by T. L. Ingham
Chapter Four
After a few more days of un-restful rest, my mother deemed me healthy enough to relinquish her role as caretaker and return home to my father, leaving me to my own dubious devices. Her parting words were the oft repeated admonition not to associate with anymore bloodthirsty killers. Assuming I might choose to do so. Because, naturally, given the opportunity, I would jump at the chance.
Like I told her, it's not like they advertise. Sincerely, it would be much easier if all criminals had a big sign painted on their front doors so that you might have a warning before you walked inside. Something along the lines of, 'Caution: Homicidal Maniac Lives Here! Enter at Your own Risk!'
Meanwhile, Pia finally pronounced me well enough to return to work. With so many mothers trying to take care of me (a.k.a. control me), it's a wonder I was able to do anything for myself. I was beginning to feel like I needed permission to use the bathroom. And possibly a hand to hold when I crossed the street.
Still, I was glad to be out of the guest house, if for no other reason than it now scared me to be there alone. I hadn't see hide nor hair of Alex since Cecilia's emergence, though thankfully, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of her either. I also hadn't had an opportunity to speak to Pia regarding having another cleansing, and whether or not it ticked Olivia off, if I had my way, it was going to be done.
When Pia and I arrived at the gallery- and Gloria too, of course- Giorgio met us at the door.
"Pia! What are we going to do about the warehouse? I have almost nothing left on the floor (Giorgio's 'almost nothing' was a bit exaggerated- true there were some empty holes, but overall the gallery was full) and there's nary but a crumb in the warehouse!"
Gloria yawned to announce her boredom, then flew away to examine a nearby sculpture.
"I know, darling, I know," Pia waved her hands at him. "It's been a bit crazy these last few weeks, and with the increased popularity of the gallery, not to mention the season's being in full swing now, we've got some heavy buying to do. I'll take care of it, don't you worry!"
"It's not only that!" he insisted. "I've been doing the inventory and there are a number of empty crates in the warehouse. There's not nearly as much art back there as one would assume!"
A girl I'd never met before suddenly came up to join us. She was a few years younger than I, early twenties at most, and judging by the coffee she held out to Pia, I took her to be Zoe, Pia's new personal assistant.
"Low-fat, mocha latte, half-caf, extra shot, hold the whip."
Damn her. She was a far better assistant than I had ever been.
"Sycophant." Gloria had rejoined us.
I couldn't help but to smile at her assessment.
"Thank you, Zoe," Pia took a sip of the warm brew and sighed happily. "Oh, you two haven't met yet, have you? Zoe Riley, this is Reid Larson, one of our buyers. Reid, Zoe is my new assistant."
We exchanged the expected pleasantries, then Pia said, "Zoe, would you get started on that call list, please? I have a few things to go over with Reid. Giorgio, stop fussing, I'll get your floor filled soon. Simone has a few things she's bringing in today and a few more before the end of the week. With three of us going at it, we'll have the warehouse back up to capacity in no time."
Giorgio threw his hands in the air, the international symbol for 'I give up,' and stormed away.
"What's his deal?" I couldn't help but to ask Pia as Gloria and I followed her to her office.
"Since Fiona's gone, Giorgio is now the senior seller, and he's taking it quite seriously. He's taken complete ownership of the floor and treats it as if it were his own gallery. Honestly, Fiona's leaving was the best thing that could ever have happened to this gallery. Giorgio is much more hands on than she ever was. He's already turned in a new floor plan and it's so exquisite I told him to run with it. That's one less thing on my plate. Plus, he takes care of all the deliveries- which is a great relief to Maya- and stays on top of the warehouse staff and has handled all the training and scheduling for the new salesperson."
After everything that had happened with Professor Stanley, Pia had found herself down three employees, two that were murdered and one- Fiona- who had quit. (Who could blame her really? With employees dropping like flies, the environment had suddenly become very unstable.) After so much bad luck, things finally seemed to be working in Pia's favor.
"Pia!" Simone called just as we were entering Pia's office. She followed us in, then eyeballing me, said, "Oh, you're back." The disappointment in her tone was palpable.
There was no love lost between us. In fact, things would have worked out much better for me had Simone been one of the staff to leave. I would have been okay with her murder, too. "Yes, I'm back."
Turning back to Pia and instantly dismissing me, Simone said, "I have two appointments this afternoon. The ones we discussed yesterday. Am I a go on those purchases?"
Hmmm. What was this? Simone was having to clear her purchases through Pia now? This was new.
