Fool Me Once

by Fern Michaels

  “Tell me everything,” Olivia prompted.

  “Well, for starters, I didn’t get an appointment with Mr. Martindale. His secretary told me every minute of his day was accounted for, and my name wasn’t on any of those minutes, so I left a very curt, concise message and said I quit. I quit, Olivia. I didn’t give the firm a chance to fire me. I knew I was going to quit, so I’d packed up my stuff before I went up to the lion’s floor. Even downloaded my personal files and took my day planner, along with my briefcase, to the car. That’s what everyone calls Martindale, the lion. I think he knows and is rather smug about the whole thing. I had Hillary type up my resignation and was on my way to personnel with it when Martindale caught up with me at the door to my office. I really didn’t give him the time of day. He wasn’t even sure who I was. Didn’t do much for my confidence. Hell, I’d already bitten the bullet, so I just kept right on going to the elevator, talking to him over my shoulder. I even shoved my resignation in his hand, saving me a trip to personnel. That’s about it. Oh, he said he wasn’t going to allow me to turn this mess, that’s what he called it, a mess, into a circus. I don’t have a job, Olivia.”

  “I do. We won’t starve. Now you are free and clear. Let’s get to work on Cecil. You didn’t say anything about the TV and radio stations. I gave them your cell phone number. Did they call you?”

  Jeff slapped at his forehead. “Jeez, I almost forgot to tell you. Both stations called, and I gave them an earful. They sounded like they were on our side. Give me ten minutes to change my clothes, and I’m all yours.”

  Olivia stood up and was instantly kissed by Jeff. “Go!” she gasped before she pulled away. “Annabell’s owner will be here any second. I have a few things I have to do in here because I have a one o’clock appointment with an Airedale. You can carry in the groceries I left in the car and make us lunch. I’m pretty hungry.”

  Jeff made a low, sweeping bow before he trotted off to do her bidding. He blew her a kiss that she returned with loud, smacking gusto.

  Olivia’s mood turned sour when the dogs barreled into the studio at the sound of Annabell’s owner’s car. The hair immediately went up on the schnauzer’s back. Her new best friends joined in the frantic yapping. Olivia’s heart thudded in her chest when the doorbell rang outside the studio. She opened the door, and Mrs. Collins, sporting a new haircut, sailed through. Olivia thought she looked like a broomstick with feathers on the end of it.

  The woman tried to coax Annabell to her, and when the dog refused to listen, she started to scream about keeping Annabell in her crate for a week. Annabell sneaked around a stool and nipped her owner on her leg. Mrs. Collins howled. The other dogs, Cecil leading the pack, circled her showing their tiny teeth. Mrs. Collins continued to howl as she tried to catch Annabell, who raced away and tried to hide under the little red wagon. The little dog was trembling, and Olivia rushed to pick her up.

  “Give her to me,” her owner screeched. She reached out to snatch the dog, and Annabell snarled and bit down on her hand.

  Olivia’s heart was beating just as fast as the schnauzer’s. What the heck was going on? What kind of dog owner was this? “I don’t think so, Mrs. Collins. I’m not sure, but I think you’ve been abusing this dog. She isn’t biting me, as you can plainly see. In fact, she’s shaking badly, which tells me she’s afraid of you. I think I’m going to call Animal Cruelty and let you fight it out with them. Be aware that if I file a complaint like that, it will get into the newspapers. Before that happens, why don’t you let me buy Annabell from you?”

  “Buy? Buy? You can have her! I’ve done everything I could for that stupid dog. She pees wherever she feels like it. I have to keep her in her crate most of the time or she’d ruin my entire house. My husband wanted this stupid dog, not me. She bites everyone. She’s nothing but trouble. Don’t bother calling Animal Cruelty, and don’t think I’m paying for those photographs, either. She’s all yours! And don’t even think about giving her back!”

  Olivia cuddled the schnauzer to her chest. The little dog was calmer now, as though she understood she wouldn’t be leaving with the screeching woman.

  Olivia sucked in her breath as she stroked the little dog. “I’m more than willing to pay for Annabell. She’s a wonderful little dog. Which vet do you take her to?”

  The woman laughed. “Figure it out for yourself!” She slammed the door behind her. The dogs started to bark and growl as they raced, a nanosecond too late, to the door.

