How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  They were noticeably younger and considerably more tattooed than the rest of the lunch crowd, and several looked as though they’d probably arrived for work on their skateboards.

  “They’re the customer service reps,” she explained. “At least the ones we still have here. Most of that work is outsourced now.”

  “So they’re the group you manage?”

  “I used to manage just them, but since Clara…” She didn’t seem to know how to end that sentence. “Anyway. Now I have the knowledgebase writers too, and I oversee the outsourced firms.”

  “That sounds like a lot.”

  Her shoulders had tensed. She tried to shrug but it came off more like a twitch. “I can handle it.”

  Right. Then why did she look like she was playing Ophelia on her way to the river?

  “Why don’t you sit with them anymore?” The gang at her former table looked like they were having a good time.

  “MoM told me it wouldn’t be appropriate, because of my new position. She says you have to draw the line firmly when you get to a certain level. She’s been really helpful in all of this.”

  Right. I remembered her helpful slap at Clara’s funeral.

  I waved my chopsticks in the direction of the execs. “So are you supposed to sit with them now?”

  She looked toward them. “Oh, sometimes…” Her voice trailed off and she toyed with her broccoli, keeping her eyes on her plate. “They don’t like me.”

  “Oh, um…” This was not exactly the way I’d seen our conversation going. Time to change the subject if I wanted to accomplish anything other than making her cry.

  I looked around the room for a distraction. Flank was sitting two tables over from us, devouring cheeseburgers and keeping an eye on things. I didn’t think drawing Krissy’s attention to him would have quite the calming effect I was going for. I scanned the crowd behind him.

  “Who are they?” I gestured to a group of vampires in the far corner. At least they looked like vampires. Dyed black hair, pasty complexions, black clothes, and lots of eyeliner.

  Krissy glanced over and made a face. “The Goths. They hired one in Creative Services six months ago and the next thing you know we’ve got a whole flock of them.” She sniffed. “They think they’re so cool.”

  “What does Creative Services do here at Zakdan?” Implying that I knew exactly what they did at the many, many other companies I’d consulted with.

  “They work for Marketing. They do the artwork and design and stuff.”

  It was a wonder the Zakdan packaging didn’t look like the work of Charles Addams.

  I took a bite of spicy chicken. Krissy seemed to have given up on eating. The more time I spent with her, the more I just didn’t see her as Clara’s killer. She hardly had the demeanor of someone who’d killed to get ahead in her career. I decided to ask her a direct question.

  “Krissy, do you like your new job?”

  It turned out to be really the wrong thing to say.

  ***

  “She burst into tears right there in the cafeteria?” Brenda looked appalled. I’d found her in the conference room as soon as I’d been able to extricate myself from Krissy’s emotional breakdown.

  “It wasn’t a burst so much as a slow leak,” I explained. “She just started weeping, so I hustled her out of the lunchroom and got her to the nearest ladies room.”

  “What did she do then?”

  “You know how all the bathrooms here have a room with all the sinks, and then a separate room beyond that with all the stalls?”

  Brenda nodded.

  “She ran ahead of me and locked the door into the far room. So I talked to her through the door.”

  Actually, I’d listened to her through the door. I found out later that Flank had taken position outside the bathroom to keep anyone from disturbing us in the middle of Krissy’s confession.

  A huge sobbing confession.

  But not a confession to murder.

  “She hates the new job. She hates that Clara was right about her—”

  “She said that?” Brenda pounced on the information.

  I nodded. “Told me all about how Clara had her on a performance improvement plan, and that she knows she’s incompetent, and that she feels like a huge fraud, and that everybody knows she’s an idiot—”

  “That’s so harsh,” Brenda protested.

  “She’s just completely insecure, and in over her head, and has no idea how to get out of the mess.”

  “The poor thing! You know, I think that’s probably pretty common. Places like this thrive on the insecurity of the employees. I’ve been reading all about it.”

