Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Temple giggled into her lemonade.

“What?”

“It’s hard to imagine anyone as ineffectual as Mark Ainsworth taking anything, much less a stage.”

“So your opinion of him matches mine?”

“Which is?”

“How did this guy ever get to be manager of a Maylords store? He doesn’t even look the part, being squat and chubby and red faced and oily haired and pathetic. But then he got up to address us after Kenny Maylord had left.”

“And he showed hidden virtues?”

“He stunned us. He said two-thirds of us would be gone in three months’ time. That’s before we got vested in a company health plan and got an employee discount, by the way. He said it was sink … or swim with the bottom feeders. If we didn’t perform, we’d be out. We were left reeling.”

Temple considered. “Six weeks’ paid training time before the store even opens, and almost all of you are presumed to be gone in three months? What was the point? A rehearsal for a reality show like Fear Factor? It makes no sense. And you say Kenny Maylord had left by then?”

“It was just us and the weaselly widdle wabbit … with Dracula fangs.”

Temple laughed at her description of Ainsworth.

Janice shrugged disarmingly. “Guilty. Two kids at home who watch way too many cartoons. But I admit I’m perplexed by the Maylords strategy. Why hire the cream of local employees, pay them fully for six weeks merely to learn the company routine, bring in the boss man to praise them to the skies, then turn them over to the on-site manager, who threatens immediate beheadings?”

Temple mused, this time eating her Jell-O. “Good cop, bad cop,” she said finally.

“But we were already pumped on ‘how great thou art, Maylords.’ We didn’t need threatening.”

“You got me. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No. Anyway, after that there were more ‘Disappeared.’ “

“How do you mean? More gratuitous skirt hikings?”

“No. Just the man in Mattresses who was hired after orientation, came around one day introducing himself … and was never seen again.”

“You suspect foul play?”

“I suspect he quit, fast, for some reason. He never even got the Jekyll-and-Hyde treatment. He just vamoosed like a bad dream.”

“Maybe Maylords was the bad dream. Anything else odd going on there?’

“Only the occasional impossible employee who can do no wrong. But that happens everywhere.”

“Who is it in this instance?”

“An impossibly bossy … okay, bitchy … woman named Beth Blanchard. You glimpsed her in action. She behaves like she runs the joint, orders all her peers around. Worse, she steals other sales people’s commissions in the most blatant way. You have a client coming in at ten? She meets her at the door and ‘escorts’ her to you.”

“I’ve seen her in action, but how is that stealing?”

“Only in that any sales agent who ‘refers’ a client to another sales agent gets half the commission. By intercepting your appointments, she gets half the sales commission.”

“What a witch! Has she done that to you?”

“She’s tried. She especially went after Nigel’s flocks, who came flooding in asking for him after all the media exposureyou got him. He was murderously mad! When she tried a few of those tricks on my modest contacts, from my mall sketch-artist days, I immediately sent a memo to Ainsworth protesting her poaching other people’s clients, but I haven’t heard anything back.”

“For someone’s who’s dead meat in three months, you’ve got guts.”

Instead of accepting Temple’s praise, Janice made a face. “I can’t afford to kiss off a good position, not with child support as erratic as it is. But I also can’t afford to give up half my commissions to Miss Snake in the Grass. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. I think that’s how most of the Maylords employees feel now that the kid gloves are off. It’s as if Kenny Maylord hasn’t got a clue and he’s letting the gorillas in boxing gloves run the zoo.”

“That sounds awfully cutthroat, like Enron or something. Who would think selling furniture was a new Ottoman Empire, full of Byzantine schemes and backstabbing and two-faced sales associates and managers? And I thought the theater was bad.”

“It’s retail. And I hear, now that I’m there and talking to the veterans, that retail is hell. It’s all commission, ergo worth backstabbing for.”

“I would have made the same mistaken assumptions as you did,” Temple said, consolingly.

Janice quirked her a smile. “I’ll live. At least I hope so. After Simon . .”

“You think he somehow got caught in the schizophrenic management style?”

“He was very straightforward. Certainly not crooked enough to protect his back. I don’t see Simon playing anyone’s game. You said his partner was Danny Dove, a major celebrity and power in Las Vegas. Maybe Simon never had to fend for himself.

And-” Janice winced. “There was the sexual harrassment.”

“I noticed that women were in the minority opening night. There was you and that Blanchard witch, and about half the

interior designers.”

“Not that kind of sexual harassment.”

“What other kind is there?”

Janice rolled her eyes at the ugly cafeteria ceiling. “I don’t like to say it, but there’s a double standard going on. One of the Disappeareds was this really handsome guy in Carpets. I mean, Hollywood material even if he couldn’t walk or talk, and he could.”

Temple started to interrupt, but Janice cut her off. “Beyond Matt. Beyond Simon. Just beyond. One of those people you can’t take your eyes off even if they’re not your type or your sexual preference. Nature’s amazingly right-on anomaly. Clete was getting hit on, not by the opposite sex. And he was straight. So he left. Before he got anything: health coverage, furniture discount, even a single commission. It sobers you to see a guy get sexually harassed out of a job. You’re so used to seeing it happen to women. I won’t be there long. The best and brightest are being systematically driven out. I don’t have that high an opinion of myself, but I don’t want to end up falling out of a car like a mob hit.”

“Then you’re not here just because Matt asked you to come?”

Janice shook her head. “True, I’ve heard a lot about you. From Matt. A good part of it was what a great investigator you are. I think you’re onto something here, Temple. I don’t want Simon dying in vain. The police? It’s all rumors and company politics, with some sexual politics thrown in. Damned if I can figure it out. Maybe you can. One thing’s certain. I’ll discourage Matt from visiting me at work as long as Simon’s murder goes unsolved.”

“You don’t think the resemblance-?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’m not used to this industry, I’m used to the open ego warfare of the arts world. I can’t figure the damn place out, except that it doesn’t seem healthy for women, gays, sales associates, interior designers, and other living things. And that’s all it is, whatever it’s feeding upon, whoever or whyever.”

Temple nodded. She’d already resolved not to rest until Danny had an answer, however ugly. Now she had to go forward and would have to wait until she’d accomplished something to ask Janice what the heck else Matt had said about Temple that Janice was unwilling to pass on.

Other than that she was a good investigator.

Try to take that to bed or to the bank with you!

Chapter 28

Trouble in Store

Maybe it was because today was Sunday, but furniture stores in the late afternoon reminded Temple of churches.

This was when both were formally decked out for company, but usually deserted.