Cube Sleuth (25 page)

“What do you care? You’re probably happy she’s dead.”

I suck air into my lungs and hold it there, leaning in until my nose is almost touching Faith’s. “Don’t ever say that again. You don’t know me.”

Faith looks terrified, her arms gripping her chair. “You gonna hit me or just follow me around?” She tries to sound calm, but her voice squeaks.

I keep my face close to hers. “You’re gonna help me. Not for me, but because someone in this building might be the reason Eve is dead.”

“That person could be you.”

I lean back, sit in her guest chair. “She called me before she jumped. I was the last person she talked to.”

Faith raises an eyebrow. “That true?”

I nod. “Why do you think I was the first one under the bridge?”

“Maybe you pushed her.” She smiles triumphantly.

I slam my fist on her desk and glare at her. She cowers. The woman in the cube beside hers yelps like a frightened puppy. “Don’t push me. I’m not in what you’d call a healthy state of mind. Tell me what you know about Eve and Ron.”

“Ron? She didn’t even know him.”

I tell her what Eve said on the phone before she jumped.

Faith looks confused. “That doesn’t make sense at all. They were never together. Not even friends. If they were, I would have known. We told each other everything. There was only you, and…”

“And?”

“Let’s go in the conference room.”

* * *

Faith closes the conference room door and has me sit as far away from the door as possible. She sits right next to me and whispers. “What I’m gonna say, no one here knows. You can’t repeat it. Understood?”

I nod.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” Before I finish saying the words, I decide this is the type of promise I will most likely have to break.

“Eve had a relationship with a married man for as long as she worked here.”

“With someone here?”

“No. She met him at her old job. I started here six months after Eve, so they had already been together a while when we became friends. She loved him so much. And he loved her. At least that’s what she said. But he wouldn’t leave his wife because of his kids. She always thought he would eventually get a divorce. The kids are college-aged now; they’re not kids anymore. But he still wouldn’t leave his wife, and Eve wouldn’t leave him. I tried to convince her to for years, but she wouldn’t listen.

“I told her she could never really be happy with him. How can you be happy if you’re a secret? She said she’d be miserable without him. I’d say to her ‘You’ll never get married, have a house with him, wake up on Sunday and read the paper together at the breakfast table.’ She wouldn’t hear it. I think she thought she was too old to find someone else. She didn’t realize how pretty she was.”

“What’s his name?” I dig my notebook out of my pocket.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I never met him. They met at weird times, in hotels, that kind of thing. It’s not like she took him to dinner parties.”

“But she never told you his name? You said she told you everything.”

“Her own mother never knew he existed. And never will. I was the only person she could talk to about him.”

“She ever use a nickname to talk about him?”

“She called him Mr. Luther. I think it was just a random fake name so we could talk about him without saying ‘the guy who’s cheating on his wife with you.’”

I write MR. LUTHER in my notebook and surround it in question marks. “Where did Eve work before she worked here?”

Faith looks up at the ceiling. “Oh, what the hell was it called?…Something Staffing. It was in Ambler. That’s all I remember. Something Staffing.”

I write down ________ STAFFING, AMBLER. “How long before I was with her did she break it off? Or did
he
break it off?”

Faith’s face contorts like she has a pain in her front teeth. She doesn’t want to be the one to tell me whatever she’s about to say. “They were still together when she was with you. She was with you to make Mr. Luther jealous, maybe force him to leave his wife. She left him hints around her apartment so he’d figure it out and realize that if he wouldn’t commit to her, she had other options. I guess it didn’t work out the way she thought it would, and she just gave up on it. On you. Sorry.”

I sit in silence for a minute letting this news sink in. Faith examines some invisible threads on her clothes, allowing me a moment of privacy.

“This makes sense, really. The way she came on to me so strong. It was out of nowhere. I didn’t question it because I just wanted her. Didn’t care why she wanted me. But this fits.”

Then, a thought strikes me. I lean in close to Faith. “Do you think he was at the funeral?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what he looked like. There were plenty of men there that I didn’t know; I assumed they were all family. High school friends.”

