Alex Harris 00 - Armed

Dad’s. Remember? And Michael works over at the free clinic once a month. Tonight’s his night. You don’t look too good.”
    “I’m fed up with people lying and I can’t seem to get a handle on things. Today I actually accused three people of being liars.” I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. “The police haven’t arrested me but they haven’t told me I’m in the clear either. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I looked up at Sam.
    “Who knows,” Sam shrugged. “Give it a rest. Let them handle it. You work at a temp agency. And we miss you.”
    “I didn’t plan on getting this involved but I got sucked in like a barn in a Kansas tornado and now I can’t let it rest until I find out who’s responsible.”
    Millie came back in. “The food should be here in about twenty minutes. So tell us what you’ve found out so far.”
    I spent the next few minutes filling them in.
    “You have no idea what could be in Emmanuelle’s file?” Sam asked, when I had finished.
    I waved my hand dismissively. “No. I don’t. I read it and she’s changed jobs a few times, but that’s about it.”
    “Well, if she killed Mrs. Scott over something in the file, why didn’t she take it with her that night?” Millie asked.
    “Good point. Maybe she heard something and got scared.” I pursed my lips together and shook my head. “If she killed the woman over the file, she would most definitely remember to take it with her.”
    “Well, she could’ve looked and not found it. Maybe someone put it there after the murder.”
    “No, Millie. Joanne didn’t have it. Emmanuelle had already asked her. And I saw it in the desk.”
    “What about this Jerry guy,” Millie questioned.
    I leaned back in my chair. It felt so comfortable I could have just shut my eyes and slept.
    “He’s creepy. But I haven’t spoken with him yet about the murder. I’ve been avoiding it. I know he’ll throw me out of his office, so why bother. So out of all of this, tell me,” I asked both Sam and Millie, “who do you think it is?”
    Sam thought for a moment. “I agree it’s an inside job. No doubt about it.” She held up her hand and began counting off suspects. “We have Emmanuelle because she’s hiding something. Then there’s Joanne because she’s overly ambitious and killed Mrs. Scott for her job. Or maybe Mrs. Scott said something nasty about her eye and that pushed her over the edge,” Sam said straight-faced. “Then there’s Ruth who could be harboring some real jealousy over Mrs. Scott’s relationship with that client. Richard Sheridan is sneaky, so whatever he’s up to, maybe Mrs. Scott found out. Jerry is a jilted lover—whether or not anything ever happened between him and Mrs. Scott is beside the point in his mind. He feels jilted, period.” Sam slipped off her shoes and perched her feet on the edge of my desk. “Then we have Mitch because he’s backing Joanne. And then there’s Mr. and Mrs. Poupée. She’s jealous of his relationship with his assistant, and he killed the assistant because he wanted to end the relationship and she didn’t, or maybe she found out he stole another company’s ideas and called him on it.”
    “I hate to say it,” Millie said, “but the best motives are the ones for Mr. and Mrs. Poupée.”
    I hung my head and moaned. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
    “Of course, there’s you, because you lied about not finding a shovel and dragged Mrs. Scott out to the factory and killed her because she’d been giving you the run around,” Sam added.
    I cast a murderous glance at my sister.
    “Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
    “I know. None of these motives sound good enough to me, but we do have a dead body on our hands, so something is wrong somewhere.”
    “What about the people in the order center and the accounting department, and how about that designer Ron,” Millie asked.
    “Ron seems like a nice guy but then he knew I would be coming to ask him questions so he could’ve had something all made up. Again, what would be the motive? I can’t see anyone in accounting involved. I managed to talk with Sandy but she spent the entire time telling me about the running of her department. Monica lied about the printout but I can understand her hesitation to get involved. Speaking of the printout,” I said, taking the copy out of my purse and passing the sheets around.
    The food arrived and we spread everything out on my desk.
    “Well, I see