15
EDMUND CLOSED THE DOOR AND MOTIONED TO A CHAIR on the opposite side of his desk. Anne sat down, looking around at the scant furniture. Besides the desk and two chairs, there was nothing in the room but a file cabinet. There were no pictures on the wall, not even swap meet—quality prints. There was a plastic plant on top of the file cabinet, the leaves of which appeared to be scrupulously clean. The desktop was empty of real books, although there were half a dozen computer manuals to go along with a new Power Mac, as well as three copies of GQ, fanned out neatly. Beside the computer lay a stack of CD-ROMs in jewel cases, filed in a wooden box with a hinged glass lid.
“Here’s a couple of forms for you to fill out, Anne.” He smiled at her. “You don’t mind if I call you Anne?”
“Not at all.”
“We’re a first-name sort of company.”
“Good.”
“I hope Dave didn’t bother you … ?” Edmund nodded at the door.
“No, he didn’t bother me. He seemed harmless.”
“I hope so.” He looked at her meaningfully, then started shuffling papers, laying out IRS forms and the other paperwork. Anne wondered what he meant with his “I hope so.” Obviously the two men had a problem with each other.
“To tell you the truth, Dave is an old friend of my brother’s. He used to have a lot of potential—degree from a good university, a solid job in advertising. Something happened to him, though. He went off the rails somewhere.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Hell of a shame. He’s my brother’s best friend, like I said. I’ve known him for years.” He shook his head seriously. “When he was what you’d call in between jobs, my father offered him work here, and he’s been around ever since. He’s got a laid-back work ethic, I guess you’d call it. A lot of ex-surfers are like that. He just kind of comes and goes. I don’t know what he’d be up to if it weren’t for my father. If you run a company of this size long enough, you learn a lot about what I call the virtually unemployable, although I don’t mean to say that he’s gotten entirely to that point yet. Anyway, there’s a small percentage of people who simply cannot work. They’re neurotic, they’re drunks, they’re drug addicts, they’re chronically lazy, they have no sense of time. Such people essentially have to be taken care of. That’s all we can do. And it’s our philosophy here at the company that they’re better taken care of by the private sector than by the government. I don’t know if this sort of thing is common up in Canada, but in southern California a number of large and very successful corporations make it a habit, for example, to lire victims of Down syndrome. They make very good employees once they find their niche.”
“So I’ve heard,” Anne said. “Which category does … is his name Dave?” Dalton nodded. “Which category does Dave fall into? I’m simply curious. Certainly he doesn’t have Down syndrome?”
“No, no, no. Of course he doesn’t.” He sat back in his chair now and looked at the ceiling as if he were working something out. “You know, it would almost be better if he did. There’d be a certain degree of predictability, at least. You could work with him without …” He bit his lip and squinted. “This is rather a private matter, of course, and I’m already out on a limb here, simply having brought it up with someone who’s not a confidential employee. On the other hand, I think that an attractive woman like you has the right to know about any … peculiarities in the personalities of her fellow workers.”
“Honestly,” Anne said, “it was just idle curiosity. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my business.”
“On the contrary, it might well become your business. You wanted a category? How about ‘emotionally damaged’?” He widened his eyes when he said this, in a way that made it look as if it hurt just a little bit.
“That’s a common enough category.”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know all the details of the case—nobody does, really, except Dave—but some years back he was involved in the drowning of an adolescent girl.”
For a moment Anne was speechless. “That’s terrible,” she said finally. “How many years ago?”
“I don’t know, really. A few.”
She nodded. A few … “How old was the girl?”
“Fourteen, something like that. Maybe fifteen. All I can tell you is that the details were a little bit murky. My brother will tell you that Dave was a hero, trying to save this girl’s life, and that’s pretty much been the prevailing story. And maybe it’s true. I don’t know for sure that it’s not. There was some evidence, though, that there was a … relationship. What the hell can I call it?” He waved his hands helplessly. “Let’s just say there might have been something between them.” He gave her an arch look now. “Put it this way: she was far too young for Dave to have had a legitimate interest in her, if in fact he did have an interest in her. I don’t want to be a rumormonger here.”
“So you’re telling me he knew her?”
Edmund shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “That’s the way it looked, although that’s not the official story.”
“So he’s what? A murderer? A child molester?”
“Oh, God, no. I don’t mean that. There was no real proof. He was never even charged with a crime. Let’s just say that the papers implied that there was more to the drowning than meets the eye. I guess that makes it public knowledge, and there’s no reason for me to be so hesitant here, but I can’t really say any more than that. There’s a certain protocol that I’ve got to follow as an employer….”
“Of course there is.”
“Well, I’m sorry to bore you with all of this downbeat talk. I’m a little out of line, and I apologize. And I hate like hell to be running Dave down, because we try to be as supportive as we can be around here. But you’ll be working with him fairly closely, and if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have brought the subject up. We had a little bit of difficulty with falling objects today, Dave and I did, and I’m afraid I’m a little sensitive about the safety of our employees, myself included. There’s no way I want to start wearing a football helmet around here. On the other hand, you’re getting tired of hearing me run down a man you don’t even know. I’m getting a little bit tired of it. He’s an old family friend, as I said, and I want to give him the benefit of every doubt. But I’ve got a business to run here, too.”
“I guess that’s the truth.”
“Sometimes it’s a hard truth. There are elements of running a business that just aren’t very pleasant.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You be careful, then. If his behavior is out of line in any way, report it to me. I’ll hold what you tell me in the strictest confidence.”
“Well, thank you for the advice, Mr. Dalton. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Edmund,” he said to her, smiling again. “You call me Edmund, and I’ll call you Anne. Now, you’ve already met my brother Casey. You won’t see him around much. He’s another surfer, only he never got over it. Never really grew up. I guess you don’t have to when you can use your father as a banker. Everybody calls my father the Earl, by the way, like a title. His name actually is Earl, but almost nobody calls him plain Earl. It’s always the Earl. He’ll be back in town this afternoon. You’ll know who he is when you see him. I think I can guarantee that. I guess you could say he’s a character.”
Dalton shook his head fondly, as if recalling something humorous about his father, and it occurred to Anne that he looked all right when he smiled. She saw then that his nails were manicured, which had always struck her as weird in a man….
But so what? She liked a manicure now and then herself. There was something luxurious and relaxing about it that was no doubt equally luxurious to a man. And it was possible that the clothes and the grooming were simply part of the uniform of the successful southern California businessman in the late twentieth century. The Earl of Gloucester was eccentric, to say the least, and Edmund’s stark office might easily be something like a calm in a storm instead of a lack of imagination. He was a little heavy-handed with his warnings about Dave, but then if all of this about Dave was true, then probably she should know it. Living alone as she did in an often empty building, she was an easy target.
On the other hand, quite possibly this was all a simple case of office politics that had gotten out of hand, and she was seeing only the surface of something here, some long-standing feud. She had learned more than once in the past to avoid taking sides.
She worked at the last of the forms now, filling in all the blanks. She collected the finished forms, tapped them straight against the top of the desk, and handed them to Edmund, who smiled happily at her.
“I think we’ve made a very good choice in you,” he said, putting his hand briefly on her shoulder.
“I’ll try to keep you thinking that way.” She smiled back at him.
‘I’m absolutely certain you will,” he said.