Thigh High

by Christina Dodd

  Last night, he’d checked out MacNaught’s whole setup.

  In one day, that bastard MacNaught had managed to check into one of the best rooms in New Orleans, visit all his banks, and impress Nessa Dahl so much she invited him to the annual Dahl House party.

  Of course, Russell had been invited, too, but the gossips never thought he was worth mentioning. They never talked about how he dazzled the old Dahl ladies, or spoke in awe of how he got shot defending Nessa from a mugger. They never called him Nessa Dahl’s date, or whispered that he’d been seen kissing her in the garden. Nobody ever noticed him.

  But they were going to. When he was finished making a fool of Mac MacNaught, he would be rich, he would be famous, and Mac MacNaught would be bleeding on the ground.

  Just like before.

  Sixteen

  All weekend long, Nessa heard not one word from Jeremiah Mac—a good sign that he’d seen the sense of her argument and withdrawn from his pursuit.

  She was very pleased. She could only imagine how uncomfortable she would feel now, at eight thirty a.m. on Monday morning, as she walked into the bank dressed in her most conservative black suit with the one-button jacket, the straight skirt, and the heels…. Well, her heels weren’t at all conservative. They were tall, open-toed, and red. Bright, stunning red.

  Some people might say she was in conflict with herself.

  Some people were jerks.

  “Hey, Miss Dahl, congratulations on escaping from the Stephabeast!” Carol gave Nessa a big thumbs-up.

  Nessa responded with a grin and a wave at the tellers, all of them once again dressed in their Mardi Gras costumes, all of them pleased that she had broken free, at least temporarily, of the grind of making sure the bank ran smoothly. Which was damned generous of them, considering that meant they were stuck with Stephabeast as their real, day-to-day manager.

  “Miss Dahl, can you open the vault so we can get our drawers?” Jeffrey asked. “The beast isn’t here yet—”

  “Duh,” Julia said.

  Jeffrey continued, “And with you gone, she’s the vault teller. But if we don’t get those drawers counted, we’re not opening on time. And you know what that means.” He lifted the imaginary noose around his neck, tilted his head, and bugged out his eyes.

  “I know.” Nessa dropped her purse in her drawer and locked it. Walking behind the counter, she punched her code into the vault, counted out the bills into the cash drawers, took them to the tellers, and watched as they confirmed her count.

  As always, it took twenty minutes, and she wondered what Stephanie would have done when she strolled in at one minute to nine and none of the tellers were ready to work. What would that have done to her impeccable record?

  “Is, um, Mr. Mac here?” she asked Carol.

  “He came in plenty early. So I came, too.” Carol grinned.

  “Carol, men are not meat. They deserve the respect accorded to another breathing, sentient being.” Nessa observed Carol’s smirk of delight, and shoved her shoulder. “Okay, listen—men are carbon-based life forms, and they deserve to be fed dinner occasionally.”

  “Hey!” Jeffrey feigned insult.

  The women laughed, and Nessa hurried toward Jeremiah’s office. Not because she wanted to see him after his easy abandonment of his pursuit. That this guy had slipped away just because she said no…that surprised her. Most men faded away as soon as a woman expressed an interest, or a lack of interest, or wanted to have a conversation, or didn’t like their football team, or ate something expensive on the menu, or offered to pay for dinner…. But she would have sworn Jeremiah wasn’t a normal, easily intimidated kind of guy. She had thought he seemed a real man, the type who made up his mind what he wanted, planned how to achieve his goal, and wasn’t dissuaded by mere practicalities such as the fact that they were working together or that they had nothing in common.

  So. She was disappointed in his character. Better now than later, when she’d invested time and emotion in him.

  Right, Nessa. Don’t invest time and emotion in him. Pretend like you didn’t lust after him the first moment he walked into the bank.

  She stopped in the doorway of his office.

  He stood gazing at the sheets of paper spread out on his desk, his jacket unbuttoned, his hands on his hips.

