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Madeleine is a retired management consultant who now writes full time. In her business life, she worked on the investigation of the mysterious infant deaths at Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto, which sparked a life-long interest in crime. She is an award-winning mystery short story writer and a longstanding member of Crime Writers of Canada. Her stories have appeared in both print and electronic media. When not acting as ‘helper monkeys’ on their film-maker daughter’s movie sets, she and her husband share their Victorian home with two cats.

Bertie, my cellmate in our office's maze of cloth-covered boxes, sighed, smoothed back her spiky red hair, and granted me her usual look of benign indulgence. "Lorraine, consider the alternative. Unemployment. You're just upset about turning fifty. You'll get over it."

Would I? No one hires people over fifty, especially civil servants. And men don't date women over forty. Since my divorce even the possibility of charity sex looked bleak. My ears were ringing with the sound of the doors of opportunity slamming shut.

"Think about the French pastry shop we'll be raiding for your birthday lunch," Bertie said. "Think white wine, raspberries and crème fraîche. It'll get us through the staff meeting Magda called this morning."

"Yep." Bertie hammered away at her keyboard in her longstanding battle with our dysfunctional computer network. "On her way in, she just happened to mention that she has a day nanny and a night nanny."––

For reasons known only to our fusty Assistant Deputy Minister, Dr. Vladimir Nickle, our Policy Coordination Unit served as the gateway to the great Snakes and Ladders game of senior management. All aspiring careerists passed through us on their way up to––or hurtling down from––the corporate stratosphere. Magda was our newly appointed director.

To save our sanity, over the years Bertie and I had devised a boss-cataloguing system: fiery prodigies who springboarded through in sojourns of mere weeks, we named The Comets. Those who fell from grace, we called The Meteors. And Magda's predecessor, who'd hidden under his desk before vanishing on permanent stress leave, we'd baptized The Black Hole. But classifying the enigmatic Magda Molina had proved difficult, so temporarily we'd labelled her the Quasar.

But I'm not a naive fool. By fifty, I should hope not! I'd already ferreted out my moles in the division to glean vital info on her management style. After all, forewarned is forearmed. But curiously, so far I'd got nothing. Even Ramona, our admin assistant, landed Magda's official backgrounder before I did. Together with everyone else, I learned that the Quasar was a graduate of Toronto's high-ranking Mendelssohn Business School and that she shared a Rosedale mansion with her young family.

Just the same, I tried to like and respect Magda. Really I did. Her warm smile charmed me, especially when she spoke about her children. One daughter was a prodigy at the National Ballet School, the other a bourgeoning artist though still in Montessori kindergarten. And she often mentioned the charities she and her corporate executive husband supported––as well as the vivid succession of balls, concerts, and celebrity golf tournaments they had to attend. Surely her devotion to social causes made her human….

"Have a chocolate, doctor's orders," Bertie said, prying open the box of truffles Ramona had brought in for my birthday. "I struck gold today."

Covering my eagerness to hear the tidbit of gossip she'd landed, I snagged a truffle bristling with chocolate shavings like a hedgehog.

Dr. Nickle––Vlad the Spellchecker to us––had ruled our division for twenty-five years, his astonishing longevity cemented by his mastery of the art of obstructionism. Stifling innovation meant no programs, and no programs meant no problems for our political masters. They all loved him. The few contentious issues that did squeak through from the public sank in Vlad's miry sea of government-speak. Starting at seven each morning, he edited every report, letter and memo that emanated from our division. In detail. He'd reject correspondence for a comma which––inevitably––mutated into a moving target. My personal record for the number of back-and-forth journeys of a draft letter between our office and his stood at sixteen.

Vlad's disciple. Oh, God that meant Magda was connected. We'd be powerless no matter how bizarre she turned out to be. And if she decided to downsize us, we didn't have a prayer.

Queasy now, I trailed into the boardroom for our staff meeting and slumped down next to Bertie. Magda's wonderful smile sought me out. I smiled back. Why was her well-manicured finger tracing an ellipse next to her mouth? Mimicking her unconsciously, I dislodged a chocolate shaving clinging to my cheek. I felt uncomfortably hot, and not just from middle age.

When we'd all settled into our chairs, Magda smiled sweetly at our admin assistant and said, "Ramona, this meeting is only for professional staff. I thought you would have understood that."

