"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.
