Everlasting (41 page)

Kit met her flight. Riding into the city, he told her Lily had just called from school to say she was invited to a friend’s home in Vermont over Christmas break. She wanted to go, because she loved to ski. Both children loved sports, but Lily was the jock.

“Skiing,” Catherine said. “Immediately I think of broken legs.”

“Lily’s strong. She’s coordinated. She’ll have a great time. And Andrew called to say he got an A on his history exam.”

“Good for him.” The thought of Andrew was like sunshine to Catherine. She loved Lily, but like all mothers and daughters, they fought. Andrew was Catherine’s golden boy. Oh, both children were wonderful and complicated. Sometimes she wondered if either one of them would want to work for Blooms, take it over someday.

She still hadn’t talked about Shelly.

“Where are we headed?” Kit asked as he pulled onto the FDR Drive.

“I’d like to go right to Blooms. I want to talk to Carla. I’ll have to fire her—today. After that, I assume it won’t be long before we hear from Shelly.”

“We could also start legal proceedings against them.”

“I know. I thought of that during the flight. But Kit,” she said unhappily, “I just don’t think I could go through with it. I don’t think I could take my brother to court.”

“I understand. It’s just as well. If we did prosecute him, the newspapers would have a field day, and that kind of publicity wouldn’t do Blooms any good.”

Kit parked in the alley behind Blooms.

“Unless Shelly is a total idiot,” Catherine said, “he sent over correct invoices today. I was there when he was watching the flowers being packed. I saw him writing up the invoices. Oh, Kit,” she said, suddenly sick at her stomach. “The thought of confronting Carla—stay with me.”

“I will.”

“Hey, boss lady. Hey, Kit,” Jason greeted them. He was sticking orange mums into chicken wire shaped like a pumpkin.

They said hello to Jason, then took the elevator to the tenth floor.

“Oh, you’re back—feeling better?” Sandra said, seeing Catherine. “You don’t look very good, though, Catherine. Are you sure you should be at work today?”

“I’m just tired. Look, go down and take over the shop will you? Hold all calls. And send Carla up.”

“Of course,” Sandra said, her face white.

“We’re grateful to you,” Catherine said, “but let’s talk later.”

She touched the older woman on the arm, a gesture meant to comfort both of them. Then Catherine and Kit went into her office. She tossed her mink coat over the back of her chair. Kit hung his coat in the closet.

“Coffee?” she asked Kit. “Please.”

She poured it and stirred in cream and sugar, the actions seeming exaggerated and clumsy as she moved, waiting with each second for Carla to appear. As she handed the cup to Kit, her hands shook.

“You wanted to see me?”

Carla stood in the doorway then, a perky look on her face. As she registered Kit’s and Catherine’s expressions, her face fell, and her hands flew together in front of her, fingers locking nervously.

“Yes, Carla. I think you know why. Come in—sit down. Carla, I’ve just come back from Amsterdam. I brought these back with me.” Catherine took the two account ledgers from her satchel. “You and Shelly have been cheating Blooms. You’ve been cheating me. We know how you’ve worked it from beginning to end.”

During her flight home, Catherine had imagined this scene over and over again, and each time she had envisioned Carla indignant, raging, insulted. Carla surprised her by simply bursting into tears.

“Oh, God, now you’ve gone and ruined everything,” she sobbed.

“
I
have ruined everything?” Catherine said sarcastically, but Kit flashed her a warning look. Catherine stopped. In response, Carla, who had flinched and frozen at Catherine’s bitter tone, began sobbing again.

“Tell me how I’ve ruined everything,” Catherine said in as sympathetic a tone as she could manage.

“We were only going to do this a while. Until we had enough money to start our own company.” Carla collapsed in despair, covering her tear-stained face with her hands.

Catherine handed Carla a wad of tissue. “Your own flower company?”

“Oh,
no
! Of course not! We’d never compete with you, Catherine. Actually”—Carla faltered a moment—“I don’t know what kind of company. We never got that far. Shelly just said that if we did this, we could save up enough money to start our own company. And it didn’t really hurt Blooms. Shelly said—”

Catherine listened, wanting to weep along with Carla. Shelly said. Shelly did. Shelly. Shelly. Charming, endearing, gorgeous, adorable Shelly. Of course Carla would be in love with him, had been in love with him for years. In the years she’d worked for Catherine, she’d learned how to dress. She had her hair cut stylishly; she’d made herself a pretty woman. But she’d never be the sort of woman Shelly would love. She didn’t have the flair, the elegance—the money.

