“That they did this together, do you?”
“Are you crazy? They’re hardly on speaking terms.”
“Mh. I guess you’re right,” said Gran, then sighed. “Oh, well. Looks like we’ve got a couple to unite,and a murder to solve. No pressure!”
“I wonder if there could have been a ladder,” I told Dooley.
“A ladder?”
“Yeah, if the murderer got in through Madison’s window by putting a ladder up against the building.”
“The badger didn’t mention a ladder.”
“We didn’t ask.”
“If there was a ladder, he would have mentioned it.”
“Maybe not. Maybe badgers don’t think anything about ladders set up against buildings and used to murder people. Maybe they think it’s just par for the course.”
We both thought about this for a moment, and soon came to the same conclusion: we had to talk to that badger again. Which was going to prove hard, since he had disappeared down his burrow—or den or sett.
In the meantime Gran had taken it upon herself to talk to Natalie again, and try to find out about her involvement with the death of her boss.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
“You’re kidding,” said Natalie, as she stared, wide-eyed, at Vesta.
“No, I’m not,” said Vesta as she shoved a cup underneath that recalcitrant coffee machine she’d been struggling with since the day she arrived at Advantage. “The police think Madison might have been pushed.”
“But I heard they found a suicide note?”
“Suicide notes can be faked.”
“Oh, God. This just keeps getting worse and worse!” the glorified secretary said, clutching a distraught hand to her face. She looked pale and drawn, which was no surprise. The man she professed to love had just been killed, and yet here she was, still showing up for work.
“If I were you I’d go home,” Vesta now told the girl. “There’s nothing you can do here.”
“I can’t go home,” said Natalie.
“Your brother still giving you a hard time?”
Natalie nodded.“We had a flaming row last night. When I arrived the place was a mess. He’d invited a couple of his friends and they’d spilled cigarette ashes all over my furniture, slices of pizza left upside down on my coffee table, beer soaked into my carpets. You should have seen the place, Vesta. It wassuch a mess. So I threw them all out and told Luke to clean up, which he refused.”
“I think you should kick him out.”
“I would, but he’s got nowhere else to stay.”
“He’s got friends. He can bunk with them.” And mess up their places.
“I couldn’t do that to him. He’s still my brother.” She sighed. “Before mom died, I promised I’d always take care of my little brother, and I won’t break that promise.”
“You know what I think? Luke knows you made that promise, and now he’s taking advantage of you.”
“I know,” said Natalie miserably. “And now with Madison gone, I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re still having the baby?”
The girl nodded wordlessly.
“Even though its dad is dead?”
At the sound of those awful words, Natalie burst into tears. Vesta handed her a tissue, which she used to dry her eyes and blow her nose.“It’s all just so terrible,” she said. “My baby is going to grow up without a daddy.”
“From what I understand, your baby was going to grow up without a daddy, whether Madison had lived or not.”
“I know this is stupid of me… but I was still hoping for a reconciliation, you know. Michael once told me he loved me. And a love like that—it can’t just go away, can it?”
It can if it was never there in the first place, Vesta thought.“I’m sure everything will be all right,” she assured the young woman as she patted her back consolingly. And as they walked back to the office, she asked, “Could you think of anyone who would hurt Michael, Natalie?”
“No one,” she said immediately. “The man was a saint. When you look at the kind of stuff he had to put up with every day—the man was an absolute saint.”
“Of course he was. A regular saint.”
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
Scarlett wanted to talk to Tom, with whom she felt she had built up a nice rapport the day before, but unfortunately he wasn’t at his desk. And when she asked his cousin Danny, he told her Tom was taking a sick day.
“He wasn’t feeling well this morning,” Danny said as he took a seat on the edge of her desk. “So I told him to stay in bed. And a good thing I did, considering what happened with Madison.”
“I thought Tom didn’t like Madison?”
“Who did? But he’s got enough to deal with right now, without having to look at Natalie crying her heart out because her precious boyfriend dropped dead last night.”
Natalie was back at her desk, and from the quaking motion of her shoulders, it was obvious she was going through yet another box of Kleenex.
“He took Natalie’s rejection pretty hard,” Danny said. “After he screwed up his courage like that, and finally popped the question, the way she turned him down flat—that was cold, Scarlett. That was cold of her.” He directed an equally icy look at Natalie’s back, clearly unhappy with the way the girl had treated his cousin. “I keep telling him to forget about her. There’s plenty of fish in the sea, right?”
“Plenty,” Scarlett confirmed, who knew from experience this was true.
“But no. He keeps insisting Natalie is the only one for him. The idiot.”
“Did you tell Tom about what happened to Madison?” asked Scarlett.
“I sent him a text.”
“And?”
“He’s shocked, of course. Just like we all are. I mean, I always thought Madison was hard as nails. The toughest boss I ever worked for. But turns out the man was fighting some inner demons that none of us knew about. And then he goes and kills himself. Just goes to show you never really know aperson, do you?”
“No, I guess you don’t,” said Scarlett, darting a glance at Madison’s empty office, which was sealed off by police tape.
“So you and Tom were home last night, were you? Didn’t go out?”
He gave her an odd look, then nodded.“Of course. Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. Out. Couple of young guys like you? Hitting the town hard?”
“Tom isn’t one for hitting the town hard, especially in the state he’s been in. And I may not look it, but I’m a homebody at heart. And besides, my aunt likes us all home safe and sound with her. She’s old-fashioned like that.”
Scarlett made a mental note for Odelia to check with Tom’s mom if she could confirm Tom’s alibi, but she had no reason to doubt Danny’s words. Tom may have been upset with Madison for the way he was treating Natalie, but the soft-spoken young man didn’t strike her as a cold-blooded killer.
And that this was cold-blooded murder was clear. Someone had taken great pains to make Madison’s death look like a suicide, and had planned this well, even making sure he or she weren’t detected by the building’s security system.
“Thanks, Danny,” she said. “And when you hear from Tom, give him my love, will you?”
“Will do,” said Danny, and was on his way again, pushing his cart.
The big boss might be dead, but life at Advantage went on. Soon corporate would put a new boss in charge, who would move into Madison’s office, and Madison’s death would be a minor blip on the radar of this multi-million-dollar business empire.
CHAPTER 22
[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]
Looked like it wasn’t business as usual at Advantage after all, for around eleven a representative of management showed up, and told everyone to go home. In light of the circumstances, they had reached the decision that we couldn’t very well be expected to give of our best, and so we were all asked to leave, and Advantage Publishing was closing down for the time being.
“When are they going to reopen again?” asked Gran as we stepped into the elevator.
“No idea,” said Natalie, pressing a Kleenex to her nose. “I think it’s very decent of them, don’t you? To give us time to grieve?”