CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
"Come in." Sounded Carmazan's voice through the door. Despite her age, she was intimidating as she was cryptic.
As the pair of them entered, Carmazan looked up.
Xeno noticed that her office was in a similar state to how his usually was, in that it was slightly messy.
It was clear she had been at the museum for a while.
The carpet on the ground looked ancient, and dust was collecting at the tops of cupboards that he presumed she couldn't see due to her relatively short stature.
"What did you want?" She asked, eyeing them suspiciously.
He heard Haiden gulp before he said, "We just wanted to ask you some questions."
Her gaze didn't divert. "What kind of questions? Xeno, is this about your training? I know we haven't talked in a while, but given the recent state of affairs, I thought that you'd be more understanding."
Haiden walked towards her desk, closing the door behind them. "We're trying to figure something out." He hesitated, clearly measuring his words in his head. "Where were you before the last work party started?"
"Are you serious?" Her pen fell out of her hand, clattering to the ground. "I know what you're implying." She was immediately defensive, though he didn't know if that was just her personality or if it indicated her guilt.
"Please, just answer the question." Xeno cut in, sounding more confident than he felt. Truth be told, he feared Dr. Carmazan. Though not an intimidating woman by looks, you never knew quite where you stood with her. As the saying goes, she kept her friends close and her enemies closer.
Her expression of shock hadn't left her face. "Well, I'll have you know that I was writing something up. I was right here, sitting in this very seat in my office. After work ended, I was right here, where I stayed until the party. I was revising what I'd written."
"Do you have any proof?" Asked Haiden untactfully.
"No, I don't have any proof!" she exclaimed.
He winced. Despite her intimidating nature, it was rare to hear the woman raise her voice.
"I'm innocent until proven guilty. And if there's no proof, then I'm not guilty!
" The walls seemed to shake with her voice.
She stared at both of them, clearly furious. Suddenly, Xeno had a thought.
"What did you write? And what was it on?"
"I wrote on my computer, in a Word document, why?" Her emotions seemed more reined in, but that was almost more terrifying.
"Can I check when you saved it?" Xeno asked. "If you're innocent, then it should say you'd saved it just before the party, and we can look at the revision history."
"Be my guest." She turned her laptop around, narrowing her eyes.
Sure enough, it said "Saved at 6:50 pm".
There was no way she could've cut the wires before.
When he clicked on the history, it showed that she'd saved the document many times beforehand.
It matched her alibi exactly. But Xeno was more concerned with the content of the file, which read "Two weeks' notice".
"You're retiring?" He asked Dr. Carmazan, incredulous. He knew she was going to retire "soon", but he hadn't realised how quickly it would come around..
"I'm retiring." She parroted. "In light of what's been happening recently, I don't particularly want to be here. I decided I'd fly the nest before all of astronomy goes under. Speaking of.." She reached into her drawer and pulled out a stack of envelopes, each addressed to someone.
"These are invitations to my retirement party. If you deliver these for me, I'll forget that you accused me. Your invite still stands, by the way." She smiled icily at him. "I'm sorry I had that outburst just now. You must understand where I was coming from."
Xeno was terrified. He could stomach furious Dr. Carmazan, but he didn't know how to handle it when she was friendly. "Of course, I'll deliver these." He said, almost resisting the urge to salute her, like she was a drill Sargent.
Haiden left almost immediately, but just before Xeno could do the same, she cleared her throat.
When he looked back, she said, with all the certainty of an ancient prophecy: "Xeno, if you want to get far at this museum, you must make sacrifices.
Sometimes, you must keep your head down and out of sight.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. Just think about that.
" She said each word weightily, as if each syllable bore the weight of years of experience.
"How do you know that?" He asked, exasperated. "What do you mean?"
"You aren't the first to investigate this mystery, you know." She gasped, her hand clamping over her mouth. "Don't tell anyone I said that. I promised her I wouldn't tell." Her eyes narrowed. "Leave now."
Xeno didn't need to be told twice.
Outside, he turned to Haiden, who looked back at him. Before he could get a word in edgeways, he began. "I'll go through everything again; there must be something we haven't looked at!" He smiled weakly, but Xeno could see the worry in his eyes. "I'm sure we can solve this."
