Martin remained silent. The brick comment, he felt, was completely unnecessary.
'You need to call his boss.'
She was always telling him what to do. Most of her sentences started with 'you need to.' God forbid Martin tell her that she needed to do something. He was senior to her in every way, yet Unique was the one who took control in the office – bringing in potted plants, scattering candles, air fresheners and photos of her lap dog around the common areas.
Granted, she was a faster typist, and she tended not to make very many mistakes, but she hardly had it the same as he did with her job of invoicing and collections for non-liquid products and vending items. You couldn't really compare Vomit-Up granules and LadyTickler condoms to the massive roll-paper orders and toilet-seat liners that Martin processed. It was apples and oranges, as he often told Norton Shaw.
To make matters worse, she had despicable work habits. From the moment she showed up, she would keep her cellphone to one ear and the business phone to the other. She would cross-talk to her sister, who worked in a church office, with customers listening on the other line. Meanwhile, her glossy fingernails would click-click-click against the keys like a Chihuahua on a tile floor while her hair rat-tat-tatted like a rubber snake with beads in its tail. About sixty times a day, she would apply lotion to her hands, and oftentimes her feet. The one time Martin politely asked her to find a more appropriate place to oil up, she had screamed, 'I can't help it I'm ashy!' and that was that.
As a large-breasted woman with a generous waistline, she had to maneuver herself carefully around the desk. Martin had been intrigued at first to watch the alignment of breast, stomach and arm that made it possible for her to reach the computer keyboard. She had misinterpreted his scientific interest as unbridled lust, admonishing, 'Honey, you ain't got the stamina to ring this bell!' Then, he'd had to listen to her relay the story to her sister, whose 'amen' could be heard across the room.
These were not isolated incidents but daily occurrences. Martin lived in terror of her pronouncements, which were usually made in mixed company during the most inopportune moments. He would be going over a time card with one of the shift workers and she would shoot out a, 'You ain't following what he's saying, fool!' Or, Norton Shaw would come down to check on receivables and she would shout, 'He got some bad gas from lunch. Let's do this outside.'
At times, she reminded him of the Geraldine doll his mother had bought him for Christmas when he was a child. Flip Wilson was one side while Geraldine, his cross-dressing alter ego, was on the other. Pull the cord and witticisms would come out, such as 'The Devil made me do it!' and 'When you're hot, you're hot!'
Perhaps worst of all, and even more humiliating than listening to her complain to her sister about menstrual cramps while she took off her shoes and lotioned her feet, was that she kept promoting herself. On her first day, Martin had foolishly given Unique the ability to order her own business cards. In the course of three years, her title had changed from 'accounting assistant', to 'accounts executive' to 'senior account executive'. Any day now, he fully expected to find a card that read, 'Unique Jones, Chief Financial Officer'.
Meanwhile, Martin's own cards simply read, 'Accounting'. He had ordered a thousand printed up his first day of work. Sixteen years had passed and the box was still half-full.
Back in the parking lot, Unique had stopped at the front door. 'Your mama didn't teach you to open the door for a lady?'
Martin was opening the door for her as a witty comeback occurred, but she was halfway to her desk by the time his mouth moved to get it out.
She said, 'Don't mumble, fool,' as she tossed her purse on to the desk. The chair made a noise like two pool balls hitting against each other as she sat.
Martin quietly put his stack of business cards, his pens, the yellow legal pad and his report on his own desk. His chair made no noise as he sat down and turned on his computer. When he'd first started working at Southern, the only automated part of the process was an IBM Selectric that got stuck on the 'g' and the 'l' no matter how many times it was cleaned. All the ledgers had been done by hand – Martin's hand. People from the factory floor were in and out of his office all day, giving Martin a quick wave or a smile. Mr Cordwell, the owner, would occasionally drop in and talk to him about fishing or taking the family out on the lake that weekend. Martin would nod, then Mr Cordwell would go to the bathroom (the only entrance was through Martin's office), and then he'd come back again and toss the paper towel he'd used to dry his hands on to Martin's desk. They were heady times, the Cordwell days – peaceful times. That was before the Germans came in and made Martin hire an assistant. It was never the same with the old man gone.
