4 Slightly Irregular

by Rhonda Pollero

  Plastering a pleasant smile on my face, I opened the door wide. Standing regally on my front porch was Cassidy Presley Tanner Browning Rossi. My mother.

  “Hi, Mom,” I greeted, adding the customary country club air kiss on either side of her face. Well, not her face. She was wearing a scarf tied forward and giant dark glasses, so the only thing I could see was the tip of her nose and her newly—and overly—plumped lips.

  “Finley,” she returned, her mouth moving a lot like guppy lips. Not that guppies have lips, but the analogy was working for me.

  “Welcome to my home,” I said enthusiastically. My arm swung in a wide arc. “Please, come in.”

  As usual, my mother thumbed her nose at the hot afternoon weather by wearing a tailored green suit with a pale mint silk blouse beneath. I often wondered if she was the last woman in Palm Beach County to still wear panty hose. Slowly, she removed her scarf and glasses. Faded bruises around her hairline told me she’d had yet another thread lift, along with some collagen and Botox. Her vanity was unwarranted, given the fact that she didn’t even look her true age. Then again, very few people knew her true age. She’d lied about it so often, and for so long, it was possible that even she didn’t know she was about to hit fifty. Lisa’s wedding created a problem; she couldn’t shave a decade off her age with her daughters around. Quite the conundrum. She had been twenty-two when I was born and twenty-five when Lisa came along, so she’d have no choice but to own up to her fifty years.

  She glanced around the great room, but thanks to the Botox, I couldn’t gauge her reaction.

  “When do you plan on decorating?”

  Direct hit. No matter how old I got, her zingers still stung. “It is decorated, Mom.”

  “Oh.”

  “You hate it,” I said, my spirits sinking.

  “I just never would have considered decor best suited to an outdoor eatery. But then again, it makes sense. You and your friends are partial to those waterfront bars.”

  “Would you like something to drink?” Arsenic, perhaps?

  “I’d like to see the rest of the cottage first.”

  “Follow me,” I said, with a mental picture of holding a gun to my head and slowly pulling the trigger. In under thirty seconds my mother had me committing virtual suicide.

  I got a lot of “uh-huh”s as we went from room to room, then what I hoped was the final noncompliment when we reached my bedroom.

  “I had no idea you’d be napping in the middle of the day,” she said, her puffy lips managing a scowl as she looked at my unmade bed.

  “I had a late night,” I explained. I detoured her away from the bathroom, where I’d left my brunch outfit crumpled on the floor. I wasn’t usually such a slob, but with Harold here, the quick change was a must.

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “You know what?” I asked as I led the way back toward the kitchen.

  “About your second job.”

  It took me a minute to follow the winding path that was her logic. “I don’t have a second job.”

  We returned to the great room. I sat on the sofa and offered her the chair across from me. She opted to stand.

  “But Mr. Caprelli said you were a babysitter.”

  “Hang on. You spoke to my boss?”

  “Of course, I needed Mr. Caprelli’s address for the invitation.”

  “Are you having a party or something?” First I was hearing about it.

  She shook her head as if I’d just suggested she vacation in Iraq. “I called him to ask if he would serve as your escort.”

  The hair on my arms stood up, and my skin tingled with dread. “My escort for what?”

  “Well,” she began as she lifted her scarf off her shoulders and began to retie it, “since you so abruptly ended your relations with Patrick, and even though I have a million things to attend to, I had to find you a suitable escort for the wedding.”

  Blood rushed to my head rendering me temporarily deaf. “So you called Tony?”

  “He’s successful. He’s a lovely man. He comes from a very influential family in New York. Did you know his father owns one of the largest investment firms and is considered a financial genius? His mother is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. He’s perfect as an escort. He’ll photograph quite nicely, too.”

  “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I’m far from being facetious. The photographs are Lisa’s keepsake memories that—”

  My door opened, and Liam appeared. Normally, I would have been furious about him just bursting into my home, but I was stuck on planet Cassidy.

