Death of the Office Witch by Marlys Millhiser Page B

call a closing, but in fantasyland it was a lot closer to a done deal than could be said to happen ninety percent of the time.

9
    Unlike Ed Esterhazie last night, Richard Morse was not dressed for the occasion. He lounged at poolside in shorts and sports shirt, tanned and gregarious, passing fresh strawberries and hunks of pineapple and melon to the producer and the money men and Edna Thurlow’s daughter and grandson and their lawyer, all of whom were dressed for success. So were Charlie and the Vance, the only females present except for the daughter and the Vietnamese maid with the coffee and the mimosas.
    Talk about a coup—to have the head of an agency hosting this at all and at his home to boot. Charlie scanned the holes in the prickly hedge guarding the huge pool and tiny lawn for the legs of a reporter from Variety or the Reporter . She gazed at her boss with new respect.
    And he noticed. An eyelid notched three-fourths of the way down one protuberant eyeball and stayed there as if stuck. He was the only nonanimated creature she had ever seen who could do that. It said, “Stick with me, kid.”
    â€œAre you his wife or … something?” Edna Thurlow’s daughter, Tessie, asked Charlie behind her hand. Tessie’s body had grown middle-aged lumpy, but her complexion made you want to reach out and stroke her cheek.
    â€œI work at his agency. I was your mother’s agent in New York when we sold Alpine Tunnel .” And Charlie could hear Edna’s soft Louisiana blurring in her daughter’s speech. Why an elderly lady from Louisiana would choose to write a first novel about narrow-gauge railroads in the Colorado Rockies had always been a mystery to Charlie. “Why did the family change its mind about this?”
    â€œMy brother passed on. He was the one who never liked the way the story was going to be changed. My sister and I have too many children needing college. Mama would understand. She’d always wished Flora and I had gone to college. It was one of her greatest disappointments when we married right out of high school. Now we’re both divorced with nine children between us. Earl was an attorney and only had one son, so he could afford to be fussy.”
    Charlie would never understand how a mother survived more than one teenager. Tessie’s son, Sonny, looked a little older than Libby—and essentially wholesome, responsible, healthy, mature, boring, safe. Charlie wondered what it would take to get him to Long Beach for beanie wienies on the patio.
    â€œWhat do you think, Charlie?” Richard Morse asked, and literally everyone turned to her expectantly.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œ Do you think Keegan Monroe will be finished with his current project in time to be considered a possibility to script this project?”
    â€œOh absolutely,” Charlie lied happily, “no doubt about it.”
    While Richard went on to sing Keegan’s praises and list his credits, she paused to run close-ups of Keegan’s recent moods through her mental camera lens. Something was bugging him. Something besides Mary Ann Leffler and her adverbs. Something neither he nor Charlie needed right now.
    And then without warning the conversation turned to the recent murder at the agency. Apparently, Congdon and Morse had made both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter , and for all the wrong reasons, and the witchcraft angle was being played to the hilt.
    â€œDon’t worry,” Richard assured Murray Goldstein, from Ursa Major. “It had nothing to do with business or the agency. It was a fluke. And Beverly Hills’ finest are hot on the scent, and besides, we have our own in-house detective. Matter of days, maybe hours, and poor Gloria’s murderer will be named and we can all forget about it.”
    Charlie thought those last a poor choice of words and tried to smile reassurance at Tessie and Sonny.
    â€œYeah, Charlie here solved a murder case up in Oregon