Free Somebody Else's Music by Jane Haddam

happened?”
    â€œFor one thing, she didn’t show up until nearly ten-thirty. For another, she’d already been drinking.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI think she spikes that coffee she brings in a thermos every day. In fact, I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Only, today, when she’d been in for about an hour, she went out again, up the street to get some tampons, she said, although why she needs tampons at her age—”
    â€œSome of us do.”
    â€œShe doesn’t. Don’t you remember? It was on her health form when she first came to work for us. I remarked on it at the time. She went through menopause at forty.”
    â€œYes. Okay. I remember.” Liz sighed. “Just tell me what happened. Did she go out and never come back again? It hasn’t really been that long. It’s only, what, twelve-thirty?”
    â€œI wish she’d gone out and never come back,” Debra said. “She came back in less than ten minutes and locked herself into the bathroom for another fifteen. When she came out she was, quite frankly, potted. And I do mean potted. There was no mistaking it.”
    â€œCrap, crap, crap. Then what?”
    â€œThen she sat down at her desk, spread the copy of the speech for the Armonk library talk all over it, started to giggle like a lunatic, and threw up. On the speech. All over the speech. And then she looked at it and started giggling again, and then she threw up again, on the carpet. The new carpet. The one you had installed two months ago after she threw up on the old one for the fifth or sixth time. There’s vomit everywhere in that office. The other girls have had to get out. They didn’t have any choice and I wouldn’t have
tried to make them sit still. We’re not getting any work done. It’s going to be one o’clock before the cleaning guy gets here to mop it all up, and in the meantime we’re all milling around as if we’re at a cocktail party. And that’s just for starters.”
    â€œMarvelous,” Liz said. “I can’t wait to hear the rest of it.”
    Debra hesitated. “You don’t have to hear the rest of it,” she said finally. “There’s no point. I’ve got the speech on the computer and I’ve got a backup on diskette. It’s not lost. I can rescue your appointment diary from the computer, too—did I tell you she took your appointment diary when she locked herself in the bathroom?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œShe did. It doesn’t matter. But this does matter, Liz, and I mean it. This is an ultimatum. Either she goes or I do. We’ve been together for what, fifteen years? I stuck with you when your finances collapsed after Jay died and you couldn’t pay me. I stuck with you when you seemed determined to go to hell in a handbasket and end up dead yourself. I think I’ve been more of a friend than a secretary most of this time and I know you’ve made it worth my while financially in the long run, but I can’t handle this. I appreciate your loyalty to your old friends, I really do. It’s a wonderful quality in somebody in your position. I love it that we kept Celia Frank on the payroll right up until the day she died from breast cancer because you didn’t think it was right to let her go and make her lose her insurance. Your generosity is something I would not like to see you lose, but, Liz, there’s a limit, and this is it. This was it, months ago, and you know it. Pension her off, if you have to. Set up some kind of trust that will keep her from ending up homeless and on the street, pay for her apartment yourself so she doesn’t spend the rent money on booze, have food shipped in from grocery stores that deliver, do whatever you have to, but get her out of here. Someday, she’s going to pull one of these stunts in front of Dan Rather or
the president of AOL-Time Warner and it’s going