In Deadly Company

by L.S. Stratton

Genres: Black Humor; Women's Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

An incisive workplace satire and twisty murder mystery featuring a young executive assistant who realizes the peril in being diligently attentive to her boss's whims.

As the assistant of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Nicole Underwood has plenty of tasks on her to-do list—one of which is the blowout birthday celebration for her nightmare, one-percenter boss, Xander Chambers. But when the party ends in chaos and murder and Nicole is one of the survivors, suspicion—from the investigators to the media—lands on her. Was she the reason for all the bloodshed?

A year after those deadly events, Nicole tries to set the public record straight by agreeing to consult on a feature film based on her story. However, on the set in LA, she's sidelined by inappropriate casting and persistent, bizarre script changes, while also haunted by the events of that party weekend with visions of her now-deceased boss. It seems clearing her name isn't so simple when the question of guilt or innocence is...complicated.

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 384

Sample

“BEN!” A VOICE BARKS BEHIND ME. “JESUS CHRIST, CAN’T YOU DO anything right?”

When I hear it, I have an almost primal response, even though my name is Nicole, not Ben. Even though the person who used to snap at me like that is long dead.

Like a lactating mother who hears her infant’s wails in the middle of the night, or a hungry dog who stumbles upon the most fragrant slab of Wagyu beef miraculously abandoned on a city sidewalk, I have an instant physical reaction. My muscles tense. My heart starts racing. Beads of sweat form on my upper lip.

I forget that I’m in Los Angeles, sitting on a banquette next to the concierge desk at a luxury hotel, sipping complimentary espresso while I wait for my driver to arrive to take me to a film set. Instead I’m hurled back more than a year ago when I was standing on the seventy-fifth floor of a high rise in Manhattan and my boss Xander Chambers is asking me why I couldn’t finagle him a last-minute invitation to the Met Gala.

“Well, fuck me!” Xander cried in exasperation. “Elon’s gotten in at least twice. You’re telling me I can’t get one little invite?”

“Xander, they probably come up with the guest list a year in advance… and it’s four days away,” I replied.

“Which should be plenty of time for a good assistant,” he said before popping a CBD gummy into his mouth.

But I was a good assistant. One of the best, actually.

“I’ll keep trying,” I insisted.

He stared at me for a long time, still chewing. “Yeah, you do that,” Xander finally said.

I then watched as he swiveled around in the custom ergonomic chair made with 150-year-old trees from some remote Scandinavian forest. He faced the floor-to-ceiling windows, turned his back to me, and answered the call in his earbuds.

“John, you asshole, so you finally called me back,” he said with a laugh. “What’s up?”

I now look up to find a potbellied, balding man dressed in all-white linen and striding toward the hotel’s sliding glass doors. He doesn’t resemble Xander in looks but certainly does in attitude. There’s something in his strut that conveys his sense of entitlement, like an invisible red carpet is stretched out before him. The model-type blonde walking beside him, who seems to be one-third his age and also dressed in all white (a mini slip dress and thong sandals), is the obligatory accessory for men like him. Trailing behind them both, juggling two cell phones, a leather satchel, and a Louis Vuitton suitcase, is a bespectacled, beleaguered-looking young man I quickly guess is Ben. It’s evident from the way he flinches when the man in linen rants, “Never again! Never again will I let you book me a suite in this dump. Next time we’re staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You hear me?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Ariti,” Ben mumbles before his boss walks through the sliding glass doors.

As he passes the banquette where I sit, Ben and I momentarily lock gazes. Over the lip of my coffee cup, I give him a small smile of reassurance. I’ve been where he’s been. Felt how he’s probably feeling right now. And, if it hadn’t been for the events of the three most tumultuous days of my life more than a year ago, I would probably still be in his place.

Ben doesn’t acknowledge my smile, though. His eyes guiltily dart away and he picks up his pace, almost dropping his suitcase. His boss shouts, “Ben, let’s go! We don’t have all day!”

“Y-y-yes, sir. Sorry, Mr. Ariti,” he mutters as he dashes through the parted doors.

I watch as a bellhop, pushing a loaded-down luggage cart, pulls up the rear, and the sliding glass doors close behind them.

