Bad Publicity

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

“Antony and Cleopatra, darling,” Delphi answered. “So much classier than ‘I need a drink.’”

  “But not quite to the point,” Sunil said. “I have to say, this Shakespeare quoting thing is getting really tiresome.”

  Delphi sniffed haughtily. “‘I wonder that you will still be talking: nobody marks you.’” She turned back to Isobel. “So what did you want to tell me?”

  “I’m not going back to Dove & Flight tomorrow.”

  “Good!”

  “James is sending me to the Office of the City Medical Examiner.”

  Delphi gasped. “What? No! Why?”

  “They happen to need someone tomorrow.”

  “What are you up to?” Sunil asked.

  “Nothing.” Isobel gave his hand a reassuring pat. “James is just doing this to shut me up. He knows I’m not convinced that Jason Whiteley died of natural causes, and when this came up, he figured it might be a chance for me find out for sure.”

  “And how exactly are you going to get that information?” Delphi asked.

  “I have to check out the lay of the land first. But I’m sure I’ll find a way.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Delphi. “That’s what worries me.”

  “And what will you do when you find out that it was a good, old-fashioned heart attack?” asked Sunil, with a sideways glance at Delphi.

  “I’ll forget all about it and go back to my job at Dove & Flight until they hire someone permanent to replace me.”

  “And if you find out something different?”

  Isobel shrugged. “I’ll go back to my job at Dove & Flight until they hire someone permanent to replace me.”

  Delphi turned to Sunil. “Notice how she left out the ‘I’ll forget all about it’ part that time?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “‘What, my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?’”

  “Cute,” said Delphi.

  “Come on, aren’t you impressed?” he cried. “But don’t stray further than Much Ado. It’s the only one I’ve done.”

  Delphi turned back to Isobel. “You’re still going to forget about it, right?”

  “Oh, eventually,” said Isobel breezily.

  “Isobel!” Delphi smacked the bar with her fist. “You got lucky once, but you might not be so lucky a second time!”

  Isobel swiveled her bar stool to face Delphi. “Jason Whiteley wasn’t shot, he wasn’t knifed, he wasn’t bludgeoned. If it turns out to be homicide, it had to have been poison. And if it was, guess who probably served it to him. You have to agree that it’s a good idea for me to stay one step ahead of the police. Just in case.”

  “But why would they tell the PR firm it was accidental if it wasn’t?” Delphi asked.

  “Maybe to keep people from poking their noses into it.”

  “Nice to see that’s working,” Sunil said wryly.

  Isobel sipped her wine. “Beyond the inherent improbability of a healthy young man having a heart attack, James says Jason Whiteley wasn’t universally liked.”

  “Why?” Delphi asked.

  Isobel thought back to her conversation with James and the unflattering details he had revealed about his own past.

  “I can’t really go into it, but their paths have crossed a few times. James says the guy was a first-class jerk.”

  “And you trust James?” Sunil asked.

  Without giving it a second thought, Isobel nodded heartily. “Absolutely. I trust James completely.”

  TWELVE

  Isobel couldn’t help feeling that Felice Edwards wasn’t exactly happy to see her. Then again, Isobel had last seen Felice passed out drunk in the hottest club in town, in front of several of her colleagues and a famous movie director. Or, at least, it had been the hottest club in town at the time. Like most establishments of that nature, its fifteen minutes of fame had expired right on time, and Xavier’s was now frequented only by the perennially uncool playing catch-up. Although Isobel had successfully unmasked a murderer that night, she doubted Felice remembered their club date with equal fondness. Now that they were face to face again, Felice’s unwillingness to look Isobel in the eye made it clear that James had pushed for her to be there.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” Isobel said, trying to inject extra warmth into her voice.

  “Yeah, okay. You’re in records. Fifth floor.” Felice twisted a lock of hair impatiently around a long red fingernail.

  “Thanks,” said Isobel. “And don’t worry, I doubt I’ll stumble over a dead body this time.”

