Minerva's Ghost (3 page)

Gabriel Hall and his friend and coworker Henry Scofield, AKA Scooby, sat on a park bench at the library next door to Harold’s office and watched the group exit the meeting. They knew all the players from their dealings with Minnie. Michael and Amanda came first, walking fast and looking tense and unhappy. They did not look like heirs with the lion’s share of the assets, nor did they look at each other or speak until they reached Amanda’s car.

Amanda looked up at her cousin briefly and spoke, saying something short he couldn’t hear before she cranked the car and drove away. Michael stood watching her until his mother approached. She threw a short, low voiced communication in his direction during which he neither looked at her nor answered. She left him standing with his head down and his cheeks flushed red with anger or humiliation or both. He suddenly gathered himself and walked to a battered pickup truck and drove away.

‘Such a loving parent ’ Gabe thought, sympathizing instantly with Michael. His siblings, all of them adults, were giggling at the reprimand like bad children. The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He realized how dangerous adults could be if they had none of the normal curbs on their behavior that people should learn as they mature.

Scooby said, “I’ve got a feeling. I had one after Minnie’s accident already, but I have it more now.”

“I have one, too,” Gabe agreed. “I want the whole team here, now…today if possible.”

The rest of the people gathered for the reading of the will climbed into two cars, Heather in her own car, and the boys and their mother in another and pulled out of the parking lot. After they were gone Moon stepped from the building. He stopped and drew a flask from his pocket. He took a long, apparently satisfying drink from it and then climbed into his own vehicle and left, too. Gabe knew he had no driver’s license, but he was still driving.

The next day Gabe asked to meet with Amanda in her office at Au Natural. Because she knew Minnie had hired him, for something that her aunt considered important she decided to meet with him. She met him outside her office in the lobby of the building. He was   tall, dark and attractive in a rough sort of way, not classically good looking in the way blond men often were. Gena’s Pete was blond and did not turn her on at all, as much as he wanted her body or her assets…whichever it was that he wanted. She was all too sure that she herself as an individual mattered little in what Gena and her Whitfield offspring wanted from her.

She wanted family ties. She was alone in the world except for her cousin Michael and desperately wanted a family. Still, she wasn’t desperate enough or dumb enough to mistake what Gena and her children were offering for even affection, let alone love.

She watched Gabe walk toward her briskly, not really hurrying but as though he had things to do…responsibilities. Gabe looked dark and a little rough even in carefully pressed slacks and a starched shirt. His eyes were very dark and extravagantly lashed, big and expressive. He was well built and his clothes were perfectly tailored, but loose enough for comfort. His pants were a softly draped fabric with enough ease to disguise the details and give air to his package. She realized she was looking at his crotch, enjoying the view. He wore either hangers or no underwear. The thought of it was tantalizing. His shirtsleeves were rolled up revealing hairy muscular forearms and big masculine hands. She always looked at men’s hands…imagined them on her body. It was usually the first place she looked after their eyes. But she had looked first at Gabe’s crotch, not his hands. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t looking for love. She was avoiding it, if anything. Her fantasies were as close as she was getting to a real man. 

He walked to her and she turned and led the way into her office. She was attracted and reluctant to shake his hand or touch him at all.

“Can I offer you coffee?” she asked to cover her standoffishness.

“No, I’ve had a few cups already.” He stood without restlessness and waited with apparent patience until she offered him a chair in the small conversation grouping that served as a conference area in Minnie’s office. He sat as soon as she chose a chair across from him.

“You here working even before Minnie died?” she said. “She introduced us.”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “I was here a couple of weeks.”

“Why were you really here?” Instinctively knew she Amanda had to know, needed to know.

“Minnie was concerned about some money that was missing from some of the company accounts. I had been called in to investigate, but did not find any answers before she died.” Gabe told her. I had placed some equipment in the main offices and just started some surveillance to increase security here. We were obligated to see that employees and customers were aware their conversations might be recorded for quality control and/or security. We didn’t make a big deal about it. We just wanted to be sure it was in employment contracts and all.”

“What did the two of you think was going on here?” Amanda asked him.

“She thought some money was being embezzled. I do, too, though I had not yet done the accounting checks.” Gabe told her. “I was going on what Minnie had told me, but we both know she would know what she was talking about.”

Amanda felt her body tighten from shock. She thought, ‘Oh, Yeah, Minnie would know. She was a great mathematician.’

There it was, the wrongness she had felt put into words. Amanda’s vision seemed to shrink to a point of light and then pure rage seemed to pour through her. “What are you saying, Gabe?” Her voice was choked and hoarse. She had felt the wrongness of it. Minnie had been murdered. She knew it, now.

“Easy, Amanda. I don’t know anything substantive to tell you. Stuff happened, money went missing and Minnie’s dead, but we don’t know and have no facts to support that Minnie’s death was anything but an accident.”

Amanda found herself on her feet heading for the door. Gabe was somehow right with her. “Wait “ he said. “Do you really know where you’re going?”

He was right. She didn’t know. He was not fool enough to touch her when she was so angry. Amanda was not a small woman and she was in great condition, if not at her best at the moment. If he’d touched her at that moment she might have hit him. He somehow kept her in the room without touching her, or provoking her past bearing.