“YOU CAN FOLLOW ME, MS. UNDERWOOD,” THE PRODUCTION ASSISTANT or assistant director says.

“Nicole,” I offer.

The young, redheaded woman frowns and yanks down the mic of her headset. “I’m sorry… what?” she shouts over the noise around us.

A multitude of voices and a mechanical banging sound echo around the soundstage.

“I said you can just call me Nicole.” I tuck my braids behind my ears and incline my head. “You don’t have to call me Ms. Underwood. It’s just… Nicole. Or Nikki. Either will do.”

“Oh.” She gradually smiles and nods. “OK, cool. This way, Nicole.”

She doesn’t offer her name in return. I don’t think she even gave me her job title earlier. She’s back to barking into her headset as we hop over wires and what looks like a kiddie train track.

I’ve been trailing her since she came to get me at 9:00 a.m. from the small office they set up for me at the studio. It’s a six-by-six-foot room with an IKEA loveseat, coffee table, small desk, chair, and on the door my name printed in bold black letters with the word CONSULTANT underneath.

I’m now being taken to the set for one of the scenes on the shooting schedule today. Some of the filming for the movie will take place here at the studio, but from what I understand most of it will be shot in a mansion on a private vineyard and estate somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. How they will make that estate resemble Xander’s Colonial Revival mansion and his estate in Hudson Valley, New York, is beyond me, but I’m interested in seeing them try.

As we draw closer, I see one of the soundstage’s sets. I slow my steps and my eyes widen.

It’s an almost perfect replica of Xander’s Midtown office. They have his glass desk and floating glass shelves. Both the Basquiat and Matisse hang on slate gray walls. They even have his Hans Wegner Swivel Chair, although this one has its original paint job; Xander had his chair’s wood stained black to match his office decor—something that would’ve probably made Mr. Wegner himself faint. The set even has a series of ten-foot-tall LED screen panels made to look like the view of the Manhattan cityscape at sunset. I spot the Empire State Building and a few other Midtown landmarks you could see from the penthouse of our old office building on Lexington Ave.

“It’s awesome, isn’t it?” the young woman says, noticing my gobsmacked expression. “The set designer worked off some video footage and a few photos from a Vanity Fair profile they dug up.”

I remember that profile: I had to convince Xander to come back and finish the interview after he pulled a bitch fit and stormed out when the reporter mentioned his mother’s car crash. Bridget Chambers’s untimely death had been a touchy subject with Xander.

“They did a really great job,” I acknowledge with a nod, and she leads me to a line of director’s chairs behind a series of video monitors.

In one of the chairs sits one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in real life, which says a lot when you’re in a town like Hollywood, which has more conventionally attractive people in a five-mile radius than are probably in the entire state of Wisconsin. Her dark curly hair is piled atop her head in a sexy messy bun held in place by two pencils, for some reason. Under the bright lights of the film set, I can see that her golden skin is flawless.

It’s Asia Wilkerson, the indie actress who will portray me on-screen. The last time I saw her was her smoldering headshot in the online Deadline article announcing that she would be the star of Murder in the Valley. This is my first time meeting her in person.

When we approach, Asia raises her green eyes from a few binder-clipped pages of the script that she’s been highlighting. She gazes at us quizzically.

“You’ll be over here during filming today, Nicole,” the young woman beside me says, gesturing to the other empty chairs.

“Nicole?” Asia asks. “As in Nicole Underwood?”

I nod. “That’s me.” I turn to say goodbye to the production assistant/assistant director, but she has already walked off and is back to talking into her headset.

“Oh, my God!” Asia squeals before she hops out of her chair and rises to her feet. She sets down her script pages on the seat and extends a hand to me for a shake. “I’m Asia Wilkerson. I play you in the film!”

“Yes, I know,” I say, shaking her hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. I had no idea you’d be on the set today. It is such an honor!” she gushes.

“Why thank you. I’m… I’m honored that you’re honored.”

She laughs and eagerly nods as we continue to awkwardly gaze at one another. The longer I stare, the more I think, I can’t see it. I can’t see her as me.

I mean I’m sure she’s a great actress and a nice person, but I don’t understand why the casting director chose this ambiguously raced movie siren to play me. I thought a film that was going to be about a chunk of my life story might give a few dark-skinned, Black actresses a shot at a leading role in Hollywood, but I guess I was wrong.

