Best of Luck Elsewhere Page 5

  As I was leaving, a small, cool hand caught my wrist. “Eliza!” cried Carrie, the assistant editor for children’s books. “How was Greece?”

  I took a sip of my mocha frappuccino. “It was great. Beautiful. I spent most of my time on the islands. Santorini was my favorite.”

  “And you saw those houses with the blue roofs. I love those.” She nodded enthusiastically, auburn waves bobbing in her face.

  “Those churches, yeah. They were gorgeous.”

  “I’m glad you had fun. You deserve it, what with Rain always at your throat. And your engagement being called off and all.”

  Bitch! Trying to ruin my happy mood! “You and the other gals from children’s should clear out of here before Rain goes on one of her tirades. I know she’s not your boss, but she can cause havoc anywhere in the company.”

  “Or anywhere in the world, right?”

  One of her companions spoke up from their table. “I think we’re safe for now. Rain isn’t in the office yet this morning.”

  “Not in?” Rain was always in.

  “Nope. I went over to talk to her about this book that’s a mystery for kids, to see what she thought of the mystery aspect of it, and her assistant said she’s been out for a few days.”

  Mystery indeed.

  Carrie chimed in. “But wasn’t she going on vacation, too?”

  “She was going to San Francisco, but she’s supposed to be back.” I thought of the note to Sue on the stacks of manuscripts.

  “She hasn’t been back, though.”

  I shrugged it off. “Maybe she got hit by a trolley in San Francisco and is never coming back.”

  Carrie didn’t laugh at my attempted joke. Her eyes focused right past me. Don’t be Rain. Don’t be Rain. Don’t be Rain, I chanted inwardly as I turned.

  “Ms. Li,” I said with a small smile to the HR manager. “How are you?”

  The look on her face was strange, and she looked at me while speaking to everyone in the café. “Okay, back upstairs all of you. Go straight to the HR conference room. We’re having an urgent meeting.”

  “Dang it,” I heard Carrie mutter from behind me. “Now we’re in for it. Pink slips to go with our coffees.”

  Could this really be the last straw? It was HR this time, and not some maniac supervisor. Oh well, I told myself. I wanted a change anyway, and a change is a change.

  I spent the elevator ride to the fifteenth floor mentally calculating how long it would take me to finish my novel, send it to publishers, and start getting royalty checks. No severance package would cover the time that would take. I knew better than anyone that writing a book was the easy part and getting it published was the difficult one. So instead, I started thinking about the jobs I could do with my knowledge and background.

  The elevator opened to a crowd of people, all trying to squeeze into the HR conference room. We could technically all fit, with standing room only. As we shuffled slowly in, I leaned over to Carrie and asked, “Is this our entire company?”

  Carrie shook her head, the fear of being fired easing from her face. “No, looks like just books. I don’t see anyone from finance or marketing or anything. But all the books interns and assistants are here, too, so it isn’t an editorial issue. All I know is that they can’t fire everyone in books. So, I guess we can assume this is about something else. Thank goodness.”

  “Yeah,” I replied hesitantly, as the door closed behind me. “Thank goodness.”

  “Are we all here?” Ms. Li asked.

  I wondered how long it would be until the claustrophobia kicked in. “Thank you all for coming.” She looked upset, but not angry; uncomfortable, but not uncertain of what she was doing. “I’m sorry for the short notice. I sent an email around this morning, vague as it was, about this meeting, but I know some of you wait to open your email until later in the morning.”

  Someone next to me who had been herded up from Starbucks muttered, “I thought it was optional and deleted the message.”

  The person next to him on the other side said, “Whatever she sent is probably buried somewhere in the fifty status query emails from authors I’ve got sitting in there.”

  Ms. Li continued, “As you all know, I am Ellen Li and, as the HR manager, I am afraid I have the task of giving you all some very bad news.”

  My stomach dropped. Were our jobs being outsourced? Was the company being sold to a New York house? I didn’t want to move to New York. A wave of whispers spread through the room.

