Chapter 14

 

 

If Mr. Sykes was right about the embezzling, it was time for a visit to her lawyer, Russell Carmichael. She might need his help in the near future, and she had a couple favors to ask. If this Riley person was fired for hacking into restricted files, maybe she found out about the embezzling, and maybe that notebook in the Sykes' liquor cabinet was a record of what they paid her to keep quiet. So before going home on her second trip of hauling kitten supplies, she stopped by his office.

His assistant sat her in Carmichael's upstairs office in the two-story blue Colonial townhouse in the Historic District. The older woman set down a cup of coffee in front of her and smiled. She was a little soft around the edges, and her cheeks plumped out. Carmichael came in and waved a hand to dismiss her.

"I don't know why she works for you," Belinda said when the door closed. "She's far too nice."

Carmichael laughed and slapped his knee. "Now that was a June Kittridge comment if I ever heard one."

"I did spend close to a year with my grandmother."

"It shows." Carmichael smiled. "And I mean that as a compliment. So, Belinda Kittridge, have you come about your shop? Or, more appropriately, truck? Because you are all neat and tidy and legal and have nothing to fear."

Belinda smiled sweetly. "I wish that's all I had to worry about right now." She took her time and explained the situation with the Sykes, and what she'd learned at the pet boutique.

Carmichael swished back and forth in his desk chair while he listened. "Now it all makes sense." He tapped his glasses on the desk in time with the words.

"What does?"

"There has been some legal gossip going around that they aren't doing everything by the books." Carmichael clasped his hands on the desk. "I doubted it was anything they couldn't wriggle out of with minimal damage...but this. This is different." He looked up at Belinda's panic-stricken face and smiled. "Don't worry. If it comes to that, I'll take care of you."

There were some perks to having a lawyer fawning over your grandmother. Belinda tried to relax and drummed her fingers on her purse. "Just one more thing."

Carmichael suppressed a grin. "What favor would you like to extort from me this time? Don't think I don't know you're taking advantage of my crush on your grandmother." He wagged a wrinkled finger at her.

"Would you be able to get a list of all of someone's previous employers?"

Carmichael's forehead wrinkled in confusion, but he said, "I think I can do that for you."

He made her wait downstairs in what was probably the parlor at one point, with his assistant shuffling around and smiling at her with every pass. The woman finally approached her tentatively, her voice hushed.

"Is it true, Ms. Kittridge?" She cast down her china blue eyes. "Because I really can't imagine it is."

Belinda set her coffee down. Instead of a foam cup, Carmichael served it in a flower-patterned china cup and saucer. She felt like a proper Victorian, sipping her coffee out of a china cup on a green velvet settee. "Is what true?"

The assistant hesitated. "That you left the security guard for that designer."

"Who said that?"

The assistant smiled apologetically. "I...overheard...your assistant talking to another client one day. They wanted to know if it was true...they'd seen a photo of you supposedly kissing the designer. Anyway, your assistant said it was true as far as she knew."

"What?!" Belinda nearly jumped out of her seat. It was a good thing she'd set her coffee down on the side table. "Where? The picture...WHERE?!"

His assistant colored. "You know...one of those social networking things. Someone posted a photo of you two—kissing."

Belinda flew out of her seat. Her mind raced at who would have done such a thing. "Who saw it online?"

The assistant shifted her eyes uncomfortably.

"I know you shouldn't have heard that," Belinda said. "But I won't ever mention that, I promise."

After a second, the assistant's eyes rolled back to Belinda and she gave her a name. It was someone Belinda knew. Good.

Something like the desire to cry stung the back of Belinda's eyes. Why was everything going so, so terribly wrong? "Please don't pass that on to anyone else."

"Because it's not true?" The assistant's eyes lit up.

Belinda nodded eagerly. "Because it's not true. Not even close."

The woman let out a sigh. "I knew it couldn't be. Not you. No matter what they said about you and the Nichols' boy." She shook her head empathetically. "They're just jealous because you've nabbed all the handsome ones."

"Handsome ones?" Carmichael said from the bottom of the stairs. "You better be talking about me."

His assistant pursed her lips and gave a nod to Belinda before leaving the room. Belinda stayed cemented to the floor. She felt lightheaded. So people were talking about her and Mark again because of what had happened with Bennett. And they didn't even have the decency to get Bennett's employment right.

"Here's the list, dear," Carmichael said, handing her a printout. "I hope this helps with whatever adventure you're on."

She smiled sadly, glancing over the list. It was short with gaps of inactivity. "That's it?"

