He went to send in my first interview, and I was left to ponder what scent Lazenby and his boys were chasing. Wallace was wrong on that score. Lazenby was a lot of things, but a time-waster wasn’t one of them. If they were following the money, there was money to follow.
I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow of the day. It was easily one of the longest, driest slogs I’ve ever been ordered to march. I spoke with forty-three executives—forty of them men. Most were married, divorced, or widowed, and seven out of ten had middle age in their rearview. My script, as it developed, came out something like this.
How long have you been with Collins Steelworks?
Was this your first time at the Collins residence? How did you like it?
Were you close to Abigail or Alistair Collins?
What did you do at the party? Who did you spend your time talking with?
Did you see or talk to Abigail Collins before midnight? What about?
Did you happen to see or talk to Rebecca or Randolph Collins?
Were you in the office for the séance? What did you think?
How was everyone else taking it? Did anyone seem particularly upset other than Abigail and Rebecca?
When did you leave the party?
Were you there when the body was found?
What’s the best time to phone your wife? I promise not to bother her. Really, I promise.
There were variations, but that was more or less my day. While Ms. Pentecost might have been able to make gold out of that heap of straw, I wasn’t seeing it.
The only tidbits that piqued my interest were the following, in no particular order.
Al Collins was almost universally admired and feared in equal measure, and he logged in more hours at the office than any two of his subordinates put together.
Abigail Collins was…less admired. Everyone made the appropriate sympathetic noises, but I got the impression that a lot of the management resented her poking her nose into the company after her husband’s death. That she had grown a conscience and was considering pulling the company out of military contracts made more than a few of them grind their teeth.
The man who got outed at the party by Belestrade as planning a secret retirement admitted it hadn’t been so secret. He’d told several friends and colleagues and had been cutting back on his hours. Even if nobody had squealed, deductions could have been made.
The husband whose wife’s pregnancy Belestrade had divined? He’d let slip that his missus was a famous lover of champagne. Not a drunk, he stressed. A connoisseur. However you phrase it, her sticking to ginger ale at the party might not have gone unnoticed.
Speaking of drunk, I discovered that “indisposed” was white-collar code for throwing up in the bathroom. Used in a sentence: Conroy from accounting was indisposed in the second-floor bathroom from the end of the séance up until they started yelling “fire.” In between, he didn’t hear anyone enter the study. That wasn’t saying much as he was “loudly” indisposed. He emerged when they started battering down the study door but said he never went in.
One of the executives’ wives had recently taken up photography and had brought her brand-new Kodak to the party. She’d spent the evening burning through film. This perked me up, but the man, a middle manager in sales whose chin had been repossessed, assured me everything would turn out blurry, overexposed, or both. I made him promise to send me copies as soon as they were developed.
Were all of these things actually notable? Or were they just moderately less boring than the rest of the dross? I wasn’t willing to wager. Not right then.
I took a break at twelve-thirty for lunch and spent it in the company’s basement cafeteria, which was big and clean with some not-half-bad grub. It was used by both the suits and the factory staff, but there was an invisible but very firm demarcation line between the two.
I split the difference and planted myself at a table of secretaries. I played coy and waited for one of them to make the first move.
Eventually a tall number sporting tortoiseshell glasses and a jet-black ponytail leaned over and, in an almost conspiratorial whisper, said, “You work for Lillian Pentecost, don’t you? What’s that like?”
I started in on a few of my favorite anecdotes and pretty soon had the whole table hanging on my every word. A few scoffed and scowled and clutched their pearls at the idea of a woman getting her hands dirty with rapists and murderers. But I noticed that they leaned in just as hard as everyone else at the dramatic moments.
Another thing that shorthand class taught me is that the life of an executive secretary is one of quiet desperation and gossip is as good as gold. Soon, I had them talking, too. To be honest, that wasn’t exactly a feat worthy of Hercules. The violent death of the company’s matriarch does a lot to grease the conversation.
A few things that I picked up from the secretaries that I hadn’t gotten from their bosses:
Harrison Wallace hadn’t been the same since Al Collins’s death. The words “moody,” “depressed,” and “irritable” were used, none of which were qualities he’d exhibited before. So he hadn’t been born with the sour face.
One of the older secretaries noted that this change in mood predated his friend’s suicide, and that the two may have been arguing. Wallace and Collins used to have connecting offices, but a few months before Collins’s death Wallace relocated to new digs on the other side of the building.
“He said it was because the air-conditioning in his office never worked right,” the gray-headed woman said. “But I don’t think that’s true.”
When I asked why, she said it was because Wallace didn’t seem to really want to change offices.
A couple of the women had been there long enough that they remembered when Abigail had been Harrison and Alistair’s shared secretary.
“The pregnancy was a huge scandal,” another of the gray-hairs said. “And when Mr. Collins came out and said they were his? It was unheard of!”
