What the Dead Leave Behind Page 21

  “’Fraid I’ll sue? Hire an attorney who knows how to get rich by accident?” I saw tiny muscles tugging at the corners of Annabelle’s lips as if she felt insulted by my remark but didn’t want me to know. I was afraid she’d think less of me than she already did, so I quickly added, “It was explained to me that an HR director’s job is to serve the interests of the employer, not the employees.”

  “Sometimes I forget. What do you want, McKenzie? And was it necessary to have Mrs. Szereto threaten my life if I didn’t cooperate?”

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “I bet you are.”

  “Annabelle, I need help.”

  “Psychiatric or otherwise?”

  “Psychiatric goes without saying. But I’m here for the otherwise.”

  “If I can help you I will.”

  The if impressed me. Even with Mrs. Szereto throwing her weight at her, it meant that Annabelle had drawn a line in the sand and she wasn’t going to step over it. Period. And I thought, I really do like tall women.

  “Pretend that I’m an employer calling to verify a job candidate’s credentials,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me the employment history of Rebecca Denise Crawford.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  I spread my hands wide as if I hadn’t expected her to be.

  Annabelle’s feet came off her desk and the keyboard went on top. She started typing, moved her mouse and right-clicked a few times, typed some more.

  “Crawford, Rebecca D.,” she said. “The woman was hired to work in our Department of Research and Development five years ago. She resigned without explanation thirty-three months later.”

  Annabelle’s eyes found mine and grimaced. I’m sure she was thinking the same thing that I was—that Crawford quit at about the same time that Jonny Szereto was running amok. I glanced at Candy Groot. Her expression gave me nothing at all.

  “Crawford, Rebecca D.,” Annabelle continued, “was rehired to work in R&D on a contract basis a little over a year ago. This can’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “We use independent contractors in marketing, freelance writers, graphic designers, that sort of thing, but never in R&D because of the sensitive nature of their work. The amount of money she’s being paid seems awfully high, too.”

  I turned toward Candy Groot.

  “Have you met her?” I asked.

  Her head shake was so imperceptible that I nearly missed it.

  “I thought you knew everybody.”

  She shook her head again.

  “I met Crawford walking out of this building only a few hours ago.”

  She shook her head some more.

  I was staring at Candy but speaking to Annabelle. “How ’bout Ronald Cardiff?”

  This time Candy didn’t even bother to shake her head.

  “Who?” Annabelle said.

  “Ronald Cardiff.” I spelled it for her.

  “No. We have no employees by that name.”

  “Can you tell me who hired Crawford five years ago?”

  Annabelle hit a few more keys.

  “That would have been—Diane Dauria was in charge of research and development back then,” she said.

  “Who rehired her last year?”

  “I don’t know, but—Frank Harris checked off on it.”

  That turned my head. Annabelle was grimacing again.

  “This can’t be right,” she repeated.

  “Who’s head of R&D now?” I asked.

  “He’s not in the office,” Candy said. “He left an hour ago.”

  “Diane, then.”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “I’m going to look into this,” Annabelle said.

  “No. Annabelle, don’t. Please. Let me handle it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I told Candy, “Let’s go have a chat with Diane.”

  “McKenzie…” Annabelle said.

  I folded the fingers of my left hand over the edge of my cast and squeezed. She caught the gesture, but if it meant anything to her, she didn’t show it.

  “Don’t make me call Mrs. Szereto again,” I said.

  “If you don’t, I will,” Annabelle said.

  I let it go at that.

  *   *   *

  Candy and I took the stairs one flight up and walked the meandering corridors in silence until we reached Diane Dauria’s corner office. The lights were on, but there was nobody home. Candy moved to the elaborate telephone system on Diane’s desk and punched a couple of numbers. Diane’s voice was clear enough you’d think she was still in the same room.

  “Ms. Groot,” it said. “I’m leaving early. Girls’ night out with my daughter.”

  Good for them, my inner voice said. Not so much for you.

  “Don’t forget,” Diane’s voice continued. “I’ll be in Owatonna tomorrow morning lighting a fire under manufacturing. They’ll probably keep me for lunch, so we should reschedule both my one and one thirty. I expect to be back by two, though.”

  A moment later, Diane was replaced by a metallic voice that said, “End of message. To delete message press seven.”

  Candy hit a button and the voice said, “Message deleted. To reclaim message press nine.”

  Instead, Candy hit yet another button and the phone was silenced.

  “It’s starting to be a long day,” I said.

  “I’m going home,” Candy said.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “What about Mrs. Szereto?”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

  “But she said—”

  “What do you care what she said?”

  Candy didn’t answer. Instead she gathered up her belongings and headed to the elevators. I followed. When we reached the front entrance of the building, we noticed for the first time that it was raining.

  “How can this happen?” Candy wanted to know.

  “The weather guy said there was a twenty percent chance.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s January. It should be snow.”

  Candy announced that she needed to return to her office for an umbrella. I told her it was only a short walk to the parking lot.

