Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (10 page)

“Okay, I’m an idiot.
Mea culpa.
I will apologize to Charles personally. Enough.” Sulkily, I sipped my drink and attempted to change the subject by addressing Ingrid. “So how much trouble do you think you’re in here?”

She regarded me wanly. “I’ve been Alain’s personal secretary for nearly six years. I came to BGB right out of college, and I know where all the bodies are buried.” She flinched at her unfortunate choice of words but kept going. “Also, you weren’t the only one who saw us hissing at each other a few days ago in the conference room. Everyone else in the firm assumes that I was the latest in his long line of in-house lovers. How much trouble do you think I’m in?”

Margo leaned over and gave Ingrid a hug, and
Strutter
grabbed her hand sympathetically. I opened my mouth and put my big foot in it.
Again.
“I guess you’re right at the top of Diaz’ list.”

The three women stared at me as if I had just spit on the table.
“Uh, along with Vera
Girouard
, of course.
The wife is always the obvious suspect, especially when she has to put up with a procession of wife wannabes throwing themselves at her husband.”

Margo looked at
Strutter
and silently
mouthed,
wife wannabes?

“I’m sorry, Ingrid. We know you weren’t among them, but the general perception of your relationship was probably …” I trailed off miserably. Everyone at the table knew exactly what I meant. I liked Ingrid, and I totally believed that she was not personally involved with
Girouard
. But I couldn’t ignore that by all accounts, the man was damned near irresistible, and Ingrid was a lovely and available young woman. It was an old story with a familiar plot. I took a long sip of my drink and pulled myself together. “The question now is how do we get you off the list?”

Ingrid blinked at me, bewildered.
“We?”

Margo and
Strutter
raised their eyebrows at each other. Perhaps there was hope for this fool yet.

“Of course, we.
You know everything there is to know about Alain
Girouard’s
office life, and after six years as his secretary, you must know a good deal about his private life, too.

Ingrid shook her head.

“Of course you do. You have access to his computer, calendar,
address
book, and probably his financial records, unless I miss my guess.”

She shook her head again. “Most of the senior partners at BGB want their assistants to handle everything,” she began.

Margo snorted into her glass, and
Strutter
slapped her on the shoulder.

Ingrid frowned at them and continued. “But Alain kept his private life private, even from me. Other than knowing his wife’s name and birthday, the address of their house and Alain’s cell phone number, I didn’t know much about him at all.”

“I guess if you’re in the habit of
romancin
’ the hired help, that would be the only way to go,” Margo observed bluntly. “Otherwise, you’d have ex-
lady friends
tryin
’ to blackmail you six ways from Sunday,
pesterin
’ your wife, all kinds of untidy
goin’s
on.”

I returned to my point. “Whatever Ingrid knows is bound to be more than anyone else does, and what she doesn’t know about this firm,
Strutter
and Margo do. If they don’t, they have a pretty good idea of how to find out. Then there’s me. Everybody knows that I’m too new at BGB to have heard much of the gossip, so when we need someone to play dumb, I’m your girl. You know, that’s becoming an unattractive habit,” I said to Margo as she once again snorted with laughter.

“I’m
sorry,
Sugar, but you said it.”

“Let’s not forget your little stunt with the sign-in log,”
Strutter
chuckled.

Ignoring their hilarity, Ingrid gazed at me thoughtfully, her head tilted to one side. “You mean you’re going to try to help me? You would do that for me?”

“Well, of course we’re going to help you,” I said testily.
“Who else?
Do you think
Bellanfonte
or
Belasovich
or any of the other partners is going to spring to your defense? It’s not that they seriously think you’re guilty of knocking off
Girouard
. As far as they’re concerned maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t. They probably don’t even much care, but their clients will care. They’ve got to clean up this mess, look like they’re in charge, and at the moment, you’re the easiest person to pin this on. Silly little secretary, probably threw herself at the boss like a dozen others and then took it all too seriously, blah
blah
blah
. Believe me,
Ingrid,
they’re sitting in one of their offices right now trying to decide how fast they can put some serious distance between you and their firm without risking an unlawful discharge suit.”

Ingrid paled visibly. “But how can they prove I did something that I didn’t do? I can’t afford to lose my job,” she stammered.

I felt like a snake and softened my tone. “It may not come to that. They aren’t interested in proving it, just in regaining their clients’ confidence. They need to save some face here. They’ll probably suggest that you take an extended leave of absence—paid, of course, just until this thing is cleared up—and you will look guilty as sin by implication.”

Strutter
started to protest,
then
closed her mouth. She knew what I said was true.

I leaned across the table and met Ingrid’s eyes. “So we’ve got to figure out who did this, and we’ve got to do it quickly to minimize the damage. The police will be investigating, too, but they already have too many open investigations and limited manpower. We, on the other hand, can make this our top priority, and we will.” I looked around the table, daring anyone to demur.

A glimmer of hope dawned in Ingrid’s eyes as she glanced from me to Margo to
Strutter
. Margo reached across the table and patted my cheek.

Strutter
signaled a passing waiter. “Next round’s on me,” she announced, “but then we head home and try to get organized for Sunday’s memorial service. We’ve got to be prepared to dodge the press and still work the crowd for information. It will be a good chance to see who turns up looking nervous.” Our fresh drinks arrived, and we
clinked
glasses. “One for all, and all for one,” she pronounced.

