My Boss is A Dead Man Read online

  “Lifetime of practice,” she gulped.

  “Really? Would you be offended if I asked you to empty your bag?”

  Justine visibly flinched. I don’t know why; I already knew she was stealing, so what if there were more things? She murmured, “No, I guess you have a right to ask that.” She stood and dumped her bag out on the desktop and I saw that she’d also taken one of our decorative balls out of the lobby. “Oh, sorry, I forgot about that.”

  “I’ll put it back,” I said, taking it. “I grant that you’re awfully good at your . . . um, habit.”

  “Unless I get carried away. It’s just this room. I like everything in here. I’m nervous.” Violently she shook her head, chastising herself for being stupid. “This really is a disorder. I can’t help it.” She looked momentarily like she was going to calm down—but no, she burst into renewed sobs. “I . . . have . . . a . . . shoplifting record . . .”

  “Oh jeez.”

  “If you’d run a security check you would have found it,” she said, jerking her head at her resume. “I’ll never find another job. I’m stuck at Holton Burke till the end of time!” and she convulsed into incomprehensible sobs yet again.

  I pushed the box of tissues at her. She grabbed more, now had about four in each hand, and spoke into them so that I couldn’t understand her. In a more quiet moment I said, “You know, there are medications that can really help curb compulsive disorders. Bill’s on a good one himself now. Have you ever seen a doctor about this?”

  I heard some garbled response about health insurance. She choked and coughed. Rising from my desk I went to the door, opened it and called into the lobby, “Lucille? Could you bring us a glass of water in here?”

  “Ah’ll be right there,” called back Lucille. She rose and went to our tiny kitchenette. Our blonde, buxom Lucille was a career receptionist, and so good at her job that she made it look like something she did just for fun. She was fifty-one years old, and though a real southern lady may never reveal her true age, Lucille was happy to do so because she was the best-looking fifty-one year old most people had ever seen. Put a sash across her shoulder and she might believably ride in the front float of any Homecoming parade.

  I waited in the hall until Lucille came with the water and I whispered, “I’d have gotten it myself, but I don’t want to stray too far from this one. She’s a kleptomaniac. Swiped a bunch of stuff right out from under my nose. Look at this!” I showed her the decorative ball from the lobby. Stupid heavy thing, it was, one of those pointless doohickeys that sit in bowls on tables and look atmospheric.

  I should have known better than to expect Lucille to go quietly back to her desk. She took the ball from me and then thrust her head through the doorway to observe the chokes and gargles of my job interviewee, and said, “Hon, don’t crah. Carol’s not mad.”

  Oh, that accent. It will calm and soothe when nothing else would. Justine raised her red face to Lucille, her smeared make-up giving her pathetic raccoon-eyes. She accepted the glass of water and then asked, “She’s not?”

  “Carol doesn’t get mad at hardly anybody. Last spring someone actually tried to kill her and she’s not mad about it.”

  “Well Lucille, for crying out loud,” I muttered.

  Justine looked from Lucille to me, perplexed. “Someone tried to kill you?”

  “And she’s not mad about it at all,” said Lucille. “Now do you believe me?”

  Justine nodded.

  “All righty. Now don’t crah.” Lucille nodded to herself and returned to her desk.

  I thought we could say that this job interview was over. Seemed silly now to ask her about her typing speed.

  “Feel well enough to drive now?” I asked Justine as I escorted her from my office to the lobby. “Calmed down?”

  “Thank you. Yes.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and apologized to me again.

  “Hey, everybody has their little twitches, right?” I offered my hand. She shook it. “So I’ll be in touch, probably next week, if we want to set up a second interview.”

  For the first time Justine’s face was not either sunny and open, or cracked with embarrassment, but knowing. She said a dry, “Right, thanks.” Then she left our lobby and walked stiffly toward the elevators.

  But the thing was, I’d been serious.

  Chapter Two

  Thursday’s second job interview went much better than that the first one, despite the lateness of his arrival. I was just about to lock up the office for the evening when a man, so good-looking he made my breath quiver, stepped off the elevator in the hall. The hunk from the elevator caught sight of me standing in our office doorway and approached, flashing a badge.

  “I’m Detective Smith,” he said. “Department of Violent Crimes.”

  “Detective Smith?” I scanned his Kansas City Police Department badge and ID, looked at him with one skeptically raised eyebrow. “I’m pretty familiar with the detectives down at the KCPD, and I haven’t met any Detective Smith before.”

  “I’m new.” He put away the ID badge. “I know it’s late. I’m looking for Carol Frank.”

  “Why, I’m Carol Frank. You caught me just in time.”

  “I was wondering if you have time for a few questions.”

  I was always happy—in fact, delighted—to help the police. I’m a pushover for a badge, a sucker for a detective. Especially a handsome one, and this one certainly was that. With utmost civic pride I said, “Absolutely. Come in.”

  “Closing time?”

  “It’s 5:30.”

  “And are you here all by yourself?”

  “Yes, I’m usually the last one out. We like our staff to go home at the end of the day, not spend hours and hours working overtime. People need to have lives, make plans.”

