Of course, this last bit could have been written just to make DE look bad, and it was certainly arguable that any time spent in an office with a corpse is too much time. But it was an awful lot of wrong data.
It definitely started to lend credence to the idea that the whistle-blower was someone who wasn’t directly in contact with the company—perhaps an old employee. But of course, even an old employee had to have a source on the inside for all this stuff. Someone had to be spilling out information.
Everyone was working so hard at this point that it felt challenging to interrupt anyone for the purposes of my investigation, but I managed to catch Gary as he was exiting the men’s restroom and thus completely not working.
“Did Lawrence drug you?” I asked.
“Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
“Your wife,” I said.
“Honey Badger don’t care,” he said, not to me so much as to the air around me.
“What happened?” I asked.
Gary looked embarrassed by the question. “It’s really not a big deal, and you don’t need to worry about it. It’s not like he’s going to drug you,” Gary said. “It was just a prank that got out of hand.”
“Your wife said it was a mix-up,” I said.
“Yes,” said Gary. “The mix-up was that I started ever working here.”
The rest of the day went on in a relatively ordered way, if that phrase has any more meaning at this point. Archie came in and finally started working. Gary and Quintrell seemed to get something up and going, although I didn’t know what. Vanetta appeared to be hard at work in her office—certainly she was typing prodigiously, but I wasn’t exactly sure as to the nature of her work either. Despite the alleged lack of general deadlines, when five o’clock hit, and the day was ostensibly over, no one seemed to head for the doors. Not even Tyler, who had spent the morning shopping for David Bowie paraphernalia.
I had still hoped to ask Quintrell a few questions, but it seemed wrong to bother him, since he and Gary appeared to be on the edge of a breakthrough. “It’s finally working!” I could hear them saying—then backtracking, “It’s finally mostly working.”
And besides which, I had made arrangements for the evening. Unwise arrangements.
I had been struck in the head and was obviously not in my right mind when I had suggested meeting Detective Anson Shuler in Forest Park for a roller-skating excursion. I specifically use the word “excursion” here, because I did not and do not want to use the word “date,” although that is probably a fair approximation of the event.
It was a stupid thing to do, given that I had a boyfriend, of sorts, and that I wasn’t even really sure I wanted to be in a relationship with Anson Shuler. But when you get hit in the head, you make rash decisions. Perhaps those decisions are more indicative of your true nature than the one your non-concussed self would make, but who knows. I was going skating.
I needed to get out of Cahaba quickly, because the sun wasn’t going to stay up forever, and I wasn’t that keen on hanging around Forest Park in the dark; although, if you had to do it, a police officer is your best possible choice of companion. As I drove there I naturally got a phone call from Nathan.
The whole situation made me feel like I was a suspect in the sort of ridiculous case that I would ordinarily be employed to investigate. Dahlia has a boyfriend, yes, but is off having secret meetings with another fellow! What does this mean? (Actually this is a fair question. I ought to hire myself to find out.)
But I was feeling duplicitous and guilty, and even though I hadn’t, technically, done anything terribly wrong yet, it all made me feel sort of awful.
I had to answer the phone, even though it was terrible, because the prospect of not answering the phone was even more terrible.
“Hey, Dahlia,” said Nathan. “You have a sec?”
“Well,” I told Nathan, “I’m driving right now. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to touch base with you before you met up with Shuler,” said Nathan. He said this casually, very casually, and I nearly ran off the road.
“How did you hear about that?” I asked.
“Shuler mentioned it to me,” said Nathan. “It was really awkward because he seemed to think that I already knew about it, except that I didn’t know about it. You forgot to mention it to me, I guess,” said Nathan.
“Well, we’re just skating,” I said. “And I was going to talk with him about the case.”
“Masako seems to think that you have a crush on Shuler,” said Nathan.
I will crush Masako with my bare hands.
“I wouldn’t say that necessarily,” I said. And I wouldn’t necessarily.
“I feel like we need to have a relationship conversation,” said Nathan.
I really do like Nathan, but when I die and go to hell, Satan will greet me at the fiery gates with the phrase “we need to have a relationship conversation.” I’m not good at relationships or conversations, and when you put them together, I do even worse.
“Yes,” I said. “A relationship conversation. You start.”
“I just don’t want to be weird about this,” said Nathan. “Is this weird?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. “It’s a little weird.”
“Well, we never said that we were exclusive,” said Nathan. “I guess I just sort of took that as written. So: Are we exclusive?”
“Maybe?”
“I don’t want to be someone in a love triangle,” said Nathan. This could very reasonably have been a prelude for the next sentence of: “And so I’m breaking up with you,” but it wasn’t. It was its own declarative sentence, to which I had to respond.
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know what this thing with Shuler is tonight. I agreed to it when I had a head wound.”
“Well, it would appear to be a date, Dahlia.”
“Yes,” I said.
“No polyamory. I’m just not into that.”
“What?”