I smiled wryly at her.
“Dean’s list at Trinity, huh?
Just my luck.”

She grinned back at me.

“I just knew you were a good one, Lawrence,” Margo said happily. “This is going to be some fun, y’all.”

We finished our drinks and exchanged cell phone numbers all around.
Strutter
and I left a little earlier than the others, she to tend to her son and I to tend to my three feline charges
who
would be impatient for their dinner.

After feeding Jasmine and Oliver in the kitchen and Moses in the guest room, I allowed the kitten to follow me out of the room.
The two geriatrics
had mellowed some in the past couple of days, and with full stomachs, they were likely to be less aggressive. I sat down on the top stair and awaited developments. Moses sat beside me, considering the twelve cliffs before him, each higher than his head. How to tackle these obstacles? Not being a mother cat, I had no idea how to teach him. I needn’t have worried.

First Jasmine, then Oliver, appeared at the foot of the stairs. Jas assumed her usual affronted pose, tail wrapped tightly around her front feet, but Ollie, always a gentler creature, allowed his curiosity to overcome his hostility. Cautiously, he padded up the stairs until he was nose to nose with Moses. I was ready to intervene at the first hiss, but Ollie merely sniffed the alarmed kitten from head to tail,
then
looked at me in disgust. He began licking Moses none too gently. Instead of being frightened, the kitten started to purr loudly. This, he understood.

After grooming Moses to his satisfaction, Ollie turned around and started back down the stairs. On the third step, he looked back and made a chirping noise I had never heard before. Moses dithered and waggled his little backside for a few seconds, then dropped his front paws over the edge and tumbled down two full steps.

“Okay, guys,” I said, scooping him up and carrying him past Jasmine to the first floor. “I think that’s enough progress for one day.” I deposited him in the living room, where Ollie sprawled comfortably on the floor, and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Jas picked out a spot in the middle of the front hall and hunkered down to watch thoughtfully. No hissing, fat tail or raised ruff, though.

I poured boiling water over my teabag and stepped around Jas to get into the living room. Moses capered happily around Ollie, occasionally batting at the older cat bravely with a tiny foot, then scampering away.

“So how’s it going, Dad?” I said, raising my mug to Ollie. His eyes were half-closed. Jas remained motionless and watchful in the hall.

I sipped my tea and considered the events of the past week, which had been numerous and momentous. Despite all of the drama at work, uppermost in my mind was the fact
that
six days ago, Armando had taken off for South America, and he had sounded dismayingly happy about it. Our telephone conversations had been spotty and unsatisfactory, consisting primarily of yelling, “What did you say?” to each other over a bad connection, when he could get through at all. Colombian phone service wasn’t the most reliable, and I still had no clear idea of how he was spending his time and with whom. It was unsettling to think of him so far away from me with people I had never met, speaking a language I didn’t understand, at home in a culture about which I knew nothing.

Will our attachment be strong enough to pull him back to me when this was all over?
I wondered.

As my mind wandered through the five years of our relationship, I tried to remember when it was that I really knew we were a couple, but I couldn’t remember any specific date or event. It had been more of a realization backed by small, but important, assurances of how important we had become to one another. I remembered a vacation trip, our first together, that we had taken to Disney World in Florida. Both of us had taken our children there many years previously, but we loved the idea of being able to explore at our leisure all of the EPCOT attractions that our kids had dismissed as “
Boorrrring
!” So off we went, and despite killer heat and aching legs, we had a ball.

At that time Armando had not yet become an American citizen, and he was particularly intrigued by the U.S. pavilion. We explored it on a morning when musical entertainment was offered. A crowd had formed in the building’s rotunda to listen to a splendid octet sing several patriotic numbers. Armando’s attention was glued to the singers, and I wandered quietly around the perimeter of the room examining the artifacts displayed on the walls. The music ended, and I stood back a bit from the dispersing tourists and looked for Armando. I spotted him right away, standing across the rotunda from me. He was searching the crowd wildly, a lost look in his eyes that gripped my heart. He was looking for me, I realized, and I instinctively moved through the crowd to reach him. When I got close enough, I raised my hand and waved. “Armando! I’m here!” His head turned toward my voice, eyes still searching, and then he saw me. His worried expression disappeared immediately, and we beamed at each other. As long as we were together, I realized at that moment, we would be okay, and I knew that Armando felt that, too. I sighed deeply, missing him.

Then there was
Girouard’s
murder and my surprising willingness, along with that of my new colleagues, to involve ourselves in trying to save Ingrid’s job and reputation. While I still smarted in what I felt was a demeaning role, I was buoyed by the strength and good humor of the other women in the firm who shared that role. Oh, there were a few dingbats and silly bimbos, but by and large, far from being the downtrodden little drones they might have been under the circumstances, the secretaries were a bright, capable bunch who seemed able to present an assured face to the world and let their bosses’ arrogance roll off their backs.

“We work for the money, Honey,” was how
Strutter
put it, and I had to admit that the pay and the benefits were excellent. When you have kids to educate and a family that needs health insurance, you do what you have to do, and these women did it with more grace than I could manage.