Carmichael shrugged. "He could've been working under the table for someone, or collecting unemployment."

Belinda scanned the names, mentally checking off the Sykes' pet boutique. After that, Riley apparently left Portside and spent time in New York City. Belinda pinched the paper. She had worked for Sawyer.

"Anything else I can do before you go?" Carmichael said with a smirk in his eyes.

Belinda glanced up, wide-eyed. "Yes. Please just let your assistant know that Bennett is not a security guard. He owns an event security firm. It's different."

Carmichael's mouth formed an O but she didn't give him a chance to prod for information. She had connections to make sense of, and a rumor to trace.

 

Before Belinda visited Carmichael, she'd planned to go home and empty her car of the second load of cat products, and then write up the first blog post for the Cake Diva site. After her trip to Carmichael, she ran into the house and forsook everything else to scour people's social networks until she found the photo.

It took a lot of page hopping, but she located the source. Not the photographer, mind you. That would take more investigating. But she'd pinpointed the social network gossip.

Belinda jumped when the door slammed.

"What's all this?" Kyle swept his hand to encompass the corner of the back of the house next to the pyramid.

Belinda waved it off impatiently. "Just some things the kittens need." She stood from her crouched position on the floor, shaking her foot out to wake it up, and ran over with the phone extended.

"Need?" Kyle's brown eyes darted from the cat tree to the toy mice to the pink leopard print cat bed to the bag that didn't look emptied.

"There's more in the car."

Kyle's eyebrows arched even higher. "You're not planning to keep them, right?"

The white kitty with the random splashes of gray along her body sniffed at the bag and meowed. Belinda had started calling her Aria—in honor of their mother, the opera singer. The only boy in the litter with a white underbelly and a light gray blanket on top, snoozed in the cylinder in the middle of the cat tree. Belinda was tempted to call him Kyle.

"It's nothing permanent," she said vaguely. "But I needed some supplies to keep them alive until...until I figure out what to do."

"Until you figure out what to do?" Kyle stomped over. "Bels, we have like five-hundred cats here. They're on the coffee table, behind the toilet, in the microwave–"

"In the microwave?"

"They meow, they leave presents on the couch, they try to suffocate you in the middle of the night." Belinda wrinkled her nose. Maybe they tried to suffocate him because he put them in the microwave. "I'm saying you have to do something about this. I can't take it."

"Never mind the kittens. Look at this!" Belinda thrust the phone in his face. He leaned back so he could actually focus on it.

"What am I looking at?"

"Me. Me and Sawyer at the art gallery when he kissed me. Someone took a photo and now it's online!" She didn't feel like adding that the message had spread.

Kyle arched his sleek brows again. "So?"

"What do you mean so?"

"Well, it happened, right? It's not like they're Photoshopping it."

Belinda wanted to scream. Or strangle him. Or all of the above. "Just once, would you please be upset for me? My relationship with Bennett is...I don't even know what it is! And now everyone is saying I cheated on him, and I didn't! I know what's in this photograph, but it's not the whole story. And they're...they're even bringing up Mark again." Just when she thought she'd put that behind her after nearly a decade, here it was again.

Kyle sighed and scratched the side of his face. "Bels, I'm sorry. But we've both learned the hard way that people like to talk."

Well, that was the truth. The Sykes had been Portside's most recent favorite topic of discussion. Apparently, everyone was bored with them and moving onto Belinda and her man drama.

"Don't worry about it." Kyle shrugged.

"Why not?"

"Because soon enough someone else will break up in front of every member of the yacht club, or find out their eggs are useless, or disown their family's Ivy League legacy and move to Laos. Just give it a week."

"Find out their eggs are useless?"

"Yeah. Remember What's-her-face was seen coming out of a fertility center?"

"Oh, yeah. You know they adopted this winter, right?"

"See. Useless eggs completely forgotten."

Belinda cracked a smile.

"Like everything else, it'll be fine," he said. "Now please promise me you have plans to off-load these cats."

Belinda stroked Aria's head. "I will. I promise." She smiled to assure him though she really couldn't promise anything at that point.

After hesitating, he finally nodded assent and locked himself in the bathroom. A moment later he came back out, holding an all gray kitten by the scruff and deposited her in Belinda's palms. "Soon," he said and slammed the bathroom door shut.

Belinda and the gray kitten exchanged confused glances. "I can't imagine what he's so upset about." The kitten nuzzled her hand and Belinda leaned her back against the wall of boxes, stroking her head. Maybe the rumor would just pass over in a few days by itself. But a little push in the right direction never hurt.