“I mean, not with another guy,” Nathan said, then paused, as if contemplating other possible permutations. “Nah, no polyamory—it’s just not my scene.”
“What made you think this was an option on the table in the first place?”
“I didn’t say that it was,” said Nathan. “I just wanted to make clear that it wasn’t.”
“Well, we’re on the same page. So this is not a ‘you’re dead to me’ phone call?” I asked.
“No,” said Nathan. “But just so you know, I’m also going out with a beautiful model this evening.”
“Seriously?”
“Well,” said Nathan. “She’s a hand model. It’s not like you said we couldn’t see other people.”
“I guess,” I said. “That seems fair.”
Although, it didn’t seem fair. It seemed like a massive misstep.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said Nathan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I met Anson Shuler at the parking lot. This was, any way you put it, madness, because I had brought roller skates with me. It was hard to imagine how this was going to go. But there was an upside to all of it, which was that I could maybe learn a little bit about what the police knew regarding Cahaba. It’s a rare disadvantage to not be a murder suspect, but I hated not knowing what the police were thinking. All of my information was second-or thirdhand, and getting just a few choice bits of their reasoning would have been tremendously helpful.
Shuler met me at my car, and I immediately noticed that he hadn’t brought his skateboard, which was the ostensible, if insane, plan for outing. I asked him about it.
“Yeah, well,” said Shuler. “I changed my mind. The universe does not want to see me skateboarding.”
“I was thinking we could listen to Blink-182, and I could use nineties slang, like: What’s the dealio?”
Shuler did not seem persuaded by this, and instead pointed out that I had recently suffered a head wound.
“Should you really be on roller skates after a concussi
on?” asked Shuler. “Upon reflection, it seems like a terrible idea.”
“So what should we do instead?” I asked.
“Zoo or art museum?” asked Shuler—and thanks to the magic of Forest Park, each of these was just a short walk away. “But I think we should go somewhere, because I’ve got kind of a proposition for you.”
We settled on the art museum, and can I just take a moment to praise the Saint Louis Art Museum, which I think is one of the best museums in the world. Okay, yes, I’ve been to fancier, better endowed places—the MoMA and the Guggenheim—but here’s the kicker about the Saint Louis Art Museum. It’s free.
Typing that out makes me sound like a cheapskate, but once you’ve got an awesome free art museum in your neighborhood, you suddenly realize that visiting every other museum is like going on Supermarket Sweep. You’ve got to stuff as much art into your eyeballs as you can to get your money’s worth. “Dahlia’s going straight for the Lichtensteins—those are worth about two million apiece—and, look, she’s found the bonus prize—a giant inflatable banana!”
The Saint Louis Art Museum is the only place where you could go in, casually walk around for a half hour, look at your favorite painting, leave, and not feel cheated.
But I digress.
It took us a minute to decide what to go look at. They’ve got a Seurat that I generally like, even if it isn’t the absolute showiest of his work, but Shuler was making a case for early American furniture. I had never known anyone who went out of their way to look at Early American Furniture, and I had always sort of assumed that the category was only included for some mandatory purpose I didn’t understand. The results of the powerful American desk lobby, I assumed.
Anyway, we were looking at a red mahogany desk hutch when Shuler dropped his proposition at me.
“So, Dahlia,” said Shuler. “You asked me when we first went out if I liked being a cop. You remember that?”
I did remember that. We had gone out for frozen custard, and I had mostly asked him just to have something to talk about. I also remember that the question had struck him oddly, as if it wasn’t the sort of thing he was used to being asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “What did you tell me—that you were still deciding?”
“Well,” said Shuler. “I think I’ve decided.”
I felt that this would naturally lead to further conversation, as it sounds uncannily like the prelude to the rest of a sentence, but Shuler just continued to look at the desk. Honestly, it was a tiny little desk. People were smaller then.
Finally, after I realized that Shuler wasn’t going to voluntarily continue his thought, I bit:
“So, what’s the verdict?”
“I think I’m out,” said Shuler.
This seemed to me to be a major life revelation—certainly Shuler’s brows suggested so—because they sighed up and down along with the rest of him as he spoke.
“Wow,” I said.
I was feeling better about this outing now, because it was feeling less and less like flirty fun and more like staring into the abyss. Where here, the part of the abyss is played by a tiny desk. Questions began to bubble up, of course, not the least of which was: “Why are you telling me?” but there is a time for questions and a time for silence, and this was the latter.
And he answered one of my questions anyway without it needing to be asked.
“I’m just so tired of it,” he said. “I got into this because I wanted to be one of the good guys. And, also, maybe because I thought it would irritate my parents.”
“Always a good reasoning for major life decisions,” I said.
“I know, right? At the time, it seemed almost noble,” he chuckled. “Now, not so much. I just can’t deal with it anymore.”