  He looked good.

  He glanced up at her, and with no greeting whatsoever started a consultation. “You’re here. Good. Have you seen all the security videos from the robberies start to finish?”

  Wonderful to see you, too. “No, just clips on the news and what was playing at the police station Friday.”

  “Right. I’ve had them put on one DVD. What I want you to do is sit down and watch them, make notes on what you see.” He pointed at the new flat-screen TV hung on the wall and the two plush chairs sitting before it.

  Do you like my shoes? “You know I’m not a trained observer or anything.”

  “But you have a good eye and you’re a sensible woman.”

  Ooh, those were love words every girl wanted to hear. But hey, if she wanted to hear his love words, all she had to do was lie prone on a bed and he was a veritable fountain of compliments, lovingly prepared by the patronesses who had put him through college.

  An escort. He’d been an escort to older, wealthy women.

  She still didn’t know if she believed him, but why would he lie? It wasn’t the kind of thing most men would brag about. Certainly not this guy, with his intense gaze and grim face that hid so many secrets.

  He continued, “I want to know if you spot collusion between any of the customers or tellers. I want to know if you recognize anyone or think you recognize anyone. I want to know if you see something in common between the personnel before, after, and during.”

  Did he remember what he’d told her? Did he remember that he’d kissed her?

  “Play them as many times as you like,” he said. “Take notes.”

  “All right.” Thanks to him, she now realized she was totally resistible, not to mention the most boring female ever to walk this earth, and a pair of red, open-toed pumps was not going to change that immutable fact.

  “What are you waiting for? Come in. Get started!”

  “All right.” She walked in, took the remote he offered, and gathered a notebook and two pens. “Are you going to watch with me?”

  “No. I’ve seen them enough. I need a new eye—yours.” He picked up his briefcase. “I’ll use Miss Decker’s office. I’ve got business in my office that needs to be taken care of.”

  “Where is she going to be?”

  “On the floor, of course.” With a frown, he glanced at his watch. “If she ever gets here.”

  It was ten minutes to nine.

  As Nessa seated herself, she deliberately kept her expression bland.

  He left and shut the door behind him.

  She loosened her control and grinned. She might be the most boring female on earth, but Jeremiah Mac had just reduced Stephabeast to a joke in her own bank…. And Nessa was human enough to enjoy it.

  Mac placed his briefcase in the middle of Stephanie Decker’s pristine desk. He glanced at the clock on the shelf—a gold clock, one the bank had sent Stephanie Decker for winning the contest for the most loans secured in one year.

  It read one minute to nine.

  He heard her heels slapping hard on the marble floor, past the office where he’d left Nessa viewing the videos.

  Decker stopped. She backed up. He heard her give a huff of disgust, then her heels rapidly and loudly came toward her office.

  She walked in muttering, “Always did like her better, and now—” She caught sight of him. She jumped guiltily, then stopped cold. “I was rehearsing a play.”

  He didn’t care what stupid excuse she made—she’d been complaining about his decisions at a moment when he’d begun to wonder if she had been entirely straight in her annual assessments of Nessa’s character and actions. “Miss Dahl is using my office today, so I’ll be using your off
ice to conduct my business.”

  She blinked at him, trying to comprehend and failing. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

  “There are desks in the lobby to make bank officers available to the customers. I believe Miss Dahl has one. Sit there, where you’ll be cognizant of any problems that arise on the floor.”

  As he hooked his Bluetooth headset over his ear, he observed the ugly red flush as it slid from Decker’s collar, crept up her cheeks, and rose to her forehead, giving her complexion a sunburned, mottled look.

  “Is that a problem, Decker?”

  “No.” But she clenched her fists as if she wanted to hit him.

  Briefly, he wondered if she believed her fury carried weight with him. Then, dismissing her from his mind, he sat down in her chair and went to work.

  She turned on her heel and started out.

  He didn’t look up. “Shut the door behind you, please.”

  She did, with less control than he would expect from one of his bank managers.

