Redemption (16 page)

And the postscript:
You’re invited to a special “premiere,” 8:30 a.m. in the theater.

Joan popped her head in. “Aren’t they beautiful? They arrived first thing this morning. And there’s going to be a special screening of the footage shot here. Jackie set it up.”

“That’s nice. You go ahead,” Claire told her, unpacking her briefcase. “I need to outline the annual report.”

“You’re not going?” Joan looked crestfallen, and Matt’s words came back to Claire. Was she turning into a spoilsport? It
would
be fun, she realized, to see what the almost finished product looked like. And to see if the store really was shown in its best light. She glanced at her watch. “Well, maybe for a minute,” she relented.

Joan’s smile widened and she patted her growing stomach. “Good. I hear there’s even going to be popcorn.”

When she wasn’t actually eating, Joan was usually thinking about food. Claire smiled as she stuffed her handbag under the desk. “My grandmother always said a healthy appetite meant a healthy baby,” she said, wishing her grandmother were still here to dispense her homespun advice.

Claire slipped into the theater just after the hastily edited film montage started. She couldn’t help laughing as she watched—if the outtakes she was watching were any indication, the movie would be a hit. That could only be good for Kaslow’s bottom line, she told herself.

Before the selection of clips was over, she felt a movement behind her and a voice whispered in her ear. “How about meeting me on the roof later? We could make a snowman.”

Startled, Claire glanced back. Matt’s face was limned with light from the entrance, and for a moment, she was star struck.

Then her senses returned. “The HVAC equipment is up there. By now the snow should be filthy.”

He chuckled, then leaned close to whisper in her ear again, and the touch of his breath on her neck made her want to shiver. “I promise not to put any down your back.”

For an instant Claire found herself tempted. Playing in the snow with Matt…

But that was foolish. Not only was she not dressed for frolic, but she had no desire to encourage a relationship with this man. Or any man, she reminded herself.

There was already a man in her life, and he was at David’s house, home from school again while the teachers held an in-service. “Sorry,” she told Matt. “But I have bills to pay. We’re getting ready to start renovations in earnest, now that you and your crew are out of our hair.”

He reached out and looped a strand of her hair behind her ear, and this time Claire couldn’t halt the shiver that raced down her spine.

“Did you get my flowers?”

She nodded. “Yes. They were very beautiful.” Then from the speakers at the front of the theater, she heard his voice, complaining about the glass slipper he had been given. She arched a look at him over her shoulder. He smiled back.

“If it can make a curmudgeon like you laugh, the rest of the world doesn’t stand a chance,” he murmured against her ear.

Scattered laughter erupted from the small audience that had gathered as the rest of the outtakes were played—bloopers that normally were edited out of the footage and reserved for celebrity roasts, Matt told her. Then the screen turned blue and the show abruptly ended.

Around them, people began filing out of the theater. A few stopped to congratulate Matt, including Bernard Kaslow.

“You see there, Claire?” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just good, clean entertainment.” He thumped Matt on the back, and then Jackie was next in line with effusive praise. Claire found her exit blocked, the wall on one side and a line of expectant fans on the other.

Matt came to her rescue—and his own. “Claire was just telling me about the renovations getting underway here. In fact, she offered to give me a tour before the store opens.” Then he took her by the arm and forged his way through to the entrance of the theater, ignoring the gaping expressions of several disappointed employees.

Claire found herself in the elevator before she could mount a protest.

He leaned back and gazed at her from across the interior. He looked no different in person, she realized, than he had up on the screen, and she knew his persona had little to do with makeup and costumes. It was Matt, solid, sure of himself, with his wide-legged stance and easy laugh, and altogether too tempting when he wanted to play.

But Claire reminded herself again: Playing with Matt was not on her agenda.

As usual, he plowed right over her objections.

“What do you say? I’d really like to see what you’re planning to do to this place. It’s already quite an impressive building.”

“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll show you around. But the tour ends on the first floor. Before we open at ten.” At the entrance to Kaslow’s, she could safely see him out of the store—and out of her life.

She ignored the tiny pang that thought gave her.

They got off on the sixth floor. The store was still mostly deserted, with only a few salespeople milling around. They took the escalator, now operating, down through the spine of the store.

Claire stood on the rung ahead of Matt, giving him a view of the top of her head. As they rode down, he examined the neat part in her hair, pulled back and tucked into a neat chignon. When she turned back to speak to him, she caught him staring. Their eyes met, tugged briefly, and then Claire’s gaze veered off as she began to speak, taking her role as tour guide seriously.

“The escalators will be replaced by newer, wider versions. Forty-two inches instead of the usual thirty-six,” she told him. “That way, couples can stand next to each other or parents can stand next to children.”