“Did anyone suspect the two were an item beforehand?”
“Not a peep,” she said. “But it didn’t surprise me. Abigail was…friendly.”
“Anyone else she might have been making friends with?”
I was hoping she’d point the finger at Harrison Wallace, but she shook her head.
“Oh, I didn’t pay that much attention,” she assured me. “It was just known. She was a jazz girl. And that was before every girl was a jazz girl.”
That got all the gray-hairs chuckling and nodding along. Shortly after that they all excused themselves and headed back to work.
So Abigail Collins was friendly. That was interesting.
Of course, a twenty-year-old rumor like that could have meant squat. A beautiful young woman who snares her wealthy boss, either accidentally or on purpose, is just the kind of person who’d be retroactively smeared.
Still, it made multiple contestants for fatherhood a stronger possibility.
One other thing I’d managed to squeeze out of the secretaries: The police were passing out a lot of subpoenas. They were being cagey about it—handing out paper for files, employee records, expense reports, and doing it across a lot of departments. Basically the DA’s office was playing three-card monte with their investigation. It made me wonder where the queen was.
CHAPTER 15
I put in a few more hours in the conference room, then at three-thirty sharp Wallace reappeared to escort me to the main factory building. I was handed a hard hat and led out onto the factory floor.
It was a stark contrast to the quiet, antiseptic offices. Everything reeked of chemicals and scorched metal. The heat was tremendous and I immediately began sweating through my blazer. Wallace seemed untouched by the heat and even shivered once or twice, as if grazed by some arctic breeze only he could feel.
Machines were hammering, folding, riveting, and generally turning heaps of
steel into more elegantly shaped heaps of steel. Most would be used to house explosives that could then be dropped, fired, launched, or otherwise used to blow someone or other to kingdom come. The war might have been over, but the war business was going strong.
A couple hundred people moved in and around the machinery, all sweating through more or less identical blue coveralls. I was pleased to see that at least half were women, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. The boys were on their way back from overseas, and companies had already publicly declared that their jobs would be waiting for them when they returned. Rosie the Riveter was heading back to the kitchen or to the unemployment line.
Wallace and I weaved through the factory, dodging elbows and forklifts, and basically trying to avoid an awful death. Not too different from the circus really. Just replace the smell of manure with the smell of solder.
I followed Wallace up some stairs to a catwalk overlooking the factory floor. There we found Randolph having a heated conversation with a character who could have passed for the circus strongman: six feet and change, completely bald, with shoulders and arms that tested the structural integrity of his coveralls.
I’d have pegged him for a smelter or a grinder or some job that required lifting heavy things and putting them down again, but the white shirt and tie peeking out from the top of his coveralls said management. Randolph and the strongman cut their chat short when they saw us.
“Ms. Parker—this is John Meredith, our senior floor manager!” Wallace shouted above the din. “Meredith, this is the, um…the individual I told you about. Please answer whatever questions she might have for you.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Wallace,” he said. He had a voice like somebody had slipped gravel into his Grape-Nuts.
“You want me to sit in?” Randolph asked Meredith. It was an odd question from a part-owner to a floor manager. Wallace’s scowl told me he’d caught the disregard for rank as well, but he kept mum.
“That’s all right, Randy,” Meredith said with more smirk than smile. “If I can run the floor, I think I can handle a little girl with some questions.”
I let the “little girl” jab slide. I was in prim and proper disguise, after all.
“Come on, Randolph,” Wallace said. “We should go over the quarterlies if you’re going to sit in on the next board meeting. Ms. Parker, will you be needing me after you’re done here?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “If I do, I know how to find you.”
He nodded, then followed Randolph down the stairs.
Meredith led me along the catwalk to a door. Beyond that was a small, dank hallway, and another door that opened to reveal an office. Or a broom closet with ambition. There was a metal chair and a wooden desk so scarred it was useless as a writing surface.
He shut the door behind us, but the factory noise seeped through. I took the one chair, while he hopped up on the desk. I waited a breath for it to collapse, but it defied the odds.
“Don’t use this much,” he said. “Don’t have much use for it.”
He was so close that I could smell him—shirt starch, talcum, and sweat. His face was only about four feet from mine. It wasn’t a great face to see in close-up. His nose had been broken more than once, and he had the little cuts around his eyes that were the mark of a brawler.
“What do you want to know?” he graveled.
“Have you been with the company long?” I asked.
He laughed. “Since I was old enough to use a hammer without smashing my fingers. Started on the floor when I was fifteen hauling scrap. Then I moved to stacking boxes in the warehouse. Then riveter, assistant floor manager, crew manager, floor manager. Now I get to oversee the whole damn lot ten shifts a week.”
He looked to be on either side of forty-five, which made him one of the longest-serving Collins employees I’d talked to.
