Everlasting (38 page)

Catherine smiled at the beautiful young woman seated across from her. Recognizing her youth and her eagerness to please, Catherine behaved charitably toward her. She would never forget what it was like to be young, confused, needing advice and direction.

But it was not kindness alone that motivated Catherine; it was also good business sense. Wide-eyed, doll-sweet Melody Dewey was the new, second wife of Braden Dewey, president of the Metropolitan Bank of New York, and a long-standing, important customer of Blooms. Braden had been one of Catherine’s first major clients twenty-three years ago when she was just starting out. Now they ran in the same social set. Braden would count on her subtly to educate his new wife—who was a good two decades younger than he—in the ways of dignity and protocol. Any girl named Melody in the Dewey social set would need help, and this girl, as fully pulchritudinous and smooth-skinned as a rubber doll, needed all the help she could get.

“Melody, I think spring flowers in
all
the rooms would be …” Catherine paused. The words
tacky
and
ostentatious
sprang to her lips, but she bit them back. Melody was a nice young woman. Also she now had access to enormous amounts of money, and she was innately smart. Braden wouldn’t have married her otherwise. When she realized how Catherine had helped her, she would come back to Blooms again and again.

Catherine could have made several thousand dollars on this one order for the upcoming visit of Braden Dewey’s former school chum, now the president of a prestigious Ivy League college, and his wife. Instead she steered Melody toward a more moderate course.

“
Unnecessary
. If you have them on the table for your dinner party, they’ll be a delightful surprise. A sort of
event
. For the rest of the time, it’s usually best to use seasonal flowers. Flowers provide the appropriate mood and embellishment for each time of the year. This is especially important in the city, where we’re deprived of nature. People like having chrysanthemums and dahlias, or bittersweet berries and wild grape vines around them in the fall, just as we enjoy a wood fire or paisley velvets in the fall more than we would in July.”

Melody listened carefully, soaking it all in. She was so pleasant a pupil that when Catherine finally showed her to the door, she thought about saying, “And Melody, a bit less jewelry would be more effective than flashing it all at once.”

But it was too soon for that suggestion. As an established society florist, Catherine acted as interior decorator, party organizer, trendsetter, educator, therapist, and counselor. When invited to comment, from time to time she also played the role of fashion consultant, but she needed to know Melody better before offering such personal advice.

Besides, this session had already gone far beyond the hour budgeted in her schedule. It was seven o’clock; everyone else had gone home. Kit would be here in only a few minutes; when he’d called from his office earlier today he’d said he had something serious to discuss with her.

Now Catherine said good-bye to Melody and gratefully shut the door. She took a deep breath, kicked off her high heels, and paused to appreciate these few moments of peace.

Just looking at her office refreshed her. She had made it as much like a summer garden as any room on the tenth floor of a gray-stone Park Avenue building could be. The thick carpet was pale grass green. The heavy drapes were patterned in pink roses, lilies as orange as melons, amethyst irises, which swirled together on dark green stems against a creamy chintz background. This material had also been used to cover the long deep sofa and a wing chair where she and Melody had sat together in the far corner of the room, looking at the photographs and sketches and Blooms brochures that were arranged on the square glass coffee table.

A hollowed-out pumpkin, lacquered and filled with a loose arrangement of enormous yellow sunflowers, cattails, and bittersweet, was centered on the coffee table. Near it was the silver tray with the Limoges tea service. Catherine had served Melody China tea and tiny cakes and, later, a small glass of dry sherry. The small utility kitchen, complete with stove, microwave, and a refrigerator stocked with champagne, chocolate, fruit, and pastries, was hidden behind one wall of her office.

That wall, paneled in carved, beveled mahogany, also hid an enormous television set, VCR, and compact disc system, all state-of-the-art. Catherine had chosen mahogany for that wall because it matched the massive Empire desk her grandmother had given her twenty-four years ago, when Catherine had bought Blooms. Catherine’s grandfather had used that desk, and Catherine thought it brought good luck.

Not easy luck, but good luck.