  Jeff poked his head in the door. “Lunch is ready!”

  “We have a new dog!” Olivia said brightly. “Annabell will be staying with us from now on. She might be hungry, Jeff. By the way, what are we having for lunch?”

  “BLTs with lots of leftover bacon for the dogs. I nuked it, so it’s okay to give them as a treat. As you said, less nitrates that way. That’s great, you can never have too many dogs,” Jeff said, tickling Annabell behind the ears. “She’s a cutie.”

  Olivia linked her arm with Jeff’s. The dogs fell in line as they trooped into the kitchen. “I feel like the Pied Piper.” Olivia giggled.

  The minute Olivia and Jeff sat down to eat their lunch Cecil pawed Jeff’s leg and Annabell pawed Olivia’s leg. They weren’t begging for food, they just wanted to be picked up and cuddled. Olivia bit down on her lower lip, but not before she saw Jeff’s wet eyes. She pretended she didn’t notice. “I think this little gal knows she’s staying here, don’t you?”

  Jeff cleared his throat. “That would be my guess. I brought a copy of Lillian’s will with me.”

  Alice and Loopy barked as Bea tried to outdo them both by growling. Cecil and Annabell joined the fray, and Olivia and Jeff were left to eat in peace and quiet.

  The phone rang just as Olivia crunched up her napkin. She reached for it, clicked it on, and heard Miki Kenyon’s voice. She wiggled her eyebrows at Jeff. She took the initiative. “Still can’t find her, huh?”

  “No, it’s almost as though she dropped off the face of the earth.” Miki was, of course, referring to Jill Laramie. “No charge, Ms. Lowell. Do you want us to keep trying, or do you want to let it go for now?”

  “Right now I’m of a mind to let it all go, Miki. She’s gone to ground. If I change my mind, I’ll give you a call.”

  “Okay, honey, you’re the boss. This is only the second time we failed to find our subject. She’s good, I’ll give her that. Take care. We’ll talk again.”

  Olivia clicked off the connection. She looked over at Jeff. “That was the detective agency. Miki calls once a week. They still can’t find Jill Laramie. I told her to let it go. Mr. O’Brien is supposed to be sending all of the money back to the bank. I’m surprised he hasn’t called me. I guess there’s a possibility he didn’t send the check yet. Still, I made sure he knew how important it was to do it ASAP.”

  Jeff laughed. “You know us lawyers—we march to our own drummer.” His eyes wide, he stared across the table at Olivia. “It’s really starting to hit me now. I don’t have a job. I’ve always had a job, from the time I was eleven and delivered papers.”

  “How about if I hire you as Advisor to the CEO of Adrian’s Treasures? On a temporary basis, or until we can all figure out what to do with the company. Forever, if you like the job and whatever perks go with it. I’m going to need someone I can trust on the inside to report to me. The job has to go to someone. Who better than you? I was thinking the other day about asking my dad, but I don’t think he’d do it for any amount of money. The job is yours if you want it. It would be a real job, Jeff, not something I’m making up just so you have a job. We could convert the garage to an office. I never keep my car in there anyway, and it’s a double garage, which means there’s plenty of room. More and more people are working at home these days, with all the modern technology available. You’d have to go to the corporate offices in Baltimore every so often, but that would be it. Will you at least think about it?”

  “I will. I decided. I’ll take the job!”

  There was suc
h relief in her fiancé’s face, Olivia smiled. “Then all we have to do is negotiate a salary. What do you think is fair?”

  They got down to it then, tooth and nail, but it was all in fun. In the end, both agreed that the position was worth $200,000 a year, with medical benefits, a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, and a 401(k). They shook hands in a businesslike way. Then Jeff really clinched the deal by kissing Olivia.

  Her eyes starry, Olivia whipped out her cell phone with one hand and handed the portable phone to Jeff with the other. “We need to call all the animal organizations Lillian left bequests to and the ones who will inherit…down the road. Then I think I should take you to dinner at Two-Twenty Seafood over on Route 7. It’s on the outskirts of town. You’ll love it. I want to celebrate having the good sense to hire you.

  “Oh, one more thing. Do you have a friend who might be interested in dating Dee Dee? He has to be as good-looking as you and just as nice.”

