Читать книгу The Case of the Missing Secretary - Diana Palmer - Страница 8

Kit found the cabdriver without great difficulty. Yes, he did remember an elderly woman with a limp. He’d taken her to the bus station.

With fervent thanks, Kit rushed over to the bus station. One of the ticket agents remembered a silver-haired woman with a limp. She’d taken a bus to San Antonio.

Kit groaned. She shouldn’t have taken time to change clothes and eat lunch. By the time she could get to San Antonio, Tansy would be long gone.

She went back to the office, downcast and gloomy, to tell Dane what she’d found out.

“Chris mentioned a relative in San Antonio named Emmett, but I don’t know if he’s got the same last name as Logan and Chris.”

But Dane only grinned. “No problem,” he said. “I’ve got a contact in San Antonio who owes me a favor. This will be a great time to collect.”

“Will I need to go out there?” she asked hesitantly.

“Of course not. Logan only wants to know where she is. We won’t be obliged to follow her. Not yet, anyway,” he added with a knowing smile.

Kit was given a new assignment, one which wasn’t quite as interesting as trying to find an elderly needle in a haystack. A man wanted his wife followed to see if she was two-timing him. This was relatively easy for Kit to do, especially since the woman seemed bent on a shopping spree.

Staying a little behind the woman, Kit was just congratulating herself on her stealth when Logan Deverell loomed up in her path and brought her to a standstill.

“Where is the Dawson file?” he demanded. “Some private detective you are, you can’t even put things in their proper place!”

Kit could have hit him. The woman she’d been shadowing couldn’t possibly have missed hearing her loud ex-boss denouncing her. Sure enough, the woman gave her a startled glance and dived toward the nearest cab.

“There, look what you’ve done,” Kit cried, exasperated. “I’m on a case! I was shadowing a client, for heaven’s sake…!”

“I want the Dawson file,” he said. “None of those would-be secretaries have any idea how to find it. You’ve got to come back with me. I’m going to lose my most influential client if you don’t.”

“I should care?” she burst out.

He glowered down at her. His dark eyes narrowed with irritation. “You’re costing me time,” he muttered, slamming back the immaculate white cuff of his shirt so that he could see the gold watch embedded in the thick, curling black hair on his muscular wrist.

“I was on a case,” she pointed out. “You hijacked me. Speaking of hijacking—”

He was pulling her along as she spoke. “Can’t you be quiet for two minutes running?” he asked conversationally. “All you need to do is find a file. What’s so difficult about that?”

While she was trying to formulate it in words of one syllable that he might be able to understand, he helped her into his gray Lincoln.

I’m crazy, that’s what I am, Kit thought as he got in under the wheel. He’s blown an assignment for me, fired me, humiliated me and here I am letting him lead me to his office to work for him on my own time! Well, actually, she admitted it was on Dane’s time.

“Have you found my mother yet?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“We’re working on it,” she said.

He cocked a busy eyebrow. “I thought you were in charge of the case?”

“I am. But I lost her at the bus station.”

He chuckled. “My mother wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.”

“She would and did, to escape surveillance. Doesn’t she have a relative named Emmett in San Antonio?” she persisted, remembering only then that Chris had warned her never to mention him.

“Oh, yes,” he said with a vicious glare. “Emmett lives in San Antonio, as near as not. But I guarantee she wouldn’t go there. Nobody in the family will go near the place. You’d have to be out of your ever-loving mind to want to go and see Emmett, even if you were hiding out from the police!”

The man must be a holy terror, she thought. He was Logan’s cousin, of course. Probably it ran in the family.

“Where does he live?” she asked, and whipped out a pad and pen.

“I told you, she wouldn’t go there!”

“Humor me.”

He shrugged. “His name is E. G. Deverell.” He gave her the address. She jotted it down and stuck the pad back into her purse. Now she had something concrete to go on. She felt like a real detective.

