Dead Midnight by Marcia Muller Page B

Sharon, to attempt to do so as you go about your game playing.”
    I glanced at J.D., who wore an interested expression. “What makes you think one of your employees is disloyal?” I asked.
    “Important files have disappeared—files on unique stories our people are working on. In one case, a version of an especially good piece appeared in a rival publication. Invoices have vanished and gone unpaid till dunning notices arrived. Equipment that was running perfectly well the day before has malfunctioned. E-mail and voice mail messages have gone astray.”
    “And you’re certain this is the work of an insider?”
    “It has to be someone who has access to the premises and can find out other people’s private passwords. Last week someone disabled the security system by disconnecting wires in an interior junction box.”
    “Any suspicions of who it is?”
    “No. It shocks me to think any of my people could be responsible.”
    “Have you reported this to the police?”
    “I prefer to handle it privately.”
    J.D. said, “So even if Sharon identifies the culprit, nothing about that would appear in my piece?”
    “If it did, I wouldn’t publish it, and I’d block publication anywhere else. Is that clear?”
    J.D. held up his hands. “Just asking.”
    I said, “Are you proposing to hire me?”
    “I would think the publicity you’ll receive from the feature story would be sufficient compensation.”
    “Of course.” And good that he felt that way, because I’d compromise Glenn’s case if I accepted any payment from the magazine. “Let’s get down to specifics now,” I told him. “I think we’re going to have a very interesting time here.”
    “Jesus Christ,” J.D. grumbled as we settled onto stools at the bar of the Dogpatch Saloon, “couldn’t Engstrom come up with a better game than that? Find out which staff member has a partial manuscript of a novel locked in his or her desk drawer! Doesn’t the fool know that
every
journalist is secretly writing a novel?”
    “You too?”
    “Me too.” He gave our order to the bartender and stared gloomily at the bottles arrayed across from us, avoiding my eyes.
    “So what’s it about?”
    “About a hundred and eight pages.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “All right—it’s about my childhood in the Deep South. And it’s a silly, self-indulgent piece of crap. I’ll never finish, much less sell, it.”
    “Oh.”
    “But back to the game, it’s so simplistic you’ll have it figured out in a couple of hours.”
    “Not with everything else I’m supposed to do while I’m there. I wonder if these incidents he was talking about have any connection to Roger Nagasawa’s suicide.”
    J.D. shrugged and reached for the drink the bartender set in front of him.
    “Do you know many of the other people who freelance for
InSite
?” I asked.
    “Sure. Like I said, the way you do business with them is to hang out, schmooze with the VIPs, wait for an assignment to drop into your lap.”
    “What about a graphic designer named Jody Houston?”
    “I’ve talked with her a few times.” He raised his eyebrows. “Wait a minute—weren’t she and Nagasawa an item?”
    “Just friends, or so she says. I talked with her briefly on Tuesday at his flat.” I explained about Houston’s call to Daniel Nagasawa. “Now she’s leased her flat to a friend and vanished.”
    “Strange coincidence.”
    “How so?”
    “You remember I mentioned a VC named Tessa Remington?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Well, I meant to give you the skinny on her last night, but then I got sidetracked. A couple of months ago she disappeared. Left the Remington Group’s offices for a late-afternoon meeting of the board of a nonprofit that she sits on, but never arrived there. Her husband notified the police the following morning, and because she’s a mover and shaker, they got started on it right away, but they haven’t turned up a trace of her.”
    “They think it was a voluntary disappearance, or