by Diana Palmer
“You mustn’t recognize me if you see me on the street,” Gaby cautioned her.
Madame made a face. “And what about my birthday party next month?” she asked haughtily.
“In six weeks I’ll either have what information we need, or I’ll be hanging from a penthouse apartment by a stocking with a gavel in my mouth.”
At which statement, everybody broke up.
* * *
HER SUITCASE PACKED with enough to keep her going for a week, Gaby took a cab to Mr. Chandler’s apartment. Everett was behind it all the way, in a black sedan.
She rang the doorbell at precisely 8:00 a.m.
There were voices muffled behind the door. One was deep and loud, one was high-pitched and loud. Abruptly they ceased, and the door opened.
Mr. Chandler looked at his watch. “Well, Ms. Dupont, at least you’re punctual.”
“So she can read a watch,” the Goth Girl said sarcastically. “But can she catalog books and answer the phone?”
“I have many talents, one of which is alligator wrestling,” she said with a straight face and looked directly at Mr. Chandler’s niece. He muffled a sound that could have been laughter. The girl glared at both of them and stomped off into her room.
CHAPTER TWO
CHANDLER LED THE way down the hall and showed Gaby to a room.
“It’s next to Jackie’s, but she doesn’t usually make too much noise,” he muttered as the occupant next door suddenly turned her stereo with a rap song up high enough that the walls shook.
“Turn that damned thing down!” he shouted.
There was an immediate response. Gaby hid a grin.
“She’ll try you,” he said.
She shrugged. “I got through four years of college. I’ll cope. Besides,” she murmured, “I brought a whole library of my favorite tunes.”
“Which are...?”
“Drum and bagpipe solos,” she said with a straight face.
He started to speak, thought better of it and laughed instead. “Put your stuff down and I’ll show you what I want done today. I don’t have long, if I’m going to make it to the office on time.”
“You’re the boss, though,” she pointed out as she followed his long strides down the carpeted hallway to his study.
“I have to set an example. If I show up whenever I please, the staff might follow suit.” He glanced at her with twinkling eyes. “Chaos would ensue.”
“I guess it would. Okay. What would you like done?”
He outlined several tasks that he wanted completed by the end of the day.
“And we employ a daily woman who also cooks for us,” he added. “She comes in at nine. You’ll like her. Tell her what you want for lunch and she’ll fix it.”
“Oh, I’ll eat anything. I’m not picky.”
“Don’t tell Jackie that, or she’ll have the cook make you fish stew. Trust me, you never want to eat it.” He made a face. “I told Jackie she couldn’t go out late dancing with her boyfriend one Saturday. Dinner that evening was forgettable. Really.”
She laughed. It was nice to know that the Goth Girl had ways of getting even, so that Gaby could forestall her. She knew her way around the kitchen, too. She’d just get to the daily woman first. She had an idea that there would be no truce even from her first day on the job.
* * *
SHE WAS RIGHT, in fact. She went into the kitchen at eleven, just after the Goth Girl had gone out with an airy description of her destination and a secret smile.
“Can I ask what Jackie ordered for lunch?” she asked the older woman.
The matronly cook and housekeeper, Tilly by name, just grinned. “Fish stew...?”
“Do you like quiche?” Gaby asked.
“Oh, I love it, but I can’t make it.”
“I can. I need a few things,” she added with a conspiratorial smile. The cook laughed and went to get them.
Gaby made an impressive quiche lorraine, complete with delicate crust. The cook, invited to share a slice, was enthralled with the result.
“You cook beautifully,” Tilly said.
“Thanks. My grandmother had me sent to a senior chef and taught to cook. She never learned, so I had to.” She didn’t add that the reason her grandmother never learned to cook was that she was filthy rich and employed a chef—in fact, the same chef who taught Gaby how to cook.
“Well, this is delicious. Should we save some for Jackie?”
“Oh, yes, we must,” Gaby said with impressive faked concern. “If she didn’t get anything to eat while she was out, she’ll be hungry.”
“I agree. I’ll make sure it’s put up properly.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
IT WAS AFTER dark when Jackie came home. She went right to Gaby’s room and opened the door without knocking. Gaby was sprawled across her bed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, with her long hair loose around her face, reading a book on her iPhone. She looked up, surprised.
“Well, I guess you’ve settled in,” the girl said haughtily. “Did you have a nice lunch?” she added wickedly.
“Very nice.” She got up and took Jackie by the arm. She pulled her to the door. “This—” she pointed to it “—is called a door. When you go to someone’s personal room, you knock.” She took Jackie outside and demonstrated. “Then the person inside can decide whether or not he or she wants you to come in.” She gave the girl a blithe smile. “We had quiche lorraine for lunch. There’s some left, in case you didn’t have time to eat.”
“Quiche...? But Tilly can’t make quiche,” she faltered.
“I can.” She smiled again, went back into her room, closed the door and locked it audibly.
Curses ensued from the other side of the door.
Gaby just laughed and went back to her book.