“You can’t really like following people around for a living,” he said. He glanced at her and back at the road. “I’ve bought a new computer for the office. It’s got a sixty megabyte hard drive and all sorts of software, including a user-friendly word processing program. I bought a laser printer, too,” he added. “And the system does forms.”

She’d been begging for that sort of system for over a year. He’d argued that it wasn’t necessary and he had better ways to spend his money.

“How nice,” she said. “For your new secretary. Secretaries, that is,” she added with a spiteful smile. “Three, isn’t it?”

He made a rough sound under his breath. “I don’t see what your problem is!” he raged. “I’ve lost my temper with you before. You never walked out on me!”

“You never allowed one of your women to treat me like an indentured servant before,” she countered.

He shifted uncomfortably. “She asked for a cup of coffee.”

“Excuse me,” she said. “She demanded a cup of coffee, and then threw it at me because it was too strong. When I suggested that she might like to go to the restaurant on the first floor and get a cup there, she flew into a rage and called me several names that I won’t repeat. Then, the minute she saw you coming, she dissolved into helpless tears.”

“She said you threw the coffee at her,” he returned, narrowing one eye. “And you aren’t the most even-tempered of women.”

“Oh, but I am, as long as I’m not within half a mile of you,” she replied venomously.

He had to stifle a smile at the way she was looking at him. How he’d missed these bouts with Kit. The three women he’d had to hire to replace her were frightened of him. Poor Melody was hopelessly intimidated by spelling and her distant cousin Logan. She could type very quickly, though, and she was efficient.

Harriet, the tallest of the three, could file and do payroll accounts, but she hated everyone in the office and smoked like a chimney.

Then there was Margo, who spelled like a dictionary and wanted nothing more than to seduce him.

Logan, though, had eyes for no one except Betsy, who made his blood run hot and wild through his veins. He didn’t want to get married, but it was the only way he was ever going to possess the delectable Betsy. So he’d given in, against his better judgment, and nothing had gone right in his life since he’d proposed. He was no nearer to coaxing Betsy into his bed and he’d lost Kit. Amazing, he thought, how empty the world was without Kit in it. He had no one to talk to anymore. Betsy hardly listened to him, and certainly paid more attention to where they went and who they saw than what they did.

“Betsy was no threat to your job,” he told her. “I don’t combine my personal relationships with my business ones. I thought you knew that.”

She knew that he was going to marry Betsy, and she couldn’t bear it. Not only was she losing the only man she’d ever loved, but she was losing him to a woman who’d cut his heart out and roast it over a pile of blazing hundred-dollar bills. Betsy would take him for every cent he had. She glanced over at him curiously. How, she wondered, could a man with a brain such as his be so terminally stupid when it came to women?

“You aren’t going to be happy working in a detective agency,” he persisted.

“But I am,” she corrected. She smiled smugly. “I’m treated like a person there. When I do something right, I get praised for it. When I do something wrong,” she added with a meaningful look, “nobody rages at me in disgusting language and threatens to feed me my handbag.”

“How boring.”

She smothered a laugh and looked away.

“You miss me, damn you,” he murmured, smiling at her averted face. “Our daily battles kept you going when nothing else did. You loved trying to get one up on me. Remember the day the Brazilian businessmen came to the office and you spent thirty minutes trying to speak Spanish to them?”

“You told me they spoke it.”

“You should have known that the national language of Brazil is Portuguese. Anyway, you got even.”

“Indeed I did,” she recalled with a grin. “I borrowed one of the girls from the secretarial pool who spoke no English and sent her in to take dictation from you while I took a two-hour lunch break.”

“I almost broke your neck,” he said shortly. “She sat there and nodded and smiled at me for thirty minutes before I realized that she didn’t understand a word I said.”

“The girls in the next office did.” She chuckled. “They said you were very eloquent. In fact, one of them wanted to have you arrested.”

“The good old days,” he said wistfully. He glared at her. “Now I have two helpers who get down on their knees and thank God when I leave the office, and a third who spends her life trying to bend me back over my own desk.”

“Oh, my,” she said.

