These people were nuts, but I was no better than any of them. I had blabbed like Cynthia. My love life was as messy as Vanetta’s. I had made unwise romantic gestures just as Archie had done. I had even had my own flirtations with not-as-yet-legal drugs like Lawrence had, which are not detailed here.
“Are you okay, Cynthia?” asked the voice on the phone. “Or has the lily finally wilted?”
But somehow, amid all the chaos, it came to me. I could see the answer swirling through the hell farce. I knew who was on the phone.
“Joanne,” I said in a poor but apparently serviceable re-creation of Cynthia’s voice. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Don’t let them rope you back into that horrible place,” said Joanne. “There’s no saving it. It’s quixotic to even try.”
“Hang on,” I told Joanne. “I’m going to have to call you back.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Everyone sit down,” I said, although no one was listening to me.
Tedin was pulling himself together. “You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lawrence with a surprising politeness. “I thought you were Archie.” He then attempted to dive at Archie, but I stood on top of my workstation and said, louder, “I have solved the case.”
“What case?” asked Vanetta.
Charice and Daniel entered the room with Ignacio, who had seen better days.
“Everyone sit down and shut the fuck up,” I said. “I know how Joyce died.”
“Who is Joyce?” asked Lawrence.
I am not, as a rule, very good at commanding a room. But somehow, this worked. It helped that Detective Tedin was already on the floor and, from the looks of it, was going to have a hard time getting up. It also probably helped that Charice and Daniel sat on the floor themselves, thus prompting everyone else to follow along. Those two are, by contrast, extremely good at commanding a room.
“First off,” I said, “a confession. I am a private detective, and I was hired to keep tabs on Cahaba and to learn, if I could, the identity of the whistle-blower.”
“I knew there was something like that going on,” said Tedin.
“Well,” I said. “You were right.”
“Wait,” said Tedin. “Are you seriously doing that thing where you gather all the suspects together and say: ‘The murderer is among you’?”
“I suppose I am,” I said. I had expected Tedin to arrest me for this or at least look consternated, but he simply sighed and said, “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“The murderer is among us?” asked Quintrell, looking appropriately cowed by this thought.
“I’m just here for lunch,” said Masako.
“She’s the murderer, get her!” said Gary.
“Silence!” I said, and this was suddenly fun again. “I have gathered you all here to explain what happened. Let’s start with the whistle-blower.”
“It’s Quintrell, isn’t it?” said Vanetta. “I have no evidence, but I just think it’s Quintrell.”
“It’s Tyler,” said Cynthia. “I know it’s Tyler.”
“Why would you think that?” said Tyler.
“It’s that lunch woman,” said Gary. “Let’s get her!”
“I shall put the whistle-blower on speakerphone!” I said, and pressed a button on the phone. Only I think I pressed the wrong button, and I caused the phone to hang up. A loud dial tone played to the room.
“I’m confused,” said Ignacio.
“Okay,” I said. “So I fucked up the phone. But I still have the answer. You see, in the second letter, the whistle-blower referred to Cahaba being named for a river, but that’s not true. It’s actually named for—”
“No one cares how you figured it out,” said Vanetta. “Just tell us.”
“Well, I thought it was named for a river,” said Cynthia, “and I didn’t do it.”
“Of course she doesn’t think it was you,” said Tedin helpfully. “Obviously you are not on the other end of the phone.”
“Fine, Jesus. It has to be Joanne,” I said.
“Who the fuck is Joanne?” asked Archie.
“Joanne—and this part is just a guess—is Cynthia’s significant other,” I said.
“That is my private business,” said Cynthia.
“Oh well, private business,” said Vanetta, still sore about being ratted out.
“How did you make the connection?” asked Cynthia.
“You’re wearing her brooch,” I said.
“Bah,” said Cynthia. “She was wearing my brooch. She’s always borrowing my things.”