  I’d found Brenda seated behind a stack of business books. It looked like she’d bought every item from Mike’s suggested bibliography. And, apparently, she’d been doing her homework.

  “I mean, I thought academia was bad, but this place has really opened my eyes.” She pulled out a notepad. “There might be a paper in all of this. The effect of the corporate machine on people like that poor girl.”

  “Let’s just not forget she’s the poor girl we’ve been considering for the role of Clara’s cold-blooded killer.”

  “Do you still think so?”

  I made a face. “Not really. She may have had motivation to kill Clara, but she hasn’t been here long enough to have planted the software bug, and I really don’t think she’s the one who’s been trying to kill Jack.”

  Flank, who’d taken his usual stance in his usual back corner of the room, grunted. I took it as a sign of agreement.

  “So where does that leave us?” Brenda asked.

  With a new number one on my mental list of suspects. “Jim Stoddard.”

  She nodded. “If he’s the one who put the bug in the Zakdan code—and he knew Clara found out about it—he has a motive.”

  “Right,” I said. “Besides, I think he could have overheard Jack making plans to go to Bix from his office on the night someone tried to run us off the road.”

  Brenda scrunched her eyebrows together. “And he could have been the person we saw getting into Lalit’s car,” she admitted.

  “Not to mention that if he was in the habit of hearing what goes on in Lalit’s office, he might have heard Clara telling Lalit what she’d discovered about the bug when they had their meeting the day before she died.”

  “So we’re concentrating on Jim,” Brenda said with finality. “Okay, so—”

  We were interrupted by Simon and Eileen, bursting through the door breathless and babbling.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Have you heard?”

  “Do you know?”

  “Can you believe it?”

  “What?” I yelled.

  Eileen got a grip first. “It’s Jim Stoddard!”

  “We know!” I jumped up.

  “How did you find out? What happened? Did he confess?” Brenda joined the shouting.

  “Confess? What are you talking about?” Simon said.

  “About Jim being the killer!”

  I saw the confusion on his face and got a sinking feeling. “What are you talking about?”

  Simon and Eileen answered together.

  “Jim Stoddard is dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Please tell me he wasn’t shot by an unknown gunman last night.” Particularly if that unknown gunman might have been my husband, shooting back at whoever was trying to kill us.

  Eileen shook her head. “Car crash.”

  “After leaving the party at Edinburgh Castle,” Simon supplied.

  “Drunk,” Eileen concluded.

  “Thank God.” I sank down into a chair.

  They all stared at me.

  Perhaps I was being insensitive. “I mean…was it an accident?”

  “Car crashes involving drunk drivers usually are.” Eileen took a seat opposite me. “Why?”

  Mainly because it seemed awfully suspicious for our lead suspect to be so conveniently disposed of.

  “D
o you know what I think?” Brenda closed her book. “I think we need to call Jack.”

  And maybe our new best friend, Inspector Yahata.

  ***

  When I got home that evening, I followed the sounds of conversation and smells of garlic and basil to their source in the kitchen. Mike and Gordon were with Jack, who was stirring an immense vat of something on the stove.

  “Hi, Pumpkin. Where’s Flank?” Jack handed the spoon off to Gordon. He pulled out a high bar stool for me to take a seat at the kitchen island.

  “On front door duty. What’s going on? When did we get kitchen chairs?”

  “They’re on loan from Gordon’s restaurant,” Mike said.

  “Oh.” I turned to the chef. “So you’re still planning on opening a restaurant? You haven’t decided the Zakdan cafeteria has an irresistible charm?”

  “It isn’t the charm of the place I find irresistible,” he said. “It’s the fact that I get to observe such fascinating interactions.” He dunked a piece of sourdough bread into the pot and it came out covered in marinara sauce.

  “Like what?” Harry’s voice, booming from behind me, was enough to make me knock over a bottle of olive oil.

