My Boss is a Serial Killer (37 page)

I figured they might more logically be angry
with Charlene, who was, after all, the one who had been offing
clients.

I was under an oath not to speak of matters
pertaining to Charlene Templeton. I wished I could, though, because
it peeved me to be shunned as if I were the cause of all the
trouble. As if things would have been better, if I’d just left
Charlene to her serial killing and minded my own business. I wanted
to remind these folks that my participation in her downfall had
been almost totally passive.

Oh, never mind. I’d never worked here for the
social life, anyway.

I moved slowly through the office, my
half-lame state giving me plenty of time to notice how little
attention was being paid to me. Upon reaching my cubicle, I found
it empty. I’d heard that it had been upended, but empty? I went to
Bill’s office and saw that it was practically empty itself,
stripped down of everything that belonged to him, with only the
furniture and his little bonsai tree remaining. Hell, it was
probably a minimalist look he would appreciate. No clutter
whatsoever. Bill wasn’t there, but I remembered, from normal life a
thousand years before, that often I got to work before he did.

Hobbling back through the office, I went in
search of Donna. It took what seemed like six hours to make it to
her, and I was delighted to see that she was at her own desk,
instead of Junior Gestapo Brent being there and pretending
importance.

After I’d let her express her doubts that I
should be working and ask after my well-being (I’m sure they feared
that severe psychological trauma would be part of my worker’s comp
claim), I finally got to ask, “What happened to my desk? Surely the
police didn’t take my chair and stuff.”

“
No, they didn’t. But I took the
liberty of moving your things for you. We put you in the empty
cubicle next to Melinda. It’s closer to Aven’s office.”

Yes, indeed it was. Though what Aven had to
do with my cubicle, I was unsure.

She saw the look on my face. “Now, it’s
nothing you have to rush into. We insist that you take your time.
Aven is looking forward to working with you, but he knows what
you’ve been through.”

They do this at offices. They break news to
you, by talking about the news as if it has already been broken and
letting you fill in the details in your head. They are hoping
you’ll feel too stupid to actually ask what you “missed,” and that
saves the supervisor from having to say something unpleasant out
loud. Like “You’re not working for Bill Nestor any more. Now you’re
going to work for Aven Fisher.”

Well, no thanks. I had been through quite
enough baloney lately, and I felt entitled to some respect. Of
course, I understood the logic in assigning me to Aven Fisher,
since I was in part responsible for sending his secretary Charlene
to prison, but I was not interested in karma at this time. I said,
“Back up, and tell me what happened to my job with Bill
Nestor.”

“
Bill has turned in his resignation,”
she said, as if I should have known.

“
He didn’t mention this to me.” I
waited, challenging her to suggest that Bill didn’t have to clear
his comings and goings with me. She didn’t quite dare. “When did
this happen?”

“
This morning,” said Donna.

“
It’s 8:15,” I countered, pointing to
her clock.

“
I mean that he’s in Terry Bronk’s
office now, turning in his resignation.”

“
And you’ve had time to move my desk
already,” I said.

Donna couldn’t maintain eye contact.

“
Oh, come on,” I begged her. “Come on,
Donna, you’ve always been a really decent supervisor. Tell me what
the hell is going on.”

She sighed. “Terry Bronk is asking Bill to
resign.” Before I could yell something foul, she continued. “Carol,
we just have to. This whole mess with Charlene looks bad enough for
the firm, and these were all Bill’s clients. Maybe we should have
noticed what was happening, but he especially had an
obligation.”

I stared at her in disbelief.

“
It’s better than firing him,” said
Donna, trying to convey that Bill was being done a favor. “This
way, he can go somewhere else—”

“
Excuse me,” I said to her, and turned
on my heel.

Funny, but I don’t remember feeling any pain
as I hauled ass down the long hallway to Terry Bronk’s office.
Maybe righteous indignation is a hell of a painkiller. I was loose
and strong and fast. I plowed past the cubicles and right past
Terry Bronk’s ass-kissing secretary and flung his office door open
before I’d even thought clearly about what I was planning to
do.

