Part 17 (1/2)
”You kept to yourself. Very quiet and dependable.” Kane said, ”Accordingto what you told me, Mrs. Camp, you spoke to Miss. Parker for about fiveminutes before she left the office the day of her accident.”
”Yes.”
”Do you remember what you talked about?”
”After all these weeks? Not really. I should imagine it was something todo with the paperwork she had stayed late to complete.”
”I see. Do you always remain late yourself if some- one else is workingafter hours?”
”Usually but not always. I had paperwork of my own to take care of.”
Kane glanced at Faith as she s.h.i.+fted slightly in the other visitor'schair then said to the supervisor, ”Were ir, you both working on thesame project?”
”No, Mr. Macgregor. No one in my department is a.s.signed a specificproject the way you mean. We take care of work as it comes in, on arotation basis. As I recall, Miss. Parker was transcribing threedifferent field reports and collating inspection forms from at leasthalf a dozen construction sites. It was by no means an unusualworkload.”
-Would you happen to know which construction sites those were, Mrs.Camp?”
”Not specifically.” Her voice was' different.
”Could you find out for us?”
”I don't see how, Mr. Macgregor. There's no reason for our files to show which clerk handled the various pieces of paper.”
Faith spoke up then. ”Why was I late, Mrs. Camp?”
”I beg your pardon?”
”You said I was dependable. So why did I have to stay late to complete
that paperwork?
Didn't I have time to get it done during regular hours?
The supervisor frowned at her. ”You took a long lunch that day. Two
hours.”
”Do you know why I did that?”
”You said you had a doctor's appointment.”
There was the faintest emphasis on the second word.
Slightly dry, Faith said, ”I guess I didn't have a note.”
”No.”
There didn't seem to be much more they could ask, so after thanking the
supervisor for her time, Kane and Faith left her tiny office.
”Good question,” he said as they stood in the hall- way outside the
suite of offices that made up the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning. ”It never occurred to me to wonder why you stayed late that day.
”The answer doesn't seem to help us much.” She shrugged. ”I didn't have
a doctor's appointment that day, at least not with Dr. Murphy, so Icould have been lying to Mrs. Camp about why I took the long lunch. Butwe don't have a clue what I might have been doing, or where I went, andafter so many weeks it's doubtful we'd find anyone who might have seenme and remembered, even if we knew who to ask.”
”And you don't recognize this hallway?”
Faith looked around again. The Office of Building Inspections and Zoning
was on the fifth floor of the busy downtown office building, and up and down the hall on this floor and others were more city offices.
The hallway itself was generic, almost featureless and without charm,
and struck no chord of memory within Faith.
”This isn't the hallway I saw in that memory,” she told Kane. ”At least, not this floor.”
”My guess is that they all look virtually alike, but we can check a
couple on the way down.”
As Kane had predicted, the other floors they checked were all but identical, and by the time they reached the lobby, Faith was certain it was not this building she and Dinah had been in when she had found ...
whatever it was she had found.
A morning filled with questions, and precious few answers.