How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  “That’s because you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  I yelped, Brenda screamed a little, and Eileen slammed the book shut.

  MoM stood at the door.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Act casual,” Simon whispered. “She can’t have seen what we’re doing.”

  It was worth a shot.

  “Hi,” I said too brightly. “We were just packing up. Are you going to Jim’s memorial service?”

  “That would be a little hypocritical.” She closed the glass door behind her and leaned back against it, putting her hands in the pockets of her raincoat.

  “Oh, really?” Brenda’s tone was too bright as well. We were overacting.

  “Were you on your way out?” Eileen asked.

  “Yes, but I need my book first.”

  We assumed various looks of blank incomprehension.

  “Book?” Simon enquired politely.

  “The one somebody just took from the ladies room. Probably you.” She looked at Eileen.

  Why probably Eileen? Why wouldn’t she think I’d done it? I mean, what did that make me?

  “Sorry?” Simon tried a slightly befuddled smile.

  She stood up straighter. “I’m not an idiot. I came around the back way and I could see my planner perfectly well behind your computers.”

  The back way. Great.

  Eileen was quietly and almost motionlessly tapping something on her laptop, and Simon, giving up the pretense, began leafing through the book. He stopped when he got to the Accomplishments tab.

  “Good lord.”

  There was a pocket on the back of the divider page, and in the pocket was a plastic card. He pulled it out.

  Clara Chen’s gym card.

  ***

  It took us all a minute to remember to breathe again. Then I spoke.

  “You killed her.”

  MoM’s expression didn’t change.

  “But why?” Brenda asked. Then, angrier, “Why?”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Mom said impatiently. “It wasn’t my fault. She had an accident. I liked Clara. I’m the one who hired her. I was her mentor.”

  “So…” Simon still held the ID card. “What happened?”

  Her face twisted. “It was a bad day, all right? It was late, and I’d found out that the project I’d been working on was getting cancelled. I’d been killing myself, and for what? So they could throw everything I’d done for them away? Again?”

  Brenda spoke. “But Clara wouldn’t have been the one to cancel your—”

  “Oh, no.” MoM cut her off, her voice bitter. “She never did anything. She just floated up through the ranks, everybody’s darling, never doing anything wrong—”

  “You were jealous,” I said.

  “Don’t oversimplify,” she snapped. Then she took a deep breath and straightened her coat, pulling the belt a little tighter.

  “Look, I just ran into her in the garage that night. We’d both been working late. I’d gone jogging before it got dark, and then gone back to the office to finish some work. Clara and I hadn’t had a chance to catch up for a while, and she said she wanted to ask my advice about firing that idiot Krissy.”

  She looked at each of us. “Clara still needed me. She still turned to me when she had a problem.” It seemed important that we acknowledge this.

  “What happened then?”

  She shot me a hostile look. “After we talked about Krissy, she started telling me how happy she was. How everything was going so well for her. That she was getting married.” MoM spoke the word with distaste. “That she was being promoted.” She compressed her lips.

  “And you couldn’t stand it,” Brenda said softly.

  MoM ran a hand through her cropped gray hair. “Nonsense. I was delighted for her. I told her if I hadn’t still been in my running sweats I would have taken her out for a drink to celebrate. But as she was on her way to the gym…” She shrugged.

  “You manipulated her into asking you along,” I finished for her. “And then you killed her in the steam room.”

  “It was an accident,” MoM insisted. “We were just relaxing and talking, and she got up to push the button for more steam, and she slipped.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Brenda said.

  “I don’t care,” she answered flatly. “That’s what happened.”

  “And she hit her head on the bench?” I asked.

  Had the coroner been right all along? Was there really no murder?

  “But you meant to kill her,” Eileen spoke up. “Otherwise, why didn’t you leave your name on the gym guest pass?”

  MoM looked insulted. “I see no reason to give every living soul my personal identification information. So when the girl behind the counter gave me a card to fill out, I just waited a moment and handed it back to her blank. She didn’t even notice, she was so busy gossiping with Clara. She just tossed it into a drawer and handed Clara our towels.”

  “It’s possible,” I said slowly. “The receptionist said she didn’t really notice you.”

  MoM’s eyes narrowed. “Of course not. Who would notice me when the glorious, young, beautiful, brilliant Clara was around?”

  “Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Eileen said.

  She flushed. “Oh, you think you know me?” Her voice held disgust. “You don’t know me.”

  She turned a challenging stare on each of us.

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a woman over fifty? We’re invisible. And working in a place like this? Where I’m older than anyone else in the room every day of my life? Where they think of me as their mother?” She stopped, shaking with hostility.

  “Well, to be fair, dearie, you do rather play into that,” Simon drawled. “I mean…MoM?”

  “Shut up!” she snapped. “Don’t you call me that, and don’t you dare condescend to me!”

  Her voice sent a chill through the room. I waited a beat before going on.

  “What happened in the steam room?”

  MoM regarded us, her chin held high. It was a moment before she spoke.

  “She slipped. The idiot slipped and then sat on the floor laughing about her bruised butt. About how Morgan was going to think it was sexy. About how she hoped it would fade by the time she went on her honeymoon to Maui.”

