Marie Ferrarella - Carrying His Secret

“Mr. Adair gave the order for everyone to leave by five,” she told him. Maybe this would go faster if she just answered him in simple sentences, she thought, desperate to have this over with. She had calls to make, people to notify of this terrible tragedy.

“Convenient.” Kramer continued to stare at her intently, waiting for her to break or say something out of turn.

“Not really.” She knew her tone sounded defensive, but there was something about the detective that just brought out the worst in her. “Mr. Adair was having the security system overhauled and updated.”

The detective’s face was expressionless. “How many people knew about that?”

Wasn’t he listening? “Everyone,” she answered, trying not to allow her exasperation to poke through. “That’s why they all left at five.”

“Not all.” Kramer looked at her pointedly. “You stayed.”

“I had something to finish. It took longer than I thought,” Elizabeth told him, leaving out the part explaining why it took longer: because she was so preoccupied with this new situation she unwillingly found herself in. “When I finished, I left the building,” she informed him coolly, then added, “It was around eight o’clock.”

“You left,” he echoed. “And yet, you’re here. Why is that?” Kramer asked, keeping his voice deceptively light, almost friendly sounding.

Elizabeth didn’t know if the detective was mocking her or trying to trip her up into making some kind of a confession. In either case, she trod very carefully, knowing that any misstep would have the man pouncing on her with who knew what sort of accusations—not the least of which would be naming her to be Reginald Adair’s killer.

She phrased her explanation about her reappearance as simply as possible. “I realized that I’d left a few pages I was going to need on my desk, so I came back for them.”

Kramer stared at her as if he was x-raying her very bones. “So you were planning on working this weekend.”

His tone was too pleasant. She didn’t trust it. “Yes, I was.”

Kramer circled her slowly, as if taking measure of her from all sides. “An attractive woman like you, staying home all weekend, working—what’s wrong with this picture?” he asked, standing in front of her again.

It was obvious that he didn’t believe her, Elizabeth thought. She was telling him the truth and the detective didn’t believe her.

Was she going to need a lawyer on top of everything else that had happened today?

She knew that if she showed the least bit of fear in the face of this interrogation, she’d be lost.

Raising her chin, she tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder and said defiantly, “Nothing, if that woman wants to get ahead in the company. It takes a great deal of hard work.”

Kramer shrugged, his loose-fitting jacket shifting on his thin shoulders. “Another way might be sleeping with the boss,” he suggested.

That might be the way you’d do it, but I wouldn’t , Elizabeth thought angrily.

For now, the response had to remain solely in her head, since saying anything remotely antagonistic out loud would be asking for trouble and far from wise.

“Mr. Adair is— was ,” Elizabeth corrected herself, “a married man with a family,” she pointed out to the detective, hoping that would be the end of his condescending inference.

Even so, she couldn’t deny that she felt guilty—and perhaps even partially responsible—for Adair’s death. Maybe if she’d just stopped by earlier...

Turning, she watched the gurney being guided by the coroner’s men until it disappeared into the private elevator car.

“I should have checked on him,” she murmured to herself.

Kramer’s ears went up on high alert. “What did you say?” he asked, his eyes once more boring into her.

She wanted to shout at the man to leave her alone. Instead, she patiently explained her meaning.

“Before I left the first time, I should have checked on Mr. Adair then. He was supposed to have already left for a business trip—that’s why I came into his office in the first place. I saw the light coming from underneath his door. It should have been off and he should have been at the airport, waiting to take off,” she added mournfully.

And now he never will.

“Looks like he found another way to take off,” Kramer commented, his tone far from friendly or compassionate.

Elizabeth pitied anyone who had to work with this man. “Am I free to go?” she wanted to know. The detective made her very uneasy, not to mention the fact that she desperately wanted to get out of her bloodied clothes and into an accommodating hot shower.

“Sure,” he said magnanimously. But when she turned to leave, he qualified, “When we’re done.” His tone made her blood run cold. “I’ve still got a few more questions for you.”

The smile that slid over his thin lips was completely disembodied from anything remotely personal, warm or sincere.

“Why don’t you come down to the station with me where you can be more comfortable?” he suggested.

“Come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly , Elizabeth thought with a sense of uneasiness. The old familiar phrase immediately ran through her head.

Who in their right mind thought that a police station was a comfortable place to spend their evening?

“If you don’t mind, why don’t we just go into my office?” Elizabeth suggested instead. “It’s right next to Mr. Adair’s.”

To show the detective how close it was, she pointed to it and then mentally crossed her fingers that he would agree to it.

The last place she wanted to go was a police station. She was tired, upset and she had a number of people to notify. Going to the police station would just needlessly use up more time.

“I do mind,” Kramer replied. His barely open eyes—like the slits of a reptile’s—looked at her for a long moment before the detective told her, “I do better on my own home turf. You understand,” he added loftily.

No, she didn’t, Elizabeth thought as she allowed herself to be escorted out of Reginald Adair’s office. She didn’t understand anything that had transpired today. Not who would have killed Mr. Adair, or why, not to mention how they could have done it without her hearing anything . She was, after all, in the next office. Could they have done it in the short amount of time she was gone from the building?

Most of all, she couldn’t understand why the police detective thought of her as a possible suspect—and he most certainly did think of her that way, judging by the look in his eyes when he was staring at her.

Aside from proximity, which might cover opportunity, the most important factor in a homicide was conspicuously missing in this particular instance.

Namely, she had absolutely no motive to kill her boss.

Adair had never been anything but kind and fair to her in the years that she had worked for him. While she knew that Reginald Adair had his flaws—who didn’t?—whenever he interacted with her, the man had never been anything but upstanding and kind.

She’d found herself admiring Adair’s work ethic and felt that AdAir Corporation was a very good place for her to work. There was an energy here, a zest that promised good things came of efforts that were put forth.

Nowhere within all that was there anything that even distantly resembled a motive.

Rather than just allow herself to be blindly herded out of the building, Elizabeth turned to the detective as they got into the elevator and demanded point-blank, “Am I a suspect?”

She tried not to dwell on the fact that they were riding down in the same private elevator that had just taken away Adair’s lifeless body.