Winters & Somers

by Glenys O'Connell

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she growled at him.

  “You and me, a partnership.”

  She made a noise like a cross between a laughing hyena and a choking elephant.

  “You’ll let me,” he told her.

  “In your dreams,” she replied, trying to stem the trembling in her chest.

  “Oh, mark my words, Somers, we’re going to be a team. Either you agree, or I’ll sue both you and your client for everything you possess.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Why would the famous J.V. Winters want a partnership in a one-horse investigation agency that barely has two cases to rub together?” she asked honestly.

  “I don’t like working girls masquerading as something else. I think this agency has potential – together we can turn it into a real detective agency. Besides, I'm bored,” he said with equal honesty.

  “And because you’re bored, you’d break up a marriage and ruin me if you don’t get what you ask for?” Her voice was faint, but the blood was pounding so hard in her temples she had to struggle to speak.

  Winters just shrugged his wide shoulders. “Not much to ruin, is there? I'd rather think it's more like saving you.”

  Cíara's brain was working overtime. What on earth did he mean – saving her? Working girls masquerading…? But, pushing to the front of her mind was poor Frank O'Keefe. It was the first question she wanted to ask.

  The telephone shrilled. Neither of them moved – their position was a stalemate.

  Finally the answering machine picked up. A woman's voice filled the room, sounding as if she was close to tears. “Ms. Somers, this is Peggy O'Keefe. Frank O'Keefe's wife. I found your number in his phone book, and saw the appointments with you. They say a wife is the last to know. I…I don't know what this is all about, but I want you to leave my husband alone!” Cíara jumped as the phone was slammed down.

  Winters regarded her through slitted eyes.

  “I don't have a clue what she's talking about,” Cíara muttered. But it seemed obvious that Frank's wife was as prone to jumping to the wrong conclusions as her husband.

  “Peggy’s a nice woman. Frank should get his act together.” Winters said softly.

  Cíara's slender fingers curled into fists as she imagined the satisfaction of pummeling the hard body that caged her in against the wall of her own office.

  Winters was threatening to sue her and Frank. ‘Everything you possess’ didn’t amount to too much in her case – but in her client’s case, it could mean a great deal more – including his marriage. For Frank O’Keefe had been wrong in believing his wife was entangled with the charming writer. Her fantasies were no more than those shared by hundreds of thousands of women who read the man’s books. And now his wife thought that Frank was seeing someone else. Great.

  Winters was watching her intently, and she knew she had no choice. She needed time to think this through, so she nodded. Winters looked like the cat that got the cream, and she was left feeling like a waif and stray in her own office.

  She had had to accept as gracefully as possible – after all, if Winters took her client to court, kind, patient Frank might lose the wife he loved so much. But even so, as Winters stepped back from her, that smug look still on his face, she took the opportunity to knee him in that very tender place.

  “Oh, crap,” he yelled, doubling over and falling back onto the wooden chair by the desk, “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “Just to prove I could – and to let you know that if I go into partnership with you, it's against my better judgment! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've work to do.” She stalked victoriously into the old-fashioned bathroom attached to the office. She was booked to visit a nightclub at lunchtime to check out on another cheating spouse.

  Quickly she donned her favorite long blonde wig, teasing the fake do into a sex-kitten style that she thought looked ridiculous but which seemed to call to men like a neon sign. Then she wriggled into thong briefs and a tight black cocktail dress with a neckline that swooped so low she had to go braless and a hemline that rode so high she had to walk with teeny steps. Especially in the delicate spiky heels she eased her feet into.

  Standing back to check herself in the long mirror, she gave a low whistle and grinned at herself. Since she was 12 she'd had the kind of curves that had caught male eyes. Fortunately, she'd also had to kind of upbringing with Granny Somers that had taught her early how to slap down those same wandering palms.

  But it wasn't lust but disgust that registered on Winters' face when the sex kitten Cíara

  sashayed out of the bathroom.

