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pretty tidy and usually put things like that in a little trough container gismo. But I’m connecting this now, you understand, now that I know … I didn’t then. But right after that, on my way to a business lunch, I was thinking about the people I was going to meet there and the business to be conducted, yet still seeing those pencil ends on Gloria’s desk.”
    â€œLunch at the Polo Lounge.” He checked his notebook again.
    â€œRight. And then I came back and she hadn’t shown up yet, so I asked Larry to check if her purse and car were still here and if anyone had notified building security.”
    â€œShe disappeared from her desk sometime between nine and just after ten in the morning, and no one raised the alarm until approximately three in the afternoon. Is it just me or do you find that strange?”
    â€œIf Irma Vance wasn’t on vacation, everybody would have figured out something was wrong the minute Gloria stopped fielding phone calls, and a search would have been on. Irma’s the office manager as well as executive secretary. But right now we’re short-staffed because Maurice’s assistant quit and Maurice isn’t due back from vacation until today. The rest of us were pretty much in and out, which isn’t unusual. Luella just got back from Minnesota. We were all coming and going, and Gloria wasn’t here to be a central communication source. It just took a while for anyone to stop long enough for it to sink in that she was really gone and to start checking. I mean just because someone’s not at her desk, you don’t automatically assume she’s been murdered and … I forgot the question.”
    He smiled, keeping his lips together as if he couldn’t help himself. “Why you stopped at the garbage can this morning.”
    â€œLast night I saw my daughter’s cat come through the gate in front of the car lights, and his eyes flashed like we just saw the jewels in Gloria’s fingernails do, and we keep the garbage cans in the alley on the other side of that gate. And then he woke me about two and I was dreaming that Gloria was putting something red in the garbage can. How am I doing?”
    â€œAnd that’s when you decided to check the container in the alley behind this building when you came to work this morning?”
    â€œThat wasn’t until I actually got here and drove up next to it. If the main entrance hadn’t been blocked and I hadn’t come down the alley and seen the garbage can, I probably wouldn’t have thought of it.”
    He paused to stare at her as if his mind was working to catch up with her logic. And then, still playing for time, he said, “Uh … I’d like you please to show me just how those pencil ends were lying on her desk.”
    They were almost past the ladies’ room when someone behind them whispered, “Charlie, I’m in the trash can. Help me.”
    And then, Charlie thought with resignation, there’s always that. She leaned against the wall, weak-kneed, aware she looked nothing like a career woman on her way up to the fabled glass ceiling.
    â€œDo you believe in the supernatural?” Dalrymple asked, ignoring her sudden stop yet almost as if he too had heard the whisper. But his expression was too bland.
    â€œNo, why?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œNot scientific.” Charlie, realizing she’d answered her own question, stared back at the stairwell. Obviously someone alive had figured out how to send a voice recognizable as a dead Gloria’s up from below. Someone who knew Charlie’s hearing was more acute than most people’s. Or perhaps Dalrymple’s wasn’t any better than Podhurst’s.
    Maurice Lavender was a compulsive womanizer. Or he wanted every woman in the world to think he was. Charlie liked him but wasn’t sure whether or not his charm was the reason, or was it just that he was so different from her