The Temporary Detective Read online

“Yes! I am so sorry I’m late.”

  Felice smiled. “I’m just glad you’re here. Follow me.”

  Back in the hall, Isobel reached for the elevator button, but Felice continued toward Stairwell A, talking over her shoulder. “These elevators take forever.”

  Isobel opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. They trudged upstairs to seventeen, where Felice opened the door with a key that hung on a lanyard around her neck.

  “You’ll be working in Frank Lusardi’s group,” Felice said, as they passed the angry bearded man in the cubicle and rounded the bend to one of the distant corners. The floral-skirted duchess from the elevator stood waiting for them in an open area with three vacant desks.

  “This is Paula Toule-Withers. She’ll show you around.” With a vaguely reassuring flutter of her fingers, Felice retreated.

  Paula rapped sharply on the nearest desk. “You’re late.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, I was—”

  “We’ve already started our department meeting,” Paula said in a voice that betrayed the remains of a posh British accent warped by years in the U.S. “Just answer the phones until we’re finished. Surely, you can manage that?”

  Then she, too, was gone, and as if on cue, three phone lines rang at once. Still standing with her bag slung over her shoulder, Isobel set down her coffee and started answering.

  “Good morning, InterBank Switzerland, please hold.”

  “Good morning, InterBank Switzerland, please hold.”

  “Good morning, InterBank Switzerland, please hold.”

  She bit her lip and looked at the three blinking red lights. Praying that nobody else would call, she picked up the first one again.

  “Good morning. Can I help you?”

  “Lou Volpe for Stan. He there?”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s in a staff meeting.”

  “Tell him I called.”

  “Can I get your num—?”

  Click.

  Isobel yanked open a desk drawer and rummaged around for a message pad. She pulled out a pair of maroon-handled scissors, a used-up roll of Scotch tape, a bent metal ruler, and a crusted-over bottle of Liquid Paper. Clearly, nobody had occupied this desk for some time. As she fished in her handbag, she balanced the phone on her shoulder and took the second call.

  “Is Nikki in yet?” said a sexy male voice.

  “She’s in the staff meeting.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” replied Isobel, with cheery confidence.

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll call back.”

  Isobel frowned and picked up the third call.

  “Doreen? How could you keep me waiting all this time? DOREEN?” shrilled the woman’s voice through the plastic.

  “Um, this is Isobel.”

  “Who? There’s no Isobel.”

  “I’m temping today. Can I help you?”

  “Let me help you!” barked the woman. “Always pick up Frank’s line first. He’s the Senior VP. The others are unimportant.” Another line started ringing. “And don’t keep people on hold more than a few seconds!”

  Isobel pulled her ponytail in frustration as two more lines jingled.

  “Tell Frank I called.” The woman hung up.

  “I would, but who the hell are you?” Isobel muttered to the silent receiver. She gave up trying to find paper and picked up the next line, hoping that remembering messages wouldn’t prove any harder than memorizing lines.

  But the phones kept ringing, and Isobel kept answering. She paused to catch her breath while four of the six lines blinked on hold. The fifth line rang. Isobel grabbed it and, without thinking, shouted, “What?”

  There was a pause, then a familiar deep voice said, “This is James Cooke from Temp Zone. May I speak to Isobel Spice?”

  She gasped and slammed down the phone.

  “Shit!” She sank down in her chair. It was all over now. She couldn’t handle the phones—she could barely get herself onto the seventeenth floor. The temp agencies were right to turn her away. She was in over her head.

  A nasal snicker from across the way stemmed her wave of self-pity. Isobel looked up to see an unattractive, overweight woman with a squarish face settling her paisley-clad bulk at the opposite desk.

  “You can let them go to voice mail, you know.”

  “What about these?” Isobel indicated the blinking lights.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Those you gotta answer.”

  Isobel dug deeper in her bag and produced a handful of wrinkled receipts. One by one she picked up the holding lines and scribbled down the messages. Two more calls came in, but she let them go to voice mail. Finally, it was quiet.