“You might pretend to be sympathetic. It’s uncomfortable to work in that kind of environment.”

“Now you know how women feel,” she replied.

He glared at her. “I don’t recall ever chasing you around the office or trying to bend you over a desk!”

More’s the pity, she wanted to say. But she only replied, “No, sir, you never did.”

“Do you know, I’ve actually thought about reporting her for harassment?”

“If she makes you that uncomfortable, why not just fire her?”

“Because she can spell, Morris.” He exploded. “She can spell! That’s something neither of the others can do!”

“You could ask the agency to send you someone with good spelling skills.”

“I did,” he replied tersely. “They sent me Margo of the peekaboo bosom.”

She put her face in her hands, but she couldn’t stem the laughter.

“Come back,” he invited roughly. “I’ll give you a raise. You can have a new desk. I’ll fix the damned window that sticks.”

“I’m very tempted,” she said, and meant it. But she’d never be able to stomach Betsy at close range. “But I like my new job too much to quit now.”

“I hope Dane isn’t assigning you anything dangerous.”

“Now, see here,” she began defensively.

“Here we are!” He stopped the car, helped her out and escorted her into the building and up the elevator to his office.

“Now,” he said, opening the door for her. “Find that file!”

She blinked twice before she walked into the luxurious carpeted office. The spot where Betsy had thrown coffee at her three weeks before was still there. No one had come to clean it up. The coffeemaker was standing empty and very dirty. Three desks were piled high with file folders and stacks of correspondence. Diskettes for the computer were lying around, out of their jackets. One of the women had gray hair and was very tall. She was smoking and her ashes were everywhere. Another was talking on the telephone, apparently to someone male. She smiled at Logan and deliberately leaned forward to show her cleavage.

“Hello, Margo,” Kit said sweetly.

“Hi! How did you know my name?” the girl replied, and suddenly went back to the voice on the other end of the line.

“Cute,” Logan muttered.

Kit walked toward the third desk, the only neat one, where a third woman, plain and harassed-looking, was flipping through files.

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” she told Logan in an apprehensive tone. She looked about twenty, a country-looking girl with a patent vulnerability in her face, and Kit felt a surge of sympathy for her.

“Here, let me help,” Kit said kindly. Laying aside her purse, she bent over the stack and in seconds, extricated the one Logan had demanded. “Here.”

He took it and glared at the young woman.

“How could I know that it would be filed under Portfolios?” she asked plaintively. “I’m new…!”

“I’m Kit Morris.” Kit introduced herself.

“I’m Melody Cartman,” came the reply. She glanced toward Logan, who was making a telephone call. “You used to work here, didn’t you? No wonder you left! See Harriet over there? She’d stopped smoking for ten years when she came to work here. Now she’s gone back. She’s smoking three packs a day, and she’s got a bottle of Scotch in her desk!”

“I can understand why,” Kit mused. Logan, buried in his file, hadn’t noticed them discussing him.

“Margo isn’t afraid of him. She likes men. Especially rich ones. He has a girlfriend and she’s terrible. She expects us to stop everything and wait on her. Not to his face, of course,” she muttered. “She’s sweetness and light the minute he walks in the door.”

“Now you know why I don’t work here anymore.”

“He’s my third cousin,” Melody groaned, glancing at him. “He’s just like one other terrible member of the family. If I’d had any idea he was like this, I’d never have let Tansy talk me into this job. But the company I worked for went bust and I just couldn’t bear to go back to San Antonio.” She hesitated. “I’m stuck here!”

“Listen,” Kit said, raising her voice, “we’re short one detective at the agency where I work….”

“Shut up, Morris,” Logan said menacingly as he slammed the telephone receiver back onto the cradle. “You aren’t stealing any of my people.”

He moved away and Melody groaned. “See? We’re slaves. He owns us! I’ll never see my apartment again…!”

“There, there, it will be all right. I’ll take a few minutes and explain my filing system to you. Then you won’t have this problem again.”