“Also, Joanne is from the South,” I said. “I’m guessing somewhere near the Cahaba River, since the two of you are the only folks who think the company is named for an obscure Alabama waterway. Joanne’s the person you went on your canoeing trip with, right?”
“Hidden depths!” said Tyler. “I was right!”
“But Joanne wouldn’t make angry posts on the Internet,” said Cynthia. “Would she?”
“The poster did think that DE had made everyone work even after the corpse was found. And Tyler had told her that he worked all day.”
“That’s not even true,” said Vanetta.
Tyler shrank a foot or two and said quietly, “I was trying to impress Masako.”
“See,” said Gary, “she is responsible! Let’s get her.”
“Joanne always hated DE,” said Cynthia. “She prizes respect and efficiency, and that’s not something we have a lot of here. But I didn’t realize she had done that.”
Cynthia grew quiet, and thoughtful.
“The next question we have is who killed Joyce,” I said, and suddenly the room was very quiet. “This took me a long time, because I couldn’t figure out who was the person that the overdose was originally intended for. No one, as I see it, wanted to kill Joyce. No one knew her, and certainly no one had any beef with her. Most of us didn’t even know she existed. Besides that, she was dying of pancreatic cancer and wasn’t that long for the world anyway. Who kills a person who is already dying?”
I had expected a snarky remark from someone in this group, but apparently pancreatic cancer is a bridge too far.
“I kept thinking that the target was Cynthia,” I said. “But it wasn’t. It was Lawrence.”
“Wrong!” said Lawrence. “Everyone loves me. I am beloved.”
“Why,” asked Archie, “are you wearing Vanetta’s clothes?”
“My own clothes were covered in regurgitated pastry, and there were people in my office, so I sneaked into the break room and put on what was in there.”
“It’s very disturbing,” said Vanetta.
“I think I pull it off,” said Lawrence.
“There are lots of reasons for people to want Lawrence dead,” I said.
“What?” said Lawrence. “There are no reasons.”
“He sold the company down the river, shepherding the sale of Vanetta’s IP to DE, while the rest of the staff gets consigned to work on hidden object games.”
“What? You bastard,” said Vanetta.
“Let’s get him,” said Gary.
“What’s wrong with hidden object games?” asked Tedin. “I think they’re fun.”
“Well,” considered Lawrence, “I suppose I did do that.”
“He also is potentially the father of Vanetta’s child.”
“Oh my God, Dahlia. Seriously?” said Vanetta. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Vanetta has a child?” asked Gary.
“I’m pregnant, okay, everyone? I am pregnant. Not even very pregnant. Just a few weeks. But there, now, everyone in the world can know my private business, because I am apparently not allowed even an inkling of privacy. I can just go walking around the office with a scarlet ‘P’ for ‘pregnancy,’ like the goddamned Lady in Red I keep hearing so much about.”
“At least you didn’t have to talk to the police about your stool softener,” said Quintrell.
“Wow,” sai
d Masako.
“Also,” I said, “he drugged Gary, once, just for fun.”
“Oh,” said Lawrence, “that was months ago. And it was for science.”
“And he stole my Christmas tea!” said Cynthia.
“Right,” I said. “I wouldn’t necessarily call that a motive for murder, but he did also do that.”
“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Lawrence?” asked Quintrell.
“It was June,” said Lawrence. “I didn’t think anyone else was going to drink it.”
“Is there anything else I failed to mention?” I asked Lawrence.
“Quintrell, that dent in your car came from me. I hit it one day when I was on my bike. It was an accident, not on purpose.”
“Well, thank you for telling me,” said Quintrell.
“Now,” I said, “as long as we’re all sharing, does anyone else want to share any reasons they might have wanted to kill Lawrence?”
“Is this related to the case?” asked Tedin.
“It’s more therapeutic at this point,” I said.
“Huzzah!” said Charice.
“I think that Lawrence is an absolutely terrible person,” said Vanetta, “and I worry that I am exactly like him, except that I’m just better at hiding it.”
