Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (10 page)

“Is my father the reason you wish to
speak privately with me?” Carly asked her.
 
“Because if it is,” she continued, but Penelope interrupted her.

“No, no, it isn’t about him,”
Penelope said.
 
“It just angers me
sometimes the level of behavior he stoops to.
 
As a leader in our community, he should know better.
 
But this isn’t about him.
 
It’s about you.
 
It’s about you doing the vestry a favor.”

That request was even more shocking
to Carly than her indictment of her father. “A favor?” she asked.

“Let me explain.
 
The new head mistress, Miss Flannigan, will
be staying at your father’s hotel.
 
At
the Jericho Inn.
 
We thought, given your
familial relationship with the owner, that you would be the best person to escort
her over there and introduce her to Mrs. Sinatra.
 
If you don’t mind.”

Carly smiled.
 
“Not at all,” she said.
 
It was a reasonable request.
 
“I’ll be honored to do so.”

Penelope smiled.
 
“Good,” she said.
 
“You have always been an outstanding person,
Carly.
 
That is why we didn’t hesitate to
hire you.
 
Big Daddy may have asked us to
consider you, but he does not run Saint Catherine’s the way he runs the rest of
this town.
 
We hired you in spite of
him.
 
Thank you,” she said, and left.

Carly shook her head.
 
What did her father ever do to that
woman?
 
Sometimes she could be so reasonable,
like her request for Carly to escort the new head mistress, and other times she
could be the most unbearably obnoxious woman she’d ever met.

But when Carly fell back in line, and
made her way into the auditorium, she realized that she was wrong.
 
As soon as she saw the new head mistress, and
especially saw the skin color of the new head mistress, she fully understood
why Penelope Wright singled her out to be the woman’s escort.
 
She clearly saw that Penelope Wright wasn’t
being reasonable at all.
 
Just, as she
usually was, obnoxious.

 
“This is our chain of command,” Marla Grape
said to the new clerk, showing her the hierarchical tree on the front desk
computer.
 
“If a complaint comes in, you
contact me.
 
Always come to me first
because I’m the lead clerk.
 
But if I’m
not available, you move up the chain, as you can see here, to Mr. Sinatra.”

Becky Hamlisch, the new clerk, looked
at the older woman.
 
“
Mister
Sinatra?” she asked.
 
“You mean Donnie?”

Marla shook her head.
 
“No, I do not mean
Donnie
.
 
I mean Mr.
Sinatra.
 
I know everybody thinks of him
as one of them, but he is still the desk clerk supervisor of this hotel.
 
He’s
Mister
Sinatra to you and me and everybody else who works here.”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Becky
quickly stated, distressed by Marla’s response.
 
“Honest I didn’t.
 
He told me to
call him Donnie, that’s the only reason I said it like that.”

“I know what he told you,” Marla
said, “but I’m telling you that calling our boss by his first name is not
acceptable.
 
And don’t you worry.
 
If he has a problem with that, tell him to
come see me.”

Becky smiled.
 
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

As they continued to stand behind the
counter inside the lobby of the Jericho Inn, a bed and breakfast in the heart
of town, and continued to discuss more of Becky’s job duties, a big Ford F-150
drove up and could be seen through the double doors of the front entrance.
 
When Becky looked up and saw the truck, she
stiffened.
 
“A customer just pulled up,
Miss Marla,” she said anxiously.
 
“My
first customer.
 
What do I do?
 
What am I supposed to do first?”

“Settle down,” Marla admonished her,
as she continued to input keys.
 
“That’s
what you do first.
 
It’s no big
deal.
 
You’re going to have customers
every single workday I assure you.”

Becky smiled, realizing her
overreaction.
 
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Then Marla looked up too.
 
When she saw Charles Sinatra get out of the
truck, she looked back down and continued to key-in.
 
“That’s not a customer, anyway,” she
said.
 
“That’s Big Daddy.”

Becky looked at the handsome,
muscular man as he stood beside his truck and put on his suit coat.
 
“Big Daddy?” she asked.
 
