The Case of the Missing Secretary (3 page)

The man must be a holy terror, she thought. He was Logan’s cousin, of course. Probably it ran in the family.

“Where does he live?” she asked, and whipped out a pad and pen. “I told you, she wouldn’t go there!” “Humor me.”

He shrugged. “His name is E. G. Deverell.” He gave her the address. She jotted it down and stuck the pad back into her purse. Now she had something concrete to go on. She felt like a real detective.

“You can’t really like following people around for a living,” he said. He glanced at her and back at the road. “I’ve bought a new computer for the office. It’s got a sixty megabyte hard drive and all sorts of software, including a user-friendly word processing program. I bought a laser printer, too,” he added. “And the system does forms.”

She’d been begging for that sort of system for over a year. He’d argued that it wasn’t necessary and he had better ways to spend his money.

“How nice,” she said. “For your new secretary. Secretaries, that is,” she added with a spiteful smile. “Three, isn’t it?”

He made a rough sound under his breath. “I don’t see what your Problem is!” he raged. “I’ve lost my temper with you before. You never walked out on me!”

“You never allowed one of your women to treat me like an in-dentured servant before,” she countered. He shifted uncomfortably. “She asked for a cup of coffee.”

Diana Palmer

“Excuse me,” she said. “She demanded a cup of coffee, and then threw it at me because it was too strong. When I suggested that she might like to go to the restaurant on the first floor and get a cup there, she flew into a rage and called me several names that I won’t repeat. Then, the minute she saw you coming, she dissolved into helpless tears.”

“She said you threw the coffee at her,” he returned, narrowing one eye. “And you aren’t the most even-tempered of women.”

“Oh, but I am, as long as I’m not within half a mile of you,” she replied venomously.

He had to stifle a smile at the way she was looking at him. How he’d missed these bouts with Kit. The three women he’d had to hire to replace her were frightened of him. Poor Melody was hopelessly intimidated by spelling, and her distant cousin Logan. She could type very quickly, though, and she was efficient.

Harriet, the tallest of the three, could file and do payroll accounts, but she hated everyone in the office and smoked like a chimney.

Then there was Margo, who spelled like a dictionary and wanted nothing more than to seduce him.

Logan, though, had eyes for no one except Betsy, who made his blood run hot and wild through his veins. He didn’t want to get married, but it was the only way he was ever going to possess the delectable Betsy. So he’d given in, against his better judgment, and nothing had gone right in his life since he’d proposed. He was no nearer to coaxing Betsy into his bed and he’d lost Kit. Amazing, he thought, how empty the world was without Kit in it. He had no one to talk to anymore. Betsy hardly listened to him, and certainly paid more attention to where they went and who they saw than what they did.

“Betsy was no threat to your job,” he told her. “I don’t combine my personal relationships with my business ones. I thought you knew that.”

She knew that he was going to marry Betsy, and she couldn’t bear it. Not only was she losing the only man she’d ever loved, but she was losing him to a woman who’d cut his heart out and roast it over a pile of blazing hundred-dollar bills. Betsy would take him for every cent he had. She glanced over at him curiously. How, she

The Case of the Missing Secretary 377 wondered, could a man with a brain such as his be so terminally stupid when it came to women?

“You aren’t going to be happy working in a detective agency,” he persisted.

“But I am,” she corrected. She smiled smugly. “I’m treated like a person there. When I do something right, I get praised for it. When I do something wrong,” she added with a meaningful look, “nobody rages at me in disgusting language and threatens to feed me my handbag.” “How boring.” She smothered a laugh and looked away.

“You miss me, damn you,” he murmured, smiling at her averted face. “Our daily battles kept you going when nothing else did. You loved trying to get one up on me. Remember the day the Brazilian businessmen came to the office and you spent thirty minutes trying to speak Spanish to them?” “You told me they spoke it.”

“You should have known that the national language of Brazil is Portuguese. Anyway, you got even.”

“Indeed I did,” she recalled with a grin. “I borrowed one of the girls from the secretarial pool who spoke no English and sent her in to take dictation from you while I took a two-hour lunch break.”

“I almost broke your neck,” he said shortly. “She sat there and nodded and smiled at me for thirty minutes before I realized that she didn’t understand a word I said.”

