‘Safari?’ she echoed weakly.
‘African decorations, mosquito netting, jungle plants, leopard-print accents, and pith helmets as souvenirs for the guests. Maybe we could get the menus written out on huge leaves. I found my old pith helmet today, the one Horace got me before our first trip to Africa, and I knew as soon as I saw it that it was the perfect theme.’
Felicia blinked, unbelieving. This was actually a great idea if they could pull it together on time. Certainly better than the generic flowers and votives that had been what their budget seemed to dictate. She already had leopard-print cocktail napkins on order because they’d been on sale and she thought they’d be cute.
‘Mrs Turner, I love it! The only problem I see is getting what we need on time – and without spending too much money.’
‘Pish-posh, darling. You just find some mosquito netting and get me a copy of the menu so I can get it to the calligrapher I know. I’ll take care of the rest. And see if you can find some landscaper to loan us some potted palms. If not, one of my friends might be willing to clear out her greenhouse.’
All Felicia could say was ‘Thank you’.
After confirming a few details and getting some information on the latest additions to Valerie’s guest list, Felicia said goodbye.
‘Oh, one more thing,’ Mrs Turner said before she could hang up the phone. ‘Felicia, dear, did Richard Enoch talk to you about a donation?’
‘As a matter of fact he dropped off a cheque this morning – why?’
She could practically hear the shrug. ‘Oh, he mentioned he was planning to, but I thought he might have been full of hot air. Good to know he came through. Ta!’
There was something curious about this, Felicia reflected, but, if Valerie and Richard were butting heads again, it was no business of hers.
No, her business at the moment was coming up with a benefit booklet that looked vaguely safari-like without actually costing them extra money.
* * *
Lance pushed open the café door. Mel was sitting at a table chatting with two visitors, women in their thirties who, Lance noticed, despite their advanced age hadn’t completely let themselves go. Mel was explaining something about the fishing cats. She finished up, and the statuesque redhead and shorter curly-haired brunette thanked her, bussed their own table and walked out hand-in-hand, although not before giving Lance an appraising glance that left him slightly confused. Were they gay or not? Or maybe they swung both ways?
He would have loved some time to think about that, in private, but he had a list a mile long of things to do before the benefit that weekend.
Plus Mel was standing there, looking cute and sexy, and his brain promptly provided him with detailed memories of how cuter and sexier she looked with her clothes off and her face screwed up as she came all over his cock.
Down, boy.
‘I brought the cart; I’ll help you load it,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she said with a smile.
He followed her into the fridge, hoping the cold air would cool him down. They hadn’t indulged in any on-site humping, which he figured was something she wasn’t comfortable doing. They hadn’t even really talked much about the other night. He wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was she playing hard to get? Was she just professional at work?
He did entertain a small hope that the privacy of the fridge would inspire her, but instead she stopped inside, hands on her hips and her brow furrowed. ‘Is it warm in here?’
He focused. ‘It doesn’t seem as cold as usual.’
They went back out and closed the door.
‘It’s not closing all the way,’ Mel said, trying to push the door shut. It would go almost all the way – far enough that no gap was visually obvious – but the heavy door didn’t completely seal. Mel bent over and examined the floor by the opening. Lance admired her trim little butt.
‘Ah ha!’ she said. Having borrowed a knife from Gina, the café worker, she used it to pry a small rock out from the track in the wall that the door fit into. She tried the door again. This time it closed securely.
‘Good going,’ Lance said, and was rewarded with a triumphant smile from Mel.
They went back inside.
‘Um, I don’t think that was the whole problem,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Listen.’
She cocked her head, then shrugged. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘There’s no hum. The fridge isn’t on.’
* * *
‘Is the cats’ meat OK?’ was José’s first question.
Another confab in the vet clinic, this time including Lance in the conversation.
‘A few pieces were starting to get dodgy, but we caught it in time,’ Mel said.
‘It would have been worse if we hadn’t caught it until the benefit,’ Felicia said. ‘Debbie needs to use the fridge, too, and the smell of spoilt meat wouldn’t exactly go over well with the hors d’oeuvres, not to mention that the hors d’oeuvres themselves could’ve gone bad.’
‘Not to mention the cost of replacing the meat – or treating a cat with food poisoning,’ José said. He turned to Lance. ‘Are you sure,’ he asked, ‘that you didn’t know about this?’
Lance held up his hands in a back-off gesture. ‘No way! If Just or Dog did it, they didn’t tell me about it. And I sure as hell didn’t do it!’
‘Anybody could get access to the circuit breaker,’ Felicia said. ‘It’s not locked. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was only the fridge that was flipped off, I would’ve thought it was some kids messing around.’
‘The rock easily could have been an accident, if it wasn’t for the circuit breaker, too,’ Mel added. ‘The circuit breaker could have overloaded and tripped on its own, but the fact that the rock was there means neither was an accident.’
‘So what do we do?’ Lance asked.
‘We keep our eyes peeled,’ Alan said. ‘We’ve got to be extra-vigilant about everything.’
