by Nic Saint
“We don’t know the first thing about finance either and still you thought it was a good idea,” I told Estrella.
“Yeah, but there’s a lot of money to be made in finance. Security solutions? Um… not so much, Edie.”
“I still think it’s brilliant,” I said, defending my idea stubbornly.
“I don’t even know what security means,” confessed Ernestine. “You mean like at concerts, the big, burly guys who make sure that nobody touches Justin Bieber’s face? The ones with the funky sunglasses and the Secret Service thingy stuck in their ears?” She shook her head. “Look at us! We’re three girls, Edie. Not exactly muscle for hire.”
“We don’t have to do the actual security,” I pointed out. “We just have to run the company and hire the right people. The big, burly guys work for us.”
Both my sisters were momentarily too stunned for speech, which told me that either I had hit the idea jackpot, or I was completely off my rocker.
Finally, after staring at me, Estrella said, “You’re off your rocker, Edie!”
“No, I’m not. There’s a lot of money to be made in providing security solutions. Not to mention we’ll have our fingers in a lot of pies. I mean, all the banks have security personnel,” I said, gesturing at Estrella. “And all the big conglomerates, not to mention every single celebrity has his or her own bodyguard detail, protecting their safety as well as their jewelry. Or think about the fashion shows where clothes have to be protected from theft. New York is the place to launch a security company. But we need to be smart and carve out our own niche. We’re too small to provide solutions for everybody.”
“You know, this may not be such a bad idea,” said Estrella finally, and even Ernestine was looking less skeptical already. And as I explained how protecting VIPs and celebrities gave us access to the kind of people Mom and Dad wanted us to target, their reservations slowly waned.
“Look at the advantages,” I said. “We work from home. We’re our own boss. We pick and choose our assignments. And the business provides the perfect cover for our real work… stealing from the rich to give to the poor.”
Both my sisters had to agree I had a point… somewhere.
“I’m still not completely convinced,” said Estrella. “We have absolutely no experience in security stuff. Where do we even start?”
I shrugged. “How hard can it be? We just hire a couple of bodyguards and tell them to… guard bodies. It’s a no-brainer.”
“We need advice from an expert,” Estrella said, and she shared a look with Stien and me. I could read her mind, and so could Ernestine.
“Oh, no,” I said. “No way. Absolutely not, Strel.”
“Yes, way,” said Estrella with a grin. “If you want advice on security solutions you need to go to someone who’s got experience… and likes us.”
“He doesn’t like us. He was just doing his duty,” said Ernestine.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Why on earth would an NYPD detective help us start a security company?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” asked Estrella.
“Because he’s too busy catching… killers and stuff!” I pointed out.
“I think he’ll go for it,” said Ernestine with a serious look at me.
“Why? Give me one good reason!”
Both Ernestine and Estrella now stared at me with barely concealed glee, then finally Ernestine said, “You. You’re the reason, Edie. The guy likes you.”
Chapter 3
I decided I needed some fresh air. After our first meeting of the board, I needed to think things through, and what better place to do it than out in our very own garden? Gran hadn’t merely been a flower girl back in the day, but she’d used her green thumb to turn the garden of Safflower House, the house where we lived, into a thing of beauty. Even though I’d said I didn’t like flowers—and I didn’t—I had to admit that being out in the garden provided me with the kind of peace of mind the presence of my sisters robbed from me.
So I stepped off the porch and into the garden, admiring the colorful display that sprang up all around me. Right in the heart of Brooklyn it’s rare to find such wondrous floral splendor, and it never failed to lift my mood.
I followed the garden path past Gran’s greenhouse, beneath the rose arbor, to the back of the garden, where a large oak tree awaited me. It’s rumored that Fallon Safflower herself planted this tree in 1848, when she had this house built, and it still stands majestic, providing shade in the summer and protection from the elements in the winter. Now, since it was only springtime, it was a little chilly out, but the sun was giving of its best already, bathing the world in a golden hue, and as I sat down on the small wooden bench beneath the tree, I leaned my back against its coarse bark, pulled up my feet and placed my chin on my knees. Soon I was lost in thought.
And I would have sat there indefinitely, if not Gran herself had suddenly popped up from behind a nearby rhododendron, garden shears in hand, her hands gloved and her platinum hair covered with a shawl. Without looking at me, she said, “I like the idea of you girls going into business for yourselves, though I’m not sure if you’ve chosen the best business to be in.”
It came as no surprise to me that Gran knew what we were up to. She had some kind of magical hearing, I assumed, or a third eye or something.
“We’re still thinking about it. It’s not final yet,” I told her.
“I know it’s not final yet, because I haven’t given you my consent yet.”
“Consent?” I asked, ready to defend my idea with tooth and claw.
She nodded. “You need my consent if you want to use my house as the seat of your business,” she said as she deftly snipped a sprig of rhododendron.
“We have to follow our hearts, Gran,” I tried again, coming back to our earlier discussion. “We have to follow in our parents’ footsteps.”