“I’m disappointed in you, Carla. You have to know that. You’ve worked for me for eighteen years now. I would have thought—”

“Yes, eighteen years, and for most of them I’ve been nothing to you!”

“What? I’ve never mistreated you!”

“Mistreated, no, you’ve just ignored me. When I first came to work here, it was like a family. Everyone cared for everyone else. We spent time together. We joked together. We ate together on holidays after breaking our butts over last-minute jobs. Then you got married and had your babies and everything changed. You just cruise in and out like some queen, never bothering to spend any time with us. I’m not the only one who’s unhappy here. Just ask Jason! Just ask Leonard! Even Sandra admits you’re too wrapped up in your precious children to pay any attention to us!”

“Carla, you should have come to me. You should have told me—”

“Oh, right. I don’t want to have to ask to be treated nicely! Shelly always treated me like someone special, like someone he cares for, like a sister! More than a sister! Shelly loves me. Oh, don’t look that way, I don’t imagine for one minute that he would marry me, but he does care for me. He always stops and talks to me, asks how I am, sends me silly cards, takes me out to dinner now and then. He’s the only thing that has made working here worthwhile!”

Her anger had dried up her tears, and now Carla sat facing Catherine dry-eyed, quivering, bold.

“Blooms is a business, Carla, not a social organization—” Catherine began.

“You can say that again,” Carla interrupted.

“—and you’re fired, Carla. As of this moment. The fact that I ignored you doesn’t give you the right to cheat me. No—” Catherine put up her hand. “Don’t start again. You’re lucky Kit and I aren’t taking you to court. You’ve committed a serious crime. You could be fined, you could be sent to jail. But we’ve decided not to press charges. I don’t want to have to see you ever again. I want you out of here. I want you out of my sight.”

Carla stood up. There she was, thirty-seven years old, an integral piece in the puzzle of Catherine’s life, and with her chin high, she said in a steady voice, “I hate you.”

Catherine just looked at Carla. She could have said: I don’t feel your hate, how you feel about me hardly interests me. What I do feel is the misery approaching you like a storm cloud, the despair that I know is about to sweep through your life when Shelly returns and you realize he’s played you false. He won’t set up a business with you. Now that you’re of no use to him, he won’t even see you again. You poor, wretched fool.

Something in Catherine’s eyes made Carla turn away. Woodenly, she walked to the elevator. Kit and Catherine sat in silence until they heard the rubbery
shoosh
of the doors opening and closing, then silence.

“Who is that poor woman going to turn to now?” Catherine said to Kit. “She says Blooms isn’t her family, but I’m afraid we’re as much family as she’s got.”

“Her personal life isn’t your concern, Catherine.”

“Well, I’ll ask Sandra. Or Jason. They must know more about her than I do.”

“Catherine! Don’t waste your pity on her! She’s been stealing from you.”

Catherine looked at Kit. “It all just seems so bleak,” she said, suddenly drained. “So hopeless.”

“You’re just exhausted,” Kit said. “You need a good night’s sleep. It’s almost midnight your time. Come on. Let’s go to the apartment. You need to go to bed and rest up. If my guess is right, your brother will be in the country tomorrow.”

“Oh, God, Kit. That reminds me. We have one more stop to make before we go home. We’ve got to go down to GardenAir.”

Kit drove. On the way to their wholesale store in the flower district, Catherine talked. She had not wanted to tell him over the phone Piet’s theory about why Shelly needed extra money, and she hadn’t had time to tell him about the flower packets she’d seen him attaching to the roses in Aalsmeer this morning. As far as she knew, they were only packets of flower preservative. But she wanted to be sure.

GardenAir was a long narrow shop on Twenty-eighth Street, tucked between a container wholesaler and a shop that specialized in South American exotic plants. She was glad Kit was with her when she entered GardenAir. She was the owner of the business, and the men were officially her employees, but she hadn’t been down here for a long time, for months, maybe even a year, and she realized she didn’t even know each man’s name. But Manuel, the head man, had been with her company since it started. She had always been good to him and his family, and she had to believe he was loyal to her in return.

