Tote Bags and Toe Tags

by Dorothy Howell

  I glanced up and down the hallway and slipped inside.

  I hoped that since we’d all just come on board, the new-hire personnel files would still be on Adela’s desk. No such luck. I glanced at the doorway, saw no one walk by, then eased open the bottom desk drawer. Lots of folders, but none with our names on them.

  I slid around the desk to the credenza on the other side of the room. Two huge stacks of folders sat at each end. I ran my gaze down the tabs on the closest one. No luck.

  Voices sounded in the hallway. I darted back to the visitor chairs in front of Adela’s desk, put on my most casual I’m-not-doing-anything-wrong expression, and pretended to study the artwork on the wall.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw two men walk past.

  Whew!

  I spun back to the credenza and eyed the other stack of folders. My heart jumped. There, near the bottom, were our personnel folders.

  Darn. That meant to get to them I’d have to shuffle through about fifteen folders. Not exactly a stealth move.

  I sure could use some superpowers at a time like this—or maybe just a couple of Snickers bars.

  I looked back at the door again. Nobody in sight. I strained my ears for the sound of approaching footsteps. Nothing.

  I turned back to the credenza and reached for the top folder.

  “Haley?”

  I whipped around and saw Adela and Mr. Dempsey standing in the office doorway. They both looked surprised to see me—not as surprised as I was to see them, of course—but luckily I don’t think my presence uninvited and unescorted in Adela’s office was the problem.

  Mr. Dempsey gave me a hard look, then said to Adela, “We’ll continue this another time.”

  “Certainly,” Adela murmured. She went to her desk and kept her head down while she shuffled papers.

  “I’ll come back another time,” I said, and headed for the door.

  “No, that’s fine, Haley,” Adela said, finally looking up at me. Her cheeks were pink. She straightened her shoulders. “What did you need?”

  Oh, crap. I had to tell her something.

  “I wanted to ask about Constance,” I said—which just proved that the lingering effects of a mocha frappuccino were indispensable when working a high-pressure job. “I noticed her nameplate wasn’t outside her office this morning.”

  “Oh, yes.” Adela sank into her chair. She drew in a deep breath and said, “Constance’s condition has worsened. She’s had some sort of a breakdown and won’t return to work for a while.”

  I tried to think of something sympathetic to say. Nothing came to me.

  That happens a lot.

  “Which means—” Adela’s phone rang. She picked it up, listened, then said, “I’ll be right there.”

  Adela pulled open her bottom desk drawer. “That means, Haley, you’ll have to take over all of the events, not just those Patty was handling.”

  I remembered seeing the list in her computer. Business luncheons, birthdays, meetings in the office conference rooms. Nothing major.

  “No problem,” I said. “It looked as if Patty was handling most of them anyway.”

  Adela froze, a folder halfway out of the desk drawer. “You don’t know?”

  I was supposed to know something?

  “It’s the premier event in the history of Dempsey Rowland,” Adela declared, and yanked the folder out of the drawer.

  Yeah, well, that sounded important, all right.

  I channeled my mother yet again—which was starting to creep me out—and said, “I’m well aware of everything Patty was assigned to handle. But everything Constance was working on is inside her locked office, sealed with crime scene tape, completely out of my reach.”

  Adela pushed her desk drawer closed and rose from her chair.

  “Mr. Dempsey is retiring,” she told me. “The ceremony will be a gala affair at the prestigious Roosevelt Hotel, attended by twelve hundred guests and dignitaries from all over the globe. It will be an evening of monumental importance befitting Mr. Dempsey’s outstanding and far-reaching accomplishments on the world stage.”

  Okay, I couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open.

  “Constance has devoted most of the past year in preparation,” Adela said. “Now you’ll take over.”

  “But everything is in her office.” I think I whined when I said that.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Adela said, shooing me out of her office ahead of her.

  “I don’t have access to anything she’s done.” I’m sure I whined that time.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Adela declared.

