I choked on a mouthful of brandy. “Jeez. They’re not wasting any time, are they?”
Eleanor smiled, a slow eye-slitted smile that made me think of a cat rather than a witch. “That’s because she’s enceinte.” Eleanor liked to drop French phrases into her speech. It impressed the clients.
“On what?” Martha frowned at her.
“Pregnant,” I said. “Wow, is she really?”
Eleanor nodded and drained the contents of her snifter. “I noticed when I measured her for the alterations. She’s not very far along, but I could tell.”
I sipped some more of my brandy. That was why Bettina hadn’t stayed too long at the wine club. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen her drink a drop. That also meant Birch and Bettina had been carrying on their affair for a while—a few months at least.
I gritted my teeth, suddenly sorry for the temperamental Harriet. Even though she had been a difficult character, to put it mildly, nobody deserved to be cheated on.
Especially not with a younger and more attractive woman. No wonder she’d retreated into her safe, familiar world of miniatures and dollhouses.
“Birch,” Martha said with disdain. “What a weird name.”
“Let me guess, they’ll call the kid Sapling?” Eleanor snickered.
“Yup. He’ll be a real sap.” They both roared with laughter.
I stood up to test the waters, and feeling woozy still, leaned back against something that stabbed me painfully in the palm of my hand. “Ow! What the heck’s that?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s my needle board,” Eleanor said. “To iron velvet. You put the fabric nap side down and—”
“Aargh!” I’d stepped forward in my agony and stubbed my toe on something else. “What’s that?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s my sad iron.” Eleanor picked up an ancient-looking iron implement with a thick wooden handle.
Martha raised an eyebrow. “Aptly named. It’s like a little shop of horrors in here.”
I rubbed my sore hands. “Thanks for the drink, Eleanor, but I’ve got to get back.” I hugged them both, left my half-empty snifter on the table, and stumbled back across the street.
Somehow I got through the rest of the day at the store, trying to ignore the queasiness in my stomach, and the malevolent package stuffed beneath the counter. I ate a piece of Madeira cake to soak up the alcohol and took out my calculator. In spite of how well the business was doing, I could only last another six months at that rate.
I called Laura and asked if she could work tomorrow, and after she readily agreed, I called the only real estate agent I knew. Marybeth Skelton. Harriet Kunes’s sister.
Chapter Six
Joe enfolded me in his big arms when I got home that night, listening patiently as I blurted out the bad news. “Do you want me to talk to this guy for you, Daisy?”
I sighed. “No, it’s okay. I can handle it.”
“Maybe when you see him again, you’ll get him to see reason.” Before we retired, Joe had been the head negotiator for his electricians’ union , and he’d never met anyone who didn’t warm to him instantly.
“I’m not sure. It was strange, Joe. Like he just didn’t care.” I thought back to the scene this morning with Chip Rosenthal, and the seeming lack of human emotion, as if he were missing some necessary gene. “He says I need to come up to market rent like everyone else.”
“What is the going rate?”