Plum Girl (Romance) (19 page)

"But why? Why me?"

He shrugged. "All I know was that he was pretty hot to get whatever you had in that bag. He said it wouldn't be a big deal—just follow you, wait for an opportunity, and then snatch it. He told me he'd make sure you got it back somehow, and with all your money and credit cards, too." He sighed and added, "I shouldn't have agreed, but I needed that two hundred, and I figured it would be easy. How the hell did I know you'd clutch that thing to your side all the time? And then stay in Borders for
hours?"
The mugger's softened tone was now put out, and Lonnie mentally congratulated herself for not buying the remorse he'd offered a minute ago.

"Believe me," he continued, "when I came back and told him I didn't get it, he was pissed. He said I'd messed up something critical to the security of his company. And then he called me a fuckup." Lonnie resisted the urge to comment. "So that's our warm little family, and that's the whole story. Its all I know.
Really. "
He'd given her more information than he had to; Lonnie figured she better quit while she was ahead.

"Fine," she said, and moved aside so she was no longer blocking the door. The mugger sighed with relief, and brushed past her. He only got a few steps down the corridor, before he turned around. "Listen," he called to her, "you're not going to make that scene now, are you? This is, like, over. Right?"

She nodded... in spite of the nagging feeling that it was far from over.

* * *

Sunday night, Lonnie lay in bed mentally preparing for work the following day. She'd just gotten off the phone with Dominick, who was still in Connecticut but planned to return the next morning. She could barely wait that long to see him. And talk to him face-to-face. And kiss him senseless, if possible. The idea alone sent shivers through her body.

Her smile faded only when she started thinking about Twit & Bell. She wondered if her coworkers would act differently after Lunther's death. Would they just carry on as usual? Or, would there be a distinct somberness throughout the office?

Over the weekend, Lonnie had thought about what Lunther's step-nephew told her. It was still hard to believe that she had been the target of some nefarious corporate plot. She'd talked it over with Peach, and they'd come to the consensus that Lunther could have been after only one thing. Only one thing made sense.

Macey's spiral notebook.

The day he'd been looming in Macey's doorway, he must have heard Lonnie say she would put the notebook in her bag. The rest of that week, Lonnie kept the bag locked in her desk, so Lunther wouldn't have had access to it. Of course, he also would have had no reason to think she'd keep the notebook in her bag over the weekend—or even use that bag when his step-nephew followed her on Saturday. Perhaps that proved just how desperate he'd been.

But, why?

She'd flipped through the notebook to see what she was missing, but all that Macey had written in it were some hypothetical case scenarios, and the citations listed next to them that she'd asked Lonnie to look up. Was Lunther after those citations, too? Or did the hypothetical case scenarios somehow tie into him? For all she knew, maybe he'd just been paranoid, and envisioned something far more damaging in Macey's little notebook.

It probably didn't even matter anymore since Lunther was dead. But still, she couldn't help wondering about the notebook, and remembering the heated conversation she'd overheard between Lunther and Macey more than a week ago. They'd both threatened each other. Lonnie tried to remember exactly what they'd said that morning, but without knowing the source of their animosity, it didn't help her make sense of anything.

Instead, more questions flooded her mind. Before Lunther'd had a heart attack, did Macey have any idea how desperately he wanted that notebook? Did Macey even realize that Lonnie had unwittingly become mixed up in a feud that should've had nothing to do with her?
Dear God,
Lonnie thought as she finally drifted off to sleep long after midnight,
what has Macey gotten me into?

Chapter 14

"What are you
doing?"
Delia's raspy Boston accent broke Lonnie's concentration and granules of Sanka flew everywhere.

"Oh..." Lonnie looked down at the lime green tile, now covered in decaffeinated brown soot, and glanced back up at Delia's disapproving scowl. What was she going to say? Technically, she'd been trying to fill the large coffeepot with hot water and a dozen Sanka packets, because there was nothing else in the kitchen, including filters. But Lonnie didn't want to tell Delia that she'd only been doing it out of utter boredom.