Face red, Ramona pushed back her chair and left. The rest of us stared down at our notepads and pens. Disgracefully, we said nothing.

"I'm so sorry to make this a short meeting," Magda went on, "but I'm seeing my daughters' allergist this morning." She paused to smooth back an invisible strand of shiny chestnut hair. "They're highly attuned to chemical toxins in the environment. Everything they touch has to be pure, completely organic."

Magda stretched back, looking at each of us in turn. "So do forgive me if I appear to be brutally frank, but truth is best. Dr. Nickle is deeply concerned about your unit."

Hot acrid chocolate burned the back of my throat. Embarrass the Minister? Collectively, we had a century of government experience! I braced myself for that dreaded word: reorganization.

Oh, no, much worse! Under her elegant hand, I spotted an ominously familiar, mustard-hued booklet: the Ministry Guide to Style, penned by Vlad the Spellchecker himself.

"I have no choice but to sign off on all your correspondence personally. And I only look at hard copy."

"I'm aware of that, but hard copy unlocks the mind's creative potential," Magda countered. "Each letter you write must be flawless––warm, caring and personal. Mine your creativity. Some of you will have to dig rather deeply, but do look upon it as a challenge."

I threw up. Oh, not there in Magda's boardroom, though, arguably, charging out of the meeting to plunge into the washroom counted as a heinous career-limiting move. Later, Bertie tracked me down in the stalls to deliver the coup de grace. After I'd bolted from the room, Magda had limited our lunch breaks to the exact 45 minutes set out by the Ministry's guidelines.

And so my exquisitely anticipated birthday lunch became our unit's first casualty.

"Magda's not a Quasar," I fumed over a limp salad in the food court after work. "She's a Supernova, a cosmic disaster. I can't afford to lose my job. My divorce lawyer bankrupted me."

"I should never have moved to the Beaches," Bertie sighed. "Dream house, mean mortgage. If I quit, I lose everything."

"She'll drive us mad. Oh, heavens, we can't just sit here and complain. We have to do something."

Bertie rubbed her crimson spikes, thinking. "Okay, here's the deal. We wait until she leaves the office. We go down to the parking lot, leap in my car and then…we kill her."

"Who's joking?" Bertie looked foxier than ever. "Let's make it our Special Project. We'll call it long-term strategic planning."

Sometimes Bertie really is too much, I thought later as I trudged to the subway through the dust thrown up by the demolition next to our office. The much unlamented red-brick Government Archives building was being knocked down to make way for a sleek condo tower. Today its destruction seemed a sinister prophecy. Had I, too, become disposable, languishing away at the Ministry, sacrificing my dreams for financial security?

Happy fiftieth birthday, I thought, fighting through the rush hour crowd on the subway stairs. Heading back to a dingy apartment I could barely afford. No spare cash for hobbies or vacations. My job devolving into a torture chamber. But as I clung to the sticky overhand rail bracing myself against the train's sway, my passionate words to Bertie came back to haunt me. Damn it, I spent every minute of every waking day griping. For once in my life I was going to take action.

I surfed the internet until 3 am researching our Special Project. I pounced on Bertie the minute she arrived next morning and outlined my phased project approach: visualization, followed by planning, then implementation.

"Oh, come on," Bertie said, throwing off her coat. "You really have been a civil servant too long. Phased approach my ass––it's just your excuse to postpone implementation indefinitely."

"Well, I don't see anything wrong in sticking to Phase 1. Visioning Magda in the Iron Maiden really boosted my endorphins," I grumbled, though finishing off Ramona's truffles had helped, too.

"Medieval torture chambers? You are totally out to lunch." Bertie fired up her computer.

"There!" A website on venomous snakes flared up on her screen. "Black or green mamba?"

I stared, staggered by the risk-benefit implications. "Now who's being unrealistic? Where the hell are we going to get a snake?"

"From Roger. He quit being Senior IT Manager last night. He and his partner are opening an exotic animal sanctuary."

"You've all been sending me draft correspondence. This is unacceptable," she announced. "When your work reaches my desk, it must be pristine. Flawless. All twelve copies."

"Yes, one for Dr. Nickle, one for his executive assistant, one for myself––" And she proceeded to list every manager in the Ministry who might have heard of our unit, and several more besides.