“I still don’t understand why she wouldn’t just tell you his first name. You know? Just Ted, or whatever. Why the fake name?”

“I have no idea.”

“Were they together right up to the end?”

“Don’t know. She stopped talking about him. Stopped talking about herself, too. I don’t know exactly what happened, but she went in her shell in the last few weeks of her life. I thought maybe Mr. Luther got really jealous and hit her or something. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Didn’t want my help.” Faith looks like she’s about to cry for what seems like a split second, then snaps out of it like someone threw a bucket of ice water in her face.

“I’ll find this guy.”

“You think you’re a detective or something?”

“Or something.” I’m struck by a thought, a vomitus, awful thought. What if
Keith
is Mr. Luther? It would explain why Eve made up a name for him. Maybe she lied to Faith about him not working here. I flip through my notebook to pretend I had this question prepared. “Did Eve and Keith have any kind of history?”

Faith laughs. “That jerk hit on her the first week she worked here. Asked her if she wanted to go to the Marriott with him. She said no thanks, that she already had one married man and didn’t need another. And she told him he looked like a four-eyed penis with his shaved head.”

I laugh so hard I nearly vomit. I can’t imagine Keith having a penis, let alone a libido. He doesn’t strike me as the type to be this assertive with a woman. But I’m relieved that I can rule him out as Mr. Luther.

“After that, she avoided Keith like the plague. She wouldn’t speak to him unless it was absolutely necessary. He did the same.”

“Any other guy here she had that kind of interaction with?”

“That guy in your department, the one with—”

“Cody?”

“Yeah, him. He tried to get in her pants a few times.”

Of course.

“He made some comment about mustache rides. She said she’d rather ride a spear than his Yosemite Sam ‘stache.”

I crack up again. Oh, Eve, now I really miss you…

* * *

Mr. Luther. A mystery man. A secret identity. This is exactly the type of clue I’ve been dying for. My very own Keyser Sozë. The mythical arch-criminal behind it all. In this case, most likely a middle-aged middle-class nobody with a beer belly who cheats on his wife.

Mr. Luther didn’t kill Ron, unless Ron really did have an affair with Eve and they both hid it so well that no one but Mr. Luther found out. What was this guy’s deal? Eve must’ve had a good reason not to tell her own mother that he existed, to use a fake name when she talked about him with Faith. What was Eve protecting him from?

Mr. Luther clearly doesn’t want anyone to know about him or his dirty deeds. Once I find him, I’ll use his fear of being exposed to get him to tell me what he knows. If he’ll indulge me, I might even shine a bright light in his eyes and ask him where he was on the evening of such-and-such.

Now all I have to do is find him.

After lunch the next day, I go into Suzanne’s office looking ready to cry and tell her that I need to leave for the day. She smiles warmly and says it’s no problem. I feel a tickle of guilt in the back of my throat.

Driving to Ambler with a printout of all of the companies with the word “Staff,” the new Bobby Pinker tells the old one that he should have taken half a vacation day and not taken advantage of Suzanne’s good nature.

Luckily, Ambler is a small town and only four companies in the area have “Staff” in their name. Eve worked at Paine-Skidder for six years, so it’s possible that no one she worked with at Something Staffing still works there. I need a good ruse to get someone in HR to look through their employment records and see if Eve ever worked there. For this I let the old Bobby Pinker take over, and he comes up with the idea to pretend to be the son Eve gave up for adoption, desperate to find a connection with her. A little perverse considering the nature of my relationship with Eve, but it’ll do the trick.

Something Staffing is either Zimmerman Staffing on Bethlehem Pike, Sweeney Staffing on Butler Pike, Staff Solutions on Fort Washington Avenue, or (this was a stretch) Anthony J. Stafford, D.D.O on Highland Avenue. Unless Something Staffing went out of business or moved to a different town. That would suck.

* * *

At Zimmerman Staffing, I get a little nervous as I launch into my lie. Making up a story about a dead woman that might change the way her old friends look at her makes me feel horrible.

