Monahan 01 Options (27 page)

I led him into Harold’s office and after making the introductions, I closed the door and took a seat. Detective Leech looked at Harold who was standing behind his desk, and at me, sitting in one of the guest chairs.

“Perhaps I was misunderstood,” he said. “I do want to talk to both of you, but separately. Ms. Monahan, perhaps I could speak with Mr. Didrickson first and then I’ll find you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Sure, no problem. Harold knows where I’ll be,” I said as I closed the door behind me. I felt like I’d been sent to sit in the hall outside the principal’s office.

Detective Leech knocked on my door ten minutes later. I was chain-smoking my second cigarette. He took a seat and waved his hand in front of his face. The smoke was a little thick, so I butted my cigarette in the ashtray in my bottom drawer and kicked the drawer shut with my foot.

“So,” I said. I pulled my chair closer to the desk and folded my hands together in front of me.

“So,” he replied. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his eyeglasses and put them on. They were half glasses like the grandmother wore in Little Red Riding Hood. He flipped open his very small, spiral-bound notebook. With his pen poised he asked me to tell him about what had happened last Thursday night. I wasn’t about to tell him that I had already relayed all that information to Constable Lofaro because he might make me sit in the hall again. So, I told him.

He took copious notes during my description of the events and didn’t interrupt. When I finished he flipped through the pages of his notebook and re-read his notes. Without lifting his head, he peered at me over his glasses.

“What time did you say you joined the party?”

“I didn’t say. I can’t really remember. Probably about seven-thirty.”

“Did you see Mrs. Morris eat anything while you were there?”

“No.”

“Did you yourself eat anything?”

“No.”

“Who do you recall seeing at the reception?”

“Well, almost everyone,” I said lamely. “Are you asking if I saw someone specific?”

“No, I asked who you recalled seeing at the reception,” he repeated. Well, excuse me, I thought.

“You want a list?”

He nodded without looking up.

I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out our internal phone list that had all of the employee’s names on it. I started at the top of the list and read out loud the names of the people I could recall seeing. Leech was writing furiously so I spoke faster. When I reached the D’s on the alphabetical list, he held up his hand and motioned me to stop, just like one of the officious traffic cops, directing morning traffic downtown under the Lakeshore Boulevard. He continued to write for a moment and then looked up at me.

“Are there many more names?” he asked.

Get a grip Mister and learn shorthand, I thought. I’d only given him about twenty names so far.

“Quite a few. Why don’t I just give you this list and I’ll mark on it who I remember seeing at the party,” I offered. I beamed at him, giving him my Sunday best smile. Anything to help the local constabulary, I thought. And get this asshole out of my office.

“Okay,” he said. He put his notebook on my desk and folded his hands on his lap, waiting.

“Now?”

“I’ll wait,” he said.

I sighed and picked up a pen and went over the list fairly quickly. A few names here and there stopped me and I had to think hard about whether or not I recalled seeing them at the reception. The names of a couple of deadbeats who’d pissed me off over the years also made me stop and think. A good chance for revenge, I thought. I could put a tick beside their name and put them at the scene of the crime. That’s one of the best things about revenge. You can always think about it but never have to act on it. I finished up and handed Detective Leech the list.

He folded the list in half lengthwise without looking at it and put it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He picked up his notebook and I stood up. I was anxious to usher him out because he was giving me the heebie-jeebies.

“Just a couple of more questions, Ms. Monahan,” he said as he opened his notebook again. Fuck.

“Did you know Mrs. Morris well?”

“Yes.”

“Did she have any enemies here at the office that you were aware of?”

“No.”

“Is there any reason why, that you can think of, that someone would want to harm Mrs. Morris?”

“No.”

He flipped his notebook shut and shoved it in his overcoat side pocket. “Thank you. If there’s anything at all that comes to light that you think might have some bearing on our investigation, please call me.” He passed me a business card that was rumpled and used. He probably took them back from unsuspecting people after he arrested them. I took it by the corner and laid it on my desk blotter. I noticed the address was the same station as Constable Lofaro.

He stood up. Thank God. I wasn’t sure why this man was rubbing me the wrong way, and then I reminded myself that he was only doing his job. Maybe I resented someone so cold and apparently uncaring, investigating the death of my best friend.

“I’ll escort you back to reception.”

“That’s fine. I know the way.”

“Sorry. Security, you know,” I told him. I marched down the hall and he hurried to keep up.

“Sign him out,” I told the receptionist. I offered my hand because I could feel my mother standing behind me reminding me of the art of social graces.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Monahan,” he said as he shook my hand. His hand was dry and I could feel calluses on the palm. “And,” he said as he looked into my eyes, “I understand from Mr. Didrickson that you and Mrs. Morris were great friends. I’m sorry for your loss.” With that, he turned and headed for the elevator.

I was pleasantly surprised that it took a stranger to offer me condolences. No one else besides Jay and Vanessa had understood or told me they were sorry. I made a mental note to be nicer to the Detective if I ever saw him again.

chapter thirty-five

Vanessa was furiously punching her phone when I stopped by her office. I sat down in one of the guest chairs and flipped through a magazine she had in her basket. It was a trade magazine, all about the world of high tech. The cover story was about the next chairman of Elite Technologies. Elite was the latest and greatest in high tech companies and had been founded by a handful of young, preppie programmers who had left Microsoft or IBM or Apple, I couldn’t remember. It was the latest darling of Wall Street and was in the news almost every week. I checked the inside index and found the page number for the cover story.