Asia is wearing office clothes for the scene today—a gray blazer and matching slacks—which is a lot more formal than what I would’ve usually worn. She’s also wearing black stilettos, which is the perfect match for her sexy messy bun but would have killed my feet and ankles if I’d had to walk around in them during my twelve-to-sixteen-hour workdays.

“I’m so happy that you’re here!” Asia says, oblivious to my misgivings. “I’ve been wondering a few things about my character. I mean, about you, and I’d love, love, love… loooove,” she practically sings, “to pick your brain.”

“Sure, of course,” I say with a nod as Asia’s comely face suddenly brightens. She raises her hand and waves, beckoning someone toward us. “Troy! Troy, come over here! You have to meet Nicole Underwood. The real-life inspiration for the movie that all of Hollywood fought over!”

I can’t help but roll my eyes.

Let’s be honest. If it hadn’t been for Xander’s and the other deaths… if it hadn’t been for the investigation, news coverage, true crime podcast, and Netflix documentary, no one would care about me or my life. The studios never would’ve engaged in that bidding war over the script. I wouldn’t be here, but back in New York at my old apartment in Brooklyn trying to convince myself not to quit every day that I woke up to the sound of my pulsing alarm clock. To see it all through to the end. To just hold on for one… more… day.

I’d balked at first at the idea of selling the rights to my story, of reliving the past, but the filmmakers promised me the chance to finally share the truth without the twisting I’d seen in the media.

However, judging from Asia’s casting and her outfit, accuracy isn’t paramount so far.

I slowly turn around to face the direction that Asia is now looking. My stomach drops. My pulse starts racing. For the second time today, beads of sweat form on my upper lip.

Xander is walking toward us.

Memories of him have been haunting me for more than a year, but those memories now take solid form as he makes his way around two crew members who are carrying heavy cords and mounted cameras.

He looks the same as he did moments after his death. A stream of dried blood is under his broken nose. He smiles maniacally with his half-missing jaw. His left ear is also mangled, thanks to the bullet fired at close range underneath his chin. Xander comes to a stop in front of us and his bloodshot eyes glower at me with unmasked hatred and fury.

I take several deep breaths, close my eyes, and open them again. When I do, all the blood and macabre imagery is gone. I also see that it isn’t Xander, just a man who looks very much like him.

The casting director at least got this role right.

“Hi, Nicole! Troy Fletcher. Great to meet you,” he says, holding out his hand.

I force myself to shake it, happy to find his grasp warm and firm, not the cold and stiff hand of a corpse. “Y-y-yeah, good to m-m-meet you t-t-too.”

“Troy plays Xander Chambers,” Asia says.

I drop Troy’s hand and gradually nod. “I’d assumed as much. The resemblance is… uh… uncanny.”

“Hey, Troy? Asia?” A guy wearing a baseball cap says, gesturing to the illuminated set. “We need you guys.”

“Welp! Duty calls,” Troy says with a chuckle.

“We’ll talk later, right?” Asia asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmur.

I’m starting to feel lightheaded. I practically collapse into one of the empty chairs.

Later, I’m facing one of the monitors while wearing a set of headphones. On the screen, Troy sits at the glass office desk while Asia stands a few feet away with notepad in hand. The camera closes in on Troy’s face as a voice booms, “Quiet on the set!”

Everyone immediately falls silent.

Meanwhile, I’m suspended in another surreal moment where the past and present overlap. I swear Troy’s face morphs into Xander’s. He looks up from the cell phone he’s pretending to read and stares at the camera. No, he’s staring directly at me, making my breath catch in my throat and the blood roar in my ears.

“Roll camera!” the director suddenly shouts.

“Rolling!” a guy behind the camera’s viewfinder shouts back.

“Roll sound!”

“Rolling!” another voice answers.

Suddenly, a clapper board appears on the screen monitors, making Xander break his gaze.

The tightness in my chest finally eases as Troy the actor reappears.

“Action!” the director shouts.

NICOLE HAD JUST STEPPED INTO THE BUILDING AND WAS ABOUT TO swipe her keycard over the metal gate reader to make her way to the elevators when she heard her cell phone buzz. She stepped back to let another woman pass, dug her cell out of her pocket, and stared down at the screen.