"Let me sketch out a little analogy. My country club doesn't just preach perfection," she went on. "The linen is crisp, the silver gleams. It's pure. Elegant. As your work should be. No drafts. Final version only. All I should have to do is sign."

"She's insane," I bit out back at my desk. "Archives haven't accepted our hard copy files since we went electronic. We're drowning in paper." I pointed to the columns of dusty brown containers tottering toward the ceiling.

"So let's think outside the storage box––ha-ha!" Bertie leaned back in her worn chair. "Forget snakes for now. Let's be budget-conscious and use the weapons at hand. I'll locate the key support boxes and do the math. Then we wait till Magda leaves her office, one quick push––and we kill her!"

"Yeah, right." I pulled a bulging file from my in-tray and logged in. But visioning Magda crushed to a pulp by her true love, paper, did give me the warm fuzzies for the rest of the day. That is, until Ramona handed me my Minister's letter and I learned that Magda loved mutating commas as much as Vlad the Spellchecker. Twelve times over.

Work continued its death spiral. Every time Magda sent back a letter, Ramona had to produce twelve more copies. The Supernova insisted that all our draft copies be archived to track her revisions. Soon a towering cityscape of storage boxes eclipsed our cramped quarters. It broke my heart to see poor Ramona sobbing with frustration, seared by the harsh light of the Xerox machine or smeared with dust from heaving file boxes around.

Bertie's engineering calculations and drawings kept us going until the morning we met in the food court for a pre-work coffee and doughnut.

"We can't do it," she announced. "Ramona spends all her time next to those damn storage boxes. If we start our avalanche, we risk killing her as well."

But my imagination had gone dry. That is, until that afternoon when Magda forced Ramona to collect donations for her brat's ballet recital. And her younger brat's art school benefit. Minimum "suggested" donation $20. Each kid.

Grudgingly, Bertie and I coughed up to stay employed, and to cover Ramona's share since she didn't have an extra cent after paying her baby's daycare fees. So goodbye to our blessed sanctuary, the food court, and the snacks therein.

The staff drew lots to see who would take the filled donation envelope back to Magda's office.

The Supernova sat munching her carefully purified lunch of organic salad and imported spring water, as serene as the gleam on her mahogany desk. Her handsome husband, darling daughters and golden retriever beamed at me from the silver-framed photograph beside her.

She embraced me with her smile, pushed her salad to one side and said, "Lorraine, this is timely. Sit down over there with Alicia."

I hadn't seen Alicia come in. I dropped the envelope on her desk and, furious with my trembling legs, took the chair next to our respected Senior Policy Analyst.

Magda rested her firm chin on her hand and looked at each of us in turn. "I've been meaning to speak to you both," she said. "When one is––how shall I put it––mature, and of a certain size, it is even more vital to project a professional image."

I didn't share her courage. Pathetic defenses for being fat and fifty stormed through my brain. "But nobody sees us here," I blurted out. "Why shouldn't we be comfortable?"

"Looking professional nurtures productivity. It engenders a culture of effectiveness that shines through in your writing. Something that's lacking in both your work. So remedy this issue…I'm sure you understand."

A strange hissing noise filled my ears. Alicia was turning crimson, the whites of her eyes showing. I've never heard so many expletives so loudly delivered. And so creatively juxtaposed. Ten minutes later I stood gasping in the aftermath of Alicia's resignation.

Magda seemed strangely unperturbed. She picked up a Holt Renfrew bag from the floor. "Take these down to shoe repair, would you?"

"Yes, now. My husband and I are attending a reception for the Duke of Edinburgh tonight."

I lurched back to my desk, clutching that stupid bag. Bertie ran after me as I headed toward the elevators.

"We're going for a medicinal doughnut," she said, grabbing my arm. "Forget the money and the Supernova's ban on coffee breaks."

I was too stunned to argue, and, comforted by a strawberry cream special, I spilled out the details of the whole sordid, humiliating experience.

"That bitch! Give me those shoes!" Bertie yanked the bag from my lap and drew out a stiletto sandal with diamante straps. Seizing the metal knife beside her plate, she worked its edge into the gap between the heel and the silver sole. "Let's make sure she breaks her heel and her neck at her la-di-da reception.