Before Unique, he'd had his desk on the far wall, away from the toilets (she had changed that the first day). The view was better over there because you could see out the window to the factory floor. It gave you some sense of being part of a group. At times, Martin had glanced up and seen them all standing at their stations and thought, 'Ah, my colleagues.' Now, he kept his head down for fear of Unique misinterpreting his glance and shouting, 'Don't even think about it, fool. You ain't got the vocabulary to read this book!'
Unique was staring at him. 'I asked you a question, Fool.'
'What?' Martin asked, painfully aware that he had become so accustomed to being addressed as 'Fool'. He was even beginning to think of it as a proper noun.
'I said, where is Sandy?'
Martin glanced out the window. The stairs leading up to the executive office were empty. Usually, Sandy came down to use the bathroom and check in with Unique before work started. It was odd that she wasn't here, especially since last night's episode of Dancing With the Stars had been particularly competitive. Even the judges had been shocked.
Unique craned her neck, trying to see up the stairs. 'Who's that?'
Martin was thinking the same thing. He saw a foot appear at the top of the stairs. It was clad in a white tennis shoe. His gaze followed tan hose up the calf to a below-the-knee beige skirt. Who did that calf belong to? A beauty queen? A salesperson from a pulp goods distributor? The woman started to walk down the stairs, and he was reminded of the beautiful passage from The Great Gatsby when we first meet Mrs Wilson . . . 'She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.'
'Uh-oh,' Unique said. 'This ain't good.'
'Her face . . . contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering.'
'What's wrong with you, Fool?'
Martin became aware that his mouth was hanging open.
'That's the police.'
Unique pronounced the word with two syllables: po-lice. Martin glanced around the room at the boxes stacked high to the ceiling as if he could detect some theft. Southern had been broken into once before. In 1996, just before the Olympics, hooligans had busted the back door and papered the entire factory floor. Martin had been the first to discover the crime; he could still remember the sense of abject violation he'd felt as he'd picked 2300 from the machinery. Had it happened again? Who had dared to target Southern Toilet Supply this time? What rapscallion had breached the sanctity of a small American business that was owned by a multinational conglomerate?
On the stairs, he saw that there was a man behind the woman, a gray-haired, square shoulders kind of guy who probably wore cologne and winked a lot to make his point. Rounding up the end of the group was Norton Shaw, whose face was scrunched up like a fist.
'Uh-oh,' Unique repeated. 'Norton don't look happy.'
Martin was standing, his fists clenched. Who had attacked this simple little business? What had they done this time?
The door opened. The woman stood there, light pouring in all around her. Her blonde hair had been permed too much, or perhaps the winter weather had split the ends. There were tiny splotches of dry skin on her face and what looked like the last throes of a pim
ple in the crevice of her right nostril. She was older than he had first guessed, probably in her late forties, which somehow made her more beautiful (even as a boy, Martin had always been attracted to older women). There was just something about her – some kind of inner beauty, an air of knowing – that commanded attention.
She took in the office, the stacked boxes, the potted succulents. Behind her, the man asked, 'Are you the twat?'
Unique barked a laugh that made Martin's eardrums hurt. 'That's him. That Fool over there.' She pointed a long red fingernail his way.
Norton Shaw gave Martin a wary glance before turning around and wordlessly heading back up the stairs.
The woman took a wallet out of her jacket pocket. She flipped it open to show Martin a gold badge. 'I'm Anabahda.'
Martin squinted at the ID above her badge, trying to put words to the sounds he had heard. She closed the wallet too fast, though.
'This is Detective Bruce Benedict, my partner.'
The man winked at Martin, but his focus was squarely on Unique, taking in every inch of her. She smiled at his attention, practically batting her eyelashes. With his slicked-back hair, expensive suit and purple silk tie, he reminded Martin of a character from a Stuart Woods novel. And, like the typical Woodsian character, he carried himself as if every woman he met wanted to give him a blowjob.