“The girls in the next office did.” She chuckled. “They said you were very eloquent. In fact, one of them wanted to have you arrested.”

“The good old days,” he said wistfully. He glared at her. “Now I have two helpers who get down on their knees and thank God when I leave the office, and a third who spends her life trying to bend me back over my own desk.” “Oh, my,” she said.

“You might pretend to be sympathetic. It’s uncomfortable to work in that kind of environment.” “Now you know how women feel,” she replied.

Diana Palmer

He glared at her. “I don’t recall ever chasing you around the office or trying to bend you over a desk!”

More’s the pity, she wanted to say. But she only replied, “No, sir, you never did.”

“Do you know, I’ve actually thought about reporting her for harassment?” “If she makes you that uncomfortable, why not just fire her?”

“Because she can spell, Morris.” He exploded. “She can spell! That’s something neither of the others can do!”

“You could ask the agency to send you someone with good spelling skills.”

“I did,” he replied tersely. “They sent me Margo of the peekaboo bosom.” She put her face in her hands, but she couldn’t stem the laughter.

“Come back,” he invited roughly. “I’ll give you a raise. You can have a new desk. I’ll fix the damned window that sticks.”

“I’m very tempted,” she said, and meant it. But she’d never be able to stomach Betsy at close range. “But I like my new job too much to quit now.” “I hope Dane isn’t assigning you anything dangerous.” “Now, see here,” she began defensively.

“Here we are!” He stopped the car, helped her out and escorted her into the building and up the elevator to his office. “Now,” he said, opening the door for her. “Find that file!”

She blinked twice before she walked into the luxurious carpeted office. The spot where Betsy had thrown coffee at her three weeks before was still there. No one had come to clean it up. The coffee-maker was standing empty and very dirty. Three desks were piled high with file folders and stacks of correspondence. Diskettes for the computer were lying around, out of their jackets. One of the women had gray hair and was very tall. She was smoking and her ashes were everywhere. Another was talking on the telephone, apparently to someone male. She smiled at Logan and deliberately leaned forward to show her cleavage. “Hello, Margo,” Kit said sweetly.

“Hi! How did you know my name?” the girl replied, and suddenly went back to the voice on the other end of the line.

The Case of the Missing Secretary

“Cute,” Logan muttered.

Kit walked toward the third desk, the only neat one, where a third woman, plain and harassed-looking, was flipping through files.

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” she told Logan in an apprehensive tone. She looked about twenty, a country-looking girl with a patent vulnerability in her face, and Kit felt a surge of sympathy for her.

“Here, let me help,” Kit said kindly. Laying aside her purse, she bent over the stack and in seconds, extricated the one Logan had demanded. “Here.” He took it and glared at the young woman.

“How could I know that it would be filed under Portfolios?” she asked plaintively. “I’m new…!” “I’m Kit Morris.” Kit introduced herself.

“I’m Melody Cartman,” came the reply. She glanced toward Lo-gan, who was making a telephone call. “You used to work here, didn’t you? No wonder you left! See Harriet over there? She’d stopped smoking for ten years when she came to work here. Now she’s gone back. She’s smoking three packs a day, and she’s got a bottle of Scotch in her desk!”

“I can understand why,” Kit mused. Logan, buried in his file, hadn’t noticed them discussing him.

“Margo isn’t afraid of him. She likes men. Especially rich ones. He has a girlfriend and she’s terrible. She expects us to stop everything and wait on her. Not to his face, of course,” she muttered. “She’s sweetness and light the minute he walks in the door.” “Now you know why I don’t work here anymore.” ”He’s my third cousin,” Melody groaned, glancing at him. “He’s just like one other terrible member of the family. If I’d had any idea he was like this, I’d never have let Tansy talk me into this job. But company I worked for went bust and I just couldn’t bear to go to San Antonio.” She hesitated. “I’m stuck here!”

“Listen,” Kit said, raising her voice, “we’re short one detective at the agency where I work…”

“Shut up, Morris,” Logan said menacingly as he slammed the telephone receiver back onto the cradle. “You aren’t stealing any of my people.”

Diana Palmer

He moved away and Melody groaned. “See? We’re slaves. He owns us! I’ll never see my apartment again…!”