"All right, you win," Bertie tossed the shoe back at me. "At least Alicia's happy."

"Exactly. Did you know that Alicia used to be a research chemist? Her old professor wants her back at the university."

"Not bad," Bertie said after I explained it. "Alicia's professor does have loads of lovely poisons. We could get cyanide, potassium chloride, dioxin…"

"Nasty." Bertie grinned, showing her sharp white teeth. "About time you grew a spine." She swept away the crumbs from her apple fritter and picked up our used paper cups. "I'll get Alicia to show me her professor's lab tonight. Tomorrow we implement!"

That night I woke up with a beating heart. What the hell were we doing? Bertie wouldn't really steal the poison, would she? After all, our Special Project was just a joke, a harmless safety valve to stop us going crazy, wasn't it? Just like our boss-cataloguing system.

I staggered into my kitchenette, threw open the fridge door, and grabbed a cool metal can of diet Pepsi, holding it to my burning forehead. Even if Magda was the boss from hell, we didn't have the right to take her life. I thought of her handsome husband and her two little girls in the photo on her desk. And the dog. A dream family like the one I'd never have thanks to my cheating husband and the passage of time. It would all be better in the morning, I told myself. We just went a little off the rails….

"See this," Bertie said, dangling a Ziploc bag of white powder in my face. "Now we implement. No excuses."

"Sure it is. Magda's meeting with Vlad the Spellchecker. They'll be at it for hours. Time to spice up that pure organic salad she keeps in her mini-fridge for lunch."

I had, but I'd assumed she was hiding out in the washroom, her one refuge from the Supernova.

"Magda's connected. Even our union won't mess with Vlad's prodigy. Now are you going to do it?"

I sighed and nodded. Holding the plastic bag with my fingertips, I crept into Magda's office. Stared at the stainless steel mini-fridge that held the environmentally cleansed fixings of her lunch. Caught sight of that silver-framed family portrait….

"No way." She tore the plastic bag from my hand and shoved it into the pocket of her jacket. Eyes gleaming, she brushed back her spiky hair and tromped into Magda's office.

Oh, my, God. She was really going to do it. I rested my forehead on my desk so I wouldn't have to look.

The elevator doors chimed open. Through the gap in the ratty cloth dividers of our cubicle, I spotted the Supernova heading straight for her office. She'd descended from Vlad's heavenly sphere early. This couldn't be happening!

I leapt up to warn Bertie. Too late! My ears were bombarded by Magda's ferocious shouts.

A melee of staff and security guards poured into her office. I dove into the crowd, using my sturdy hips to knock bodies out of the way. I struggled over to the spot where the guards were manhandling Bertie and snatched that dreadful envelope from where she'd dropped it on the floor.

Not that it helped. Magda kept shouting murder. The security guards marched Bertie over to the elevators and out the door. Someone shouted that a police car was waiting outside.

"You and your damn friend are pathetic," Magda cried as our eyes met. "You can't stop my reorganization. This unit is gone. And so are you. You don't deserve to be a professional. Go work in that precious food court of yours for minimum wage. If you're lucky enough to get hired."

In the quiet of the aftermath, I slipped into the washroom, and, in the inner sanctum of the stall, I flushed that damn envelope away. And with it, every grain of incriminating strychnine. Finally my tears came. Bertie was my best friend. She'd made my working life bearable. Now she wasn't just going to lose her home. She was going to go to prison for years and years, because I hadn't tried hard enough to stop her.

As I crept out of the washroom, I spotted Magda in her wine-colored designer coat heading for the elevators. So she wasn't eating her organic salad at her desk today.

I watched her press the down button. So she was heading outside. Maybe even she needed to clear her head in the crisp spring air after this morning's drama.

The bones in my legs turned to steel. I ran after her, but her elevator doors closed in my face. I swore and jabbed the down button. An intense heat flooded through me. I could feel the give of her soft pearly throat under my powerful fingers.

By the time I reached the downstairs lobby, she was already outside, heading down the wide granite stairs to the sidewalk. Breathing hard, I chased after her. And caught up to her next to the scaffolding surrounding the half-demolished Archives Building.

