Fast Women

  He followed her out and pulled a chair around to face her. “Give it up.”

  She told him everything while he drank his Scotch, and when she was finished, she said, “I feel like hell. You should have seen the look on Suze’s face when I asked Margie about her mom’s dishes.”

  “Helena was dressed up and she had her good jewelry on,” Gabe said.

  Nell nodded.

  “She really did kill herself.” Gabe sighed and sat back, and she scowled at him.

  “You sound relieved.”

  “I am. I was afraid she’d been murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Nell said. “What’s going on?”

  “That car title was dated two weeks after Margie’s mom died. And there’s no record of any case that my dad was working on for Trevor at that time, plus he would have billed him for anything straight.”

  “Oh,” Nell said.

  Gabe nodded. “We still don’t know why Trevor handed over the car, but at least it wasn’t to help him cover up a murder.”

  Nell thought about it. “And you think this is all connected to the blackmail at O&D. And to Lynnie.”

  “That’s one guess.”

  Nell sighed. “I wouldn’t have your job for anything. No wonder you’ve been in such a lousy mood all week.”

  “Hey,” Gabe said. “I think I’ve been very open-minded, considering your track record.”

  “You’ve been a bastard,” Nell said. “But you’re right, I deserved it.”

  “No, you didn’t. You’re right. I’ve been in a lousy mood.”

  “So what are you like when you’re not in a lousy mood?” Nell said, settling back to sip her drink.

  “Pretty much the same,” Gabe said. “My way or the highway.”

  “That stung, did it?” Nell shook her head, remembering. “She was something else. You know, at the bank, when she offered me that partnership, I almost wanted to take it. She was really seductive. She kept saying if we worked together we could really do some damage.”

  “You told me,” Gabe said. “It was my least favorite part.”

  “The thing is, I liked her,” Nell said, remembering Lynnie’s sharp face and vibrating energy. “I knew I shouldn’t, but I really did. She was so alive. She didn’t let any guy get her down. I wanted to be like her.”

  “May I just say thank you for the rest of my gender for not joining her? Talk about a nightmare.” He tossed back the rest of his Scotch as she frowned at him.

  “Oh, thank you very much. Could you please remember I’m on your side?” She looked at him, squared for battle, and met his eyes.

  They weren’t hostile.

  “I not only remember,” he said, “I’m counting on it.”

  After a long moment during which she tried to remember what they’d been talking about, he put his glass on the floor and stood, saying, “I’m keeping you up.” She followed him to the door, and he turned back when she opened it for him. “Just a suggestion, but you might not want to open the door to strangers in your pajamas.”

  “I knew it was you,” Nell said. “And these things cover everything I’ve got. Big deal.”

  Gabe shook his head and went out into the night, and Nell locked the door behind him and went back upstairs to crawl into bed with Marlene. Marlene looked at her with unimaginable pain in her eyes. “Oh, right, I owe you a biscuit.” She fished it out of her pocket and held it out to the dog.

  Marlene’s eyes were half-lidded and she looked as though she were on her last breath.

  “I’m sorry it took so long,” Nell said, still holding out the biscuit. “The boss showed up. Looking pretty damn good, I might add. And here I am in old pajamas. He complained. Maybe I should get some new ones. Snazzier ones.”

  Marlene’s half lids began to look more like contempt than death.

  “You’re right,” Nell said. “What are the chances he’ll ever stop by after bedtime again?” She stretched farther to give the dog the biscuit, and Marlene turned her head away, overcome.

  “Take it or lose it,” Nell said, and Marlene took it gently and lay on her back, staring woefully into space.

  “Chew,” Nell said, and Marlene gave up and rolled over and scarfed the biscuit down. Then she sighed and snuggled down into the chenille, and Nell scooted over and patted the bed next to her. “Come here, baby.”

  Marlene picked up her long nose, considered the spot, and lay back down again.

  “Oh, thanks,” Nell said, and pulled the chenille throw up farther on the bed, next to her. Marlene sighed and staggered to her feet, dragging her long body up the bed to flop on top of the chenille against Nell’s stomach. “There,” Nell said, scratching her behind the ear as she snuggled down next to her. “Isn’t that better?”