I glanced at the pictures accompanying the story and read the captions underneath. The writers had compiled a list of who they were touting to be the next president of Elite. The preppie programmers had finally decided that they didn’t like managing their company, they liked the development side so the word was out that they were looking for a business-minded, technical-type to captain their ship for the next while. Business-minded, tech weenie. What an oxymoron! I recognized a few of the faces in the article and remembered a few years back when IBM was searching for their next president and the Wall Street Journal had done a similar article.

Some joker at our PR firm had taken the Wall Street Journal article that had about six or seven pictures of likely candidates in it, and had pasted a picture of Chris Oakes in one of the spots. They had rewritten the caption under the picture and faxed it to Oakes, anonymously. The fax looked amazingly real and Oakes bought it. He actually believed it was his picture in the Wall Street Journal. He walked around the office showing everyone. I remember actually being embarrassed for the idiot. No one had the heart to show him a copy of the real Wall Street Journal which happened to be sitting in his in-basket.

I tossed the magazine back in Vanessa’s basket and stared at her, willing her to look at me. She was writing in her book and firing off instructions to someone on the end of the line. As I listened, I realized she was talking to someone at the Toronto Club where the directors were scheduled to have dinner that night.

“Right. Right. And the cigars. Don’t forget the cigars. Thanks.” She hung up and slumped back in her chair.

“They don’t pay me enough for this shit,” she said.

“Stop your bitching. You love it,” I teased her.

“Just about as much as I love my ex,” she shot back. She looked at her watch and sat back up in her chair. “I’m not going to make dinner tonight. Oakes wants me to deliver some shit over to the Club before the dinner. No way I can make it back by six.”

“We’ll wait for you. Whatever Oakes wants, give it to the maitre d’ and hightail it out of there. Why can’t you just send it over by taxi?” I asked her.

“It’s stuff he needs to sign. A letter agreement with Jack Vincent.”

“Ooh. Are we getting ready to mortgage the company again to pay little Jack his fees?”

“Whatever.” She brushed me off.

“Not interested? Or not sharing?” I asked her.

“Not interested. We’ll talk later. I’ll be at Bigliardi’s as soon as I can. Thanks for waiting for me,” she said. She stood up and started gathering up the papers on her desk. “Everything done for the meeting tomorrow?”

“I’ve got all the books together. How about you?”

Vee and I were a team when it came to the director’s meetings. I got the materials for the meetings together and she looked after the physical requirements. If they needed laptops, projectors, conference telephone systems, TV monitors, or whatever, Vee looked after that.

I made sure all of the directors got to the meeting. Vee looked after them while they were there. Booking limos, hair appointments, golf tee times, you name it. Every one of their wishes was our command. Some of the tasks we performed for them were mundane, some were ridiculous and most were useless.

Like the time one of the directors who was very overweight, came out of the meeting with this hand on the back of his pants. We were out of town and holding the meeting in the penthouse suite of a very swank hotel. Vee and I were sitting at a large table outside the meeting room.

“Got a stapler?” he asked through his teeth that were clenched around a cigar.

“Yes,” I said and held it out to him. He disappeared down the hall to the men’s room. When he returned he handed me the stapler and turned around and lifted up the back of his suit jacket.

“Can you tell?” he asked me. The idiot had torn the seam on the seat of his suit pants and had stapled it back together. On the outside.

“Not at all,” I deadpanned. “Great job.”

Vee and I laughed so hard we both had to run to the ladies room. Even funnier though was the next morning when he showed up for a committee meeting wearing the same pants. And they still had the staples in them.

Harold was packing the director’s binders into a large legal briefcase when I wandered past his office.

“Everything in order?” I asked him when I stuck my head in the door.

“Fine. Thanks,” he said. He closed the flaps on the top of the briefcase and threaded the leather handle through the hole in the top. He snapped the two buckles shut.

“Have fun then.” Although he wouldn’t admit it, I knew Harold secretly looked forward to these dinners. The great, secret, male enclave. Farting and belching. Cigar smoke. Brandy. Hangovers in the morning. Ah, he probably thought, it doesn’t get any better.

“Kate, I’d like a word,” he said. “Come in and close the door.”

“Should I get my book?” I offered. If he was going to fire off instructions about work tomorrow or things that needed to be done, I had to write it down. I was never any good without my notes.

“No, no. Uhm,” he cleared his throat. Harold was obviously uncomfortable about something and I knew he was going to talk about something unrelated to work. I closed the door and sat down.

At the best of times, it was hard for Harold to say good morning to me. He never asked me how my weekend was. Once, when I returned from a two week vacation, beautifully tanned and visibly relaxed, he hadn’t even asked me how my holiday was. At first I thought it was because he was ignorant. After a while though, I realized it was because he was very shy and didn’t like to pry. And, he didn’t really care.

I didn’t consider passing the time of day or asking how one’s weekend was, prying, but Harold did. And, we were not allowed to ask him anything personal. I knew he had a beautiful wife and two gorgeous children, but that was the extent of it. If he attended company functions, it was alone. He wasn’t like everyone else who bragged about their kids and had pictures of them plastered all over the place. I often wondered what he was like at home.

“Kate,” he started. “I know this is none of my business.” He was red in the face. I looked at him blankly. I had no idea where this was going and I was starting to feel as uncomfortable as he was obviously feeling.

He ran his index finger under his shirt collar.

“May I ask a personal question?”

If it was about my secrets on how to keep a goldfish alive, I wasn’t sharing.

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Are you involved with Jay Harmon?” he blurted out.