Claire McNab - Wombat Strategy

"I don't mean that. I mean I could be an intruder, deadset on stealing files."

"Have you often felt this sense of alienation?"

"I'm not a patient."

"Of course not." He tucked the file he'd extracted under one arm, reached into the pocket of his white coat, extracted a business card, and pressed it into my hand. "If you feel the necessity to talk, please don't hesitate to call. Anytime."

A comforting pat on my shoulder and he was gone. Crikey! I knew the staff hadn't been told about the missing disks, so there was no security flap going on, but even so this was past a joke. If the fancy took me, there'd be nothing to stop me from helping myself to an armful of files and skedaddling with them.

I set off to run down the remaining three high-level suspects. Working on the principle that everyone eventually would end up in the staff dining area, if only for a cup of coffee, I staked it out around lunchtime-lurking, I hoped inconspicuously, by a staff notice board. It was a good move: In a few minutes I had a meeting with both Kristi Jane Russo of the PR department and Randy Romaine of Accounting.

Kristi Jane was one of those people who always talk too loudly, so I heard her long before I saw her. In her broad Aussie accent, she was yelling, "Keith's got the bloody hide of a bloody elephant. He says to me, 'Now, listen, Kristi Jane,' and I say to him, 'I'm fed up with listening. I want action.' And Randy, you just won't believe what he says to me then…"

I was betting this Randy would be Randy Romaine. I waited with keen interest for the pair to come around the corner. In a moment they did. Kristi Jane's voice proved to be much bigger than her body. She had the slight, flat-chested physique of a thin young girl, bizarrely topped by an exaggerated bouffant hairdo.

Randy Romaine looked like an accountant, which was what he was. Fittingly, perhaps, he was monochrome: brown hair, brown eyes, brown suit, brown shoes. He had a forgettable face and restrained body language. He certainly didn't fit my mental picture of a stalker. Perhaps he'd reformed and was leading a blameless life, with his stalking days behind him. Or perhaps he'd merely put his stalking on hold and was cultivating the new field of blackmail.

"G'day," I said, practically leaping in front of them. I beamed at Kristi Jane. "I couldn't help hearing your accent. I'm an Aussie too. I'm just filling in as Dr. Deer's assistant for the next few weeks."

That broke the ice. "Did you hear why Noreen resigned?" bellowed Kristi Jane. "Terrorism! You've got to stand up to the bastards. Noreen's a lily-livered little twit!" In a moment she'd swept me up into her conversation and into the dining room, where she bullied a mousy bloke into giving up his spot at a table and installed Randy, herself, and me in his place.

Apart from the desire I had to pop earplugs into my ears to mute Kristi Jane's deafening voice, I quite enjoyed myself. She was a mine of information as far as company gossip was concerned, and better still she wasn't a bit reticent about it.

Randy Romaine turned out to have a very dry sense of humor, which went rather well with his quiet demeanor. I tried but couldn't find any real distinguishing feature. The bloke was pleasant but not memorable. I did notice, however, how thick his neck was. "Do you work out?" I asked.

"Why, yes."

"Do you?" Kristi Jane regarded him with surprised irritation. "I never knew that. Why didn't you tell me?"

So by mid afternoon I had three down and one to go- Reuben Kowalski. I found Kristi Jane in the PR department shouting into a phone. When she'd finished, I said, "Dr. Deer told me to speak with Reuben Kowalski. He's supposed to be in the billing department, but I can't find him."

"That's because the bastard will be outside the building, smoking. Bloody pathetic, don't you think? Not being able to give up an addiction that's going to kill you is pretty piss-weak."

She added I couldn't miss him as he'd be the only one wearing a purple shirt. "Always wears purple, and he's not even bloody gay," she advised. I thanked her, wondering if Kristi Jane had defeated her own addiction to alcohol.

Reuben Kowalski was exactly where she said he'd be. Los Angeles, I'd been learning, had some of the strictest anti-smoking ordinances in the country, so smokers in office buildings were forced to go outside to avoid inflicting secondhand smoke on colleagues. There was a narrow alleyway running down one side of the building, and a small group of tobacco lepers had congregated there to puff furiously on cigarettes.

I stopped to examine the spot where the Hummer had been destroyed. The road was blackened, but every piece of the twisted remains had been removed, probably for forensic examination.

In the alleyway, Reuben was sucking on a cigarette and talking with great animation on a mobile phone. As Kristi Jane had told me, his shirt was deep purple, and oddly enough this color seemed to suit him. He had tight curly hair turning gray and a droopy, nicotine-stained mustache.

I'd manufactured a reason to see him-a billing that had supposedly gone astray. I introduced myself. Playing anxious-to-please temporary worker, I said, "So sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Kowalski, but Dr. Deer will be calling this afternoon about this matter and…" I let my voice trail off and sloped my eyebrows the wrong way.

He took a final mighty suck of his cigarette. "Okay, I'll come in now."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Kowalski."

Melodie might have done a better job, but I had to admit I quite impressed myself. Not to skite, but I wasn't half bad at this acting routine. And now I'd accomplished step one, which was to establish casual contact with the suspects, I could keep up the act by getting them to accept me as just another member of the Deerdoc staff.

I left at five so I could catch Ariana in the office and give her my first day's report. I felt a bit guilty leaving early, which was stupid, as I wasn't really Dave Deer's personal assistant. I wasn't going to sneak around, so I said "Good night, Chantelle" as I passed her on the way out.

"Hold on a moment, Kylie."

I came back to her desk, ready to argue I could leave the premises when I wished. She said, "I've got tickets for a play Friday night. It's a little local theater. I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

I wasn't lost for words often. This was one of the times. "Urn," I said.

Chantelle chuckled. "Yes, it's a date. I'm asking you on a date. Think it over and tell me tomorrow. Or you can call me." She passed me a Deerdoc business card. "My cell number's on the back."

"Right-oh."

I rode down to the parking structure deep in thought. I was looking at Chantelle in an entirely different light. It was rather flattering to be asked, I told myself, but how did she know…?

"Melodie!" The receptionists' bush telegraph had been at work.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, sorry," I said to the bloke sharing the lift with me. "I was thinking out loud."

When I got to Kendall & Creeling, I was ridiculously disappointed to find Ariana had left for the day, however Melodie had a consolation prize for me. "You can meet Fran's husband, Quip, if you like. He's in the kitchen talking to Rich."

"Quip? Is that a name?"

"I think it's actually Bruce, but Quip wanted something that'd stand out on the first page of a script. Quip Trent. Comedy writer, so it suits, don't you think?"

"Would I have seen any of his work? Movies? TV?"

Melodie shook her head, a look of deep compassion on her face. "The biz can be so hard. Quip hasn't sold a script yet." She brightened up to add, "Any day now, though. Rich says he might use Quip as a script doctor for his new project."

This was one for the books. "How can Quip be a script doctor if he's never had any of his own scripts made?"