Perfect Match

by Fern Michaels

  Gracie Sweet was never one to let things simmer if she could bring matters to a full boil. Nor did she know the meaning of the word relax. She was what she called on, twenty-four/seven or until she collapsed in bed. It was who she was.

  Gracie gave a very unladylike snort as she headed upstairs to take a shower and get dressed. Surely she would find something to keep her busy until she heard from the twins, Henry, Jake Masters, or Beth again. Otherwise, someone would be carrying her out wrapped in a straitjacket.

  Thirty minutes later, Gracie was back in the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a stretched-out, worn sweatshirt that said Fearless on the back of it. A long-ago gift from Alex that she couldn’t bear to part with. Besides, she was a creature of comfort, and designer clothes meant nothing to her. She sniffed the pleasing aromas in the kitchen. Maybe she should cook more often. It was so much easier to buy takeout or call and have someone deliver her food. A homemaker she definitely was not. At this point in time, unfortunately, she wasn’t sure what she was. A career woman? A young spinster? Sometimes, it bothered her that she wasn’t someone’s daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter, or at the very least, someone’s godmother. Other times, she thought maybe it was best that she wasn’t any of those things. She was Gizmo’s owner, and that was enough for her.

  Gracie made a fresh pot of coffee, and while it dripped into the pot, she got out an accordion-pleated file folder and pulled out a calculator and almost a year’s worth of bank and brokerage statements. She spent a full half hour putting them in monthly order so she could skim through them at the speed of light.

  As always, she was amazed and delighted at the bottom lines. She rarely if ever thought about her net worth because it boggled her mind. Years ago, she’d hired a really top-notch broker who said she needed long-term goals and worked toward that end. She’d been devastated in a good kind of way when she’d found out that Alex Samson had named her his beneficiary on a five-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy along with a twelve-store mini strip mall that he’d inherited from his family that was worth seventeen million. While all that was important, it was Gizmo that she valued the most as far as her inheritance went, and she knew that would never, ever change.

  It was comforting to know that her old age was taken care of, thanks to Alex. Early on, she’d set up her own 401(k), and it was robust. Should everything fall apart, her own investments along with Social Security would see her through her declining years. Such morbid thoughts. She shoved everything back into the pleated folder and stared at it. Thirty-some million dollars was what she was currently worth. Not too shabby. She carried the file folder to the cabinet under the small built-in desk in the corner and replaced it on the shelf. She wouldn’t have to look at it again until March, when her CPA asked for all her files and folders to prepare her personal taxes.

  Gracie looked in the oven just as the timer went off. She saw a beautiful, perfectly-browned-on-top berry pie that looked delicious. She set it on the counter to cool, appreciating the heavenly aroma. “Let’s go, Giz, we have to feed Beth’s fish.” With that announcement, Gizmo became a black-and-silver streak as he beelined for the garage door. He loved going in the car.

  Fifteen minutes later, Gracie stood in the small foyer in Beth’s house, aware of the silence. It was like a tomb. She gave herself a mental shrug to get herself moving. She was starting to dislike coming here to these empty rooms. Her gut told her this was the beginning of the end of Perfect Match. She’d always been one to pay attention to her instincts. She took a moment to wonder if she was overreacting. Something wasn’t right, and it had nothing to do with what was going on. I’m missing something. I can feel it, smell it, she thought as she made her way to the office so she could feed the fish. She checked the tank, the water temperature, then satisfied the fish were okay, she sprinkled the shrimp flakes across the top of the tank. She watched for a full minute, mesmerized at how the fish knew the flakes were there to gobble down. She sprinkled a few more flakes just in case the fish were extra hungry today. Such a stupid thought. Maybe today was a Gracie Sweet Stupid Day. She’d been having a lot of Gracie Sweet Stupid Days of late.

  Gracie turned on the lights, which bathed the office in bright, blinding light. She made coffee at the bar counter, then settled down at her desk, which was bare now that the computers were gone. What am I missing? she asked herself again. She looked around, hoping the answer would come to her. When nothing happened, she whistled for Gizmo and opened the French doors to let him wander the yard. The wind was really kicking up, blowing the leaves in all directions. Gizmo raced after a spiral of them swirling about him. He barked sharply, then did one of his crazy runs around the yard at the speed of light before he skidded to a stop at the door.