  “I didn’t drive,” she said. “I live one-point-three-five miles from the office, and I like to get my steps in.”

  “Steps?”

  She held up her wrist, and I noticed the black band with a digital display.

  “I use a fitness tracker to measure the steps I take every day, the miles I walk, the calories I burn; it reminds me to exercise even if the exercise is only taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Sitting at my desk all day—you’d be surprised how many hours I spend without actually moving.”

  “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  Candy regarded her digital display while she thought it over.

  “That’s very kind of you,” she said.

  We made a dash for it. My Mustang was parked in the visitors section of the lot closest to the entrance. I opened the passenger door and held it until Candy slid inside. A moment later I was behind the steering wheel.

  “It’s been a long time since a man opened a car door for me,” Candy said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I started driving.

  “I’m sorry you were hurt,” Candy said.

  “Thank you.”

  “What happened exactly, may I ask?”

  “A couple of semipros were unhappy that I was looking into Rebecca Crawford’s relationship with the Szereto Corporation.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Honestly? No. I dropped Crawford’s name, but my assailant refused to pick it up. Could be he did that on purpose. Or it could be the entire episode had something to do with my investigation into Jonny Szereto’s murder instead. Or both. I don’t know. It’s all very confused right now. I’ll figure it out, though.”

  “Why? Why should you figure it out?
”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll decide that when the time comes.”

  Candy gave me a few directions that I followed.

  “It used to be so much fun,” she said. “I remember when it all started back in the seventies, Mr. Szereto building the firm, breaking new ground in the beauty industry—it was so exciting; Mr. Szereto making a mockery of the old line that nice guys finish last. He was kind to everyone and yet a great businessman. We’re told that you can’t be both. Untrue. Those people who justify terrible behavior by saying it’s not personal, it’s just business—liars and hypocrites. They put entire communities out of work by relocating their factories or whatnot and then have the audacity to proclaim to the world what nice guys they are, what good businessmen. Mr. Szereto was never like that. He took personal responsibility for everything the company did. He was an honest man and a gentleman, and I miss him very much.”

  “What about Mrs. Szereto?” I asked.

  “Evelyn—I was upset when they married, I can’t tell you how much. She was so young and so beautiful, and I was so very, very jealous. It wasn’t just me, either. Those of us who had been with Mr. Szereto from the beginning, we all thought that she was nothing more than a gold digger. She turned out all right, though. She was very protective of Mr. Szereto, both him and the company. We became allies, Evelyn and I, looking out for Mr. Szereto, doing silly things like making sure he bundled up in the winter, but also more important things like keeping track of his professional relationships. Mr. Szereto was smart and cunning, but he was also extremely kind and generous. We wanted, Evelyn and I, to make sure no one took advantage of him.

  “When he died—we all saw it coming, but it was heartbreaking just the same. At his seventy-eighth birthday he was such a robust presence. By the time he reached eighty, his body had failed him, and then his mind and spirit. Evelyn and I ran the company, literally, those last years while he slowly slipped away. When I pass, McKenzie, I want to go all at once, not linger like he did. We can’t choose how we die, though, can we?”

  “When did Jonny take over the company?”

  “Almost immediately after Mr. Szereto’s will was probated.”

  “Was he any good at it?”

  “No. He liked being in charge, enjoyed being the boss, reveled in it, yet he hated the work, the day-to-day grind. He left it for others to do, Evelyn and me, the executive staff. The company became—it was like a ship without a captain. That’s not my metaphor. It’s how Diane Dauria described it. Key personnel left and weren’t replaced, poor performance went unchecked, sales goals were ignored, new product development was pushed back. The year after Jonny took over was the only year that the corporation failed to pay profit sharing since Mr. Szereto started the company. Employees were … I want to say outraged, but more than that I think they were shocked to the point where they were afraid for the future. Rumors began circulating that the company was for sale.”

  “How did Evelyn feel about all this?”

  “As upset as I had ever seen her. Only there was nothing she could do. She was the chairperson of the board of directors, but that was Jonny’s doing. It surprised me when I learned that she didn’t own a single voting share.”

  “You have ten percent.”

  “Yes. Mr. Szereto was very generous to me in his will. I told you he was a good man.”

  “Could you have done anything?”

  “No. Even if we had rallied all of the minority shareholders, Jonny still had a twelve-point advantage. There was talk of suing the corporation for malfeasance, forcing him out that way, except it might have taken years. Then there was the other thing…”

  “I meant it when I said I was sorry for dredging up painful memories.”

  “They’re never far away. That’s my house.”

  I stopped in front of it. I told Candy that my odometer said we had traveled one-point-eight miles from her office.

  “I take short cuts when I walk.” She opened the car door. Then closed it again.

  “What you said at Evelyn’s house New Year’s Eve,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it. Finding a beach somewhere. An island. Tahiti. Bali. Jamaica. Martinique. Why not? Just go away and start over. Pretend to be the person I want to be and hope that’s the person I become. Put some distance between me and … and those painful memories. Do you think that’s possible for a woman my age?”

