The Ultimate Exit Strategy, page 10
“We have some ideas, yes, but I think they’re best kept quiet for now.” She said, “Your information about Mr. Zemluski is very helpful, Virginia. Thank you. I’ll ask Mr. Madsen about it today. You really shouldn’t be worrying about anything. I’ll take care of this. Don’t worry about the car.” Cassandra went on with a smooth calming affect suitable for children worried about monsters residing in their closets. “And absolutely don’t worry about the call. It was a prank.”
I didn’t know how she could be so sure, but Cassandra had decided everything very neatly for me. “Relax,” she said. “Let’s see if you get another call.”
I thought that was easy for her to say.
XII
Despite my safety concerns, I arrived at work uneventfully enough, the greatest subsequent danger of that morning being the potential avalanche of unread mail in my in-basket. There was a like amount of unseemly clutter on my desk just begging to be filed, but I opted for an Internet search of the mushroom, Fly Agaric, and an hour or so in the fast lane of the information highway, yielded a general picture. Amanita muscaria (muscaria from the Latin meaning fly) was a lurid, yet implausible-looking bright red piece of flora with white spots and visible warts, the kind of toadstool artists draw in fairytale illustrations. But The Online Field Guide to Central Illinois Mushrooms, a botanist’s dream of a website, had a good deal more to say:
Amanita species are the most common ringed, white-spore mushrooms in our area. Amanitas are impressive often-showy mushrooms, almost always with a characteristic stem base, which is enlarged possessing a sock-like covering or a rimmed appearance. This is the remainder of the universal veil, which covers emerging Amanita fungi. Many amanitas have patches on their caps like the frequently pictured, storybook mushroom Amanita muscaria, which is bright red with white or yellow patches, but occurs as a white variation in central Illinois. The Destroying Angel, Amanita virosa, the world’s most poisonous mushroom, is common to central Illinois from early summer through the fall.
Cap: to 4 inches pure white or yellowing with age;
Gills: pure white;
Stem: to 7 inches terminating in a bulb like sock;
Smell: not distinctive, but rather foul as it decays;
Spore print: white; Habitat: woods.
Comments: Amanita muscaria, variant alba, is also white but the cap is covered with white patches and the base is not covered in a sock.
From what I could recall, Winslow’s mouth had worked with the discrimination of a steam shovel. It wasn’t hard to imagine how he might have ingested anything added to his lunch, warts and all, especially if someone had chopped the local flavor of Fly Agaric into bite size pieces that hid the warts. From the sound of the Online Mushroom Guide, the killer couldn’t have been a mushroom expert, not even a gifted amateur, maybe confusing Fly Agaric with the lookalike Destroying Angel. Or maybe there had been no murder at all. The white variant was missing the distinctive Amanitas sock by which the Online Mushroom Guide suggested identification.
I was better informed, but not much more enlightened when I’d returned to the filing, successfully having labeled and filled about five manila folders and two green hanging files before the phone rang, two high sharp shrills in immediate succession, digital code for an outside call.
It was my father, talking loudly; a habit he believed made him sound friendly to children and foreigners. “Hey, kid, I’ve got a website for you.” Just as soon as I’d said hello, he was bellowing, a veritable storm of excitement. “You go to AOL.com and search for food, then it will tell you to try ‘everything edible’.”
“Uh-huh.” I’d picked up my filing again, tuned out and fallen immediately into active listening. My dad and I had grown so far apart that all we had in common was eating, but my father loved food and he was nattering on with unreserved enthusiasm at the prospect of a fine meal.
“So you click on that ‘everything edible’ and you go to a whole food page and there at the bottom will be a little button for meals.com. Click on that,” he told me. “Now at ‘meals online’ you click ‘let’s start cooking’ and it’s going to tell you that you’re entering the site and then you just click on the place where it says ‘start here.’”
“Okay,” I had begun sorting again, through the stack of back mail, multi-tasking, nowhere near my mouse, but I pretended cheerfully because barring an ability to provide him with a nice Black son-in-law and a lawn full of grandkids, at least I could please my father in these little ways. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” I’d started on the pile of folders at the corner of my desk, while he talked at me, letting my fingers do the walking through my mountainous heap of read and discarded SEC filings.
