Chapter 14: Chapter 14
By the time Monday morning rolled around, Isobel was exhausted. After rejecting one apartment the size of a walk-in closet, another with room for only one bed (although Isobel was pleased at the thought of rooming with Delphi, she didn't exactly want to sleep with her), and a third whose eat-in kitchen was undermined by suspiciously chewed-up baseboard moldings, she and Delphi had finally taken a sublet in Hell's Kitchen. It cost more than either of them had budgeted, but it was too good to pass up: an L-shaped studio with a galley kitchen on the fourth floor of a brownstone. It had two large windows overlooking a weedy courtyard and somebody's rusting Hibachi, but more importantly, it was in midtown, convenient to all the audition studios.
After his callback for Two by Two, Sunil had taken them first to the flea market and then to the giant Salvation Army store on Forty-sixth Street, where he proved to be an expert haggler. With his help, they came away with a barely-used futon and frame, an almost-new air mattress, a small table with two chairs, two bookshelves, a filing cabinet, and assorted pots, pans and dishes, all for three hundred and fifty dollars. It had taken Isobel and Delphi all of Sunday to move, and with Sunil's help, they'd unpacked, organized, and rearranged the furniture until late.
Isobel had trouble falling asleep in her new surroundings. When she finally nodded off around two, she dreamed that they were still apartment hunting, but Doreen kept turning up dead in every bathroom. After a few hours of fitful slumber, Isobel was awakened at six by what sounded like a nuclear apocalypse but turned out to be garbage trucks, and that was the end of her night.
Now, armed with the largest coffee money could buy, Isobel settled at her desk at InterBank Switzerland and, since nobody was looking, put her head down. Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation the night before that had precipitated her bad dreams.
"Do you think the murder was premeditated or spontaneous?" Sunil had asked, wiping down their new kitchen cabinets.
Delphi had looked up from arranging her scripts alphabetically on one of the bookshelves. "Does it matter?"
"If it was a cold-blooded, calculated murder, Isobel is marginally safer than if it's somebody with a hair-trigger temper who might flip out if she misplaces a comma."
"I'm the one most likely to do that, given the grammatical skills of this bunch," Isobel pointed out.
But it was a good question. Had somebody followed Doreen into the bathroom in a rage and just let fly? Or was it planned ahead of time? If it was the latter, then the person who killed her knew there was going to be an emergency drill-and that Doreen would be in the bathroom at that particular moment. But who could possibly know a thing like that? Even Doreen couldn't have predicted exactly when she'd have to pee.
Something else struck Isobel, and she stopped inflating her new air mattress to pose a question to Delphi.
"When you go into a bathroom stall, do you lock the door?"
"If I'm the only one in there, I don't always bother," Delphi answered. "Then if I hear someone come in, I lean over and lock it. Why?"
"When I went into the bathroom, the stall door was ajar," Isobel said. "I was rushing and didn't look, and I just pushed it in without thinking anyone would be there."
"What does this have to do with anything?" Delphi asked.
"I might not lock the stall if I knew there was going to be a fire drill and nobody would be coming in. And if Doreen knew about the drill in advance, maybe somebody else did too. So the murder could have been premeditated."
Sunil nodded thoughtfully as he wrung out a dirty dishtowel. "Makes sense," he said. "What better time to slip into a bathroom unnoticed than when everyone is running around in a panic saving their own asses?"
Delphi shook her head. "I don't know. It still seems a little dicey. I think the person was just waiting for an opportunity and grabbed one when it came along."
"Like they grabbed my scissors," Isobel said. "Maybe the emergency drill just happened to coincide with his or her last straw."
"Or maybe the person planned to strangle her and changed his mind when he saw the scissors lying out. And maybe the lock on the bathroom stall was broken. None of this matters," Delphi had said. "Premeditated or not, it's still risky for you to be there, and I really don't want to have to find another roommate."
And that was the end of the conversation. Isobel opened her eyes and looked at the scuffed laminate of her desk, wondering anew who might have known in advance about the emergency drill.
"Napping, are we?"
Isobel jolted upright to see Paula Toule-Withers, her arms sagging under the weight of a banker's box spilling over with papers. She dropped the box onto Isobel's desk.
"Doreen handled all the filing for the department." Paula wiped her hands together dismissively. "And you're the new Doreen."
Isobel looked at the overflowing box and a fresh wave of fatigue washed over her. "Where do they go?"
Paula pulled back her brightly-sticked lips into what, for her, passed as a smile. "You're smart. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
Isobel opened the top folder, which held a jumble of invoices, order forms, memos and receipts. It was impossible to know where to begin. She fortified herself with a big gulp of coffee and dragged the box over to a wall of filing cabinets. She pulled open the bottom drawer and fingered the tabs on the hanging folders. There were designations for receipts, vendor invoices, memos, and just about every other kind of document she had spotted in the box. Pay dirt on the first drawer. She pulled up a small stepstool and began filing. She spent close to two hours sorting documents, taking frequent breaks for coffee and hoping Nikki would show up and provide her with a distraction. When she didn't, Isobel decided to orchestrate one of her own.
She stretched her tired arms, rounded the bend to the office area, and peered into Stan Henderson's office.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone