My Boss is a Serial Killer (4 page)

“
Did you get my voice mail message?” I
asked as I entered his office, knowing very well that he had. He
checked his voice mail religiously. “Here’s Adrienne’s file. The
confidentiality issues are in Miller’s hands, so let me know if
you’d like me to get him on the phone.”

“
Adrienne Maxwell,” murmured Bill,
watching the file where I’d left it on his credenza. “I wonder why
the police want to talk to me about her?”

“
Some dispute as to whether it was
suicide, I imagine. It’s probably something to do with her
will.”

“
Do you think she was killed for her
money?” Bill asked me.

“
Maybe they do.” I meant the KCPD.
“I’ll bet he asks whether there’s been any dispute over the will,
if her relatives have ever called or anything.”

“
Bet you’re right,” agreed Bill. He
knew I was the media-educated professional on murder mysteries. I
watched a lot of mystery shows on BBC America. Nobody does the
murder mystery like British television, or quite so much of it, and
frankly if that’s an indication of how things really are across the
ocean, it’s a wonder they have any gentry left standing.

“
Did her daughter tell you anything
about it?”

“
Hmm? Well no, she wasn’t very
forthcoming. She’s terribly upset, as you can imagine, and it might
be embarrassing to her.” Bill then asked me, “Did you go through
the file?”

“
No indication of any messages taken
since we last saw her,” I said. “The last thing in correspondence
is your thanks-for-your-business letter.”

“
Still, you never know what they might
be looking for.” Bill hadn’t yet taken his eyes from the file, and
I wondered if it had just hit him that a client of his was dead.
Knowing of a death and fully comprehending it aren’t quite the same
things. “I guess I should put in my final notes about her passing,
since you’ve got the file out anyway. I’ll dictate something after
the detective leaves.”

“
Speaking of which, got any letters on
here?” I went to his Dictaphone and popped out a tape, replacing it
with a clean one and returning the little recorder to its own
special place, firmly in the right corner of the OUT box. “You
don’t have anything else pending this morning. There’s a board
meeting at twelve.”

“
Will you be at your desk all
morning?”

“
Sure will.”

“
When will you take lunch?”

“
Twelve to one.” I took lunch from
twelve to one every day. Bill asked me every day, nevertheless. He
liked the ritual, a touchstone in his morning that kept a clock
firmly in mind. I used to take lunch when I got hungry, whether
that happened at eleven-thirty or one , but that caused Bill a lot
of worry. It was better if he always knew where I was. It was a
concession to extreme order that I was willing to make because I
liked the crazy man. He always remembered my birthday and brought
me presents that actually had some relevance to my likes and
dislikes. TV shows on DVD, bless him. Last time it had been
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
, Season Two—my favorite
Buffy
season of all.

Detective Haglund showed up at ten to eight
and Lucille called me at my desk. “Is he still cute?” I asked
her.

“
Oh mah, yes.”

“
Be right there.” I wondered if
Augustus Haglund would seem as attractive today as he had
yesterday. Yesterday he’d brought me back from the brink of
insanity. Thursday mornings are always easier than Wednesday
afternoons. Still, I had primped in hopes that my lecherous
thoughts would bear out. I had, in effect, “gussied up for Gussie,”
which was a terrible turn of phrase that I promised myself I would
never say out loud, unless to Gussie himself after he and I had
been married for fifteen years.

I noticed a number of staff people were
having an impromptu meeting in the lobby about the condition of our
Internet service. “Terrible,” I heard them say, and “so slow” and
“won’t download,” which meant that they were having trouble
watching sports news over their broadband connections. The purpose
of the meeting was to get an eyeful of the detective, who had
somehow overnight turned into an office legend. These kinds of
things are absorbed through osmosis. Now the women took turns
checking out the cop.

Melinda, the bold one, even asked him, “Are
you my eight-thirty appointment?”

“
I don’t know; are you Bill Nestor?” he
asked her.