  “You must be the temp,” the woman’s grating tones intruded. “I’m Doreen Fink. I’m sure we’ll be very good friends,” she added with a wink that made Isobel flinch.

  “I took a few…several…okay, a lot of messages,” Isobel said. “One was a woman for Frank, but she didn’t identify herself.”

  “Frank is Mr. Lusardi, and if she didn’t say, then it was his wife. Did she sound like a bitch?” Doreen spat. Isobel nodded. “Then it was her.” Except that in Doreen’s thick Brooklyn accent, it sounded more like “huh.”

  A pudgy, downcast man with a shock of thick brown hair appeared at Doreen’s side and held out a sheet of yellow legal paper.

  “Could you…?” His high, timid voice trailed off.

  Doreen pointed to Isobel. “Give it to huh,” she said. “I got enough to do.”

  The man cleared his throat. “Can you type this for me?”

  “Sure,” Isobel said, relieved to have a job she could handle. She glanced at the letter and the signature jogged her memory. Stan Henderson. The very first call.

  “I took a message for you from…” She racked her brain. “Lou Volpe!” She yelled the name as if she’d just discovered a winning lottery ticket.

  “Oh,” Stan said dully. “What’s his number?”

  Isobel’s heart sank. “I’m sorry. He didn’t leave one.”

  Stan’s doughy face drooped even further, and he trundled away. Isobel set his letter aside and started shuffling through her receipts, trying to decipher her scrawls. A thick pad of message notes in triplicate landed with a thump, inches from her nose, and she jumped.

  “You need one of these,” Doreen said, looming over her. Up close, Isobel could see that her chin was dotted with dark spots, either failed electrolysis or a bad case of blackheads, and her breath smelled like garlic.

  Who eats garlic first thing in the morning? Isobel wondered.

  “Um, thanks,” she said, leaning away from Doreen.

  “Conchita is Stan and Paula’s assistant, but she won’t be in until noon today, so you gotta cover for her until she gets back. I’ll take care of Frank’s phones and stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  “And no personal calls.” A lascivious smile bent the corners of Doreen’s mouth. “Unless we get to hear about how good it was last night. You got a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. Last temp we had, she had this guy who liked to do her every morning before work in the bathroom of a different Starbucks,” Doreen said, practically salivating at the thought. “Then they’d talk about it on the phone all day.”

  Isobel moved her Starbucks cup to the other side of the desk. She needed to find something to do. Immediately.

  The phones were still quiet, so she picked up Stan’s letter. Then she remembered James. She shuddered involuntarily, thinking about how unprofessionally she’d handled his call. But she had promised to check in. Maybe if she altered her voice a little, he’d think he had reached someone else earlier.

  “Temp Zone, James Cooke speaking.”

  “Hello, James,” she said, trying to keep her voice high and light. “It’s Isobel. I’m at InterBank Switzerland and everything’s fine.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Sounds like you’ve been inhaling helium.”

  Isobel readjus
ted her voice. “Nothing. I just swallowed funny.”

  “You didn’t check in. I tried you before, but the receptionist must have transferred me to the wrong number. What’s your direct line?”

  Isobel looked down at the phone. All she saw were four digits: 6583. Her eyes flew to a sheet pinned to the corkboard on the wall, listing employee names and four-digit extensions. She looked frantically around for some indication of the exchange, but she couldn’t find one. Doreen was nowhere to be seen.

  “Can you hang on a sec?” Without waiting for an answer, she dropped the phone on the desk, where it landed with a clatter. She sprinted down the corridor and almost collided with the bearded man.

  “What’s the telephone exchange here?”

  “212.”

  “No, not the area code, the first three numbers.”

  “What do you mean? We all just got extensions.”

  Isobel exhaled in frustration. “If somebody calls you directly from the outside, what do they dial?”

  The man looked at her impatiently. “212-441—”

  Isobel ran the length of the floor back to her desk.

  “212-441-6583,” she said finally to James, who could have interviewed and hired several new temps in the time he’d been waiting.

  “That’s odd. I could have sworn that’s what the receptionist said.”

  Isobel giggled nervously. “Really? Well, you know, sometimes wires get crossed.”