Her lips pressed together and her eyes hardened and I could see this was not a conversation she was keen on having. Even though Gran is the sweetest and kindest woman in the world, when she has an idea it’s hard to make her budge. In that sense she wasn’t very different from her three granddaughters.
“It’s dangerous, dear,” she said now. And for the first time she looked up, fixing me with her gray eyes. “If you go down that road you might meet the same sticky fate your parents met,” she said, and I could detect genuine worry about the three girls she’d raised as her own after Mom and Dad died.
“We’ll be very careful,” I promised her.
“And then there’s the fact your incantation technique isn’t up to snuff,” she said, flicking an aphid with her finger and sending it back to its maker.
“Yes, well, you could help us with that,” I suggested. I didn’t want to mention it, but it was partly Gran’s fault that our knowledge of the craft was so poor. She’d never wanted to teach us, and had always forbidden us to use witchcraft outside of the house, seeing how inept we were, and likely to cause serious damage to innocent bystanders if we did use our powers.
“I could teach you,” she conceded. “Though in this day and age witchcraft, more than ever, is frowned upon, Edie. You know that.” She sat down next to me and gave me her most serious look. “You’d have to be very careful, dear. Nobody can ever find out about us, or else we’d be in a world of trouble, greater than you could ever imagine.”
“Of course we’d be careful. We’re not crazy.”
She looked at me as if she was about to argue the fact, but then said, “I remember when I taught your mother. She was such an avid pupil of the craft. Couldn’t wait to go out there and practice her newfound skills on an unsuspecting world.” She shook her head. “And then she went and got herself killed. I’ll never forgive myself, dear. I should never have taught her those things and put her in harm’s way like that.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” I said, placing my hand on her arm.
“I don’t blame myself. I blame your father, and Tavish. They knew the dangers they were subjecting your m
other to, and still they persisted. Your father was just a simple thief, Edelie. A crook. He should never have dragged your mother into the world he inhabited. An ugly and foul world.”
“Mom chose him,” I pointed out softly. “Nobody forced her.”
Gran’s lips tightened again. “I know that, dear. Which is why I’m warning you not to go down the same road. It can only lead to ruin. This… Tavish Mildew is just like your father. A common crook and scoundrel.”
“He told us he’s changed. That after Mom and Dad died—his best friends—he hasn’t been the same. He’d never let any harm come to us. I’m sure.”
“Men like that never change,” Gran insisted. “He’ll use his powers for his own personal gain. Mark my words, Edie. If you and your sisters follow that pied piper into the woods, you may never find your way home again.”
I leaned back against the tree trunk and thought about this. Maybe Gran was right. Maybe the road my mother and father had traveled was fraught with so much danger it was better not to go there. But then why did I feel the call so keenly? And why did Estrella and Ernestine?
Gran must have sensed the question my soul was asking, for she put a hand on my arm and said softly, “I know I’ll never be able to convince you. It was the same way with your mother. She was adamant to follow her own path and listen to no one. The path that led to her ruin. And I know that whatever I say or do won’t stop you from going down that same path.”
“We’re not our mother,” I said. “We know the dangers that lie in store.”
“At least there’s that,” Gran conceded. “And at least the man you’re associating yourselves with is not a thief or a crook. He’s a decent man, an upholder of the law, and a man you can trust to do the right thing.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Gran gestured at the person walking toward us. To my surprise it was Detective Samuel Barkley of the NYPD, the last person I’d expected to see.
“You… you called him?” I asked, incredulous.
“Of course,” Gran said simply. “If you’re going to start a security business, you need advice, and who else to give it to you than Sam?”
She lightly touched my cheek, and then rose and disappeared back into her rhododendrons, but not before giving Sam a kindly smile in greeting.
Chapter 4
Sam Barkley didn’t like to be summoned. He liked to be the summoner, not the summonee. Especially when the summoner turned out to be Cassandra Beadsmore. Still he’d decided to heed the call, and when he saw Edelie sitting under the tree at the end of the small path that led through this garden of Eden in the heart of Brooklyn, he was glad he’d come. She looked great, he decided, her usually pale face actually flushed for once.
She was a buxom beauty, in his personal opinion, and each time he laid eyes on her, felt something stir in his gut he wasn’t quite sure he should examine too closely. Her lovely face and sweet personality affected him more powerfully than he cared to admit, even to himself. So when he finally reached her, he did so with a scowl on his face and his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He was a big man, and easily dwarfed Edelie.
“What’s this all about?” he asked a little gruffly. Too gruffly, perhaps, for Edelie returned his frown with a frown of her own. Even though he liked her, that didn’t mean he could be summoned at will by her grandmother.
“And hello to you too, Sam,” she said.
“What’s the emergency?” he shot back. “When your grandmother called and said you had an urgent message for me, I was in the middle of attending a postmortem on one of the Mummifier’s victims—I kid you not.”
“The Mummifier?” she asked, surprised.
“Yeah. This creep likes to mummify his victims, for some reason. But enough about the murdering freak. Tell me why your gran summoned me here.”
She looked contrite, he thought, and he had the distinct impression that Cassandra hadn’t consulted with her granddaughters before placing the call.
