Killer Move - Michael Marshall [25]
He wasn’t there, and a call to Melania’s number dead-ended in voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I took out one of my cards instead, and jammed it in a crack in the buzzer mechanism—after jotting the words “Call me when you’re ready to do business” on the back.
Now feeling two hundred percent better, I drove back to The Breakers.
When I got out of my car I had a sighting of the resort’s rarest fauna—Marie Thompson. She was talking to Big Walter, dressed in an immaculate white trouser suit, the perfect outfit to showcase an evident dedication to the maxim that you can never be too rich or too thin. As had been the case on most occasions I’d seen her, she was giving someone a hard time. Word was that Marie was from old Sarasota money. It was evident from her body language toward Walter (one of the very blackest black guys I’ve ever met) that she had yet to receive instruction on modern modes of interacting with people of color.
After a final jab of the finger to underscore whatever dread point she was making, she turned on her heel and stalked into the main building.
Walter watched her go, then turned to look at me. I shrugged. He shrugged back. That made me feel cool.
As I reached for the handle on the door to the Shore office, I heard someone guffawing inside. I knew who it would be. Janine had a very distinctive laugh, one of those plain-girl cackles—bubbly, raucous, and strange. It’s the kind of laugh that grown-ups who find themselves unable to compliment a child on her looks may favorably comment on instead, causing the girl to carry what is in reality rather an annoying sound into her adult life.
Sure enough, I walked into the office to find Janine at her desk, hand in front of her mouth, grinning inanely at something on her screen. Buoyed by recent successes, I decided to play nice.
“S’up?” I said.
She giggled, as if we’d been caught in some collusion. “It’s kinda bad,” she said. “But I like it.”
“What is?”
“You know. What you sent.”
I bent to look over her shoulder. An e-mail from me was open on her computer screen, with a joke. It was a mildly funny joke, assuming you were prepared to overlook the fact that it was markedly off-color and somewhat racist, too.
The only thing was that I hadn’t sent it.
Not to her, or any of the other people on the list.
CHAPTER NINE
I had a late lunch of an egg salad sandwich, sitting in the shade outside the grocery store a few doors down from the office. It’s something I do once a week, a little ritual—they make it with a little dill and a touch of Dijon mustard, and it’s very good—but either the bread was a bit stale today or I just wasn’t in the mood.
Karren had received the e-mail, too. So had a couple of private contacts and a few nonwork friends. Only one person on the list had responded, expressing surprise that I’d forwarded something that had nothing to do with realty, as I never normally did that kind of thing.
Well, right. True statement.
I’d stayed at my desk for a while, looking like I was taking care of business. I quickly established that the e-mail was not in my SENT MAIL folder, nor had it been filed. I’m very organized about keeping everything I receive and send. Big or small, even if it’s merely a “Great meeting!” or (god forbid) an “LOL!” everything gets given a sensible home. In realty you never know when you might wish or need to demonstrate exactly what was said, to whom, and when. In reality, too, I guess.
The original e-mail was nowhere to be found. Setting that aside, there was the question of who’d sent it out in my name. Clearly not Janine. That left, of course, Karren. But when Karren had walked into the office five minutes after me, and found the e-mail, I’d seen her frown. She read it again, then looked at me.
“Well, it’s technically comedic,” she said. “Ha and, I guess, ha.