“Fine! I promise.”
Around five o’clock, Taylor came into my office and closed the door. She looked positively radiant. Tossing a stack of invoices toward me with check copies attached, she said smugly, “I called China Pearl and they say all of their invoices have been paid. Then I called Robert Wang at the CERF office in Beijing, and he checked these invoices against the copies he keeps before he mails the originals to us. He doesn’t have any of these invoices. Which means they were generated by someone outside the invoicing department at China Pearl.”
I eyed the invoices. “They’re identical to the ones from China Pearl. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get these printed. I wonder if they have fingerprints on them?”
Taylor looked like she wanted to cheer. “Yours, Pink. Your fingerprints are all over them. You’re the one who approves all invoices for payment. Remember?” She glanced at my printer. “Did you know every printer has a unique imprint, that printer companies make them that way, so they can trace which printer was used to generate documents?” Her green gaze went to my computer. “And did you know computers have a unique identity, that the cops can trace any Internet transaction?”
My violent tendencies were coming to the fore. I guess we’re not so far from our caveman ancestors. If I’d had a club, I’d have conked her on the head. “Did you know I leave this office every day a little after five and the printer and computer are alone until nine o’clock the next morning?” I leaned toward her and crossed my arms on my desk. “Give this some thought, Taylor. As much as you resent me, would you really feel good about me going to prison if I’m not guilty?”
She glared at me with open hostility. “I’d throw a party, and invite some of the staff from the old firm. You don’t have a clue how many of us hated you, Pink. Always ordering everyone around, demanding we work unholy hours, giving us bad performance reviews for stupid things like wearing the wrong clothes and cussing in front of clients.”
“So I deserve to rot in prison because I insisted the staff present a professional image? Because I took my job seriously and expected others to do the same?”
“You were such a bitch about it all.”
“It was always all about the job, and making sure I did the best I could for the firm. That’s called loyalty.”
“You wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit you in the ass!”
I leaned back, realization dawning on me. “This isn’t about how I did my job at the firm. This is about that night you called and asked me to lie to your husband about where you were. You wanted me to say you’d been at my house, and I refused.”
“We were friends! I needed help, and you blew me off.”
“That was a million years ago, when we were still staff slaves. You’ve been divorced almost six years. And you’re still blaming me?” I shook my head, more disgusted than I would have thought possible. “Face it, Taylor, I wasn’t the one boinking the client’s mailroom guy. That was you, and to hold such a grudge because I didn’t go along with your lie is seriously chickenshit of you.”
“It’s not that you didn’t go along with the lie. You ratted me out to the big dogs at the firm. Because of that one indiscretion, I was way behind everyone else in promotions.”
“You’re wrong, Taylor. I never said a word to anyone.”
“Liar!” She grabbed up the invoices and waved them around. “You’re gonna get what’s coming to you!”
It took a superhuman effort not to lose my temper, but I managed. “If you finger me as the rat, you’ll regret it, Taylor. I’m not behind this, but someone is. I suggest you find that person and lay off this immature grudge-fest.”
So far, so good. I hadn’t lost any ounce of professionalism, or sunk to Taylor’s level.
Then she went over the line. With a smirk on her wide mouth, she said with dripping venom, “I figured out a long time ago, your problem is that you’re a coldhearted, frigid bitch. George told me he had to get it somewhere else because you quit putting out.” She stepped back toward the door and reached behind herself for the doorknob, just before she lobbed a nuclear bomb into my lap. “You divorced him because he slept with whores, but didn’t you ever wonder if he got some he didn’t have to pay for? You were the office joke, Pink, because half the women up there had a little bit of George. We all felt sorry for him, did you know that? I remember a Christmas party when George was doing Beth in the ladies’ room. You went in there, and had no clue they were in the stall right next to you.” She laughed. And laughed.
Unable to stop myself, I stood and shouted, “Get out!”
When she kept standing there, laughing, I reached for my coffee cup and hurled it at her, just as she opened the door. The damn thing flew right through the opening and crashed across Samantha Booker’s desk, knocking over a pencil cup and splashing coffee all over Samantha’s pretty white blouse.
I have never been so ashamed of myself. I looked at Taylor and said in as calm a voice as I could muster, which probably wasn’t very, “Just know this, Taylor. If you don’t do the job Parker entrusted you with, and do it fairly and without bias, you’ll have a lot more to worry about than a tired grudge that’s solely based on your own pathetic paranoia. Do we understand each other?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m warning you. Don’t screw with me, Taylor.”
With one last glare, she turned and walked out.
From across the hall, in the open area of desks in the bullpen, the handful of staffers at CERF all stared at me with wide eyes and slack jaws. I didn’t blame them. How often does a good catfight come along?
Chapter 2
By the time Mom and I got to the dinner party, I was ready to put myself up for adoption. All the way to Steve’s Georgetown town house, she twisted one emerald earring and muttered about how she shouldn’t have left Midland, that she had a million things to do, that her clients would suffer because she was gadding about the nation’s capital, going to some idiotic dinner party with people she didn’t know and probably didn’t want to know. That led into a diatribe about politics in the United States, and it was at that point that I tuned her out.
Regrettably, the cabbie didn’t tune her out, and by the time we arrived, they were in a hot debate about the state of the union. I guess Lou was awaiting our arrival because he opened the door of the cab. Mom didn’t notice until after she’d summarily told the cabbie he was a socialist radical and if he hated America so much, why didn’t he get the hell out?
Then Lou leaned in and handed the cabbie his fare and I honestly thought Mom would keel over in a dead faint. Her face was the color of a ripe strawberry. She took his hand and he helped her out of the cab, and while we stood there on the sidewalk, I introduced my mother to Lou Santorelli. It hit me that the two of them looked alike, with dark hair and eyes, and skin that leaned toward olive.
Lou didn’t smile, didn’t attempt to be gracious and welcoming, which I naturally expected because he was our host. Instead, he said in a curious voice, “If a man has a problem with how things are, does it make him a treasonous bastard who has no right to live here?”
It took her exactly twenty-three seconds to recover. I know because I counted, while I was praying she wouldn’t turn around and walk off.
“If all he can do is blame the government for every stinkin’ problem in his life, and insist how much better it is everywhere else in the world, then no, he doesn’t deserve to live here. He should take his pissy, whiny attitude across the ocean. Any ocean.”
Grasping her arm, he turned and walked her into the house. “It can be difficult to get a leg up, so maybe his pissy attitude is a result of struggling to make ends meet.”
Mom