  Felice finally met her eye. “You’re in a morgue. Jerome!”

  A sturdy-looking security guard lumbered over.

  “Show her to records, okay?” Without another word, Felice clacked away down the hall on her precipitous heels.

  “How do you like it here?” Isobel asked Jerome as they made their way down the cinderblock-walled hallway toward an elevator. When he didn’t answer, Isobel clocked the telltale white buds in his ears. Clearly her conversation was no competition for his playlist.

  Seeing the words “Medical Records” engraved on the small plate outside the door brought home what a stroke of luck her placement was. This was exactly where she needed to be. Surely she’d have a spare minute to look up Jason Whiteley.

  She passed through the door and turned to thank Jerome, who was already swaggering away down the hall to the beat of his music. The medical records room was vast and dusty, with several desks in the open and what appeared to be a few smaller offices off to the sides. A young woman with full, coral-basted lips was seated behind the central desk, her glossy dark hair swept off her face with tortoise-shell combs.

  “Hi, I’m Isobel Spice from Temp Zone.”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re here to help Randy. Randy!” the woman screamed in an impressively piercing, high-pitched voice.

  “Do you sing?” Isobel asked.

  The woman laughed. “Only in the shower. How come?”

  “Um, no reason.”

  “You’re the temp?” asked a male voice from behind her.

  Isobel turned to face a thin, pale, middle-aged man with one pair of glasses perched on his nose and another on a chain nestled in the V of his beige cashmere sweater.

  She held out her hand. “I’m Isobel Spice.”

  He grasped her hand and let his eyes roam over her. They lingered on her chest, and he gave a disappointed sigh. “Not much of a ‘spice rack.’”

  Isobel stifled a gasp. She couldn’t have understood him correctly. But the young black-haired woman whispered, “Ignore him. He doesn’t get out much.”

  Great, thought Isobel. A nerdy, perverted wit. What a combo.

  “You can type, right?”

  “I wouldn’t be much of a temp if I couldn’t,” Isobel said.

  Randy gestured for her to follow him. Isobel was stopped by the woman’s hand on her arm.

  “He’s less of a jerk than he seems at first, but I’d take as many bathroom breaks as you can. I’m Eva, by the way.”

  Isobel smiled gratefully and scurried after Randy, who had disappeared out of sight behind a tall bookshelf. Her pulse quickened at the prospect of unearthing the official reason for Jason Whiteley’s death. She’d look up his record as soon as she could ditch Randy.

  When she turned the corner, she found him waiting by an empty desk, drumming his fingers impatiently on the dusty surface while a computer whirred into life. Isobel had grown accustomed to the phenomenon of the empty temp desk. Only at Dove & Flight, where she seemed to have settled in for a longer than usual haul, did her workplace look like one that was in active use.

  “We need to log the site reports from last year into the system. We’re a bit behind.” He ogled her posterior. “So are you.”

  Isobel ignored him and waited for him to continue.

  “If you get cracking, you should be able to get through most of them.”

  “How many are there?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  These one-day catch-up jobs were the wors
t, usually resulting in a finger-numbing, headache-inducing day that was more exhausting than a week of regular office work. In response to her question, Randy ducked around the side of the desk and kicked out a large, heavy cardboard box.

  “But wait, there’s more!” he announced in game show host tones and proceeded to produce three more boxes.

  Isobel tried to calculate how many pieces of paper four boxes could hold. It had to be thousands.

  “Did more people than usual die last year?”

  Randy extracted a form from the top box and leaned over her, a bit too close for comfort.

  “Here you see the name of deceased, time and date of death, cause of death, medical examiner’s name—we have a whole staff—and then a short paragraph with illuminating details. If there’s no name, just type in Jane or John Doe. If there’s no cause of death,” he smiled wickedly, “just make one up.”

  Isobel gasped.

  “I’m kidding. Just write in ‘natural causes.’ That’s what a blank means.”

  He pressed a few keys on the computer and brought up an online form.