  “Harry.” Jack caught the bottle before it hit the floor.

  “What’s going on? What have I missed?” Harry went over to Gordon and looked in the pot. “What interactions are so fascinating?”

  “I was just telling these two—” The cook offered the bread to Harry and got out of his way. “—that Jim Stoddard had been having some fairly intense conversations over lunch this week.”

  “Really? With who?”

  “Krissy on Monday, and whatever he was saying to her, she looked on the verge of tears by the time they left. Then Troy on Tuesday. They almost had a shouting match, but from what I could tell it was about how Troy was marketing their latest new product.”

  “Hang on,” I stopped him. “Monday and Tuesday? We didn’t even start the undercover thing until Wednesday.”

  Gordon looked over to Jack.

  “You didn’t start until Wednesday.”

  Right. So much for my husband’s policy of telling me everything.

  I turned my attention back to Gordon. “So, Wednesday?”

  “Jim had lunch with Bob Adams on Wednesday. They both looked extremely agitated over something, Bob got increasingly upset throughout the conversation, but I didn’t overhear what it was all about.” He looked disappointed with himself.

  “And yesterday?”

  “That MoM woman. She did most of the talking.”

  I was about to ask a question when I heard Eileen calling from the front of the house. “Charley? Jack?”

  “We’re in the kitchen!” Harry bellowed.

  Anthony came tearing through the door seconds later. “Hi, Jack. Can I go play on your computer?”

  Eileen followed him in, Brenda close behind.

  “Anthony, what do you do when you enter a room?” Eileen asked in her I’m-the-mother voice.

  The boy rolled his eyes and turned to me. “Hi, Aunt Charley.” Then he looked at the others. “Hi…everyone.”

  “I’ve got the pirate game all set up for you,” Jack told him. “See if you can make it to Level Nine this time.”

  “Thanks, Jack!” He bounced once on the balls of his feet, then dashed out.

  Eileen pulled up a stool next to mine. “Is that wine? What are we talking about? Have we heard anything more about Jim’s accident?”

  Brenda had joined Harry and Gordon at the stove. “Do you use pine nuts in your meatballs?”

  Gordon nodded. “They’re Jack’s, and I think he goes a little heavy on the garlic, but—”

  “Hello, darlings.” Simon popped his head in the door. “Good heavens.” he took in the vat of meatballs and the gathered troops. “Does this mean we’re going to the mattresses?”

  He may have seen The Godfather one too many times.

  ***

  Eventually we got back to the point of the discussion. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t have any more interruptions, because I was pretty sure everyone I’d ever met in my entire life was already in my kitchen.

  Except Inspector Yahata.

  “I spoke to Yahata today after you called,” Jack told us. “According to the police, Jim Stoddard left the bar alone at around 12:45 last night.” He looked at Simon. “Does that sound right?”

  Simon brightened. “Did you see my statement? The police questioned me along with everyone else from Zakdan who’d been at the party last night. I must say, my particular officer was something of a disappointment. I mean—”

  “Simon,” Eileen interrupted him. “When did Jim leave the party?”

  “Oh. Right. That.” He beamed. “About quarter to one.”

  “And he’d been drinking heavily,” Jack went on.

  “Like a fish,” Simon agreed. “But he wasn’t sloppy. It wasn’t to the point where anyone tried to take his keys away.”

  “Maybe they should have,” Brenda said.

  “So he wasn’t stumbling drunk, but thinking about it now, would you say he’d had too much to drive?” Mike asked.

  “Well, yes,” Simon responded. “As the chap is now dead, I’d say perhaps he’d had a drop too much.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Okay, so according to the police, he’d gotten in his car, which apparently he’d parked a few blocks away on the other side of Van Ness—”

  “Hold on,” Simon interrupted. “Wouldn’t that be uphill from the bar?”

  “Yes.” Jack looked at him closely. “Why?”