  “You should not have done that,” I explained, desperately trying not to grit my teeth or allow steam to come rushing out of my ears. I gave a sideways glance to Liam, who was wearing a grease-stained T-shirt and ragged jeans. His hair was mussed. “I already have an escort to the wedding.”

  My mother’s spine straightened. “And that would be whom?”

  “Liam,” I said, pointing to the unkempt man near the doorway.

  I thought for a moment that my announcement had the Botox draining from my mother’s forehead. Botox or not, I knew there was a frown in there somewhere, but she rammed her sunglasses on her face and marched her heeled feet to the door. Sidestepping Liam, she waltzed out without another word.

  I, on the other hand, was grinning, bordering on giddy. That moment ended when I remembered Liam’s entrance. Standing, I asked, “Are the words ‘my house’ somehow confusing to you?”

  “No, Ellen sent me. She’s been calling you for the last two hours, and when you didn’t answer your landline or your cell, she called and asked me to come check on you.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “For me, too,” he said. “I was working on my car.”

  “I hope you were working on pushing it off a bridge.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Call your boss so I can get back to what I was doing.”

  As he turned to leave, I said, “Don’t ever walk in my house without an invitation again.”

  “Speaking of invitations, I accept.”

  “Accept what?”

  “I’ll escort you to your sister’s wedding.”

  I was still staring at the closed door five minutes after he left.

  Favors you do for friends; everyone else pays.

  four

  I sat down and listened to the half-dozen voice mails Ellen had left on my machine. With each one, her voice sounded more irritated than concerned. “So why send Liam?” I muttered as I copied her home number onto the Lilly Pulitzer notepad I kept near the phone, along with a matching pen, of course.

  Curious, I wanted to check my set-on-vibrate cell phone. So I grabbed my purse—a major score if I did say so myself. Coach. White leather with cute little tassels. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Only three of the original four tassels were still in place, which is why I paid less than thirty dollars for it in an eBay auction. My mother had cut me off from Jonathan’s trust fund more than a year ago, her version of teaching me to fend for myself and be more responsible.

  Jonathan and my mom married when I was still a toddler. He’d adopted me when I was three and always treated me as if I was as good as, if not better than, my sister. I’d discovered my illegitimacy and adoption when I was thirteen, after sneaking into my mother’s lingerie drawer. My goal had been to check out the La Perla. Instead, I got the whole scoop on attempts to notify Misters Finley and Anderson. Eventually, my mother explained the whole story, but it was Jonathan who’d sat next to me, gently stroking my hair and my self-esteem.

  At any rate, he’d left Lisa and me individual trusts but had given my mother the power to control any withdrawals. Lisa had full access while I was cut off, sending me into the nether world of discount designers and factory damage.

  I was a master at it now. Not even Becky had clued in to the fact that my designer stuff was secondhand at best, gently used at worst. And I’d like to keep it that way. A girl’s got
ta have her secrets.

  Just thinking about secrets, my mind drifts to Liam. Forget that I know virtually nothing about him. The one thing I do know is that he keeps everything close to the vest. Thankfully not literally. A guy in a vest does nothing for me. The mere thought of secrets instantly had Liam’s face taunting my thought processes.

  I was still fuming mad about the babysitting thing, and even angrier at myself for allowing things to go as far as they had. He thought nothing of bursting into my home without so much as knocking. For all he knew someone could be in here holding me hostage at gunpoint. And therein lay the rub. He was completely wrong for me, and yet in the past, he’d risked his personal safety for me. Did he have to be chivalrous and irritating at the same time?

  I took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly as I slid the bar on my iPhone and instantly discovered I had seventeen more messages from Ellen and one from Becky. I deleted them without listening, sure they were just repeats of the “call me immediately” mantras she’d left on my landline. Dane-Lieberman owned me five days a week, and Sunday wasn’t one of them.

  “Lieberman.”

  “Ellen, this is Finley returning your—”

  “So Liam finally found you.”

