The Hinky Bearskin Rug Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m screwing this up.
    “Listen, you
really might want the EEOC. I’m here because you said there was something hinky
about the orgy. That’s my division,” Jewel said bitterly. “If it was just
Viagra in the coffee, you could get a harassment expert, but since it was
magic, you get me.”
    “No! No one
else! I can’t risk it.” Maida took a deep breath, then a slug of her highball,
then another deep breath. “He — it was under control for a long time. I don’t
know what’s got into hi — them.”
    Jewel caught
the slip, but she didn’t pounce. She said as gently as she could, “You can’t
just hire me to throw a scare into the white guys, Maida. You’ve called in the
city over hinky phenomena. That doesn’t go away. Regardless of the stink, I’m
here until I find out what happened, and decide that I can be reasonably sure
it won’t happen again.”
    Maida sipped. “Understood.”
    “And you can’t
blame yourself for the way bosses behave. Though I admit I’m a little sickened
by the dress code. Those girls dress like victims.”
    Maida glanced
at Jewel’s navy polyester pantsuit with a shudder. “Perhaps you’re right.”
    “Okay, I get
the message.” Jewel rolled her eyes. “I’ll find something girly to wear tomorrow.”
    An almost
human smile twisted on Maida’s lips. “Don’t bother. Even in appropriate attire
I expect you’d, uh, stand out. Telling a senior to call his own cab!” She
tittered. “‘Is your finger broken?’” She seemed thrilled and horrified.
    “That’s made
me, huh?” Reluctantly Jewel grinned.
    “Maybe you’re
helping more than you think.”
    “Even if I
dress and talk like a cop?”
    With a sigh,
Maida said, “You might put heart into the girls,” as if that was the one thing
she hoped Jewel could accomplish. She slugged back her highball and got up. “I
can’t be seen with you.” She put a twenty on the table and whisked away to the
ladies room in back.
    Interview
over.
    She may not have meant me to interpret
that last remark as blanket permission to interrogate the employees. But I’m
gonna assume she did.

Chapter Five

    “You once told
me,” Randy said that night, as they put clean sheets on the bed in Jewel’s
apartment, “that you had a family attorney in Homonowoc who became your lover.”
    “I don’t
remember telling you that,” Jewel said guardedly.
    “You said he
was a septuagenarian. Now you say that this young woman has accepted the
patronage of her employer, who is ‘forty years too old for her.’ That troubles
you?”
    “So?”
    Randy looked
at her across the half-made bed. “In what way,” he said patiently, “is her
situation different from yours?” He twitched the sheet out of her hand and
shook it out.
    Jewel smiled. Old Liddy Lidheimer. There was a
forgotten name. Her belly softened at the thought of him.
    Randy flicked
the blanket over the bed. When the pillows were covered and piled up, he
stepped out of his clothes and slid his big, wedge-shaped body between the
sheets, looking at her expectantly. “Come, you are not so irreflective as you
pretend.”
    Jewel got
naked, slid down under the covers, and let her head sink into the pillow.
    “I was
seventeen. Grampa was already dead. Then my grandmother died. Liddy, the
lawyer, Mr. Lidheimer, had been coming around for a while, setting me up with a
power of attorney for Gram. That was so I could keep the farm running while she
was sick. I don’t really know how it happened.”
    She turned out
the bedside lamp and stared at the lines of streetlight striping the ceiling
through the venetian blinds, remembering. She smiled.
    “Liddy was
there for me. He joshed me along when I was desperate. He liked me strong, you
know.” She turned her head on the pillow. “That’s different from this poor girl
at this office. She’s so, so flat. So
docile.”
    Randy didn’t
say anything.
    “After Gram
died I guess I did flatten out,” she admitted. “Liddy cured me. He saw