She admitted with dismay that she was not.
Her groupies, Mary and Daphne, looked admiringly at her for being
brave enough to speak to the Bobby Lane candidate.

Lucille had taken it upon herself to turn on
the charm again. My new friend, Detective Gus Haglund, was leaning
over her reception counter, looking with convincing interest at the
biography that Lucille was reading.

“
Ah think people are so fascinating,”
Lucille said. That much was true. I’d never seen her read anything
but biographies.

I greeted Detective Haglund and was rewarded
with happy warm tingles when he looked at me. I had to refrain from
giggling girlishly because I had an audience. “Let me take you to
Bill’s office. How about a coffee or something on way?”

We walked together through the corridors, and
he asked me how I was doing this morning. “Not bad at all. I’m
getting better and better at being a morning person.”

“
I’ve mastered the art of being awake
at any hour of the day,” said Gus, “but that doesn’t mean I like
it. I hate mornings.”

“
We have a brew in here that can cure
you of that.” The break room’s tower of coffee pots was already
working hard that morning, spewing and hissing, creating a vile
black potion. “Tastes like tar and cigarettes, but if you put some
sugar in, it can make you glad to be alive.”

“
For having survived drinking it?” Gus
looked skeptically at the coffee pots.

“
Yes, exactly.” I served him a cup with
two sugars in a black MBS&K mug. “May I, um?” I gestured to his
tie, which was a little off-center. “I’m going to straighten this
up for you.” I gave the rose-colored knot a little tug. “If your
tie isn’t straight, Bill will be distracted when he talks to
you.”

“
Will he really?”

“
This is valuable information I’m
passing along.” And, it hadn’t been unpleasant to fiddle with his
clothes. One good tug with my finger, and I could have removed that
tie altogether. I took him to Bill’s office and let him in
formally.

“
Bill, this is Detective Haglund,” I
said, trying not to beam. “Call me if you need anything. Copies or
anything like that.”

Bill, to my astonishment, took one look at my
face and at Gus and made an assessment of keen perception that I
thought most men incapable of making. “Uh, Detective,” he said,
“Would it be all right if my secretary stayed for this meeting? It
might save us some time. She’s very good at jostling my
memory.”

“
Well sure. That would be a smart way
to do it.”

Bill gestured toward his conference table and
gave me a look that just might have included a wink. When he did
things like that, which was almost never, his typically washed-out,
unnoticeable face became lively and appealing.

Bill Nestor was the best boss I’d ever
had.

Detective Haglund did what he could to put us
at ease, but something about being interviewed by a detective in
any capacity unnerved me. I wouldn’t even call it a guilty
conscience but rather a wary one. I had imagined myself being
interviewed like this before. I watched so many detective shows
that it was only natural I dream myself into the plots sometimes. I
imagined trying to be helpful and to recall important details, and
then I’d realize that I’d be so eager to please the detective that
I’d likely start embellishing facts and making things up. I’m so
easily caught up in moments that I’d probably confess to murder
myself. “I wasn’t in Kansas City that night. I was on an airplane
over the Pacific Ocean with two hundred witnesses, and I’ve never
met this man before, and I don’t even know how to operate a
forklift or where to get that kind of acid, but sure, it’s possible
that I killed him.” I was particularly likely, in this case, to say
something overly helpful because the detective in question was my
new fantasy boyfriend.

Gussie didn’t come at us confrontationally.
That’s a good thing, because a confrontational detective might have
sent Bill into a fit of ritualistic office-straightening, or worse,
as was always the case when Bill became overwhelmed. No, my Gussie
was gracious. He said the appropriate thank yous and produced the
appropriate documents that told Bill it was acceptable to discuss
the client. Attorney/client meetings are privileged, you see,
meaning that an attorney is at risk of losing his license to
practice if he violates the confidentiality of anything a client
has told him, shown him, given him, or even hinted at. Being Bill’s
secretary, I was bound under the same oath to keep Adrienne’s
privacy. The investigation of her death changed matters enough so
that warrants and releases had obviously been issued and our
Quality Assurance and Risk Management Department had okayed this
interview.

