Armed With Steele (41 page)

“Hello?”

“Jessica! Oh, thank goodness you’re alright!”

“Uh, yeah, Mom. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, dear, I left a message on your phone last night. And you never called me back. You always call me back.”

“You…left a message?” I stared out the window in my office and tried to come up with something good to cover up the fact that I hadn’t slept in my own bed last night. Or been alone. “Oh! You know what? We had a power outage last night.”

“You lost power?
Last
night?”

“Yeah. I overheard the neighbors saying a squirrel got tangled up in the wires. Only knocked out power for a few homes, probably didn’t even make the news. But you know how those silly electronic answering machines are. You lose power and
bloop!
there goes all your messages.”

I put my head in my hand. These lies were getting easier and easier to come by. I wondered for the first time how hard it was going to be to break this new habit of mine.

“Oh. So how long were you without power?”

“A few hours. So, was there something specific you called about, or were you just checking up on me?”

“Checking up on you? Now, Jessica, you’re a big girl. You don’t need me checking up on you.”

“So the answer was yes, you were just checking up on me.” I shook my head and glanced down at the stack of invoices spread out before me.

“Wel—”

“It’s okay, Mom. I love you, too. Hey, since I’ve got you on the phone, have you ever heard of Morrisson Consulting Group? Or Steuben Environmental?”

“Hmm. That first one doesn’t sound familiar. But Steuben Environmental is who cleans our church. I think it’s owned by Marcus, something-or-another. Such a nice man. Only charges the church a fraction of his usual rate. Re-stripes the ball diamond once a week for the youth group, too.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut—knocked the winds of logic clean out of me. Nice man? Re-striping ball diamonds? Didn’t sound like anyone who would run my best friend off the road. Or be stealing money from Maxwell. If he wasn’t charging the church full rates, I doubted his business was in the red. And if he wasn’t in the red, why would he be embezzling?

When I didn’t answer, my mother prompted, “So, why do you ask?”

“They’re who we—” I caught myself before admitting it’s who we used at work. “Saw an advertisement for, this week. Grace and I need to get our carpets cleaned.” I pictured Brutus and his puddles of slobber, then shivered involuntarily. “We thought about giving them a try.”

“I’m not sure if they do residential cleaning, dear. But you can always give them a call. Oh! That’s Betty at the door. She’s early for Bridge. I’ll have to call you back later, dear.”

I hung up and rubbed my temples. Too many questions and not enough answers. I needed to find that first domino. The one that would set the rest into motion.

But nothing on my desk jumped out as being The One, so I decided to check into one last thing—the market analysis reports from MCG. Only, I still didn’t know where they were stored. Or what they even looked like.

And then it dawned on me—I didn’t need to know what it looked like. Because I knew someone who did. Someone who saw every piece of mail that came in and out of this place. I flipped through the employee phone directory, picked up the phone, and dialed.

“Mailroom.”

“Lauren?”

“Speaking.”

“Hey, Lauren, it’s Jessica Hartley.”

“Jessica! How are you? I haven’t seen you in the lunchroom lately. They didn’t scare you off, did they?”

I felt the color drain from my face. “Who?”

“The creepy IT guys that are always staring at you. You know, they really don’t bite. They just don’t get upstairs much. In fact, none of us down here do.” She laughed. “Why do you think we always invade
your
kitchenette?”

“Uh, gee, I hadn’t really thought about it.” I uttered a nervous laugh. “No, they didn’t scare me off. I’ve just been really busy working to, I mean, working
on
a special project. And I was actually hoping you might be able to help me with something.”

“Sure, whattcha need?”

I opened my mouth to speak, then snapped it shut and looked around the room. If Marcus was in here leaving me notes, what was to say he hadn’t bugged my office as well? “A few minutes to pick your brain. Can I come down and see you?”

“Well, I’m just getting ready to make my first floor rounds. But if we shoot for ten o’clock, that should work.”

I glanced at my desk clock. Forty-five minutes wouldn’t kill me. “Great, see you in a bit.”

* * * *

While Lauren did her mail route, I decided to do some actual work. Nice of me, since that’s what I was getting paid to do. Unfortunately, all I had left were those dreaded customer callbacks. I made my last call at 9:45, thinking it’d be a quick, “Hi, how are you, how are we doing?” kind of call.

No such luck. That customer was
pissed
. Something about getting ten dozen boxes of purple gel pens when they’d ordered red. It took me over twenty minutes and a promise to get the correct ones overnighted to them to calm them down. When I finally set my desk phone back onto its cradle, it was ten after ten. I was late.

So I hurried down the hall, an empty coffee mug in hand to give the illusion I was on a coffee run. Vanessa was involved in an animated conversation with someone in the lobby, and ignored me as I passed. When I reached the kitchenette, I made a beeline for the stairs.

I skidded to a stop at the door, torn. Nothing good ever happened in the stairwell.
Please don’t let there be anyone lurking in there today.

I opened the door. Listened. Nothing.

Relief washed over me. I scurried down the steps without my usual fear of falling, thanks to the soft, leather flats I’d selected this morning. Vanessa wasn’t the only one who’d opted out of high, clickety-clacking heels today.

