LITMIR.BIZ

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size, I noticed, no company logo on them. He slipped them into a manila folder, looking guilty as hell. It had to be personal mail, but what twentysomething these days wrote letters and mailed them? Unless they were addressed to Dear Bitch. I looked closely at Kendrick, sizing him up, but you couldn’t peg a sociopath by looking.

      “I thought you were . . . Never mind. You didn’t scare me.” He rambled on, shaken, caught out. “Excuse me. I gotta go.” He tried slipping past me, but I gently blocked his exit.

      “Got a minute?”

      “Me? Why?”

      “For a couple questions.”

      He gripped the folder tighter, flicked a look over my shoulder, where escape lingered just beyond his reach. “If it’s about the office, I can’t. NDA, or did you forget?”

      I stepped back, checked the hall. Ben was still sitting in the chair, like an observant lump. No sign of Allen or Chandler. “No, I remember. But we both know something’s going on around here. I’d like to get your take. Five minutes, and whatever you say doesn’t get back to either one of them. Deal?”

      He eyed the stamp machine, then me, as though this was some kind of trap. He narrowed his eyes. “Not even about the stamps I’m borrowing?”

      Borrowing? Could you return used metered postage? “What are you mailing, if you don’t mind my asking?”

      He looked uneasy. “It’s personal, okay? I figure she owes me. I worked fifty hours last week, but I’ll get paid for only forty. It’s always like that.”

      Maybe it was the truth; maybe it wasn’t. “Can I see?”

      Kendrick scowled. “And if I say no, you’ll tell them about all of this, right?”

      I let his question hang for a second. “It’s not my postage machine.”

      If he wouldn’t show me what he had in the folder, I couldn’t force him, but that didn’t stop me from wondering about it.

      Kendrick stood there thinking things over, then nodded. “All right. What do you want to know?”

      “What’s been going on around here?”

      He shrugged. “Not sure, but Ms. Allen’s definitely spooked. Chandler too. I know it’s got something to do with the flowers Chandler’s been throwing out, and I heard she’s been getting love notes, too. It’s got to be a stalker. Somebody messin’ with her.” He lowered his voice even more. “There’s word going around, too, that maybe she’s having a thing with Phil Hewitt and that her riding him is just for show.”

      “Is there a lot of word going around?”

      “We’re not supposed to talk, but we do. People are people. Maybe she dumped him, or he dumped her. The first could explain the flowers, and the second would explain her bitchier than usual mood lately.”

      Allen and Hewitt? Huh. I didn’t see that coming, but what did I know? The exchange I’d witnessed earlier had certainly looked genuine enough. If it had been a put-on, the two of them had given Oscar-worthy performances. Also, how much could I trust the office scuttlebutt when Allen’s threatening letters had been mischaracterized as love notes? The staffers were like players in a bad game of slumber-party telephone. There was no telling what other distorted information was flying around. So much for the NDA, though. Like Kendrick had said, people were people.

      “Tell me about the phone calls.”

      The request surprised him. “They told you?”

      I nodded, lying. “Sure. I’m just looking for your perspective.”

      It appeared to satisfy him. “There were a few of them on her private line, but we didn’t know anything about those until we heard her chew Chandler out about them. Ms. Allen figured Chandler should know how the guy got her number in the first place, but Chandler said she didn’t. When he called the main number, I was covering the desk for Pam.”

      I eased in closer to him. “Tell me about that call.”

      “He wanted to talk to Ms. Allen. I guess she’d blocked him by then. He asked if his flowers got here. Then he wanted to be put right through to her.”

      “What’d you do?”

      “I asked for his name and everything, like we’re supposed to, but he wouldn’t give it. I asked what the call was in reference to, and he said it was personal. He got a little huffy at that point, saying she and him went back almost thirty years and that she’d know what it was about. I transferred him right to Chandler.”

      “Allen ever mention it again?”

      Kendrick shook his head. “It was Chandler who had to know what time it came in, exactly what the guy said and how he said it. She made me go over it at least five times before she let up. I thought for a second she was going to fire me straight-out. If he calls back, we’re not supposed to even talk to him, but to transfer it right to her.” He eyed the doorway. “If she catches me talking to you . . .”

      “She won’t. She’s in her office. A couple more. How did the caller sound, besides being insistent? Angry? Dangerous?”

      He thought for a moment. “He didn’t sound like anything. Just normal, I guess I’d say. But he wanted to talk to her bad.”

      So Chandler was doing her job, standing in as a buffer between Allen and the flower guy, trying to work things out, hold them down. “Allen and Chandler. What’s with that?”

      Kendrick blew out a breath. “I’d say they make a good team. Only, a few weeks ago they had some kind of falling-out. We heard them shouting.”

      “You know what it was about?”

      “No. But things were real cool around here for days. Then, just like that, whatever it was blew over, and Chandler was Team Allen again.”

      I thought back to the exchange I’d seen earlier in Allen’s office, how rudely Chandler had been dismissed. If that was normal operating practice, I would have hated to see Allen and Chandler during their period of open hostilities. Had they argued about the threats? “Anybody else here on Team Allen?”

      Kendrick snickered derisively. “Publicly, sure.” He shook his head. “We’re all just marking time. Meanwhile, we keep our heads down.” I could tell Kendrick longed to be rid of me. He tapped the folder nervously against his thigh, bit down on his lower lip. He knew Chandler wasn’t going to stay in her office forever. We’d already been in here too long.

      “Last one. Promise. What do you think about Allen?”

      The tapping stopped, the lip biting, too. His dark eyes locked on mine. I didn’t think he was worried about Chandler or Allen at that moment. I think his mind was somewhere else entirely. “She hits that button like she’s calling for her houseboy, and I have to come running. Cappuccino, whatever. For the first six months I worked for her, she called me Tony, the guy before me. I don’t think much of her, but until I can make my move, I stay and eat it.” He paused a moment. “Only I got full a long time ago.”

      I rejoined Ben. He sat with his legs outstretched, his hands clasped and resting on his stomach. Chandler’s door was open; her office empty. I looked to him for an explanation, and he cocked a thumb behind him. “Royal summons. Couple minutes ago it sounded like they were having a little tiff. It’s quiet now, though. And a few people have come by to check me out like I’m about to perform magic tricks, or something. I saw you peeking down here. Subtle. You ran into the kid?”

      I nodded. “Chance meeting.”

      “That’s how you’re playing it?”

      I waved him off. “Kendrick took a call from the flower guy, who said he knew Allen from way back and knew she’d remember.”

      “Obviously, she doesn’t.”

      “Oh, I think she remembers just fine.”

      Ben

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