Melody dabbed at her brown eyes and pushed back her thick, blond-streaked light brown hair. It was very long, and she had a sweetly rounded face and freckles. Kit liked her at once. “I think Harriet carries one of those electrical weapons in her purse,” Melody told Kit. “Wouldn’t you like to borrow it? You could do him in before you leave. I swear to God, none of us would ever tell on you!”

Kit chuckled. “I believe you, but he’s really not worth the sacrifice. Let’s get to work.”

It only took thirty minutes to teach Melody the basics of the filing system, and then Kit gave Melody her telephone number for future emergencies.

“He doesn’t like you to know it,” Kit added, “but there’s a smokeless ashtray in the closet. Two of them, in fact. He used to smoke cigars.”

“He doesn’t smoke cigars anymore.”

“I know.”

“He smokes cigarettes now. Thin brown ones.”

“Marijuana?” Kit exclaimed.

Melody laughed. “Oh, no. Those little cigars, what do they call them? Cigarillos, I think!”

“Not in here, I hope?”

“Yes. Between him and Harriet, I’m a stretcher case with my sinuses.”

“Use those ashtrays.”

Melody brightened. “If I suggest it, maybe he’ll fire me!”

“You needn’t look so optimistic. Now that you know my filing system, you’re worth your weight in rubies.”

“Drat!”

“If you can become an ace speller, he’ll get rid of Margo,” she whispered.

Melody’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll hire a tutor!”

“Good luck!”

Kit walked into Logan’s office as she had for the past three years, without knocking. But she realized at once that she’d made a mistake.

Somehow, Betsy must have gotten into the office while she was occupied with Melody. Betsy was there now, blonde and fragile, in Logan’s arms.

The sight of them that way made something delicate inside Kit go brittle and shatter. Logan’s dark head bent over that bright one, his enormous body sheltering hers, his arms compelling her against the powerful length of him, his mouth devouring and insistent on the woman’s lips.

He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Kit with the desire and physical enslavement still glittering in his dark eyes.

“Well?” he asked huskily.

Kit didn’t say a word. She turned and closed the door behind her, trying not to remember the snide look on Betsy’s exultant face as she went. That had been a setup. Betsy knew how she felt about Logan. Everyone knew, except Logan himself.

She gathered her purse and said a quick goodbye to Melody, pausing only to wave at Margo and Harriet before she walked to the elevator.

The stupid conveyance would be on the bottom floor, she muttered to herself. She jabbed viciously at the down button and was almost resigned to going down the staircase when Logan and Betsy came along to stand beside her.

“We’ll drop you off,” Logan said carelessly. “We have a luncheon appointment.”

Kit looked from Betsy, immaculate in a gray silk suit and an ermine coat, to Logan in his blue pin-striped suit and handmade silk tie. Yes, they complemented each other. She’d been living in a fool’s paradise to imagine a man such as Logan would ever give her a second look. She was a teacher’s daughter with no special beauty or talents. He was related to royalty somewhere in his ancestry and had gobs of money. She held Betsy in contempt for coveting his status and wealth, but he’d probably think that Kit was eager for it as well if she’d ever tempted him deliberately as Margo and Betsy had.

Just as well, she thought, that she’d been allowed to get out when she did. Soon, she’d never have to see Logan again. Betsy would make sure of that.

“I do hope you haven’t been trying to tell Logan any of that silly gossip about me,” Betsy drawled with a cool smile. “I don’t chase men for money. I don’t have to. I have money of my own.”

Certainly she did. Bill Kingsley’s money. Kit’s blood ran hot every time she thought about the poor, kind old man. He must have been easy pickings indeed for this blonde toad. And here was Logan, waiting in line to be next.

“Some women do chase men for money, though,” Kit said quietly. She studied the other woman with cold curiosity. “One of my neighbors was chased after he won a lottery. His name was Bill Kingsley.”

Betsy’s face whitened. She averted it. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Kit said easily. “He used to live in my apartment building, about the time he won the small lottery.”