  “Quiet, please. I’m sorry to inform you that S. Rain Orwell, the editor for our mystery books department, has passed away.” Ms. Li was not expecting the collective sigh of relief that followed, but she had to have realized that this relief was for the continued safety of our jobs, not the loss of an editor. Within a few seconds though, the collective shock set in. She chose this point to move forward.

  “Ms. Orwell was in a car accident. On the night of the accident, she was heading to a meeting with an author. This just shows what a dedicated editor she was, what a vital part of our organization. On the way to the meeting, on Interstate 5 near Carlsbad, it seems she had a dispute with someone and it resulted in her car going over into the lagoon.”

  The noise from crowd began to grow. Questions. Fears.

  Ms. Li held up her hand. “Please. We don’t know much yet. The police have only told us that it was a hit and run, and that they don’t have any suspects yet. They know it was a truck that hit her and that it was able to drive away from the scene. The authorities have not been able to locate it. They expect it was alcohol-related or maybe even road rage, but they are not ruling out that it was something more serious.”

  Now we were all quiet, as though Rain were moving among us in the crowded room, peering at whoever might have hated her enough to kill her.

  “We will be having counselors in to talk to those who may need them. If you’d like to make an appointment, just email my assistant.” She cleared her throat. “The police will be in throughout the investigation to look around and to talk to some of you. Many of you knew Rain well, and may have some information about any malicious intent aimed at her. I will personally be calling those who they’d like to talk with so that you can set up appointments with them. Are there any questions?”

  No one moved until Jane’s thin, pale arm rose above the heads in the crowd. Ms. Li nodded. Jane’s usually weak voice now sounded empowered. She asked, “Who will be taking Rain’s place?” I could only see the top back of her head, but I noticed that her blonde ringlets were still; she was unmoved and unmoving.

  “We’ll accept résumés for the next couple of weeks. I’m hoping that by the end of the month we’ll have completed interviews and brought in a new mystery editor. Anyone interested, of course, is encouraged to apply.”

  “But didn’t Rain leave some kind of game plan? Didn’t she have someone in mind to follow her?”

  “Rain didn’t know this was going to happen. So I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that…Well, she wasn’t that far from retirement. She must have spoken to you about suggestions for when she retired.”

  The room was getting uncomfortable. People realized they were hearing a private conversation. A private argument.

  “No, I’m afraid she didn’t. But I wouldn’t worry about it. We’ll have someone to fill the position very soon.”

  Jane clammed up, and the discomfort in the room began to dissipate. But Jane then mumbled something, and Ms. Li leaned forward, putting her hand to her ear. “What was that?”

  “Oh, I was just said that a month is a long time. What am I going to tell all the authors that call me looking for the mystery editor?”

  “Eliza Tahan, the current assistant mystery editor, will naturally be handling Rain’s basic duties for the time being.” Ms. Li directed her attention toward me, and everyone in the room seemed to follow suit. “Eliza, please stay after the meeting to chat about this.”

  Everyone turned ba
ck to Ms. Li. Except for Jane. Her body twisted toward the back of the room. Her wide, hazel eyes darkened and her small features peered past the shoulders around her. When I caught her eye, it was obvious that she was not pleased with the answer, and a chill swept through me.

  CHAPTER 5

  I worked the rest of the day amid a buzz of chatter. Most of my colleagues could not concentrate on their work after the news about Rain. But I had long ago learned to block out drama from my professional life. I’d learned the skill in high school after my dad died and I still had to finish SATs and finals and graduate. I had honed the skill when my engagement to Liam had been broken off. I still had to find and secure a handful of promising manuscripts for next year’s list deadline.

  Now I had to do it before taking on Rain’s work. I knew that I’d have to think about Rain at some point, but my workday was not that point.