  “Yeah, but it sounded like you.”

  “Oh, here comes the boss! Gotta run. Call you later!” She hung up, cursing herself for being so unprepared. Isobel knew she wasn’t fooling James. She gave a defeated sigh; there was only so much she could do. She fired up the computer and, in between calls, examined Stan’s letter.

  It was riddled with bad grammar, which presented her with a moral dilemma. Should she correct it? She considered asking Doreen, who had reappeared. But after overhearing her on the phone, exclaiming, “You think I screwed you in the back?” Isobel determined that the difficulty presented by “between he and I” would be lost on her.

  “Hey! Who are you?”

  An attractive, slender woman with auburn, boy-short hair was depositing a bulging tote bag on the third desk.

  “Isobel Spice. I’m temping.”

  “Nikki Francis. Nice to meet you. I don’t suppose anyone called for me?”

  “No. Wait! A man called, but he didn’t leave a message. I said you were in the staff meeting. He seemed surprised.”

  Nikki laughed. “I’m sure he was. I do the department billing, part-time. I’m really an actress.”

  “Me, too!”

  Across the room, Doreen gave a loud snort. “Another one? Jeez, this town is crawling with youse. If you’re all so good, whaddaya doin’ here?”

  Nikki turned her back on Doreen. “Ignore her. She’s a cretin.”

  Isobel felt her stomach unclench for the first time all morning. “Can I ask your advice?” she whispered. Nikki nodded. “Stan Henderson’s memo is full of grammatical errors. Should I correct them?”

  “Go ahead. He’ll never know the difference. Just don’t change the meaning.”

  Isobel gave her a grateful smile and went back to work.

  The morning passed surprisingly slowly after the initial flurry, and Isobel puttered back and forth between her desk and the small area around the corner where Frank, Stan and Paula had their offices, delivering letters for signing. She was eager to talk to Nikki some more, but whenever she attempted to start a conversation, Doreen would leer at them and say, “If you two don’t stop chitchatting, I’m gonna have to put youse over my knee!”

  As one o’clock approached, Isobel’s stomach was growling, and she had to pee like a racehorse. She hadn’t been to the bathroom all morning, and the coffee had gone straight through her. She decided to push through and hit the ladies’ room on her way out, so she tidied up the last few memos and checked her watch. It was a few minutes before one. She stood up. So did Doreen.

  “I’m taking lunch,” Doreen announced. “You take yours when I get back.”

  “I’m leaving,” Isobel said. “I was only hired until one.”

  Doreen picked up the phone and punched some numbers. “Felice? We need the temp all day. She says she’s only here ‘til one.” Doreen waited a moment, then called across to Isobel. “Can you stay?”

  “Well, there’s an audition I was hoping to go to—”

  “She can stay,” Doreen said and hung up. Before Isobel could respond, Doreen plunged on. “You can take lunch at two. I’m off to the ladies’.” And with a swing of her elephantine behind, she was gone.

  Nikki smiled sympathetically at Isobel. “I hate to tell you, but if it’s an open call, you’ll never get in now anyway. You have to get there first thing in the morning to get a time slot.”

  “Oh,” Isobel said. Clearly, she still had a lot to learn—on all fronts.

  “Doreen shouldn’t have done that, though,” Nikki went on. “It’s not really up to her.”

  Isobel brightened. “On the other hand, it will make me look good to my temp agent. I’ll call him.”

  But before she could pick up the phone, deafening alarm bells rent the air.

  “What’s that?” she screamed at Nikki, who was already grabbing her bag.

  “Emergency drill!” Nikki shouted back. ““Get your stuff and follow me!”

  Isobel felt her heart skip a beat. “Are you sure it’s a drill?” she shouted.

  “Blue light!”

  Isobel looked up at the wall where Nikki was pointing. Underneath the whirling red emergency light was a smaller flashing blue one with the word “Drill” taped next to it.

  As soon as Isobel started to run, she realized just how desperately she had to pee. She was halfway down Stairwell A to the sixteenth floor, when she realized there was no way she’d make it to the bottom. She watched Nikki and the suit jackets recede down the steps, then raced back upstairs through the door, which, thankfully, had been propped open.