  “It’s Sunday. I was at the beach, not in the witness protection plan.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I winced. Probably not the smartest move to be a wiseass to one of my bosses. “Sorry, sunstroke,” I muttered. “What do you need?”

  “I’ve scheduled an eight o’clock meeting with Miss Egghardt. You handled the estate. The appointment is with Lenora Egghardt regarding her uncle’s estate and some sort of money order she received.

  “From the tenants Lenora wasn’t sure existed?”

  “Probably. And she now insists she has knowledge of some real property currently in the possession of those elusive tenants and thinks it is possible that they are distant cousins. Looks like you’re going to have to reopen the estate, and I just want to make sure you exercised due diligence in your attempts to deal with the heirs. I want you at that meeting.”

  Luckily, she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “I’ll be there.”

  “Be there at seven thirty. I want you to bring me up to speed on this before I review any real estate documents. I’ll need to be sure we didn’t close the estate again, without dotting all the ‘i’s and crossing all the ‘t’s.”

  “I think you’ll find everything was in order. I followed the law. Notices were filed in the Palm Beach Post,” I said, feeling a little irritated by the implication that I’d failed to do my job. While I may not be the most enthusiastic employee, I was good at what I did, especially when it came to trusts and estates. “How did this end up on your desk? Usually Vain—er, Mr. Dane handles this sort of thing.”

  “I’m assuming it’s because of the potential contractual issues. I did meet with Mr. Egghardt once. It doesn’t matter. Just be here at seven thirty. My office.”

  “My pleasure.” I felt my nose growing. There was nothing pleasurable about being at work at seven thirty in the morning.

  I speed-dialed Becky. She answered on the third ring. “Your boss just became a pain in my butt.”

  “Ellen? Makes sense. She seemed kinda desperate to find you. And in spite of what you think, she likes you. Thinks you have potential.”

  “No, she likes you and thinks you have potential. You’re the teacher’s pet,” I teased. I then recapped everything from coming home, to the beach, to the new construction, then shared that part about Liam barging in through the door while my mother was here and finished up with the end of my phone call with Lieberman. “Can you believe that?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds very knight-on-white-horse-ish to me. He really just burst in?”

  “I was talking about Ellen’s meeting time, but yes, he did burst right in. And somehow the next thing I knew, I was telling my mother I was bringing Liam to Atlanta as my date for Lisa’s wedding.”

  “Did she stroke out right there on the floor?”

  “Practically,” I said, feeling the tension drain from my shoulders. After all, the expression on her face was classic. “It did shut her up about the wedding escort. So now, when I come solo, she’ll be grateful. Well played, I thought.”

  “Unless Tony and Liam both show up. She actually called Tony?”

  “Don’t remind me. I have to see him tomorrow. Not sure how I’m going to explain my mother to him.”

  “Mention your mother is desperate to marry you off. Most guys hear the ‘m’ word and run screaming from the room.”

  “Why didn’t Ellen send you? Why send Liam?”

  “Well, she did call me, but I told the truth. I had no idea where you were. I even skipped the whole brunch thing. I’m still not sure letting anyone at the firm know we’re tight is in my best interests.”

  “I know, but that still doesn’t solve my Liam conundrum.”

  “Ellen was probably annoyed and figured sending a Liam-O-Gram was a speedy solution.”

  Liam is a lot of things, but a solution isn’t one of them.

  After a fitful night, I got up early and drank my pot of coffee while sitting on the draped chaise next to the pool. Sam was right: the cabana was perfect. The warm breeze coming off the ocean made the bug smoker unnecessary, and I watched the giant red ball of the sun rise, casting a bright golden blanket on the water. I wasn't thrilled when I had to abandon my comfy cocoon to get dressed for work.

  I selected a funky Helen Berman dress I’d picked up at the thrift store for Bethesda-by-the-Sea. One of the many pluses of living in Palm Beach proper was easy access to a thrift store where I could find everything from vintage Versace to BCBG shoes, all barely to gently worn by well-heeled islanders. Twice a year, they even had blowout sales. I already had the dates circled in red on my calendar.

