She took a turn at the top and headed to her office with a nice view of the street and the fickle fingers. Norman’s office was on the back and overlooked the parking lot and a few more small shops across the way.
Wallis put her briefcase down on the large oak desk that had been her father, Walter’s, when he worked for the fabric mills as a salesman. It was plain and sturdy, which was a good description of her father. He had worked long hours traveling all over the mid-Atlantic region carting samples of corduroy and sateen when there were still enough clothing manufacturers left in the states.
Eventually, trying to make ends meet and keep Harriet moderately happy wore him down and he quietly passed away in his beloved recliner one night while watching the news. His starched collar was loosened and his polished brown leather Florsheim’s with the well-worn spots on the soles were neatly lined up next to the chair. His dinner was getting cold on the tray beside him. Wallis had already moved out and was living in D.C. but missed him terribly all the time. He had been easy-going and quick with a joke and unlike Harriet, always saw the best in everything.
“Your mother doesn’t just see the glass as half-empty,” he had once said, “she wonders who the hell stole the other half. I, on the other hand, wonder if I can interest them in buying just a little bit more and filling it back up.”
Wallis knew, though, that Walter was the love of her mother’s life and Harriet never got over the loss. She once noticed her mother gingerly tucking a gold chain into the top of her dress, her beloved Walter’s wedding band dangling from the bottom.
Harriet still wore her matched platinum set with the quarter karat diamond on her finger where it had rested since Walter had placed them there and she had never mentioned taking them off.
Wallis glanced at her schedule, noting the child support hearing that afternoon and the recorder concert at Ned’s school. She knew it was going to be tough to make it in time to the school. Maybe Norman could go alone, she thought, already feeling a little guilty.
She headed down the steps pulling the dropped paper out of her pocket as she quickly took the stairs and unfolded it, stopping halfway down. It was a spreadsheet of boys names cross-referenced with schools, churches, clubs, awards. Wallis recognized a few of the names. The boys were the same age as Ned but according to the piece of paper they all went to one of the three private schools thought to be necessary to maintain a social standing in Richmond. The clubs were mostly elite social clubs where only the right family name could gain someone admission. Same with the churches. A regular body could get into one, but they’d never let you feel comfortable enough to stay.
Wallis didn’t really socialize with any of the names that were listed but had been the attorney, sometimes several times, for some of them as they remixed their families. In the last column on the paper was a series of short numbers next to each boy’s name, sometimes repeated. 845 or 671 or 907, repeated as if at random.
“Wallis?” Laurel was calling to her. “You coming down?”
Wallis refolded the paper and put it back in her pocket, heading down the last few steps and around the corner.
Laurel was walking toward the storage room with the box Wallis had left on the floor.
“Hey, where are you going with that? We couldn’t have won yet, could we?”
“Don’t you listen to the morning news? We won by default, Ray Billings is dead. Shot himself in the head yesterday. His widow won’t be needing a divorce after all.”
Wallis self-consciously pushed against the paper in her pocket, startled.
“They’re sure it’s suicide?”
“I think the phrase the news used was apparent suicide. What’s wrong? You have that look.”
“You know, for such a small city, there are an awful lot of people who meet a violent end,” said Patty, looking up over her glasses.
Wallis looked over at Patty and felt her stomach tighten. She looked back at Laurel and tried to shake the feeling of dread that was growing. “I don’t have looks,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Keep the box out for awhile, Laurel, just in case.”
“You do have looks and you’re not spilling. Okay, okay, enough said, need to know basis.”
“And could you call Jim at the Road Runners Club and ask him if a Stanley Woermer is a member?” said Wallis.
“Sure, do I give him a reason why I’m asking?”
Wallis hesitated, “Tell him I’m looking for a running partner and someone recommended Woermer. Could you ask Norman to find me when he gets off the phone?”
Wallis stood at the fax machine tucked into the small closet across from Laurel’s desk trying to remember which way to feed the paper into the machine. Norman was in charge of buying office equipment and he was forever finding a guy who had rebuilt a copier or a shredder from old parts and then sold it for way under cost. Sometimes that meant none of the arrows meant much of anything.