“Hi, Frank,” Kate said to the balding bartender, who’d worked for Donovan’s for twenty years. “Who’s supposed to be on duty with you today?”
“Jimmy,” he replied, flicking her a noncommittal look.
“I thought Jimmy was working the evening shift.”
“He switched with Pete Fellows.”
“Where’s Jimmy, then?”
“Dunno, Mary Kate.”
Scheduling the staff was Louis Kellard’s job as the restaurant manager. “I guess Louis is taking care of getting you some help,” Kate said, turning to leave.
“Mary Kate, I need to tell you somethin’.”
She turned back, suddenly uneasy about his tone. “Yes?” she said, walking over to him. He had a sheen of perspiration on his forehead, presumably from trying to rush.
“I’m gonna have to quit.”
Kate’s eyes widened in alarm at the thought of another familiar face disappearing from her life. “Are you sick, Frank?”
Lifting his head, he looked her straight in the eye. “Yeah, I am. I’m sick of watchin’ this place slide downhill. I’ve always been real proud of workin’ at Donovan’s. There’s not a customer who comes in here more than a few times that I don’t make it a point to remember his name and what he likes. Your dad, God rest his soul, was the same way about the dining room customers.”
“I know that—” Kate said, cringing inwardly from the indirect criticism of her stewardship.
“Donovan’s has always been special. Even when your dad decided to make this place real classy, he kept it real personal, too. He gave it his special touch, and that’s what’s made Donovan’s the popular place that it is. I’m gonna be honest with you, Mary Kate, and tell you what all of us think who’ve worked here for a few years: You don’t have your dad’s touch. We thought you might, but you don’t.”
Kate put up a valiant struggle against a sudden rush of tears. “I spend as much time here as my father did,” she argued.
“Your heart isn’t in it,” he countered. “Your father wouldn’t have seen me alone in here and shrugged and said, ‘I guess Louis is taking care of getting you some help.’ He’d have made damned sure I had help, and then he’d have made damned sure he knew why Louis hadn’t already taken care of it.”
Heated tears were burning the backs of Kate’s eyes now, threatening to spill over, and she turned, starting toward the doorway into the dining room. “Tell Marjorie to give you an extra two months’ pay in your final check,” she said, referring to the trusted bookkeeper who’d worked for her father for more than a decade.
To her shock, the Irishman called angrily after her, “You tell Marjorie to do it, Mary Kate Donovan! That’s your job—you’re the boss, not me, and not Marjorie.”
Kate nodded, trying to breathe steadily and slowly so she wouldn’t have to run for the bathroom to either throw up or cry.
“And another thing—” Frank shouted after her. “Why are you lettin’ me get away with talkin’ to you like that? I wouldn’t have gotten away with talkin’ to your dad that way!”
“Go to hell,” Kate whispered.
“And one more thing besides,” he called.
Fists clenched, Kate turned and saw him leaning over the bar, his face red with anger. “What’s wrong with your eyes that you didn’t notice that the lemons and limes I’m puttin’ out are old? Why aren’t you storming outta here on your way to the kitchen to see who the hell is letting that produce company get away with giving us this crap?”
Kate refused to reply, but she did notice that the maître d’, Kevin Sandovski, still wasn’t at his post at 11:25, when she walked by his desk at the entrance. In the kitchen, she found him, Louis Kellard, and several waiters who should have been busy with last-minute details in the dining room, standing around joking with the kitchen staff. “What’s going on in here?” she asked in what she hoped was an authoritative, disapproving voice.
Sandovski levered himself up from a stool, but she thought he rolled his eyes at the waiters. Louis Kellard looked at the bulge in her abdomen, smiled sympathetically, and said, “Kate, I’ve been through two pregnancies with my wife, and I know how hard it is on a woman emotionally and physically to deal with that, along with the stress of holding down a job. Try not to upset yourself.”