  “Damn, Olivia, I like the way you do business. It’s a deal! I know just the guy—Tom Ethridge. He has a law practice in Berryville but lives in town. Let’s make a date for this weekend.”

  Olivia smacked her hands together. “I love it when things work out. Just love it, love it, love it!”

  The Winchester Star was hand-delivered the following morning by Dee Dee herself. She was beaming from head to toe as Olivia herded her and the dogs into the kitchen, where Jeff was making pancakes. “We got you a date for this Saturday,” she hissed in her friend’s ear. “How cool is that, my friend? Jeff said he’s handsome, practices law over in Berryville, but lives right here in Winchester.”

  “Great! Now read my article. We got the top half of the fold, and it doesn’t get any better than that. Jeff’s firm called the paper four times before I left the office, and it’s”—Dee Dee looked at her watch—“only seven-fifteen. My boss called Sally Blake to come in to help handle all the phone calls he knows will be coming in. This stuff is hot news for Winchester. What’s really good is, we got the scoop. I owe you, Olivia.”

  Jeff turned off the stove to join the women at the table. Dee Dee handed him his own copy to peruse. He whistled at what he was reading. “You have a way with words, Ms. Pepper,” he drawled. “The firm will be drawing up all kinds of motions. I’ll bet they have people at the courthouse already just waiting to file those papers.”

  Olivia and Dee Dee looked at Jeff. “What kind of papers? What will they try to do?”

  “Well, for starters, I can almost guarantee the firm is going to file a petition to have me removed as Cecil’s handler. From there it will grow legs and take off. That means someone will be coming here with a court order to take Cecil away from us. They’re going to say it’s all about the money even though I never took a penny for his care.”

  As one, Olivia and Dee Dee exclaimed, “Over my dead body!”

  Jeff leaned across the table. “Then, Ms. Pepper, write a follow-up for tomorrow’s paper. What’s the last second we can feed you news?”

  Dee Dee hopped up from the chair she was sitting on. “Six this evening. Sorry about the pancakes, gotta run. Relax, Ollie, this is what I do to earn my living. No one is going to take Cecil. If I have to, I’ll appeal to the whole town to come here and protest. If either of you has any ideas, this might be a good time to implement them, but don’t tell me what they are.” The combat boots stomped across the floor as the small pack of dogs raced her to the door. They gave her a rousing, yapping send-off.

  “One stack of pancakes coming right up,” Jeff said, heading for the stove. “This is going to be one hell of a day, Olivia. We need to fortify ourselves.”

  Little did he know how right he was.

  Chapter 25

  Jill Laramie’s peach-colored spring jacket flapped in the early-morning breeze. Her stride was brisk as she made her way across the Ole Miss campus. Her destination was the library, where she went every day to read the morning papers. She could have subscribed to the papers or read them online, but she preferred to come here to the library and pretend she was part of the life there. She looked over her shoulder a half dozen times to see if anyone was following her. Satisfied there was no one on her trail, she walked even faster. She never felt safe these days unless she was inside a building.

  It was no way to live, and she knew it. The anxiety and the stress had taken a toll on her these past few months. She hated looking in the mirror, hated the way she looked, hated the way she was living. On any given day she burst into tears at least a dozen times.

  Jill nodded to several people she saw on a daily basis. One man in particular, a part-time professor at Ole Miss by the name of Alan Freeman, had invited her for coffee at Starbucks several times. If she wasn’t so paranoid, she would have enjoyed a little get-together. He was more than a little interested, even inviting her to dinner and once to a concert. She’d declined all invitations with ridiculous excuses because she was afraid. Now she regretted those decisions. It was the story of her life—refusing to let anyone get close because at any given moment she might have to cut and run. Still, there was a lightness to her step when she made her way to the table where she usually sat to pore over the daily papers and saw Professor Freeman already at the table, a copy of USA Today in front of him.

  Jill smiled, a genuine expression of warmth. She wished she could have met this man years ago. Before…before she’d ever met Allison Matthews.

