Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(65)

Acck. This was definitely not part of my plan.

“You can’t do that!” I cried.

“Why?”

“Um. Because Betty just went home. I saw her get on the elevator.”

“Oh, well,” she shrugged. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

Much to my relief, she put down the receiver and began filling me in on the doings at Whittaker and Wertz.

“You’ll like working for Ms. Whittaker. Once in a while she’ll ask you to pick up her dry cleaning, but that’s about as bad as it gets. Watch out for Wertz, though. Their office is known around here as Whittaker and Flirts. The man comes on to all the secretaries. Which is pretty nauseating, considering he has a wife and three kids and a gut the size of the THE DANGERS OF CANDY CANES

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Goodyear Blimp. He made a pass at me my first day on the job. My boyfriend was furious when he found out. Correction. I should say, my fiancé. Hector and I just got engaged last month.”

She thrust out her left hand, beaming with pride. A tiny diamond sparkled on her wedding finger.

“How lovely,” I cooed.

“It’s a whole half-carat. I told Hector I didn’t need a real diamond. I said, Hector, cubic zirconia is good enough. But he insisted. Nothing but the best for my Sylvia, that’s what he said. That’s my name, incidentally. Sylvia Alvarez.”

“I’m Charlotte,” I lied, just in case she remembered my name from my earlier phone call. But her mind was miles away from office business.

“Hector and I are getting married in June!” she announced proudly.

“How wonderful. Congratulations.”

“Hey, let me ask you something.” She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a copy of Modern Bride.

“Which dress do you like better?” she asked, pointing first to a picture of an elegant Vera Wangish A-line and then to a frilly traditional nipped-at-the-waist model.

“They’re both really nice.”

“But if you had to choose.”

“I guess I’d go with the A-line.”

“Really?” Her brow furrowed in doubt. “I like the clean lines, but I’ve always dreamed of getting married in a Cinderella dress.”

“With a figure like yours, you’re bound to look great in either one.”

A little shameless flattery couldn’t hurt. And besides, I wasn’t lying. The fattest part of her body were her eyelashes.

“You don’t think I need to go on a diet?”

Why do the skinny ones always want to go on a diet?

“Absolutely not,” I assured her. “You look amazing.” And then I added, in what I must confess was a brilliant segue: “I 224

Laura Levine

guess you stay thin working for two attorneys. They must keep you hopping. What are they like, anyway?”

“Oh, I only work for Mr. Roberts. Mr. Janken is deceased.”

She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “A horrible accident. He fell off his roof putting up Christmas decorations! Did you ever hear of anything so gruesome? I told my father, ‘Papi, don’t you dare put Christmas lights on the roof this year. You could fall and hurt yourself. A tree in the window is good enough.’”

It looked like little Sylvia was a bit of a chatterbox. Now all I had to do was get her to chatter about Garth and Peter.

“What about Mr. Roberts? What’s he like?”

And just like that, an invisible screen slammed down between us.

“Oh, he’s a very nice gentleman,” she said, stiffly.

Although perfectly willing to share the details of her wedding and her parents’ Christmas decorations, she wasn’t about to badmouth her boss, not yet, not until she knew me better. Clearly I’d have to win her trust.

Which was where Phase Two of my plan went into effect.

“So,” I asked. “Is there a place to have lunch here in the building?”

“Oh, sure. There’s a coffee shop downstairs. The food’s pretty good.”

“Any place to unwind after work?”

“There’s The Legal Eagle, right next door. They have a fantastic happy hour. People from the building go there all the time.”

Just what I wanted to hear.

“I love their buffalo chicken wings. I’ve tried to make them at home, but I can never get the spices right. I think I’m adding too much cumin. Or maybe it’s chili powder. I always get the ‘c’ spices confused.”

“Hey,” I said, as if I’d just thought of it on the spur of the moment. “Want to go there right now? I’m sort of wiped out from that interview and I could really use a margarita.”

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“I don’t know,” she hesitated. “I really should get home.”

“My treat. For helping me out.”

She flashed me another grin. “Okay, what the heck? Hector’s working late tonight anyway.”

She locked up the office and off we trotted to The Legal Eagle, Phase Two of my plan now in full swing. With any luck, I’d get Sylvia tootled enough to dish the dirt about Garth and Peter and their “amicable” split up.

Sylvia was right about those buffalo wings. They were scrumptious. Spicy, but not too spicy. I absolutely could not allow myself to eat more than two. Three, tops. Okay, five at the outside.