  “It’s possible at any age.”

  “McKenzie, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but I need to know—do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Yes.”

  “A woman my age?”

  “Especially at your age. You look at the lines and creases and think you’re old. I look at them and think, Here’s a woman with character. Someone who’s seen life and knows what it’s about.”

  “If only that were true.”

  “Candy, it is. If I weren’t happily involved with someone else, I’d be all over you like a cheap suit.”

  She was laughing when she said, “McKenzie, you are such a terrible, terrible liar.”

  “Who? Me?”

  “Yes. You.”

  Candy opened the car door again.

  “Thanks for the lift,” she said.

  She was smiling as she walked slowly to her front door in the rain. I was smiling, too.

  *   *   *

  By the time I reached my condominium, the rain had become a hard, wet snow that shattered tree branches and downed power lines. I watched it slowly blanket the Twin Cities on the Weather Channel, a practice Erica found amusing.

  “If you find the weather so interesting, why don’t you just look out the window?” she asked.

  “You don’t get the play-by-play,” I told her.

  At about 10:45 P.M., Nina arrived. I met her at the door with a quick kiss and a hug. She noticed the cast right off but said nothing. Instead she held a single finger in the air and said, “Give me a sec.”

  After discarding her coat and bag, she went to the kitchen area and poured herself a hard apple-and-pear cider from her personal stash. Hands off her Lilley’s, imported at great expense and inconvenience from Somerset, England, was one of the few rules in our place. She sat on the sofa, wiggled around a little bit to get comfortable, took a long pull from her glass.

  “Okay,” Nina said. “I’m ready. Tell me what happened.”

  My first thought was to lie—so she wouldn’t worry, I told myself. But of all the things I owed her, the truth was at the top of the list. Besides, she had to be used to it by now. Just a few days after we met, some questionable choices put me in Regions Hospital with an epidural hematoma that required the emergency room docs to drill two dime-size burr holes in my skull to drain the fluid. Nina came for a visit.

  “I’m not going to get involved with you if you’re going to make a habit of this,” she told me at the time.

  I promised her that I wouldn’t, but I did.

  She stayed with me anyway.

  So I gave it to her straight, without spin or embellishment.

  “Sounds like it was a close call,” Nina said.

  “You need to add a little color every once in a while. Otherwise, it’d be like a real job.”

  “Couldn’t have that; punching a clock like the rest of us working stiffs, oh, no. Seems to me, though, you could have handled it better.”

  “You’re right about that. You are very right. I was just so angry. I let it get the better of me.”

  “Because he threatened me and Rickie?”

  “He was lucky I wasn’t carrying.”

  Nina patted my knee.

  “In that case, I’m glad you don’t like guns as much as you used to. Where is Erica, by the way? Did she go out?”

  “No, because of the snow. She’s in her room Skyping or whatever it is that millennials do now instead of using the phone.”

  “Well, then, I thin
k I’ll quick slip into my jammies, get cozy in my big, warm bed, and catch up on my reading. Care to join me?”

  “You know I don’t like to read in bed.”

  “Oh, McKenzie.” Nina started making “tsk, tsk tsk” noises as she walked toward the bedroom.

  I’m not an idiot. It only took me a couple of minutes to figure it out.

  I was heading to the bedroom at a brisk pace when my smartphone slowed me down. Once again the caller’s ID was blocked.

  “You were lucky today.” The voice was the same one that made the call last Friday—but not the voice of the man I fought with in the parking lot. “Only a broken arm. Next time you won’t be so lucky. Stay out of Szereto business.”

  I was going to award him points, tell him his performance had improved since last time, but he ended the call before I could say anything.

  I spent a few beats staring at the phone.

  “What is it?” Nina asked.

  I spun toward her. She had a hanger in each hand, one holding a silver nightgown trimmed with white lace and the other holding a red nightgown with narrow straps.

  “I just had a thought,” I told her. “But you know what? It can keep till morning.”

  FIFTEEN

  The snow had stopped falling around 2:00 A.M., which meant all the school kids—and a few adults—who had gone to sleep with visions of a snow day dancing in their heads woke up disappointed. Our snow removal system was so efficient that by 5:00 A.M. power had been restored to all those communities that had lost it; by six the main arteries had been plowed and traffic was moving normally. By eight, even most of the side streets had been cleared. At ten the sun was shining bright and the snow had already started to melt.

  “I don’t remember a winter like this,” Erica said. She appeared in front of my desk dressed in a turtleneck sweater, jeans, long black boots, and a jacket that was meant to be worn during autumn football games. “Do you know it’s going to be forty-three degrees today? I’m starting to wonder if this might not be the new normal because of climate change.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by liberal scientists for financial gain.”

  “Yeah, right. Even someone with a nature as cynical and suspicious as yours has to know that’s a load of crap.”

  “Speaking of which, you’re up awfully early, aren’t you?”