“There, there, it will be all right. I’ll take a few minutes and explain my filing system to you. Then you won’t have this problem again.”

Melody dabbed at her brown eyes and pushed back her thick, blond-streaked light brown hair. It was very long, and she had a sweetly rounded face and freckles. Kit liked her at once. “I think Harriet carries one of those electrical weapons in her purse,” Mel-ody told Kit. “Wouldn’t you like to borrow it? You could do him in before you leave. I swear to God, none of us would ever tell on you!”

Kit chuckled. “I believe you, but he’s really not worth the sacrifice. Let’s get to work.”

It only took thirty minutes to teach Melody the basics of the filing system, and then Kit gave Melody her telephone number for future emergencies.

“He doesn’t like you to know it,” Kit added, “but there’s a smokeless ashtray in the closet. Two of them, in fact. He used to smoke cigars.” “He doesn’t smoke cigars any more.” “I know.” “He smokes cigarettes now. Thin brown ones.” “Marijuana?” Kit exclaimed.

Melody laughed. “Oh, no. Those little cigars, what do they call them? Cigarillos, I think!” “Not in here, I hope?”

“Yes. Between him and Harriet, I’m a stretcher case with my sinuses.” “Use those ashtrays.” Melody brightened. “If I suggest it, maybe he’ll fire me!”

“You needn’t look so optimistic. Now that you know my filing system, you’re worth your weight in rubies.” “Drat!”

“If you can become an ace speller, he’ll get rid of Margo,” she whispered.

The Case of the Missing Secretary 321 Melody’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll hire a tutor!” “Good luck!”

Kit walked into Logan’s office as she had for the past three years, without knocking. But she realized at once that she’d made a mistake.

Somehow, Betsy must have gotten into the office while she was occupied with Melody. Betsy was there now, blond and fragile, in Logan’s arms.

The sight of them that way made something delicate inside Kit go brittle and shatter. Logan’s dark head bent over that bright one, his enormous body sheltering hers, his arms compelling her against the powerful length of him, his mouth devouring and insistent on the woman’s lips.

He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Kit with the desire and physical enslavement still glittering in his dark eyes. “Well?” he asked huskily.

Kit didn’t say a word. She turned and closed the door behind her, trying not to remember the snide look on Betsy’s exultant face as she went. That had been a setup. Betsy knew how she felt about Logan. Everyone knew, except Logan himself.

She gathered her purse and said a quick goodbye to Melody, paus-ing only to wave at Margo and Harriet before she walked to the elevator.

The stupid conveyance would be on the bottom floor, she muttered to herself. She jabbed viciously at the Down button and was almost resigned to going down the staircase when Logan and Betsy came along to stand beside her.

“We’ll drop you off,” Logan said carelessly. “We have a lun-cheon appointment.”

Kit looked from Betsy, immaculate in a gray silk suit and an ermine coat, to Logan in his blue pin-striped suit and handmade silk tie. Yes, they complimented each other. She’d been living in a fool’s paradise to imagine a man such as Logan would ever give her a second look. She was a teacher’s daughter with no special beauty or talents. He was related to royalty somewhere in his ancestry and had gobs of money. She held Betsy in contempt for coveting his status and wealth, but he’d probably think that Kit was eager for it

Diana Palmer

as well if she’d ever tempted him deliberately as Margo and Betsy had.

Just as well, she thought, that she’d been allowed to get out when she did. Soon, she’d never have to see Logan again. Betsy would make sure of that.

“I do hope you haven’t been trying to tell Logan any of that silly gossip about me,” Betsy drawled with a cool smile. “I don’t chase men for money. I don’t have to. I have money of my own.”

Certainly she did. Bill Kingsley’s money. Kit’s blood ran hot every time she thought about the poor, kind old man. He must have been easy pickings indeed for this blond toad. And here was Logan, waiting in line to be next.

“Some women do chase men for money, though,” Kit said quietly. She studied the other woman with cold curiosity. “One of my neighbors was chased after he won a lottery. His name was Bill Kingsley.”

Betsy’s face whitened. She averted it. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Kit said easily. “He used to live in my apartment building, about the time he won the small lottery.”