Death and the Motherlode

Chapter Eight

"You sure?" Greenberg used his pen to scratch inside his right ear.

When I asked, Harriet confessed her gratitude to the Princess, Deborah, for picking up the telephone so that "Eff-Eee" (Harriet's private nickname for our boss) hadn't been troubled by Becky's absence. Most brokers, Harriet allowed, would have let the telephone ring. She said, picking up calls wasn't the brokers' job. That was for support staff.

I turned to Karlson. "Funny how the Princess picked up the telephone and pretended that Barney was on the other end for revenge, but she couldn't put paper into the copy machine and prevent the trouble in the first place." I allowed myself a tiny, smug smile. "Thin women have no sense of humor. Probably requires too many carbohydrates."

I got no response from either cop, so I continued my narrative. Jimmy had been quiet when he learned of the Princess' infamy. The man who'd dreamed up the "grand experiment" in the first place counseled patience. He took one look at my face and said there was nothing to be gained by violence. This from an Irishman whose people have been slaughtering one another for generations.

Had the Princess tangled with me directly, I would have taken my lumps, and there would have been an end to it. We laughed at her; she was above me on the food chain, and it was her right to get even if she chose. But she had gotten Becky into trouble. That was different.

Rebecca aka "Becky" Sharp was twenty-three going on thirteen. When we were first introduced, I tried to tell her about her literary namesake from Vanity Fair, but she never quite grasped the concept. After six months, I decided that her name couldn't have been less apt if she had been called Mata Hari. Nevertheless, I adopted her immediately.

Forget the fact that she'd been married since she was eighteen to her high school sweetheart, who ran some kind of machine in the same plant as my stepfather, the Swede. Little, blond Becky with the chia pet hair (short and curly in the front like those ceramic heads that you smear the herbs on) needed someone to look out for her, and at work that someone was me.

I already had Karlson's attention, so I waited until Greenberg glanced up from his writing. "I planned to make the Princess sorry that she'd made Becky cry."

My people were Scots, the guys with short skirts and double-edged swords. We don't give up until six months after we're beaten. And, for the record, the Brits never conquered us.

"Were the other two in on your plan—your second bit of mischief?" Karlson moved across the room to lean on the wall next to the mirror.

I shook my head. "Jimmy and Becky didn't know what I planned because I didn't tell them." What I didn't say is I wanted both of them to have plausible deniability if anything went wrong.

I'd waited until Nature called. The designer of our building put the bathrooms downstairs. Considering all the coffee she drank, Her Highness would have to make at least one pit stop before she drove home to Chicago.

"That was the other thing about the Princess," I said. "Our little town was never good enough."

I didn't care if Greenberg wrote that down or not. Her Highness, like the rest of the brokers, was originally from Chicago. She maligned the shopping, the restaurants, and the intelligence of the populace of Rockford at least once a day.

Listening to her talk, one would have thought Chicago was the Mecca of all things bright, beautiful, and trendy. She assured us that she intended to shake our puny dust from her Etienne Aigners the day that she married her security lawyer fiancé. The wedding would take place in six months. That was before the incident with the scissors.