Red Tape (12 page)

Chapter
14

I felt frustrated from the moment I woke up. I decided to stop at Take Ten after I dropped off Mandy and treat myself to a cup of coffee. When I pushed through the door to the shop, who did I see? Lorraine having coffee with none other than Mayor O’Donnell. They suddenly stopped talking when I walked in, as if they were saying something they didn’t want me to hear. The sight of them made me sick. I ignored them and asked the barista for a large crème brûlée-flavored coffee. I wished they had shots of something to make my coffee stronger to get me through the day.

While I was waiting for my drink to be prepared, Officer Williams entered the coffee shop and sat with the mayor and Lorraine. If I had realized that Take Ten was going to be a big hangout for the Sunshine Brown-nosing Club, I would have skipped the cup of joe and gone directly to my office.

I drove to work. I took a deep breath and counted to ten before getting out of the car. Inside, I stared at the mounds of work draped over my inbox. I was basically expected to do everything myself, since Mrs. Ugly sat on her behind all day not doing anything. I looked down at my phone. Thirteen voicemails were already waiting for me. I guessed word got out that I was back at work.

I listened to a few messages from coworkers who said they were happy to have me back. That made me feel a little better. At least some people appreciated me. The fourth message was from a woman named Mrs. Coral who had been trying unsuccessfully for three weeks to get someone to call her back with instructions on how to get a copy of her husband’s death certificate. No surprise there—that Lorraine wasn’t answering phones and wasn’t calling people back. I hit the callback button to dial her number. She didn’t answer the phone, but I left her a message to stop in and see me if she could or to call me back.

I finished listening to my messages. It was ten o’clock by the time I returned all the calls. Mrs. Coral was at the window five minutes later. I apologized to her for the wait and explained I was out on leave for a while, having only returned yesterday. I handed her a form to fill out and took a copy of her ID.

The computer networks were running slow. I asked Mrs. Coral to take a seat while I waited for an internet connection in order to check to see if the death had been properly recorded. She wanted five certified copies. I unlocked the drawer where we stored our Vital Statistics paper. I panicked for a moment. There was no paper. Then I remembered that Bonnie moved it to a new hiding location after we had discovered the paper was missing.

I grabbed the key to the liquor license cabinet and retrieved the paper from there. The pack of paper seemed rather light to me. I was immediately suspicious of Lorraine. She would have been the only other person who knew where the paper was kept and it didn’t sound like she had been bothering to issue any certificates to the public, so I was curious to see exactly what was missing.

I finished waiting on Mrs. Coral. She was very appreciative that I had helped her. Then I put on my invisible detective hat and got down to investigating. I pulled out the logs of destroyed safety paper and noted how many pages were purposely shredded. I pulled out the receipt books from the past month and a half and counted the number of copies issued for birth, death, and any other life events. I confirmed the sequential numbers of the safety paper that had been previously missing with notes I had made when I originally realized paper was missing. I double-checked
bank account figures with our CFO to see how much money had been deposited from the sale of certified records. My suspicions were realized. More safety paper was missing.

I waited for Lorraine to go to the bathroom, then I called Bonnie.

“Hey, Bonnie, I have a quick question for you. Does anyone know where you moved the safety paper to?”

“It’s in the liquor license cabinet.”

“I know that, I’m wondering who else knows.”

“Just Lorraine, why?”

“There is paper missing again, at least a hundred sheets.”

“You’ve got to be joking. Maybe you should call the county prosecutor or something. Or those FBI guys that interviewed you. Something’s wrong and if I’m thinking what you are thinking, then that witch mayor and her ugly friend need to be behind bars.”

“My thoughts exactly. Lorraine could be issuing legitimate certified copies and pocketing the cash or stealing the paper and issuing fake copies.”

“Lorraine wasn’t around when the first batch went missing, so my money is on the stealing paper scenario.”

I hadn’t noticed Lorraine had returned from the ladies’ room. I hoped she didn’t hear anything. I quickly switched the subject.

“Do you want to get together for lunch this weekend? It’s Columbus Day weekend, so I have off on Monday,” I asked Bonnie.

“I know you are changing the subject on purpose; someone must be listening.”

“Yuppers.”

“Is it ugly?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Monday is good. Hey, maybe we can check out that Bratz place again. Maybe your knight in shining armor will be working since it’s a week day.”

“Monday it is then. I’ll pick you up around eleven thirty.”

“See you then, Chelsey.”

“I’ll see you, Bonnie.”

I didn’t want to risk Lorraine hearing me on the phone again, so I emailed the state registrar. I told him I was concerned that this was the second time this year that I had noticed the safety paper missing in my office and I implored him to put a ban on the issuance of certified records from my office until such matter could be investigated.

Seconds later, I received a reply. Invalid email address. I know I hadn’t typed the address wrong, I chose it from my address book. I went to the State’s website. It said that Beverly Daniels was the interim Registrar of Vital Statistics. I wondered what happened to Mr. Alfred. I decided to do a Google search for his name.

What I found next was troubling, to say the least. Charles Alfred had been murdered near his home about a month ago. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard anything about this. The news article said it was a mugging gone wrong. I felt queasy at first, then I felt frightened. Could it be possible that this had something to do with the fact that I had contacted him about the missing safety paper here?