They reached the next floor, and Matt let her go on talking. “We’re constructing a model home here in the furniture department. ‘The Twenty-First Century Home.’ We’ll have products from the other departments strategically placed throughout—coffeemakers, lamps, linens, designer fashions casually left on the bed—that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like set decoration.”

Claire nodded. “Yes, the retail industry is very much like show business. In fact, we plan to tie in future promotions with local opera and theater productions on the Avenue of the Arts.”

Matt ran his hand over the smooth marble column next to the escalator well. “This place is something else. When was it built?” he asked, prompted more by a desire to see the animation her face took on when she talked about the store than historical curiosity.

“The present building, in the eighteen nineties. The first building was destroyed by fire. Hence the ghost stories you may have heard.”

“Aren’t they true?”

She shrugged. “People swear they’ve seen the ghost of Eudora Peabody in the ladies’ lounge. She was killed in the fire. But I think it’s just a rather inventive marketing gimmick on the part of our founder. ‘See the ghost at Kaslow’s and then check out the sale on winter coats,’” she mocked.

“It’s been owned by Kaslow’s from the beginning?” They rounded the corner and stepped onto the escalator, this time Matt on the rung below, his gaze level with Claire’s.

“That’s right.”

“That must have been daunting. Coming in after a century of family control.”

She met his eyes briefly, then looked away. “There have been a few tense moments.”

He didn’t comment, and she went on with the tour. “We’ll have computer terminals on each floor, near the escalators, which shoppers can use to quickly locate a specific item. Customers want to be able to get in and get out, especially at the downtown location, where many are stopping by on their lunch hour.”

Matt made an appreciative sound, watching their progress in the mirrored escalator wall. Claire was wearing a chic little suit, a plaid wool jacket in fuchsia shades, over a charcoal skirt. The color suited her, though Matt guessed she didn’t dress in such shades very often.

“Aisles are being widened and rerouted to move traffic through each department. Department store floor plans operate on the ‘hub’ concept,” she explained. “The trick is to prevent it from becoming a hopeless maze, where the customer gets lost.”

“It sounds like you know a lot about this. I mean, you don’t just sit up in your office and call in overdue accounts, do you?”

She looked surprised. “Of course not. I’ve studied the retail industry. Before I went to work for Connor, I worked for a department store in Arizona. That’s where I met him, in fact.”

“Connor? You mean Forrest? That’s the new owner, right?” Matt tried to ignore the unaccustomed twinge of jealousy.

She nodded. “The Forrest Group, technically. They’re an investment firm—mutual funds, primarily,” she explained. “Based in San Francisco.”

“And that’s where you lived before moving out here,” he said, putting the pieces of her life together.

“That’s right.” She returned to guidebook mode as they skirted a work crew busy polishing the marble floor. “Not everything in the store is being replaced. This floor, for instance, is Lasso white marble imported from Italy when the original store was built.”

He let her go on with her travelogue. For the first time, he was seeing a touch of passion, a glow of pride on her face as she pointed out the architectural features of the store. He wondered if she only cared about buildings. Was there no one in her life to cause such an outpouring of affection?

The girl—the woman—she’d been ten years ago, had given him her affection pretty freely, hadn’t she, and as a result, her name—even if it wasn’t her real name—was smeared in the press, her motives impugned.

Maybe she’d learned a lesson. But, in Matt’s mind, it was the wrong lesson. That, he decided, was an overdue account he intended to call in.

When they reached the first floor, Claire led Matt through the labyrinth of cosmetic counters, eerily darkened now, and ended up in the rotunda. It too would undergo a facelift, though mostly only the lighting would be enhanced to reflect off the sparkling fountain in the center.

“Tell me, what’s the story with this lady?” Matt asked, taking a seat on the edge of the tile fountain and studying the impassive figure in the center.

“She’s supposed to represent the Roman goddess Fortuna. Earnest Kaslow brought her back from Italy, where he rescued her from a fountain in Tuscany. Days after she arrived here, an earthquake destroyed the village where she had resided.”

“And I suppose that was blamed on her departure.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. The other is, she was rescued. From her own fate, so to speak.”

Claire gazed at the goddess, who, like the rest of the store, had aged gracefully. She preferred the latter version of the story, having been spared from the whims of fate herself.

Matt’s voice intruded in her reverie. “Penny for your thoughts.”

Before she could castigate him for the corny line, she noticed the quarter he held in his hand. She smiled. “Inflation?”

“Figured your thoughts might be worth it. You had that look on your face.”

“Oh? Which look is that?”

“Like you’ve just watched some horror flick, and now you’re telling yourself it was just a movie.”

She shot him an admonishing look. “You’ve got a vivid imagination.”

He shrugged. “Comes in handy in my profession.” Then he asked, “Do you ever think, Claire, what your life would have been like if you hadn’t disappeared? If you had stayed in Hollywood? It’s a given you would have been offered more parts, once the scandal died down.”