Fast Women Read online

  “Thank you,” Deborah Farnsworth said, casting one last dubious glance around the office before she left. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  Gotta get this office fixed. Nell found 3-in-1 oil in the bathroom and oiled the front door, hoping to stop it from sticking, and then did the partners’ office doors, too, because the creaks were driving her crazy. Then to distract herself from the neglect and the dog, she went into Gabe McKenna’s office and began to clean, dusting off the black-and-white photos on the walls and wiping down dark wood and old leather until the place gleamed from the power of her frustration. She noticed an odd striped pattern to the dust on the bookcases, as if somebody had pulled books off some of the shelves and then shoved them back again. Maybe Gabe McKenna had lost something and had gone looking for it behind his books. God knew, he could have lost damn near anything in that mess.

  Near the wall on the last bookcase, she found an old cassette player and punched Play to hear what he listened to. Bouncy horns blared out followed by an easy, deep voice singing, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.” She hit Stop and popped the cassette out. Dean Martin. That figured. That might also explain why his office looked like a set for the Rat Pack. There was even a blue pinstriped jacket hanging on a brass coatrack that also held a slouch hat covered in dust. She dusted off the hat and shook out the coat with an angry snap and then put them both back where they’d been.

  She heard somebody call out, “Hello?” and went back to her desk to find the little blonde from the teashop standing there.

  “I’m sorry,” Nell said. “I didn’t hear you come in. The door usually rattles—”

  “Different door.” The blonde jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That door leads into my storeroom. I’m Chloe. I run The Star-Struck Cup. So I was wondering. You seem very efficient.”

  “Thank you,” Nell said, not quite following.

  “Do you know anybody who’d like to run The Cup for a while? Until Christmas? We’re only open in the afternoons, so it’s not hard.”

  “Oh,” Nell said, taken aback. “Well…” Suze wanted a job, but Jack would talk her out of it the way he had a hundred times before. And Margie … “Would the person who ran the shop for you get your cookie recipe, too?”

  Chloe looked surprised. “She’d have to, wouldn’t she? To make the cookies?”

  “I might know somebody,” Nell said. “She’s not really the business type, but she’d probably love to run a teashop in the afternoons. You sure about this?”

  “I just decided today,” Chloe said. “Really, when all the signs say it’s time for a change, there’s no point in waiting, is there?”

  “Uh, no,” Nell said.

  “Do you know what time of day you were born?”

  “No,” Nell said.

  “It doesn’t really matter. Virgos handle everything beautifully.” Chloe smiled. “What sign is your friend?”

  “My friend? Oh, Margie. Uh, February 27. I don’t know—”

  “Pisces. Not as good.” She frowned. “Of course, I’m a Pisces and I’m doing okay. Have her call me.”

  “Right,” Nell said. “What—”

  The doorbell clinked from the depths of the teashop, signaling a customer, and Chloe turned back to the storeroom door.

  “Chloe?” Nell said, on an impulse. “Is there a reason everything here looks like something from a Dean Martin movie?”

  “Gabe’s dad,” Chloe said from the doorway. “Patrick raised both Gabe and Riley. They have father issues. Unresolved.”

  “It’s a little … outdated.”

  Chloe snorted. “Are you kidding? Gabe’s still driving his dad’s car.”

  “That car’s from the fifties?” Nell said, dumbfounded.

  “No, from the seventies. Of course, it’s a Porsche, but still.”

  “Somebody needs to bring this guy into the twenty-first century,” Nell said, and Chloe beamed at her.

  “The stars never lie,” she said and went back into the storeroom.

  “Oh-kay,” Nell said, not following, and called Margie, getting her machine. “I think I can get you that cookie recipe,” she told the machine, “but you’re going to have to work for it. Give me a call.” Then she hung up and went to finish her cleaning.

  Riley’s much smaller office had the same leather furniture, but the resemblance stopped there. His desk was empty except for his computer and a plastic Wile E. Coyote mug full of pens, his bookshelf held computer manuals and detective novels next to the same directories she’d found in the big office, and his wall had two huge framed movie posters featuring a scowling Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and a sultry Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. That was like Riley, romantic and bigger than life. Gabe McKenna obviously ran a business while his partner played the game.

