“Oh, and I have a cat named Buttons.”
“I thought you said you don’t like cats.”
“Yes. I did.”
Henry expected her to elaborate, but she sat in heroic silence.
“You’ve got the job.”
A broad smile crawled across her face. Henry began the salary negotiations phase, which frightened him a bit. She was surprisingly reasonable in her demands, and an agreement was reached. Before Henry could ask her when she would be able to start, she had popped up from her chair, gone into the outer office, and grabbed a yellow legal pad of her own. She returned to stand at the side of his desk.
“Would you like to write a letter, or have me type up the notes from our meeting? I could make coffee.”
Henry’s eyes darted towards the coffee maker, and she was off.
Henry brought her up to speed on the current case, explained how he had lost his mentor, and told her about the meeting with the man in the brown suit. She returned to her desk and began to furiously type notes about the case. She looked up the addresses for “Big” Mike and Professor Brookert and created files for them. There were several filing cabinets, which were mostly empty, as everything before the Tommy “The Knife” case had been destroyed in the fire. Celine asked about the lack of files, and he told her about that case. Then she typed up notes on it, too.
She is a whirling dervish, Henry thought, and then asked her to make a call to Marian at the public library, explain who she was, and ask if Marian had found out anything.
Henry was quite sure that he had just hired the hardest working secretary in the five boroughs. Soon Mike and the professor would be arriving. He stood at the window and watched the buzz of the city below. Things were starting to speed up. He just knew it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The morning went by in a flash. Henry liked having Celine around. It allowed him to sit and think, something which he sorely needed to do. His unexpected dinner with Dr. Schaeffer was still weighing on his mind. Though, to be completely honest, it was Hans who made Henry uneasy. For an hour Henry jotted down notes about the high points he remembered from the night before. It was too bad he hadn’t been able to learn more about the anti ky-thingy, or at the very least, learn how it was spelled. It would have been rude to ask, he thought to himself. No matter, soon Professor Brookert would be here, and Henry was sure that researching whatever it was would be right up his alley.
The phone rang. Henry reached for it, but Celine was quicker. She had just set a cup of coffee on his desk, and with the speed of an ancient ninja warrior, snatched the receiver from the cradle.
“Henry Wood Detective Agency: we solve your mysteries.”
Henry gave her a look, and she smiled back. Celine had been there less than two hours and already she had created a tag line. Henry was getting a bargain with this one.
“May I tell Mr. Wood who is calling?” She looked at Henry, with her hand over the receiver. “It’s a woman named Katarina. Would you like to speak to her?”
Henry took the phone, shaking his head a little. Celine bounded back to her desk. She seemed quite pleased with her spur of the moment, and catchy, phone-answering line.
“Hey Kat, how you doin?”
“Henry, who was that woman on the phone? She sounds young.”
“She’s my new secretary. I didn’t ask her age.”
“Is she pretty?”
Henry thought the hint of jealousy in Katarina’s voice sounded strange, but it was also flattering. He knew better than to answer. Normally, he might have considered this a great moment, a sign that she felt the same way about him that he did about her, but not today. Today, there was too much going on to mess around with romance. He wasn’t in the mood, and it came through in his voice. “What can I do for you Kat? It's pretty busy around here.”
“What’s wrong, Henry, aren’t you happy I called?” she said, feigning hurt.
“Always. I just have a lot going on. There are people arriving shortly for a meeting. I am working on…well…finding Mickey’s killer.”
Katarina's attempt at cute was off key, so she wished him luck on the case and hung up.
Maybe he was just getting too old for romance. Maybe the spell she had on him was weakening. Or maybe he really was just too busy. He wasn’t sure and didn’t care to dwell on it.
Mike arrived first and was introduced to Celine. She hung his coat up, noticed the hall tree was getting full, and said, "I'm adding 'get some additional hooks or another coat rack' to my list."
Mike and Henry were talking when Celine popped in and offered to get Mike a cup of coffee; she had just brewed a new pot. Mike accepted politely, though he was actually afraid to tell her "no". She had that effect on people. Celine said, "We need to get more coffee cups," and started writing on her pad again.