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