Tote Bags and Toe Tags

by Dorothy Howell

  Yeah, okay, it was crappy of me not to explain everything to Jack before he got here, but some things were better when presented in person.

  “Thank you for coming by,” I said as I took his hand.

  My knees wobbled. Talk about a warm, firm handshake.

  “Let’s go to my office,” I said. That might have come out in a breathy little sigh.

  Jack threw a quick, questioning glance at Camille. She looked particularly skeletal this afternoon, her face more drawn and waxy than usual.

  “I’m pretty sure she came back through time to kill John Connor,” I whispered.

  He nodded and followed me down the hall.

  “Nice,” he commented as we walked past the LAPD crime scene tape still covering the door to Constance’s office.

  “The cops won’t take it down,” I told him as we walked into my office. “That’s why I called you.”

  Jack eyed the massive floral arrangements filling my office.

  “Did someone else die?” he asked.

  “The day’s not over,” I said.

  I pushed my office door closed and turned to face Jack. Fading sunlight filtered in through the window. The room seemed smaller. Jack seemed—

  Never mind. I had to stick to business.

  “I need a favor,” I said. “It’s nothing big. Really. And it’s not illegal—technically. I don’t think. Well, probably not. But you have to be quick.”

  “I’m never quick.”

  I wish he hadn’t said that in his Barry White voice.

  My stomach got kind of gooey, but I fought it off.

  “Come over here,” I said, moving past him to the tall file cabinet in the corner. “All you have to do is help me get up there, then wait while I climb through the ceiling into the office next door, and pull me back up when I’m finished over there.”

  Jack just looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Jack had a way about him that affected me in lots of ways, and forcing me to blab on with his silence was one of my least favorite.

  I’d come up with this plan after Adela’s oh-so-pleasant visit to my office this afternoon. If I had any hope of keeping my job, I absolutely had to pull off a fabulous retirement party for Mr. Dempsey. Everything I needed to do was locked up in Constance’s office, sealed behind LAPD crime scene tape. I had no idea where the key was kept, and even if I managed to find it, I didn’t want anyone to see me going inside. If word got back to Detective Madison—and it would because that’s just the way offices work—he would be down here in a superhero flash, slapping on the cuffs.

  “Look, I need information that’s in that office,” I told Jack.

  I saw no need to mention my renegade balloon purchases or my flagrant disregard of the corporate list of authorized restaurants.

  “There’s no way to get what I need except to climb in through the ceiling,” I said.

  “What kind of information?” Jack asked.

  “It’s nothing illegal or top secret,” I said in my let’s-move-on voice.

  “What kind of information?” Jack asked again.

  Good grief. Why can’t he just roll with this?

  “It’s information about a party,” I said.

  His left eyebrow crept up a half-inch. “A party?”

  What was it with men? Why did they have so much trouble understanding the most basic concepts?

  “The less you know, the better,” I told him. “Nothing illegal is happening here. We’re not breaking and entering because nothing is being broken, and entering doesn’t count if you’re already in the building. Probably. And if it does, it shouldn’t.”

  Jack just stared at me.

  Okay, now I was getting annoyed. I couldn’t hang around inside the building after office hours forever. Someone would notice my leaving later than usual and it might arouse suspicion. Plus, I had to work at Holt’s tonight and I didn’t want the hassle if I was late.

  “Your total involvement is to help me get over the wall, then pull me back again,” I said.

  I remembered from being inside Constance’s office that she had no furniture in the back corner of the room, the spot that corresponded to the tall file cabinet in my office, leaving me no way to get back into my office.

  Of course, once I was inside I could move something over to stand on while I climbed back up, but what if Detectives Madison or Shuman came back to check something? They’d probably made a diagram of the office—that’s what they do on all the TV crime shows—and they’d know the furniture had been moved, and I’d be their one and only suspect.

  “It’s no big deal,” I insisted. “I go to the gym and work out, but I concentrate on my thighs and legs, not my arms.”

  Jack’s gaze dipped a bit. “Time well spent,” he said.

  “Are you going to help me, or not?” I asked.

  He hesitated a few seconds, then said, “I’m in.”

  “Good. Now turn around while I get undressed,” I said.

  Both eyebrows shot up.

  “A covert op in lingerie?” he asked. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  “Just turn around,” I told him.

  When I’d decided to climb into Constance’s office this afternoon, I knew I couldn’t execute the necessary moves in my business suit and heels. No way could I go home to get something op-worthy to wear, with Ty there. So I’d found a store a couple of blocks from here and bought sweatpants and a T-shirt—in black, of course.

  I grabbed my shopping bag from under my desk and retreated to the far corner of my office near the door, but away from the glass panel that allowed anyone in the hallway to see inside. Jack turned his back and stared out the window.

  “Hey, did you find out about the Dempsey Rowland lawsuits I asked you about?” I said, and kicked off my pumps.

  “You mean the last favor you asked?” Jack said.

  “Yeah, okay, I’ve asked a lot of favors lately,” I said as I took off my suit. “I owe you dinner, or something.”

  “I’ll take or something,” he said.

  Jeez, I wish he’d stop talking that way when I’m half-dressed.