  “I hope I’m not keeping you from any plans you’d made.”

  “It’s all right, Detective,” I assured him. “No one is expecting me anywhere. I’m at your disposal.”

  “Nice of you,” said Detective Smith. He looked around the lobby of William K. Nestor Law Office, P.C., where the walls still smelled of fresh paint and wallpaper glue, the new carpet so springy underfoot that it could almost trip a woman who, perhaps, tried to move a little too fast in her high heels. Our furniture was not new—Bill and I had bought most of it second-hand from an estate sale—but it was nice stuff, a little more homey and comfortable than one might ordinarily expect in a law office. The detective surmised, “You haven’t been in this space long.”

  “Actually we’ve been renting the office for almost three months now, but we only got the decorating finished last month.”

  “Took that long?”

  “Well, you’ve got to understand that Mr. Nestor and I did the work ourselves. You have to cut a few corners, financially, when you’re a startup business.”

  “You and Bill Nestor did all the decorating yourselves?” He reappraised the lobby, and then peered down the hall at our suite of rooms: two rows of small offices, a kitchenette, a file room that was, at present, fairly empty but rapidly expanding. “It looks pretty good.”

  “The paint and wallpaper, we did that. And we picked the furniture—nice, huh? We managed to get through it without any hernias or fistfights.”

  “Fistfights?”

  “You have to know Mr. Nestor,” I explained. “He’s pretty fussy about straight lines and taping the borders and such—when we were painting I thought I might have to kill him—and I’ll let you in on a secret. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried hanging wallpaper with an obsessive-compulsive. There were days when he was lucky he’s worth more to me alive than dead.”

  Detective Smith ran a hand over the soft brown leather of our lobby sofa, smiled at me.

  That smile was lethal. I swallowed. “So, Detective, what is this about?”

  “You’re in my list of follow-up files,” he explained. “It’s my responsibility to keep track of you.”

  “I’m a follow-up file?” I grinned at the idea.

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Not at all. I’m a huge fan of detective stories and the thought of being a follow-up file sits with me just fine.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard a little bit about your fondness for detectives—and all things associated.” Detective Smith made no attempts to downplay his innuendo.

  “All things associated?”

  “I’d heard that you like detective television.”

  “I love it.”

  He hesitated, then ventured, “I’d heard that you like Detective Haglund.”

  “Oh, I certainly do. Guilty as charged.”

  “Maybe you like Haglund only because he’s a detective?”

  “That hypothesis has some serious implications. We should go sit down. Would you like to see my office?”

  “That’d be nice.” Detective Smith followed me down the very short hall to my pink office, where the golden quality of the late afternoon sunlight made the walls glow and the glass gleam. He examined the pinkness with mild shock, then I saw him smile again. What a great smile he had. He commented without overtly looking skeptical, “It’s colorful.”

  I took the chair behind my desk, offered a seat to my visitor. Once we were settled he asked, “How’s business?”

  “A little slow, but getting better all time. We have three lawyers already, and the possibility that we’re going to need to expand into the empty suite next door. Plus, we had a bit of publicity going our way when we split off on our own—”

  “The Suicide Widows, right.”

  “—and Bill, er, Mr. Nestor had a lot of his clients elect to transfer their cases to our firm. They like him. He’s a very good estate attorney.”

  “So you’re keeping your heads above water?”

  “We’r
e very able to float, yes.”

  “And you’re the office manager.”

  “I am now. At first, I was everything except the actual attorney.”

  “Ouch, that couldn’t have been easy.”

  “No trouble at all,” I said with a magical wave of my hand. “I am a master of secretarial mojo.”

  “Mojo. Definitely.” Detective Smith examined me critically, seemed to like what he saw. “Now back to my question. Do you like Detective Haglund just because he’s a detective?”

  “No. I like him because he’s a detective with a motorcycle.”

  “Oh, so a detective also has to drive a Harley for you to be interested.”

  “Well, I thought so,” I commented, doing my own critical appraisal of this visitor, “but now here you are.”

  Detective Smith narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “Seems like a detective’s badge just does something for me.” I crossed my legs so that my skirt hiked a couple inches up my thighs, which he could see plainly enough through the glass table. “Do you like working for the police department?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, if you’re amenable to the idea, I’m thinking of interviewing you for a position.”

  I thought I was being clever, but then without missing a beat Detective Smith asked, “Would that be a position directly under you?”

  “There’s no other position available in this office.”

  Detective Smith looked thoughtful. “I like being a detective, but I suppose I could be open for some part time work. As luck would have it, a certain case file was finally closed today, and I am suddenly available for any position you’d care to fill.”

  I stood and rounded my desk, propped my butt on the edge as I leaned back invitingly before him. When I crossed my legs again, the toe of my shoe brushed the leg of his slacks. “I’d really appreciate the opportunity to practice my interviewing skills.”

