Diana Palmer - The Case of the Missing Secretary

“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.”