“You said he did live in your building? I suppose he left when he won the money?” Betsy asked with assumed politeness, but an underlying nervousness that was visible.

“He left, all right. The lottery wasn’t too much, but it was more than he’d ever had. When he found out, he celebrated by buying drinks for everyone at the bar around the corner. That was where he met a young woman who started being nice to him and let him take her around. She was young and pretty and he was a lonely old man with no family. He fell in love with her. She repaid him for his kindness by taking him for every penny he had. She even managed to cost him his savings. After she left, he couldn’t believe he’d been such a fool. He simply couldn’t live with it. He committed suicide.” Kit shook her head, her eyes never leaving Betsy’s paper-white face. “If I were that woman, I’d choke on my own greed. And I’d deserve to.”

“None of that has anything to do with Betsy!” Logan said angrily.

“No, of course not,” Kit replied, smiling at him. “Did I say that it had?”

“It’s all right, Logan,” Betsy said, having regained her composure if not her color. “You and I have so much, and poor Kit has nothing. Not even a man’s love.”

Touché, Kit thought. Betsy gave her a smile that would have curled leather.

“Where can we drop you, dear?” Betsy purred.

“I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way. I’ll just pop onto a bus downstairs. Do have a lovely lunch. Ta, ta.” Kit smiled and waltzed to the staircase.

“Morris, come back here…!”

She ignored the demand and kept going. She was shaking inside with rage at Betsy’s blatant playacting. The woman was as guilty as sin and felt no remorse at all. She was going to cut Logan up just the way she’d cut up Kingsley. And how was Kit going to stop her? In Logan’s eyes, Betsy could do no wrong. But there had to be a way to stop Betsy and save him in time!

She worried the question all the way back to the office, where she had to explain to Dane what had happened.

“I’m sorry,” Dane apologized when he could finally stop laughing. “But that’s such a dandy little tale….”

“It’s the truth!” Kit threw up her hands. “He’s my nemesis, I tell you! And one of his very own employees—his third cousin, in fact!—offered me an electrical device and said she’d swear I was innocent if I’d just bump him off for them!”

“Kit, are you sure you’ve done the right thing to leave an office like that?” he asked her. “Logan is never going to be the same again.”

“Good. I hope Margo gets him pregnant.”

“Stop that!” He leaned forward and picked up a notepad, whipping off a sheet. “Well, I can solve your problems for a day or so. Take this.”

“What is it?” she murmured, reading a street address.

“Emmett’s address. Get on the next flight to San Antonio and follow these directions. They should lead you right to Tansy Deverell.”

“Hallelujah! I’ll kidnap her and send Logan a ransom note….”

“Not while you’re on my payroll, please.”

“It was just a thought.” She folded the note. “I’m sorry about losing the lady I was trailing for you.”

“That was hardly your fault. It’s okay.”

She shrugged, fingering the note. “I seem to get in deeper all the time. I had a neighbor who Betsy Corley took for everything he had.” She looked up. “She’ll do that to Logan, you know. He’s so besotted he won’t believe a bad thing about her. She’ll lead him right to the slaughter and make him think he’s heaven-bound. Just like she did poor old Bill.”

“You don’t give Logan credit for having much sense, do you?” he asked gently.

She shrugged. “How can I? After all, he sacrificed three years of loyal, slavish devotion and adoration over a cup of spilled coffee, didn’t he?”

“He was an idiot there,” Dane had to agree. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough deal. Maybe this job will open new doors for you.”

She smiled. “Maybe it will. Do you know any more about this address besides its location?”

“Just that Tansy’s nephew is something of a hell-raiser. He and Tansy should get along just fine.”

“Another Chris,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well…not exactly,” he replied slowly. “Never mind, just go out there and find out. And, if you get in trouble or have any problems, any at all, just phone here and I’ll demand that you come right home to work on another case. Okay?”

That sounded very much as if he were keeping something from her. She wondered what. Her eyebrows lifted. “Now I’m intrigued.”

“You will be. That’s a promise.” He chuckled. “From what we ferreted out, intrigued is an understatement for what most people think when they meet Emmett.”