  “Dempsey Rowland has been the target of a number of lawsuits,” Jack said.

  “Nuisance suits?” I asked, pulling on sweatpants. “That’s pretty standard stuff for any big company.”

  “More than that,” Jack said. “Sex discrimination suits filed by women who worked here. Executive-level women complaining about low salaries, slow promotions, things like that.”

  “Maybe that explains why so few younger women work here, except in the Support Unit, and why so many women in support never get promoted,” I said. “Word got out that Dempsey Rowland wasn’t a good working environment for females.”

  “Try hostile environment,” Jack said. “Arthur Dempsey has been sued personally for sexual harassment.”

  Okay, that really explained why so few young women worked in the Executive Unit. Human Resources must have figured that with Dempsey retiring, it was finally safe to hire women—thus, my new job.

  Wow, did I have great timing, or what?

  “The suits that were settled all had a confidentiality clause,” Jack said.

  “That figures,” I said, as I pulled on my T-shirt. “Dempsey Rowland is crazy concerned about their public image.”

  I pulled the tote I’d bought this afternoon from the shopping bag. It was a no-name canvas bag—the Temptress would have been perfect for the occasion—and I felt a familiar wave of nausea at carrying a nondesigner bag, but I powered through.

  I can do that sometimes.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” I said.

  Jack looked me up and down, from my head to my bare feet—thank goodness I had a fresh pedi—and said, “It’s going to be dirty up there.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “It’s a small space,” he told me.

  “Doesn’t scare me.”

  “With bugs,” he added.

  “Bugs?”

/>   “And spiders.”

  “Spiders?”

  Oh my God, I’d never thought about bugs and spiders. I didn’t want to crawl around with bugs and spiders—not in this outfit. I needed a hazmat suit with goggles, gloves, and boots.

  I drew in a breath, forcing myself to calm down. Icky as it would be, I had to go through with this. I absolutely had to get that retirement info from Constance’s office. My entire life depended on it. Sort of.

  “That’s okay. I’m doing this,” I said. I might not have said that with as much conviction as I should have.

  “Let’s go,” Jack said.

  I pushed my desk chair over to the file cabinet, then removed Ty’s roses and put them on my credenza. When I looked again, Jack had his jacket and shirt off revealing a snug, sparkling white wifebeater and drool-worthy muscles. In a flash, he stepped onto the desk chair, climbed onto the file cabinet, lifted out the panel in the drop ceiling, and disappeared.

  My knees gave out and I dropped into the chair. Oh my God, was that hot or what?

  Then I came to my senses and scrambled up the chair and onto the file cabinet.

  The crawl space was creepy, all right, dark and dusty, with all kinds of cables and wires running alongside duct work. It didn’t smell so great. The ceiling panel in the adjoining office was gone. I raised onto my tiptoes and peered over the common wall.

  Jack stood below looking up at me.

  “What do you need?” he asked, in a low voice.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  Oh my God, who cared about dirt, bugs, and spiders? I was desperate to get into that office with Jack—just to make sure nothing was missed, of course.

  He glanced at the glass panel in the office door. At any second, somebody could walk down the hall and see him inside. Or peek into my office and see me on the file cabinet.

  “The clock’s ticking, Haley,” he said.

  Jack was right.

  I hate it when other people are right.

  “Look in the desk for files labeled ‘retirement party’ or anything to do with the Roosevelt Hotel,” I said.

  Jack blasted through the cabinets, the credenza, the desk drawers, pulling out file after file. He handed them up to me.

  “I’ll check the computer,” he said quietly, and went back to the desk.

  From the number and weight of the files he’d given me, I figured this had to be everything. Plus, Constance probably wasn’t any better with her computer than most of the other women in the building, which was why she’d had Patty—her second brain, as Adela had called her—to help.

  Jack perched on the edge of the desk chair and started pecking away at the keyboard. I climbed down from the cabinet, dumped the files on my desk, then shimmied up again.

  From the angle of the computer, I could see Jack paging through screen after screen—obviously, Constance didn’t believe in password protecting anything—then he stopped. I knew he’d found something.

  I squirmed higher on the wall and leaned into Constance’s office as far as I dared. Jack went through the drawers again, then stopped and pulled out a box of CDs. He flipped through the jewel cases, then selected a disk, which must have been blank, and popped it into the tray on the tower.

  Wow, he was superfast.

  If I was going to be a private detective, I was definitely going to have to up my game.

  Seconds ticked by while the disk copied. Jack sat perfectly still, watching the screen. I glanced at the glass panel in the door to the hallway. Nobody outside. I scanned the drawers to make sure Jack hadn’t left anything open. He hadn’t.

  Somebody walked past the door. Yikes!

  “Hide,” I whispered.

  I ducked down behind the common wall. A couple of seconds passed. I straightened up and peered into Constance’s office. Jack had the CD out of the tower. He snapped it into a jewel case, logged off of the computer, then gathered up all the cases.

  Something caught my eye. One of the cases had a cover that looked familiar.

  “Bring that one,” I whispered.

  Jack looked up at me and shuffled through them one by one until I nodded. He put the rest back in the drawer, did a quick sweep of the room, then headed toward me.

