Fortune Is a Woman by Francine Saint Marie Page B

a nice trip.”
    Oh, just the usual meddling and manipulation. Paula’s trademark. “I thought I was incommunicado?”
    “This is an exception. Besides, you’re in the home stretch now. Cheer her for me. Give her a call. Or better yet, send her an e-mail. No, don’t send her an e-mail. Pay her a visit. Say hi, say bye.”
    Hi, bye. Lydia brushed her hair back nervously. “Okay. I can do that.” A few weeks ago she had discreetly popped her head in at VP Kendle’s looking for Venus and saw that her things were gone. Her office phone and e-mail had been changed, too. Searching the corporation’s directory was of no use. Her new location either wasn’t listed yet or Paula had seen to it that it wouldn’t be. Lydia hadn’t dared ask around lest word of her quest got back to Paula, or to the board, or to whoever else had a vested interest in such matters. Of course, she could have called Venus on her private cell phone or e-mailed her at home, but… “Where exactly is Venus Angelo these days?” she asked.
    “Oh, that’s right. I put her on the fifteenth floor. Your old office.”
    This detail struck Lydia as intrinsically perverse though she didn’t comment on it. She wanted to ask if that seemed wise in light of Paula’s romantic suspicions and whether or not Venus was aware of the fact, but there wasn’t enough time to listen to Paula’s hemming and hawing, her predictable and impenetrable techniques for avoidance.
    “Hey? You there?”
    “Then she’ll be easy to find. Gotta go, Paula, I’m late already.”
    “You’ll see her before she leaves, right?”
    “When is she leaving?”
    “Monday, but she’ll probably be finishing odds and ends at her office on Friday and Saturday.”
    “You have her working on Saturdays?”
    “Well…that’s her prerogative, Beaumont. I don’t interfere.”
    (Yeah, right.)
    “Beaumont?”
    “Of course, Paula. I’ll go see her, I mean.”
    _____
     
    “Ah, Queenie. This is…?”
    “Eeeevlyn,” the woman inserted in a husky, aristocratic tone. “Evelyn Wainwright,” she said, as if Lydia was supposed to recognize the name.
    She didn’t.
    “Eeeevelyn,” Edward Beaumont crooned, winking at his daughter. “This is Lydia, my illustrious daughter.”
    “Oh, Lydiahhhh, I’ve heard so much about you.”
    Ahhhhhhhhhhh, the old coot was at it again. Evidently the woman hadn’t noticed, or didn’t mind his wedding band. “Pleased to meet you, Evelyn,” she said. “Edward, is this a bad time for–?”
    “No, no, no,” he insisted. “I’ve got a table for the four of us. Where’s Helaine?”
    “Uh…Helaine couldn’t make it, tonight. She sends her love.”
    “Oh? That’s too bad. And here I am on my best behavior.” This time the wink was for Evelyn.
    The seventy-something-year-old giggle that erupted from her was still as attractive as a girl’s, Lydia noted.
    “Then we’ll just have to carry on without her,” Edward said. He held the chair for his date and she sat in it like a throne.
    The baroness. That’s what Lydia would call this one. She wondered if he had picked her up at the bar.
    Appetizers. Drinks. Giggles.
    His “best behavior” would be the death of him, she kept thinking throughout dinner. She watched charming Edward Beaumont with a mix of pride and shame as he expertly reeled the baroness in. The woman went willingly; she didn’t see him the way a daughter might. She was charmed, charmed, charmed all evening, laughing until the girlish giggle grew older and older and the lights of the clubhouse finally went dim and there seemed to be only Edward Beaumont left glowing in it, shining like a candle, illuminating the woman’s way in the darkness.
    Beaumont charm. By the time dessert had arrived, Lydia was feeling notorious, too. She began weighing the greater genetic implications of being the man’s daughter and glanced around self-consciously to see if anyone else might be thinking the same.
    Probably.
    Eight o’clock. The