  She cleaned Riley’s office, noticing the same dust patterns on his bookcases, and then she went into the grimy green bathroom to wash the coffee cups and saucers she’d collected, hating the cracked linoleum and dingy plaster. A good coat of paint would do wonders, but Gabe McKenna’s father had probably picked out the color while listening to “In the Misty Moonlight” in 1955. Honestly. She washed the cups and then, with a last impromptu swipe at the age-speckled mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself that froze her in place.

  She looked like death.

  Her hair was dull and so was her skin, but more than that, she was dull, her cheekbones protruding like elbows, her mouth tight and thin. She dropped the paper towel in the sink and leaned closer, horrified at herself. How had this happened, how could she look this bad? It must be the light, horrible fluorescent light bouncing off ugly green walls, nobody could look good in this light …

  It wasn’t the light.

  She realized now why her son Jase was so sad and careful when he hugged her good-bye, and why Suze and Margie kept doing their cheerleading routine. She must have looked like a corpse for the past year and a half, must have sat like a ghost in other people’s lives. She’d looked in the familiar mirrors in her apartment a million times since the divorce to comb her hair and brush her teeth, but she hadn’t looked at herself once until now.

  I have to eat, she thought. I have to get some weight back on. And do something about my skin. And my hair. And—

  She heard the front door rattle and thought, Later. I’ll do all of that later. My God.

  * * *

  Driving a vintage sports car through a beautiful city on a September morning would cheer anybody up, and Gabe was no exception. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes of listening to Trevor Ogilvie, Jack Dysart, and the head of their accounting department, Budge Jenkins, pretty much took him back to ground zero.

  “She called, she accused you of adultery and embezzlement, you refused to pay, and nothing’s happened,” he summed up for them. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”

  “Catch her,” Budge said, looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy on a hot plate as he cast a sidelong glance at Jack.

  “Well, let’s not be hasty,” Trevor said, looking like an expensive liquor ad in Modern Maturity.

  “If this were your problem, what would you do?” Jack said, looking like a very wealthy Marlboro Man who’d just gotten his first subscription to Modern Maturity.

  “Hit star sixty-nine,” Gabe said. “Failing that, I’d try to think who disliked me enough to blackmail me.”

  “Every business has disgruntled employees,” Trevor said.

  “Anybody recognize the voice?” Gabe said.

  “No,” Trevor said before anyone else could answer. “We have many disgruntled employees.”

  “You might want to work on that,” Gabe said. “Has anything happened lately that might lead to a newly disgruntled employee?”

  “What are you talking about?” Budge said.

  “He wants to know if we’ve pissed off anybody in particular lately,” Jack said. “No. We’ve won cases, of course, which always leaves some people unhappy, but nothing stands out. We haven’t fired anybo
dy.”

  “How about the accusations she made?” Gabe said.

  “I’m insisting on an outside audit,” Budge said, expanding with outrage.

  “We’re not going to pay for an audit,” Jack said tiredly. “Nobody thinks you’re embezzling. I’m not cheating on Suze. Trevor says he’s not cheating on Audrey. It’s a nuisance scam.”

  “It’s outrageous,” Trevor said automatically. “But she hasn’t called back. I think if we wait—”

  Jack closed his eyes.

  “Where did she want you to leave the money?” Gabe said.

  “She said she’d call back and tell me,” Trevor said quickly. “In a day, when I had it.”

  Jack shot Trevor a glance and said, “That’s right.”

  No, it isn’t, Gabe thought. “What about you, Budge?”

  “I hung up on her before she got that far,” Budge said. “She accused me of stealing.”

  “That’s what blackmailers do,” Gabe said. “Accuse people. Okay, as this stands, there’s not much I can do. If you want to bring in the police, they can check the phone records, but I’m guessing she called from a public phone and not her living room.”

