Double Down (6 page)

Fuming over my inability to make any kind of a connection with him, I marched in and blurted out, “I assume you’re waiting for me?”

All amusement left his face as he rose to follow me to Monica’s office.

Nice going, I thought. Now he can add
shrew
to the list of reasons he hates you. When we reached my office, I sat down behind the desk.

He sat down in the chair beside the desk and handed me Monica’s calendar. “I want to re-create her final week as far as possible.”

I flipped through the pages. “The initials for these first few appointments are for supervisors she consulted to answer some union grievances.” I wrote down the names and departments. The SM of C is probably Scott from the Culinary Union.” I added his name to the list. “This appointment with JM from the T has to be Jerry McCrea from the Teamsters’ union, except that makes no sense. I’ve been in negotiations with the Teamsters for the last couple of weeks. Jerry should have brought any issues that came up directly to the negotiation table. Even if he tried an end run around me, Monica should have notified me immediately. According to this, she met with him three days before I wrapped up the negotiations.”

Since he didn’t comment, I handed him the list I’d made, and promised to research the others I didn’t recognize. As he started to get up and leave, I stopped him. I wanted to apologize for my earlier rudeness, but since I couldn‘t very well explain it, I simply said, “Are Rose and Danny still on your list of suspects?”

He sat back down. “Everyone is still on my list.”

“
Including me?”

He smiled that crooked little half smile and my heartbeat accelerated. “No your mother verified your alibi.”

“
You spoke to my mother?” I was astounded, not because he called her, but because she hadn’t called me immediately afterward. “I can’t believe she didn’t freak out when she heard about the murder in my office.”

He raised one eyebrow. “I doubt the officer who spoke with her gave her that information.”

So he hadn’t talked to her directly. Still any inquiry from the police about me should have set her off. Charlene must be shielding me. He stood up and so did I. “I’ll call you when I identify the other names.” He nodded. In spite of the fact that he’d said very little, he seemed as hesitant to leave, as I was to let him go. Finally, I held out my hand to shake his. When his skin touched mine, I felt a jolt. My heart went into overdrive and I couldn’t breathe for a second. I looked up to see if he felt it too.

His eyes widened and then he looked down, dark lashes masking any other reaction. He released my hand, mumbled goodbye, and left.

I stood there rubbing my still tingling hand, wondering what just happened. Did he feel what I felt, or was he just surprised at my reaction?

Okay, maybe my mother was right. Obviously, I did need more of a social life, when shaking a man’s hand was all it took to ratchet up my blood pressure. Then again, I hadn’t had much sleep, so maybe I just needed a break. I called Linda Mann, the Slot Director and Angie Cho, the Hotel Director, arranging to meet them in our Mexican restaurant for lunch. On my way out, I stopped by Charlene’s desk to get my messages. “Has my mother called?”

“
Only about six times. I explained that you were fine and would call her as soon as you were free. Please be free soon,” she begged. She looked up and raised her eyebrows as if to question my earlier behavior, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it, yet. Charlene knows me so well that she let it go. She handed me a group of phone messages and said, “Oh, and I made an appointment for you at 2:00 p.m. with a Gary Dillon. He isn’t an employee, but said it was urgent that he speak with you about the sexual harassment of one of our employees. He wouldn’t say anymore.”

I thanked her and told her I would call my mom before going to lunch. It wasn’t fair to Charlene to put it off. After I assured Mom several times that I was alive and well and not suspected of anything, she reminded me of dinner. I promised I would be there and tell her everything.

***

Linda and Angie were waiting for me in the restaurant. As the only other women on the executive committee, we’ve become good friends. They’re the ones I depend on to either give me a good ass kicking or moral support. I wasn’t sure which I’d get today. Angie was a tiny Asian woman, who never backed down from a fight. I’d watched with admiration as she took on the good old boys and earned their respect. She also had built in bullshit radar, so I especially wanted to get her take on Monica. Tony had promoted Linda to Slot Director against considerable opposition from the good old boys who thought the gaming side of the business belonged to a man. She looks like a kewpie doll, all soft with a sweet voice. However, I’d seen her stand up to a six foot, 250-pound man and tell him, “I don’t care how it’s been done for the last twenty years, I’m doing it differently, and if you don’t like it, you can talk to the General Manager.”

Once we had ordered, they asked about the murder. I told them what I knew. “Apparently, everyone in my office hated her, but no one bothered to tell me.” Even I cringed when I heard the whine in my voice.

“
Stop beating yourself up. It’s only been two months and she was good at covering herself. They would have come to you eventually.” That was Linda being kind. Angie nodded, but I knew she wouldn’t put up with my whining for long, so I moved on.

“
I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Anyway, how did she come across to you?”

Angie went first. “Since I sat in on the negotiations with you, I didn’t interact with her, but I can tell you my managers didn’t like her. When they asked a question about how to handle a situation, they never got a straight answer. Instead, she implied that as a favor to them, she could fix it so they could do whatever they wanted.”

Linda said she had the same experience. “My slot mechanic supervisor wanted to write up a slot technician for getting into a shoving match with the coin room guys during a drop. The supervisor and I went to Monica to ask how to write it up, and if we had sufficient documentation to back up the warning. She told us that she could speak to the coin room guys and make sure they wrote the documentation in such a way that no one would be able to question it.”

“
What? It sounds like she was going to tell the guys what to write.”

“
Exactly what I thought. She also managed to convey without really saying it that she would expect something in return for doing it.”

“
What did you do?”

“
We told her thanks, but no thanks, we would just issue the warning with what we had. I knew you’d want to know so I called you immediately, but you were in negotiations, and then the next day she was killed.”

