“Then how did he manage to reroute the machine?” I asked. “I don’t think we had a day last week when the damned thing didn’t turn up someplace where it wasn’t supposed to be. I was trapped in the women’s room for half an hour, remember, when he managed to get the thing stalled outside the door.”
“Just be glad he wasn’t successful at opening the door,” one of them said while the others snickered. “He had a couple of Web cams hooked up to the cart that day, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” I said. “And it’s a good thing I didn’t, or he wouldn’t have lived as long as he did. So if he didn’t figure out how to make and erase dots, how did he manage to reroute the mail cart?”
“He was moving carpet tiles around,” Rico said. “You walk around this place and half the carpet tiles are loose. See!”
He walked a few steps, scuffing each tile as he went. The fifth tile he touched moved a few inches out of position when he kicked it.
“He was gluing them back down,” a programmer said. “I saw him.”
“Yeah, but whatever he was using didn’t do the job like the commercial adhesive the carpet installers use,” Rico said. “Another week and you wouldn’t have been able to walk around here for loose tiles.”
Was this useful? I didn’t see offhand how Ted’s high jinks with the mail cart got me any closer to finding his killer. Still, you never knew.
Now that the cart had disappeared, everyone began drifting back to their cubes and offices. All except Roger the Stalker, who, as usual, had been lurking silently at the edge of the group. I forced a smile. He might be a creep, but who knows, I thought. Even Roger could have some useful information.
“What’s new, Roger?” I said.
He bunked and glanced back, as if he thought there might be some other Roger in the hallway.
“We’re having pizza,” he said finally. “Luigi’s. Seven-thirty.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
He nodded and drifted back into Cubeville.
Apparently the guys were planning a little outing and had forgotten to tell me. Or maybe hadn’t intended to invite me - perhaps they thought I’d force-feed them more vegetables. In any case, this could be useful. Gathering information would be much easier when no one expected them to hurry back to work. And when they were full of pizza and beer.
See, I told myself. Even creepy Roger can serve a useful purpose, now and then.
Two useful purposes, in fact; seeing him reminded me that I still needed to feed George.
I was heading back to the lunchroom when I ran into Liz.
“You look a little tired,” I said. Actually, she looked as if she’d gotten even less sleep than I had. I decided it would not be a kindness to tell her about the giant run in her pantyhose. “How’s it going?”
She shook her head. “Slow,” she said. “As if I needed yesterday’s interruptions. Or all the media stuff.”
“You do a good job with that,” I said.
She shrugged. “I suppose,” she said. “I just try to do whatever needs to be done to take care of the problem.”
“You’re doing great.”
“They don’t like me a lot,” she said. “I don’t give them much.”
“They probably like you a lot more today,” I said. “I’ve been biting their heads off all morning.”
“Good show,” she said. “But we shouldn’t have to be doing this, either of us. Why couldn’t Ted have managed to get himself killed somewhere where it wouldn’t be my problem? Our problem, really.”
“What is it that’s keeping you so busy, anyway?” I asked.
“Preparing a brief,” she said. “And I’m not likely to get an extension just because we’ve had a murder here. If what your dad says is true, and you’re trying to find Ted’s murderer, maybe you should look at the guy who’s suing us. If you ask me, he’s got a great motive.”
“Someone’s suing Mutant Wizards?”
“Someone’s always suing Mutant Wizards,” she said. “Anyone who’s ever invented any kind of board game, role-playing game, or computer game that even mentions lawyers thinks we stole their idea.”
“Or pretends to think it,” I suggested.
“Precisely,” she said. “Not surprising, I suppose, given how successful the game has been. Still, it’s enough to destroy your faith in human nature, if you have any left.”