Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,55
ask, What the hell? Also I missed the paycheck, tiny as it was.
There was a new doorman on duty that day. That last day. Gus, the regular doorman, had been there forever. I knew people left jobs, quit, and got fired. But Gus would have said goodbye. We’d been friends.
The new doorman asked me to sign into the visitors’ log. He was new. I wasn’t a visitor.
I explained that I worked in the building, on the sixth floor. He said there was nothing on the sixth floor but empty office space. I explained: That wasn’t possible. Friday I’d gone to work there, and it was only Monday morning. He said he didn’t know about that. He’d started on Sunday. The previous doorman had a health emergency. Something crazy happened in the building. Some cops and an ambulance came.
A chill ran down my spine. What kind of a bullet had I dodged?
“What happened?” He had to tell me. “I mean, what happened to Gus? What kind of health emergency?”
“Gus? I’m sorry. I don’t even know the dude’s name.”
He’d started work on Sunday. We’d never had a Sunday doorman before.
I said, “Can I go take a look?”
“Go ahead. Be my guest. But do me one favor. Two favors. One: Don’t tell anybody I let you up there. And two: Don’t steal anything. Anyhow, there’s nothing to steal, which is the only reason why I’m letting you do this.”
The glass door to the office was locked. I saw cubicles and a few desks, overturned chairs.
A ghost office.
Where was the African violet I’d kept on my desk? It looked as if no one had been there in ages, as if no one had ever been there. My head was starting to ache in a way that felt like the start of a red-alert, heavy-duty migraine.
I thanked the doorman as I left. He didn’t even look at me.
I sat on a bench in the park. I put my head (seriously hurting now) in my hands.
I should have called Rocco. I should have begged the doorman to let us back in and taken Rocco up to the sixth floor and asked him to help me figure it out.
I don’t know what stopped me. Maybe I didn’t want to admit how out of the loop I’d been.
The guys didn’t trust me. They didn’t like me. No maybe about that. Would this be an unsolved mystery? It made me look so flaky, so naive. So stupid!
I needed to think of the least embarrassing way to tell Rocco.
Maybe I was stupid. Rocco found out on his own. All the time I’d worked there, he never once came to see me at work, though it would have been helpful to let those frat boys know I had a cool boyfriend who had my back. And now he decided to drop by and . . . surprise! No more frat boys. No more office.
I gave myself a few days to rest and recuperate with Granny Edith and Grandpa Frank. I stayed in my old room and cried. Every so often Granny Edith would knock on my door and ask if I wanted something to eat. I could smell the delicious food she’d brought to tempt me; I could hear Grandpa Frank telling her to leave me alone.
They’d seen me melt down before. They weren’t worried.
When I finally ventured out to the TV room, Grandpa Frank turned off the TV, maybe to spare me the news about the ongoing investigation—no suspects so far!—into the murder of that young mother who’d been renovating the brownstone near my grandparents’ house.
She smiled into the camera. Her hair was blond and shiny, her face open and trusting. She had a little mole on her cheek. She must have really loved whoever took that picture.
“Is the door locked?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Granny Edith.
“Check,” I said. “Please check. You know that poor young woman was murdered in her own house—”
“I’ll check later,” she said.
Grandpa Frank said I needed to get back on the horse that threw me. I should look for another job. It was good advice, except that the horse had run away, leaving no trace in the stable.
Granny Edith’s voice was unusually sharp when she said, “What you need, Ruthie, is to get away for a bit. Travel. We’ll be fine without you. I promise to keep the door locked. Isn’t there anywhere you want to go?”
It was the perfect moment to ask if they could pay for a ticket to Mexico for Rocco’s