Read Online Death of the Office Witch by Marlys Millhiser - Free Book Online Page B

empty.”
    â€œHave you told Dalrymple all this?”
    â€œI don’t want to implicate myself, or irritate a killer, or lose my job.”
    â€œYou think Richard did it?”
    â€œAll I know is that now that Gloria’s gone, I’m low man on both the seniority and the clout totem poles around here. I’m not making any waves until I know what this is all about. And I was gone a little longer than just over to the Chevron for Ding Dongs for Gloria. I slipped in another errand first.”
    And if he raised the first alarm about alibis someone else would probably figure that out and call him on it in front of Dalrymple. “How much longer?”
    â€œHalf hour, forty-five minutes.” He leaned forward in probably his most endearing pose, the butterscotch hair tumbling across his forehead. “You know, Charlie, I think you and I need to look into this whole business on our own before we go to the lieutenant? We know each other didn’t do it. And we’ll know better what we’re getting into that way.”
    Charlie stared at her quiet phone and blank computer screen. All she wanted was to be happy and do the work she loved. Was that so much to ask of the world? “ We did not go on this errand together,” she said, “so maybe you better fill me in?”
    â€œI had to meet a friend. It has nothing to do with Gloria or the agency or any of this, I swear.”
    â€œA friend? Larry, I thought you and Stew were solid.” Stewart Claypool was Larry’s significant other.
    Color flowed back into her assistant’s complexion. Anger pushed him to his feet. God he was something—sort of a combination Superman and Mitch Hilsten, Charlie’s favorite superstar. “Stew and I are solid, Charlie. Just because you don’t need anyone doesn’t mean you know shit about relationships or that just because I meet someone it has to be about sex.”
    He slammed the door on his way out and, having propped her feet on the coffee table in front of the couch, she stared at the run in her hose as it zipped up from a big toenail to a knee. She stared at the lavender and beige dried arrangement in the dark blue pot in the center of the coffee table. When did that arrive? She honestly couldn’t remember seeing it before. Hadn’t there been something similar but with yellow in it? Irma must see to these things, too. Charlie watched the palm fronds droop outside the wall of window. They reminded her of droopy Doug Esterhazie.
    What did he mean she didn’t need anyone or know anything about relationships or sex? Why did life have to get so damn complicated just when it was getting so good? Charlie slipped out of her ruined hose and into one of the spare pairs she kept in a lower drawer.
    Besides being an irreplaceable assistant, Larry Mann was an irreplaceable friend. “Know why you like him so much, don’t you?” Richard Morse had said to Charlie no more than a month ago. “Because he’s safe. You, lady, have a problem.”
    I do not have a problem.
    Charlie slipped back into her killer heels and marched out to the cubicle. “You think you’re so picked on,” she told her assistant. “You don’t have to go home to Stew and hear about cats who kill birds and two-hundred-dollar Rollerblades and sororities, huh?”
    â€œCharlie?”
    â€œYou get me Keegan Monroe on the line and no more bullshit, understand? And after that be ready to plug back into Alpine Tunnel .”
    â€œAnd where are you off to?”
    â€œIf the good Lieutenant Dalrymple is not lurking nearby, I’m off to beard the Vance about our little problem. But the deal is, my friend, that we mix business with snooping or you are back on your own. Right?”
    â€œRight.” He flashed her that smile. His parents must still be paying off the orthodontist.
    Which reminded Charlie that this weekend when she wasn’t doing all the other