  * * *

  It turned out that the point would be on my way home. Not that I didn’t try to head it off. I turned on the radio, but three stations were playing the same Top-40 song, one was playing a commercial for Sea World, one was reporting on traffic, and my beloved KPBS was pleading for donations in their latest membership drive. Thoughts of Rain overrode them all.

  I’ll never see S. Rain Orwell again. Ever. She won’t be watching me in the office, waiting for me to screw up. I’ll never again run into her at Balboa Park’s Museum of Art on a Free Tuesday during our lunch break.

  These things, I decided, were not too bad. That was the truth that I could never admit in the office, when she was there and definitely not now that she wasn’t. Rain had been a bitch to me, and treated almost everyone as inferiors. She made people feel bad about their work, about their lives, and about themselves. With no Rain, J Press’s mystery department might be a much more positive place to spend the workday.

  I glanced out the passenger-side window at one of the military planes heading into Miramar Air Station. I turned my head back at the sudden flash of red taillights and had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting the truck in front of me.

  My heart rate quickened. My adrenaline rushed. I’d almost had an accident.

  Is this how Rain felt when she saw the truck coming toward her? Did she know she was facing the end?

  Despite my better judgment, I let myself imagine Rain getting into that silver Porsche of hers for the last time. Ms. Li had said she’d been on her way to meet with an author. It was a good guess that the meeting was probably with J Press’s star author, J. D. The country could not get enough of J. D.’s free-spirited motorcyclist “Jace Jordan,” who traveled from town to town solving mysteries and saving the day. Men loved the exposition on Jace’s motorcycle and the sexy women he encountered. Women loved that though Jace could have any of those sexy women as easily as James Bond, he never gave in to temptation. At the end of each book he was on the phone to his long-time girlfriend, who was waiting on the other coast. The motivation for Jace Jordan’s travels was to get across the country to his woman, but each town—each book—held another mystery to solve that slowed down the road trip.

  I knew that J. D. had mentioned in a call to Rain last week that he wanted to end the series and send Jace Jordan home to an ultimate mystery that put the girlfriend’s life in danger. Rain was collected and professional on the phone, but as soon as she’d hung up, she’d had a fit.

  When she had turned her hysteria on me, she threatened, “If I can’t stop him, Eliza, you’d better find out next best-seller in those stacks of manuscripts. And you’d better do it real soon.”

  Rain just couldn’t let “Jace” get home to his girl and end the series. She would have come up with an argument to convince J.D. to extend the road trip for a few more books. I couldn’t think of what the argument would be. It seemed reasonable to me to let J.D. move on to something else. If J Press handled his request with grace, he’d continue with us for his next book. But Rain was a star of an editor, and she’d have had a plan to convince him to write more “Jace” books and continue to publish with J Press for any future books as well.

  The meeting to which she was heading had to have been with J.D.

  Had she been nervous about the meeting, not paying attention to the vehicles around her as she drove north on Interstate 5? Or was she confident in her negotiation skills, so confident that she hadn’t concerned herself much with the truck closing in on her car until it was too late?

  What was her reaction when she realized that the truck was getting close? Maybe she pulled over into the right-most lane; she did drive a Porsche, after all. Not a car to be reckless with.

  I imagined a sudden screech of tires, the jolt of impact as the truck turned deliberately into the Porsche, ramming her driver’s side and sending her plowing over the edge of the raised freeway and into the lagoon.

  It would have felt like long minutes, though it had only been a matter of seconds.

  The crunch of the truck against her car. The pain shooting over every inch of her body. The crushing sound of the divider that didn’t stop her car from going over the side of the freeway and down the embankment. The whirl of her stomach as she turned upside down, right side up, upside down. A splash, and the feeling of cold salt water stinging her open wounds.

  Rain must have felt the pain.

  And then felt nothing at all.

  Great, and now I’m sobbing. Sobbing for very few of the reasons I ought to be sobbing, but sobbing nonetheless. I wasn’t going to pretend, like so many of my colleagues, that she would be missed. That it was “our loss.” I cried now for the tragic end to a life. It was a mean life, but not evil, and not deserving of such a tragic fate.