It was Xander.

She stifled a groan.

Any text or phone call from him before 9:00 a.m. usually wasn’t a good sign. He rarely got up this early, even for board meetings. After he’d skipped two of them and the board of directors at Altruist Corporation had sent Xander a sternly worded email letting him know he was in violation of their bylaws and could be voted out as president, Xander managed to drag himself out of bed and appear via Zoom bleary-eyed, unshaven, and with matted hair like he’d literally just rolled out of bed. He’d sulked the entire meeting, making it clear to everyone present that he didn’t want to be there.

Needless to say, his work ethic was a far cry from that of Altruist Corporation’s founder—his now-deceased mother, Bridget Chambers. With the exception of maintenance staff and security guards, Bridget had always been the first one on their floor in the morning, often in her office before most of the lights were on.

“When you’re the boss, you hold the bar and you set the example, Nicole,” Bridget used to tell her back when Nicole was her assistant. “Everyone else follows. Hold it too high and you set them up for failure. Hold it too low and they won’t push themselves to succeed.”

In contrast, Xander either didn’t care about the example he was setting or had more of a “do as I say, not as I do” philosophy when it came to managing a holistic beauty, skincare, and lifestyle brand valued at more than a billion dollars.

Nicole reluctantly pressed the button on her cell screen to answer his call.

“Hey! Good morning,” she said, pasting on a smile, hoping that cheer came across in her voice.

“Is that Xander?” she heard someone ask behind her simultaneously. She turned to find Daniel Miller, the COO and second-in-command at Altruist, striding toward the entry gates. In response to his question, she nodded. “Remind him we have that one o’clock meeting today, Nicole,” Daniel said, eyeing her shrewdly. “He has to attend this one. We’re discussing the acquisition. Word is Patrick Gallagher is sniffing around again. We need to talk about this. It’s important.”

“Got it. Absolutely, sir,” she said while holding her hand over the phone’s speaker, then giving Daniel the thumbs-up as he walked through the gate. She returned her attention to her phone.

“Hi! Everything OK, Xander?”

She knew the answer was likely no and wondered what had gone wrong this time.

Last week, she’d raced from the office to his place in Tribeca to walk his two cane corsos, Optimus and Rodimus Prime, because his dog walker was sick and Xander didn’t trust “his boys” with anyone else.

Two weeks before that, he’d ordered her to book him an emergency doctor’s appointment.

“There’s some weird sore on my dick,” he’d said, making her cringe. “Wait. Let me take a picture and send it to you. You can just forward it to the doctor. Maybe they can tell you what it is and give me a shot or pill or something.”

Although Nicole had deleted the image, she would never get that picture out of her mind.

Maybe this time she’d get lucky and he’d just ask her to reschedule his ten o’clock meeting.

But the voice on the other end of the phone line wasn’t Xander’s. It was a woman she didn’t recognize.

“Hey! Hello! Are you the chick who works for this Xander guy?” the woman asked, making Nicole’s false smile fade.

“Yes,” she answered hesitantly. “Is… is Xander all right? Is he OK?”

Nicole had half-expected that one day she would get a call from a perfect stranger—some hospital ER nurse or a cop—telling her that Xander had partied too hard, done one snort of blow too many, and suffered a heart attack, or he’d let his mouth get him into a fight that his money couldn’t get him out of and met his bloody end. But she’d assumed that call would come in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning. Certainly not during business hours.

“He owes me eight hundred bucks and this dumbass says he doesn’t have any cash on him,” the woman said between gum pops. “He says you’re good for it.”

“I lost my wallet!” Nicole could hear Xander slur in the background. “And for some reason, she doesn’t take Venmo.”

“Shut up!” the woman snapped. “Look, either someone comes here and pays me, or my man is gonna come here and take it out of his ass!”

Nicole closed her eyes and sighed. “Text me the address. I’m on my way.”

THE DRIVER CAME TO A STOP IN FRONT OF A GLASS FACADE—A FOUR-STAR boutique hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. Nicole didn’t wait for the doorman to open the Lincoln Town Car’s passenger door before she leaped out and rushed across the sidewalk to the hotel’s revolving doors.