"The industrial sculptures and the textured abstracts? Yes, those will be fine. See how many you can get, Giorgio is complaining that his floor is empty. But wait on those others; I haven't yet decided one way or another."
"Fine." Simone turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door behind her. You could almost hear the grinding of teeth on the other side of the door.
"A lot has changed around here since I've been gone."
Pia sat behind her desk. "Yes, darling, it has. That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I may find myself relying on you a bit more heavily than one would expect given the newness of your position. Considering the situation with Simone- she's here on what you might call a probationary period- I don't see how it can be avoided." The cause of this probation was no doubt the affair that Pia and I had discovered Simone was having with Ricky, one of the warehouse workers, just prior to his murder. Truth be told, Simone was lucky. If it wasn't for her master's degree (a degree she loved to flaunt at every possible opportunity) she probably would have been fired on the spot.
"Now, do you honestly think that it's fair that Pia punishes Simone for such a minor infraction of the rules?" Gloria was letting her annoyance be known. Effusively. "It simply infuriates me! What is this- a nunnery? There's no room for old-fashioned sentimentality in today's world and it's about time some people got that through their thick skulls! She acts as if-!" Gloria kept right on going, talking over the top of Pia. So much so, that before long, I had no idea what either of them was saying.
"STOP!"
Pia sputtered to a halt. "Excuse me, dear?"
"I'm sorry," I flashed a glare at Gloria. "Not you. Gloria."
Pia looked at the ceiling. "Gloria, dear, do stop being tiresome, will you?"
She waited a minute then said, "There. Did she stop now?" When I nodded, she went on. "I was saying, with me having to babysit Simone every step of the way, I have less time to focus on my own buying. That's going to leave the majority of the weight on your shoulders. Is this something you think you can handle?"
While I wasn’t sure if I could or not- dairy farming and waitressing is a far cry from buying art- I answered in the affirmative. "Absolutely."
"Toady," Gloria sniped.
I flashed her another glare but said nothing.
Pia sighed. With relief, I noticed. "All right then! I'll give you today to set up your office (I had forgotten about that- my own office!) and then tomorrow you see what you can do. Meanwhile, not to put too much pressure on you, I am still quite interested in representing you as an artist. I know that you've already sold the two pieces you had, but should you finish any more…" She left the statement open ended.
I nodded. "No problem. I actually have a few ideas I'm working on now. I'll let you know when they're done."
Pia clapped her hands in satisfaction then dismissed me.
I headed to my new office just down the hall, all the while trying to dismiss the fact that it had been previously occupied by one of my murdered co-workers. (Though, s
ince Corey had been an accomplice to the professor's counterfeiting scheme, I couldn't feel a whole lot of pity.) The room was bare except for the furniture and one vase of flowers sitting on the desk.
I was tempted to make a wide berth of the flowers- my recent experience with exploding vases had me a little gun shy- but remembering that ghosts (unless they are connected to people) are usually stuck in one place and rarely travel, I realized that the likelihood of Cecilia popping up here was nil to none and so I went to check the flowers out. It was a lovely summer bouquet filled with roses and tulips and baby's breath. A card stuck out of the top and I quickly read it. The flowers were from Maya, the office manager, and the card was a mixture of, 'Congratulations on your recent promotion,' and, 'I'm sorry for our recent dust-up.'
I immediately headed to Maya's office where I found her, as usual, perched Indian style in the chair behind her desk. She was a diminutive woman who should have been over-shadowed by the abundance of filing cabinets in her office. Instead, her strong personality seemed to eclipse them.
Upon seeing me, Maya leapt from the chair and came around the desk to greet me, barefoot as usual. (Maya's determination to leave her shoes under her desk was a constant bone of contention with Pia.) "How are you doing? I've been so worried about you!"
"I'm fine," I assured her.
"Look, I just wanted to say I'm sorry about our getting off on the wrong foot."
"No, getting off on the wrong foot was what Simone and I did. You and I, well, we just kind of-"
"Fell off the deep end?" she supplied.
"Something like that," I chuckled.
Maya leaned against her desk. "It's just that, I liked you so much from the second I met you. You weren't at all like that one Pia had before you."
"You mentioned her once. Cat, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Maya frowned. "She was a sneak and a liar. Though now that I think about it, not nearly as bad as Corey."
"Yeah, well, he was pretty bad."
"No joke. Though, at least he didn't try to get me fired."
"No, if you'd gotten in his way, he probably would've just had you killed. So much better in the grand scheme of things."
