to impress me with the importance of your work … career … importance. And I want to give you this chance.”

  “Huh?”

  He got out his side and she got out hers. “It’s important for women to feel important. And I understand that.”

  “I’m just trying to make a living, Ed. You don’t have to be condescending.”

  “And men insist upon trivializing what women do. No matter what it is. My ex-wife pointed that out to me. Fucking endlessly. And besides, you have stomach cancer, remember?”

  “You guys be quiet in there?” a homeless man yelled from the other side of the concrete end wall. “I’m trying to get some sleep. Jeesh.”

  �
��Sorry,” Ed yelled back and accompanied Charlie to the security door inside the parking area. She had a key card for this, too, and slid it into the slot lock on the door.

  But this was, after all, a bank building, and a guard at a security desk just inside had them sign in and leave their driver’s licenses with him to be returned when they signed out.

  “Your boss told me he’d hired you to do some detective work on the side because of the murder of your receptionist,” Ed said in the elevator on the way to the fifth floor. “You must be a very talented young woman.” He put his hands out in front of him, palms outwards and cocked his head to one side. “Now I’m not being condescending, honest.”

  “And he told me twenty percent of the money behind Legionnaires’ Disease was Esterhazie Cement.”

  “Concrete, Esterhazie Concrete. And more like five percent. I’ll never do that again. It was a real bomb.”

  Secretly glad for his company in the empty, echoing suite of offices, Charlie locked the Shadowscapes script in her desk drawer. Ed insisted on seeing the murder scene. “Well okay, but it’ll have to be fast. I have to work tomorrow.”

  He was a good listener, and Charlie found herself describing that part of the last nine days of her life that had been usurped by murder. He stopped the condescension and the even less appealing attempts to joke about it. He wasn’t involved with anyone else involved in the case. And anyone who could make a fortune in cement probably had to have some brains.

  At the window at the end of the VIP hall, she described standing there with Dalrymple, seeing Gloria spread out in the bush tops below. She didn’t mention someone pretending to be Gloria whispering she was in a trash can.

  One peep out of you now, Gloria Tuschman, and I’ll get an exorcist in here first thing in the morning.

  Gloria either behaved herself, or the imposter didn’t work this late. How could anyone predict that Charlie would be in after midnight? She continued her tale all the way back out of the FFUCWB of P and onto the Santa Monica Freeway and was still at it when they hit the 405.

  “Pull off at the next exit,” Ed startled her by interrupting without warning. “Get over now. Get that signal going. Christ!”

  Charlie glanced ahead, in the mirrors, to either side, and registered the background noise she’d been hearing and not listening to. “Oh boy.”

  “I’m counting on you, Charlie. This is the best Porsche I’ve ever owned. We have your lovely tush to consider and even mine. Not to mention a few dependents.” Edward Esterhazie had gone heart-attack red even in the limited light of the dash. “Don’t panic now. Easy does it.”

  Charlie sat up, tuned him out as he totally lost it, and tuned out the roaring that was upon them as well. She fought for the little car’s access to ever closer right lanes, praying the metal monsters surrounding them had even an inkling of their existence and gave a damn if they did. She couldn’t make the first exit, but she got them positioned for the next—her body, her face, her beautiful shimmery green dress, the roots of her hair, her hands, and probably her earrings drenched in nervous sweat.

  But she got them off the 405 at two in the morning without a ding. “I declare you sober enough to be the designated driver. I hope you know a back way home.” They both staggered a little as they exited the Porsche, met in the headlights, and took each other’s seats.

  They had unwittingly hit a semi rush hour and survived.

  “You were wonderful, Charlie. You must think I’m a wuss.” They sat there, seat belts buckled, engine growling, going nowhere—the day’s groceries, booze, bikinis, building supplies, toxic wastes, and whatever racing by at the speed of light on the overpass next to them. “I’ve been a good boy all night. But I have to have a cigarette.”

  “It’s your car. I’m sorry, Ed, I got so involved in telling you my story I didn’t notice what was happening around me.”

  They wended their way back to Long Beach by side roads that only a native of longer than two years would have known about.

  Charlie had time to finish her story. And when they pulled up in front of her condo, she asked, “Well? You’re the first person I’ve really put this all together for. Who do you think murdered Gloria Tuschman?”

  “If I say it’s elementary, my dear Watson—”

  “I’ll slug you.”

  “At the risk of sounding condescending, and remember you did ask me, and on the basis of the information you have, which is clearly incomplete, I think it is tentatively obvious that two people were involved in the receptionist’s murder, and that one of them was Mary Ann Leffler.”

  “Mary Ann—how do you figure that?”

  “She had one motive we know of, the Tuschmans’ demanding a share of her profits—”

  “That strikes me as pretty weak.”