  Marlene yawned, but she didn’t flutter, so Nell took it as assent.

  “We’re proud, independent women, Marlene,” Nell said, trying not to think of Gabe standing dangerous in the dark. “We don’t need men.”

  Marlene looked at her with definite contempt and then buried her face in the chenille and went to sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  “Thank you,” Gabe said when Nell brought in a package the next morning. She was wearing a bright blue sweater and a short navy skirt, nothing like the slim gray suits she’d been sporting since he’d hired her, and not much like the tissue-thin flannel pajamas she’d had on the night before, either. He was never going to be able to look at an Eeyore with innocent eyes again. And now there was this new outfit to contend with: The blue sweater made her hair seem even brighter, and the short skirt showed a lot of her legs, which were terrific.

  “A guy just dropped this off,” Nell said, and he stopped looking at her legs to take the package.

  “Tell Riley this came,” he said as he opened it.

  “What is it?”

  “Police report on Helena Ogilvie’s suicide.”

  “Oh,” Nell said and went to get Riley.

  An hour later, he looked at Riley and said, “It’s not tight.”

  Riley raised his eyebrows. “She got dressed up. Margie was on the phone with Trevor when she shot herself. The gun had been in the house for years. She left a note, for Christ’s sake.”

  Gabe shook his head, wanting it to be a suicide and less sure than ever before. “I don’t like the coincidence that Trevor was on the phone when she pulled the trigger. I don’t like any coincidences, but that one in particular stinks.”

  “Not necessarily,” Riley said. “Margie was telling him that Helena was acting strangely. He told Margie to take her to a hospital. That’s logical.”

  “He made the call,” Gabe said. “At exactly the right time.”

  “Maybe Helena heard them on the phone and decided she wasn’t going to a hospital. Maybe she figured if Margie was on the phone, she’d have help when she heard the shot.”

  Gabe pulled the photos back from Riley’s side of the desk. They were hard to look at, not because of any gore, which was minimal, but because Helena Ogilvie was so pathetic, a small, chubby woman dressed in a good silk suit who should have been at a garden show or a bridge game and not sprawled dead in her garage, her diamond-encrusted hands splayed on old oil spots. “I don’t think the cop who did this report thought it was a suicide, either,” he said. “Look at all these photos. Look at all the interviews he did. Jack Dysart, for Christ’s sake. He was looking for something.”

  “And he didn’t find it,” Riley said. “I vote for suicide.”

  “I want a second opinion,” Gabe said and buzzed Nell.

  “I’m not asking Margie anything else,” she said when she came in.

  “Come here,” Gabe said. “Look at this.”

  Nell came around to his side of the desk and looked over his shoulder and took a step back. “Oh, no.”

  She turned away, and he said, “Stop being such a baby.”

  “Don’t spring stuff like that on me,” Nell said. “Warn me.”

  “This is Helena Ogilvie,” Gabe said patien
tly.

  “I guessed that,” Nell said. “The hole in her head was a dead giveaway.”

  “She wrote three suicide notes, threw two into her wastebasket, got dressed in her best suit, went downstairs, smashed some china, talked to her daughter, went out into her garage and shot herself,” Gabe said. “What’s wrong with that story?”

  “I’d never kill myself if Jase was there,” Nell said promptly. “You don’t do that to your kids.”

  “People do,” Riley said. “Plus, she was clearly nuts. That china bit?”

  “No, I understand the china bit,” Nell said. “That wasn’t crazy. Getting dressed up sounds crazy.”

  “No,” Riley said. “Suicides like to look nice.”

  “That’s it?” Gabe said to Nell, feeling let down. “She wouldn’t have killed herself in front of Margie? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

  Nell looked at him with exasperation, which was understandable. “Look, I didn’t even know this woman.” She pushed the photos away. “And I’m not going to get to know her from these. From what I have gathered, she wasn’t very bright, but she was nice, and she just couldn’t cope after Trevor left her, and I can understand that, too.”