I walk to the receptionist, whose smile reminds me of the way an infant smiles, when you’re not sure if they’re happy or just pooping. I start my spiel and it hits me that her old coworkers probably know she died, may have been at the funeral. I need to account for this in my story or pretend to be shocked when they tell me the bad news.

Maxine, the poop-smiler, taps a pen into her open palm. “Eve Mothit. That name doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

“How long’ve you worked here?”

“Four years.”

“She’s been gone for at least six, I think. Can I talk to your HR person?”

“Sure.” She smiles wider and resembles an infant who’s really straining. “Sure. One sec.” She picks up the phone and starts to dial, then stops. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

I open my mouth to say Bobby Pinker, then think how criminally stupid it would be to use my real name. I wish I’d taken the time to think of a good pseudonym. “My name…it’s…Vince Codmist.” What the hell kinda stupid name did I just say?

“OK, Mr. Codmist. One sec.”

* * *

The HR guy’s office smells like a burp. He has a bloated belly and his tie comes past his belt buckle and halfway down his fly. His voice has a deep James Earl Jones, rumble, but with a strong lisp. After telling him my lie, Mr. Earl Jones leans back in his chair and shakes his head from side to side. “I’m schorry. Your mother never worked here. I’ve been with Zchimmerman for fifteen yearsch and could rattle off the namesch of every employee schinche I schtarted and tell you their schtart date. I don’t need to look at my filesch. Schorry you had to come all the way down here to find that out.”

Mr. Earl Jonesch stands and extends his hand.

* * *

I get basically the same story from the HR woman at Sweeny Staffing, but nothing there reminded me of poop or a burp, and no one had a speech impediment. So, moving right along…

* * *

I tell the receptionist at Staff Solutions a revised lie. “She passed away recently. I had been looking for her for a while and didn’t find her until it was too late. I was hoping someone here might remember her and could tell me about her. What she was like, what she liked to do.”

The Staff Solutions receptionist speaks with a funereal tone. “I didn’t know your mother, but she did work here. I’m sorry for your loss. A few people here now worked with her. They were all pretty distraught over her passing. It’s a small company, like a family. I’m sure one of them can tell you all about her. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll go ask around.” She smiles a beautiful, capped-tooth smile.

So it was Staff Something, Faith. Not Something Staffing. Way to go.

I sit and wait to talk to one of Eve’s old friends, tapping my thighs with my fingers and taking deep breaths.

One hen, Two ducks, Three squawking geese, Four corpulent porpoises, Five limerick oysters, Six pairs of Revlon tweezers, Seven charging Macedonians in full battle array, Eight brass monkeys from the deep dark crypts of ancient Egypt, Nine peripatetic, paraplegic old men in wheelchairs with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth, Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who quiver the quo of the quay, all at the very same time
.

The thought that anyone close to Eve might know that she never had a child she had to give up makes me feel nauseous. I revise my lie as the receptionist returns with a man who looks about Eve’s age.

The man’s eye contact unnerves me. I know he’s never heard of me, must think I’m a con man. Extending his hand, he keeps direct eye contact and says my name like a politician who speaks out loud to remember it. “Hi, …Vince. I’m Nick Wynant. I worked with your—with Eve for three years. Why don’t we go talk in the lunch room?” Nick’s meaty hand grips mine, his eyes scan me like a metal detector.

I walk behind him to the lunchroom. He’s half a foot taller than me and his back is so broad I could sleep on it sideways. His wavy salt and pepper hair looks like a combed Brillo Pad. We sit at a table in the empty lunchroom. Nick leans forward and smiles suspiciously at me. “I have to say, this is really a surprise to me, Eve having a son. I knew her very well. She never mentioned you. We weren’t just work friends, we used to spend time together outside this place.”

I can’t help but interpret “spend time” as “have lots of sex.” I ignore this for now and focus on selling my false identity. “I didn’t know my mother, obviously, so I don’t know why she didn’t tell you. She was so young when it happened. About seventeen. Maybe the guy she was with was a bad person.”

“You mean your dad?”

Oops, yes, I do. “Yeah… I don’t know him either. But maybe she felt guilty for giving me up. I honestly have no idea. But I’m pretty sure she never tried to find me, so maybe that says it all.”