Seidel, Kathleen Gilles Read Online Free PDF Page B

wealthy. The truly wealthy were often rather nice.
    The Casler Properties offices were in a complex of low, Spanish-style buildings a few blocks off the Hollywood Freeway. A red-tiled arch led into a courtyard that had recently been paved over for parking. The space nearest the main door was prominently marked "Reserved for Miss Casler." Somebody else's white Mercedes was parked in it. Jill managed to squeeze her own American-made car between a pair of Porsches that were each angled across two spaces.
    Currently employed by the estate were the two people Jill trusted more than anyone on earth. Ken Sommerston, an attorney now more involved with real estate and investments than with the law, was a good-hearted, genial man. The estate's secretary, Lynette Shepherd, had been with Cass longer than either of his two wives. With graying hair twisted into a hairnet at the back of her head and glasses, which she wore suspended from a chain, she looked like a grammar-school librarian, but she was an exceptionally competent woman. Her memory was superb. If Cass had ever told her anything about the making of Weary Hearts, she would remember.
    Both Ken and Lynette were always delighted to see Jill, having known her since the day she was born. As soon as Jill opened the door to the fourth-floor suite, Lynette, presiding over the outer office from a large mahogany desk, flipped a switch on the intercom. "Ken, Jill's here." Then she came around the desk, holding out her arms.
    In a moment Ken was with them, he, too, kissing Jill's cheek. The file folder he was carrying caught in her hair.
    Smiling, she untangled herself. "I suppose this is something you want me to sign."
    "It's the inventories for the insurance claims." He was filing for her mudslide losses. "Do you want to go over them? See if we've forgotten anything?"
    How was she going to do that? Only by picturing in detail each room of her lost home. On the table opposite the front door had been a tiny watercolor framed in gilt, standing on a little easel. Next to it was a vase that her friend Susannah Donovan had given her. Was either of them valuable? Jill didn't know. They had been lovely, that's all she had cared about. What about the arrangement of dried flowers and sea grasses in the vase? Her mother had brought in a florist to design it specifically for the vase; it picked up some of the colors in the painting. Like many things Melody purchased, it had cost the earth. Should that be listed on the claim?
    Jill did not want to have to think about each and every one of her lost possessions. Getting every last dime out of the insurance company wasn't worth it. She shook her head. "I'm sure you're close enough."
    She sat down on the sofa across from Lynette's desk. She was glad to be there. After taking her to see the empty mudland that had been her house, Ken had planned on bringing her to his own home, but she had asked to come here. The offices felt warm, comforting, full of her father's presence.
    Cass had not opened it until he was quite affluent, and the furnishings revealed that. Although the rooms were washed with Southern California's straw-colored light, they were decorated as if they were in Williamsburg or Richmond. The large, square reception room was dominated by a dramatic Jacobean pattern of scarlet and navy flowers on a parchment background. The fabric covered the camelback sofa and the rolled-arm wing chairs; it had also been fashioned into deep fringed swags over the windows. The inner offices had gentler toiles, airy designs of vines, ferns, and birds in white and faded blues.
    In the midst of this steady dignity, Doug Ringling's story seemed hardly worth talking about. But Ken and Lynette had taken seats on the wing chairs and were looking concerned, waiting to hear why she had come.
    "I wanted to tell you about this visitor I had," she said. "He was a nephew of Bix Ringling. It was the strangest thing, but the nephew looked exactly like him."
    "I think we knew