Over three hours ago, she'd finished
most
of
her
daily tasks, and Twit hadn't given her any other work. In fact, he hadn't come out of his office all morning. He hadn't even left for lunch... or, at the very least, popped his head out to bark a food order at her and then slam the door without giving her money to pay for it.

"Well, I was just going to make a pot of coffee in case anyone wanted—"

"Haven't you ever made coffee before?" she condescended. Rolling her eyes obviously, she muttered,
"Jesus,"
and pushed past Lonnie—who rolled her eyes in return, but with a lot more subtlety, and looked around for a broom.

"I hope you don't expect me to clean up your mess," Delia scoffed.

"I'm just looking for a broom, but I guess it's in the supply closet," Lonnie said, struggling to keep her voice toneless instead of asking the bitchy assistant why she was truly outdoing herself this afternoon.

"Good, because my kitchen-duty days are over," she snapped, and grabbed a can of diet black cherry soda out of the refrigerator. Then she grumbled under her breath, "Fucking
over."
She slammed the refrigerator door so hard, some fliers flew away from the magnets that had been securing them in place. Then in one motion, she shook the can and yanked the soda tab up, and burgundy liquid spurted out, foaming over the top and trickling onto the floor. Delia looked down, then back up, and smirked. "Aw... looks like you'd better grab some paper towels, too, while you're in there."

Lonnie's mouth dropped open incredulously. What the hell was this woman's problem? In fact, Lonnie was beginning to wonder why Delia had become positively unbearable over the last couple of weeks. When she'd started temping at Twit & Bell six months ago, Delia was never friendly to her, but she mostly just ignored her. Lately she'd been more and more hostile, and now it was all somehow targeted at
her.

"What's with you?" Lonnie demanded.

Delia just scoffed. "Oh, grow up, Lonnie. I can't think of one damn reason why I need to be nice to you. If I'm in a bad mood, you can just suck it up."

"Wha—?"

"And, by the way, I'm forwarding Lunther's phone to you. You can deal with all the fucking dolts still calling for him." She gave her hair one more
screw-you
toss, and strode out of the kitchen. Lonnie stood there dumbfounded for another second or two before heading to the supply room.

As she cleaned up, Lonnie realized that Delia had donned the same miserably hateful expression she'd had at the holiday party when Lunther'd walked away from her, and when she'd started a rumble at the buffet table. She shuddered to think what Delia's temper would be like if someone
really
crossed her. And Lonnie couldn't help wondering if she was volatile enough to be violent. After two seconds of deliberation, she made a mental note to steer clear of Delia and not hang around the office after hours.

Lonnie abandoned her whole Sanka-pot idea, then killed another half hour at her desk going through new e-mail—which included two from Terry. Groaning inwardly, she closed her inbox. She felt guilty that she hadn't replied to him yet, but in her defense, the only e-mails he'd sent her so far had been forwards.

She glanced at her PC clock in the bottom corner of her monitor: 2:25. Hmm, it seemed like over five hours ago it said 2:21. Suffice it to say, this day was dragging. She still couldn't believe Twit hadn't emerged from his office all day. The only reason she knew he was in there at all was because she'd caught a glimpse of his duckwalk when she'd first entered the office that morning... just before he'd disappeared around the corner and shut his door audibly.

Having her boss out of her face should've been a liberating feeling, but Lonnie found it unsettling, at best. The last time she'd seen him had been at Lunther's wake, when his body had been racked by dry sobs, and she'd gotten sidetracked with the mugger, anyway. It just seemed odd that Twit's longtime partner had died, and Twit wasn't bustling around the office, working double time to make sure Bell's accounts were covered and the firm was on schedule.

What could he be doing in that office? It was more than odd.... It seemed, well, suspicious.

I'm being paranoid.
What
could
Twit be doing in there, if not assembling some outrageous stack of work for her? The mother of all PowerPoint presentations, or something equally tedious? That sounded like Twit. Yes, undoubtedly, he'd unload a project big enough to make up for all the task-free hours she'd had that morning. And, if she wasn't at her desk the second that he needed her... Well, she knew Twit. He'd get that infuriated eye tic no matter how unreasonable it was.