  Gracie laughed. “Okay, guess that’s your exercise for the day.” She shivered as she closed and locked the door, then slid a cut-off broom handle into the sliding track. Beth’s idea of extra security.

  Gracie looked over at the thermostat, wondering if she would be here long enough to warrant turning the heat up. Well, she’d just made coffee, so she had to drink it, ponder her current circumstances, and stare at the fish some more. She walked over and cranked the heat to a reasonable seventy-eight degrees. Might as well be comfortable—no sense in shivering.

  Gracie settled herself comfortably in her ergonomic chair and sipped her coffee, her eyes on Gizmo, who, for some reason, looked antsy to her. She always got uptight where Giz was concerned when she saw him go into what she called patrol mode, something he had been trained to do by the military. Why would he do that here? He must be picking up on something, and she was almost certain it had nothing to do with her. Something else.

  Gracie carefully set her coffee cup down on the desk and leaned forward, never taking her eyes off the big dog. She felt a slice of fear knife down her back as Giz growled. She leaned further forward when the shepherd started to paw at Beth’s bottom desk drawer. “Oh, crap!” Gracie muttered as she flew off her chair and around to Beth’s desk. She yanked at the drawer and pulled it out as far as it would go. The file with the big red X on the cover was gone. “Damn! Damn! Double Damn!” Giz barked loud and shrill as he pawed at the floor. “I know, I know! Someone was here last night! I’m sure I set the alarm. Well, almost sure!”

  Gracie whipped around, reaching for her cell phone. She punched in the numbers for the alarm company, who picked up on the first ring. She quickly announced herself, gave the address, then breathlessly asked, “Was the alarm set last night, and did anyone activate it at any time during the evening?”

  The woman on the other end of the phone told her she would check and to hold on. “The alarm was turned on at quarter to eight last night by number four twenty-one, Grace Sweet.”

  “I’m four twenty-one.” I did set the alarm.

  The voice continued. “The alarm was turned off at two minutes after three A.M., and reset at three forty-five. It was turned off again but not reset twenty-two minutes ago.”

  “That was me, twenty-two minutes ago. I set it at seven forty-five last night, but I did not turn it off at two minutes after three; nor did I reset it at three forty-five.”

  “Were you burglarized last night, is that what you’re saying?” the voice asked.

  “Yes. I have to call the police.”

  “Yes, you do. You cannot hold us responsible since the alarm was turned off and on per code. You realize that, right?”

  Gracie seethed. “Yes, I do realize that. Thanks for your help,” she said, disgust ringing in her voice. She looked over at Gizmo, who was working himself into a frenzy. She went over to him, dropped to her knees, and spoke softly in his ear. He calmed almost immediately. “You did good, Giz. If I had a medal, I’d pin it on you. Not that you need another one. I had a gut feeling something was awry when I got here this morning. Who knows when I would have gotten around to looking in Beth’s desk drawers again. You did my job for me.” Then she said the words Giz had lived by for so long from Alex. “Good j
ob, Giz!” The big shepherd nuzzled her neck as he basked in her quiet praise. God, how she loved this big dog with the soulful brown eyes.

  “Now we call the police, and after that, I’m going to call Andy and Artie and tell them about this. After that, we’ll go for a nice long walk and pick up some lunch. How’s that sound, big guy?” The shepherd barked to show his approval.

  “I wonder how the intruder got in here. As far as I know, only Beth, John, and I have keys, and we never keep a key outside,” Gracie muttered to herself. She’d read enough spy and mystery novels to suspect whoever it was knew how to pick the lock.

  While she waited for the police to arrive, Gracie ran through the house, checking to see if anything else had been taken. The hair on her neck and arms moved as she stepped into Beth’s bedroom on the second floor. Her gaze raked the room. It still looked lived in. There were still clothes, shoes, coats, and jackets hanging in the walk-in closet. There were still things on the vanity in the bathroom. No wet towels or anything like that, but it still looked like a bathroom that was in use. Her skin crawled as she thought about Luke Olsen knowing that Beth had left. Until now, she’d been so sure that no one knew except Beth’s brother and herself plus their help. And they didn’t even know Luke Olsen. If it was Luke Olsen who had broken in.