  “Forget it,” he told her arrogantly, “Get that lot off, scrub the gunk off your face, and let's get down to business.”

  “This is how I dress for business,” she replied, cheeks blushing pink with fury under her peach sunset foundation.

  “Well, you're not doing that work from now on,” Winters ground out.

  Why the hell was he worried if she wanted to dress like a whore and do a whore's work? he asked himself, not at all liking the way his anatomy had responded to the way she'd wiggled her butt as she bent down to pick up her briefcase. “I've every intention of turning this business into a legitimate investigating company, and I won’t have your cheap tricks making a mockery of it,” he snarled.

  “I am going out to do surveillance,” Cíara said, her jaws clenched to prevent herself from leaping across the room and ripping his throat out with her teeth. They stood, checkmated, glaring at each other from across the room for several very long moments. The atmosphere was charged with electricity so strong, she thought her short red hair would be standing on end under the wig, so she gave a sigh of relief when Winters shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay, I don’t suppose I can change you overnight. Go and do your 'surveillance', but first we need to go over your files.”

  Winters spent twenty minutes in the office, looking over her client files, his lips twitching when he read about the old lady and the cat. Then he discussed her current caseload with her – which was zilch. She explained through clenched teeth about the private investigations scene in Dublin, and was dizzily relieved when the man decided he had another appointment. She hoped she’d bored him enough that he’d decide, over a luxurious lunch somewhere with his niece, that he couldn’t be bothered toying with her any more.

  “I’ve got some ideas that we can discuss but I’m pushed for time right now. So I’ll see you bright and early in the morning. Anything I can do in the meantime?” he asked pleasantly as he shrugged his arms into his jacket.

  “Yeah, you could fall under a bus,” Cíara snapped back.

  But he grinned and planted a fast kiss on the top of her bewigged head as he headed for the door.

  And suddenly she was extremely glad that she had not taken the Serena McLaughlin file with its completed report out of her briefcase, or any of her other 'seduction to go' case files.

  Because she now knew just how Jonathon Victor Winters got that nasty bruise on the side of his face!

  * * *

  “Nah! You just have to be kidding me?” Cíara’s flat mate, Mary Margaret McCutcheon, gasped in delight when she heard the story over a late lunch. Or at least, an edited version, in which Cíara explained that the American visitor had spotted what a good future her business had after she had met him briefly on a job, and had made a partnership request.

  No way was she planning to let Mary Margaret, a confirmed ManEater and prize gossip to boot, know who she was dealing with, so she just called her new partner Jon and made it sound as though she was delighted with the proposal. Mary Margaret swallowed the story whole, to such an extent that Cíara decided she should maybe pop along to the Gaiety Theatre and see if they had any roles for a consummate actress and storyteller like herself.

  “So, anyway, just as the poor man was leaving, I noticed he had this bruise on the side of his face.” Actually, the bruise was the first
thing anyone would notice, looking at the man, because it was large and now bright purple with green streaks, but again, she was editing the tale. “It was only later that I put two and two together and guess what?”

  “Spill!” Mary Margaret commanded, slurping deeply of her fresh fruit drink after devouring the last shred of lettuce in her Dieter’s Healthy Special and casting a longing look at the cream éclairs under glass at the counter.

  “He's the one who rescued me down in Waterford!”

  Mary Margaret’s eyes bulged. She was quiet for a whole heartbeat and then squealed: “No! You mean the man who rescued you from being raped and then was bashed on the side of the head by that old Granny landlady! Cíara, sweetie, that’s too unreal!”

  Now they had the interested attention of every single soul in the crowded city center restaurant. Cíara wondered if it wasn’t too late for her to slide under the table and pretend she wasn’t there. But she knew everyone was waiting for her answer and Dublin is a city where you don’t keep your audience waiting.

  “Sure, that’s the truth, Mary Margaret. Talk about your coincidences, eh?” she replied, loudly enough for everyone to hear. There was a collective sigh of relief from the other patrons that the news had been confirmed, and everyone settled back into their own conversations again.

