Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (5 page)

I grabbed my check requests and headed for the internal elevator that shuttled creakily up and down among the four floors occupied by BGB. I was startled to see a statuesque blonde pushing a catering cart toward the elevator from the opposite direction. My surprise must have shown, because she smiled warmly and offered a well-manicured hand across the cart.

“You must be Kate, Donatello’s new assistant. Did you think you were the only early bird in these parts, Sugar?” she inquired in a honeyed drawl, the origin of which had to be south of the Mason-Dixon Line, if that imaginary divider still exists. “Margo Farnsworth. Of the Georgia
Farnsworths
, don’t you know, though wouldn’t Daddy just be
rollin
’ if he knew how his little gal was
payin
’ her bills these
days.
”

The elevator door clanked open, and I helped her lift the serving cart over the metal lip of the car. “And how is that?” I asked.

“By
servin
’ coffee to two dozen able-bodied young associates who could
damned
well get it for themselves,” she retorted, but her tone lacked real rancor.

“You really have to do that? I should think having secretaries serve coffee qualifies as an anachronism these days,” I said tactlessly, wondering what I would do if Donatello ever dared to ask me to perform such a task.

“Well, of course it is, but it shores up their shaky little egos, poor
darlin’s
, to know that there’s someone even lower on the BGB totem pole than themselves.” She grinned. “That’s my role here.” The elevator doors opened slowly on thirty-nine.

“Low man on the totem pole doesn’t strike me as your style,” I said sincerely. “That outfit you’re wearing would put any of the women lawyers in this shop to serious shame.” It was true. Margo’s understated suit and tasteful gold jewelry would have set me back a month’s pay, I was certain. I helped her maneuver the cart over the metal lip one more time, and we both exited.

“Why, thank you, Hon. I always did like nice things. And thank you for
assumin
’ I’d know what anachronism means, too,” she added as we entered the little kitchen that serviced the partners’ conference room and smaller, adjacent meeting rooms.

“It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t.”

“I can see that.” Margo held a coffee pot under the cold water and gazed directly into my eyes as if searching for something there. It was a little disconcerting, but I held her gaze with my own. “No wonder you’re a fish out of water.” She turned off the tap and turned to pour the water into the top of a huge brewer, then deftly snatched a filter and pre-measured bag of coffee from the cupboard underneath the machine.

“Is that the office scuttlebutt, or is that your personal assessment?” I asked, annoyed that people at BGB would be gossiping about me.

“Both,” Margo answered with that disarming directness, “but then I kind of like the ones that don’t fit the mold, being one myself.” She flipped a switch, and the big coffee maker gurgled into life. With the ease of long practice she assembled cups, napkins, sugar and creamer on the top shelf of the cart, then added a bunch of plastic stirrers.

“I’m beginning to get that,” I said dryly. “So what’s your story? Why are you here, gasping for air on the shores of BGB?”

“Oh, I like that,” she said, crossing her eyes and pushing her lips together from the sides to make fishy gulping noises.
 
I giggled appreciatively.
 
“Well, Sugar, if you’re really interested, I’ll give you the
Reader’s Digest
version of the life and times of Margo Farnsworth. I’ll even give you a cup of decent coffee before I water it down.” She grabbed a mug, ostentatiously monogrammed BGB, and held it under the coffee stream. I accepted it gratefully.

“Water it down?”

“The job description says I’m supposed to serve ‘
em
coffee. It doesn’t say the coffee has to be good. Besides, all that caffeine isn’t healthy for the little wretches. I’m
doin
’ them a favor by
dilutin
’ it just a bit.
Kinda
makes it taste like dirty dishwater. Anyway, I did the whole debutante drill in Atlanta, the perfect little southern belle, and snagged myself the biggest catch in town. He was that most desirable combination, good family, good
lookin
’ and richer than one man has a right to be. Unfortunately, Mr. Wonderful wasn’t much good at monogamy, and it wasn’t long before I caught him
bangin
’ his secretary on a desk, right there in his daddy’s office one night when he was supposed to be
workin
’ late.”

I grimaced. “That had to be tough.”

“Oh, I got over it, Sugar. As a matter of fact, I decided to enjoy the freedom my husband’s infidelity gave me and took up with the mayor’s son. He didn’t have much money, but he had plenty of other assets, if you take my
meanin
’.”
 
Margo was obviously enjoying the memory as she transferred a nearly full coffee carafe to the cart and slipped an empty one under the brewer’s spout. She went to the sink and filled a mug with hot water, then dumped it into the carafe on the cart and grinned at me.

“Where was I? Oh, yes, Tommy. Well, it was fun while it lasted, which was until the mayor’s Christmas party. Mrs. Mayor herself caught us
doin
’ it on the guests’ fur coats—they still wear fur in Atlanta, if you believe it—piled up on the bed in the master bedroom. It might not have been so bad if Tommy and I had been able to pretend to be sorry, but I tell you, the look on his mother’s face just sent us into a fit of the giggles. Tommy could hardly get his pants on, he was
laughin
’ so hard, and I fell right off a full-length ranch mink onto the carpet. We’d had just a little too much punch,” she added unnecessarily.

“I figured.”

Margo transferred the second carafe to the cart and made another trip to the sink. “So there we were
en
flagrante,”
she said delicately, rolling her eyes, “and the mayor’s wife positively
swoonin
’ at the foot of the bed. Everybody came
rushin
’ in, and, well, the party was over, literally and figuratively.” She shoved the cart toward the kitchen door. I got up to help her, shaking my head and laughing on our way to the big conference room.