  She looked back at the photos, clearly miserable, and Gabe felt a pang of guilt.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sorry. You can go.” He shook his head at Riley. “So Trevor didn’t give Dad the car to cover up a murder. We should celebrate.”

  “I can see you’re thrilled.” Riley leaned forward and picked up one of the photos. “Okay, if you’re that uneasy, let’s do this again. What in all of this mess doesn’t sound right? No matter how loony.”

  “Killing herself in the garage in a silk suit?” Gabe said. “I can’t get those oil stains on the garage floor out of my mind.” He spread the photos out on the desk. “She could have gone upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. Why kill yourself in a garage?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to get the bathroom messy,” Nell said, wincing as she looked at the photos. “Maybe—”

  “You’ve got to do better than that,” Riley said to Gabe. “Suicides do strange things. Hell, she was shooting herself in the head. What did she care if her suit got dirty?”

  “It’s such a cold place to kill yourself,” Gabe said. “And—” He stopped, aware that Nell was staring at one of the pictures, a close-up of the entry wound. “Don’t look at that one.” He shifted the pictures, trying to find one from farther away, but Nell picked up the close-up.

  “Where are her earrings?” she said.

  “What?” Gabe took the photo from her.

  “She’s not wearing earrings. If she was dressed up, she would have had earrings on.” Nell swallowed. “Margie said her mom put on her best jewelry.”

  “Diamond rings,” Gabe said. “She had them on both hands.” He shuffled through the photos to find the ones of Helena’s hands. “Three rings,” he said, showing the pictures to Nell. “Her wedding and engagement rings on her left hand, and this ring with diamonds in a circle on it on her right.”

  Nell shook her head. “Not enough. She’d have had earrings on.” She shuffled through the photos until she found one taken from farther away. “And I would bet there was a necklace, too, and maybe a bracelet or a brooch. There, see? She’s wearing a diamond circle pin. But no earrings. She wouldn’t have dressed up and not put earrings in.”

  “That ring is weird,” Riley said, and they both looked at him, and he pointed to the circle ring on Helena’s right hand. “Well, look at it. It’s not a normal setting. It’s a flat circle with diamonds embedded in it, and the band doesn’t run under the circle. That’s not something every jeweler would carry.”

  Gabe leaned forward to look at the picture of Helena’s right hand, and Nell leaned to see, too, warm against his shoulder. The ring was too small for Helena’s pudgy finger, and her flesh puffed up through the center of the diamond-encrusted circle.

  “It’s ugly,” Nell said. “Why would anybody design a ring like that? The circle pin, sure, but a ring?”

  “Part of a set?” Riley said. “To match the pin?”

  “Ask Margie,” Gabe said to Nell.

  “No,” Nell said. “If that ring was part of a set, there are other ways to find out. I’m not upsetting her again.”

  Riley said, “Maybe she just forgot the earrings,” but he didn’t sound sure anymore.

  “Maybe.” Gabe opened his desk drawer and pulled out his phone book. “Take that picture of the ring and hit jewelers who have been in business since before 1978,” he told Riley as he leafed through the white pages. “Talk to the oldest employee. See if anybody recognizes it.” He ran his finger down the page and picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Nell said.

  “Robert Powell,” Gabe said.

  “Who?” Riley said.

  “The cop on the case.” Gabe said, gesturing to the signature at the bottom of the report. “I think we need to talk.”

  * * *

  An hour later, while Nell was still trying to get rid of the memory of the pictures, Lu came by the office.

  “He’s in there,” Nell said. “Don’t annoy him, he’s having a rough day.”

  “I’m not going to annoy him,” Lu said. “I’ve decided to stay and go to school.”

  “Really?” Nell sat back. “Well, we’re all grateful. What changed your mind?”

  “In a way, you did,” Lu said, smiling at her. “Thank you.”

  “I did?”

