Alex Harris 00 - Armed

you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life .’ Maybe Emmanuelle tried to change things,” I mused.
    “Who else have you talked to?”
    “Joanne. Mrs. Scott’s assistant. She’s got one eye that doesn’t look at you. It looks across the room or something. Very unnerving.” I cringed.
    “I could use an eye like that. I could glare at both my kids at the same time. Maybe that would calm Henry down,” Sam said, referring to her overly rambunctious younger child.
    I snickered and tossed a pen at her. “Don’t you dare try to calm him down. He’s perfect just the way he is.”
    I had been a terrible tomboy, never wanting to be inside, always off somewhere on my bike or playing in the woods. Henry was just like me. I loved my nephew with all my heart.
    “Yeah, well, you don’t have to chase after him all the time. Just holding him down to brush his teeth is wearing me out.”
    “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said getting back to the murder, “Joanne couldn’t stand Mrs. Scott. She ranted on about all the stuff she’s done to make things more efficient and how Mrs. Scott took the credit. She’s also dating Mitch.”
    “Who’s Mitch? You’ve gotta help me out here, Alex. I don’t have access to all your sources,” Sam chided.
    “Mitch is one of the designers.”
    “Killer material?”
    I gave her a sideways glance. “Not that I would think. Unless someone tried to confiscate his coffeemaker. He’s really into his coffee,” I added at Sam’s questioning look.
    “You know, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this ill will she and Emmanuelle had might be more attributable to Mrs. Scott’s own attitude. Resisting change, being too overprotective of Mr. Poupée…”
    “Maybe, but being overprotective and resisting change doesn’t get one killed.”
    “Depends what change you’re resisting,” Sam said.
    I perked up. “So you think I should be looking at the company? The only big change I know about is the database installation, and that happened several months ago.”
    “Hey, I’m just throwing out ideas. I think you’re on the right track. Keep talking to people and something will pop up. By the way, any more run-ins with the police?”
    “Oh, just what you’d expect. ‘Keep your nose out of it. We’re on the job,’” I mocked. “At least they’re still looking and not handcuffing me and hauling me off to prison. That would really ruin Christmas.”
    I didn’t feel like telling Sam about my impromptu lunch with Detective Van der Burg. I felt the stirring of something there and had a feeling he did too—or maybe he just tried to catch me off guard so I wouldn’t put up much of a fight when he clamped the cuffs on. I changed the subject. “What’s going on here?”
    “We’ve got that meeting tomorrow with Mr. Brandon. I worked out some figures and have a pretty good idea what he’s going to want so I thought I’d get a little ahead of the game. But the most important thing we need to work on…” she took a long pause, “is Millie’s Christmas gift. What are we going to get her?”
    “I thought about that and I think I’ve come up with something really nice. You know she’s a member of a ski club. They’re planning a trip to Vermont at the end of January if there’s enough snow.”
    “So?”
    “So. She doesn’t have any vacation time left. She took her last week back in September when she went on that week-long retreat.”
    “Oh, right,” Sam nodded again. “The one where you take your best friend and really get in touch with your inner most thoughts and fears and talk about your differences and how to make the friendship better. Are they back to talking yet?”
    “No. They’ve been friends since the sandbox and one week with those psychobabble bullshit people ruined it.”
    “What does this have to do with her Christmas gift?”
    “I thought we could give her a week off with pay and pay for her hotel room. What do you think?” I held my breath knowing how tight Sam could be—especially now with things so slow.
    My sister threw up her hands. “Oh, why the hell not. We’d be lost without her and I think it would be a lovely gift. We could get a really nice card or something and maybe make up a voucher and put it all in a big box and wrap it up. She’ll be ecstatic.”
    We were interrupted in the middle of congratulating ourselves by a knock on the door.
    “Sorry to interrupt, Alex, but there’s someone here to see you,” Millie