“
Mrs. Maxwell’s death is being
considered suspicious,” Gus explained. “It initially looked like
suicide by drug overdose, but we have a witness who states that an
unidentified subject was seen leaving her house on the night of her
death. One of Mrs. Maxwell’s neighbors was out looking for his cat
and noticed a person leaving her house. He didn’t think anything of
it until the following day when he heard about her death. Also
there are some questions about the drugs Ms. Maxwell allegedly took
in order to end her life.”

“
Questions about drugs?” asked
Bill.

“
At this point, I’d rather not go into
detail about that. In combination with the sighting of the
unidentified subject, her death definitely warrants further
investigation.”

Bill and I exchanged glances. All very
interesting, but why was he speaking with us?

Gus said, in answer to our confusion, “As I’m
sure you’re aware, Mrs. Maxwell had a fair amount of money and
assets. I found out from her daughter that you, Mr. Nestor, drafted
her will and other estate documents for her.”

“
That’s true,” said Bill. “We did her
estate work in 2004. She paid her invoice and took the originals.
We haven’t heard much from her since then.”

“
No?” Gus jotted notes in his little
detective notebook. “How can you be sure about that? Two years is a
pretty long time.”

“
When a client calls or emails us,” I
explained, “I keep a record in the file. With an email, I’d print a
copy; with a phone call, I’d log the call on a blue sheet that
included the details. Even though this is an old file that is kept
in storage, I’d still send copies to our clerks, who would
eventually put them in the right file downstairs. But I checked
with the file room, and there’s nothing pending for this file
number. So there’s no record of any contact in here until her
daughter called Bill last week to let us know what
happened.”

Bill picked up the rhythm of my explanation.
“And this week, I’ll put together a memo including the details of
Adrienne’s death and any conversations I had with her family, and
we’ll add that to the file as well.”

“
Then the file will be closed?” asked
Gus.

“
Her file is already technically
closed,” said Bill. “Once the estate documents are finished, I
often don’t see the clients again. There is no further need for me
to be involved in their lives, unless there is a problem with the
documents or a change in life status. For example, if Adrienne had
gotten remarried, she could have come back to me to draft a new
will. Or she could have gone to someone else just as easily. She
paid her bill, so we no longer had any obligations to each
other.”

“
So now that she’s died, what
happens?”

“
In Adrienne’s case? Nothing here. I’m
not her executor.”

“
You don’t have a reading of the
will?”

“
It’s not like in the movies,
Detective. There may be a reading of the will, or there may just be
a family meeting of some sort. But whatever happens, it will be
handled by her daughter, who is the executor of Adrienne’s estate.
I’m not their family lawyer. I’m just the guy who drafted
Adrienne’s estate documents for her to ensure their legality. Now,
if one of Adrienne’s relatives decides that the will is unfair or
even bogus, attention would turn back to me—and not in a good way.
But I do my best to take care of my clients and make sure that
their estate documents are as good as can be. Because everybody
dies, eventually.”

I was impressed by this pithy little speech,
and Gus seemed all right with the answer, too. He asked Bill, “Do
you remember your meetings with Mrs. Maxwell?”

“
Oh, fairly well,” Bill replied. “But I
do a great deal of estate work, and most of the client meetings
progress along the same lines. They all begin to feel the same
after a while.”

“
How do those client meetings usually
go, in estate work?”

Bill was at home with this topic. He was a
shy man, not a lawyer who wanted to hear himself talk (a favorite
pastime of many attorneys) nor not a dramatist primed for court
appearances. He was in his element when discussing the rote
procedures of producing a will, a power of attorney, or a trust. He
didn’t seem shy at all when he answered the detective.