“There’s soup, bread beverage salad, main course, appetizer and desert; and you just click on the one you want.” Presumably Dad believed I was clicking along, and the thought of a family activity, albeit virtual, really did seem to gratify him. “So, Gin, say you want a main course, you just click on ‘main course’. Then, you can click a cuisine, say French, and you can click on a meat, say poultry. They have ten thousand recipes.” Even at its excitement-elevated decibel levels, my father’s voice was pouring out of the phone not unpleasantly, with the soothing quality of a heavy rain on the roof at night, no drop, no single word in particular distinguishable from the rest of the deluge.
“Cool, Dad.” As speaker phone seemed a sign of disrespect, I was cradling the receiver between my neck and shoulder, awkwardly stuffing a pile of quarterly earnings reports into the file I’d just made for them when I felt it – something in the pile of remaining loose papers on my desk. I was just sweeping the papers into the trashcan, which I’d positioned just under my desktop for easy disposal and there against the heel of my hand was the longish, flatish Tupperware container.
My dad’s voice careened on frenetically, reciting the names of the recipes as if he intended to list all ten thousand, “And there’s Chicken Vegetable Crepes and Coq au Vin and Chicken Tarragon, Chicken Scaloppini –”
“Great. Right,” I told him as on my desk my fingers had found something quite amazing. I knew the second they grazed the smooth plastic sides, missed in my alcoholic post-lunch fog. The stray papers I’d been working with on Friday had obscured it for days. When I moved them away, the Tupperware container that had held Wesley Winslow’s deadly lunch was sitting on my desk.
His pager went off as he was finishing his salad and he’d run. I’d left for lunch with The Irishman shortly after, locking my office door; and so, the container must have been forgotten by both of us in the confusion of that afternoon’s shareholders meeting and Winslow’s subsequent collapse.
“Chicken Cornmeal Crepes, Chicken Cordon Bleu en Croute,” my father paused to ask reflectively, “I wonder what that means – en croute?” I had no idea.
“Breaded maybe?” he was puzzling. “What do you think, Virginia? You took French.” Typically, my father was remembering my sister’s studies, but he continued undeterred by the translation issues: “Well, anyway there’s Lattice Crust Turkey Pot Pies, Chicken and Fresh Vegetables Provençal –” He didn’t seem to need to breathe.
Holding the Tupperware up to the light by its day-glow green handle, through the clear plastic sides I could see the foul, black soup of wilted lettuce, limp peppers, and what well could have been shriveled pieces of rotting mushrooms, chopped very small.
“Did I say they have ten thousand recipes?” my dad had acquired a reverent awe. “Well, they do – ten thousand recipes and those are just a few – the ones I read.” I considered how he and Spike could find nothing to talk about an absolute wonder, setting the lunch container back down on my desk. I’d opened the top just a hair at the edge, closing it again very quickly against the odor that wafted out. Whatever color the mushrooms had been on Friday, like everything else now, they were black.
There were no surprises about the smell.
“If you wanted beef, along the same lines: there’s Veal Marengo, Fillet of Beef with Corichon Tarragon Sauce and Goulash –”
“I’ve got a meeting in ten,” I told my dad, then I made a clear space on my desk for the lunchbox and called Cassandra.
* * *
It took her barely an hour and a half to have my office crawling with cops, evidence cops, plain clothes cops and cops in uniform. Cassandra was pacing back and forth in the middle of this vaguely Hollywood crime-drama-looking scene, in and out of various rooms with an officious and deliriously happy air of authority, taking notes and barking orders – in her sin. She might have created this pageant a little faster, but Herb Symon had wanted to make her sign an agreement not to use any confidential investment information the cops might stumble across while they were looking for deadly poison.
Herb finally just settled for her threat to have him imprisoned for obstruction of justice and her solemn word as to the ethics of Chicago law enforcement professionals. Just to be safe, he was standing guard outside my office, wringing his hands and admonishing passersby to get back to work.