What “it” was here, precisely, was something of a mini-mystery, but I’d read enough stories about policing lately that I didn’t want to push too hard. Instead I asked:
“So what are you going to do instead?” I started to add “build desks?” as a snarky rider, to lighten the mood a little, but then thought the better of it. Besides which, maybe that was his plan. Maybe we were here gathering blueprints.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Shuler. “You’re getting certified as a private detective, right? That’s what Maddocks tells me.”
“Slowly,” I said. Although, in truth, it wasn’t a huge amount of coursework. In some states, Mississippi, for example, anyone can be a private detective, if you’ve got the nerve to call yourself one. Missouri was a little harder than that, but not overly so.
“Well, how soon before you’re done?” asked Shuler.
I was suddenly feeling cornered. Although, I don’t know why I should have been anxious. I suppose I just don’t like having my plans pinned down.
“Maybe six months,” I said.
“I was thinking about becoming a private detective myself,” said Shuler.
And it hit me. This was the statement that had augured this meeting, not a romantic interest in me. I could tell that Shuler was anxious about telling me this because of the carefully rehearsed and overly casual way he said it. I appreciated the theater.
“Right,” I said. “So you’re becoming a private detective, and I’m becoming a private detective. And you came here to tell me—”
“This town’s not big enough for the two of us,” said Shuler. And I laughed. Too loudly, because a security guard glared at me.
“Scram, Shuler, University City’s my territory,” I told him, approximating a 1930s gangster voice very badly.
“What I was thinking,” said Shuler, “is that we could maybe go into business together?”
“Moss and Shuler Investigations,” I said. “It’d look good on a door.”
I had fully expected Shuler to say “Shuler and Moss Investigations,” because that is how this patter always goes, but instead he upped the ante:
“I was thinking Shuler and Co.”
“Well,” I said. “Two’s company.”
“What do you think?” asked Shuler.
I thought that I wasn’t ready for discussions for names on the door.
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
I did not, as it happened, ask Anson Shuler any actual useful questions about the case. I had figured I’d get into it with him later, but the business about “Shuler & Moss Investigations” had kind of knocked me out of orbit. All of my follow-up questions were about that. How much money would we need to start such an endeavor? Answer: a fair amount, but we could get a bank loan. Where could we find office space to rent? Would we need office space? And Shuler had answers for all of these. He had me at a disadvantage, because he’d clearly been thinking about this for a very long time. And, I have a business degree, after all. This was a thing that was doable.
The question I didn’t ask, maybe because I didn’t want to know the answer myself, is what he actually gained by teaming up with me. Was this a weird way for him to just spend time with me? No, probably not, because that’s already clearly doable without involving bank loans. But I could easily see the advantage of working with him—ex-cop, with lots of police connections? Who wouldn’t hire him?
But here I am going down the wrong path again.
When I arrived back at my house, I was only somewhat surprised to see Tyler on the floor, eating ramen noodles with Charice.
Let’s start with the ramen. First of all, this was not Maruchan, store-bought 99 cent stuff. This was a dish, made by Charice, that had grilled mushrooms and tofu and actual chopped vegetables. I point this out purely out of bitterness, because there was none left for me.
Next there was Tyler, who had changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants and looked possibly as though he had jogged over here. His green wisp of hair was limp and looked like it had been brutally mauled by the St. Louis humidity.
Finally, there was Charice, who was wearing a lavender vest with white trim that made her look vaguely like an extra on Battlestar Galactica. She was casually f
uturistic, which is not a bad way to think about Charice in general, honestly.
“Dahlia,” said Charice. “You have a visitor. You know, I remember when weeks would go by without anyone visiting you.”
“Yes,” I said, “those were good times.” Although, they weren’t, truthfully. There was just no reason to tell Tyler that.
“Tyler,” I said, “you come by to dig up more intel on Masako?”
Tyler spat out his soup. “Wait—does your roommate know Masako?”
“I know everybody,” said Charice in what was probably only a partial exaggeration of the truth.
“I didn’t,” said Tyler. “Maybe I should…”
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” I told him. “Why are you here, then?”
“I came to see you,” said Tyler. “I got some big news about Cahaba.”
“What kind of big news?” I asked.
I hadn’t been in communication with Emily yet today, and it would be great if I had something impressive to tell her.
“Let’s just say the lack of a deadline is not a good sign,” said Tyler.
“No,” I told him. “Let’s not ‘just say’ that. Let’s say everything, including the subtext.”
Tyler lowered his voice, although I couldn’t have told you why.
“So, I heard that DE is selling the studio.”
“Is that bad? I mean, no one is overly fond of DE, anyway, right? It could be good for the game.”
“DE is keeping Peppermint Planes. They’re keeping all the intellectual property—it’s just the people they’re getting rid of.”
I took a moment to process this.
“So the code that these people have been working on day and night, month in, month out—it’s all just going to be handed over to someone else to finish?”
“It’s probably going to be tossed altogether,” said Tyler.
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss Page 18