'You're Martin Reed?' Anabahda asked.
'Yes.' He added, 'ma'am' to let her know he respected her authority. 'Are you here about my car? I hope you've caught the vandal.'
'Why don't we go somewhere and talk? Your boss said we could use the conference—'
'You got a card?' Unique interrupted.
Martin smiled at Anabahda. 'You'll have to excuse—'
'Fool, these are detectives. They don't send detectives when somebody twats up your car.' She snapped her fingers at Benedict. 'Gimme your card.'
The man gave his partner a knowing, lopsided smile as he handed his card to Unique.
'Homicide!' she screamed, nearly falling out of her chair. 'Martin, you don't talk to Homicide cops. My cousin talked to them once and he got sent to jail for twenty years!'
Anabahda asked, 'What's your cousin's name?'
Unique's face went blank. She picked up her purse. 'I think I left my oven on.' She scampered out the door, only the lingering scent of garlic and mocha latte indicating she had even been there.
Martin swallowed. He was alone with her now, except for Benedict. 'Can I see your card, please?'
She took out her wallet again and dug around in one of the pockets. 'This is just routine questioning, Mr Reed. There's no reason to worry.'
He took the card, electric shocks going through his body when his fingers brushed against hers. Martin noticed that she chewed her cuticles, just like he did.
'Mr Reed?'
He realized he was staring at her. Martin ducked down his head, reading the card: Detective Anther 'An' Albada, Homicide Division. 'An' not 'Anne' or 'Ann' but 'An'. The simplicity was breathtaking, yet alluring. And the Albada . . . how exotic, how foreign . . . He wanted to touch the raised letters to see if the tingling sensation came back.
'Mr Reed?' She was leaning against Unique's desk, arms crossed over her chest. He saw a gold Timex on her wrist – spare, utilitarian, just like the lady.
She looked tired. He wondered what it might feel like to have her put her head in his lap. Martin blushed at the thought, thinking that, if she could read his mind, she would assume that his wanting her head in his lap had sexual connotations, which was not the case – he simply wanted to stroke her hair, to ask her about her day. Maybe he would make her fishsticks and Tater Tots (Martin's favorite meal), and then when the kids came home, he would help them with their homework and then carry her to bed where they would make sweet, gentle love and she would look into his eyes and—
'Mr Reed?'
Martin looked back at her. 'Yes, ma'am?'
'Can you tell us where you were yesterday?'
'At work.'
'I mean, after work.'
'I took my mother to the Peony Club. She left her good trowel.'
'And then what?'
Martin felt his face flush. His throat tightened. He had taken his mother home, and then he had done something awful – so awful that the words strangled in his throat. The one time someone asked him what he had done the night before, and he had actually done something, but he could not talk about it. At least not to this beautiful flower of a woman. Oh, the irony! The unseemliness of it all!
The toilet flushed. All of them turned their heads, surprised by the noise. Daryl Matheson was zipping up his coveralls as he came into the office, saying, 'Shit, Marty, gimme the spray. Something dead just crawled outta my—' He stopped when he saw Martin's guests. 'What are the cops doing here?'
Martin opened his bottom desk drawer and fetched the OdorOutter (one of Southern's most popular sellers). 'They're here about my car,' Martin told him. 'Be sure to tell Ben Sabatini that when you see him next.'
Daryl shook the spray can and headed back into the bathroom. The office was so quiet they could hear the spraying and subsequent coughing. Martin held his breath (Southern had settled a civil suit out of court with a customer who claimed that OdorOutter ate away the lining of her esophagus) and smiled at An.
Daryl came back out of the toilet, waving his hand in the air to fight the fumes. His voice cracked when he spoke. 'Damn, sorry about that, folks.' He coughed a few times, then a few more. Then even more. Martin shot an apologetic look to An as he plucked some tissues out of the Kleenex box on his desk and handed them to Daryl.