"Uh, me too." Xeno replied, still stunned from her parting words. What did she mean by they weren't the first? Who was "she", the one who had initially investigated, and what had happened to her that had made Carmazan actively warn them to avoid her fate?
Haiden walked away briskly. He barely even registered that he was now alone. Not only was Dr. Carmazan not the culprit, taking them back to square one, but she was retiring. They must have missed something when they were interviewing the suspects.
On autopilot, he handed out the invitations, slipping them under people's office doors.
All seven of the astronomy employees were invited, along with a few from botany, two from history and one from pretty much every other department.
Walking through the museum, Xeno took the time to really appreciate how huge it was.
From his induction, he'd been toured around.
But it was nice to see how each department had changed.
He appreciated the Roman section of history, with little wax figures of legions of soldiers.
He appreciated the flowers blooming in botany, despite winter encroaching.
He even appreciated the mosaic-tiled floors that connected each department.
The looming, ever-encroaching threat of losing his job had distracted him from why he had wanted to work at the museum in the first place.
When he finally finished, he stepped back into his office, exhausted.
Suddenly, he heard a knocking at his door, and when he opened it, Jess was there, beaming from ear to ear.
"Hey, why are you so happy?" Xeno asked.
Perhaps it was because of the last half hour, or that he wasn't interested in clothes, but he couldn't imagine a fashion show would be that interesting.
"It's a long story." She paused, and Xeno guessed it was a story for another time. That was, until she started talking at a mile a minute. It was hard for Xeno to keep up.
"So basically, when I got there, I got pushed to the front, and I was standing next to this old man with a clipboard.
I was going to just enjoy the show when I realised he had a really interesting outfit on; so I complimented him - because you know I'm trying to give more compliments- and he said that my outfit was "retro chic" which was exactly what I was going for.
" Anyway, when the show started, I saw her writing on his clipboard, noting about the dresses and the clothes.
And she seemed to be at a loss for one of them.
It was this really weird dress made of aluminium cans.
So I made an offhanded comment about how it was impractical, and "not even that experimental because Ayse Bysanz literally already did that years ago", and he gives me an interested look and asks me how I'd like to shadow him at his work!
So now, once a week I can go in and help to design some runway stuff!
It'll be brilliant to get my foot in the door!
" As she finished, she was out of breath.
She'd said all that in about half a minute.
"That's really cool, Jess." Xeno smiled, even though he had no idea about the finer details of what she was saying. "Oh, yeah. I have something for you." He handed her an invitation to Dr. Carmazan's retirement party.
"Woah, I didn't even know she was thinking about retiring. Still, it'll be fun. Ooh, it says you can bring plus-ones. I wonder who I'll ask."
Xeno was thinking about inviting Haiden, but then a thought crossed his mind. He needed expert advice from Jess.
"Jess, I need to ask you a question."
"Go on then." She said.
"Say I had this friend, and we always met up to do a specific thing, and it meant a lot to him, but I didn't want to do it anymore. How could I tell him?" Jess raised an eyebrow, and Xeno realised how he'd come off. "No, not like that. Well, kind of? Just, like, an activity we'd do together."
"Well, I'd say that you should just tell him. It's better to do it sooner rather than later, right?" She asked.
"Right, thanks." He replied. "This is all hypothetical, of course."
"Of course. Oh! You should invite him to Carmazan's retirement party! The invite's for this weekend, so it's fairly soon, and who can be sad at a party? Besides, I'm sure Haiden would love to go with you."
Xeno thought it was a good idea, though he realised that he and Jess had very different ideas about how fun parties were. "Thank you for the advice, Jess." He smiled at her before realising. "How did you know it was Haiden?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's not like you were trying to hide it.
" She looked up for a second, momentarily deep in thought.
"Oh! I could wear the same dress I wore to the last party, but with a different bag.
" When Jess got fixated on a thought, it was hard to divert her from it, so Xeno spent the rest of his break helping her decide what to wear next week.
It was obvious to him; he'd just wear the same thing he did last time.
When Jess left, and as he was doing some of his paperwork, he was lost in thought. He didn't know how to tell Haiden that he didn't want to investigate who destroyed Steve anymore, not if it meant risking his job, or his friends.
Or the promotion.