All those years ago, when she had bought this flower shop, she had not had the money to buy an apartment or a car or even the right kinds of clothes.

Now she could buy anything she wanted, and the paintings on the walls of her office were testimony to that. Above her desk hung a Georgia O’Keeffe of white lilies. On the wall above the sitting area hung a seventeenth-century Dutch oil of a massive bouquet of flowers, and a small Renoir of lush glowing pink roses hung next to a smaller Impressionist oil of flowers in a spotted pitcher painted by Vanessa Bell at Charleston.

Success, she thought, and remembered Kit. Too often it seemed she forgot that Kit was not only her children’s father and, since Mr. Giles’s death, Blooms’ lawyer, but also her husband and lover as well. Now she slipped into her private bathroom, brushed her hair, freshened her lipstick, and carefully drew a stripe of dark brown just above her eyelashes.

Like everything else these days, the sight of her own face and body was bittersweet. Sweet because finally she had learned to accept herself and because it was a face and body that had been used. She had given birth to children, she had made love, she had laughed and cried and fought and cheered; she had seduced men with this body, and with this body she had surrendered everything. And that too was sweet; her life on earth had been full, as this body and face attested.

But she was no longer young, and all the face creams and exercises and aerobics and fresh-fruit diets in the world could not change that fact—and that was bitter.

She knew that she could still be stunning. Because she had made herself rich, she could afford certain helpful luxuries: weekly massages, manicures and pedicures, shampoos and expensive cuts for her wild curly dark hair, fabulous clothes. Her body, always curvaceous, was now voluptuous, and she had her own designer and dressmaker, who garbed her in outfits like the one she was wearing. Under a suit of heathery silk-and-wool tweed, a white silk shirt parted just above the curving cleavage of her breasts, so that the severe and businesslike cut of the suit was softened by the hint of creamy lace and creamier skin. She wore real pearls at her ears. Her only other jewels today were her wedding ring and diamond engagement ring, her watch, and, on her suit, between her breast and shoulder, her trademark jewel, an outrageously expensive bouquet of flowers, suitable for the woman who owned Blooms, of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and pearls. She had chosen and paid for this piece herself. An extravagance, perhaps, and yet in its way therapeutic. Over the years she had come to rely so much on Kit’s opinions and judgment that now and then she got frightened, nervous—couldn’t she think for herself? She’d never meant to be so dependent on any man, and the brooch reminded her that she didn’t need to be.

Kit’s knock on her office door broke her reverie. She hurried to let him in. They kissed briefly, and she could tell at once that it didn’t matter what she looked like today. He was worried.

“Would you like some coffee, Kit? A drink?”

“I’ll take a Scotch. And you’d better get one for yourself. Catherine, I think you’ve got a problem on your hands. With Shelly, or, perhaps, Piet.”

“All right,” Catherine said calmly, pouring their drinks. Kit never could understand the emotional responses her brother and sister aroused in her—how she could criticize them bitterly at one moment, only to jump to a feline defense of them whenever anyone else dared attack them. Catherine couldn’t understand this herself, but over the years Kit had pointed out her often illogical explosiveness, and now Catherine tried to monitor her reactions.

“Sit down, Catherine. Just listen to me a minute. Sandra came to see me today. She’s upset. She thinks Blooms is being cheated out of a great deal of money. She—”

“Wait a minute! Why did Sandra come to you? She’s my employee!”

“First of all, I suppose, because I’ve been Blooms’ lawyer ever since Mr. Giles died. More important, because she knew this would upset you, so she thought I should be the one to tell you.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Maybe so. But Sandra said that she’s noticed for quite a while that our profits are down. She’s checked and rechecked the books and records. She was certain that something was wrong, and then about two weeks ago Carla called in sick. Carla’s the one who receives the shipments of flowers from Amsterdam and checks them against the invoice. Carla initials the invoice if it’s correct or marks it if a change is needed, then sends the paperwork on up to Sandra, who pays the invoices.”

