Matt very slowly eased his head out the door of his cubicle. His mother wore that grey suit he’d seen a thousand times. Ada Silberwetter had an orange-brown ensemble that flowed with her. They stood with their backs to him. Walter Prince faced them, and had obviously not expected to encounter so warm a woman on such a cold day.
“What a pleasant surprise!” he said, his voice devoid of pleasure. One hand groped madly at the air in Maryann’s direction. “Er, Maryann. You remember Mrs. Silberwetter, don’t you?”
Walter Prince had very likely been out there berating Maryann for some infraction of his iron laws; it was practically the only reason he ever addressed her at all. Her voice showed none of this. “Of course!” she said, her voice pure “welcome-to-our-humble-abode.”
Walter Prince swallowed. “And this is….”
“Lowe.” Mrs. Benz reached down to shake Maryann’s hand. “Felicia Lowe.”
Maryann was startled out of city employee mode. “Oh! Are you…are you related to the mystery writer?”
Matt’s mother shrugged. “A little.”
Ada’s chuckle rippled. “She is the mystery author, Love.”
Maryann stood up to shake Mrs. Benz’s hand again. Ada went on, “I told her I could show her around here to get some background for her next book. She’s calling it ‘Miss Skull’.”
Barring short story collections, there had been no new Felicia Lowe book in four years. So Maryann was probably justified in asking “Oh, are you still writing?”
Mrs. Benz’s lips drew into a disapproving little knot. “I’ll be writing until I die,” she said. “And if I can manage it, I’ll write my own obituary.”
Walter Prince’s eyes suggested he had been kicked, hard, in the stomach. He opened his mouth, but the sentence, like Matt’s view of the little comedy, was cut off when Holly stepped from her cubicle. Today she wore a quilted red blouse and pants whose legs did not match except in the way they adhered to her skin, stating boldly what Ad Silberwtter’s outfit only insinuated. Matt wondered if she had to shave her legs to wear them in public.
“Ah, oh, this is Ms. MacTaggart, of course,” Walter Prince informed his guests. “You know Mrs. Silberwetter. This is….”
Matt pulled back into his cage, grinding his teeth. That two-bit…tadpole. Tadpole: he must write that down. Tadpoles also lived off their tails.
Scrawling this on a dead draft of a cover sheet involved extra thought. Writers, of course, lived off their tales as well. He considered turning this pun into an article, but the only place that would print it was Scavenger’s Newsletter, and they were still overstocked.
Anyhow, he now had other concerns. “And this is Linda Szarjkowksi,” said Walter Prince, his voice nearer now.
Silly to hope they wouldn’t stop at his cubicle. What would he say? More important, what would THEY say?
“Carleton Nairn, our latest recruit.”
“Mrs. Silberwetter! I haven’t seen you since….”
The key to dealing with Ada Silberwetter was to stay calm. She liked to see people squirm. He did have one advantage. He’d seen her coming, so she’d lost the element of surprise.
“And this is my assistant, Matthew Benz.” Walter Prince waved a hand through the door. “Benz, this is Ada Silberwtter, Marshall Silberwetter’s wife, and Felicia Lowe, the mystery writer.”
Matt, an utterly insincere smile on his lips, started to rise. “Oh, don’t stand up,” his mother told him. “I can see you’re busy.”
“Yes,” growled Walter Prince. “Everyone here stays busy. It’s a wonder we don’t get more work done.”
He gestured toward his own office, and Mrs. Benz followed in that direction. “I do like that Mr. Benz,” Matt heard her say, as she moved from his view. “It’s a pity he looks so overworked.”
Matt was up and at the door by now, in time to intercept the third member of the part. “Excuse me,” he murmured, at the last minute setting his hand on the door frame instead of her shoulder, “But I am really furious and would like to share this with you at your earliest convenience.”
Ada’s eyes glittered with appreciation. Bright red lips pointed into the depths of dimples. “Have we been introduced, sir?”
Not waiting for an answer, she sauntered into his cubicle. Matt stepped way back.
“Nice place you’ve got here.” She picked up the little brass name plaque and set one hip against the desk. “Matthew C. Benz. What does the C stand for?”
“My middle name. What are you doing here?”
Ada slid back to sit o the desktop, and crossed her legs, running the name plaque along one knee. “Oh, in the halls of government, the floors are paved with clues. I wanted to show our perpetrator that we’re on the job. That’s how it’s done in all the books. You scare the naughty criminal into doing something desperate.”
Matt’s lips drew back to show all his teeth. He was not smiling. “And what if they do something desperate to my…to her?” He pointed at the cubicle door.
Ada wriggled backwards on the desk, ruffling stacks of paper. “But no one knows her real name, or where she lives. Unless YOU did it.”
Matt opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “How can you know you want someone at…. And get off my desk!”
“You be nice, or I won’t let you help me at all.” Ada slid back, further crumpling documents, and leaned a shoulder on his wall calendar. “Oh, my! Don’t I remember that ceiling!”
Matt started forward, and stopped. He had no useful idea how to slide those papers out from under her, and her pose offered her rather too much perspective on what art writer Thomas Craven called “mature female amplitudes”. An image rose unbidden of a dessert covered with whipped cream. But though a child might fantasize about diving headfirst into a bowl of whipped cream, an adult could think of a dozen reasons to resist.
While he was trying to think of one, she went on, “Anyway, I came for my pictures.”
“Oh!” Matt turned redder. “Oh, er, ah….”
A naturally rosy face leaned toward him, not helping matters. He stammered on, “Um, well, they aren’t here. I lent them to a friend at Water Tower Place.”
Eyelashes bounced at him. I knew you’d be a perfect Watson. Misplacing the vital clues already?”
Matt held both hands between them, palms out. “I…I didn’t know….” He cleared his throat and, deepening his voice a bit, went on, “I was going to pick them up tonight, on my way….”
Ada hopped down from the desk. “Huh! You’ll leave them on the bus!” Slow steps brought her toward him; his back was already against the doorframe. “I’d better come with you. Shall we meet there at, say, five thirty-seven?”
That smile melted a perfectly proper appointment into a sticky assignation. Matt couldn’t turn away from her eyes; those eyes knew everything there was to know about him, barring a few specifics Ada Silberwetter was menacingly eager to learn. She knew he could be had. Matt was NOT sure, and would not be until she exerted herself to prove it. The suspense was murderous.
She was now only eight inches away. “What if a woman kissed you?” she breathed.
Calm, keep calm. Matt snarled, “I’d kiss her back.”
She blinked at him. “What if it was a very tall woman?”
While he was working on that, she laughed and bounced from the cubicle. “Oh, here she is!” called Felicia Lowe. “Never mind, Mr. Nairn. She was in the office of that nice Mr. Benz!”
“We really need to look over the rest of the building,” Ada told Matt. She turned her gaze on the two men with Mrs. Benz. “Thank you so much, Walter. And it was nice to visit with you again, Carleton. And that nice Mr. Benz, of course. Ta-ta!”
Matt could feel the glare radiating from the face of Walter Prince, but could not help following the pair of researchers as far as the door of Down. He then retreated to Maryann’s desk to make sure the pair actually moved off down the corridor.
Once things appeared to be safe again, he turned to go back to work. But one long impeccable arm stretched out to rest a hand on his wrist. Matt looked down into the face of Maryann, whose eyes brimmed with suspicion.
She withdrew her hand. “I have all Felicia Lowe’s books,” she said, her voice casual. “And I happen to know that her real name is Katharine Benz. Are you related?”
Matt shrugged. “A little.” He moved off back to the cubicle.
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