“I’m not upsetting myself,” Kate said, unsure whether he was genuinely trying to help her or patronizing her. “Frank O’Halloran said we’re getting inferior produce. Is that true?”
“Of course it isn’t,” Louis said, shaking his head in affront. “We’re just not using as many lemons and limes as we used to in the lounge, so they stand around a little longer.”
“Why aren’t we using as many as we used to?”
“Ask Marjorie,” Louis said. “She has all the figures on how much business we’re doing. We’re down a little from what we used to do, but not by much.”
Kate nodded and backed out of the kitchen. “I’ll be in the office if you need me.”
Her father’s office—her office now—had been relocated years before to an area off the main dining room, separated from it by a paneled hallway with doors opening into the bookkeeper’s office and the manager’s office as well. The staircase leading up from the old pub to the apartment above had been closed off and a new staircase created that was located next to her father’s office. The apartment itself was still there, but her father had used it only rarely, either when the weather was too bad to drive home or when he’d worked unusually late.
Marjorie was sitting at her desk, her fingers racing over a calculator keyboard, her ledger books spread out over nearly every available surface. “Frank O’Halloran is going to quit,” Kate said. “Will you please give him two months’ extra pay in his final check?”
The gray-haired bookkeeper looked up. “Are you going to let Frank quit?”
“How am I supposed to stop him?” Kate demanded, her fingernails biting into her palms.
“I don’t know. I guess I thought maybe you’d have an idea.”
“I do have one idea,” Kate shot back. “What’s that, Kate?”
“We ought to be using a computerized cash-flow system. Those ledger books are as antiquated as—”
“As me?” Marjorie suggested ironically.
“I didn’t mean it that way, Marjorie.”
“We are computerized,” Marjorie said, taking pity on her. “Food orders, reservations, everything. Haven’t you noticed that before?”
“Of course I have!” Kate said, already feeling drained after being there less than half an hour. “I was talking about the ledgers you’re using right now. Why isn’t that information on computer?”
“It is, actually. Your father liked the consistency of tracking everything using the same method we’ve always used, so I transfer certain information into the ledgers off the computer.” She waited expectantly for Kate to say something, and when Kate didn’t she dropped her gaze to her calculator and began inputting figures. “Kate,” she said without looking up, “you’re not really invested in running this business. You need to think about selling it.”
Wounded to the core now, Kate said nothing and backed out of yet another room, retreating again, because she’d lost complete faith in herself. A few months ago—before Mitchell Wyatt—she would have had enough faith in her own judgment to take a firm stand in the kitchen with Louis, and with Frank, and with Marjorie. But not now. Now she’d lost faith in herself, and on top of that, everyone else was losing faith in her, too.
Because of Mitchell, and because of her pregnancy with his child, she’d been reduced to an exhausted mass of raw emotions and uncertainties. Worse yet, she couldn’t think of the child she was carrying without immediately thinking of what a gullible fool she’d been about his father. For weeks, she’d been waiting to feel some sort of maternal bond with her baby, but it wasn’t happening, and she was starting to fear that her feelings about Mitchell were going to prevent her from loving her baby.
Kat
e sat down behind her father’s desk and faced the fact that things were likely to get much worse, not better, unless she could find some sort of resolution, and peace, about what Mitchell had done to her. She had to be able to forgive him, and then forgive herself for falling for him. Once she did that, she’d be able to put all the bad feelings behind her and look forward to the future.
In order to forgive and forget, she first needed to understand how he thought and what had happened to him to make him so heartless and vengeful.
Propping her chin on the palm of her hand, Kate considered how to find the answers she needed. …
Neither Caroline nor Cecil Wyatt would be willing to talk about him behind his back. Matthew Farrell and Meredith Bancroft knew him, but Meredith had witnessed her confrontation with Mitchell at the Children’s Hospital benefit, and afterward, she’d looked at Kate as if she didn’t exist anymore. In Anguilla, Evan had told her enough about Mitchell’s childhood to make her feel horrified, but Evan certainly wouldn’t fill in any details for Kate now. …
In her mind, Kate suddenly saw Gray Elliott taking some files off a thick stack on his desk and bringing them over to the coffee table where Holly and she were sitting. Those particular files had contained photographs, but there had been a lot more files in a pile on his desk.