  Alan Freeman looked the part of the absentminded professor. During the winter months he dressed in baggy tweeds. In the spring and summer he wore wilted seersucker. His hair was beyond the thinning stage, and his features were, at best, hawkish. It was his eyes, bright and curious, and his warm smile that drew her to him. He was gentle and soft-spoken. Outside the classrooms, he smoked a pipe, as did most of the older professors. A widower, he’d returned to Ole Miss when his wife of thirty years had died of ovarian cancer.

  Alan only taught part-time because of his other interests, which were many and varied. He lived in a charming old house in Oxford. She’d driven by it one night just as it was turning dusk. She loved the old oaks, with their hanging moss, the Confederate jasmine that climbed and trailed over the ornate fencing and trellises. The house itself was set back from the street and surrounded by dozens of gardenia and azalea bushes. A magnificent magnolia tree, taller than the three-story house, stood sentinel at its side. Alan said that in June the tree was full of fragrant white flowers. The house, he’d gone on to say, had belonged first to his grandfather, then his own father, and now he owned it. He’d laughed, a wonderful sound, when he said the house was a work in progress, and the main reason why he only taught part-time. Jill suspected that Alan Freeman was independently wealthy.

  If only she could live in a house like that with someone like Alan Freeman, her cup would, indeed, run over. It wasn’t going to happen, though, and she knew it. Not with her past or current life. Still, it was fun to dream.

  Jill sat down and smiled shyly at the man sitting across from her. “Anything new in the world today?”

  Alan laughed, a quiet sound, as he pushed part of the paper across the table toward her. “I found this extremely interesting,” he said, pointing to a large picture below the fold on the front page. “Great human interest. What do you think, Caroline?” Alan asked, using her new alias of Caroline Summers.

  Jill stared down at a picture of Olivia Lowell holding a small dog. Next to her was a handsome young man. She was glad she wasn’t holding the paper in her hands because she would have dropped it in shock.

  Her hands in her lap, Jill speed-read the article, knowing that Alan expected a comment. She hoped she could make her voice work. “Hmmm,” she said. Her head bobbed up and down, her eyes behind their green contact lenses exceptionally bright.

  “My wife and I had a dog once that we loved dearly. With no children of our own, Sophia, that was the dog’s name, became our child. There was nothing we wouldn’t have done for that dog. We were devastated when she died at the age of fifte
en. We literally could not function for weeks. All we did was cry. I know how that young couple feels.”

  “Hmmm,” Jill said again. What were the odds of her seeing this particular article at this particular time in her life? She allowed herself to slump down on the hard wooden chair. She was never going to get away from her past.

  “I guess you had a similar experience, I can see it in your face. Listen, Caroline, let’s go over to Starbucks and get a cup of coffee.”

  All she wanted to do was get out of there. Common sense told her an article like the one she’d just read didn’t have anything to do with her. That same common sense told her where there was smoke, fire was sure to follow. Reporters were going to start digging, and when they found out that Olivia Lowell was Adrian Ames’s daughter, the connection to Allison Matthews would be revealed as surely as night follows day. Sooner or later, the past was going to jump up and hit her hard. That was a given. A chill unlike anything she’d ever experienced rivered through her body.

  Jill picked up her purse. It was time to run again. She felt like crying until she felt Alan’s hand cup her elbow. She forced herself to look up at the man towering above her. She smiled. She knew then she didn’t want to give this up, whatever this was or turned out to be. As much as she didn’t want a cup of Starbucks coffee, she said, “Sounds good.”

  Just do something ordinary, she cautioned herself. Coffee at Starbucks is ordinary. Try not to think about Olivia Lowell and the article in the paper. Oh, God, I don’t want to run again. I don’t have the stamina. I’m over sixty, and that’s too old for this. I can’t do this anymore.

  Jill looked around her garden apartment. In all the years since she’d graduated from college, this was the first place, the first time that she truly felt like she was home. The apartment was cozy, filled with brand-new furniture. She’d painted the walls herself, a shade of paint called Distant Mountain. It made the rooms look bigger. She cooked in the kitchen, did her laundry in a little closet off the master bedroom, soaked in the Jacuzzi with scented candles and fragrant bath salts. Subconsciously, she thought she’d made the decision to stay right there and stop running. For some un-godly reason, the apartment felt permanent. She’d paid her rent a year in advance when she’d signed the three-year lease, another sign she’d been thinking of the place as a permanent abode.