“You must have known Abigail Collins back when she was Abigail Pratt.”
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, I knew her to say hello. She’d come onto the floor with her old man—I mean her boss. Taking notes and all that. He’d be over here all the time. Didn’t trust us to do our jobs. That kind of guy. But I didn’t know her much except to say hi.”
“You seem to be friends with her son,” I pointed out.
“I don’t know about friends,” he said, wiping away a sheen of sweat from his dome. “We’re friendly. He’s a good kid. Gave him his first tour of the factory floor back when he and his sister only came up to about my knee.”
“Was he the one who invited you to the party?” I asked.
“I got invited to the party because I’m management,” he said, leaning another inch toward me. “You know, I volunteered for the army but they wouldn’t take me. Said my job here was vital to the war effort.”
The massive chip on his shoulder wobbled a bit, but he righted it.
“All right,” I said. “You were there because you belong there. Who’d you talk to?”
“Mostly Randy,” he said. “Couple guys from shipping and distribution. I made small talk with the head of personnel—always good to make nice with the guy who signs off on your overtime, right?”
I smiled and nodded like, yes, we’re both just two blue collars in white-collar masquerade.
“Did you talk to Mrs. Collins at all?”
He shifted his weight and the table creaked dangerously. “Little bit,” he said. “Thanked her for having me. Being polite, you know?”
“Did she return it?”
“What?”
“The politeness,” I said. “Was she polite to you?”
He was really sweating now. Then again, so was I. There were no vents in the office, and the room was starting to bake.
“Sure, she was polite. Why wouldn’t she be?” he asked.
“I’ve been talking to other people around here, and she doesn’t seem to be so well liked. Especially with people who knew her from before.”
“That’s no surprise. She had aspirations and she let people know it.”
“How could you tell?” I asked.
“You can always tell a girl like that,” he said. “Girl who thinks she’s better than everyone around her.”
If it was a jab at me, it wasn’t subtle. I shrugged it off.
“What did you make of the séance?” I asked.
His lip curled into a sneer. “I thought it was nonsense. Kind of thing you waste money on when you’ve got it to waste. That’s why I didn’t go up.”
“You didn’t go into the office?”
“Nah,” he said. “Got one of the bartenders to make me something stronger than champagne, then went out back for a cigar and a snort. Didn’t know about the thing until Randy came out and told me.”
“What did he say?”
“That this voodoo woman or whatever she calls herself had played some tricks and really upset Becca.” He cracked his knuckles, one at a time in slow succession. “She didn’t deserve that.”
I had the feeling he took Becca’s discomfiture personally.
“Are you as friendly with Miss Collins as you are with her brother?” I asked.
“Not so much, I guess,” he said. “Never got to know her like I did Randy.”
“You don’t like her as much?”
“I like her plenty. She’s just more…standoffish.”
There was definitely something there. Bitterness, maybe? Like he’d tried to make nice with Becca and she’d shot him down. I wondered if Meredith had a crush on the boss’s daughter.
“Anyway, if somebody should have been clubbed, it should have been that Belestrade woman,” he said. “Toying with people like she did. Somebody should catch her in a dark alley and teach her a lesson.”
With each word, he leaned in a little farther until his face was barely two feet from mine. I couldn’t he
lp staring at his battered nose. I wondered who’d had the guts to take a swing at him, and what they’d looked like after.
The metal chair began to feel a lot harder. I crossed my legs, and he glanced down to take in an eyeful. He wasn’t quick about it either. When he looked back up, our eyes met, and he knew he’d been caught. He didn’t even blink. Just gave a little what-are-ya-gonna-do smile.
It occurred to me how isolated we were. Two doors between us and the factory floor, and the din so loud any noise from the office would be lost.
“I, um…I understand you were the one that managed to get the door down,” I said.
“Still got the bruise on my shoulder.”
“What did you see?”
“Not a thing at first. It was all smoke,” he said. “Then I saw the fire and smothered it with some of those black curtains. Then Becca yelled and I saw…I saw Mrs. Collins.”
“Who followed you in?”
“Wallace, Randy. Conroy was there, but I don’t think he came into the room. Becca was there. And what’s-his-name—the butler. And that voodoo woman.”
I looked up from my notebook.
“Belestrade was still there?”
“Yeah, I think in the hall with Conroy. Right behind him.”
Conroy hadn’t mentioned seeing the clairvoyant after the door had been busted down. But he’d also admitted to drinking two bottles of champagne and being nearsighted.
“You’re sure it was her?” I asked. “Could it have been someone else?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “The woman’s kinda memorable.”
Belestrade had still been there when the body was found but gone by the time the police arrived. That little tidbit might have made the entire slog of a day worth it.
I gave a half grin and wound up my last pitch. “Do you want to nominate a murderer?”
He hopped off the desk and stared down at me like I was a rat that had made it through the traps.
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 14