“Is that really a motive for murder, though?” asked Quintrell.
“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” said Lawrence.
“You should call your sister,” said Vanetta.
“I’ve been trying!” said Lawrence.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“I worry that he’s closer to Vanetta than me,” said Archie. “And I worry about the fact that this is even a thing that I would care about,” said Archie.
“Aww,” said Lawrence.
“And he stole my Christmas tea!” said Cynthia.
“Seriously,” said Vanetta. “Fuck all of you. When this game is over, I am going to change my name and move to New Zealand and I will never see any of you again.”
“Who killed Joyce?” said Masako, who was good at cutting to the point.
This would have been dramatic, except the phone rang, and Charice picked it up.
“Welcome to Cahaba Apps,” said Charice. “Where Games Go Down the River. What can I do for you?”
“That’s a good slogan,” said Lawrence.
“Ignore the phone. Tell us who killed Joyce,” said Masako.
“The person on the phone says it’s Morgan Freeman.”
“WHAT?” said Vanetta.
“Tell him to call back,” said Detective Tedin.
“Does it sound like Morgan Freeman?” asked Ignacio, wandering into consciousness.
“It sounds like Morgan Freeman,” said Charice.
“No,” said Vanetta. “Emphatically no. What does he want?”
Charice relayed this question, and the answer. “He wants to speak with the person who wrote the Peppermint Planes script.”
“Who did that?” asked Gary. “Was it Archie?”
“Someone wrote a script?” asked Quintrell. “How am I so uninformed?”
“I wrote it very late at night,” said Archie.
“Put him on speakerphone,” said Vanetta.
“But we’re in the middle of revealing the murderer,” said Detective Tedin, who at least had a respect for how these things were supposed to go.
“IT’S MORGAN FREEMAN,” said Vanetta. “Put him on speakerphone. This could change everything. If he gets on board for this, it could save the project. Maybe DE wouldn’t sell us. It could save the company!”
“Hello?” said the voice. Morgan Freeman’s voice.
“Hello, Mr. Freeman,” said Vanetta. “It’s an honor to speak to you.”
“Is this the person who wrote the Peppermint Planes script?”
“He’s here,” said Vanetta. “But it was kind of a group effort.”
“Well,” said Mr. Freeman. “I just wanted to say that in forty years of acting—in a storied career, mind you—I have never read a script as bad as the one you sent me.”
“I see,” said Vanetta.
“We’re talking Henry Darger levels of unreadability here. It was bad. Really bad. The word is garbage, honestly.”
“So,” said Lawrence. “You’re considering getting involved, or?”
“I’ve read scripts handed to me by cabbies, by people’s weird emotionally damaged nephews, someone once handed me a script that was written in crayon, and I’m telling you, this is the worst thing I have ever—EVER—seen. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you on drugs? Did you write it in your sleep? Are you having massive problems in your personal life?” asked Morgan Freeman, quickly assessing the problems of Cahaba Apps. “It reads like a fever dream. A racist nonsensical fever dream.”
“It could sell a lot of cereal,” said Lawrence. “Look at Lucky Charms.”
“I wrote it very late at night,” said Archie. “So very late. And you fired the script doctor that was going to work with me.”
“He was an ass,” said Lawrence.
“I kept thinking that this was a joke—a practical joke. This couldn’t be a real script. No one would write a script like this, much less send it anywhere for another human to consume.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Freeman,” I said, “but the police are here and we’re about to reveal who the murderer is. There was a poisoning here, you see.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry,” said Mr. Freeman, who, having starred in a few police procedurals himself, appreciated how this was supposed to work. “I hope I didn’t interrupt the narrative flow.”
“No, I’m so sorry to interrupt your feedback regarding Archie’s racist script,” I said. “It’s just that we’re right at the penultimate moment here.”
“I’ll call back later,” said Morgan Freeman. “Although I can just wait quietly on the phone, if you’d prefer.”
“That would be very distracting,” said Vanetta.
