“Relax, Professor,” he said, as he gently shoved Paul up the aisle. “You just got tenure.”
THIRTY-FIVE
“WHERE’D SHE GO?” Preston asked Paul a few minutes later. He slid Olivia’s ID badge across Paul’s desktop and then stepped back, filling the doorway of the cube. Behind him Ray, from Building Services, was cleaning out Olivia’s cube, collecting her personal effects — her FOLLOW YOUR BLISS coffee cup, her lumbar pillow, a little bouquet of imitation daisies — in a cardboard box. Preston draped a large hand over the partition on either side of Paul’s door.
“What’s this?” Paul glanced at the badge.
“Found it on the security desk this morning,” said Preston, watching Paul.
“Didn’t you hear?” Paul returned his gaze to his monitor, where he was paging through the revised RFP. “She quit.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“She must have left it on her way out the door.”
“On a Saturday?”
Paul glanced at the badge again, noting its little, square picture of an unsmiling Olivia Haddock. “Maybe she didn’t like long good-byes.”
“Maybe.” Preston shifted in the doorway, blocking Paul’s view of Ray in the cube across the aisle. “You know why she quit?”
Paul stared hard at the text on the screen, every word gone blurry. “Check with Rick.”
“I did,” Preston said. “He says you saw her after he did. Says you was supposed to meet her here Saturday morning.”
Paul paged down to the next section. He was slouching in his seat, but it was getting harder to feign boredom with Preston looming over him.
“Look, Paul.” Preston lifted one of his hands. “I ain’t accusing you of anything. It’s just, we need to know where to send her stuff.” He stepped aside just enough to give Paul a glimpse across the aisle. Ray stood with the box curled under one arm, his other hand digging through the shadows at the back of Olivia’s desk.
“She’s got a home phone, right?” Paul lifted his gaze to Preston. “Call her up.”
“She ain’t there neither,” Preston said. “Phone’s been disconnected.”
Paul pushed himself up in his seat. “I give up,” he said. “Where is she?”
“So you wasn’t here Saturday,” Preston said, “when she resigned.”
Paul swiveled in his chair, hunched forward, and clasped his hands between his knees. He was aiming for a look of exasperated sincerity. “No, I wasn’t here Saturday,” he said. “I was home, in bed, sleeping off Friday night, if you really want to know.” He looked up at Preston with wide eyes. “I didn’t come in until Sunday. Colonel let me in.”
Preston scowled. “Colonel.”
“Yeah.”
“He let you in.”
“Yep.”
“On Sunday?”
Paul gave Preston a look of sincere exasperation.
“Be real easy for me to check if Colonel’s badge was used yesterday,” Preston said.
Paul hadn’t thought of that. It was getting difficult to hold Preston’s gaze, and he began to wonder if there might not be a surveillance camera in the lobby and a tape somewhere showing a pixilated image of him and Olivia crossing the lobby on Saturday morning. But then, plucking up the courage of his conviction that this was all a dream, he reminded himself that none of what he remembered from Saturday morning had really happened. For all he knew, Colonel was telling the truth, and all the tape showed — assuming there was a tape — was Colonel and Paul scooting across the lobby on Sunday. Or, for that matter, Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and baby Jesus.
“I thought you weren’t accusing me of anything,” Paul said.
“No, I ain’t.” Preston sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.” Preston glanced over his shoulder. “It’s just. . remember what we talked about t’other day?”
“About. .?”
Preston dropped his voice. “About you tell me if you see anything. You know, out of the ordinary.”
“That’s funny,” said Ray, out of sight behind Preston.
“You remember that?” Preston said, narrowing his eyes.
“This ain’t her computer,” Ray said. “Number don’t match.”
With some reluctance, Preston turned slowly away from Paul. “What?” he said.
Paul glimpsed Ray around Preston’s belly. Ray had set the box down and was cataloguing the contents of Olivia’s cube against a checklist on a clipboard.
“This ain’t her computer,” Ray said. “Serial number don’t match up with the number she was assigned.”
“Then whose computer is it?” said Preston.
Ray licked his fat thumb and paged through the papers on the clipboard. The mild exertion of cleaning out the cube was making him sweat, and his broad forehead glistened in the fluorescent light.
“Huh,” said Ray. Paul could hear him breathing all the way across the aisle.
“What?” said Preston and Paul, simultaneously.
“That’s funny,” said Ray.
“What?” chorused Preston and Paul.
“Used to belong to what’s his name.” Ray rotated slowly on his own axis, and with his blunt chin indicated the empty cube next to Paul’s. “Fella who sat over there.”
“Dennis?” gulped Paul.
“You mean the fella who—?” Preston began.
“Whatever,” said Ray. “It’s his computer. Or was his, before he—”
“Don’t say it,” Paul groaned.
“What’s it doing in her cube?” Preston moved across the aisle.
“Good question,” said Ray. “I thought it was down in storage.”
“Then where’s her computer?” Preston stooped past Ray, peering past the computer at the cabinet over the desk. He felt under the cabinet and stood again, rubbing his fingers together. His fingertips were smudged with black. He looked across the aisle. “Paul?” he said. “You know anything about this?”
Paul pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “No,” he whispered.
Preston sniffed his fingers and wrinkled his nose, then he stepped across the aisle and snatched Olivia’s ID off Paul’s desk. “Excuse me,” he said, marching up the aisle with the heel of his hand on his sidearm.
“Twitchy son of a bitch, ain’t he?” said Ray.
“I guess,” Paul said, watching Preston’s head and shoulders glide away through the labyrinth of cubes.
“Say listen,” Ray said, “I don’t suppose you’d give me a hand getting this computer out of here. She’s got to go all the way back down to storage. . ”
“Excuse me,” Paul muttered, and he glided up the aisle, in the opposite direction from Preston. A minute or two later, he was in Building Services, where he found Callie bent over the sign-up book in the outer room.
“Hey,” she said, giving him an equivocal look, but he caught her by the elbow and tugged her into the inner office. She brightened a little, misunderstanding his intent, and as soon as they were out of sight of the hallway, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Apology accepted,” she said.
“Apology?” Paul said. They stood with their foreheads touching.
She widened her eyes at him. “No?” she said. “Where the hell were you all weekend? I figured you’d be out of it all day Saturday — God knows I felt like shit — but when I come over Sunday morning, I hammered on your door for prit’ near fifteen minutes.”
“Was my car there?” Paul searched her face.
Callie stared at him. She loosened her grip, but kept her hands draped over his shoulders. “Don’t you know?” she said.
“Callie.” Paul curled his hands around her long wrists. “Where was I Saturday morning?”