  “No police,” Jack said. “This is a joke.”

  “I don’t think it’s a joke,” Budge said. “I think—”

  “Budge,” Jack said. “We all think it’s a joke.” He said it with enough intent that Budge shut up. “Thanks for coming out, Gabe. Sorry we wasted your time.”

  “Always a pleasure,” Gabe said, which wasn’t true. O&D was rarely a pleasure, but it was always profitable. He stood and said, “Let me know if anything else happens.”

  “Certainly,” Trevor said, but his face said, Absolutely not.

  “Wonderful seeing you all again,” Gabe said and left, wondering what the hell was going on but not caring much.

  * * *

  Back at the agency, Riley slammed the door, threw a file folder on Nell’s desk, and said, “I do not like that woman.”

  “What woman?” Nell pulled the file over and sat down at her desk to read the label, trying to get her balance back after the mirror. “The Hot Lunch,” she read. “What is this?”

  “One of our regulars.” Riley dropped onto the couch and made it creak in anguish. “The client has a wife who takes a new lover a couple of times a year. She always meets him at the Hyatt on Mondays and Wednesdays at noon, so we call her the Hot Lunch.”

  Nell looked at the folder, confused. “And she’s been doing this how long?”

  “About five years.” Riley stretched his legs out and put his hands behind his head, still scowling. “And I’m sick of it.”

  “You’re sick of it?” Nell opened the folder. “How’s the client feel about it?”

  “All he wants is the reports.” Riley closed his eyes. “It’s a farce. She knows both of us, so it’s not exactly a covert operation. Today she waved at me on her way to the elevator.”

  “At least she has a sense of humor.” Nell scanned the report and shrugged. “So you did the job. What’s the problem?”

  “I feel like a marital aid.” Riley shifted on the couch, and it creaked again. “My guess is, we deliver the report to the client, he shows it to her, they fight, and they have hot make-up sex for a while. Then it starts to taper off, and he calls us and says, ‘I think my wife is having an affair.’ No shit, Sherlock.” He sighed. “That is not a marriage.”

  “Are you married?” Nell asked, surprised.

  “No,” Riley said. “But I know what a marriage is.”

  “And that would be…”

  “Commitment for life with no whining,” Riley said. “Which is why I’m not married. I’m more of a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. Can you type that report for me?”

  “Sure,” Nell said. “Can I have your datebook so I can log your appointments into the computer?” When Riley nodded, she said, “Okay, then, one more thing. When was the last time you took money from the petty cash?”

  Riley shrugged. “Whenever it says I did. Last month sometime. Why?”

  Nell took out the cash box and handed him the slips.

  He shuffled through them, frowning. “These aren’t mine.”

  “I know. My theory is that Lynnie signed them for you.”

  Riley whistled. “How much did she get?”

  “With the other checks, over five thousand dollars.”

  “And Gabe says to forget it and swallow the loss.” Riley tossed the slips back in the box. “You know, once he’d have gone after her just for the exercise. Now he’s practical.”

  “What happened that he changed?”

  “His dad died, we inherited the agency, and he got way too serious. He’d already started to slow down because of Chloe and Lu, and because Patrick was the world’s worst manager, but that was the last straw.”

  Nell frowned, trying to keep up. “Chloe and Lu?”

  “Wife and daughter. He was really something once. He was like Nick Charles.”

  “Who’s Nick Charles?”

  “Nobody reads anymore.” Riley pointed at the black bird on the bookcase. “Do you know what that is?”

  “Poe’s raven,” Nell guessed. “‘Nevermore.’”

  “And you work in a detective office.” Riley sighed and slouched toward his own office. “You don’t know literature, and Gabe’s given up the chase. All I can say is, I hope I never get that old.”

  “We’re not that old,” Nell said to his back, but he shut his office door behind him before she could finish the sentence. “Hey!” she said, and when he didn’t open the door again, she buzzed his office and told him about the Farnsworth case, omitting the part about stealing the dog. Let the client tell him.