Nicole had already called ahead to let the front desk know that she’d be arriving. A smiling hotel staffer stood in the lobby, waiting for her.

“Hello, I’m Miss Underwood,” she said, looking around the hotel lobby’s understated modern decor and furniture, searching for the elevators. “I need to get to Suite 4883. It’s currently being occupied by one of your VIP guests.”

The older man’s mouth fell open in surprise. He slowly looked her up and down. “You’re Miss Underwood?”

She was used to that response. Even when she’d been Bridget’s assistant, most hadn’t expected a twenty-something Black woman with boho braids and hoop earrings to walk through the door at meetings or cocktail parties. But Bridget, who hired her while she was still in college, had accepted that Nicole could be the best assistant Bridget ever had without whitewashing herself. Nicole had learned that lesson from watching her mother bend over backward for years to meet a corporate aesthetic her white counterparts found more appealing, while still getting stepped over for promotions and having the door to the proverbial boys’ club slammed in her face.

“Yes, I am Miss Underwood,” Nicole now repeated with a slow nod.

Her enunciation became more pronounced. Her gaze remained steady. She had her “assistant to a major CEO” armor on.

“And like I said, I need to get to 4883. ASAP, please. Per Mr. Chambers’s request.”

She’d had to stop at an ATM on the way to get the eight hundred dollars, not wanting to dip into their executive office’s petty cash to pay for sex work. Nicole now worried that she’d taken too long with her detour and the woman on the phone had made good on her promise to have Xander roughed up by her pimp.

No chance in hell of keeping that out of the gossip columns, Nicole thought with exasperation.

The Chambers family had finally made it out of a news cycle that they’d dominated for the past couple of months thanks to Bridget’s fiery car crash back in February. The news coverage had been mostly a mix of glowing retrospectives on Bridget’s life and impact on the beauty industry and details of the crash, but a few more tawdry websites and social media posts shared rumors and speculations on why Bridget had really gone off the road that night. Was it an accident, or had there been foul play?

This could put the Chamberses back on New York’s front pages again.

“Yes, of course,” the hotel staffer said, plastering on a tight smile. He gestured toward his left and did a slight bow. “This way, ma’am.”

Two minutes later, they arrived on the forty-eighth floor. Even though she was trailing behind someone who knew the way, Nicole could’ve easily found the suite herself; she simply had to follow the sound of raised voices.

As they approached the suite’s door, she heard the loud bang and a crash of breaking china.

“Did you just throw that at me?” Xander’s muffled voice yelled.

“You’re damn right I did! Where’s my money, you piece of shit?” a woman screamed, then another crash.

“What the hell,” Nicole whispered then grimaced, not looking forward to what awaited her inside the hotel room. “I can take it from here,” she told the older man whose blue eyes were now as wide as saucers. He nodded his graying head limply, then retreated. Nicole took a deep breath, raised her hand, and knocked.

“What is it now?” Xander shouted.

“It’s me, Xander,” Nicole answered.

Within seconds, she heard the wrenching metal sound of a deadbolt being unlocked. The door swung open.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, throwing out his arms. “What took you so long, Nicole? I’ve been stuck in here, basically being held hostage by this psycho!”

The hotel’s complimentary bathrobe he wore was drooping open, revealing his bare chest and Hugo Boss boxer briefs. His hazel eyes were puffy and bloodshot. He smelled vaguely of weed. Xander was definitely not in any condition to make his ten o’clock meeting. Luckily she’d anticipated as much and already canceled it.

“I came as fast as I could,” Nicole explained before shutting the door, stepping around him, reaching into her purse, and pulling out an envelope filled with eight-hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. She strode to the annoyed-looking blonde in the sequined halter dress who was standing next to a white sofa now stained with red wine. Several feet away was a broken flower vase. Water and a pile of tulips now littered the bamboo flooring.

“Your money,” she said, holding out the envelope to the woman who promptly snatched it.

Nicole watched as she took out the bills and counted them once, then twice. She squinted at Nicole. “No tip?”

“Just get out,” Xander said, flicking his hand toward the front door. He grabbed a coffee cup from a nearby end table and gulped some of the black brew.

“Asshole,” the woman. . .