Three surprised men looked up at me. Terry
Bronk; Bill, of course; and Junior Gestapo Brent.

“
Are they forcing you to resign?” I
asked Bill directly.

Brent rose to his feet, showing all the
telltale signs of preparing to say something asinine.

“
Sit down and shut your mouth,” I
snapped at him. “The Third Reich has ended. You’re going to have to
find another outlet to compensate for your sexual inadequacy. Bill,
are they forcing you to resign?”

For a terrible moment, the idea occurred to
me that they weren’t doing any such thing, and that I’d just done
the stupidest act of my entire life. Junior Gestapo Brent did sit
down. He looked to Terry, as if hoping that insubordination such as
mine were punishable by death.

“
Um, Carol,” said Bill, coming slowly
to his feet. “Maybe you shouldn’t, um…”

I looked to him desperately. “Please answer
my question, Bill. Please.”

“
Um, yes.” He glanced at Terry from the
corner of his eye. “I am tendering my resignation. But this isn’t
something that has to involve you.”

“
Well obviously it involves her now,”
Junior Gestapo Brent sniffed haughtily.

“
Obviously,” I agreed. I looked to
Bronk, who lorded behind his great oak desk like he thought it made
him a king, like keeping his minions a few feet away made him more
powerful because they couldn’t reach over to throttle him. I asked,
“Your next chosen scapegoat?”

“
Get out of my office.” His tone was
almost bored.

I said, “Because he didn’t notice something
that no one here noticed, and no one probably would have noticed
unless the killer herself had started dropping hints?”

“
I’m going to call building
security.”

“
Go ahead and call him. I don’t think
Danny gets here until 9:00 anyway.” I looked to Bill now. “They
think that they’ll be sued for not noticing the mortality rate of
their clientele. They want to make it look like it was your job and
therefore your fault. And if you don’t work here anymore, it’ll
make them look better, or so they think.”

“
I know,” said Bill, with a shrug that
indicated none of this surprised him.

Dryly, Terry Bronk remarked, “Bill, it’s not
in your best interest to join in Carol’s histrionics.”

Bill, always earnest, said, “Terry, if you’re
finished with me, I think I’ll just let Mr. Miller wrap my
severance package up over the phone. Thank you for accepting my
resignation.”

He walked swiftly to my side, took me by the
elbow and tried to steer me out the door.

“
Incidentally,” I said to Terry Bronk,
“everybody at the firm knows that you were sanctioned by the
Federal Court last year. So your secret-keeping sucks. But good for
you, for persevering.”

The look on his face. Ha, if only I had had a
camera or something. Junior Gestapo Brent said the only intelligent
thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. “You, uh, you know
that you’re fired, right?” And he didn’t even have the presence of
mind to sound gleeful about it.

Bill hurried me out the door and down the
hall before I could say anything else about Nazis. I went with him
automatically. I was still anesthetized by anger, and our walking
was swift.

It hardly bothered me, being fired. I had
assumed I was fired last week. I had been amazed to find that I
wasn’t fired. I suppose they’d thought that if the firm could rid
itself of Bill, it didn’t need to rid itself of me. He was a much
better person to blame for their problems, and experienced
secretaries were harder to come by than attorneys. I would have
been deposited in a new secretarial position with a different
attorney and then forgotten about, had I not decided to insult
MBS&K’s managing partner and his goose-stepping sidekick. Bill
would have placidly agreed to do as instructed, and they knew
it.

The whole mess made me sick. And I ranted
about it, as Bill guided me through the firm. “You make money for
them! Your clients always pay their bills! You bill forty-eight
hours a week! I can’t believe that they’re doing this to you!”

“
Shhh,” he said as we approached our
old stomping grounds. “Are your things here?”

Gruffly I grabbed my purse, which I’d left in
my empty cubicle. I could tell that everyone within earshot was
listening to us, whether or not they dared to show their faces. The
room was so silent I could hear the hum of the fluorescent
lights.