  Simon concentrated. “I could have sworn that as I got to the party I saw him coming from downhill.”

  “Did you mention that to the police?”

  Simon swallowed. “Nobody asked me about the early part of the evening. They all just wanted to know what happened when he left.”

  “What did happen, Jack?” I asked. “How did he die?”

  “He was in the intersection of Van Ness and O’Farrell when he was hit broadside by a truck that was carrying a load of new cars. The driver said he didn’t see Jim’s black BMW in the dark and the fog until it was too late.”

  “How is the truck driver?” Brenda asked.

  “A broken leg and a bruise from his seatbelt, but he’ll be fine,” Jack said.

  “What direction was Jim’s car facing?” I asked. “Uphill or downhill?”

  “Downhill. So if Simon really did see him coming to the party from the opposite direction, we have to ask how he got there.”

  “O’Farrell is a one-way street,” Eileen said. “So either Jim was going against traffic or he’d come from uphill.”

  We all thought it over for a minute.

  “Could it have been suicide?” I asked.

  “You mean, overcome with remorse for having murdered Clara Chen and Lalit Kumar, the killer gets drunk and waits to be run over?” Simon shook his head. “I don’t think so. He certainly didn’t seem like someone about to top himself at the party.”

  “But,” Jack said, “there are some things that don’t check out about the accident scenario.”

  “Spill it, Jack.” Harry had left his station at the stove and joined us at the kitchen island. He reached for the wine bottle. “What’s suspicious?”

  “Jim’s lights weren’t on,” Jack told us. “And the driver of the truck swears that Jim was just stopped in the middle of the road.”

  “Which, again, makes it sound like it could have been suicide,” Brenda offered. Then her eyes widened, and I could see she’d had the same thought I had.

  “Or murder.”

  “Simon,” Jack asked, “who else was at the party?”

  Simon blinked a lot and did his best to recollect everything, while Mike popped open a laptop I hadn’t noticed before and took notes. When they’d finished, we had a chart of our main suspects’ activities.

  Looked miserable for most of the time she was there. Spoke to unidentified engineers and MoM. Left alone so
on after Jim made a lewd suggestion that several people overheard.MoM Spent time with Krissy, Jim, Troy, and Bob. Didn’t drink much.Came from another party and left for another party. Brought most of Creative Services staff with him, but didn’t take them when he left. Spoke with MoM. Followed Krissy out?

  MoM and Bob had both gotten to the party before Simon had arrived. He’d gotten to the pub at the same time as Jim.

  “And you didn’t catch the names of any of the engineers who were there?” Jack asked.

  Simon looked uncomfortable. “There were rather a lot of them. And they were all sort of talking amongst themselves, so…no.”

  “Did any of them seem hostile to Jim?” Eileen asked.

  Simon thought about it. “They all just seemed happy he was buying the drinks.”

  “What about the Creative Services people?” I remembered them as the vampires from the lunch room. “Anything weird there?”

  “Aside from an absurd fashion sense?” Simon shook his head. “Nothing, really. Although their manager is a different story…”

  “What?” We all looked at him.

  “A body to die for, and the most amazing green eyes—what?” He noticed our collective sigh of disappointment.

  “Simon.” Eileen regarded him. “You’re telling us you were in a room with the latest victim of Zakdan’s maniacal killer—as well as every suspect we have in the case—for the entire evening, and you spent your time flirting?”

  “Oh.” Simon looked a little trapped. “Ah, well, you see…”

  They all started talking at once again, and I saw Jack watching me from across the kitchen. He said something quietly to Gordon and slipped out of the room. I followed him to the hallway, and from there into the dining room. He shut the door behind us.

  Since I didn’t have any chairs in there yet, I had no choice but to lean against my husband in the moonlit room. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said. “Yahata thinks the police are going to call this an accident too, and Morgan Stokes is going a little nuts over that.”

  “When did you talk to Morgan?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Why wasn’t he at the party?”