‘How about if we break down the Sanctuary into quadrants,’ Felicia said, ‘and we’ll each be responsible for one area?’
‘That’s good,’ Alan said. ‘In the morning and before you leave, at the very least, police your quadrant – check anything you can think of.’
‘I’ll make the list,’ Felicia said.
‘I’ll go feed the cats,’ Mel said. ‘There are some very grumpy kitties out there.’
And I’m going to find out who turned off the fridge, dammit, Lance decided.
* * *
After the fridge incident, Felicia thought she was prepared for anything. Maybe she should dig out her camo makeup, because this was war. Someone wasn’t backing down, and she was on her guard for anything.
Except for what hit her desk on Wednesday morning.
This time, the Sanctuary was on the front page of the Addison Independent.
And it was really, really bad.
SCCS TO BE SHUT DOWN?
Addison, CA – The Southern California Cat Sanctuary is being investigated by the Zoological Association, an anonymous source said yesterday.
The local big-cat breeding facility and zoo has had a representative from the watchdog group on site in the past week, the source said.
Unconfirmed reports are that the SCCS’s recent problems caught the Zoological Association’s notice, and they sent an investigator to the site for a review.
A bad report – which the source says is likely – could mean the SCCS will be shut down.
The Zoological Association’s job is to monitor zoos, aquariums and other animal facilities to ensure they comply with federal and state regulations and that all animals are receiving quality treatment.
Furious, Felicia reached for the telephone.
After the high heat but low moisture of the California desert, the humidity of the New York summer was a heavy change of pace. But Gabe was humming as he opened his office window, letting in the whir and bustle of the st
reet below and at least some air movement, even if it wasn’t cooler.
The window protested at first. The building was at least fifty years old and, while it had the charm of fancy cornices and mouldings, charming light fixtures and walls of built-in bookshelves, it sometimes acted as if it just wanted to be left alone so it could take a long nap.
He’d been in meetings all morning, and had escaped long enough to pick up a coffee and a bagel with lox and cream cheese from the deli on the corner. Now he settled in to do his expense report from the California trip.
The California trip. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. That had certainly been one of the most…enjoyable site visits he’d done. Oh, he’d had women (and one or two men) try to seduce him before, to convince him to write a good report. He’d always seen right through them. It didn’t mean he didn’t occasionally enjoy messing with their heads – but that was only when they were outright nasty to their animals and he was poised to shut their facilities down so fast their heads spun.
Felicia, on the other hand, had waited until she was sure he wasn’t the bad guy, until they had joined forces against a common enemy. Even if they didn’t know who that enemy was yet.
He’d tried to review the SCCS’s financial reports on the flight home but, thanks to the combination of way too much incredible sex, a red-eye flight and the extraordinary lack of excitement inherent in spreadsheets, he’d pretty much passed out until the plane’s landing gear had hit the tarmac at JFK.
He didn’t want to think about financial reports. He wanted to think about Felicia and those outrageous panties with pearls sewn into them. So, when his phone rang and he saw the caller ID, he couldn’t have been happier. ‘Felicia! I was just thinking about you.’
‘I just bet you were.’
That didn’t sound positive. It sounded like she was gritting her teeth. He hoped nothing else had gone wrong. ‘Is everything OK?’
And off she went.
Eventually he managed to sort through the how-could-yous and why - didn’t - you - have - the - courtesy - to - tell - mes and what-the-hells, and wait for her to get it out of her system and calm down a little bit.
‘OK, slow down,’ he said. ‘What report are you talking about?’
‘Your report, you bonehead! The negative one!’
‘Felicia, I haven’t written my report yet. For one thing, I can’t finish it until after the numbers come back from the benefit, just to make sure you bring in enough. More importantly, my report isn’t going to be negative. I can’t tell you anything more, but the Sanctuary is in great shape from what I saw.’ He blew out his breath and ran a hand through his hair. It had gotton hotter in his office, that was for sure – and not for any of the right reasons. ‘I’ll recommend some areas of improvement, but you’re nowhere near the problems I’d need to recommend you be shut down.’
‘We’re not? Really?’ Her voice sounded small.
‘Really.’ He put every ounce of conviction he could muster into the word. ‘What made you think the report was going to be so bad?’
She told him about the newspaper article, reading it to him over the phone, punctuated by several sniffles and one very descriptive expletive. He found himself grinning at that, although he didn’t let her know. She was a firecracker, all right. She might be down for a few minutes, but she always came back fighting.
His grin faded in seconds, though, to be replaced by a tightening in his jaw. ‘That’s insane,’ he said. ‘Where did they get that information? It’s all speculation.’
‘An anonymous source,’ she quoted. ‘Unconfirmed reports.’
‘They didn’t even try to contact me. Is that even legal?’ he asked, but it was a rhetorical question and the more important thing was that, across the phone lines, he heard an audible gulp. ‘Are you OK?’
‘People are calling. They’re getting bounced to my voicemail right now, but I’m going to have to hang up and deal with them.’
Gabe thought fast. ‘Don’t. Don’t call them back. Give me half an hour to sort this out, OK? I’ll call you. Don’t pick up the phone for anyone but me.’