  “Anyway, Mary Margaret, it’s so generous of you to buy me lunch – so unlike you, in fact,” she said peevishly. Public ridicule after the close encounters of the Winters kind had done nothing to improve her humor.

  “Don’t be snotty, Cíara, it doesn’t suit you,” Mary Margaret sniffed loudly. Then she leaned forward, excitement suffusing a happy glow to her face under the foundation and powder. “I’ve some wonderful news! Joe has asked me to move in with him! We’re going to live together!”

  “You’re going to…but only last week you were calling him a pimple faced alcoholic with a mother-complex!” Cíara gasped.

  It was then Mary Margaret’s turn to flush as all heads turned again in their direction. But Mary Margaret had been brought up in a family of 12 in Finglas and it took a lot to make her quail.

  “I said no such thing. I maybe said he wasn’t behaving well, but that’s all over now! I’m moving in with him!”

  “Good for you, love,” a gray-haired woman in a severely cut business suit at the next table called out as she folded over a copy of the Times’ business section.

  “That’s disgusting – living in sin and not making a marriage commitment!” came a quavering voice from the back, and then the restaurant was in uproar as patrons began a vigorous debate over morality issues.

  Mary Margaret sat placidly through it all.

  “You really did say that, Mary Margaret!”

  “Yeah, well, ‘suppose that was before I found out I was pregnant,” she replied, a Madonna-like smile quivering her lips. Conversations all around them stopped, heads turned in their direction, and then the hubbub began again.

  “You’re…you’re….not serious.” Cíara was having difficulty getting the words out around the shock that had lodged in her throat. “Have I told you recently that you’re crazy?”

  Mary Margaret sat up straight in her chair. “I should have known there’d be nothing but abuse from you – of course I’m crazy! I shared a flat with you for two years, didn’t I?” Flinging a ten-Euro note down on the table, she stalked out of the restaurant, leaving Cíara to foot the rest of the bill – could lettuce salad really cost that much? – and bear the brunt of crowd attention all the way to the cash desk.

  Back in her office she slumped at the desk. What a God-awful day! It had started off fine – delivering the good news to Frank O’Keefe had given her a warm fuzzy feeling. A feeling that was short-lived as Jonathon Victor Winters – damn him! – had walked into her life. And now she’d have to hunt for a new flat mate!

  With the scarcity of housing in Dublin, every Tim, Dick, and Patricia would beat a path to her door – hundreds of unsuitable, incompatible people would want to move in with her and be her new best friend, and she’d have to interview them all…

  Sighing, she pulled a piece of paper towards her and started to compose a ‘flat to share, own bedroom,’ advertisement…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The screech of the telephone by her bed brought Cíara back to consciousness the next morning. Groaning, head pounding, she played doggo for a few moments, hoping that Mary Margaret had come home last night and would answer the phone. But by the tenth ring, she gave up and answered.

  “Cíara, darling! Did I wake you up? It’s eight o’clock, you know.” Margaret Henley – no way would she ever call that woman Grandmother - said, her voice purring down the line with the effect of chalk on a blackboard as far as Cíara’s pounding head was concerned.

  “Yeah, well, I was out late last night. What do you want?”

  The sigh sounded mournful, even across the miles from Meath to Dublin. “Still not well-versed in the social graces, are you, darling?”

  “Just get on with it, then leave me alone,” she snapped. Her headache – no, be honest, hangover – was pounding like a Loyalist drum on the 12th of July. She groaned audibly as her grandmother explained that they were holding a dinner party that very evening and there were several wonderful people she wanted Cíara to meet. Including that lovely young man, William Dexter, who worked for Mr. Henley’s stockbroker and had such a good future ahead of him.

  “No.”

  A short silence ensued, a stalemate that Mrs. Henley broke. “Well, that’s a shame, dear, because I suppose the next time we’ll see you will be at the big Henley garden party next month?”

