Murder Between the Covers by Elaine Viets Page A

executive chairs. She longed to sit in one. On the closest desk, she saw a framed baby picture and a philodendron in a blue pot. The thronelike chair was empty. It was waiting for her.
    Please let me get this job, she prayed. I’ll work for a snake. It won’t be so bad.
    Hanselmeyer was so short, she suspected he’d jacked up his chair to make himself look taller. He did not rise when Helen entered the room. He probably didn’t want to be measured against her six feet. Instead, she looked down on his elaborate comb-over. She wondered if it hid a diamondback pattern.
    Helen recognized his first questions as part of the standard employee interview. He wanted to know her goals and past experience. Helen lied about both. She truthfully said she was skilled in all the right software.
    When Hanselmeyer asked what job she wanted in ten years, Helen knew not to say, “Yours.” The snake asked when she would be available.
    “Tomorrow,” she said.
    Could she could work overtime? “I love overtime.” Yes! she thought.
    Then he hissed, “Do you hear that old biological clock ticking?”
    “I beg your pardon?” Helen said. She wasn’t sure what this had to do with typing and filing.
    “I know I shouldn’t ask, but are you planning to have children?”
    “I’m not married,” Helen said.
    “Unmarried women can have children,” Hanselmeyer said, pointing to the empty desk. “That girl out there had herself a turkey-baster baby because she was afraid time was running out. Now she’s off half the time taking care of the kid. It’s always sick. Got croup today. I can’t fire her or I’ll have the libbers all over me. Maybe it’s a little illegal to ask, but are you going to have kids?”
    Helen wasn’t. But she could feel her anger burst in her brain in a red-hot shower. How dare he? He only asked because she was powerless. He knew he could get away with a question that was piercingly personal and definitely illegal.
    “Oh, dear, I wouldn’t want you to do anything illegal, Mr. Hanselmeyer,” she said. “So I won’t answer that.”
    Oh, damn, she thought. There goes my chance to ask the snake to pay me in cash under the table. That’s illegal, too. Well, I couldn’t work for the slithering SOB, anyway.
    She stood up and said, “Thank you for your time.”
    On the way out, she gave the desk with the leather chair one last lingering look.
    Helen dragged herself home to the Coronado, tired and discouraged. Margery poked her gray head out her door and yelled, “Pick your face off the sidewalk. That boyfriend of yours is on the phone.”
    “Rich?” she said. She’d asked Rich never to call her landlady unless there was an emergency.
    “You dating someone else?” Tonight, Margery’s shorts were a militant mulberry. They clashed alarmingly with her plum sandals and crimson toenail polish.
    Helen picked up Margery’s phone with a fluttering heart. “What’s wrong?”
    “I couldn’t reach you all day.” Rich sounded whiny, her least favorite male mood. “I called the store six times. No one answered.”
    “I’m sorry, Rich. We were swamped because of Page’s death. When that happens, the phones go unanswered.”
    “How are you?” he said. “Are you avoiding strange men at the store, like I told you?”
    She wanted to tell him not to be so foolish, but she wasn’t going to fight on Margery’s phone.
    “Look, I don’t want to tie up Margery’s phone. She may be expecting a call.”
    “Then let’s talk tomorrow night. We could go to my place. I’ll pick you up after work and throw a couple of steaks on the grill. You can meet Beans and Sissy.”
    His pets—at his place. For Rich, meeting his animals was like meeting the family. Beans was a basset hound who’d been brought to the clinic with terminal flatulence. The exasperated owner wanted to put the gasbag to sleep, but Rich adopted the dog instead. Helen thought that was sweet. Sissy was a regal gray Persian. Helen had not been to Rich’s