  “So you pushed her,” I said.

  “I did no such thing! I reached out to help her—”

  “Right. I’ve seen the way you help people. First you create a disaster, so then you can come to the rescue. What did you say to Krissy at Clara’s funeral to trigger her hysterical outburst?”

  I was just going on a hunch, but at that moment I was sure MoM had set Krissy up for that slap.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about you, and your manipulations. If Clara slipped in that steam room it wasn’t an accident, and if she hit her head it was because you pushed her.”

  Her eyes flashed. “So what if I did? So what if I took her by that little-girl ponytail and crushed her skull into the bench? Who’s going to prove it?”

  Brenda sank to her chair, her hand over her mouth.

  “I think—” My voice came out in a croak. “I think that membership card proves something.”

  She froze.

  “That was your one mistake,” I said softly. “The missing card was the one thing that said it couldn’t have been an accident. So what I’d like to know is—what was so important for you to take from Clara’s locker? Why did you need her card?”

  MoM was still motionless, her face flushing but her eyes growing colder. When she spoke it was like the sound of crushed ice.

  “Krissy’s file.”

  “Krissy?” Eileen said. “What does she have to do with this?”

  MoM glanced at her dismissively.

  And suddenly, I got it.

  “You knew Krissy would get Clara’s job,” I said. “And you knew she’d collapse under the pressure, leaving the way cle
ar for you to step in and save the day.”

  I’d been watching the scenario play out ever since we’d gotten there. I just hadn’t realized what was going on.

  “Why did you keep Clara’s ID card?” Simon still held it. “You had to know it was evidence.”

  Her mouth twisted. “I’m allowed one mistake, aren’t I?”

  But I didn’t think it had been a mistake. She’d wanted to keep the card. She’d been proud of it. Hadn’t she filed it under Accomplishments?

  She straightened again, and glanced at the wall clock. “Well, I have to admit I didn’t plan for this today. Which leaves us with a problem.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Eileen asked. “Kill all of us?”

  She blinked. “If I have to.” The she pulled a gun out of her pocket. “And I think I have to.”

  I stared at the gun. And I remembered suddenly that I had a gun too. It was in my laptop bag, which was in front of Brenda on the table. I began to move slowly toward it.

  “You can’t possibly plan to murder us all and expect to get away with it,” Eileen said.

  “I know that,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Oh, no we’re not,” I said firmly. I’ve seen enough episodes of Oprah on the subject to know that when a crazed killer invites you for a ride, the smart thing to do is decline.

  “I have the gun.” She waved it. “That means you’ll do what I say.”

  My bag was in reach. “Like hell we will—”

  I might have made a mad grab for my gun if the two glass walls of the conference room hadn’t suddenly exploded.

  There was an ear-splitting crash as the glass shattered and disintegrated. Everyone in the room screamed and dove for cover. But when the dust cleared and we crawled out from under the desk there was only one person with any serious damage.

  And she was on the ground, with Flank standing over her.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I assumed it was wishful thinking when I thought I heard Jack’s voice. A side-effect of the ringing in my ears. Then I heard another voice.

  “Are there any casualties?”

  Inspector Yahata.

  Jack and the inspector were both standing in the doorway to the elevator lobby, both surveying the damage, both holding guns.

  “Stay put,” Jack said when I started toward him. “This isn’t stable.”

  I followed his gaze to the ceiling, where crackling sheets of glass still hung between us. Safety glass, thank heavens, but that didn’t make getting caught in a shower of the stuff any more appealing.

  “Is she dead?” Brenda asked. She was looking at Flank.

  He shook his head and crouched over MoM’s body, applying pressure to a fast-spreading stain on her shoulder. She was covered in broken glass.

  Yahata pulled out a cell phone and started speaking into it in urgent, clipped tones, which probably meant an ambulance was on its way.

  “Well.” Simon brushed himself off. “You three certainly know how to make an entrance.”

  “Who shot her?” I asked. There were a lot of guns around.

  “Me,” Flank grunted. “Saw her gun.”

  “Where were you?” Eileen asked. “Did you get my messages?” She looked from Jack to Flank.

  “What messages?” Then I remembered her surreptitious typing. “Is that what you were doing on the laptop?”

  “I sent SOS text messages to Jack and Flank,” she said.

  “You’re a genius,” I told her.

  She picked some glass out of her hair and looked modest.

  “I was at the Hall of Justice with the inspector when I got the message,” Jack said. “And you are a genius.” This to Eileen.

  The Hall of Justice was only a few blocks away. Still, they must have done the whole lights and sirens bit to get here so quickly.

  “We were outside the door coming up with a plan when Flank…” Jack surveyed the extensive wreckage. “…took action.”

  “Came up the back stairs,” Flank said. Which explained why we hadn’t seen him in the hall. He must have been behind MoM in the hallway, which accounted for the fact that his shot had shattered both conference room walls, as well as the kitchen’s.

  Flank was still crouched over MoM’s body. “She’s waking up.”