Officeless at least for a little while, I’d settled myself at a table in the lunchroom with the 10-Q and annual report of one of my corporate problem children.
“Well, isn’t this exciting?” When Ellen came sliding up behind me, it was already eleven o’clock and I was only just finishing up the Chairman’s letter at the front of the annual. She’d arrived with a Tupperware container in hand presumably full of tofu scramble on the pretense of an early lunch. “Imagine.” She talked with a furtive casualness that made me think her primary aim had been to track me down. News traveled fast. “Imagine you finding the smoking gun, Virginia.”
I said it was more like the stinking lunch box.
“HA.” Kevin Cavanaugh had been eavesdropping. “That’s good.”
“All right, so the smoking gun.” Ellen Borgia was practically oozing goodwill, all smiley-voiced and recovered from yesterday’s outrage over the stock options.
I was steadily turning the pages of my 10-Q, which was laying out, at best, a dodgy business plan that I had somehow failed to scrutinize very heavily when I’d moved the stock to a buy last quarter.
“Well it’s all over the firm that you found it.” Ellen gushed.
Cavanaugh chuckled companionably, “the stinking lunchbox.” I guessed the mid-lunch hour timing of Winslow’s memorial, one-thirty that afternoon would prompt a number of folks to eat early, prophylactically as the trek to Barrington promised a long and, knowing Madsen, potentially foodless afternoon. Peek-opening the plastic top of his Tupperware container as if it were a Christmas present, Kevin had taken his own lunch out of the refrigerator. “It’s Chinese.” He announced as if this might be something of general interest, carefully unwrapping some little pancakes from wax paper, rearranging them on the counter in a presentation, which involved a prodigious number of paper towels. “Usually she makes me salami.” Kevin deposited his plastic container into the microwave and in less than two minutes the whole room smelled like Mu Shu Pork.
“Oh, yes indeed.” Ellen was gushing, “News travels fast around here – and you seem to be getting it all in previews.”
I was nodding only half engaged in whatever it was that Ellen was saying. It was clear as I read that I’d missed a HOLD recommendation by a good three months. In that respect, news didn’t seem to be traveling fast enough.
“So,” as she talked, Ellen made a secretive glance in the direction of Kevin Cavanaugh who was still completely enmeshed in his lunch. “What exactly did you find?”
My stomach grumbled. At the smell of the Chinese food I remembered I’d eaten nothing but a couple Pop-Tarts, some Xanax, scotch, and a glass of orange juice since lunch the day before.
“She was so sweet to surprise me with the leftovers.” Kevin was still babbling dimwittedly, as he assembled his food to take back to his desk. “From her ladies night at China Kitchen. What about that?” This thoughtfulness, was clearly an ongoing source of pride.
“I think I’ll keep her,” Ellen sneered, but Kevin didn’t seem to hear. I was thinking how nice it would be for someone to make my lunch occasionally. That’s what I wanted: someone to love me enough to sacrifice her leftovers – someone other than Spike. I was thinking how nice it would be to eat something other than the questionable tuna I’d brought from home.
With what I felt was admirable courage I retrieved my sandwich from the refrigerator. It smelled barely the right side of salmonella but I took a bite anyway.
“Listen.” After Cavanaugh left, Ellen made another swivel-necked glance in the direction of the door, and then she scooted a chair up close to mine. “Listen, who do the police think did it?”
I’d been letting my thoughts linger on the last vestiges of that Mu Shu smell.
“Who do they think killed Winslow? I know you know.” Ellen enunciated her whisper as if she suspected I had momentarily lost my fluency in English. Having bragged to Ellen about my inside line on this whole business, this was my reward. “I know you know.” She was insisting. “And someone who misunderstood my nature might take our conversation yesterday the wrong way. If you were for example to repeat what happened with the wrong emphasis, someone could get the idea, mistakenly, of course,” Ellen added quickly, “that I hated Wes.”