“Amanda, please stay a few minutes. We don’t know anything that points to your aunt’s death being anything except an accident. Minnie would have called it ‘cosmic bad luck’. You know she would.”

Amanda headed back to her chair.  She gathered her composure and straightened her backbone. She knew it was ‘cosmic bad luck’ only in the sense that someone wanted her aunt out of the way. “Tell me what you know.”

”We really have just started the investigation,” Gabe told her.

“Do you want to continue it?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she told him.  She looked him straight in the eye. “I want to be part of it, not just kept in the loop.”

“Count on it,” he said. “I have another person here. His name is Henry Scofield. He agrees with me that something is up. We just don’t know what. I’m going to get with him and some of our other people. Minnie already paid us, so I feel obligated to do the job. I hope you understand.”

He stood up and she stood also and escorted him to the door. This time she offered him her hand. He took it and she put her other small hand over his. “Find the answers. All of us here need to know what’s going on.”

“I know,” he told her. “I need to know, too.”

Amanda got through the day. Her time was taken up with transitional decisions and she avoided thinking about what had happened to Aunt Minnie so she could function. She finished for the day and went home to an empty house needing distraction. She picked at a frozen dinner, but finally dumped it in the trash. She took a hot bath and had some chamomile tea, hoping it would help her sleep. She climbed into bed naked, no gown. Her skin seemed to need to be bare. It felt almost as irritated as her emotions. She tried to lie quietly but her mind wouldn’t rest. Finally her mind found distraction in daydreaming about Gabe…naked. He had a soft touch with a woman’s hand, always a good sign that a man knew how to touch and give pleasure.

Most men she had known didn’t give pleasure very well. They knew how to take, not how to turn women on, but still Amanda had hope that true love existed. Until she found something better she took care of her own pleasure. She closed her eyes and thought of Gabe. She imagined his hands gentle on her breasts. She stroked herself and rubbed her nipples while imagining his hands on her body. It seemed more stimulating than her usual movie star fantasies. Gabe was bigger and more masculine than little, macho guys that made movies until they were decades older than their female costars. Ignoring their wrinkles and bellies got to be a strain. She couldn’t think of a single one who would compare favorably standing next to him. Her fantasy life had found new inspiration. She felt her arousal increase just imagining Gabe in bed with her. She imagined him touching her breasts and kissing her. She ran her hands down her own body while she wished for something…someone else…to play with.

Gabe’s hands passed that intangible test she gave all men. She liked the way they looked…how they would look on her body. She kicked the cover to the end of the bed and spread her legs. Her hands wandered to the sensitive spot where she wanted Gabe. He made her feel hot and bothered, almost desperate for sex. It was new for her. Sex had been something she did without. She was soaking wet, ready for the man she wanted, unique from all others, and special to her. Her fingers strayed to her mound and parted her labia. She was wet and needy. She put two fingers in her passage and the fingers of her other hand on her clit. She thought of Gabe and the thought did it. She came. She had to make herself come two more times before she could sleep, dreaming of Gabe all the time.

Chapter 2

Amanda rushed around the house not quite ready for the meeting with Tom and Gabe Hall. She was glad to see Friday come. She had been working hard and was tired and overwhelmed by what Minnie had seemed to do so effortlessly. Minnie had always worked from home so all her data and files were right where Amanda could find them. Managers and an operating officer ran the day-to-day business of the company. She sensed reluctance on the part of those people to accept her leadership. They were patronizing at best and at worst they were insubordinate. Amanda was realizing that the most critical problem was that they were jumping at the opportunity to undermine Minnie’s vision.

Amanda had always expected to have a part of the business, but she never thought of being the head honcho while she was still so young. She was going to have to take some unpopular stands, and soon if she was going to continue to manage Minnie’s company in the way her aunt would expect. Amanda knew some people were trying to play with her head and what she would do about it. She was going to be reminding some folks she was the boss whether any of them wanted it or not.

Amanda had embarked while still a child on a course of study Minnie designed to train her to be a part of the business after Amanda showed an interest. She had some skills and a real affinity for working with the natural products Minnie sold and marketed. Some were even Amanda’s recipes. Most were either invented by Minnie or passed down in her family for generations.  

Her aunt had seen to her education, not just in book learning, but in experience and folklore, too, but Amanda did not feel she knew all she needed to know.

Most of all Amanda missed the partnership of their combined skills, the comments and suggestions when she was stuck or Minnie was interested in a younger person’s input. Two brains were often better than one. It brought new meaning to the word lonely. Amanda had never felt so lonely in her life. Still she knew no one else who had the knowledge and the will to guard the purity of her aunt’s vision. She could and would do what needed to be done.

Amanda pulled on navy pumps and buttoned the top button of her suit. She stood in front of the hall mirror and tied a scarf around her wild hair just as Tom drove up. He came to the door to escort her to his car.

“Hey, Mr. Martin.” She greeted him, but he barely looked at her.

He seated her in the passenger seat with no more than a grunted reply.

As he seated himself in the driver’s seat she turned to him and said, “Are you feeling more yourself today?” She then fixed her eyes firmly on him and waited for a reply.

“Damn it, Amanda, you’re just like your aunt. Do you know what it’s like for me, to know I’m never going to have her? I can never have what I want, now. I’m too old to start over even if I wanted to do it. Minnie would have been unhappy over the way I ran out and left you with that bunch of vultures.”