He wore shades, an obviously expensive suit,
and was dripping sex appeal even from a distance away.
 
Becky was in her thirties now, and still had
high hopes of marrying well.
 
“Who’s Big
Daddy?”

“Oh, no one special,” Marla said
sarcastically.
 
“He’s just the owner of
this place.”

Becky looked at her.
 
“The owner?
 
But I thought Donnie’s stepmom, I mean Mr. Sinatra’s stepmom, owned this
hotel.”

“She runs this hotel.
 
But Big Daddy owns it.
 
He owned it before he married her.”

Becky was surprised.
 
“That’s Mrs. Sinatra’s husband?”

Marla nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
And it still drives these ladies around here crazy.
 
An outsider like her corralling a man like
him.
 
But there’s no doubt about it.
 
He’s all hers, and she’s all his.
 
Every woman that’s tried to break that bond
have the scars to prove it.”

Becky was disappointed.
 
Jenay Sinatra, she’d already decided, was
nobody’s pushover.
 
But Becky was no bad
looker either.
 
Most men considered her most
attractive.
 
She still held out
hope.
 
And when he entered the B & B,
she couldn’t help but smile.
 
“He’s very
good looking,” she said to Marla.

“He’s mean as a hungry lion on a
summer night,” Marla replied.
 
“That’s
why they call him Big Daddy.
 
It’s not an
affectionate term, I assure you.
 
He
never shows an ounce of compassion ever.
 
He kicks people out of his rent houses like they were roaches to
him.
 
You should have seen what he did to
a protestor this morning.
 
It was all
over the news.
 
He nearly killed that
man.”

Becky looked at her.
 
“Really?”

“He’s worse than the government.
 
He’s worse than Big Brother.
 
He just takes and takes and is trying to take
over this whole town.”

“And that’s why they call him Big
Daddy?”

“Exactly why.
 
No ma’am, there is nothing affectionate about
that term, or that man, I assure you.”
 
Then Marla looked at Becky.
 
“But
don’t you dare call him Big Daddy to his face.
 
He doesn’t like it.
 
He’s Mister
Sinatra to you.”

“But I thought Donnie was Mister
Sinatra to me,” Becky reminded her.

“They both are,” Marla said, and then
smiled a big smile as Charles finally made his way to the front desk.
 
“Good afternoon, sir!” she said with
exaggerated joy.

“Good afternoon,” Charles Sinatra
said as he approached.
 
Becky noticed
immediately that he wasn’t returning Marla’s gaiety.
 
This man was all business.
 
Mean, Becky thought, just like Marla said.
 
“Is she in?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Marla said. “She’s in her
office, sir.
 
She and Mr. Sinatra are
reviewing the protocol list for the upcoming debutante ball.”

But Charles frowned.
 
“She and
who
are reviewing the list?” he asked.

Marla swallowed hard.
 
“She and Donnie, sir,” she said.

“Oh,” Charles said, and Becky stifled
a grin.
 
Charles looked at her, and
removed his shades.

When she saw his beautiful green
eyes, her heartbeat quickened.
 
And just
by his look alone, she was pleased to see that he was sizing her up as most men
did.
 
He even looked downward, which was
always, to her, a sign of more than a passing interest.
 
And she could tell, by his reaction when he
looked, that he liked what he saw.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Marla said, when she
realized Charles had no clue who this new face was working in his hotel.
 
“I want you to meet Becky Hamlisch,
sir.”
 
Marla motioned toward Becky.
 
“She’s our new desk clerk.”

 
Becky was about to extend her hand, but when she didn’t see Charles
extending his, she quickly thought the better of it.
 
“Nice to meet you, sir.”

“Nice to meet you,” Charles said
sincerely, but without puff or smiling, which she respected.

“You have a beautiful hotel
here.
 
It is very well run.”

“Credit my wife for that,” Charles
said.
 
“It was a big pile of crap when I
first got my hands on it, and very poorly run.”

“You certainly wouldn’t know it by
looking at it now.
 
I must say she did an
excellent job of turning it around.”

