Once Helen Louise was under way, Diesel and I hurried back into the house. I had debated calling off today’s lunch, but none of the family would hear of it. They all insisted on coming as usual. I prayed for a quiet day, and a quiet day we had.
I only hoped it wouldn’t be the calm before the storm.
* * *
Diesel and I made it into the office on the dot of eight thirty. Melba was there before us. After we exchanged greetings, I told her about the situation with Cassandra Brownley.
“Let me check my e-mail,” Melba said. “She might have e-mailed me after we left the office on Friday.”
I was willing to bet she hadn’t. She certainly hadn’t replied to my e-mail from the weekend. I had checked this morning before breakfast, and again a few minutes ago, on my phone.
“Did you get a response from your friend in accounts payable? I really need to see those files this afternoon.”
“I’ll check that, too,” Melba said. “I’ll get the coffee started and be right back.”
I nodded. Diesel accompanied Melba to make the coffee, and I unlocked my office door and turned on the lights. I halfway expected to find it in shambles or filled with bugs, either live or plastic, but everything appeared to be as I had left it on Friday afternoon.
Once my computer was awake and I could log on, I checked e-mail again. Still no response from Cassandra. I checked for voice mail on the office phone, but there was none. I glanced at my watch—eight thirty-nine. I opened my briefcase and pulled out my own thumb drive, onto which I had copied from my laptop all those files I’d found on Reilly’s thumb drive. I had decided earlier I didn’t want to lug my laptop to work and back.
Melba appeared in the doorway. “No e-mail from Cassandra, but Margie Flaxdale, my friend in accounts payable, did e-mail back to say she would have the files ready for you to look at. You won’t be able to remove them from their offices, but you can look at them there.”
“Thanks for checking,” I said. “Have a seat for a moment. I need to bring you up to date on a few things.”
Diesel came around the desk to meow at me. I was sure he wondered why we were here, instead of in the archive office. The window here didn’t have the wide sill he was accustomed to upstairs.
“You’ll have to find a new place to nap for a while,” I told him. “We’re going to be in this office for at least a couple of months.”
He meowed again, as if to express his displeasure, and then walked back around to the desk to stretch out on the floor by Melba.
She grinned at the cat. “What’s been going on?”
I filled her in on the weekend’s events, and she paled when I told her about the gunshot.
“Lunatic,” she said. “Thank the Lord you weren’t hurt.”
We discussed the incident a few minutes longer, and then I noticed the time. Four minutes before nine. I mentioned it to Melba, and she rose.
“I’ll keep an eye out for her,” she said before she walked back into her office.
Moments later I heard another person speak to Melba, but it didn’t sound like Cassandra. Then Penny Sisson walked into my office.
“Good morning, Charlie,” she said.
I returned the greeting and asked her to have a seat. “Thank you for coming, but as you can see, Ms. Brownley has not shown up.”
“No, she hasn’t,” Penny responded. “She called me fifteen minutes ago to inform me that she was ill and would not be at work this week, nor the first part of next week. Her physician has put her on complete bed rest for the next seven to ten days.”
To judge by Penny’s stony expression, she was not pleased with Cassandra’s delaying tactics. Diesel lightened that expression, however, by greeting Penny with a meow and a rub against her legs. Penny patted him and smiled.
“I reminded her, of course,” Penny went on, “that she would have to have a note from the doctor before she would allowed to return to work after an extended period of sick leave, and she assured me she would have one.”
I shook my head. “If she is really ill—which I doubt—I am truly sorry. But this gamesmanship of hers is trying what little patience I have left.”
“I understand how you feel,” Penny said. “After I received your e-mail to her, I did some digging in her personnel file. Some of this you can find out yourself by looking at annual reviews of her performance, so I will share that with you now. During the time she has been here, she has had several of these episodes that required bed rest. These episodes appear to have always coincided with times that she was in conflict with her supervisor.”
“I see.” I thought for a moment. “Tell me realistically, Penny, do we have any firm ground for firing her? We can’t keep tolerating behavior like this, although she’s evidently gotten away with it for years.”
“I would be happy to see her gone,” Penny said, “because she has caused trouble for years. Unfortunately, the documentation we have isn’t strong enough for us to be able to fire her for cause. Now, if we could find proof, for example, that she was behind any of the recent incidents, well, we would certainly have cause.”
“And the police might have cause to haul her off to jail, too.” I grinned. “I’ll talk with Chief Deputy Berry and Chief Ford about this, try to find out whether they have any evidence for who pulled those pranks, including smashing my windshield.”
“Good plan,” Penny said. “Let me know if you find out anything.” She rose to leave. “I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with her, Charlie, on top of everything else. Hopefully some good will come out of it.”
I rose and came around to see her out. “Thanks, Penny. We’ll get through it somehow. I appreciate your help tremendously.”
Diesel followed Penny into Melba’s office, and I returned to my desk. I had a meeting with the president and the deans of all the schools at ten, and I wanted to be prepared. I scanned the agenda that Forrest’s secretary had sent and reread an e-mail from Forrest outlining what he wanted me to present.
I left the office ten minutes before ten, admonishing Diesel to be a good boy. He wanted to come with me, but I didn’t think it appropriate to take him along. Until the college found a permanent library director, I would have to leave him in Melba’s care frequently. I knew I could trust her to look after him, but I really couldn’t make him understand why he couldn’t go with me.
My head ached by the time the meeting with the president and the deans had finished. I had just enough time to make a restroom stop and buy a can of diet soda from a vending machine before I met with the vice president in charge of finance. That meeting lasted only forty-five minutes, to my great relief. I came out of it with a clear understanding of the library’s finances, and we discussed the measures necessary to get the budget back on track after Peter’s disastrous overspending. I walked back to my office already tired and ready to go home for the day, but I had another meeting ahead of me.
Diesel greeted me with a series of meows and trills, all of which told me how disgusted he was with having been left behind. Melba smiled while she listened to me repeat several times, “I’m sorry, Diesel.”
When he lapsed into silence and smugly began to lick a front paw, I told Melba we were going home for a quick lunch. I had to be back in time for my two o’clock meeting with her friend in accounts payable.
“I’m going to lunch, too,” she said. “I’ll be back in time to watch over Mr. Chatty here for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re the best.”
She grinned. “I know.”
I had to make it a working lunch, although the thought of it annoyed me. I took my salad and sandwich to the den, where I powered up the laptop and logged in to the college network. I needed to catch up on e-mail. My first task was to compose a message to Kanesha and Marty Ford about Cassandra. The woman’s behavior was more than merely annoying. I also found it suspicious, despite her history. I had a hunch there was more to it this time than simply stonewalling her supervisor. If I couldn’t get through to her, perhaps Kanesha or Marty Ford could. Personally, I would love to watch Kanesha interrogate Cassandra. Ms. Brownley was a tough nut, but Chief Deputy Berry had cracked far tougher.