* * *
SUPPER THAT EVENING was a subdued affair. Jackie glared at Gaby and picked at her food, which was a macaroni-and-cheese casserole and asparagus, cooked by Tilly.
“How was school?” Chandler asked his niece.
“Boring. Tedious. I hate it!”
“Well, cheer up. When you’re seventeen or you graduate, whichever comes first, you can leave.”
Jackie glared at him, too. “I miss my old school!”
“You can always get on a plane and join your mother wherever she’s living in Europe,” he said, barely noticing her as he made notes on an iPad for court.
Jackie put her fork down and actually looked sick. “I’m full.”
He looked up. “Then you’re excused.”
“She’s not eating, either,” Jackie muttered, noting Gaby’s apparent lack of appetite.
“Oh, I’m still full from lunch,” Gaby said with a big grin.
“Were you here for lunch?” Chandler asked Jackie suddenly, looking up from the screen with hostile brown eyes.
“No,” Jackie said shortly.
Chandler looked at Gaby. “What did Tilly feed you?”
“She was going to make fish stew,” Gaby said, with a wry glance at Jackie, “but I suggested quiche instead.”
“Tilly can’t make those fancy dishes,” he began.
“I can,” Gaby replied. “I made the quiche.”
“You can cook?” he asked, startled.
“My grandmother had me professionally trained when I was about the age of the Goth Girl, here.” She indicated Jackie, who fumed and stood up, angrily.
“I am not a Goth Girl!” she almost screamed.
Gaby and Chandler both stared at her. She was wearing black pants and a black camisole. She had tattoos on both arms and pierced jewelry from her ears to her nose. She was wearing black nail polish and black lipstick.
“I can call you a Beatnik instead, if you like,” Gaby said pleasantly. “They wore black and hung around coffee shops playing bongo d
rums and reciting poetry. In fact, I know of such a club, right downtown.”
“That’s the Snapshot, right?” Chandler asked.
Gaby chuckled. “Yes, it is. The owner said that everybody snaps instead of claps and they drink shots of espresso, so the name just seemed right.”
“It actually does.”
“I do not play bongo drums,” Jackie growled. Not for worlds would she admit that she knew the place and loved to go there.
Gaby looked at her. “The original beatniks didn’t wear tattoos,” she remarked. “Did you know that they have actual tattooed human skin in one of the larger museums in the city?” she added.
Jackie made a horrible face. “I’m going to bed.”
“It’s just eight o’clock,” her uncle said.
“TV. I’ll go watch TV,” she muttered.
“There’s a new series about women in prison,” Gaby called after her. “It might give you some pointers.”
There were horrible curses, followed by a slamming door.
Gaby burst out laughing. “Sorry,” she told her boss contritely. “Couldn’t resist it.”
He shook his head. “You’ve got her standing on her ear. I haven’t been able to get so much as two words out of her since she’s been here.”
“She’s hurting,” Gaby said suddenly.
He scowled. “Excuse me?”
“Something or somebody has hurt her badly,” Gaby said simply. “Have you asked her why her mother wanted her to stay with you?”
He hesitated. “It wasn’t her mother. Jackie asked to come.”
“That must have taken a lot of guts, at her age,” was the soft reply. “I imagine her mother was insulted by it.”
His firm, chiseled lips opened on a breath. “She was. How did you know?”
“We all have tragedies in our pasts,” she said simply. “At a guess, her mother’s boyfriend did or said something inappropriate, or she’d still be with her mother. Tilly said she loved her mom.”
“She does. Not the new boyfriend, however. Frankly, I think he’s the worst kind of layabout, and he’s got a roving eye. I don’t know what the hell my sister sees in him.”
“Who can understand the leanings of a hungry heart?” She sighed and smiled.
“Have you ever felt them, Miss Dupont?” he asked pointedly.
She grimaced. She couldn’t tell him about the trauma that had kept her chaste for so many years. “I was too busy being educated to hang out with wild crowds. My grandmother paid for my education, but insisted that I not go to any, as she referred to them, party schools. So I ended up in one known for its academic excellence and I never went to a beer party or even dated much.”
He just stared at her, incredulous. “How old are you again?”
“Almost twenty-five,” she replied.
“And you don’t date?”
She cocked her head and stared at him. “Frankly, I find most men lacking.”
“Lacking what?”
“Manners, decorum, intellect, compassion, that sort of thing.” She smiled at him.
He let out a breath and shook his head. “At least you won’t be after me.”
“Mr. Chandler, I do not stalk fifty-year-old men!” she exclaimed haughtily.
He burst out laughing, recalling their first meeting, because she certainly knew he wasn’t yet out of his thirties.
“Just as well,” he commented after a minute. He sipped coffee. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me, anyway.”
“You can put a rose on top of that,” she agreed. “I’ve never indulged, so I don’t know what I’m missing. That’s my macro for my lifestyle. You’d be amazed how often I have to use it in the modern world.”
“Modern.” He made a face. “I was raised by traditionalists.”
“Me, too. It makes it hard to fit in. Even harder, because I don’t own or watch television.”
