Murfey's Law

Chapter One

"I really should be helping Max with his presentation," Lori tried again.

"Listen, Max agrees with me, you need a break from work, and not just for the afternoon." Sara rubbed Lori's arm affectionately.

"What do you mean?" Lori started to panic. Was she being fired? That'd be just her luck, to get the sack from her best friend's business. Quite a feat in fact.

Job security was the one thing Lori hadn't really ever worried about since she was poached from her old job six years ago. Working for Sara and her very successful husband was amazing. Admittedly she never felt there was ever a good time to take more than a couple of days off at once, and she was always the first to arrive and the last to leave, but she loved the work itself. She had been Max's Personal Assistant for long enough now that she knew which colour tie he would be wearing before he had even walked in the door each morning.

"Calm down Lori," Sara said sternly.

Lori winced. Sara only ever called her by her actual name when they were in front of clients, or preceding some sort of home truth. The last release of brutal honesty had been that Lori needed to take a little extra care of her appearance. It had hurt for sure, but in hindsight it had been a fair comment - Lori had stopped plucking her eyebrows the day Pete, her ex-boyfriend, had left her for a farmer he'd met on a corporate bonding day at a Dairy just outside the M25.

"All I'm saying, is that Max and I recognise the immense amount of work that you've put in to Hunter & Hunter over the years and the fact is, we owe you three months leave. We want, no we insist, that you take it now. Go somewhere warm, go to Australia maybe?" Sara waggled a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

"Don't be ridiculous, I can't possibly leave Max for that long."

"You can, and you will. I'm not taking no for an answer, it's not a negotiation." Sara squeezed Lori's thigh affectionately. "And while you are on your break, maybe cut out the chocolate eh?"

Ouch. For a best friend she sure packed a punch. Lori knew Sara was right about everything, she always was, it was why she trusted her so much.

"I guess I could do with a break." Lori resigned herself to the inevitable. "At least it'll make use of the little bit of savings I made when Pete had the decency to call it quits the day before we were due to buy that house."

"Atta girl." Sara chinked Lori's glass. "So... you'll head down under and finally go see your Dad?"

"No, I don't think so." Lori shook her head and took a big gulp of her drink.

"Why on earth not? Seems like an excellent idea to me. Mmm, just think of all that sun. It is their summer now right?"

"Yes, it is. And yes, I will go, but I won't be seeing my father." Lori knocked back what was left in her glass, grabbed her purse and stood up to go get the next round.

"What are you on about? You can't go all that way and not go see him, that's just lunacy." Sara finished her Rosé too and slid the empty glass across the table.

Lori picked it up by the stem and stepped down off the raised area where they were sat. "I can't go see him Sara, because he's dead."

By the time Lori had made it back from the bar with their refills, a group of Hunter & Hunter staff had descended on Sara, all vying for the gossip on Lori's meltdown. It hadn't taken long for Gay George to sweet talk one of the firemen into giving him the cause of the earlier alarm.

"So, Lori," he patted the seat beside him, "word around the office is that you were burning evidence for a tax cover up. Care to confirm or deny?"

Before Lori could answer, Katy the Receptionist jumped in to the spot beside George and snorted loudly, "Don't be ridiculous, she would never do anything even remotely dangerous, I mean, the last big risk she took was wearing a skirt."