You Had Me at Halo

Vince squinted. “It’s sort of a weird color if you ask me. Does he dye it?”

“Oh, well I guess he gets a few tones and highlights, but there’s nothing wrong with male grooming. In fact some of your colleagues would do very well to take a leaf out of Todd’s book.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that little tip along,” Vince said in a dry voice.

Holly continued to stare in Todd’s direction. “This is so annoying. I mean he’s my boyfriend and I can’t even go over there and tell him how much I love him. And what’s she doing?”

“Who?” Gemma spun around to see what was going on.

“Rochelle Jackson,” Holly said in disdain as she stared at Todd, who was paying an awful lot of attention to the stupid girl. “She is so unbelievable. I feel like going over there and giving that slut a piece of my mind.”

Gemma’s hand shot out and grabbed Holly’s arm. “Don’t be stupid,” she hissed. “You’re only Holly on the inside. On the outside you’re—”

“Vince Murphy,” Holly muttered. “Yeah and don’t I know it. I mean what’s the point of them sending me back here to sort out my issues if I’m stuck in this body? It’s driving me crazy.”

“Ah, finally we have something in common,” Vince retorted.

“You know it’s starting to become quite obvious why you have no friends,” Holly replied. “And is Rochelle Jackson touching Todd’s butt?”

“Okay, Holly, don’t freak out,” Gemma said tentatively, as if she were about to reveal some more information.

“Don’t freak out about what?” she said in a dangerously low voice.

Gemma let out a muffled sigh. “I didn’t want to tell you before but Rochelle’s been making a play for Todd ever since you died.”

“But I’ve only been dead two weeks. What kind of person would go after a dead girl’s boyfriend like that?”

“I know, right,” Gemma immediately agreed. “But the thing is, Todd isn’t remotely interested. Holly, he’s really upset about you dying. It’s totally thrown him.”

“Well, so it should. I mean we were meant to be…oh.” Holly broke off with a start as something occurred to her. “It was Rochelle who gave me the pills! You were so right when you said that it couldn’t have been Tina. Because what would be the point of only knocking me out for one night? But with Rochelle it’s different. She wanted to knock me out so she could have Todd all to herself at the ball.”

For a moment Gemma was quiet before she finally nodded her head. “We both know that Rochelle doesn’t stop at anything to get what she wants, so making you fall asleep for the night certainly wouldn’t be beyond her. Unbelievable.”

“I’ll say. That girl does not know how to take no for an answer. And she definitely has boundary issues. And why is she still touching him?”

“Well, that’s about to change,” Gemma said firmly. “As soon as we get proof, then she’s history. I think we should start with her office.”

“Her and her stupid office,” Holly growled. Rochelle liked to mention it at every opportunity since the rest of last year’s graduates were still stuck in cubicles. Word on the street, though, was that she hadn’t earned that office at all, she’d only gotten it because she was friendly with the CEO. Real friendly.

And now she had stopped Todd from proposing on the night of the ball. Well the pills may have worked, but there was no way Holly was going to stand by and let her get away with stealing her fiance as well. This was war.

Holly could feel the determination rising up through her. Finally they were getting somewhere. At this rate they would catch Rochelle, convince Todd of the truth and still have time to watch the latest episode of The Rich and the Restless before she went back to heaven. Perfect.

Gemma nodded. “That girl is toast. We’re going to take her down.”

Vince folded his arms and Holly could tell by the way his lips were turning that he was about to frown. “Before you go pointing fingers, shouldn’t we be working out how she managed to do it?”

“Oh.” Gemma paused. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’d better retrace your steps first.”

Holly pulled out a piece of paper from Vince’s pocket. “I do have this. It’s a list of all the things I remembered doing on Friday. According to the Internet the tablets could still keep working for up to eight hours, so I’ve gone back as far as ten in the morning.”

Gemma peered over and chewed her lip as she studied it. “You only had one cup of coffee in work and that was made by Tina, so Rochelle couldn’t have spiked your drink. Are you sure you didn’t go somewhere for lunch? Perhaps she did it then?”

“No.” Holly reluctantly agreed. She’d been particularly busy that day trying to get her presentation all ready for Monday so she hadn’t even left the building for a break. “I brown bagged it and ate at my desk.”

“Did you put it in the staff room fridge?” Vince wondered but Gemma gave a dismissive shake of her head.

“They work on different floors.”

Holly stabbed at the piece of paper. “But our fridge was on the blink, so I did go up to fourth floor to put mine in there. I remember because I had chicken in my sandwich and I was worried about salmonella poisoning.” For a moment Holly was struck by the irony since it wasn’t the salmonella she should’ve been worrying about. On a brighter note. At least it was a start.

“Okay, so what are we waiting for? Let’s go,” she said but Vince’s feet weren’t moving anywhere. If she could’ve glared at him, she would’ve. “What? We’ve got motive, we’ve got opportunity, now we just need to find means.”

“Yes, well I hate to break up this little Law and Order episode, but aren’t you forgetting something?”

Holly wrinkled her nose as she lifted up her fingers to start mentally ticking things off. “I don’t think so. What do you mean?”

Gemma groaned as she nodded in the same direction as Vince. “He means we’ve got the company meeting which is about to start right about now.”

CHAPTER NINE

Ten minutes later they were standing at the back of the meeting room and Vince’s arms were firmly folded. Normally Holly preferred to sit a bit closer to the front, just so everyone could see she was keen and eager to make something of herself, but Vince obviously didn’t feel the need to impress anyone and had refused point blank to go anywhere near “those suited monkeys.”

Besides, being at the back meant they would be able to make a quick getaway once the meeting was finished—something Holly longed to do. Still at least she was closer to getting her issues sorted than she had been yesterday. She knew that pretending to be calm and organized was the right thing to do.

Because it was the beginning of the month, nearly one hundred people had turned up and Holly was quite pleased to have access to Vince’s extra height to check everyone out. Particularly since the Regional Executive Sales Director, David Harris, was droning on about the company decision to change from ninety-six brightness to ninety-two brightness for internal memos.

She yawned and was just trying to decide if Tina Macdonald had hair extensions in when she caught sight of a poster taped up on a the wall. It was for a suicide help line and Holly knew damn well that it hadn’t been there two weeks ago.

Unbelievable. How many times did she have to tell people that she didn’t commit suicide? Surely Baker Colwell had better things to do than put up posters like that, especially when based on such flimsy evidence. She was almost tempted to stomp over there and yank it from the wall, when David Harris suddenly coughed and changed topic.

“And now the next thing on the agenda is that I can finally reveal our top account manager for the last quarter, and who at this rate will be on target to beat the company record held by yours truly.”