  She locked her office door and walked away.

  Oh, crap.

  Around noon, my desk phone rang, startling me a bit because I’d been deep in thought.

  Since my Plan A had failed this morning when Adela and Mr. Dempsey walked in on my covert op, I’d immediately jumped to Plan B. It had taken longer than expected to arrange, but finally it was done—and now I was being interrupted.

  “Haley?” a girl asked when I answered my phone. “This is Shawna from the Support Unit.”

  Somebody in the Support Branch from Hell. Just what I needed.

  “Listen, I noticed Kinsey didn’t get her card from Mr. Dempsey yet,” Shawna said.

  There was a birthday card? From Mr. Dempsey?

  I hate the birthday club.

  Shawna didn’t sound like a complete bitch about it, which was encouraging.

  “Kinsey’s at lunch. So if you want to bring it over now, it will be a nice surprise when she gets back,” Shawna said.

  I glanced at my watch and saw that I had a few minutes before Plan B went into effect.

  “I’ll bring it right over,” I said, and hung up.

  I couldn’t imagine that Mr. Dempsey took time away from his outstanding and far-reaching accomplishments on the world stage, as Adela had put it, to sign birthday cards for specific people. I searched through the desk drawers and the file cabinet until I found a stack of pre-signed cards, which, I would have bet, his secretary had signed.

  I wrote Kinsey’s name on the envelope and headed to the Support Unit. I’d been there once today already, but the walk over seemed different this time.

  For one thing, everyone on my side of the building dressed nicer—obviously, because we made more money—but that wasn’t all of it. The carpet here was a little thicker and the furniture was nicer. Everyone here had a private office.

  That still didn’t explain why the girls in the Support Unit had hated me on sight.

  A girl waited at the entrance to the cube farm, leaning against the door casing. I put her at about my age. She was petite, with short blond hair and a pierced lip. A tat peeked from under the sleeve of her striped sweater. Her face looked vaguely familiar from my visit earlier today.

  “I’m Shawna,” she said, when I walked up. “Pretty brave of you to come over here again, after this morning.”

  “You’ve got to be tough to work the birthday club,” I told her.

  She grinned and nodded toward the inside. “The other girls took Kinsey out to lunch for her birthday.”

  “You didn’t go?” I asked.

  “They’re not exactly my peeps.” Shawna said. She paused for a moment, then said, “They shouldn’t have treated you that way this morning.”

  Already, I could tell Shawna and I might become friends.

  “So what’s got everybody so bent out of shape?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some people take a job way too seriously.”

  I was liking her more every minute.

  “This place,” Shawna said, shaking her head. “They don’t exactly have what you’d call really fair hiring practices. A lot of the girls in Support are qualified for higher positions but don’t get them. H.R. is super old-school.”

  Maybe that explained the crappy looks I’d gotten this morning and the comments about how I’d gotten hired. It probably didn’t help that I’d been brought on board so quickly by Adela.
/>   “I’d probably hate me, too,” I said.

  “It’s still not right,” Shawna said. “None of it.”

  I passed Kinsey’s birthday card to her. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Shawna eyed the envelope. “I don’t know why anybody would want a card signed by the old bastard himself, but Kinsey’s new. She’ll learn.”

  Okay, that was a weird thing to say.

  “Great job on the balloons,” Shawna said, backing away. “They really livened up the place.”

  When I got back to my office on the other side of the complex, I saw Max, Ray, and Tina waiting outside my door. Plan B was a go.

  “Thanks for coming in,” I said, squeezing between them and taking the power seat behind my desk.

  They filed inside looking a little confused, and sat in the three chairs I’d swiped earlier from the conference room down the hall.

  Max seemed a little nervous about being here, as if SWAT might crash through my window any second and arrest me—along with the three of them, simply for sitting here. Ray seemed like one of those guys who was never upset—no matter what. He was thirty, maybe, and slender, and looked as if his mother dressed him. Tina had a few miles on her. Mid-forties, a bad dye job, and an expression that said she’d seen it all, more than once, and expected to see it all again.