She put a hand on her hip. “Emmett?”

“Well, most people don’t call him that if they want to stay out of emergency rooms. Better make it Mr. Deverell until you know him.”

“Should I invest in one of those electrical devices…?”

“Doris will have your ticket.”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted and walked out. Sure enough, Doris was waving it at her when she approached. Adams was nearby, grinning.

“Don’t get involved with the natives,” Doris told her. “Those San Antonio men are tornadoes when you get them wound up.”

“I’ll try to remember that. See you when I can. Goodbye, Adams,” she added, waving at him and smiling.

Adams seemed to gain height and masculine beauty as he grinned back.

“Hands off,” Doris whispered. “He’s all mine.”

She said it just loud enough that Adams could hear it, which made his smile even broader. “Good luck,” she whispered back to Doris. And with a wave of her hand, she went to get the necessary things out of her desk before she left for her trip.

San Antonio was big. It boasted a million in population and some of the most interesting things to see and do in the country, including the Alamo and the Paseo Del Rio.

Before she went searching for the address and directions in her purse, she checked into the nearest hotel and took time to get a bite of lunch and rest.

Then she got into her rental car and set out for the address Dane had given her.

It was on the southeastern side of town, and not in a subdivision. In fact, the address was something of a ranch, complete with oil wells pumping in the pastures and white fences all around. Red-coated cattle grazed in thickets of mesquite, past flatland that had patches of prickly pear cactus to hallmark it.

She looked at the address a second time to be sure, but there it was. No one had ever said that the Deverells had a cattle-raising relative out here in Texas.

As she drove across the cattle grate and down the long, winding dirt driveway to the elegant two-story Victorian house in the distance, she was suddenly assailed by three war-painted buckskin-clad midgets with bows and arrows and chicken-feather warbonnets.

“Hold it right there, palefacette,” one of them drawled “You’re our captive.”

She shouldn’t have stopped, she supposed, but they’d looked so cute! Now they looked menacing and ferocious—if you could call grammar-school kids dangerous.

They all looked like boys, but one of them turned out to be a girl. They piled into the backseat and commanded Kit to drive.

“We’re the Deverell gang,” the spokesperson said. “I’m Guy. That’s Polk. She’s Amy.”

“Yes, we’re the reason our daddy can’t get married.” Polk piped up. “We’re savages, like our lus…illl…us…”

“Illustrious,” Amy said for him.

“Thanks! Illustrious ancestors, that is,” Polk continued.

“They were Comanches!” Amy whispered.

“One of them, Amy, only one,” Polk muttered, “and she was our three-times great-grandmother. For heaven’s sake…!”

“You said we were Indians,” Amy persisted. “That’s why we’re wearing these silly costumes!”

“It’s Thanksgiving in two days,” came the reply from the spokesman, Guy. “And we’re in a school play tomorrow, which is Monday, so we’re rehearsing.”

“We’re going to kidnap the principal, Mr. Deere, and hold him for ransom!”

I like these kids, Kit thought. They’re my kind of people. I wonder if they know anything about kidnapping financial experts?

“Stop here,” Guy said. “And don’t try anything funny, pilgrim.”

Amy leaned toward him. “Pilgrimette,” she corrected.

As John Wayne impersonations went, it left a lot to be desired, but it wasn’t too bad, considering. Smothering a laugh, Kit got out of the car and raised her hands as three ferocious Native Americans with bows raised herded her toward the porch and the front door.

“Knock!” Guy said.

She did. There was the muffled, quick and heavy sound of footsteps approaching and a deep voice asking some kind of question. The door opened, and Kit looked up, way up, to a muscular jean-clad body into the palest green eyes in the most unwelcoming darkly tanned face she’d ever seen in her life.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured thoughtfully, glancing at his brood. “Another captive! Bring her in, boys, and we’ll build a nice, warm fire.”

The last thing Kit saw before she hit the floor was the surprise that momentarily softened those fierce features.