  Jack and Yahata crunched their way through the broken glass to her, skirting the perimeter of the room.

  “It’s fake,” Flank said, handing MoM’s gun to the detective.

  Yahata took it, and turned it to read the inscription on the barrel. “To MoM, for all her great work on Sniper.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Jack said. “That was the first game ever developed on Zakdan software. This must have been a team gift.”

  Right. She couldn’t have gotten a tee-shirt like everybody else.

  “Charley, you’re bleeding.” Brenda came closer to look at a cut on my arm.

  “So are you.” From several scattered cuts on her hands and arms.

  Simon had a small cut on his forehead. “This had better leave a damn sexy scar.” He reached up to touch it.

  “Come on.” Jack was suddenly next to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  ***

  Several hours later, in the cafeteria of San Francisco General, Inspector Yahata found us cleaned up, bandaged, and drinking lots of coffee. All of us except Flank, that is. He hadn’t been hit by any glass, so he’d gone to the police station to surrender his gun and make a statement. Although if they made him surrender his gun first, I didn’t know how they’d ever get an intelligible statement out of him.

  But that wasn’t my problem.

  “How is she?” Brenda asked the detective.

  “Well enough to give us a statement.” He sat, producing the familiar small notebook and glittering silver pen.

  “Is a statement the same thing as a confession?” Brenda asked.

  The detective’s eyes flashed in Eileen’s direction. “Had it not been for your recording, I believe she would have insisted that Ms. Chen’s death was accidental.”

  “What recording?” Brenda and I asked simultaneously.

  “You clever thing,” Simon said. “You recorded the whole thing, didn’t you?”

  Eileen shrugged. “After I sent the text messages, I turned on the computer’s microphone. It seemed the obvious thing to do.”

  “For you, maybe.” I stared at her.

  Brenda put her hand over Eileen’s. “Thank you.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Did she have anything to say about Lalit Kumar or Jim Stoddard?”

  Damn. I’d completely forgotten about them.

  Brenda’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, she must have killed them. At least, she must have killed Jim. Remember when we asked if she was going to his memorial service? She said it would be hypocritical.”

  “But why?” Simon asked. “Don’t tell us she was jealous of him too?”

  “If I had to make a guess—” Jack looked at the inspector closely. “I’d say Jim knew something about Clara’s murder.”

  Yahata hesitated, seeming to consider several thousand things at once before speaking. “He saw them in the garage on the night of Ms. Chen’s murder.”

  “And he didn’t go to the police?” Brenda protested. “What a bastard!” She looked shocked at her own outburst.

  “He tried to blackmail her.” I looked to the detective for confirmation, which came as a minute lift of his eyebrows.

  “How did she kill him?” Eileen asked. “I mean, how did she make it look like an accident?”

  Yahata looked at Jack. “How would you suppose?”

  Jack thought about it. “He was already drunk. So she probably followed him to his car and offered to drive him home. Maybe she gave him more to drink, or maybe she just talked to him for a while until he passed out.”

  “Literally boring him to death,” Simon muttered.

  Jack, having learned the technique from me, ignored him. “Then she could have driven the car into p
osition, heading downhill on O’Farrell, gotten out, and released the brake so it rolled to a stop in the middle of Van Ness, where the road flattens out.”

  “And waited for the inevitable,” I finished.

  We all looked at Yahata. “It might very well have happened that way,” he acknowledged. Which was not the same thing as telling us the details of MoM’s confession, but it was as much as we were going to get.

  “You put it best when we first met her,” I told Eileen. “She’s opportunistic. With both killings, she saw the opportunity that presented itself, and she took it.”

  Eileen nodded. “Which is why she probably still thinks none of it was her fault.”

  “Hang on.” Brenda’s eyes widened. “What about Lalit Kumar? And what about the shooting? That wasn’t opportunistic. That was a deliberate ambush.”

  “But, be fair,” Simon said reasonably. “Charley did provoke it by stealing—”

  She waved her hands. “No, not today. The shooting at the museum. At Jack and Charley. The same night Jim Stoddard was killed.” She looked at Jack. “If she wasn’t killing people because of the software bug, why would she have wanted to kill you? And if she didn’t even have a real gun, how could she have?”

  She turned to Simon. “Wasn’t she at the party before you? So how could she have been shooting at Jack and Charley all the way across town?”

  Brenda was right. It couldn’t have been MoM. So who? And where did Lalit Kumar fit in?

  “Well, darling, people have been known to shoot at Jack before,” Simon suggested. “Maybe that didn’t have anything to do with dear old MoM.”

  All eyes turned to my husband.

  “Eileen,” he said. “I may need to make a few changes to your PowerPoint presentation tomorrow.”

  The presentation?

  Oh.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  We were in the executive boardroom, as scheduled, at ten the next morning.

  After all, the show must go on.

  Even if, as we now assumed, MoM had been the one to schedule it.

  Jack and Mike had left for Zakdan ahead of us. They, along with Bob, Krissy, Tonya and Troy, were already in position by the time we got there. We were still undercover, so I wasn’t entirely sure if I was supposed to know Jack or not, but I had a hard time not staring at him.