I was chewing my sandwich tentatively prepared at any moment to discover some concrete evidence of botulism; I looked up from the annual, a little confused. Of course, Ellen sort of did hate Wes.
“Well, yes – but not enough to hurt him.” She was methodically pulling the dead skin off her bottom lip with her teeth. I was nodding. There did seem to be some subtlety in the point she was making, some definite shades of gray in her possible feelings.
“It was a very limited hate,” she’d explained. “Really, it was hardly hate at all, a mild distaste. I could never actually hurt anyone. You aren’t going to tell your friend on the Police about our talk. Are you?”
“Why would I?” She seemed happy enough with that, happy enough to give my shoulders an impulsive squeeze. “I never believed what anyone said about you, Virginia.”
It was nice for once to have hit upon just the right thing to say. More than that, Kevin Cavanaugh’s Chinese food had just given me an idea.
Maybe Winslow’s lunch had been packed at home, and poisoned at home, not at work. Maybe, like Kevin, there was someone not so lovingly packing Winslow’s lunch for him – not Mrs. Winslow, but a mistress. Hadn’t that been what she was accusing him of at the Christmas party? There had been talk about Starr and Winslow. Before that, there was the scandal of Camille Guiterrez’s pretty little teenaged daughter.
“It’s a sure sign Winslow’s sticking her.” I’d overheard Rupert Dean, nature’s perfect barometer of sleaze, pontificating by the coffee machine. News that Winslow had gotten Elana a job in the Whytebread library and arranged for a special Whytebread scholarship to pay her tuition and books at the Catholic High school had been grist for the gossip mill. “Sticking her – or going to.”
Kevin Cavanaugh’s face had twitched with uncontrollable angst at the subject of infidelities with teenage girls.
“Well I wouldn’t mind a piece of that myself.” Rupert leered. “But I guess rank has to have its privileges.”
The talk made me sick, but I was sicker yet when Elana had left her job at Whytebread and left school as well rather suddenly. She wasn’t exactly showing yet, but some of the older secretaries said they could always tell. Within a couple months Starr had replaced Camille Gutierrez as Winslow’s secretary.
* * *
“I can’t now.” I could see Starr through the Plexiglas window at the top of her cube, her jaw working a wad of gum in profile, as she held the receiver to her ear with her shoulder. She’d spun her chair away from the computer desk towards the back of her cube to keep her conversation private, hunched over the phone. It had just rung when I came up, the shrill single tones of an inside call, a call I’d presumed would be brief and businesslike but which stretched on inconveniently as I’d waited outside her carrel, trying not to listen to what seemed quite personal, and when this failed, trying not to hear. Starr’s molars had fallen into a deliberate rhythm, testimony to the recidivism of nervous gum chewers, Winslow’s hard work gone for nothing. From the pack of Capris on the desk by her keyboard I could see that she had started smoking again.
As the call went on I could guess not entirely satisfactorily from the occasional catch in Starr’s voice, the pausing, the chewing, the playing in the hair. It smelled of romantic trauma, and I took a few steps away from her cube having no interest in Starr’s ongoing personal entanglements, which could tell me nothing about Wes’s murder. Still I clung to my original thought that Starr would know with whom Winslow was keeping company, the same way she’d known to put Emily Karnowski’s calls right through to me in the years we were together, the way she’d quickly figured to inquire after Spike when I returned from a long weekend. If Starr would ever get off the phone I could ask her about Winslow’s girlfriends, maneuvering myself conspicuously into the doorway of Starr’s carrel not so much to listen, but rather to interrupt.
More than conspicuous, as time wore on I had crossed the line into obnoxious, fidgeting, tapping, shifting my weight from side to side in a manner that could not easily go unnoticed. Even so, Starr was so taken up with her low-voiced conversation that she didn’t look my way until another call rang through on the second line. “Look somebody is buzzing me.” She turned to the blinking lights on her console, dabbing awkwardly at her eyes with a bit of tissue. When she turned to take the other line, her mascara was smudged in ugly black rays à la Tammy Faye Baker.