Feeling more resolute and optimistic than she had in months, she got a phone book out of her desk drawer.
After a fairly long delay, Gray Elliott picked up the telephone. “Miss Donovan?” he said, sounding brisk but curious. “My secretary said you needed to talk to me about an urgent matter.”
“I do,” Kate said emphatically, “but it has to be in person.”
“I’m booked up for several—”
“It will take only a few minutes, and it is urgent—and very important.”
He hesitated, and Kate could almost see him looking at his calendar. “Could you make it at twelve-fifteen tomorrow? I’ll see you before I go to lunch.”
“I’ll be there,” Kate said. “Thank you.”
Chapter Forty-one
“MR. ELLIOTT WILL SEE YOU NOW, MISS DONOVAN,” THE secretary said.
Kate stood up and followed her into his office. Yesterday, Kate had looked like a wreck, but today she’d paid careful attention to her appearance, striving for a feminine, summery look she desperately hoped would help offset her last, unpleasant standoff with the state’s attorney. Her sleeveless empire-waisted turquoise jumper concealed her pregnancy and was enlivened by the geometric print, in bright turquoise, lavender, and white, of her linen tote. The jumper was just short enough to be very stylish without revealing too much skin above the knee, and her high-heeled sandals showed off her legs.
To go with the mod sixties look of the jumper, she’d straightened her hair and pulled it back at the sides, holding it in place at the crown with a tortoiseshell clip.
Gray Elliott stood up when she walked into his office, and his brief, startled smile made her feel that she definitely looked better than at their last encounter, and that small success was enough to buoy up spirits that had been at a low ebb for so many months.
“Why don’t we sit over there, Miss Donovan,” he said, coming around his desk and gesturing toward the sofa and chairs where she and Holly had sat before.
Kate gave him her best rueful smile and said, “Please call me Kate.”
“All right—Kate,” he said, but his brows drew together in mild suspicion.
Since he was already suspicious, Kate decided to try to outflank him and catch him off guard by firing a round of honesty at him. “I’m hoping that if we’re on a first-name basis,” she admitted with what she hoped was a charming smile, “you’ll be more inclined to agree to the favor I’ve come to ask you for. It’s terribly important, Mr. Elliott.”
“Please call me Gray,” he said courteously—and because he had little choice if she was going to allow him to call her Kate.
When they reached the coffee table, Kate deliberately sat down on a chair at the end of it rather than on the sofa in front of it, since the soft sofa cushions would have sunk beneath her weight and put her at a height disadvantage. Evidently, Gray Elliott was equally conscious of these subtleties, because instead of sitting on the sofa as she’d hoped he would, he walked around the coffee table and sat down in the opposite chair, facing her.
“Would you like something to drink?” he offered.
“No, thank you,” Kate said, crossing her legs. Watching him from beneath her lashes, she leaned to the right to put her tote bag on the sofa. His gaze went briefly to her crossed legs and quickly withdrew. He hadn’t meant to look, but he was definitely a leg man, she thought wryly; then a sudden memory of Mitchell, standing on the balcony in St. Maarten, slashed across her heart and vanquished her brief spurt of confident optimism.
Are you smiling because I look surprisingly nice, or because there’s something wrong with my dress? she’d asked.
I’m smiling because I just realized you have gorgeous legs, and I never saw them before.
I was wearing both of them earlier. In fact, I distinctly remember that they were attached to me when we were in bed.
Unaware that her hand was still on her tote and her gaze was locked on the back of the sofa, she started when Gray Elliott said, “Kate? Are you feeling all right?”
“Oh, yes, perfectly all right,” Kate lied hastily.
He nodded acceptance of her answer and got down to business. “What can I do for you?”
