“Would it be too much to ask what business?”
The man took a moment before he answered. “Kady, do you have any dreams in life?”
“Of course I do,” she snapped, glancing at the phone. Was this man crazy?
“What is the very wildest of your dreams?”
Not that it was any of his business, but she looked at the letters on the bed and smiled. “I’d like to own my own restaurant.”
For some reason this seemed to spark the man off again into drunken hilarity, and again Kady had to wait. “You’ll get your restaurant. You’ll get anything you want, but you must come to see me tomorrow.”
“What time?”
Again he started laughing. “You come any time you’re ready, Kady. When you arrive, I’ll be waiting for you. And a car will be waiting for you at your—May heaven help me, but I don’t even know where you’re staying.”
Kady hesitated as she thought twice about telling this man anything about herself. “I don’t need a car, and I’ll come to your office tomorrow at ten A.M. Is that too early?”
“No,” he said, amused. “Whatever time is convenient for you. We’ll all be waiting for you.”
“I’ll see you then,” she said and hung up. What a very odd man, she thought, looking at the phone in wonder, then, dismissing him, she looked back at the job offers. Which one shall I take? she thought. Living in Seattle might be nice.
Thirty minutes later she fell asleep amid the letters and didn’t wake until fifteen minutes till ten, which is why she was late for her appointment with Mr. Fowler. But, as he’d said, it didn’t matter, for they were all waiting for her.
Chapter 22
THE OLD-WORLD ELEGANCE OF THE OFFICES OF FOWLER AND Tate made Kady more aware than usual of her old, worn clothing. This place is made for Chanel, she thought as she walked across the marble lobby. Not that she had ever seen Chanel outside a magazine ad, but she had an imagination.
“I am Kady Lon—” she said to the receptionist, but the woman didn’t so much as allow her to finish her sentence before she started gushing.
“Yes, please come this way, Mr. Fowler is expecting you. Could I get you some coffee? Tea perhaps? Would you like anything ordered in?”
Kady hardly had time to say no to all the offers before big double doors with ornate brass fittings opened and out stepped a tall, handsome, gray-haired man wearing a drop-dead-gorgeous three-piece suit.
“Kady,” he said, breathing out the word as though it were what he’d been waiting all his life to say.
“You’re Mr. Fowler?” she asked in disbelief, since she couldn’t reconcile this elegant man with the whooper on the telephone last night. This man looked like he should star in one of those sophisticated 1930s movies that usually featured Cary Grant.
“Bill,” he said, his hand on the small of her back as he steered her into his office, a room that made Kady give an involuntary gasp. It was like a library in an English country house, all dark green and burgundy, with walls of carved wooden paneling. There was a picture on the wall that looked very much like an original Van Gogh.
“Can I get you anything? Anything at all?” he asked.
Kady felt so out of place that she tried to make a joke. “New shoes?” she said, smiling as she took a seat on a pretty l
ittle dark green sofa, and he smiled back at her warmly.
When she was seated, Kady looked up at the man. There was no way she was ever going to be able to call this man Bill. “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”
For a moment he remained standing, towering over her; then he sat on a chair facing her and nodded toward a neat stack of papers on the antique coffee table. “I must admit that never has a client engendered as much curiosity in me as you have. I know nothing about your connection to a woman who has been dead nearly a hundred years. I only know that you were married to her grandson, but if that were actually true, you’d have to be nearly a hundred years old.” At this he chuckled and gave her what she was sure was his best you-can-confide-in-me look.
Kady gave him a little smile in return, but she wasn’t tempted in the slightest to tell him what she had been through.
“Yes, well, I won’t pry.” Again he chuckled. “No, I probably will pry a great deal, but I have a feeling it may get me nowhere. If you are half as secretive as the rest of the Jordans, I will find out nothing.”
Kady started to tell him again that she wasn’t a Jordan, but then refrained. The less she said, the sooner she’d get out of here and the sooner she could go back to her hotel room and start calling about those job offers. Some of them were three months old, meaning Gregory had received them some time ago, and she wondered if they were still open.
“I guess we should start with this,” he said and handed her an envelope, yellowed with age, tied with ribbon, and sealed with red wax.
Before Kady touched it, she knew it was from Ruth, and she had to blink away quick tears. It was painful to think that the woman she had met just weeks ago had now been dead for so very long. Sometimes it seemed to Kady that she’d open a door and Ruth would be standing there. Sometimes she thought, I must tell Ruth about that, then she’d have the hurt of realizing that the woman she’d come to care about was no longer alive.