  Placing his laptop before him, he opened it as he placed the call to his private line.

  Mrs. Freytag answered at once, and together they began the process of answering the hundreds of e-mails that she deemed important enough to require his attention. As they worked, he kept an eye on his inbox, and within ten minutes an e-mail arrived, the one he half expected to see.

  Stephanie Decker had written him a personal note.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Freytag.” He put her on hold and opened the e-mail. He read:

  Mr. MacNaught,

  As much as I hate to bother you when you’ve gone to such lengths to place your insurance investigator in the best possible circumstances to crack the case of the Mardi Gras Robberies, I reluctantly must inform you that he’s obstructing the normal workings of the bank. I believe he’s simply ignorant of the delicate balance required to maintain good service between customers, tellers, and officers, and perhaps he fails to realize that in this case, service is my first priority. Also—and I hesitate to suggest this—I believe Miss Dahl may have used her privileged position as his assistant to behave less than professionally with Mr. Mac. While I certainly hope this is not true, I’m afraid past experience will prove me right.

  Okay, Stephanie was a malicious bitch. Okay, she was a tattletale and a troublemaker.

  But she had a point. That stupid investigator he’d hired had fallen in love with Nessa without even realizing how easily she’d manipulated him….

  Worse, since Mac had met her, he no longer wanted to remember his own suspicions.

  He returned to the e-mail.

  I’m not in any way criticizing your arrangements, but perhaps in the future it might be better if Mr. Mac worked somewhere else with someone else.

  Sincerely, Stephanie Decker

  Mac typed:

  Miss Decker,

  Thank you so much for keeping me up to date with the situation. I’m afraid Mr. Jeremiah Mac has been placed there by the insurance company and there’s nothing I can do to change that. However, as always, I appreciate your clear-sighted assessment and will be interested in any further comments you might have.

  M.

  Mac hit Send, briefly wondered what Decker would do next.

  Dismissing her from his mind, he opened the line to Mrs. Freytag and went back to work.

  Seventeen

  After a morning spent watching security videos and taking notes, Nessa was glad to go to lunch—alone, for Jeremiah absently asked her to bring him a sandwich.

  She hadn’t seen anything particularly interesting on the DVDs. She’d spotted a few familiar faces: neighbors, friends, customers. She’d noted the clever methods employed by the robbers, methods that changed with each robbery and made each unique. But she hadn’t uncovered anything helpful to the investigation, and that made her feel as if she’d failed.

  As she left, she expected Stephanie to be in one of her rip-roaring snits that caused secretaries, tellers, and bank officers to quit, and customers to take their money to another bank in a huff.

  Instead, Stephanie smiled pleasantly as Nessa made her exit, so pleasantly Nessa was put in mind of a serial killer gloating over her next hapless victim. Not that Nessa was a victim, but…Stephanie’s smiles tended to be the prelude to another of Nessa’s crushing disappointments.

  Oddly, Pootie’s offer of a job leaped to her mind, and wasn’t easily dismissed. Nessa supposed it was because Pootie was so independent; nothing and nobody (except for her family in N’York) gave her any trouble. And right now, Nessa would enjoy having troubles that were her own and only her own. She didn’t want to remember the tellers and their uneasy expressions, or the way old Mr. Carnation stopped her on the way out of the bank and quavered a greeting. Her aunts said she took too much on her shoulders; maybe they were right.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent rerunning the DVD, trying to concentrate on what she’d seen half a dozen times when the events of Friday evening were so much more interesting.

  Once, she thought she saw a familiar gesture, but she couldn’t put it together with anyone she knew. Once, she thought she recognized a walk, then realized she was mistaken. The truth was, she wanted to see something more, strained to put clues together, anything that would impress him, end this case, put them on equal footing…. And then what?

  Then he’d leave, that’s what.

  But it didn’t matter. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see anything conclusive on this DVD.

  At closing time, she turned off the TV and stretched, sprawling with her legs out and her arms over her head.