“Yes,” Charles said, looking at her,
“she did.”

A smile would have been nice too,
Becky thought, or even a thank-you for her compliment, but time was on her
side.
 
He was going to come around sooner
or later.
 
She was patient.

"You ladies get back to work,”
Charles said as he left the desk and headed toward Jenay’s office.

Marla gave him a chilling look.
 
“You heard him?” she asked Becky.
 
“
You
ladies get back to work
, he said.
 
He
doesn’t have to tell us to get to work.
 
We know to get back to work.
 
But
did you see it?
 
Mean as a junkyard dog!”

Becky nodded, but she was equally
curious to know just how good in bed that mean dog was.

Charles, unaware of her interest or
Marla’s distaste, and not caring either way, knocked one time and then entered
Jenay’s office.
 
He began walking toward
the desk.
 
Jenay was seated behind her
desk, and Donald was seated on the side chair.
 
“Forty more at the front desk too?” he asked her.

“At least forty,” Jenay said. “That
part of the protocol is on us.
 
We don’t
want to look as if we held back.
 
We want
more of these kind of balls.
 
Tell them
to go all out.
 
Decorate that space as if
they were spearheading the ball themselves.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Donald said as he stood
up.
 
“Hey, Dad,” he added as he headed
out.
 
“Bye, Dad.”

Charles didn’t respond as Donald
left. He, instead, made his way toward the desk.
 
“Busy?” he asked Jenay as he plopped down on
the chair in front of her desk.

Jenay noticed the strained look on
his face.
 
“Not really,” she said.
 
“What’s up?”

Charles stretched out his legs and
crossed them at the ankle.
 
“What are you
doing?”

“Just going over protocols.
 
Nothing special.
 
What’s going on with you?”

There was a hesitation.
 
“You saw the news reports?” he asked her.

“Of you throwing that guy off of the
public sidewalk?
 
Of you destroying his
bullhorn?”

Charles stared at her.
 
Would she judge him harshly too?
 
“Yes.”

“I saw it.”

“And what did you think of it?”

“I thought he had it coming to him,”
Jenay said frankly.
 
“They’re there to
create a commotion, that’s the only reason they were there.”

“And I played into it,” Charles
admitted.

“Yes, you did,” Jenay said.
 
“But I’ll bet you one thing:
 
those so-called protestors won’t be coming
back.
 
They won’t be creating any more
commotions around your place of business.”

Charles smiled.
 
“That’s true.”

“It’s not pretty how you do things,
babe,” Jenay said, and Charles looked at her.
 
“But it’s always effective,” she added.
 
“I’ll take effectiveness over politeness any day of the week.”

Charles felt that swell of emotion he
often felt when Jenay demonstrated her love for him.
 
This time her words said it all.
 
“Thanks,” he said with a weak smile.

But Jenay knew him too well.
 
“But that’s not what’s really bothering
you.
 
Is it?”

Charles drew his legs back up and
leaned forward in his chair.
 
Most men
with his vast business interests often had many advisors.
 
Charles only had one: Jenay.
 
He trusted her advice as profoundly as he
trusted his own instincts.
 
“They want to
shut me down,” he said.

“Shut you down?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.”

“But, Charlie, don’t you think that’s
a little excessive? I mean, Cruikshank is running his mouth.
 
But it seems like nothing more than a clown
show to get elected.
 
I never took it
seriously.”

But Charles did, and his facial
expression told Jenay that he did.
 
“So
you think there’s more to it than this election?
  
Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s the way it’s shaking out to
me,” Charles replied.
 
“I looked into the
eyes of that protestor this morning.
 
That guy was no protestor. That guy’s a professional thug.
 
If those hidden cameras weren’t rolling, he
would have done a lot more than the little fighting back he called himself
doing.”
 
He looked at his wife.
 
“There’s something more at work here,
Jenay.
 
I can feel it.
 
I’ve felt it for some time now.
 
Cruikshank may be the pawn, or he may be the
mastermind.
 
I don’t know which.
 
But they want to shut me down.”