“Well, the thing is… we have a proposal for you, Sam,” she finally said.
“A proposal? What do you mean? Like a business proposal?” Or a romantic proposal, he thought, but quickly stomped on the silly notion.
“Well, yes, actually. You see, the three of us—my sisters and I—we’re seriously thinking about starting a business, but we’re lacking expertise.”
“What business?” he barked, annoyed they would disturb him for such nonsense. Though he was always happy to see the sisters, this was rubbish.
“We’d like to start a private security company.”
He hitched up the jaw that had dropped to the floor. “A what?!”
“A private security company? You know, um, doing security. In private.”
“You mean, like protecting people and all that? Bodyguards?”
“Something like that. We’d probably focus on a specific niche, though.”
“And you need my help?” he asked, incredulous. “Look, Edie, I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not exactly in the security solutions business.”
“I know.”
“I’m a cop.”
“Exactly,” she said with a smile. “Which makes you the perfect advisor.”
He laughed. “I don’t believe this.” He raked his fingers through his mane. “Is that why you called me out here? To offer me a job as a consultant?”
She nodded. “Gran thought—we thought you’d be perfect for the job.”
He stared at her, still dumbfounded. Last thing he remembered she was a barista, Estrella was some kind of voice artist for commercials and Ernestine a legal secretary. Hardly the kind of background to start a security company. “Look, I know for a fact that you brew one hell of a cup of coffee, Edie, but what makes you think you’re qualified to run a security company?”
“Well, we don’t know the first thing about the business,” she admitted, “which is why we need you to advise us. Tell us all about the ins and outs.”
He shook his head. This was too crazy. An ex-barista, an ex-singer and an ex-legal secretary were going into the security business, totally unhindered by prior experience, and they expected him, a cop, to act as their consultant.
“This is crazy,” he stated his professional opinion and his first consult, free of charge. He sat down next to Edie. “Why? What’s the big appeal?”
“Why not?” she replied, answering a question with a question.
“Why not?” he repeated, staring at her. “There must be a reason, Edie.”
“There is.” She hesitated. “Let’s just say we think we’ll be good at this.”
He rubbed his anvil jaw. “This is just… So what’s this niche you’re talking about? What are you and your sisters going to specialize in?”
“I was actually thinking… celebrities.”
“Celebrities? You mean…”
“Actors, models, singers… They’re all living in this town and they need protecting. It’s a niche I think could be very profitable. Don’t you?”
He eyed her curiously, trying to figure out if she was for real or simply yanking his chain. “Why this sudden interest in the security business, Edie?” he tried again. “And why drag me into it as well? I don’t get it,” he confessed. “It’s just so unlikely for you and your sisters to get into this dumb racket.”
“Look, we’ve all been working for others for so long we figure it’s time we got into business for ourselves.”
“Sure, I get that,” he said. “So start a nail salon, or a hairdresser’s.”
“That’s so sexist! Just because we’re three girls we have to start a beauty parlor? Is that what you’re saying?”
He held up his hands. “Okay. I apologize, all right? But why celebrities? Do you have any affinity with the noxious breed?”
She laughed. “I take it you’re not too crazy about them?”
“No, I’m not,” he said emphatically. “If you want my opinion—and you do, apparently—you’d be better off steering clear of t
hose people. They’re needy, nasty, annoying, spoiled, and extremely ungrateful.”
“I’m sure they’re not all like that,” she said, glancing up at him.
“In my limited experience? Yes, they are, and especially to the people working for them. It’s safe to say that most celebrities are annoying pains in the behind, and you’re in for a world of hurt if you get involved with them.”
“Well, it’s either that or find another job as a barista,” she said soberly. “So if it’s all the same to you I think we’re going to go down this road, Sam. With or without your help. But much rather with,” she added softly.
She had a way of looking at him that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and before he could stop himself he heard himself telling her, “If you’re really going to do this, better you do it with my help than without it.”
Her smile was radiant, and the blush that mantled her cheeks made her look even prettier than she already was. Oh, man. He was in deep doo-doo.
“So you’ll do it? You’re really going to advise us?”
He nodded. He had no idea why he was doing this, but like he’d told her, if they were serious about this, better they did it with him than without him.
“It’s a pretty rough business you’re getting into, Edie,” he warned her.
“I know,” she said, even though he doubted that she did.
“Is your gran okay with this?” he asked finally, catching a glimpse of a pink shawl ducking behind a hydrangea bush.
“Yes, she is,” she said, though she didn’t sound very convinced.
“That’s fine then,” he muttered, and caught a glimpse of Cassandra Beadsmore, her head popping up once again with perfect timing.
She smiled at him, and he smiled back. And then she called out, “Thank you for your help, Detective Barkley! It’s much appreciated!”
He waved back with an inward groan. How had he gotten himself mixed up in this? “Let’s set up a meeting, all right?” he suggested. “I have a buddy who works for one of the big boys in town. I’ll ask him to join us so we can get serious. At least if by then you still want to go through with this.”