  “Me too, but murder has been committed for less reason. I think an even better one could surface with a full investigation of her, relationship with Gloria and hubby. But the main giveaway is that Mary Ann is now presumably dead.”

  “Why would that make her a murderer?”

  “Because she could identify her accomplice. And her accomplice has silenced her forever.” He got out of the car and opened her door for her, walked her to the security gate, and then walked inside with her when it opened.

  “Ed, I’d invite you in, but it’s three in the morning.”

  “I need to retrieve my kid, remember?”

  Charlie had forgotten, but even her embarrassed giggle was tired by now. “I’m not tracking. Murder’s not my thing.”

  “Do you think it was wise to leave them alone together? This long, this late?”

  “They couldn’t know when we’d be coming home. And frankly, I was using Doug to ward off Jesus.”

  A road warrior on the screaming television lobbed something over a high fence into a lot crowded with eighteen wheelers like those that nearly ate the Porsche. Charlie found the remote just as he grabbed his Uzi and the waist of the requisite female in jeopardy, and off they ran, he in sensible Army boots and she in heels more lethal than Charlie’s.

  When the set snapped off, she and Ed were left in booming silence and darkness complete but for the warm glow of radiation fading from the TV screen and the angry blinking of the red light on the answering machine. Charlie switched on the lamp next to it and they surveyed the scene of destruction in weary silence.

  Papers, calculators, school books, pizza boxes, and paper Coke cups littered nearly every surface not covered by a motionless body. Lori huddled inelegantly in the easy chair, spit glistening on the rubber bands connecting her braces and holding her lower jaw on. Libby was curled in a fetal position on the couch. Doug sprawled on the floor with Tuxedo splayed on his stomach.

  “Look dead, don’t they?” Ed said and Tuxedo stretched and unrolled a long tongue in a wide yawn. “Seems to be the regular gang, though. Don’t see any sign of loaves or fishes or sandals.”

  “Wonder what Lori’s doing over on a school night?” Beverly Schantz was usually paranoid about that.

  Ed managed to rouse his son, find the kid’s eyeglasses, and aim him at the door. “Thanks for a most entertaining evening. I’m afraid the yacht club will be dull in comparison.”

  “Wait, who do you think helped Mary Ann kill Gloria and then killed Mary Ann?”

  “It can’t be anyone but your favorite client, Charlie. And, sadly, someone you are so obviously fond of—Keegan Monroe. I think all the witchcraft business is irrelevant except that it brought together that certain group of nuts. I’m sorry, and I hope you or the police prove me wrong. Then again, you’re asking the great brain who let himself be conned into sinking a few mil into Legionnaires’ Disease.”

  When both Esterhazies were gone, Charlie rewound the tape on the answering machine and listened to Lori’s mother plead and finally threaten in an attempt to convince someone to answer. “I know someone’s home. I drove by and could see the TV was on. I have to know if Lori’s there.”

  Tangling with supermo
m was the last thing Charlie could face right now—but she knew this particular gut-wrenching terror of the night as only another mother could and punched the number before she had time to talk herself out of it. Neither girl had moved an eyelash through it all, but the cat decided to be pissed about then and spat, taking a swipe at Charlie’s hose and tearing off on one of its own idiotic versions of the Long Beach Grand Prix. “I’m going to donate you to the witches’ association, you little—hello, Beverly, this is Charlie Greene returning your call. And yes, Lori’s here, don’t worry. I’ll see that she gets to school in the morning.”

  Predictably, Beverly had not been asleep and answered on the first ring. “How could you wait so long? I’ve been calling all night and worried sick. It’s after three in the morning.”

  “I just got home and found her here and the light blinking on the answering machine.” The kids had apparently listened but chosen not to answer.

  “Just got home? But—” something in Lori’s mother’s long-suffering sigh and longer pause suggested she was visualizing Charlie swinging at singles bars and humping truck drivers. “Poor little Libby. Poor, poor—”

  Charlie hung up and poor, poor little Libby pushed herself to a sitting position, squinting in the light of the lamp. “Mom? Lori’s run away from home. I told her you wouldn’t mind if she lives with us till she gets a job. Okay?”

  22

  Charlie stumbled into work very late the next day. Stumbled from lack of sleep. Very late because she’d been to see Dr. Williams first.

  “So, is it terminal or what?” Larry sat at the front desk instead of in his cubicle where she needed him. He handed her a sheaf of phone slips.

  “No results yet. I have to go in next week for more tests.” Of what she couldn’t imagine. The gremlins at the lab in the “medical arts” building where Dr. Williams tortured people had already taken juice and pulp from every orifice of her body and enough blood from her arm to feed a family of vampires for a week. It had been degrading, embarrassing, humiliating, uncomfortable, awful, and expensive. No wonder people had to be worried sick about their health to go to a doctor.