  Bull's-eye! Cíara conceded defeat. She knew that if she turned down the dinner party she’d have to be dead and buried by June 20th if she wanted to get out of going to the god-awful garden party the Henleys held each year.

  Slamming the phone down viciously was a mistake – the racket resounded in her head like the trump of doom. Heading home from the office in a foul mood last night, she’d met some old buddies and gone along to the pub with them. But the quick one had turned into an all-nighter, especially when several of the gang had discovered that she was going to be in need of a flat mate soon. Having a place to rent made her a very desirable friend and the object of numerous free drinks, all of which now raced between her head and stomach as she staggered to the bathroom.

  Once she was sure she was going to live for another few hours at least, she headed off to Harry's Garage to pick up her car. All the way there, on a crowded Dublin bus, she repeated the mantra: Please let Winters have fallen down a deep, dark hole and not be in my office when I get there! Over and over to herself, a trick she’d learned in a yoga relaxation class. Except that, with Winters’ name in it all the mantra did was raise her blood pressure, which rocketed still further when she saw the bill Harry handed her for the MG’s new exhaust system.

  “God, Harry, I hate to bitch, but are you planning to retire on this?”

  But Harry was in no mood to be grouched at. He usually treated her with fond indulgence, but this morning he snapped at her to watch her lip. “Damn car’s more trouble than it’s worth, anyway. You must have more money than sense to want to keep it running.”

  Cíara’s eyes widened in shock. “Harry! You love this car as much as I do! What on earth’s gotten into you!”

  The big mechanic scowled even more deeply, then looked sheepish. “Sorry, I shouldn’t take it out on you, what these damned Corporation officials are doing.”

  That’s when she saw the notice pinned to Harry’s door. The land on which his garage stood on was now slated for redevelopment. “But you’ll get compensation, surely?” she asked, rapidly figuring that land right here in the city center was probably worth a pretty penny and her friend should maybe be ready to celebrate rather than mourn the loss of his business.

  “I only rent, it’s the owner who’ll do well.”

  “So, will you look for another place?”

  Harry shot her a
bitterly amused glance. “Sure, if I can find someone with €100,000 or so going spare for the lease and the moving,” he replied. “Happen to have any rich relatives, girl?”

  She bit her lip. Harry was her friend but he knew nothing of her background. She commiserated with him, wrote a check for the bill, and caught a bus the rest of the way to her office, leaving her car for final tune-up work.

  She was frowning and pre-occupied with Harry’s problem when she walked into her office. Otherwise, she’d have picked up warning signals long before she came upon the cozy little scene of Jonathon Victor Winters ensconced in the chair behind her desk, in deep conversation with a sweet old lady who smiled at him adoringly.

  Wait, run that reel again! That sweet old lady is a transformation of that old harridan, Granny Somers!

  Cíara was still blinking in shock when they became aware of her.

  “Cíara Henley Somers,” Granny said immediately, in that I’ll brook no nonsense from you, young lady voice that she knew only too well. “Why did you not tell your own Granny that you had a new partner? And not just any new partner, but a famous gentleman?”

  “’Cos he’s not a gentleman,” she hissed back under her breath, but she was out of luck. This was one of those moments when Granny had her hearing aid turned up full.

  “You watch your lip, young lady, or there’ll be trouble,” the old harridan, who just a moment ago had been a sweet old lady, warned.

  “Gee, Cíara, I know we said we’d keep our partnership private, but Lillian is your grandmother, after all,” Winters said, his face innocent. Lillian? Lillian? She'd been fourteen before she’d known Granny even had a first name. His voice was reproachful, but she could see the glint of laughter in his eyes and sent him an if looks could kill you’d be dead meat glance which only set his lips twitching merrily, too.

  Granny finally left, sworn to secrecy and clutching an autographed copy of J.V. Winters’ latest literary bombshell. The writer himself leaned back in her chair, feet up on her desk, and regarded her with that same arrogant look.