Elaine Viets & Victoria Laurie, Nancy Martin, Denise Swanson - Drop-Dead Blonde (v5.0) (pdf) by Unknown (best classic books .TXT) 📗

department. Vicki couldn't type for beans, so I did her typing. I filed the memos from on high. I had the payroll and personnel records on everyone in the department.''

``Sounds like you found some useful information buried in those boring files,'' Helen said.

``Oh, I did,'' Margery said. ``I saw and heard even more. I answered the phones, so I knew when a man's wife was angry at him. Even the nicest wives couldn't always keep the sharpness out of their voices. I also figured out that when a married man wrapped his hand around the receiver and started whispering all lovey-dovey, he probably wasn't cooing to his lawful wedded wife. I was friends with Mr. KILLER BLONDE 99 Hammonds's personal secretary, Francine, so I picked up a few things that way. If I needed to hear or see something interesting, I wasn't above changing a typewriter ribbon at a nearby desk, or getting down on the floor to look for dropped paper clips.''

Helen imagined Margery's office, circa 1970, with its clunky gray metal desks, creaky leather chairs, army-green filing cabinets, piles of paper in gray metal in and out boxes, and heavy black five-button phones. Wooden coa- tracks were festooned with men's suit jackets. The walls were painted institutional green and curdled cream. Sitting at most of the desks were white men in gray suits.

The twilight turned into darkest night as Margery talked and Helen listened. The only other sounds were the creak of the chaise longues, the rustle of small things in the bou- gainvillea, and the glug of the wine box when Margery re- filled their glasses from time to time.

Her landlady's voice, with its smoker's rasp, was hypno- tic. Helen didn't dare say a word. She was afraid Margery would suddenly stop her revelations.

Helen sat back and listened as Margery told her story of blond betrayal, murder, and a secret burial in an ordinary office. Chapter 2

God, I loved the early seventies fashions. I know everyone laughs at them now, but they were wild. The men dressed like Regency rakes. They looked romantic in long hair, vel- vet frock coats, and ruffled shirts. Well, some men looked like that. Rock stars, mostly.

These were Margery's words. Helen kept silent, afraid to interrupt the flow. Margery's memories seemed dredged from some place deep.

Her landlady continued, almost to herself.

The men in my department never made the sixties, much less the seventies. They could have walked out of any office in 1959. They didn't even have the lush seventies sideburns. One guy did show up at the Christmas party wearing a turtleneck and a peace symbol. Our CEO, Mr. Hammonds, gave that ornament such a cold stare he nearly froze it off the guy's chest.

The next day Mr. Peace and Love was back in suits, shirts, and strangulation ties.

It's too bad, really, you have to neuter yourself for a corporation. I understand the idea of dressing for success. It creates a more professional atmosphere, but it doesn't have much flair. So I was lucky. When I worked in an office, women didn't have to know about proper corporate dress. I suppose my clothes were in bad taste for a work environment, but how does that saying go--``Good taste is merely the fear of the beautiful''?

I had no fear.

I used to wear white go-go boots and purple miniskirts. The first time I bent down to get some papers out of the U to Z file drawer, half the men in our department nearly

100 KILLER BLONDE 101 keeled over from heart attacks. I was careful how I moved after that. I wasn't a tease.

I was still pretty cute in those days, before my chest fell to my knees and my face wrinkled up like a prune. I was a bright spot, sitting behind my big old battleship of a desk at the department entrance. The delivery boys weren't sure whether to fear me or flirt with me. In the end, they did both. I shooed them away, just like I did the office Romeos.

Men hardly noticed Minnie, but why should they? Minnie sat hunched at a dun-colored desk, her face to the wall. Minnie's resemblance to a mouse could not be denied, even by me, and I liked her.

And that Vicki. There was a piece of work. She wore these short pink suits with a froth of ruffles at the throat, as if she were exploding with femininity.

She'd sit at her desk, flipping her long blond hair, which drove the men crazy. Like most young women then, she wore her hair straight and parted in the middle. It gave her an innocent look--something else I didn't trust about her.

I thought Vicki was slick as an icy pond the first time I laid eyes on her. I was right, too. You know what she did? She gave herself a private office. Up and did it late one night.

Vicki bribed the maintenance guys with beer and eye- batting. After the office staff left, the maintenance men put up a door and two metal-and-glass dividers, enclosing Vicki's corner of the office, including a window.

Windows are coveted in offices. People get claustropho- bic shut up and staring at blank walls. When you got an office with your own window, you were on your way. In our department, that window was supposed to be for every- one, but Vicki hijacked it.

Once her new dividers and door were in place, Vicki stayed up most of the night, painting her office pink and putting down a square of hot-pink shag on the mold-green tile floor.

When the staff came in the next morning, they saw Vicki's new corner office. You should have heard the uproar.

Everyone except the very top bosses sat in a big open area, so we become a herd of faceless white-shirted workers in a bullpen. Now there was a pink tumor growing