I knew I shouldn’t have surmised without having any facts. I went over the particulars in my head, making a mental list in no particular order:

1.    
   The safety paper was missing.
   
2.   
   The FBI raided Town Hall looking for mayor’s records and vital statistics records.
   
3.   
   I alerted the state registrar to the missing paper.
   
4.   
   The state registrar was dead.
   
5.   
   I knew about the paper.
   
6.   
   I was accused of a crime I did not commit.
   
7.   
   Bonnie knew about the paper.
   
8.   
   Bonnie was fired for a bogus reason.
   
9.   
   Lorraine was the only person who knew where the safety paper was moved to, other than Bonnie.
   
10. More paper went missing.
    
11. Lorraine is Mayor O’Donnell’s friend who got a job making more money than any other employee in Sunshine.
    
12. The mayor could be placed at the scene of the crime within twenty-four hours of the burglary, flood, and computer/phone tampering incidents.
    
13. There was also an arson, making that four attempts to sabotage the building with no arrests made.
    

That was more than a dozen facts. I was starting to connect the dots. Was I being paranoid or had my suspicions all along been accurate? I truly believed the mayor was guilty. I wasn’t sure about Lorraine. Either she was involved or she had some real good dirt on Mayor O’Donnell and was blackmailing her for a job.

I used my lunch break to call Agent Romeo and spill my guts about all of my suspicions, but I only got his voice mail. I was feeling apprehensive. If I was right and they killed Mr. Alfred, then what would they do to me? They already had me arrested. They knew where I lived, what hours I worked, the names and address of my parents. Would they hurt Mandy to get to me? I shuddered at my thoughts and hoped that I was overreacting. I had accused Bonnie of being a drama queen, but maybe that title suited me more.

After lunch, I tried to drown myself in work to get those insane thoughts out of my head. Whenever I kept busy, I didn’t feel so afraid. I had to keep telling myself that I concocted the notion of the mayor being an arch criminal and that I was making it all up to exact revenge on her for having me arrested. After all, I was absolutely, without a doubt, a disgruntled employee.

Later that day, I received a call back from Agent Romeo. I excused myself to go sit in my car to talk to him without Big Brother’s prying ears. I recited my list of facts to him and told him to take it for what it was worth. I didn’t want to be held accountable if something bad happened and I never informed some kind of authority.

“Must be nice to be able to leave the office whenever you want,” Lorraine squealed at me as I walked back in the room.

There were so many things I wanted to say—it must be nice to make $120,000.00 per year and not have to lift a finger to do anything, for one. More than saying something, I wanted to shove my boot into her mouth and knock a couple of her teeth out. But, instead of sarcasm and violence, I opted to kill her with kindness. I just smiled and went back to work.

* * *

There was a terrible stench filling the lobby when I entered the building for work the following morning. I noticed public works was painting the hallways and stairwell. I went to my office and opened up the windows. Even though it was nippy outside, I felt lightheaded and needed the fresh air. Exhaustion, frustration, and anxiety had taken its toll on me this week. I reminded myself that I already made it through two days back at work and if I could make it through the pains of labor, I could make it through the rest of this week. I contemplated seeing a doctor and getting some happy pills to make work seem more bearable.

Lorraine came in to work late again. “Did you oversleep?” I asked her sarcastically.

She squawked back at me with her nose in the air, “No, I had a meeting with Mayor O’Donnell.” I guessed that was her new excuse for showing up whenever she felt the urge.

“Mayor O’Donnell wants this office to be used as the official mayor’s office since there isn’t one in the building. She wants you to move into the basement. She already made arrangements and had public works move a desk down there for you,” Lorraine announced.

“Is that so?” I asked.

Oh, so the bad little girl that I am is getting banished to the basement,
I thought.
Unbelievable.
The mayor was rarely ever in the building; there was really no need for a mayor’s office and if she thought there was, then
she
should have been put in the basement. I marched out of my office and over to Rodney’s to see if I really had to move into the basement, where there were no other offices. I tried to point out to him that the senior citizens that came in to pay their taxes and get their beach badges or dog licenses at the same time were not going to want to trudge downstairs.

“It wasn’t my decision,” Rodney said without even looking up at me.

I walked back into the hallway and went to the ladies’ room to cool off. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized I’d be just fine and dandy getting away from Lorraine in my face all day every day, so moving to the basement wasn’t such a bad idea.

Upon entering my office, I promptly announced that I was happy to move and I’d be doing so immediately. I grabbed a cart, disconnected all my computer wires, and loaded up my computer, printer, and all of the paperwork I was currently working on. I dialed the number to the public works department and asked them if they would be able to move my phone as soon as possible and to move the rest of my file cabinets when they had time.

I purposely packed the safety paper and the cash box. I wasn’t taking any chances. I decided to mix the safety paper in with a bunch of files so that it couldn’t be readily seen by Lorraine on my way out. When my cart was filled, I headed out to the elevator. It appeared the stairwell was off limits to residents for the day too, because of the painting going on. It finally made sense why the mayor was having the stairwell painted, I presumed she wanted it to look somewhat presentable to the people who have to come in to my office. After all, these were the same people that would be voting in November when her current term was up.

The elevator was taking forever. I didn’t understand why. There was only this floor and the basement in the building. The doors started to open slowly and I heard a horrible screeching sound. I hesitated for a minute because I thought it sounded bad.

“Hiya, dolly,” I heard from behind me. I turned around to look and saw it was Rose Sciaratta. I gave her a big smile. I liked Rose.

“Rose! How nice to see you. What brings you here today?”

“I came to see you.”

“You did? What can I do for you?”

“I want to know if I can pick up the poll books and supplies for my district. I get paid an extra twenty-five dollars for that, you know. An old lady like me is on a fixed income; I could use the extra money.”