“I know all that. Why are you telling me—”

“Wait. The day Carla was sick, Amsterdam invoiced us for twenty boxes more than we received. When Sandra mentioned this to Carla, she said casually, ‘Oh, that happens sometimes. I usually catch it.’ But it bothered Sandra, especially since our profits have been down. So she asked Jason—”

“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe she didn’t come to me right away!”

“—to try to count the boxes when they’re delivered, without letting Carla know he was doing it. Three times he’s done it during the past two weeks, and each time Carla’s count was almost exactly twenty boxes higher.”

“Perhaps the truckers—”

“Sandra’s husband rode with the truckers the last three days. He counted the boxes that Amsterdam shipped to Blooms as they were loaded on the truck at the airport and unloaded at the shop’s back door. Then he called Sandra with the count. Each day Carla initialed invoices stating that we got twenty boxes more than were delivered.”

“Sandra talked to her husband about this before coming to me!”

“Catherine, Sandra was worried. This is a major accusation. She didn’t want to come to you until she had reasonable proof. She knows how you feel about your employees—she was afraid this would devastate you. She’s more worried about your emotional state than the state of Blooms’ finances. And of course, she’s worried about Carla.”

“Good old Sandra,” Catherine said with a sigh. “I mean it. Good for her for noticing all this.” She ran her hands over her neck to ease the tension. “Well. So it looks like Carla is a little snake.”

“She’s not doing this alone. Someone in Holland has to be doing this with her. Amsterdam’s billing us for more than they’re sending us. Carla’s covering, and they split the profit.”

“When you say ‘Amsterdam,’ you mean Shelly or Piet.”

Kit nodded uncomfortably. “You can see why Sandra was reluctant to talk to you. To accuse your own brother of stealing from your company—that takes a lot of nerve.”

“It may not be Shelly or Piet. It could be some other employee over there, someone who’s talked regularly with Carla.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“I have to go to Amsterdam.”

As she spoke the words, pleasure flowed through her, warming her heart, setting her fingertips tingling. She would see Piet again, after all these years, walk the streets of a city she’d never seen, hear a language she didn’t speak; she would be a woman alone and free.

She looked at Kit, suddenly guilty. Had he read her mind? Had she given herself away, had she smiled?

“I could go,” Kit said.

“No. I need to be the one. I’ll go tonight. I want to surprise him—whoever it is. I’ll say I’ve come to see the
Bloemenveiling
, which will be the truth. I’ve never seen it. I’ll call Piet after I’ve gotten there, and tell him I want to see the auction, then I’ll ask him to let me see his offices—then the books.”

“You’re going to come right out and ask Piet to show you his books?”

“What else can I do? I can’t very well just show up at the offices and start searching through desk drawers. I have to bet on someone, and my bet is that it isn’t Piet. His company is too large for a swindle this small. I’m sure he has someone else doing the invoicing. Besides, I don’t think Piet would be stupid enough to jeopardize our business relationship. Carla and her accomplice can’t be making the kind of money that would interest him.”

“All right,” Kit agreed. “I see your point. And I agree someone should go now, before Carla realizes there’s any suspicion on our parts. Let’s go to the apartment. I’ll get a plane reservation for you while you pack. I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“And you’ll hold down the fort at home,” Catherine said. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you. Be careful over there.”

* * *

K
it booked a first-class seat for her on a nine o’clock KLM flight. Catherine tossed clothes and papers in a suitcase. As Kit drove her to Kennedy, they went over the details of their plan. Both Andrew and Lily were at boarding school this year and so happy there that they seldom called home. Catherine would probably be back in the States before they even knew she’d left. She intended to stay in Amsterdam only two or three days at the most. Kit would call Sandra in the morning; he’d tell her that Catherine was in bed with a bad flu. Sandra could pass the word along so Carla wouldn’t suspect that Catherine had gone to Amsterdam. And Catherine promised to call Kit as soon as she had any news.

In spite of her excitement, Catherine managed to sleep a bit on the flight over, but by the time she’d gone through customs and checked into the Amsterdam Hilton, she was exhausted. It was noon in Amsterdam, dawn in New York. The auction and packaging of flowers would already be over for today. So she showered, left a wake-up call, and collapsed into a deep sleep.