She seemed to sense me behind her. When she looked over her shoulder, her face went as pale as the 20-bond paper she adored. A strange power surged through me in rhythm with her fear. Never get Lorraine angry, people said. When she loses it––

A strange whistling wind charged towards us. A tremendous pendulum of steel swept past my arm.

I froze, gawping. One second she was our cold-hearted unit director, the next a mess on the sidewalk. I'd never seen anyone die before. I couldn't breathe. For the second time that day, I was submerged in a crowd of shouting people.

The paramedics couldn't do anything for Magda, but they dragged me off to the hospital where the docs downgraded my "heart attack" to a stress reaction. Bertie fought her way past the nurses to find me.

"For what? Alicia didn't put strychnine in the bag. She gave me a powerful laxative to give Magda a wake-up call, but you––you bloody genius!" She plopped an armload of red roses into my lap. "Everyone at work got together and bought you these."

I didn't know what to say. In dull moments, I liked to pretend I had superpowers, but, of course, I hadn't killed Magda. A renegade steel beam from the crumbling Archives Building had crashed through the construction barrier and done that.

"Guess what?" Bertie went on. "My lawyer says old Vlad wants to settle. He's terrified of more bad publicity since Magda's "accident." So let's take my exit package and open a chocolate shop together. I'm serious. Think about it."

I did during my endless first morning back at work with only my food court snack for company. Everyone who hadn't already quit our unit had called in sick.

I nearly choked on my maple-cream doughnut. Vlad the Spellchecker himself had materialized in front of my desk! Greasy fronds of greying hair hung over his spotty scalp. His dry, thin-skinned hands clutched Magda's familiar Holt Renfrew bag.

"Glad to see that you, ah, are feeling better in time for Ms. Molina's memorial service."

So that's why everyone had stayed away from the office today. They might have told me!

As it turned out, we got stuck in the heavy downtown traffic, leaving me free to stare at the chunks of dandruff adorning Vlad's black suit while he fumbled through the Holt Renfrew bag, muttering to himself. I gathered that his assistant had got the address wrong and that we were seriously late.

We finally pulled up outside a low stone church that we'd passed three times already. We raced up the flagstone path to find it completely deserted except for a trim elderly lady in an elegant navy suit.

"Dr. Nickle, yes, of course. You were Magda's mentor," the lady said. "I'm Iris McKenzie. And Lorraine, you're the one who saw––"

"Let's sit down," she said with capable calm, indicating the pew beside her. "Magda talked so much about all of you at the Ministry. I feel as if I know you already. "

That made me squirm. "There must have been quite a crowd at the service," I said.

So Magda had put off her society friends, too. How awful her family must have felt when no one bothered to turn up. No wonder they'd left already. My breathing grew shorter just thinking about them. Perhaps it was a blessing we were late. What would I have said to her husband? To her little girls? That I had wanted to kill their mother?

Old Vlad stiffened at that. "She was a superb manager, a brilliant communicator," he intoned.

But she did have a life, I thought. She had her perfect family, a gorgeous house and brilliant society parties. Vlad uttered a dusty cough, reached into the Holt Renfrew bag, and pulled out Magda's silver-framed family portrait. "Under the circumstances, I should like to, ah, return this."

"Oh, heavens, that poor misguided woman! This is my favorite photo of my son and his children."

"Oh, dear me, no, Magda and I weren't related. She just rented my coach house. My son lives with his family in Australia. That poor girl didn't have anyone in the world!"

Back outside old Vlad looked like he'd been scorched by the rising sun. "I confess, Ms. Fraser that I don't fully understand––"

"I do," I burst out. "Magda wanted a family so desperately, she stole Iris's. Her glorious private life was nothing but an elaborate lie!"

"The mistake Magda made was devoting her life to chasing idiotic edits in useless documents. Just like I've been doing for twenty years."

"Calm yourself, Ms. Fraser. And I shouldn't have to remind you to keep this little incident confidential…."

If I'd been a Comet, I would have used Magda's secret to worm myself into a promotion back at Vlad's moldy ministry. Instead I turned my back on the old bugger and left him standing open-mouthed next to his long dark limo.

So here I am charging down the twisting streets of Rosedale. Forget the bus or the subway. I'm walking the six miles to Bertie's house, where I'm going to get down on my hands and knees and beg her to open our chocolate shop.