  Detective Smith glanced at my legs, and with a fingertip brushed a line up one of my shins. God, was I glad I had shaved my legs that morning. A shiver went down my spine and straight into my groin—Lord help me, it had been a while since a man’s fingers had tiptoed across my skin. Five months. Not the longest sexual dry spell in my life in terms of actual time, but the longest dry spell in terms of difficulty. I almost melted across the glass tabletop right then and there. But one must maintain a little cool.

  “What is it that you need to practice?” asked Detective Smith. His fingertip reached my knee and began working its way teasingly under the hem of my skirt.

  “I’m awfully new at the whole process. The best job interview I’ve done yet—just today, in fact, and the interviewee turned out to be a kleptomaniac.” I chuckled at the thought, but I was rather distracted by the touch on my thigh. “I’ve read some books, but they seem kind of stupid. There are these standard interview questions you’re supposed to ask, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what they have to do with how well a person can do a job.”

  “You’re looking for a more hands-on approach, such as a physical demonstration.” The detective leaned forward as he suddenly removed his hand from my leg. I almost protested, having been very happy with the direction he’d been heading, but the cry died in my throat as he reached for my pumps and plucked them from my feet. I waited, looking down at him, interested to see what he would do next. He said, “I’d be happy to be your guinea pig in a mock interview. And if I impress you, maybe you’d consider taking me on in a more permanent capacity. Would you mind standing up for a second?”

  I did so. With one swift and pleasantly overpowering motion, both his hands slid up my legs, got a grip on my panties and yanked them down. He slipped them off from around my feet and tossed the dejected little garment aside. A gentle push from him urged me back into my sultry sitting position on the desk.

  I asked, “Did you bring a resume with you?”

  “I only have the clothes on my back. But you can have those.” He was busy now with putting my pumps back on my bare feet. “Hope you don’t mind. I love these wicked little secretary shoes.”

  I did not mind. I was absolutely at the mercy of his whims and delighted to be there. “No resume, huh? What about references?”

  “Aw, I think references for this kind of thing are tacky. I’d be happy to give you a demonstration of my various, position-filling skills. Tell me what the position is.”

  I thought of a few. I wondered how sturdy this glass desk might be. But, then again, I didn’t want to end up in the emergency room, should it collapse and shatter under our weight. The carpet was new and springy-soft, though . . .

  “Tell me a little about that leather couch in the lobby,” said Detective Smith.

  “Got it at an office liquidation store. I found a dollar and a petrified stick of gum between the cushions.”

  “And how does it feel?”

  I was absolutely tingling when I said, “I haven’t actually used it much.”

  The detective rose and offered me his hand.

  I wasn’t seriously hesitant, but I didn’t want to sound desperate, either. I said, “We could just go back to my place.”

  “I want to take you out for dinner,” explained Detective Smith, “but I’m afraid if you don’t interview me now, before we go, I’ll just spend the whole time worrying about what questions you’re going to ask.”

  I followed him helplessly to the lobby.

  I had read three different books on effective interview techniques, involving good questions to ask, how to read between the lines of resumes, and what to look for in body language and verbal cues. But honestly, most of it sounded like hooey written for people who don’t have an ounce of common sense. And they all listed the same stupidly pointless questions that are supposed to be used in interview to gauge whether this person is a good prospective hiree. Seemed to me that all they would gauge is how well the prospective hiree could answer stock questions without letting their crippling personality and social flaws shine through. Like kleptomania, for example. After the third book I made a personal vow never to use those questions, but here in the presence of this very promising hiree, I found I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

  In the lobby, Detective Smith checked the front doors of the firm to make sure they were locked, then he sank onto the couch and motioned to me to come toward him.

  I approached and, at his coaxing, sank onto his lap. His fingers drummed just above my knee. I asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years, Detective Smith?”

  “Hopefully, in a position directly above you.”

  “That’s an admirable goal, I guess.” I reached for his belt buckle and set about unfastening the man’s trousers. Interesting work; there was much to be discovered here. Exploring my way over a shirttail, a zipper, a pair of very warm boxer briefs, all of which were covering a conspicuous hardness, I continued with the interview questions. “What would you say is greatest weakness?”

  Detective Smith had closed his eyes, and he groaned, “Brunette secretaries.”

  “Oh, that’s a good answer. I see that these questions have more merit than I’d originally supposed.”

  His hands pushed my skirt up my thighs and I was really balanced quite precariously, having only the good detective’s grip to keep me from toppling ungracefully into the floor. We shifted and lurched around, and it seemed to me that we might easily solve a good portion of our dilemma by just getting naked—but then again, this detective apparently had a real thing for office attire because he was determined to keep me as far in my clothing as possible. And this was fine with me; the more he was enjoying himself, the more I was.

  “Do you have a condom?” I asked, leaning close and putting my lips against his ear.

  “God, is that really one of the standard interview questions?”

  “That’s an optional question, only for the interviews that are going really, really well.”

  “Good. I’m glad I’m performing up to standards. Let me, um . . .” He held me in place with one hard strong arm and reached underneath himself, to a back pocket, resulting in his securing a condom, and in my getting a ride sort of like the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. I was giggling too hard to breathe by the time he settled back on the couch. “Here we go. One party favor for the lady.”