  “Our tech department created a program to handle all this information, no more, no less. It’s pretty straightforward, but I’m over in the far office if you need help.” He gave her one last squirm-inducing wink and removed himself, while Isobel silently resolved that if she needed help, she’d ask Eva and not randy Randy.

  She needed help almost immediately. Straightforward it was not. The first three questions on the computer form asked for information she either couldn’t find or couldn’t decipher from the sloppy handwritten sheets that supposedly held all the answers. But Isobel was getting used to this phenomenon, too. The procedural minutiae of any office were second nature to those who worked there and utterly mystifying to the uninitiated.

  Regardless, Isobel was relieved to have an excuse to procrastinate so soon, since simply looking at the boxes was making her temples throb. Besides, she didn’t care whether or not she did a good job; she was there for one reason and one reason only, and it had nothing to do with bringing the Office of the City Medical Examiner’s database up to date.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ve got a few questions,” Isobel said to Eva a few moments later. “I’d rather limit my interactions with Randy.”

  Eva turned from her own computer and dipped her head knowingly at Isobel. “Yeah, no joke. What’s up?”

  Isobel handed Eva a form completed in an illegible scrawl and glanced down at the piece of paper where she’d made some notes.

  “The computer screen wants to know the code, record number and status. I don’t see anything on this form that corresponds, but the computer won’t let me go on to the next screen unless I enter them.”

  Eva pointed to a box at the bottom of the page. “It doesn’t say, but that’s the code. It’s always a four-digit number starting with O or C. Record number is right here at the top. It’s already on the form, preprinted in red. Status you get from the letter in the code. O means a case is still open. C means a case is closed.”

  “What are the four digits that go with the O and the C?”

  “The last four of the social. On a John or Jane Doe, it’s 0000 and the letter, usually O, of course.”

  “Got it. Thanks.” She glanced around for Randy, but he was nowhere in sight. “I’m just curious, since the recordkeeping seems so far behind—no offense—where are the current cases?”

  “Down in the basement. The morgue office sorts and handles those records. It’s supposed to be current, like, within a month, but they’re pretty behind too, so they’ve probably got up to six months’ worth of records down there.”

  Isobel digested this information and began to formulate a plan. She’d wait a bit, maybe until her lunch break, and then head downstairs to the morgue.

  It seemed Felice was right: her day was destined to include a dead body or two, after all.

  THIRTEEN

  Inputting death records was turning out to be one of the absolute worst tasks Isobel had encountered since she started temping. She was no longer a stranger to the monotony of data entry, but the eye strain involved in deciphering the handwriting of the medical examiners made her head feel like it was going to explode. Only one, a Dr. DeAngelis, had neat, meticulous script. After two hours of straining, Isobel finally decided to make her life easier and pull all of Dr. DeAngelis’s forms. Since she’d never get through all the boxes, or even part of one, she figured she might as well save her eyesight.

  With half an hour left on her lunch break, Isobel made her way to the morgue. As she descended to the basement, it briefly occurred to her that wolfing down a turkey avocado wrap first might not have been the best plan, but it was too late now. The elevator doors opened into what seemed like a cross between an office and a hospital. The floors and walls were white, and the fluorescent lights burned brighter without benefit of natural light peeking in through windows. She followed a sign that pointed to the morgue office. As she walked down the hall, her shoes echoing on the polished linoleum, a door marked “Room 1” opened and two medical examiners emerged, pulling off their masks and gloves, deep in conversation. Isobel shot past, but like a road accident, it proved impossible not to look. An orderly was sliding a table with a cadaver into a vault in the wall. Even though the body was draped in opaque plastic, Isobel gulped back a wave of nausea and hurried down the hall.

  She paused outside the morgue office and reviewed what she planned to say. It wasn’t one of her better schemes, but it was the best she could come up with under the circumstances. She withdrew from her pocket the death report that she had filled in earlier, in her worst handwriting. She examined the slanting, barely legible loops and scrawls she had made on the page and briefly wondered if she could have been a doctor.