“You reactionary,” he accused.
“Guilty as charged.”
He finished his coffee. “I have briefs to work on.” He stood up. “If you want to watch any of the new movies, we have most of them on Prime video,” he said. “Feel free.”
She shook her head as she, too, stood up. “I read in my spare time.”
“Read what?” he wanted to know.
“Right now it’s Arrian.”
“Arrian?”
“And Quintus Curtius Rufus,” she added.
“Alexander. You like to read about Alexander the Third, called the Great,” he replied.
She nodded. “It truly fascinates me, that you can read something written almost two thousand years ago and feel what the author felt when he was writing it.” She paused. “It’s almost like having them speak to you, across the years.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s how I’ve always felt about it. I read the classic authors, as well.”
She smiled. “I wish more people did. They might have less pessimism about the future.”
He smiled back. “Yes. They might. How’s the cataloging coming?”
“Slowly,” she said. “But I’m getting them in some sort of order so that I can start. You have an impressive library.”
“It was more impressive before Jackie pitched a temper tantrum and overturned two bookcases,” he mused.
“We all have our issues. Perhaps a course in anger management...?”
“Please don’t suggest that where she can hear you,” he said with mock horror.
She grinned. “I’ll try. Good evening.”
He nodded. “Good evening to you, too.”
* * *
GABY WENT BACK to her room, pleasantly surprised by her boss’s laid-back attitude. But once she closed the door, through the walls came the loudest, most vulgar rap song Gaby had ever heard.
She reached in her closet for her recently purchased CD player, extricated a CD from its case and inserted it, placed it against the wall that adjoined Jackie’s, and maxed the volume. The exquisite strains of “Scotland the Brave,” played by a magnificent bagpipe band, almost shook the walls.
Within two minutes the rap music was abruptly turned down. Gaby turned off her boom box. She waited, poised over it, but the rap didn’t reoccur. So Gaby got into her silk gown, crawled into bed with her iPhone, turned off the light and read herself to sleep.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING the boss was missing from the breakfast table.
“Had to go in early to meet some important client,” Tilly sighed as she put delicately scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and biscuits on the table. That was followed with jars of preserves, all homemade.
“Tilly, this is wonderful,” Gaby told the cook, smiling.
Tilly glared at Jackie, who was picking at her food. “Nice to know that somebody appreciates my efforts,” she said and went back into the kitchen.
Gaby took another bite of her eggs and sipped black coffee. “What happened?” she asked the girl.
Jackie glared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“What happened to you, with your mother’s boyfriend?” Gaby persisted.
Jackie was so flustered that she dropped her fork. “Why...why would you think...?”
“Oh, give me a break,” Gaby muttered, staring at the girl. “You might as well be wearing a sign. Come on. Talk about it.”
Jackie’s whole face tautened. “He backed me into a wall and I couldn’t get away,” she said gruffly.
“Did he...hurt you?”
“No. But he tried. I told my mother.” Her eyes lowered. “She said I was lying, that he’d never do anything like that.”
“How did you get away from him?” Gaby asked.
She drew in a long breath. “I watched this movie. It’s about a female FBI agent, and she taught this lesson about SING, about how and where you can hit a man for the bes
t effect. I did the groin pull. Oh, boy, did he let me go. I ran into my room and locked it, and he cussed for five minutes straight. Then Mama came home and I told her. And she didn’t believe me.”
Gaby felt her anguish. “Something similar happened to me,” she said tautly, not going into details. She didn’t add that it was her own grandfather who’d sold her to the foreign man, or the details. That would have been much too personal at the moment.
“It sucks, the way some men are,” Jackie said.
“It does,” Gaby agreed. She looked up. “Your mother will come to her senses one day and she’ll apologize.”
“Yeah? Well, it doesn’t help much right now, does it?” she muttered.
“No. It doesn’t.” She studied the younger woman and saw beneath the flashy black makeup and the piercings to a basically shy and introverted person who had a sensitivity that she carefully hid.
Jackie drew in a long breath. “I’ve been a horror. My uncle Nick has the patience of a saint, but he should have thrown me out.”
“You’re his niece,” she said. “He’d never do that.”
She looked up. Her dark eyes were full of pain and bad memories. “It wasn’t the first time,” she said and averted her gaze. “I just didn’t tell her about the first one. She was getting over my dad dying, and I figured she was trying to hide her grief in a new romance.”
“Your father died?” she asked gently.
Jackie nodded. “He drowned one summer when we were at a resort on an island in the Caribbean. There was a red flag warning about riptides, but he ignored them. He was depressed about his job. He was about to lose it, and it hurt his pride that my mother had all the money on her side of the family. She said he did it on purpose. I miss him...”
“My father and mother died together,” Gaby told her. “They were on a dig, in Africa. Their jeep overturned.”
Jackie grimaced. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen,” she said. “I went to live with my grandmother. She’s the kindest person I’ve ever known.” She cocked her head. “How old were you, when you lost your father?”