Page 116 of A Dead End Wedding

Boring legalese explanation over, though, my problem remained, as a single sheet of paper. An invoice, to be precise. I picked up the phone and called Max. "Will you and Mr. Ellison please come in for a quick huddle?"

They'd been working their way through boxes, too. Mr. Ellison, annoying sense of humor aside, had a nearlysavantset of organizational skills, and was charting and arranging our new landslide of documents with amazing precision. When I'd mentioned it, he'd looked at me, bristling. "Forty-five years as a bus driver; damn straight I'm organized," was all he'd said, but I'd caught him grinning to himself when I left the file room.

They walked through my door, momentarily blinding with me with green and pink. I squinted my eyes. "Maybe I should wear my sunglasses for this meeting," I said, only half joking.

Max daintily arranged herself in a chair, while Mr. Ellison plopped himself down on the other one. "Hilarious," he said. "Ha, ha. Now what's up? Some of us are working around here."

I ignored him and held up the invoice. "This is a clerical error or a problem."

Max reached for it, but he got to it first, grabbing it out of my hand. "What is it? Invoice for film production, 1-800-BAD-INSULIN. I don't see . . . Wait! This can't be right."

He stabbed a finger at the date listed as "date of service," on the invoice. "This is, what? Three weeks before that, Dr. Kuebler woman reported the first reaction. I got a calendar going back in the file room."

I nodded. "Exactly right. I was going to ask if either of you have come across any reports of earlier adverse events."

Max took the invoice from Mr. E and studied it. "No, everything I've seen has pointed directly to Dr. Kuebler's report as the first one that alerted BDC to any problem. Faith Deaver's reaction was seventeen days later."

"Yeah, plenty of time to notify people and get that product off the shelves and out of use," I said, scowling again. "Anyway, this must be a typo. How could Orange Grove Productions be filming commercials three weeks before anybody even knew there was a problem?"

I pointed at the client's name and address on the bottom left corner of the invoice. "This is even more interesting: Sarah Greenberg hired this company to film these commercials. It's put as ATTENTION TO: M-somebody Ziggeran at her firm. The first name is a little hard to read."

"Damn vultures, those kinds of lawyers," Mr. Ellison muttered.

Max and I glared at him. "Don't even go there," she said. "People have a right to know about legal services that may be available to them."

I held up a hand to cut her off. "Not that I don't appreciate a spirited defense of the legal system as much as the next person, but is anybody else wondering why an invoicefroma video production companytoGreenberg and Smithies is in with Langley, Cowan's production of BDC discovery documents?"

Max narrowed her eyes. "That makes no sense at all, does it?"

I shook my head. "No way. And there's also no way that a firm like Langley Cowan didn't have half a dozen slave-labor associates go through this production page by page over and over. How could it get in there?"

Mr. Ellison looked back and forth between the two of us. "Will somebody explain what the heck is going on here? Don't they have to give you all the paper about the case?"

I picked up my mug, made a face at the smell of stale coffee, then put it back down. "Sorry. Yes, they do. All the paper werequested. Which is why those requests the other lawyer wrote – and you made fun of – are so thorough. But we can't ask BDC to give us documents they don't have. We can't ask them for Greenberg and Smithies' communication with their film company, for example. So why would this even be in here?"

Max shrugged. "It's a mistake."

"Right. Except why would Langley Cowan even have it in the first place? And if the date on the invoice is one mistake, then this would make two mistakes." I shook my head, getting that tingly feeling in my head that I always got when puzzle pieces didn't fit.

"It's too weird, and I don't like weird. Max, will you call Orange Grove Productions and figure out a way to ask about this date? Maybe even get a copy of the correct invoice faxed over? This is going to bug me until we figure it out."

Mr. Ellison folded his arms across his bony chest. "I betcha it's a conspiracy. The government is running bad drugs and trying to make guinea pigs out of us citizens."

Max and I both stared at him. I was the first to figure out something to say. "Um, well, how about we go with 'clerical error' for now and leave 'government conspiracy' as a future theory?"

"Sure, that's what they said about that Area 51. Then the anal probes started happening."

After a quick sandwich (Max had stocked our tiny kitchen with the essentials, like a giant jar of peanut butter, a jar of strawberry jam, and a loaf of honey-wheat bread), I was ready to dive back into the Deaver documents, but Max buzzed me. "December? I think you'd better come out here."

"What—"

Click.

Even my staff hangs up on me. That is just so wrong.

I trudged out to reception, the invoice still niggling at me. Then I reached our little lobby and all thoughts of invoices vanished at the sight of a dozen of Aunt Celia's casserole brigade, all clutching papers and files and, in one case, a precarious pile of about four shoeboxes.

"Hi! It's so nice to see you again! Um, may I help you?"

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