'You're wearing them tomorrow?'
Mersiha nodded. 'Sure.' Buffy continued to paw at her stomach, wanting to play. 'Katherine bought me some makeup, too. I'm going to try to do it myself tomorrow.'
Freeman raised his eyebrows. 'Now, that, I'm looking forward to.' He stepped aside to allow Katherine and Mersiha into the house. Katherine winked as she went by. Freeman patted her backside affectionately and closed the door as Buffy slipped through.
Mersiha took a can of Coke from the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. 'So, do you feel like a vacation?' he asked.
'A vacation?'
'Yup. You and me. Some father-daughter bonding.'
Mersiha looked at him, then at Katherine, then back to Freeman. 'Are you serious?'
He grinned. 'Sure. I thought we'd go to the mountains. Hike.
Ski, maybe. I'll show you how to light a fire, skin a moose, build an igloo, all that wilderness stuff.'
Mersiha laughed. 'When?'
'The travel agent says she can get us tickets for a Saturday flight.'
'Next Saturday?' Katherine said. 'That's a bit soon, isn't it?'
'Saturday'll be great, Dad. Just great.'
'I thought the sooner the better, Kat,' Freeman said. 'We've got a board meeting the week after next and I've got to be here for that, obviously.'
'I guess so,' Katherine said. 'You are the chairman after all.'
There was a sarcastic edge to her voice, but she softened it with a smile. 'Yes, you're right. You should go.'
'You're not coming?' Mersiha asked.
Katherine shook her head. 'No, kiddo, I've got lots to do here. Besides, you know how I hate the great outdoors. We'll all go away together later in the year.' She patted Mersiha on the shoulder. 'You can bring me back a moose.'
'What size?' she asked, then giggled.
'What do you call a blind moose?' Freeman asked.
'No eye-deer,' Mersiha said quickly.
'How come you know that one?' he asked.
'School,' she said. 'But the version I heard was an elk. I'm not sure if a moose is a deer, is it?'
'Dunno,' Freeman admitted. 'What do you call a blind elk with no legs?'
'Still no eye-deer,' Katherine said.
'Sheesh, does everyone in Maryland know these jokes?'
Freeman was reading an article on Singapore's defence industry in the Far Eastern Economic Review when Maury Anderson burst into his office. 'You're not going to believe this,' he said, doing a soft-shoe shuffle across to Freeman's window. 'What a beautiful day this is turning out to be.'
'What aren't I going to believe?' Freeman asked. Anderson's mood swings were starting to become a little tiring. The good news could be a fifty-million-dollar order or the fact that the photocopier was working, depending on how his partner was feeling that day.
'Lennie Nelson's dead.' Freeman's mouth dropped and the magazine fell from his fingers. 'I knew you'd be pleased,'
Anderson said, stretching his hands out to the side like a man crucified. 'It couldn't have happened at a better time.'
'He's dead?' Freeman said. 'You mean dead dead?' He wondered if he'd misunderstood, if Anderson meant that the banker was dead career-wise, because he couldn't believe that his partner would express so much glee over a man's death.
'As a doornail. Isn't it great? Isn't it the best news you've heard all day?'
Freeman was horrified at Anderson's attitude. 'Maury, get a grip, will you? What happened?'
Anderson did another soft-shoe shuffle to Freeman's desk and leant over it, his hands either side of the blotter. There was a manic gleam in his eyes. 'That's the best part,' he said. 'You're not gonna believe it. It's so great.'
'Just tell me, Maury. You're starting to get on my nerves.'
'Okay, okay. Listen to this. They found him on his bed, stark naked, with several lines of coke, a stack of gay porn magazines and a plastic bag over his head.'
'You mean he killed himself? Suicide?'
Anderson began pacing up and down, waving animatedly. 'No, don't you get it? Don't you get it, Tony? He was a gasper! He was playing with himself while cutting down his air supply.
Auto-erotic asphyxiation, they call it. He was as queer as a three-dollar bill. They found kiddie porn in a bedroom closet and all sorts of weird videos. My God, and he was trying to tell us how to run our business. I knew there was something wrong with him the first time I met him. Didn't you? Didn't you think there was something strange there?'
Freeman leant back in his chair and stared at Anderson. He'd never seen his partner as elated as this before. 'What the hell's wrong with you?' he asked.
Anderson stopped in his tracks as if he'd been poleaxed. 'What do you mean?'
'Look at you, grinning like the Cheshire cat because a man's dead. Lennie Nelson might have been a thorn in our side and I'll admit that he was a bit of a prick, but he was only doing what he thought was best for his bank.'
Anderson was stunned. 'Hey, come on now, don't tell me you're not glad that he's dead.'
'That's exactly right, Maury. I'm not glad. And his death doesn't change things for us. The bank will still be looking over our shoulder, they'll still want a man on our board. If it's not Nelson, it'll be somebody else.'
Anderson's eyes blazed. 'But that's just it, Tony. That's just it. It's going to be Walter.'
'Walter Carey? Are you sure?'
'I've got a friend in the bank. He just called me to give me the good news. The whole bank's talking about Nelson.
I mean, nobody knew he was that way. Everyone thought he was a ladies' man.'
Freeman rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Have you heard officially?'