  “I’m heading up corporate events now,” I said, “which makes me in charge of office morale, among other things.”

  I gave them a bright smile—a key element in Plan B—just as if I really loved the position and hadn’t felt hopelessly lost since I set foot in the office.

  “So first of all, I want to make sure all of you are feeling good about being here and are adjusting well,” I said.

  They all mumbled that things were fine. They wouldn’t, of course, say anything else, since everybody wanted to keep their job.

  “To be sure you’re included in all the corporate events in a manner that’s comfortable for you,” I said, “I’d like you to fill this out.”

  I passed out the form I’d generated on my computer earlier. The three of them looked it over.

  “You want our home address?” Ray asked. “And our spouse’s name?”

  I cranked up the wattage on my Queen of Morale smile.

  “You never know when Dempsey Rowland is going to surprise you with something cool delivered right to your home,” I said. “And if there’s a special event in your honor here at work, we want your wives, husbands, and significant others to be invited.”

  Tina eyed the form. “You want to know our favorite color?”

  “And what kind of ice cream we like?” Max asked, as if it were some sort of mounting conspiracy.

  Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less. I’d just thrown those questions in for cover.

  “I want to personalize your birthday celebrations,” I said, smiling even wider now.

  “This is too much,” Tina declared. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “Bad enough I need some security clearance just to do admin work.”

  There were several levels of security clearances, depending on what project you were assigned to and what your specific duties were—I know this because my dad is an aerospace engineer and has yammered on about it my entire life. It sounded as if Tina’s clearance was lower than that of the rest of us, making her more reluctant to conform to my totally fabricated Plan B.

  Not good—for me.

  So what could I do but turn up the heat—and not on my I’m-a-really-nice-person smile.

  “If you’re refusing to cooperate, Tina,” I said, in my now-you’re-in-trouble voice, “you’ll have to sign a different form stating why you’re not willing to divulge this information. I’ll have to present it to H.R. where it will be placed in your permanent record.”

  Max and Ray eased sideways in their chairs, distancing themselves from Tina. She stewed for another minute, then mumbled something under her breath, picked up her pen, and started writing.

  They all made quick work of completing their forms, then left my office. I fell back in my chair.

  Jeez, who’d have thought corporate events—coupled with Plan B—could be so exhausting?

  Really, at that moment, I’d had enough of Dempsey Rowland. How did anybody sit in an office all day? Especially in the early afternoon on a Friday?

  I took care of a couple of things, then grabbed my purse and left.

  CHAPTER 9

  I couldn’t imagine how I’d possibly live the rest of my life knowing Mom had been right about something. It would completely shatter our relationship as I’d always known it.

  Not a great feeling.

  So when I got in my Honda and pulled out of the parking garage, I headed straight for Juanita’s house. I needed to put this Juanita-might-be-dead thing to rest quickly.

  I’d never been to Juanita’s place. In all the years she’d worked for my mom, Juanita had always been at our house, day in and day out, working early or late, holidays and special occasions, whenever Mom needed her. The only constant was her day off, which was Sunday. Juanita had another day off during the week but it changed, depending on Mom’s schedule.

  My GPS took me up the 110, then onto the 5 toward Eagle Rock, which was sandwiched between Glendale and Pasadena. It was home to Occidental College. The town had been around for decades, changing with the times, like a lot of places in Southern California. There was a wide variety of neighborhoods and houses, and everything from working-class people to young professionals and artsy types lived there.

  I decided to give Ty a quick call as I transitioned to the 2. Even if he’d slept in today, he’d be up by now. I punched in his speed-dial number and was surprised when he answered on the second ring.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Great,” he said.

  “Really?” I asked.

  He hesitated a minute. “Still a little sore.”