'Jesus!' Daryl choked. He cleared his throat a few times, spit in the tissue, then handed it back to Martin. 'Thanks, man.' He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands and addressed the detective. 'Are y'all here about all that blood on his car?'
Suddenly, the OdorOutter wasn't the only thing sucking breathable air from the room.
An asked, 'What blood on the car?'
Daryl nodded toward Martin. 'This morning. He had blood all over his hands, too. I thought maybe he hit a deer or something, but there was hair on the bumper – like, hair from somebody's head.' He shrugged. 'Then Darla saw him outside by the Dumpster beating the ever-loving Jesus out of his briefcase.' He glanced back at Martin. 'You oughtta talk to somebody about that temper of yours, man.' With that, he left the office.
Martin felt his mouth moving, but no words would come out.
Benedict reached underneath the back of his jacket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Martin Reed, I am arresting you for the murder of Sandra Burke.'
'Sandy?' he asked, craning his neck to look up the stairs even as Benedict slung him around like a sack of Meyer lemons. Was that why she hadn't come downstairs to talk about Dancing With the Stars? 'You don't understand!' Martin tried. 'Why would I hurt Sandy? Why would I hurt anyone?'
'Mr Reed,' An began, 'why don't you clear this up right now and tell us where you were last night?'
Martin gulped, his face reddening again. This was awful, just awful. Hadn't this very thing happened in John Grisham's The Innocent Man – some poor shlub in the wrong place at the right time?
'Mr Reed?'
Grisham was a lawyer. He knew how these things worked. In his head, Martin consulted the legal advice contained in his many books. The Client. The Broker. The Appeal. 'I believe,' Martin began, 'I have the right to remain silent.'
Wherein We Learn That There is More to Anther
Than Meets the Eye, or An Another Thing
An stared at Martin Reed through the observation mirror. He sat alone in the interview room, his pudgy face squeezed into a ball of fear. The wisps of hair covering his round head reminded her of Charlie Brown. He kept clenching his fists on the table in front of him as if Lucy had yet again tricked him into trying to kick the ball. It was the same kind of clenching he'd been doing when they'd walked into his office – or at least what Martin seemed to think was his office. To An's eye, it looked like a b
reak room that had two desks and was stacked almost wall-to-wall with boxed payables and receivables from the last fifteen years. If anyone found it odd that the accounting department was basically an adjunct to the toilets, no one was commenting.
Bruce opened the door and came into the room. 'Nothing in his house.'
An had assumed the search of the Reed home would yield little evidence.
'His mother's terrified, says he's been acting strange lately. Might be hitting the bottle again.'
'Again?'
'She says he doesn't like to talk about it. Must be in recovery.' Bruce shrugged; there were lots of cops in recovery. 'The woman's a potty mouth, by the way. Some of the shit outta her mouth made me blush.'
Coming from a man who used 'cunting' as an adjective, that was saying a lot. Of course, An couldn't talk. She was quite explicit around prisoners, who tended to respond to threats better than pleasantries.
Bruce continued, 'You should see his bedroom. Wall-to-wall books with more in boxes in the garage. We're talking tens of thousands of them. The guy must read all the time.'
An studied Martin. He didn't strike her as the cerebral type. 'What kinds of books?'
'Thrillers mostly. James Patterson, Vince Flynn – that kind of stuff.'
An couldn't say anything. She refused to answer her phone when a Columbo movie was on. Not that it rang much, but she was constantly being surveyed for her opinion on things. Talk to those people once and they never gave up. 'Did the mother give him an alibi for last night?'
'She said he took her on an errand, then they went home, then he went out and she didn't see him until she woke up this morning.'
An nodded, processing the information. Through the mirror, she could see Martin's mouth moving as he mumbled to himself.
'What a tool,' Bruce commented.
An could not disagree, but was this tool a murderer?
Bruce seemed to read her mind. 'We've got Reed's blood mixed in with the victim's on both the front bumper and in the trunk.'
'You saw his hands. What he said about the cuts would explain the blood.'