The Temporary Detective

Chapter Forty-One

Clutching Doreen's Filofax to her chest, Isobel sat with her back against the door to Frank's office and tried to think.

On the day she was killed, Doreen had planned to meet Stan at one o'clock, during the emergency drill they both knew had been scheduled. The question was, had they met? Had Stan darted into the women's bathroom just before the bell rang, had a brief argument with his ex-wife, and killed her?

Right from the start, Nikki, criminal though she herself turned out to be, had suspected Stan. But why would Stan kill the person who was helping him raise money for his operation?

Maybe she wasn't. Percival was mathematically gifted, true, but maybe the numbers didn't mean what he thought they did. Doreen must have known about Stan's proclivities. It easily explained the annulment of their marriage. But maybe Doreen had seen it as a betrayal and had never forgiven him. Then Stan had told her he'd changed his ways in order to convince her to help him get a job. If Doreen found out that not only did he still like to dress up, he wanted the operation, maybe she'd started blackmailing him.

But according to Frank, Doreen had been pushing Stan for promotion. Why? Because in the end, she hated Paula more than she hated Stan? Or was she just perverse enough to toy with Stan, one day helping him, the next day hurting him?

And speaking of Frank, what was Doreen's Filofax doing in his possession? There was only one explanation for that, and the realization made Isobel groan aloud. Stan and Frank were lovers. Frank had found out somehow that Stan had killed Doreen and was hiding the Filofax to protect him.

If that was the case, then why not destroy it? But Isobel knew the answer to that instantly. If Frank ever needed a hold over Stan, he could literally take a page from Doreen's book.

Isobel's head was spinning. She opened the Filofax again to the calendar page, only this time she noticed something she hadn't before. In the same spot the day before the murder, Doreen had written the letter "P."

Well. That was intriguing. Doreen had met Paula during her lunch hour the day before. If they hated each other so much, what was that meeting about?

Isobel stood up and stretched her cramped legs. Still holding Doreen's Filofax, she paced the room, weaving around the boxes as she worked through her thoughts.

Doreen didn't want Paula to have Frank's job. She was trying as hard as she could to keep her from getting it, but the one thing she hadn't been able to do was blackmail Paula. Yet.

But what if Doreen had finally found something? What if they'd met, and Doreen had laid out blackmail terms? Then, the next day, during the emergency drill—which Paula also knew about beforehand—Paula had waylaid Doreen in the bathroom and killed her before she ever got to meet Stan.

Isobel paused and looked at her watch. Six forty-five! She had completely lost track of the time. She was due at her Two by Two audition at seven thirty and she hadn't warmed up, or put on makeup—or anything!

Filofax in hand, Isobel ducked out of Frank's new office and instinctively turned the corner to the ladies' room, which was directly below the one on the seventeenth floor. She was a mess. Her hair was lank, and the dark circles under her eyes had returned. She spun her voice up and down the scale, then sang out a tentative arpeggio. Her voice echoed off the bathroom tile, startling her. She sounded tired, but there was no time to warm up if she wanted to get to the audition. She would just have time to dash back upstairs, quickly refresh her makeup, and then hightail it out of there.

As Isobel turned to go, a sound stopped her. Someone had flushed the toilet in the ladies' room above her, on the seventeenth floor.

She cast her mind back to the group that had been gathered by the glass doors. All men. She had an irrational impulse to bolt, but her things were upstairs: her coat, her bag, her music, her high heels. And she wasn't ever coming back. She had to get them now.

It's probably the cleaning lady I saw the other day, she reasoned. Or maybe it's somebody from one of the other departments on the floor.

Except that they generally used their own bathroom at the other end.

She left the bathroom on the sixteenth floor and made her way quickly and quietly back to the elevators. She exited onto the seventeenth floor, pressed the entrance code into the keypad on the wall and proceeded through the etched glass doors.

There was no one in sight. Someone had turned off her computer. Isobel knelt on the floor to gather her belongings, which she had stowed, as always, under her desk.

A door creaked open. The door to the ladies' room.

Isobel stood up. She knew the smart thing to do would be to stay low, under her desk, just in case it wasn't the cleaning lady. But she didn't. She backed up to the wall next to Nikki's desk and stood flush against it. In this position, Isobel would be able to see who it was without the person seeing her.

She pressed her body against the wall and held her breath. After a moment, a tall, voluptuous woman with auburn curls, wearing alligator pumps, palazzo pants, and a purple silk blouse strode past her. Isobel's eyes grew wide.

It was Stan Henderson. And she was beautiful.