  Lu opened the door and went in, and Nell heard her say, “Good news, Daddy,” before she closed the door.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she said to the empty office. She’d met Lu three times, and she hadn’t said much of anything the second or third times because Jase—

  “Oh, no.” Don’t let it be Jase. They’d date, and then Jase would break up with her because he always did, and Lu would be devastated because what girl wouldn’t be devastated at losing Jase, and Gabe would …

  She picked up the phone and dialed Jase’s apartment and got his machine. “This is your mother,” she said. “If you’re dating Lu McKenna, stop it right now. I’m not kidding.” She started to hang up, and then added, “I love you.” Then she banged the receiver down.

  Lu came out of the office, smiling. She nodded at Nell and whispered, “He’s really happy. Ask him for something.”

  “Tell me this is not about Jase,” Nell whispered back.

  Lu’s smile widened. “I don’t need to go to Europe. I have all the excitement I need right here. Really, you did an excellent job raising that man.”

  “Boy,” Nell said. “He’s a boy. You’re children.”

  Lu shook her head. “Parents,” she said, and went out the door with a backward wave of her hand.

  “Oh, God,” Nell said.

  “What’s wrong?” Gabe said, and Nell jumped a foot in her chair.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, clutching the desk.

  “I just wanted to say thanks,” he said, looking at her, mystified. “Lu said you’re responsible for her changing her mind about Europe.”

  “Not true,” Nell said. “Absolutely not. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Okay,” Gabe said. “What’s this about?”

  “Nothing.” Nell turned back to her computer. “I’m just typing here. Go back to work.”

  “Look, I’m grateful you talked Lu out of Europe.”

  “I didn’t,” Nell said, keeping her back to him. “Not me. Go away now, I have to work.”

  “Sooner or later, you’ll tell me,” Gabe said.

  Over my son’s dead body, Nell thought.

  “Okay, fine, be that way.” He turned to go back into his office. “Oh. I’ve got an appointment at nine tomorrow morning with Robert Powell.”

  “Got it,” Nell said, opening the appointment file. She concentrated on work the rest of the day, trying to ignore Jase and Helena lurking in the back of her mind. By the time she got home to Marlene, she
was so unsettled that she sat on the daybed with the dog in her lap and just cuddled her until she felt better. Really, she didn’t see how people got through the day without a dog. She spared one guilty thought to Farnsworth, getting through his days without Marlene, and then decided she was being oversensitive. He’d called her a little bitch; clearly he didn’t love her. Marlene moaned in Nell’s lap, and Nell said, “Yeah, that’s the kind of day I had, too. Biscuit?”

  A little later when Nell was chopping peppers on her drainboard for dinner and eating half of what she chopped, Jase called.

  “I have this really weird message from you on my machine,” he said. “Are you on medication or something?”

  “No, but I will be if you don’t stay away from Lu McKenna,” Nell said. “I’m not kidding. Her father is nobody to mess with. That man has guns registered in his name.”

  “Mom,” Jase said. “Chill. This is between me and Lu.”

  “Until her father finds out. Then it’s you and the emergency room.”

  “Well, then, don’t tell him,” Jase said, completely unfazed. “You worry too much.”

  “I have things to worry about,” she told him, but when she’d hung up, she looked around her cheerful kitchen and thought, Maybe not. Maybe the bad times were over. She’d survived her first week at work, she had a new place to live, things could only get better. Maybe Lynnie was in a better place, too. Maybe she’d blackmailed Trevor Ogilvie and was now living the good life. Nell had no regrets about Trevor Ogilvie losing money to Lynnie. He was the one who’d driven Margie’s mother to suicide. The hell with him.

  She and Marlene reclined on the daybed and ate salad and dog biscuits, crunching together companionably, and then they went upstairs to Suze’s bed, Nell carrying Marlene’s chenille throw. She changed into the plain blue silk pajamas that Suze had given her for her birthday—“Where’s the black lace in my life, Marlene, that’s what I want to know”—and then climbed into bed and read until they both fell asleep.

  Nell woke up several hours later to a pitch-black bedroom and a strange sound in her bed. It took her a moment to fumble through her sleep and figure out the noise, but then she woke up completely.