  She pushed open the door and approached the receptionist’s desk. A plump Hispanic woman welcomed her warmly.

  “Hola, chica! We don’t get many visitors down here. What can I do for you?”

  Isobel felt bad about hoodwinking such a friendly face, but she forged ahead nonetheless. She glanced at the woman’s nameplate. Wanda Bautista. “You’re Wanda?”

  Wanda nodded happily.

  Isobel smiled. “Nice to meet you. Randy upstairs asked me to check something with you. See this guy who died last year, Jason Whiteley?” She held out her forged form for Wanda to see. “Randy knows someone who knows someone who knows a guy with the exact same name, Jason Whiteley, who died just the other day. Same thing, cardiac arrest, and the same date, only one year later. Freaky, huh?”

  Wanda let out a long, slow breath and nodded solemnly. “My great-grandmother died when lightning struck a tree and it fell on top of her on the Fourth of July. Then my great-grandfather married her sister, and a year later to the day, the same thing happened to her!”

  Isobel’s eyes widened. “No kidding! That’s even weirder!” This was going to be a piece of cake. “Anyway, Randy said I should come down here and double-check their socials. Just to make sure nobody’s playing a prank and they’re not really the same person.”

  “Who was the medical examiner, do you know?”

  Isobel thought back to the other day when the man had poked his head into her interrogation. She didn’t know his name, only what he looked like, but she couldn’t very well describe him to Wanda without some explanation for having seen him.

  She shook her head. “I don’t. Can you look it up?”

  Wanda nodded, and Isobel gave her the date and the address of Dove & Flight. Wanda consulted a complicated-looking calendar on the computer and pointed to the screen. “That’ll be Dr. Daley. You can ask him for the form.” She gestured behind her to an inner office, where Isobel caught a glimpse of the little bearded man she had seen at Dove & Flight bustling about the small, white space. What if he recognized her?

  “Can you pull the form for me?”

  Wanda shook her head. “He has it.”

  “He looks so busy,” said Isobel. “I don’t wan
t to bother him.”

  “It’s no bother.” Before Isobel could stop her, Wanda called out, “Dr. Daley? I need a form from the other day.”

  “Just a second!”

  Isobel glanced quickly around the room. No place to hide, no possible distraction she could provide. A moment later, Dr. Daley emerged from his office, pulling on an overcoat. Unable to think of anything better, Isobel bent down and pulled off her shoe.

  She heard Wanda say, “She’s working upstairs in records and needs to see a death report from last week. Jason Whiteley.”

  Isobel rubbed her foot and waved vaguely upwards with her other hand. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “something sticking out on the side…”

  She sensed Dr. Daley moving toward the door. “It’ll have to wait until I get back. Dead drug dealer on Avenue B.”

  Isobel heard the outer door slam shut and she straightened up, pretending to test her shoe. “There, I think I fixed it. It was, like, a wire or something.”

  Wanda was looking at her curiously.

  Isobel hurried on, “New shoes. I should probably just return them.”

  “You’ll have to check later when Dr. Daley is back.”

  Damn, thought Isobel. So close.

  “Do you know when that will be?”

  Wanda shrugged. “Could be gone all day. You never know. You should just come back tomorrow morning.”

  Isobel bit her lip. “The thing is, I’m a temp and I’m only hired for today to clean up the files. Randy seemed particularly eager to get this wrapped up. Can you just pull the form for me?”

  “I can’t give you anything off his desk,” Wanda said firmly.

  “I only need to look at it. Just to check the socials.”

  Wanda hesitated. “Well, if that’s all you need, I can check it quickly.” She snatched the form from Isobel’s hand and disappeared into Dr. Daley’s office.

  Great. Now what?

  Isobel glanced into the office and saw Wanda rifling through papers on Dr. Daley’s desk. After a moment, she seemed to find what she was looking for. She held an identical form side by side with Isobel’s forgery and shook her head.