The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell Read Free Book Online Page B

feigning rapt busyness would lead to actually being busy. Once again the Chief Inspector retreated back into his office, evaporating into his cloud of pipe tobacco and easing his nerves as well as our own. Slowly but surely, the pace of activity began to settle into its familiar clip—with one exception.
    I unabashedly observed Odalie move through her first day at the precinct. After the Lieutenant Detective showed her to the coatrack and hung her coat for her (a billowing wrapover number, lilac in color; I believe it was cashmere, though I wasn’t close enough to it to be sure), he escorted her in a promenade-like circle around the main office, introducing her by turns to each officer and staff member the two of them encountered along the way. Odalie, I noticed, was polite to all but modified her demeanor ever so slightly to accommodate each. With the Sergeant she was ladylike, formal. With Marie she was chummy; they laughed loudly together over a few familiar remarks. With Iris she turned a mirror to Iris’s own aloofness—a professional distance, I know, Iris probably appreciated.
    The Lieutenant Detective also introduced her to several of the patrolmen before they went out to walk their routes, or beats, as they liked to call them, short for
beaten
paths
. I looked on as she extended a flirtatious hand to O’Neill, causing him to color slightly about the cheeks and lower his dark lashes shyly over his sleepy blue eyes. With Harley she allowed herself to chuckle indulgently at his suggestion they plot to play a prank on the Lieutenant Detective (the Lieutenant Detective looked less amused by this prospect). With Arp she nodded intently as he gestured nervously with his small hands and communicated to her in an instructive tone the importance of typing up a booking sheet with the utmost accuracy. With Grayben she shook hands firmly, looked him in the eye, and did not smile at his lewd jokes—instinctively knowing, somehow, that it was best to stake her ground with him straightaway.
    And then, before I knew it, the Lieutenant Detective and Odalie were standing in front of my desk. I glanced up from the paperwork I had been proofreading and adjusted my expression to one of polite, detached interest.
    “And last but not least, the lovely Miss Baker,” the Lieutenant Detective said. I winced. I am no deluded fool, you see, and I have long since come to comprehend that
lovely
is not the adjective most people would use to describe me. To be blunt: I am plain. Hair the color of a common field mouse. Eyes the same. Regular features, average height. Clothes that attest rather frankly to my class and profession. I am so plain, in fact, that I am almost remarkably so. Having been in the police business for a couple of years now and knowing something about the nature of eyewitness reports, I am fairly confident that I could commit any number of crimes and get off scot-free, simply by virtue of being utterly unmemorable to a witness. My plainness was a fact, and a fact of which I’m certain the Lieutenant Detective was well aware. And so, wounded that the Lieutenant Detective was willing to mock me in front of an entirely new addition to our office staff just to settle an old score, I shot him an acid look. But Odalie took my hand in hers and instantly smoothed the air of discord.
    “Of course; Miss Baker,” she purred with that quaint rattling voice. “We weren’t introduced, but I remember you from last week—I admired the blouse you had on. I remember thinking what nice taste you must have.” I looked at her. She was hypnotic. I felt myself strangely compelled to believe her compliment in spite of my acute awareness that none of the blouses I owned were particularly admirable. But then I thought of the brooch and questioned whether this might be a veiled reference to its disappearance. I felt an icy apprehension creep into my veins. I hesitated.
    “The other typists call me Rose,” I said finally.
    “Rose,” Odalie