  The police arrived in twenty minutes. After that, a forensic crew arrived to dust for fingerprints and examine the lock on the front door. Gracie signed off on the report that said to the best of her knowledge nothing was taken except a file on Luke Olsen that had been in the bottom drawer, a file she’d read the day before. She asked if they were going to talk to Luke Olsen. The officer looked at her, and said, “If you’re accusing him, then, yes, we’ll talk to him. If you aren’t accusing him, then the answer is no. Unless you have proof Olsen is the one who broke in here, there’s not much we can do.”

  And that was the end of that.

  Gracie closed and locked the door. Maybe she needed to get a better, more secure lock. How he got the code to the alarm system was the question that really bothered her. She’d seen a movie once where a burglar had a square box of some sort that could spit out an alarm code in twenty seconds. Maybe those boxes were something architects used on a daily basis. Now, that was a crock if she’d ever heard one, yet it came from her own mind. She knew there would be no fingerprints other than her own, Beth’s, John’s, and the cleaning lady’s, who came once a week. Any burglar worth his salt would wear gloves. “Crap all over again.”

  Gracie spent the next twenty minutes shutting down the office, checking and rechecking all the locks and windows, turning down the heat, cleaning and unplugging the coffeepot. She felt like she was locking the barn door after the horse was stolen, but she did what she had to do. In the garage, she called a locksmith and made an appointment for ten the next morning to reconfigure all the locks and to install dead bolts. Then she called the alarm company and changed the code, for whatever good that would do.

  “Let’s walk to the law office, Giz. You need more exercise, and it sure won’t hurt me, either. Then we’ll go to lunch.”

  At best, it was a brisk ten-minute walk, which they completed in record time. It was so warm inside Andy and Artie’s law offices, Gracie grew light-headed. The receptionist, a pleasant older woman, showed her to the private offices and asked if she could get her anything. Gracie said no, but Gizmo nuzzled the woman’s leg as much as to say, “I’ll take a cookie if you have one.” She did, and Giz barked his thanks.

  “Wow! You two look awful. No, no, don’t get up. Sorry, I know you said you were pulling an all-nighter. I hadn’t intended to come over, but I have news, and that’s why I’m here.” Gracie quickly related Gizmo’s discovery, the police call, and what all they said. “I’m almost positive that it was Luke Olsen. The only thing missing as far as I could tell is his file. I know it was in the bottom drawer because I pulled it out yesterday to read it, then I put it back. So, tell me, what do you think?”

  “What we think is this.... You were hacked but not really. The person who did it wanted you to think the worst. We spent all night talking with and e-mailing your clients. Yes, they were hacked, but just their e-mails. All of them immediately called their credit-card companies, their banks, etc., and nothing else went awry. It’s still early, but we’re both thinking it was a scare aimed at you and Beth. If Olsen is your hacker and Beth’s stalker, he had to know he could get into some very serious trouble if he misused any information he gathered off your computers. Yes, at first blush we all panicked. Andy thinks, and I agree, that all he wanted to do was get Beth’s attention. Even if it was negative attention. I don’t remember if you told us this or not, but does Olsen know Beth’s gone?”

  “I don’t know. I checked out her bedroom before coming here because I wondered the same thing. For all intents and purposes, it looks like she still lives at the house. She didn’t take all her things. Actually, she left a set of everything behind so if and when she does come back, she won’t have to pack a bag and all the junk she carries with her. I think it’s safe to say Olsen still thinks she’s in residence, but I can’t be sure. He’s probably waiting with bated breath for her to get in touch with him. Sicko,” Gracie said through clenched teeth.

  “Well, that’s where we are right now, and it’s not a really bad place. We’re on top of it, but we both need to get some sleep. And then we’ll go back at it. Isn’t tomorrow the day you set up shop at Beth’s brother’s house?”

