Maybelle cackled. “Sounds like he wanted y’all out of that black jacket right bad.”

“So I’ll wear the red one again.”

“Caint wear it ever’ day or he’ll catch on,” Maybelle argued.

“Then I’ll wear my black suit tomorrow whether he likes it or not.”

Maybelle gave her a look.

“Okay,” Mallory said, capitulating, “maybe I could buy another sexy jacket to wear tomorrow. But after that I really must leave to meet Carter.”

“Id-zackly what I had in mind,” Maybelle said smugly. “Jes’ stick with me, hon, and you’ll be at that restaurant right on time.”

“Maybelle, we haven’t seen you in weeks,” gushed a salesperson, rushing across a carpeted floor.

This was Bergdorf Goodman, as expensive a store as one could ever hope to avoid, and they were on the third floor-designer clothing. Yet the saleswoman was rushing toward a parrot wearing cowboy boots and shrouded in llamas. Mallory found her hospitality heartwarming.

Maybelle shrugged off the coat and dropped it on a bench as if she owned the place. “Haven’t had a client who needed clothes in weeks. This one needs ‘em bad and fast.” Her tiny figure buzzed from one rack of clothing to another, a hummingbird now rather than a parrot.

“We need a coupla sexy suits-”

“I said one suit. I mean one jacket,” Mallory puffed, pausing to zero in on a price tag and wipe her forehead. “I’ll wear it with my black pants and skirt.”

“Or some other black pants and skirt,” Maybelle said.

“What I really need are some of those plastic shoes that go over your own shoes-”

“We’ll find y’all some cute snow boots later,” Maybelle said.

Mallory caught up to her in the Gianfranco Ferre in-store boutique and spoke to her in a hushed whisper.

“Maybelle, I do make a very nice salary, but I can’t afford…”

Maybelle brushed off this absurd reasoning with a diamond-studded wave. “I have a charge account here,” she said. “We can talk about the money later.”

Mallory groaned. Later it would still be too much money.

Somehow she was in a dressing room, with Maybelle and the saleswoman ripping clothes off her and stuffing her into new ones.

“I think we can make it to the weekend without new undies,” Maybelle confided in the saleswoman as if Mallory were not there. “Now, hon, that’s what I call a black suit.”

Mallory turned slowly to the mirror. This suit jacket had narrow shoulders, a fitted waist and was too short to cover even half her rear end. The pants were so narrow-legged that without the vents, she couldn’t have gotten her bare feet through them.

She looked terrific in it. Even she had to admit it. She gritted her teeth. “Okay, I’ll take the whole suit. But not another thing.”

“Keep your new pants on,” Maybelle said. “It’ll save time.”

In addition to the black suit, Mallory left the floor with a featherweight jacket that matched her eyes and a coordinating top, one skirt that wasn’t as short as Phoebe Angell’s but almost and another very curvy one in the new midcalf length. Both Maybelle and the saleslady, whose eyes had begun flashing dollar signs, insisted the longer skirt had to be worn with very high heels to achieve the proper proportions.

That’s why they were speeding toward “Designer Shoes” on the fifth floor-to further reduce Mallory’s stock and bond holdings she’d intended to live on in her retirement. Here the saleswoman began to confer with a salesman who’d been looking down his nose until he caught sight of Maybelle. In a dizzyingly short time, Mallory owned Prada pumps with sky-high heels.

“Do you have any of those plastic shoe covers-”

“Snow boots,” Maybelle interrupted her. “We want a pair of them little high-heeled ones with the fur at the ankle. Don’t wrap ‘em. She’ll wear ‘em.”

And once she was in them, Mallory realized she couldn’t live without them. She’d stopped looking at price tags. Now was when she needed to live, not after she retired. It was a one-time binge. She’d never do it again. She’d have Maybelle paid off in two, three, four, ten years and start saving again.

Panic seized her. What was she thinking? Her mother would disown her.

Beside her, Maybelle said serenely, “I’ll get the rest of this stuff brought right to your room in that suite. And I’ll make sure your young man isn’t there when they’re delivered. Now you run on. You got twenty minutes, time to spare.”

“I have to tell you something before I go.”

“Shoot.”

Mallory took a deep breath. “I’m a lawyer for Sensuous, the company that made the dye that turned Kevin’s hair green. I started to tell you last night, but the subject changed somehow.”

It was odd that Maybelle didn’t seem surprised. She dismissed the confession Mallory had dreaded making with one of her dismissive waves. “Don’t worry about it, hon.” Her eyes widened, blue and innocent. “We’re all perfessionals here. That’s not gonna have nuthin’ to do with the advice I have to give you.”

“I would never have known if we hadn’t deposed him today,” Mallory said, surprisingly relieved that Maybelle didn’t seem to be upset about the coincidence.

“And that wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t shot my mouth off about him last night,” Maybelle said, and sighed. “Don’t know what made me do it. Then when he tole me y’all deposed him today, I-”

That startled Mallory. “He told you I deposed him?”

“He tole me he was bein’ deposed,” Maybelle said, again fixing Mallory with those innocent blue eyes. “You tole me it was you deposed him.”

Too innocent, Mallory thought suddenly, and narrowed her own eyes.

“I think Kevvie’s sorry he got snookered into this lawsuit,” Maybelle went on. “If he hadn’t, we coulda had that bathroom upstairs regrouted already-heck, I could have done the job myself-and Kevviecoulda had free haircuts and manicures until all the green was gone, at least where’s you could see it.” She snickered. “And he could be waitin’ tables and auditioning again instead of… other stuff.”

It was at that moment Mallory knew. It all came together, Kevin’s peculiar behavior when he stepped into the conference room, his reluctance to reveal what his “seasonal” work was, the joke nobody understood about cookies and milk, the traditional snack children left for none other than-

“Maybelle,” she croaked, “who was Santa Claus?”

Maybelle looked disgusted. “I never could keep a secret,” she said. “Yep, hon, Kevin’s yore Santy Claus.”

7

Carter stood at the bar, not drinking, just leaning his elbow on it for support while he watched the door and ticked off the minutes, eight-twelve, eight-thirteen, eight-fourteen…

There she was, looking at the sign on the window, probably wondering why the JUdson Grill capitalized both the I and the U and wishing she were somewhere else besides here. She stepped in, and even as his pulse speeded up and his heart started directing all his blood south, he observed that she didn’t look especially happy to see him. In fact, he had to say she was looking frantic.

“Hi,” she said, looking at the room rather than at him. “Been waiting long?”

“Four minutes,” he lied. He’d been there since eight, just in case the man she’d gone to see escorted her back to the restaurant, perhaps to see whom she was having dinner with. But she was alone. He examined her closely. “Our table’s ready.”

A very New York-looking woman, severely polished and self-assured, divested Mallory of her coat, and Carter steered her up to the headwaiter, another New York-looking woman who sent them off with a waiter-male, with a ponytail-to the table. Carter moved along behind Mallory. She was obviously upset. This was bad news. Her pants were the good news.

They weren’t the loose-fitting, pleated ones she’d worn on the plane. These were so tight she’d have to call the fire department to help her get out of them. But what a lot of trouble to call the fire department when he’d be right there in the suite and happy to come to her rescue.