  Because I’m only five-four, I tend to avoid empire waists with bow accents, but this dress, with its black bodice and white skirt, had been a great bargain and way too cute to pass up. Plus, it gave me an excuse to wear my black Jimmy Choo patent-leather cuff sandals with the very, very high heels. I’d gotten them at half price because of an imperfection in the stitching on the inside right cuff, but unless someone got down on her hands and knees for inspection, my secret was safe.

  The drive to Dane-Lieberman was much quicker at o’-dark-thirty, leaving me time to swing through the Starbucks for a venti frappe. Even though I’d already downed a pot of coffee, my caffeine levels were still way too low for maximum concentration.

  I parked my shiny Mercedes next to Ellen’s utilitarian Volvo, grabbed my purse, and fished for the office keys as I walked toward the etched-glass doors with the names of the partners accented in gold.

  Maudlin Margaret’s desk was deserted, and I couldn’t resist leaving a faux message on her pink pad. It read:

  “Miss Egghardt arriving at eight, please send her up as soon as possible.”

  I wrote the date and time just to jerk her chain, then took the elevators to the second floor. It was just shy of my meeting time, so I turned on my computer and my personal coffeemaker, shoved my purse into the bottom drawer of my desk, then spun in my seat to place my briefcase—which held my study guide for tomorrow night’s test—inside one of three vertical filing cabinets adorning my office.

  I was still happy with my new digs. And even happier that I’d gotten them by solving not one but two murders. Well, solving may be a bit of a stretch, but I had been an integral part of unearthing the culprits, even if I did have some marginal help from Liam. Okay, so maybe marginal was a bit of a stretch, but it didn’t matter. Vain Dane had given me the private office with a view of City Place to lure me back to working at the firm. He’d fired me twice in six months, and I wasn’t about to return without some major perks.

  With the Egghardt file and ever-ready pad and pen in hand, I took the elevator to the fourth-floor executive suite. Ellen’s office was to the left of the elevator, off the circular lobby. I walked with co
nviction and the knowledge that five-and-a-half-inch heels were not the best walking shoes ever invented. But as my grandmother often said, “You have to suffer to be lovely.”

  I had just passed the conference room when Ellen called my name. Pivoting, I found her seated at the head of the long table, several boundary maps rolled out in front of her, the corners anchored by staplers.

  She checked her watch. “Very good.”

  Very early. “Good morning,” I said, refusing to allow her sarcastic tone to get under my skin. I placed my coffee and pad on the table at the spot to her left.

  “Are those your notes and the estate file?” she asked as she glanced up from the map.

  No, it’s my grocery list. “Yes, I knew you wanted to review it before Lenora gets here. Oh, and I hear congratulations are in order.”

  Ellen peered up through her mascara-free lashes. “Thanks.”

  Thanks? You’d think she’d be a tad more excited. It wasn’t like a daily thing to be named one of Florida’s “Top 100 Lawyers” in the Sunday paper.

  Dismissing the topic as if my comments were unimportant, Ellen read most of the pages in my file while I was left with nothing to do. Bored after seven minutes, I went to the coffeepot and refilled both our mugs. It wasn’t until I placed one next to Ellen that I noticed the faint smell of sweet pea, freesia, and hyacinth, and I realized she was wearing Acqua Di Gio perfume by Armani. The designer fragrance was at odds with her brown-and-green shapeless dress and Jesus sandals. The perfume was soft and feminine, when everything else about her screamed “I don’t give a shit what I look like!” She had about four inches of white-gray roots before curly red hair fell well below her shoulders. The woman is just weird. She doesn’t bother to wax her brows, yet she wears a seventy-dollar-an-ounce fragrance. I’d never known her to wear perfume, but then again, this was the first time I’d seen her so early in the morning. Apparently, she didn’t subscribe to the theory that perfume, like lipstick, requires reapplication during the day.