  As Isobel bolted down the corridor, it dawned on her that she didn’t know where the bathroom was. She tried to recall which direction Doreen had taken, but the corridors, unfamiliar and interchangeable, refused to yield a door with a female icon. Isobel dead-ended at Stairwell B and doubled back as the alarm bells continued their raucous clanging. She sprinted past her desk, where the offending Starbucks cup mocked her from atop the phone message pad, and dashed around the corner. Finally, there it was—the ladies’ room.

  With renewed energy, Isobel pushed open the door and flew past the vestibule with its makeup desk and long mirror. She flung open the door to the first stall.

  And screamed.

  THREE

  Isobel rested her forehead against the cool tile of the bathroom wall and watched the automatic sink wash down her response to what she had just seen. She was tempted to look again, to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, but the splayed feet just visible under the stall were enough to convince her.

  Doreen Fink was sitting on the pot, with a pair of scissors sticking out of her meaty bosom and blood dripping down the sides of her mouth. Her eyes were glassy and unseeing, and although Isobel had never seen a dead body before, she was pretty sure Doreen had peed her last. With a jolt, Isobel remembered that she still had to go to the bathroom terribly. For a moment, she couldn’t move; her hands seemed frozen to the sink. Then, feeling cold and hot at the same time, not to mention distinctly weak in the knees, she inched her way as fast as she could to the stall farthest from Doreen’s, sat down, and tried to think.

  She knew she should call for help, but she didn’t want to be the person who found Doreen, with all the possible guilt that implied. She could simply leave and belatedly join the emergency drill, but no doubt Doreen’s stall door would display two large handprints from where she had pushed it inward. Those handprints would be even harder to explain if she fled the scene of the crime, which she was well aware was a crime in itself. If only she ha
d passed out, she wouldn’t have to do a thing. She briefly considered faking it, but decided this was not the best time to be caught acting. No, going for help was the only sensible course of action.

  She flushed, washed her hands, and splashed cold water on her face. The alarm bells had finally stopped, and it wouldn’t be long before people would be returning to their desks. Somebody might come into the bathroom at any minute.

  Somebody did.

  It was Paula Toule-Withers, who glowered at Isobel and reached for the door of the first stall.

  “Don’t go in there!”

  Isobel’s shout startled her every bit as much as it did Paula, who shrieked and jumped back, hitting her head on the tile wall.

  “Holy Christ!” yelped Paula. “What is wrong with you, you stupid twit?”

  Isobel had half a mind to let Paula see for herself, but the words choked themselves out anyway.

  “She’s dead! We need to call for help.”

  Paula sucked in her breath and growled, “I’m telling Felice—no more actresses!”

  And with that, she pushed in the door to Doreen’s stall.

  Isobel wasn’t sure which she found more satisfying: the fact that Paula didn’t even make it to the sink, or the fact that now her fingerprints were on the stall as well.

  As Isobel waited in the small, airless conference room with the others, she found herself annoyed by how thoroughly Doreen Fink had ruined her day. If only Doreen hadn’t tricked her into staying longer, Isobel wouldn’t have been around to discover her body. Then again, obnoxious as Doreen had been, it seemed unjust to blame her for her own death. Even so, Isobel couldn’t help feeling manipulated. She wondered if she could bill for the extra time.

  Paula Toule-Withers returned from her police interview, retrieved her things, and left without a word. Isobel looked around the table at the others. The color still hadn’t returned to Stan Henderson’s pudgy face, which was greenish pale against his shock of brown hair. Senior Vice President Frank Lusardi, a dark-haired man in a well-tailored suit, was occupied with his BlackBerry and seemed to be trying to maintain his distance from the rest of the group, which was difficult, given the close quarters. Conchita Perez, a matronly Hispanic woman, was hunched over a rosary, wiping away her tears with a parade of never-ending tissues that emerged from her sweater sleeves like clowns from a Volkswagen. Isobel would have liked to compare notes with Nikki, but she had been the first person interviewed and released.