  The door opened.

  She leaped to her feet.

  It was Jeremiah. Of course, it had to be Jeremiah.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  “No.” She ripped a sheet off her tablet and handed him her list. “That’s everything I noted, but I don’t think there’s anything that’s helpful.”

  Without bothering to glance at her scribblings, he placed it on one of the piles on his desk. “I’ll decide that.” Taking her arm, he walked her into the reception area.

  The last customers stood at the counter in front of Lisa, Carol, and Mary. Eric stood before the door, key in the lock, letting them out one by one. Jeffrey, Julia and Donna were finished for the day, counting out their drawers. Stephanie waited to swoop on them as soon as they finished. The bank echoed with too much cold marble and the gust of air-conditioning, and the Mardi Gras decorations hung limply, showing their age, waiting for Lent.

  Everyone looked up, took note of Jeremiah’s hand on Nessa’s arm, and looked back down. Carol was grinning, but the rest managed not to smirk.

  Well, except for the Stephabeast, who scowled.

  Jeremiah didn’t notice. Of course not. He surveyed the scene coolly, then said, “Before we leave for the day, I’d like to look over the vault.”

  “The vault?” Nessa thought he must be kidding.

  “The famed vault where Frederick Vycor was murdered.”

  She considered him. The vault had nothing to do with the Beaded Bandits. He didn’t seem the type of man who was impressed by a ghost story, yet she suspected he never did anything without a reason. So what was going on in his head?

  He looked down at her. He had no expression on his face. None.

  But she knew now that his impassivity meant only that he was good at concealing his thoughts…his passions.

  The heat of his body curled around her, enveloped her. Or maybe that was the heat of her own frustration she felt.

  He raised his eyebrows. “What do you want, Ionessa?”

  “Want? I don’t want…” She couldn’t even finish the lie.

  She glanced at the tellers.

  They had all counted their drawers. They were finished for the day.

  She glanced at the door.

  Eric was letting the last customer out.

  She glanced at her wristwatch. 6:20 p.m. “As soon as the drawers are counted, the vault teller will place them inside
the vault. Who tonight, I suppose, will be…Stephanie Decker.”

  Jeremiah strode up to Stephanie, who stood tapping her foot, waiting without patience for Lisa to finish the last transaction. “Decker, Nessa and I are going to tour the vault,” he said.

  “Tour the vault? You want to tour the vault?” Stephanie’s voice hit the famed Stephanie high note, the one that made dogs howl. “Why? Why would you want to do that?”

  Jeremiah stepped back as if she were spitting hissy all over his clean white shirt. “Is there a problem?”

  “Mr. MacNaught will not approve.”

  Nessa exchanged glances with Carol, who was wide-eyed and edging away.

  “Are you forbidding me?” He sounded mild, but beneath that, Nessa heard the steel.

  So, apparently, did Stephanie. Her voice returned to the normal human range. “Of course not. I’ve cooperated with your investigation, and I will continue to cooperate in every way. Can you wait a moment while I finish bank business?”

  Lisa gingerly slid her drawer toward Stephanie.

  “Thank you, dear.” Stephanie smiled so pleasantly at Lisa that the girl snagged her costume sprinting away.

  While Stephanie verified the amount, the tellers picked up their things and called out farewells. They hustled toward the door like civilians trying to escape before the bomb squad detonated their latest acquisition.

  As soon as Eric locked the door behind them, Stephanie crooked her finger at him.

  He hurried over and stacked the drawers, then followed as Stephanie led the way to the vault.

  She punched her code into the electronic panel. The round, deep steel door opened. “As you can see,” she said, “I have my own personal code that opens the vault. Miss Dahl is the only other person in this bank who has her own code.”

  “If Miss Dahl has been deemed untrustworthy, why does she have access to the vault?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Untrustworthy? What do you mean, untrustworthy?” Nessa couldn’t believe he had said it.

  “I understood there was a blot on your record,” he said.