This was much worse than I expected. Stunned, I agonized over how much damage she could have done in two months. I said nothing for several minutes staring at my chicken quesadilla.

Angie interrupted my reverie. “I’m afraid there’s more. I don’t have any facts to back this up, but rumors are she was sleeping with someone working here. I do know that she came on to my front desk manager, who turned her down.”

Linda mentioned that she heard two of her slot managers laughing about being hit on by Monica. She blushed when she told me they said were tempted, but thought the price too high.

Great, now I could add prostitution to the list of HR services. I wondered how many had actually taken her up on her offers. I went to lunch hoping for solace, and left feeling even more depressed.

When I got back, I stopped by Mike McCormack’s office. Mike was the HR Training Manager. As the only male on my staff and a good-looking man, he’d been tagged as either gay or a lothario banging each of us in turn. The picture of his wife and kids that he kept on his desk refuted gay. In the office he was always very professional without even an off color comment, but I suspected that when he hung out with the guys he did little to discourage the rumors concerning his prowess as the sheik of the harem. I wondered if Monica had hit on him. It would be interesting to hear his take on Monica.

The desk, one chair and a row of filing cabinets took up most of the space. He’d tacked his class schedules along one wall. His suit coat hung from a hook on door. I sat down in the chair next to his desk. “You have a minute to talk?”

He looked up from the files on his desk and took off his glasses. “Sure. I don’t have any classes scheduled until later.

I got right to the point. “I hear Monica was sleeping around, did she ever hit on you?”

He leaned back in the chair, a smile on his face. “No. I wasn’t influential enough. See, Monica wasn’t after a good time. It looked to me like she only went after men she thought she could use in some way.”

“
Then why sleep with Danny? He didn’t work here and he was a lowly mechanic. Was she having car trouble?

He laughed. “Not that I know of. My opinion, she did that just to distract Rose. Rose had her number from day one. She stopped Monica from using the clerks as slaves. Even I noticed that Rose started keeping track of when Monica came and went, and who she had in her office. When Danny stopped by one day to talk to Rose, I think Monica saw her chance to get back at her. It didn’t take long before she made a play for him. Woman like that, I doubt he even had a chance.”

I decided I needed to have to have another talk with Rose. “What do you know about this new man that Monica kicked Danny out over?”

“
Not much. I walked past her one day when she was talking on her cell phone. I heard her say if her plan worked out, it could solve all her problems. My guess would be someone with a lot of influence or money.”

I thanked him and went back to my office to return the stack of phone calls before my two o’clock meeting with Gary Dillon. Everyone I spoke to said how glad they were they could get finally get a straight answer. I answered what I could over the phone, and made appointments with the others to go over their issues.

Gary Dillon arrived right on time, tall, thin, and blond, wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a white long sleeved shirt rolled up at the sleeves. Not a lawyer, and not an employee either based on the beard. We shook hands and I asked him how I could help him.

“
My girlfriend works here. Her boss is sexually harassing her. I want to know when you people are going to do something about it.”

“
Why don’t we start at the beginning? What’s your girlfriends name and who is harassing her?”

“
Her name is Doris Fox. She works as a blackjack dealer. It’s her pit boss, Arnie Waters who keeps hitting on her.”

I made a note of both names. “Why isn’t she here making the complaint?”

“
I’ve tried to get her come in, but she’s afraid if she says anything, she’ll lose her job. This guy is always putting his arm around her, or touching her. He‘s asked her out several times. Lately he’s insinuated that if she doesn’t say yes pretty soon, she won’t be working many hours.”

I listened and made notes, but reserved judgment. It was certainly possible that the dealer was too scared to make the complaint herself, but it was also possible this was just a story Doris told her boyfriend. On the other hand, it could be the boyfriend was jealous of the pit boss and trying to get him fired. I’d seen it happen before, usually an ex-wife or disgruntled girlfriend who called up to get the man in trouble. “Mr. Dillon, I appreciate you’re coming in today, but I really need to speak to Doris. Do you think you could talk her into seeing me?”

“
I’ll try. She’s pretty scared. Ever since I talked to that other lady here last week, he’s gotten worse.”

“
Do you mean that you spoke to the lady that used to be in this office, Monica Smith?”

“
Yeah, she said she’d look into it”

I told him she no longer worked here. I promised not to talk to the pit boss until I could speak with Doris. Once he left, I looked through the files again. I found no record of Gary’s meeting with Monica. However, I did find a meeting with AW on Tuesday on her calendar, one of the initials I couldn’t identify. If AW meant Arnie Waters, he should have been the last person she talked to until after she’d completed her investigation. I couldn’t help but wonder if Monica had made Arnie an offer to look the other way. Pit bosses made good money. Was he the new boyfriend? I wanted to give Mr. Dillon time to talk Doris into coming in, but I made a note in the file to talk to her anyway if she hadn’t called by next Wednesday.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in appointments I’d made earlier.

Just before five, Charlene came in and sat down. “Have you forgiven me yet?”

I should have known I wouldn‘t have to explain my boorish behavior in front of Detective Delgado to her. “Maybe, if you tell me how you got him to laugh.”

She crossed her legs and leaned back. “It was his story, not mine. He told me how he met my husband several years ago during a domestic dispute. Evan’s client insisted Evan accompany him when he when home to pick up some clothes during a trial separation. The wife came home unexpectedly. Evan ended up trying to protect the husband from being beat up by the wife. She was this big woman, over 300 pounds, smacking this little guy with a cast iron frying pan because he wanted a separation. It took five policemen to restrain her. Everyone ended up with bruises. Then she tried to sue the police department for police brutality. You came in just as I told him that I remember Evan telling me about the case. The husband fired Evan when Evan was forced to testify against the wife on behalf of the police force.”