"Okay, so there are worse things. Still, I love my job, and the thought of losing it over a little schemer like that! Oh! It just burns me!"
"I can tell." Maya's fuming was leaving a dark red stain on both cheeks and her eyes snapped like firecrackers. This was not a woman I would mess with. She may be tiny, but right now she looked downright dangerous. "Why did Cat try to get you fired?"
Maya shrugged. "Dunno. To this day I have no idea what she was thinking. I only know she began telling Pia tall tales about me fudging the receipts and skimming off the top. I was pissed!"
"I bet!"
"Naturally Pia didn't believe her, but anyway, after Cat, I was a bit of a raw nerve. So when all those strange things began happening, and you were the new kid on the block, well, I just put two and two together-"
"And came out with five?"
She flashed me a wry grin. "Yeah. Sorry."
"Hey, no problem. If I'd been in your position, I'd've been wondering too. Actually, I kind of was anyway. I even told the police to lock me up."
"You what?!"
I nodded. "Yeah, I told them I was some kind of Mata Hari. A danger to society and all that. So, I told them to lock me up. Then I started dating one of them."
She laughed. "Pia says you're dating that cute one, Stern?"
"Jase."
"Maybe we can go out for lunch sometime and gossip about him?"
"As long as you promise not to accuse me of murder anymore."
"It would help if you'd stop being found standing over dead bodies."
"I can't make any guarantees. Though, that's certainly one I'd like to make."
"No doubt." Then, "Have you met Zoe yet?"
"Yeah, just now. Why?"
"What did you think of her?"
I shrugged. "Hard to say. I only saw her for like ten seconds. She seems eager though."
"She is that," Maya said dryly. "Almost too eager. And perky. Annoyingly perky. Every day she comes in here and practically sings, 'Good mooorrr-ning!' I want to kill her."
"Please, don't do that. We've had enough murders around here to last us a lifetime."
"I suppose. Still, it's irritating. It's morning. What the hell's so good about that? And that thing Pia does with everyone, taking them out and buying them a new wardrobe so that they are, 'dressed in a presentable fashion,'" here Maya made air quotes with her fingers. "Do you think she did that with little Miss Zoe? No, she did not. Turns out, Zoe's the only child of some very wealthy family. Like so wealthy they invented wealthy. Anyway, her clothing was more than up to standards and so she didn't have to suffer the humiliation of being sized and fitted and treated like some life-sized Barbie doll." Maya gave the high-heeled shoes slumbering under her desk a vicious kick.
Obviously she was bearing even more of a grudge than I had after my own adventures with Pia. I had spent a full day being dragged from store to store, re-outfitting every part of my wardrobe down to the lingerie. If that wasn't enough, we had rounded out the day with some heavy duty waxing and the full works at a salon. I thought I had been in hell at the time, but having been for the most part pleased with the outcome, especially since they had not cut my hair- the one place I had put my foot down- I had quickly gotten over it. Apparently, not so with Maya.
Hesitant as I was to redirect her temper toward me, not to mention take the chance on putting an end to our tentative truce, I said, "It wasn't so bad. For me anyway."
Maya rolled her eyes. "I swear, if I had heard one more word about my height, I probably would have blown my top and quit on the spot."
I laughed. Maya has the opposite problem of me. Where Maya can't reach five foot without the assistance of heels, anything more than two inches puts me over six. "I get what you mean. I was too tall."
"It's so trivial I shouldn't let it annoy me. But for some reason it gets to me. I mean, the last time Pia saw fit to skip that clothing option was with Simone, and look at her. The woman's barely tolerable. It makes me think that the people in this world who have fashion sense have used up all their personality on that." She fluffed her pixie-cut hairdo and smirked. "Just look at me, no fashion sense, but loads of personality."
"Maybe all that Botox kills their brain along with their wrinkles," I offered.
"Probably," Maya laughed. "They don't call it tox for nothin'. Anyway, I've still got a bunch of invoices left to handle. Plus Giorgio's got me helping with this inventory thing he's doing. I'm gonna be looking up records late into my fifties at this rate." She gestured at all the filing cabinets. "I'll talk to you later, 'kay?"
I spent the rest of the day shopping for office supplies and setting up my new workspace. When I was through, I was quite happy with the results. It was organized and functional without being overly stuffy. I couldn’t wait to come back to work the next day. I was so lost in thought and excited that I had completely forgotten about Cecilia.
Stepping into the guest house was all the reminder I needed.