I paused at the landing for the basement, to catch my breath. Even with the stairwell door before me closed, I could hear some sort of commotion coming from the other side. People shouting directions, hurried footsteps.

“She’s over here!” a woman cried.

“Can she walk?” a deep voice boomed.

“No. It had her pinned pretty good. Her ankle took the brunt of it.”

The shouting diminished, but a pair of onlookers remained in the hall just outside the stairwell. They continued their conversation in lower tones. I moved closer to the door and strained to listen in on them.

“Can you believe it?” The woman’s voice held a mixture of shock and fear.

“No,” responded her friend. “We’ve never had an accident in the mailroom before. What caused the shelves to tip over like that?”

“You’re buying that story? Sorry, but no way it tipped—that thing is solid. It had to have been
pushed
.”

More sabotage? The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

“But…who would do something like that?”

“I don’t know. But they sure as hell aren’t going to talk me into covering for Lauren while she’s off.”

Shit. There goes that idea.

No Lauren, no leads on where the MCG reports might be stored. I turned around and began the long climb back up to the second floor. And while I climbed, I mulled over the latest accident. Poor Lauren. What were the chances that she’d get hurt just as I was coming to see her?

I stopped dead in my tracks. Checked my watch and bit back a scream. The heavy shelves weren’t intended for Lauren.

They were meant for me.

Chapter 31

“And then once you’ve finished with that… Jessica? Are you alright?”

My eyes snapped away from the windows. “Yes, Michael. Why?”

He leaned back in his chair and set his bifocals on his desk. The man was simply too handsome. I couldn’t help but melt a little each time he cast his gaze upon me. “You’re thinking about what happened to Lauren McCauley, aren’t you?”

I looked away. Of course I was, but not for the same reasons as everyone else. I knew damned well that shelf falling on her wasn’t some fluke accident. Even worse was having to sit here, helpless, riddled with guilt and fear. Whoever bumped those shelves wouldn’t find the wrong target a second time.

He sighed. “I know there are rumors going around, but I don’t want you to be worried. This building has always had its fair share of gossipers. Shit-stirrers, if you will, pardon my French. They live to mess with the heads of everyone else. Why, even Lauren was known to do that from time to time. But the fact of the matter is, we’re perfectly safe here. There is no crazed employee out there trying to knock off our mail lady.”

He was right. The crazed employee wasn’t after the mail lady—he was after me.

“Okay, Michael.”

He gave me a nod and picked his glasses back up. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Once you finish updating that memo, I need you to go on a little recon project for me.”

“Sir?”

He looked up over the top of his glasses at me. “Recon, you know: go out and retrieve something for me. When you were going through that vendor list with me yesterday, it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to go back over some of MCG’s market predictions from last year. See how close they really were.”

I could hardly believe my ears. Was my luck finally turning around? “Um, yeah, sure. I’d be happy to grab them for you. Where are they?”

He pursed his lips in thought. “Hmm. I think the last person I loaned them to was Frank Pitzen. Up in accounting. You might as well start there.”

Frank Pitzen? Nope, my luck was definitely maintaining its status quo.

* * * *

I hurried out to Nate’s car, glad to be out of my personal hell, formerly known as Maxwell Office Solutions.

“Thank God you’re here.” I leaned across the front seat and planted a kiss on Nate’s cheek.

“That bad?” he asked as he turned the car around.

“Yeah, pretty much. Though, it could be worse. I’m still breathing.”
And not buried beneath any lethal shelving units.
A shiver ran up and down my spine.

“Well you’re safe now. Make any progress today?”

I tried to push the mailroom debacle from my mind. “Actually, yes. I made copies of all the Morrisson invoices. And I think you’re right.” I fumbled in my bag to produce the ever-growing stack of notes. “There’s a tiny black spot in the exact same spot beside the signature on all but two.”

Nate glanced over, nodded. “Let me guess…those two were the ones you think had Grace’s actual signature?”

“Yep. And even better? Our culprit was sloppy. Michael prefers using a blue pen. All but these two were done in black.”

Nate chuckled. “What about their reports? Did you find them?”

“Yeah, by a total fluke.” I shook my head. “I didn’t have a clue where they were, or if they even existed in hard copy, so I thought I’d go to the one person who sees everything coming and going. That Lauren gal, from the mailroom.”

“And what did she tell you?”

“She didn’t.”

Nate cast me a confused, sideways glance.

“I headed down the stairs to see her, and—”

“I thought we’d decided you were going to stay out of the stairwell.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I had to so no one would see me. I called ahead and she told me to come down after she finished her mail run at ten. But I got tied up on a phone call.
Man
, I hate those customer callbacks!”

“Anyway…”

I threw Mr. Impatient an annoyed look. “
Anyway
, I was running late. Hurried down the stairs, but when I got to the bottom, I heard people shouting and running around. I stayed in the stairwell, listening. Seems some big shelving unit tipped over and landed on her.”

Nate ran a hand through his thick hair. “Shit.”

“I know, it’s just awful. Someone must have overheard our phone conversation. Poor Lauren, I’m sure those shelves were meant to fall on me.”