  “Yep. I plan on telling him then what’s going on. I was going to go there today but thought better of the idea. I also plan on downplaying it all for Beth so she doesn’t get her panties in a wad and rush here. Thanks, guys. Keep in touch, okay?”

  The twins promised they would and walked Gracie to the front door. She and Giz took the walk back to Beth’s at a more leisurely pace than they had the walk to the law office.

  “I’m relieved, Giz,” Gracie said as she settled herself behind the wheel. “Buckle up, big guy.” The shepherd did as he was told. Gracie grinned. He’d fought her when she tried to teach him how to buckle the seat belt, but he quickly got the message when the car didn’t move. He also learned that the quicker he did it, the bigger the treat. He barked. Time to get this show on the road, and he was hoping for a juicy cheeseburger.

  “Cheeseburgers from McDonald’s okay, Giz?”

  Gizmo let loose with an earsplitting bark. Translation: more than okay, and don’t forget the fries.

  Chapter Eight

  D-day!

  Gracie took all of five seconds to decide what she was going to wear to her first day at work at Jake Masters’s house, the new headquarters, at least temporarily, of Perfect Match. Worn, tattered, lived-in jeans and a fleece-lined, equally worn and tattered sweatshirt that said Sweet on the back of it was her final decision. Wool socks and ankle boots because her feet were always cold.

  Her curly hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She penciled in some eyebrow color, ran the brush over a packet of blush and smeared on some strawberry-flavored lipstick. Good to go! Giz barked, his big head tilted to the side. “Right, I forgot!” Gracie spritzed some perfume in the air and danced under it. She laughed the way she always did when Giz held up first one paw, then the other for a spritz. “Now we both smell like a lily field. Okay, pal, let’s grab some breakfast. And then we can hit the road.”

  Midway through a breakfast of blueberry pancakes that Gizmo practically inhaled, Gracie answered the phone. It was Beth calling for an update. Gracie quickly reassured her that all was well, then listened to Beth tell her about her first night at Rootie Tootie’s, which was so awesome she didn’t have words to describe it. “John was really good, and the audience loved him.” She prattled on, then wished Gracie luck with her no-account brother. “Just don’t let him get the upper hand, Gracie. If you need to step on him, step on him. He can only intimidate you if you allow him to. To my own dismay, I allowed it. Rein him in. Moose will be on your side even if you think he isn’t.
Okay, listen, I gotta run. I’ll call you tomorrow or maybe later today on your cell, and you can let me know how the first day went.”

  Don’t let him get the upper hand. Don’t let him intimidate you. Step on him. Rein him in. Gracie looked over at Gizmo, who was watching her. “She must think I’m some kind of CIA operative. Or maybe even a Royal Canadian Mountie. Jake Masters is not going to listen to one thing I have to say. You might have to bite his ass or something, Giz. You know, to get his attention. Yeah, I know he sits all day, so his butt is out of the question. We’ll work on that as time goes by.” Gizmo barked, an indication he either did or did not understand what she’d just said.

  Gracie opened the door for the dog to go out, then tidied up the kitchen. She had things to do—stop by Beth’s house, feed the fish, stop by the law office, stop by the post office to mail out some bills, call Henry to make sure he would be done by noon, stop by the dry cleaners to pick up the winter coat that she’d taken in to be cleaned. All busywork. Still, it had to be done.

  “Okay, Giz, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Gracie sat quietly in the car outside the open gates of Jake Masters’s estate. She hated the way her heart was pounding, hated that she was so nervous, her hands were actually sweating. She hated that Giz was picking up on her nervousness. “God, how did I ever let Beth talk me into this? How?” Giz whined and tried to nuzzle her neck. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “I’m just being a wuss today. I just need a few more minutes before . . . before I . . . whatever it is I’m going to do when I get in there.”

  Gracie stared out the windshield. Were those snow flurries she was seeing? Yep. Amazing, but then again, maybe not so amazing; it was, after all, coming up on the end of November. She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. Try and figure that one out. Fear. Yeah, yeah, it was fear. Fear of a man in a wheelchair. Fear of letting Beth down.