This whole day was just plain weird! Was it that Beauregard hadn't asked her if any confidential faxes had come that day? It had gotten to the point that Twit's daily, obsessive requests for some mythical fax were a staple in Lonnie's routine. No, it was more than that. The first day back at the office since the day of the holiday party—since Lunther's death—and half the staff hadn't even shown up. Among the no-shows were B.J., Macey, and Bette.

Maybe she should call Dominick again. He'd called her first thing that morning, but she was ten minutes late getting in, and just missed his call. In his message he said that he had several meetings on his schedule, but he'd call her later. Then he'd left another message when Lonnie was busy wiping black cherry soda off the lime green kitchen floor Now she picked up her receiver, dialed his work number, and felt disappointed to hear his voice mail pick up.

Just then she saw Macey walk through the main glass doors. Before Lonnie could say anything, Macey hastened past her, waving a quick hello as if not to bother her while she was on the phone, and smiled behind dark sunglasses. She moved briskly down the hall toward her office, and Lonnie started deliberating her options.

Should she tell her about the mugging? That Lunther had orchestrated the whole thing because he was worried about the "security of the firm"? Hell, what did that even mean? She didn't want to imply that Macey was doing something wrong, but she had given Lonnie the notebook and wanted her to keep it a secret. That seemed rather suspicious now, but Lonnie was sure Macey had an easy, innocent explanation. That settled it. She rose from her comfy leather chair and headed down the hall.

She knocked gently on Macey's door. "Yes, come in," Macey summoned. Lonnie walked into the familiar office, remembering the many times she'd come in to discuss a project and ended up talking about other, more interesting subjects. She remembered all the times that Macey had pleasantly offered her a Snapple and let down a bit of her icy facade. (Lonnie assumed it was at least partly a facade.)

"Hi, Macey. Do you have a minute?" Lonnie asked, slightly reserved.

"Hi!" She welcomed her with a sweet, open smile crossing her lovely features. "Come in. Come in," she added brightly, and motioned toward the blue armchair.

"Hi," Lonnie repeated, relieved by Macey's good mood. "I don't want to disturb you, but—"

"Nonsense," Macey interrupted, and waved her hand in complete dismissal of the idea. "Lonnie," she started, "I just want to first say that I'm sorry I didn't have more of a chance to talk to your sister last week. Unfortunately, I was somewhat preoccupied at the party, and, well, the point is, she seemed like an independent, interesting woman, and I regret not getting to know her."

"Oh... thank you," Lonnie replied, a little lacking for words. "Well, she enjoyed meeting you, even if it was brief. Macey," she continued, eager to bring them onto the topic of Lunther and the notebook, "I just wanted to apologize for not getting your research project finished in time. I know it was supposed to be done by Friday, but with everything that happened, I—"

Macey held up her hand to stop Lonnie from explaining. "Don't give it a second thought. In fact, if I could have that notebook back as soon as possible, that would be great."

"Oh, okay... But, don't you want me to finish the project?" What, was the project no longer important?

Macey shrugged, smiling amiably and looking more relaxed than Lonnie had ever seen her. "Nope."
Nope?
Macey did not use words like "nope."

"It's just not relevant anymore." She wheeled her chair over to the minifridge. "Snapple?" she asked, beaming, and handed Lonnie a raspberry iced tea.

"Macey, actually, I was sort of wondering—"

BRRRINNG!

"'Scuse me a sec," Macey said, and picked up her ringing phone.
'Scuse? A sec?
Macey was abbreviating words; now this was disconcerting. "Macey Green... Oh, hi! How are you? Me? Bloody hell, do you even have to ask?" she enthused into the phone, and laughed.

Lonnie stood up and moved toward the door, hoping that Macey would stop her. But Macey didn't stop her. She just smiled... and waved good-bye with one finger.
Huh?

As she was shutting the door behind her, Lonnie heard Macey say "natch" two times, in succession. Okay, it was time to panic.

* * *

Lonnie couldn't help but wonder if heart palpitations and intense panting were the norm for everyone who lived on her floor, as she opted for the stairs over the elevator. Climbing the five flights to her apartment definitely seemed better in theory than in practice, a distinction she vowed to remember next time she came home. So much for regular exercise.