As soon as he’d severed the connection, he was out his office door, bellowing Tom’s name.
* * *
Felicia had heard the phrase ‘the longest half-hour of her life’, but she’d never really understood it until now. She spent most of it explaining the situation to Katherine and convincing her not to answer the phone, and passing on the same information to the gift-shop clerk and the volunteer who took group reservations. In truth, the board members should have been contacted so they could do some damage control, but Felicia gave Gabe his half-hour.
When she saw Gabe’s number on her caller ID, she lunged at the phone. Katherine leant in expectantly as Felicia put the call on speakerphone.
‘Tom is livid,’ Gabe said. ‘The newspaper apparently made some half-assed attempt to contact him last night after he’d left the office. As far as he’s concerned, the newspaper article was libellous. They’ll be printing a retraction tomorrow, and right now I’m not sure if he’s still planning to sue or not. He’s still in his office screaming at the editor.’
Felicia’s stomach lurched and then settled. Across from her desk, Katherine sagged into the guest chair.
‘I’ve got the Zoological Association’s official statement here that you can give to anyone who calls or writes,’ he said.
She grabbed a pen and began scribbling, only half-hearing phrases like ‘preliminary assessment is extremely favourable’ and ‘in no danger of closure’ through the ringing in her ears as the adrenalin oozed out of her system.
‘Gabe, thank you,’ Felicia said. ‘I’m so sorry I went ballistic on you.’
‘It’s OK. You had good reason to be upset,’ he said. ‘But there’s one more thing.’
The ice re-formed in her gut at the sombre tone in his voice. Her fingers clenched around the pen. ‘What is it?’
‘Tom got the editor to reveal his anonymous source,’ Gabe said. ‘It was Richard Enoch.’
17
Gabe got up from his laptop and paced the few yards into the narrow ship’s-galley kitchen of his apartment. Even with the air conditioning on and him stripped down to his skivvies, he felt sticky.
Or maybe he just felt dirty. He’d been digging deep into public records via the Lexis-Nexis legal database that the Zoological Association used for research. Usually, it was to figure out how much you could reasonably ask someone to donate. This time he was trying to figure out if someone was a crook, but all he’d learnt so far was that he wasn’t cut out to be a private detective. He’d been at it for hours, but hadn’t found anything useful. Poking through the records of Richard Enoch’s business transactions (none of them connected to commercial real estate), David Abrams’s divorce (uncontested and not involving alimony on either side) and the bankruptcy of one of Sarah Wu’s software startups (which looked like a motive until he realised the failed startup was the spin-off of a very successful established company) felt wrong.
Not as wrong as what someone was trying to do to SCCS, though.
He grabbed a Sam Adams from the fridge and headed back to the computer. He’d done some research into the developers who’d made the offer on the Sanctuary property but hadn’t gotten very far. Nothing turned up on any of the business databases.
He sipped the sweating bottle of beer and stared at the computer screen at the list of options for business research. Maybe he was missing something. Fictitious business names and D/B/As? Why not? He’d tried everything else.
Twenty minutes and many layers of search later, he jumped up and yelled ‘Eureka!’ to the empty apartment. He’d traced the business name back to another company, which traced back to another company, which listed ownership.
Of course, the names weren’t on their suspect list. A quick Google turned up nothing to help pin down the right Joseph Estabrook and unearthed one Lindsay Chamaine in California, a photographer specialising in artistic but rac
y lesbian imagery. Not likely to be the same person, but Gabe bookmarked the site just in case.
Maybe the names were familiar to Felicia. And, even if they weren’t, it gave him a good excuse to call. A few minutes of looking at pictures of women kissing each other, tying each other up and preparing to do still more interesting things to each other had got his blood racing. There’d been one petite blonde with short-cropped hair who looked like a slacker elf. She and her curvy, coffee-coloured, strap-on-wielding partner would have normally started a very distracting chain of fantasies.
But lately, even if he started getting horny because of some random image, his fantasies all wound back to Felicia.
* * *
Felicia relaxed back on her bed, a glass of oaky white wine on her nightstand. She’d snuck out early enough tonight to have time to have a hot bath. The benefit was two days away, and she’d been going into work earlier and earlier each day this week.
Gabe had called while she was in the bath, leaving a message for her to call, no matter how late it was. She’d towelled off, slipped into a spaghetti-strapped, sagegreen satin nightgown that skimmed the tops of her thighs, and made herself comfortable before calling. He’d sounded like he was in a good mood, and she hoped to take advantage of it.
She was pretty sure he’d be feeling frisky. After all, her wake-up call from him that morning had been a text message suggesting what thong she wear that day.
She’d taken extra care in the bath, gently scrubbing every inch of her skin with a loofah puff until she tingled. She hadn’t been able to resist brushing the rough puff over her nipples, and now they rose again, making small bumps beneath the smooth satin.
Her skin was still damp, smelling of the gardenia-scented bath bomb she’d used. She was already growing damp between her legs, just thinking about Gabe, remembering the acrobatic sex they’d had in this very bed and anticipating hearing his voice.
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