Bill announced, loud and clear, “I really
appreciate your agreeing to come with me, Carol. I couldn’t find
another secretary like you in a hundred years.” Then he winked at
me. He was so bad at winking conspiratorially that it made me
laugh.

“
Come on,” I said, over my chuckles.
“Let’s go to our new office and check out the swimming
pool.”

“
I think we should restock the wet
bar,” commented Bill with enthusiasm. He stepped into his office to
get his bonsai tree and then returned to my side.

We left together as if we’d meant to all
along. On the way out, I told Lucille that I was no longer employed
there but that she should call me to get details, which of course
she would do because the goddess of gossip would no more go without
details than she would go without her make-up.

In the elevator, I asked Bill, “Are you all
right? No chance you’re going to start a little freak-out
session?”

“
I feel fine, all things considered,”
he replied.

“
Because I’m in no mood to try to
unstick you, and I don’t have any shortening.”

But he did look fine. A little disoriented,
maybe, but who wasn’t on that lovely spring morning? He certainly
didn’t seem on the verge of scraping leaves out of a gutter. Maybe
he wasn’t truly stressed by this. Maybe, like me, he wasn’t a bit
surprised.

As our descent slowed, he said, “I wish you
hadn’t quit for my sake.”

“
Yeah, well, screw them.”

The elevator deposited us on the parking
garage level, and we wandered out toward our cars. My bruised body,
which had responded well to adrenaline and rage, now began to throb
again in this aftermath of impotent disgust.

“
They’re only doing what they feel is
best for the firm overall.” Bill was being far more forgiving than
I was, and he made me feel like a petulant child.

But I couldn’t stop myself. “Why are all
these people missing the point? A serial murderer has been offing
our clients for fifteen years, and they’re worried about the
employee handbook, the order of reporting work-related grievances
to supervisors, and whose job it was to notice the unusual suicide
rates among people we hadn’t seen in years. The only thing they
care about is covering their collective ass.” I felt like stamping
my foot. My words echoed off the garage walls around us.

Bill tilted his head at me. “You do know
you’ve been working for a law firm, right? And that 99 percent of
the field of law is about covering your ass.”

Aw, he’d made me laugh again. “Well, if I
didn’t know it before, I know it now.”

I found that we were standing by Bill’s BMW,
and I realized that I was waiting for him to put down his bonsai
tree and tell me what to do. But why should he? Why should I wait
for him? He was no longer my boss, and for the moment at least, I
was nobody’s secretary.

Or was I? Had he been joking upstairs, or was
that a serious job offer?

“
Say, Bill,” I said, “did you mean what
you said about coming with you and still being your
secretary?”

“
I don’t think so,” he said. My heart
sank. But Bill wasn’t very good at bluffing, and it only took me a
moment to see that he was teasing me. He explained, “I was thinking
that with my ‘severance package’—which is a code word for ‘hush
money’—I might hang out my own shingle and start a small practice
of estate law. I could use a good office manager.”

“
Oh, I see. And ‘office manager’ would
be the code word for the person who does everything you don’t want
to do?”

Now it was his turn to look disappointed. He
thought I was refusing, and I was a better bluffer than Bill. He
thought fast and then said, “I’ve seen you eyeing those
plasma-screen TVs in the electronics circulars. How about I throw
one in as a signing bonus?”

Plasma screen. I thought I heard angels
singing.

His face lit up. “We can write it off as an
entertainment expense!”

He didn’t need to bribe me. I had been more
or less willing to keep working for him even when I suspected him
of murder. But then again, those plasma screens were truly
beautiful things.

“
No,” I said reluctantly. “Bill, I was
kidding. You know I’d work for you for nothing.” I hesitated, then
added, “Or for roughly the same salary that I was making
before.”

Bill broke into a wide grin. “Sorry. The
offer is on the table, and if you work for me, that plasma screen
is yours.”