Manuel and Kit and Catherine greeted each other warmly. The other workers only nodded. It was early afternoon now, and some of the men had left. The majority of the business for the day was over. A handsome dark-haired man Catherine didn’t know was sweeping the floor.

“Manuel, do you have any roses left from today’s shipments?” Catherine asked. “I’d like to take a bunch with me.”

“Sure. We’ve got some. Here. This is a good bunch. How many you want?”

They moved to a table where the long boxes lay propped up, lids off, displaying the roses and other flowers.

“These are from Amsterdam?” Catherine asked. “Fresh today?”

“From Amsterdam,” Manuel said. “Fresh today.”

“Where are the packets of flower preservative?” Catherine asked.

“What flower preservative?”

Catherine noticed the switchblade glance of the boy sweeping as she spoke, and that Manuel, who managed to keep his face straight and his voice calm, inadvertently stepped backward, as if she’d hit him.

“Let’s go in your office,” Kit said.

The office was a tiny cubicle at the back of the store, closed in by glass and particleboard. A splintered old desk covered with invoices and bills and dirt, a wooden chair, and a metal filing cabinet were the only furniture in the room.

“I was in Amsterdam this morning,” Catherine said. “I saw Shelly putting packets on the roses. He told me he only does that on the wholesale flowers. I can see there are no packets on the roses out there. Tell me the truth right now, or I’ll fire you and everyone else in this shop before you can turn around.”

“We’ll bring in the police and the DEA if we have to,” Kit said.

“Jesus, man, cool down!” Manuel said, waving his hands at them. “Look, there’s nothing major going on here. Catherine, we’re not involved in anything illegal, if that’s what you’re thinking. You think we’re bringing in drugs?”

“I think Shelly is.”

The man studied Catherine’s face, considering.

Catherine spoke softly. “I don’t want to get him in trouble. I know he’s my brother, Manuel. That’s why I don’t want to get the DEA involved. If I don’t have to. I just want to know exactly what he’s doing, and I want to put a stop to it.”

“You might feel better knowing that today, as soon as we can get in touch with Shelly, we’re going to fire him,” Kit said. “He’s already involved himself in other things you don’t even know about. So he won’t be in Amsterdam anymore. At least he won’t be working for Blooms or GardenAir. He won’t have any authority over you here.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Manuel sighed and turned. He bent over, fiddled with a key, and pulled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

Catherine stepped back instinctively. For all she knew he would pull out a gun.

Instead he merely stepped aside and waved down at the open drawer with his hand. There were no files in the drawer, only glistening plastic packages of white powder.

“This is all Shelly’s,” Manuel said. “I mean, his personal stuff. He doesn’t sell it. He’s not dealing. He just sends it over, and we keep it for him to use when he’s in the States. For him and his friends.”

“Manuel. You should have told me. You should have come to me.”

“Hey, between you and your brother, it’s a hard call.”

“I’m taking this with me,” Catherine said. “Manuel, get me a box, any box big enough to hold this stuff.”

“Hey, this stuff is Shelly’s.”

“Now it’s mine,” Catherine said coldly.

Manuel stepped out of his office and was quickly back with a box. Catherine and Kit took out the bottom file drawer and dumped the contents into the cardboard box and closed the lid.

“This won’t be happening anymore, Manuel,” Catherine said. “Or if it does happen, I expect you to come to me.”

* * *

T
hey threw the box in the trunk of Kit’s Mercedes and drove back uptown to their apartment. Now they could only wait for Shelly. Catherine bathed, showered, and sat in bed, eating the scrambled eggs and buttered muffins that her maid, Angela, always prepared for her after a long trip. The food was nursery food, soothing, and finally, after so many hours of coming and going, Catherine fell into a deep sleep.

S
he awoke to darkness. Her head was filled with clouds, her ears were ringing, and anxiety was making her heart clatter inside her like a pair of castanets.

“What?” she mumbled, sitting up. “Where?”

“Catherine, it’s all right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” It was Kit, just coming to bed.

“What time is it?”

“Just after midnight.” He put his arms around her and pulled her down next to him. “Everything’s all right.”