LITMIR.BIZ

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her. “Ladies!” Mimi rapped sharply again and kept rapping until the chatter finally died to a low murmur. “I think that now would be a good time for our break,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “There’s coffee, wine, and pastries in the dining room across the hallway. We’ll reconvene in about twenty minutes.”

      Uh oh. Suddenly realizing that her presence in the dining room could be construed as eavesdropping, Charlotte tucked her feather duster beneath her arm and hurried back into the kitchen. She was bent over her supply carrier when Mimi entered the room only seconds later. Charlotte straightened. Mimi’s face was pale, and she looked as if any minute she were going to burst into tears.

      “Charlotte, I’m going upstairs for a few minutes,” Mimi said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “Would you please make sure that everyone has what they need?” Without waiting for Charlotte’s answer, she turned and fled the room.

      Charlotte wanted to feel sorry for Mimi, and she did, but only up to a point. In Charlotte’s opinion, Mimi had no one but herself to blame for the fiasco with Rita. She could have let the group vote again, as Rita had requested. That would have been the gracious thing to do, the fair thing. But she hadn’t, and because she hadn’t, and because of what June had done, Charlotte just couldn’t sympathize as much as she would have under other circumstances.

      With a sigh, Charlotte wandered into the dining room to check on things. Whether she agreed or disagreed with what Mimi and June had done didn’t matter in the long run. What mattered right now was that Mimi was her employer, and she still had a job to finish.

      Even with a dozen women milling around, the dining room was large enough that it wasn’t overly crowded. Charlotte paused just inside the doorway and glanced around. She spotted June almost immediately standing near the buffet with a glass of wine in her hand. Looking as innocent as a newborn lamb, she was laughing and talking to a small group of women. Almost as soon as Charlotte saw June, June glanced up and saw Charlotte. June abruptly excused herself from the group and made a beeline for Charlotte.

      When she reached Charlotte, she took her by the arm and pulled her just inside the kitchen. “Do you know where Mimi got off to?”

      Charlotte didn’t appreciate the accusatory tone in June’s voice at all—a tone that insinuated that Mimi’s disappearance was Charlotte’s fault. She firmly pulled her arm from June’s grasp and fought the urge to rub it, not from pain, but simply because she also didn’t appreciate being manhandled by anyone, least of all someone who was almost a complete stranger. Using all the self-control she could muster, she said, “Mimi went upstairs for a few moments.”

      June’s face wrinkled with concern. “Did she say why?”

      “No, she didn’t.”

      “Hmm, maybe I’d better go check on her, just to make sure she’s okay.” She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know how much of what went on in there you heard”—she waved toward the parlor—“but we had a little altercation with one of the members—a slight misunderstanding—and, well, the member got upset, and Mimi—poor thing—takes everything to heart.”

      A slight misunderstanding? First the woman manhandles her, and now she was insulting her intelligence. Charlotte felt her temper rise.

      “Anyway,” June continued, “I won’t be gone but a moment, so just make sure everyone has what they need until I get back.”

      Yes, ma’am; no, ma’am; right away, ma’am. Or maybe she should just stand at attention and salute. Charlotte swallowed hard. June’s intimidation tactics might work on some people, but she had another thing coming if she thought Charlotte was going to put up with it. Charlotte forced a tight little smile. “Ms. Bryant,” she said, “I’ve already assured Mimi that I would take care of things. And I will,” she added pointedly.

      June gave her an odd look but nodded once. “Of course,” she said, her tone chilly. Then, with a slight lift of her chin, she stuck her patrician nose in the air, turned, and hurried toward the doorway leading to the central hall.

      As Charlotte watched June weave her way through the other women, she took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm her racing pulse. Good thing she didn’t have trouble with high blood pressure.

      After a moment, she felt a bit calmer. She returned to the dining room and busied herself with picking up the dirty dishes and tidying the table. All around her, conversations centered on Rita and continued as if Charlotte weren’t even there. But, then, no one ever paid attention to the hired help. It was a fact that Charlotte had learned early on when she’d first started up Maid-for-a-Day, and it was the very reason she insisted that the women who worked for her adhered to her client confidentiality policy.

      Once Charlotte had cleaned up as much as she could for the time being, she slipped into the kitchen. As she stood at the sink hand washing one of the crystal dessert plates, she tried to concentrate on what she was doing instead of the conversation between the two women standing just inside the dining room doorway. But ignoring what they were saying proved to be impossible, and she got an earful.

      Chapter 4

      Both of the women looked to be in their early forties, and each had a glass of wine. The taller of the two had a whiny, nasally voice and was the one who did most of the talking.

      “It’s a shame that there’s such bad blood between Mimi and Rita,” she said.

      “Bad blood?”

      “Has been for a while now.”

      Charlotte glanced over at the two in time to see the shorter woman wrinkle her brow. “How come? I thought Mimi and Gordon were really good friends with Rita and Don.”

      “They were, once upon a time, but not any more. I can’t believe you haven’t heard about it. Why, that was just an awful scandal.”

      “Scandal? What scandal?”

      “Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I heard that Rita accused Mimi of having an affair with Don.”

      The shorter woman gasped, and Charlotte almost dropped the plate she was rinsing. She cleared her throat loudly, hoping that when the women realized she could hear everything they said, they would stop their gossiping.

      “Why, that’s just plain ridiculous,” the shorter woman said.

      So much for trying to be discreet, Charlotte thought.

      “Mimi would never cheat on Gordon,” the shorter woman continued. “And she certainly wouldn’t cheat on him with the likes of that awful Don Landers.”

      “Well, you and I know that,” the taller woman whined, “but, evidently, Rita thought differently.”

      Shades of Bitsy Duhe, Charlotte thought, as she tried again to tune out the women’s malicious gossip session, but again it was no use. Whether she liked it or not, she was a captive audience.

      “Anyway,” the taller woman continued, “no matter how many times Mimi denied it, Rita just couldn’t get past it. And we both know that Rita is not exactly the soul of discretion. She claimed that she’d caught ’em in the act.”

      “Nooo,” the shorter woman drawled in a tone of utter disbelief.

      “Oh, yeah,” the other woman replied.

      “But if she caught them doing it, then it must be true.”

      The taller woman shook her head. “Not hardly. Rita has been known to lie. Regardless, Rita, like a ninny, went and blabbed it to anyone and everyone who would listen.”

      “Aw, come on now. Why on earth would she do that? You’d think she’d be too humiliated to want anyone to know.”

      “I kid you not. That’s exactly what she did, mostly, I suspect, to humiliate Mimi and cause her problems with Gordon. Of course, poor Mimi found out. But even worse, Gordon found out what Rita had done, and woe to anyone who upsets his Mimi. Suffice it to say, Rita’s

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