  I cried in fear for the people I loved. For my mom, for Cleo. Why hadn’t the mythical forces of the universe protected Rain? Why hadn’t they protected my dad?

  And when would they fail me, or again fail someone I loved?

  * * *

  Liam wasn’t home yet, but I decided to stay in for the night, not just because my crying had drained from me any energy to go out, but also because I remembered Liam wanted to use the car. I was in a “cherish your loved ones” mood right now, and I might as well cherish him by handing over the keys if he ever did come home.

  I unloaded the manuscripts from the trunk in two trips and dropped them on the floor next to the sofa. With a dramatic, draining day behind me, I felt justified at having a little floor-picnic for dinner. Main course: mint and chocolate chip ice cream. Side dish: white zinfandel. I sat on the floor with my back against the couch and a manuscript in my lap and dug the sturdy spoon into the pint of ice cream.

  At that moment I heard a rustling at the door. In a split second, my lethargy was drowned in adrenaline. My pulse quickened.

  It’s Liam, I told myself, hoping I wasn’t lying. I haven’t seen him in two weeks, and here he is. That’s good, right? So why is my stomach twisting? He’ll want to update me on the plans to sell the condo. And I can talk about the thing with Rain. That might make me feel better.

  But no key entered the lock. No roommate entered the house.

  There was a tap on the door, hesitant at first, and then more confident.

  “Who the heck…?” I muttered as I slipped quickly past the window, hoping not to be seen in the narrow gap between the curtain panels. On tiptoe, I looked out the peephole.

  The figure on the other side of the door was facing away from the door, but it was definitely not Liam’s sleek figure. I wanted to see who it was, but to turn on the light would confirm that someone was home. The tall, masculine figure shifted uneasily, and I noticed he carried something bulky under his arm.

  I thought then about Rain, about the fact that she might have been murdered.

  My stomach dropped and I groaned audibly. Through the peephole, I saw the man turn, face invisible in the dark entryway. He leaned toward the peephole. I backed away, though I had tested the thing before we bought the condo and there was no way this psycho could see in at me. But he knew I was here. The idea t
hat I might be murdered because I’d groaned at the idea of murder was an irony that did not escape me.

  But then I heard footsteps. Had he left? I looked through the peephole again, but the man outside was still there. I watched another figure approach the door, sure my only defense against two murderers on my doorstep was flight. Then a familiar voice pierced my fright.

  “Hey buddy, what do you need?” Liam’s voice came muffled through the door. “Selling the paper? We already get it.”

  I moved my fingers to the deadbolt, planning to unlock the door in a hurry if he needed to escape inside with me.

  The other man’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. And familiar. “I’m looking for Ms. Tahan. I’ve only been here once, but I was sure this was the house.”

  Liam moved around the man, patted him on the shoulder. “The light’s on inside, so she should be here. Let me get her.”

  Liam inserted his key into the lock, and I heard Adam’s voice drop. “You have a key? I didn’t realize Eliza had a boyfriend.”

  “Eliza’s boyfriend? Not quite, buddy—”

  Liam didn’t have a chance to finish his reply before I threw open the door. “Hi, Adam. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Liam looked from Adam to me and back, and then moved inside, giving me the slightest hug on the way in. I stepped aside to invite Adam to follow Liam in.

  “With everything going on today, I’d kinda forgotten that I said you could swing by.”

  Adam’s brow was lightly furrowed as he watched Liam with some concern. “Sounds like you had a tough first day back.”

  Liam dropped his bag on the couch and looked up. “Sorry to interrupt you guys, but Lizzy, did you get my message about me borrowing your car?”

  “Yeah. How did you get here?”

  “Shelly from the desktop supplies department at work gave me a ride. She lives over in Escondido. I think she has a crush on me, though. Not looking forward to conversation about that.”

  I turned to Adam in explanation. “Liam works at a place that sells office supplies to big companies.”