  “Are you at the office?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m taking care of some things.”

  Amber had left something undone? That was weird.

  “What kind of things?” I asked.

  “Seeing my mom.”

  I liked Ty’s family, the few of them I’d met, that is. His Grandma Ada was a real hoot.

  “I’ll bring you something special for dinner tonight,” I said.

  “We can go out,” Ty offered, which, I’m sure, was in no way a reflection on my nonexistent culinary skills.

  “You need to rest,” I told him.

  Ty was quiet for a few minutes, then said, “That’s really nice of you, Haley.”

  “See you soon,” I said, then hung up.

  I took the exit for Colorado Boulevard, the main street that ran through Eagle Rock. It still looked as it must have appeared back in the day when Pat Boone topped the charts, with lots of small shops, restaurants, and mom-and-pop businesses.

  The GPS directed me onto Eagle Rock Boulevard for a couple of blocks, then through a few more turns, and finally onto the street where Juanita lived. I crept along, getting a look at the area. Stucco houses, fenced yards, mature landscaping. The neighborhood was older but in good shape. Kids rode bicycles and played in the yards. Not a lot of adults were out, but that wasn’t unusual for a hot summer afternoon.

  I pulled in at the curb and parked in front of Juanita’s house. The place was neat and clean, surrounded by a chain-link fence. It had a settled look to it, as if she and her family had lived there for years. I knew Juanita had a husband. She had two grown daughters, one here in Eagle Rock and another who’d recently moved out of state; I didn’t have contact info for either of them.

  I got out of my Honda and went through the gate. The front windows were closed and the blinds were down. I stepped up onto the porch and I rang the bell. No answer. I rang again, then knocked. Still no response.

  I glanced around, saw nobody looking, and opened the mailbox hanging by the front door. A handful of envelopes were inside, mostly bills, and the u
sual junk mail. I noted two different postmarks on them.

  I left the porch and followed the narrow concrete strips that led from the street to the detached garage at the back of the house. I gazed through the glass panel in the big rollup door and saw Juanita’s Chevy parked inside.

  While I was back there, I checked out the rear yard. Neat and orderly, just like the front. I stepped up onto the porch, cupped my hand against the window in the door, and gazed into Juanita’s kitchen. The light was on over the stove and several glasses sat on the counter by the sink. I knocked, but nobody appeared.

  No sign of a struggle that I could see, no broken door locks, no shattered windows, no blood, no dead body. Nothing indicated Mom was right in her assertion that Juanita was dead.

  Yet Juanita didn’t seem like the type of person to let two days of mail accumulate; but since it was mostly bills, what was the rush in taking them inside—not that I’d ever done that myself, of course. From the look of things, Juanita had simply left the house for a while, maybe to shop or visit a friend.

  Still, that didn’t explain why she hadn’t called Mom about not coming to work.

  I rounded the house and went out the gate. The neighborhood seemed quieter. The kids weren’t riding bikes now. A couple of people had come out of their houses and were gazing my way.

  I probably looked like a cop or a bill collector in my suit, which wouldn’t inspire anyone to talk to me, so I got in my car and left.

  Okay, so my investigation into Juanita’s supposed disappearance hadn’t netted much, but that was no reason to go back to work.

  Really, was there ever a reason to go back to work on a beautiful sunny Southern California day?

  I stopped at the traffic light and accessed the e-mail on my cell phone—which I think might be illegal—and found the home address of Max Corwin I’d oh-so-cleverly acquired earlier, scanned into my computer, and sent to myself, along with Ray’s and Tina’s info. I punched Max’s address into my GPS—which I’m pretty sure was also illegal—and hit the freeway heading west.

  Detective Shuman hadn’t given me any real info about why he suspected Max Corwin in Violet’s murder. I guess if he had any hard evidence, he’d have arrested Max already. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something I could uncover. Something that would prove Max was the killer—and I was innocent, of course.