“Now I’m sort of curious to listen in,” said Morgan Freeman.
Charice talked Morgan Freeman into hanging up, and after a moment we were ready to move back along. Or I was, anyway.
“Well, here’s the thing. No one meant to kill Lawrence. Someone just meant to roofie him.”
“That was extremely disappointing,” said Quintrell, presumably about Morgan Freeman and not about no one meaning to kill Lawrence.
“It’s true what they say,” said Vanetta, also still, presumably, on Morgan Freeman. “Never meet your idols.”
“Hooray,” said Lawrence. “No one wanted me dead!”
“Oh no,” said Gary.
“It was in your kefir,” I said. “What was your tradition—kefir before a power meeting, bourbon after if it goes badly.”
“Oh no,” said Gary.
“That’s the tradition,” said Lawrence. “The truncated version, anyway. The full version is much more complicated. I have a flowchart.”
“You had a power meeting,” I said. “You were negotiating the control of the IP to DE.”
“Yes,” said Lawrence. “But I did that from home, you know, for the secrecy.”
“But someone here thought they could scotch it, by drugging you.”
“Ha,” said Lawrence. “Well, that’s ridiculous because I’m even better on drugs. Invincible, you might say.”
“Oh no,” said Gary.
“So we’re all assuming it was Gary that did this, right?” said Vanetta. “Since he’s said ‘oh no’ thirty times.”
“Well, I never thought I could scotch the deal,” said Gary. “I fully realize that I’m just a tiny cog in a Lovecraftian enterprise for evil, but I thought I could at least humble you a little. Plus you roofied me first, for no reason, you jackass.”
“It wasn’t for no reason,” said Lawrence. “Why do people keep saying that? I wanted to make sure they were safe.”
“Oh my God,” said Gary. “Let’s just take his body and put it back in the Lemarchand’s box and set
it on fire.”
“You got paid,” said Lawrence. “You were on the clock the whole time and you spent the day sleeping. My God! I’m on it now, and it’s great! I can’t feel my feet!”
“Kill him with fire,” said Vanetta.
“Joyce was in here picking up Cynthia’s things,” I said. “And for some reason she went into Lawrence’s office. That’s the part I can’t quite work out—”
“She was looking for the Christmas tea,” said Cynthia. “I had told her I thought Lawrence took it. She must have looked in your desk and found the kefir.
“Joyce loved kefir. She was always saying that it was her favorite fermented milk drink.”
“That’s it,” I said, quite surprised. “It was the Christmas tea that led her in there.”
“So, really, in a way,” said Lawrence, “Cynthia is responsible for all this.”
“Shut your dirty mouth,” said Cynthia.
“But wait, the roofie just killed her because she was old?” asked Vanetta.
“Joyce had pancreatic cancer, and she was on a number of drugs to treat the pain. Such as methadone.”
“That’s not a good drug interaction. You have to be very careful mixing things with opioids,” said Lawrence very solemnly, revealing a deep knowledge of drugs that, at this point, shouldn’t have surprised me at all.
There was a stunned silence that affected everyone but Masako, who asked:
“So who was responsible for this death?”
“Gary, mostly,” I said. “But Lawrence is really to blame, since he shouldn’t have roofies to begin with.”
“Oh no,” said Gary.
“You have a private stash of roofies,” said Tedin. “You tackled a detective. You’re involved in a manslaughter. You’re going to jail for a long time, son.”
“I have lots of money,” said Lawrence.
“Well,” said Tedin, chastened. “Community service, then.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
There is, traditionally in my stories, a chase about now, in which the murderer, after being unveiled, pursues me through an unlikely setting, such as a video game convention or a steamboat. It does not happen here, but in an effort to maintain tradition, I acknowledge it here. If you like, feel free to imagine such a chase, involving myself as well as Gary and Lawrence, and if you like, assists from Cynthia. Here are some keywords to encourage you on your own imaginative adventure:
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss Page 25