Wetting her lips, Kate drew a long breath and said, “When I was here the last time, you had a stack of files on one corner of your desk. The ones you took off the top had pictures in them of Mitchell Wyatt and me. Am I right that the files you left on your desk involved your actual investigation of him?”
He hesitated, mobile brows narrowing slightly over wary gray eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“Did you investigate him?” Kate said calmly but obstinately, then she answered for him. “Well, of course, you must have. I mean, surely you didn’t waste a small fortune of taxpayers’ money sending detectives to the Caribbean just to take licentious photographs of him seducing me—and whoever else he seduced,” she added as an afterthought.
“If that’s what you’re trying to find out by coming here today, the answer is that you were the only woman he showed any interest in while he was down there.”
“How lucky for me,” Kate said, then she shook her head to stop herself from betraying, or feeling, any bitterness. “Actually, he wasn’t interested in me at all—” she said, starting to explain the truth, but Gray Elliott’s incredulous smile stopped her in midsentence.
“He certainly looks interested in those photographs. I would even have said absorbed,” Gray replied.
“That’s what he needed me to think. Never mind, that doesn’t matter. I’m getting sidetracked,” Kate said, and decided to abandon her carefully thought-out plan and go straight to what did matter. “I need to ask you something, but before I do, is there the slightest chance you’d be willing to give me your word that what I say here won’t leave this room?”
“That depends on whether what you’re going to say involves the commission of a crime,” he said half-seriously.
That struck Kate as funny and almost endearing, and she smiled at him—a natural, warm smile this time. “Unless bad timing and gullibility are crimes, there’s no problem. If they are crimes, get out your handcuffs.”
He returned her smile and leaned back in his chair, ready to listen. “You have my word that our conversation won’t leave this room.”
“Thank you. What I need is information about Mitchell Wyatt from your files, but I’m not interested in him as your murder suspect.”
“What is it that you’re curious about?”
“I’m not curious,” Kate said simply. “I’m pregnant.”
The words dropped like a bomb, sending shock waves rippling across the room. Finally, he said, “You could probably locate him yourself with some intense sno
oping on the Internet. However, I’ll give you his addresses.”
“I don’t want to locate him,” Kate said, and for the second time Gray Elliott was silent with shock.
“Why not? He has a right to know about this baby, and he also has financial obligations to you and to it.”
“Believe me, he would not want to exercise his rights to this baby. He made his first wife divorce him when she wanted to have a child. And as far as I’m concerned, he has no obligations to this baby. I’m the one who inadvertently had unprotected sex with him, and I’m the one who chose not to terminate this pregnancy. The responsibilities for the baby are all mine, and that’s fine with me.”
He studied her closely for several moments, as if unable to comprehend her willingness to accept total responsibility for her pregnancy and her baby. “What do you think you’ll discover in our files?” he asked finally.
“Evan told me a little bit about the way Mitchell grew up and what the Wyatts did to him. Do you know anything about that?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I know all about it.”
“Are you also aware that Evan’s father orchestrated and supervised everything concerning it?”
To her surprise, Gray nodded.
“Then you should be able to believe this: Mitchell staged that whole seduction effort to get himself a little revenge against the Bartletts. I was just a gullible tool. When I met him in Anguilla, I had no idea he’d ever been to Chicago, let alone that he knew Henry and Evan. He knew who I was from the very beginning, though, and when he realized Evan wasn’t with me, he pulled out all the stops to get me into bed.”
She waited for all that to sink in, then she said with a sad laugh, “Mitchell got much more revenge than he hoped for: Evan and I aren’t together anymore, and I’m pregnant with Mitchell’s child.”
“How will looking through our files help you?”
“I need to learn about him so that I can understand why he did the things he did. Once I understand why, I’m hoping I’ll be able to forgive him, and then I’ll be able to love my baby. As it stands now, I can’t think of this baby without hating his father and hating myself for being such a fool over him.”