  I scrambled down from the file cabinet. A second later, Jack’s face appeared over the wall. He must have pulled himself straight up—how hot was that?

  He climbed over the wall, put both panels back in place, then jumped down from the file cabinet.

  “Wow. That was awesome,” I said.

  “Damn right it was,” he told me, then presented me with the CDs he pulled from his back pocket.

  I recognized one of the covers right away. It was a pink and black Burberry.

  “You owe me,” Jack said.

  I’d seen this pattern several years ago when they’d come out with a limited edition line of handbags and accessories.

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” Jack said.

  Only, I’d seen it recently. But where?

  “When I want it,” he said.

  Jack’s hand splayed across my cheek. His palm was hot. He tilted my face up until I met his gaze. His eyes were hotter.

  He leaned down until his mouth hovered above mine. His breath was smoking hot.

  Jack angled closer and his lips moved closer.

  I put my finger across his mouth, stopping him.

  I’ve got an official boyfriend. And that’s that.

  Jack just hung there for a minute, then backed away.

  “You still owe me,” he said.

  He picked up his shirt and sport coat, and left.

  “My boyfriend and his new girlfriend broke up,” Sandy said.

  Bella and I sat across from her at a table in the Holt’s breakroom as the minutes remaining on our break ticked away and we all waited for the store to close so we could get on with something interesting.

  For a change, my evening shift had flown by—probably because I couldn’t stop thinking about what had almost happened between Jack and me in my office a few hours ago.

  I desperately needed to talk to Marcie about this. Only a BFF could help me process this whole thing.

  Sandy’s comment blew me out of my own problems and landed me squarely into hers.

  “You mean your ex-boyfriend?” Bella asked.

  She still had the tropical thing going on with her hair. Tonight she’d sculpted it to resemble an erupting volcano. Or maybe it was a whale with a waterspout. I couldn’t be sure.

  “You two broke up,” I said. “He and the new girlfriend were going to Hawaii, weren’t they? You went shopping with him for clothes.”

  Sandy nodded. “They broke up. Things weren’t as serious between them as I thought.”

  “You mean he didn’t buy her an engagement ring when he went into the jewelry store?” Bella asked. “While you sat outside holding all the bags?”

  “No,” Sandy said. “He bought her earrings. See?”

  She pulled back her hair and pointed to gold loops swinging from her earlobes.

  Bella and I looked at the earrings, then at each other. If somebody had held a match to us, we’d have launched straight through the roof.

  “Those are the earrings he bought for her?” Bella demanded.

  “And he gave them to you?” I asked.

  “They’re really quite lovely,” Sandy said.

  “And you took them?” Bella asked.

  “And kept them?” I asked.

  “He said he really had me in mind when he bought them,” Sandy said. “He said I truly deserved them.”

  “Lord help me,” Bella murmured, as she rose from the table. “Get me out of here before I say something that ought to be said.”

  She left the breakroom.

  I, however, couldn’t hold back.

  “Dump that loser,” I told her. “He treats you like dirt.”

  “He’s an artist, Haley,” Sandy said.

  “He does tattoos.”

  “That’s
how all artists are,” she said. “That’s the price they pay for being so creative.”

  Sandy and I had been friends for a long time, but for a moment I thought I might bitch-slap her—just to knock some sense into her.

  The breakroom door swung open and Jeanette, the store manager, walked in. Tonight she had on an I-paid-big-bucks-for-this-six-years-ago-and-I’m-going-to-wear-it- until-the-buttons-pop-off suit which, from the look of things, could happen at any moment. She’d gone urban, for some unknown reason, with a gray skirt and a matching jacket that had wide shoulders covered with crystals.

  She looked like the Chrysler Building.

  “Haley, could I see you for a moment?” Jeanette asked.

  Immediately, I shifted into no-can-do mode. I’ve found that when a supervisor seeks you out, it’s only because they want you to do something—like a special project, or additional duties. No way was I saying yes to anything.

  That’s how I roll.

  “I just sat down for my break,” I said, which was a total lie but absolutely necessary under the circumstances.

  “You can come back,” Jeanette said. “There are some people in my office who need to speak to you.”

  Somehow, I doubted this was anything that would benefit me.

  “Immediately,” Jeanette added, using her I’m-the-boss voice.

  I hate that voice.

  I followed her out of the breakroom and down the hall to her office. Jeanette paused outside the closed door.

  “You can ask for a lawyer,” she said, then pushed the door open and walked away.

  I looked inside. Detective Madison sat behind Jeanette’s desk and Detective Shuman stood behind him.

  Oh, jeez, this couldn’t be good.

  “And so we meet again,” Detective Madison called. He reared back in his chair and gave me a wide I’ve-got-you-now smile. “Come in, come in. We have lots to talk about.”

  “I doubt that,” I said.

  “Oh, but we do,” Madison said. He was still grinning, still thoroughly enjoying himself—at my expense, of course.

  I glanced at Shuman. He looked tense. I’d seen that expression before—but not in a good way. I was sure his girlfriend had never seen it.

  “Let’s start off with Erma Pomeroy,” Detective Madison announced.

  I got a weird feeling.