“Then what happened? You can’t just leave me hanging.”

“What happened was that my husband got cuckolded in front of half of Atlanta’s elite and sued me for divorce, which was pretty ironic.” She set about unloading the coffee things onto the credenza that ran the length of the room’s back wall. “Momma took to her bed with the shame of it all, and Daddy banished me from Atlanta—but not without
settin
’ up a nice trust fund, the income from which keeps me from
shoppin
’ at the thrift stores. I may be a black sheep, but I’m still his little girl.”

“So if it’s not for the cash, why are you here serving coffee to the able-bodied?” I persisted, genuinely puzzled.

Margo put her hands on her hips and smirked. “Because I can’t think of a better place to meet men, can you? This is the priciest, snobbiest old law firm in these parts. Stands to reason that sooner or later, every rich man in Hartford
is
goin
’ to need himself a legal eagle, and I’ll be right here
servin
’ them refreshments and
givin
’ them an eyeful.” She surveyed her handiwork and removed all but three plastic stirrers from their crystal container. “There. Just enough so that the
meetin
’ will be called to order before they discover there’s
nothin
’ for most of them to stir their bad coffee with,” she said contentedly. “Now I’ve got to run out and get some more of that special creamer for Alain before he sends Ingrid up here for his
mornin
’ eye-opener.
Nonfat amaretto.
It’s all he ever puts in his coffee.”

We returned the cart to the kitchenette and opted to take the stairs down from thirty-nine, she to her post off the thirty-eighth-floor reception area and I to my pod on thirty-seven.

“Thanks for the tour and the tips, Margo. What do you say we get out of this place for lunch one of these days?”

“Absolutely.
I know all the best benches in the park.” She waggled her polished fingernails at me in farewell and disappeared around the receptionist’s console, and I continued on my way thoughtfully.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, and I savored the relative peace after my Hell Week. Donatello was doing expert witness duty in Dallas, so the phones were relatively quiet, and I concentrated on the stacks of mail that inevitably arrived after the weekend. Donatello apparently believed that the more mail he got, the more important he appeared to be, and he subscribed to every periodical known to the legal profession, as well as the golfing and racquetball magazines. He also spent money like a shopaholic on speed, so he received dozens of catalogs and a ton of junk mail, which multiplied with every additional item he ordered.

The result was a staggering amount of mail, all of which had to be sifted through carefully by yours truly to glean the few pieces of business-related correspondence that actually required professional attention. These were referred to designated associates, who did what was needed. I sorted and stacked the rest of the mail in Donatello’s office. Since he traveled so much, this mountain of paper grew exponentially on his desk, atop his file cabinets, on the seats of every chair, and in overflow cartons on the floor.

At home I sort through my mail over the kitchen wastebasket. Even though, or perhaps because, I made my living for years as a marketer, I don’t even open the junk mail. If you want to get my attention, you’d better put first class postage on your message, and even then, the envelope had better be addressed to me by name. Catalogs go right into the recycling bin. So after just a few days, the sight of Donatello’s office with its cascading piles of brochures and catalogs sickened me to the point where I began throwing the obvious junk out furtively, putting just enough of it in his office to be plausible. First, I did a quick sort through the entire pile and pulled out the genuine business correspondence. Then I grabbed a stack of catalogs and headed for the supply room, where I stuffed them in the waste bin underneath the legitimate trash that was already there. The first time I was caught, it was by
Strutter
. Her only comment was, “His last secretary liked the trash basket in the women’s room. She figured he’d never be able to catch her at it in there.”

After that, my morning trip to the women’s room, made the long way around when Donatello was in town so I wouldn’t have to walk past the door of his office, became standard operating procedure. The other secretaries just smiled knowingly. On this morning I went the short way, since Donatello was safely away.
 
This route took me past the office of Alain
Girouard
, the third of the firm’s senior partners, which occupied the sunny southwest corner of the floor and was adjacent to a small conference room.

As I passed the conference room, I glimpsed
Girouard
and his young, blonde secretary, Ingrid
Torvaldson
, who had her back to me.
Girouard
hissed something at Ingrid, then caught sight of me passing and reached to slam the door shut, but not before I saw Ingrid cover her face with her hands. I paused for a few seconds, wondering what the brute could possibly be saying to her to cause such distress; but hearing no sounds of physical abuse, I decided it would be prudent to mind my own business and moved on.

Inside the women’s room I methodically removed several paper towels from the top of the trash receptacle built into the wall, dumped in the stack of catalogs, and replaced the used towels. I was washing my hands with the thoughtfully provided liquid soap, apparently designed to suck every last molecule of oil from human skin, when Ingrid slammed through the door, stalked into the nearest stall, and started to bawl, all the while flushing the toilet madly in an attempt to muffle the sound. Once again I pondered the wisdom of intervening, but this time, compassion overcame prudence.

Between flushes I tapped on the stall door. “Ingrid? I won’t ask if you’re all right, because you obviously aren’t. Is there anything I can do?”

Her only answer was to honk into a tissue, but at least she didn’t flush the toilet again.

“Would a sympathetic ear help?”
Silence.
I tried again. “My daughter Emma isn’t much younger than you, and I would like to think another woman might offer a shoulder if she needed one.”