  Then she sat back and processed the new information. So Gabe McKenna was married to Chloe. She tried to imagine them together, but it was too absurd, like Satan with a Powerpuff Girl. And they had a daughter. How could you mix those two sets of DNA? She and Tim had been perfect for each other, had made a perfect son, and their marriage was over; McKenna and Chloe were at opposite ends of the human spectrum and they were still together. Marriage was a mystery, that was all there was to it.

  She picked up the Hot Lunch notes that Riley had written about a woman named Gina Taggart who got away with adultery on a regular basis. That was the problem with the world. People did stuff they knew was wrong because they knew they could get away with it and other people didn’t stop them. The Hot Lunch cheated, and Lynnie stole, and that guy in New Albany tormented a dog, and Tim dumped her and left her looking like she was a million years old—her heart clutched at the memory of the mirror—and nobody paid. Except she couldn’t be mad at Tim, he’d played fair, it was her fault she looked like hell, she couldn’t be mad.

  Sitting there in the dim office, she realized that she wanted to be mad, wanted to say, “No, you can’t just change your mind after twenty-two years of marriage, you spaghetti-spined weasel.” But that wouldn’t have been productive, it would make things more difficult for everybody, it would do nobody any good at all. Imagine if she’d screamed at Tim when he’d said he was leaving; their divorce would have been hell instead of civilized and fair. Imagine if she’d screamed and thrown things; they’d never have been able to maintain the friendly relationship they had now. Imagine if she’d screamed and thrown things and grabbed him by the—

  “Nell!” Riley said and she swung around in her chair to face his office doorway.

  “Yes. What?” She frowned at him. “Don’t yell. Why didn’t you buzz me?”

  “I did. I’m leaving. Back around five.”

  “Okay,” Nell said, and then she frowned, transferring her frustration with Tim and Lynnie to him. “Explain this to me. You guys do background checks all the time. Why didn’t you do one on Lynnie?”

  “We did, or at least my mother did when she hired her. She had great references.” Riley dropped his datebook on her desk. “Ogilvie and Dysart, same as you. She was only supposed to be here for a month until Mom go
t back. That’s why the appointments have never been in the computer. My mother doesn’t like computers.”

  “That explains a lot,” Nell said. “So your mother quit?”

  “She decided to take a two-week trip to Florida in the middle of July, hired Lynnie, and then when she got down there, decided to stay. That’s when we made Lynnie permanent. There wasn’t any reason not to trust her.”

  “I suppose,” Nell said. “It just makes me mad that she got in here.”

  “Yeah, I can see you’re frothing,” Riley said.

  “I’m a quiet kind of person,” Nell said. “I do a subtle mad.”

  “Kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?” He headed for the door, and then stopped. “Did you get lunch? I can cover the phones for a while if you want to go out.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Nell said.

  “Okay. If Gabe asks, I’m out working on the Quarterly Report.”

  “The what?”

  “Trevor Ogilvie,” Riley said, from the doorway. “Of the infamous Ogilvie and Dysart, Attorneys at Law. He hires us to check on his daughter every three months to see what she’s doing.”

  Nell gaped at him. “He hires you to check on Margie?”

  “No, we check on Olivia, the twenty-one-year-old. Margie is the older daughter, right? By the first wife? Margie evidently makes no waves.”

  “I forgot about Olivia,” Nell said, remembering Margie’s spoiled little stepsister. “I don’t think she and Margie talk much.” She sat back. “So Trevor hires you to follow Olivia?”

  Riley nodded. “It’s his idea of parenting, and it’s a miracle he survives the reports. Olivia has a very good time. Oh, and before I forget, we are not rescuing SugarPie.”

  “Who?”

  “SugarPie, your abused dog,” Riley turned back to the doorway. “Rule number two: We do not break the law.”

  “There are two rules?” Nell asked, but the office door slammed before she finished her sentence. “You know, it’s rude to do that,” she said and then picked up Riley’s datebook to enter it into the computer, trying not to think about the dog and the Hot Lunch and everything else that needed to be fixed in the world.