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"Still seeing that stud CPA down the hall?"
"No." Kate shut her mouth firmly on that. Closed book, she reminded herself. Even if it did still burn. "I don't have time to date. The fact is, as tied up as I am for the next week or so, I'm really glad you're there, with Laura and the kids."
"I'll stay unless it looks like it's complicating things for her." Absently Margo tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, lovely shell-pink nails bumping against the chair's dull brown. "She's awfully happy to have Josh back. I don't think I realized she was so unhappy until I saw her with him today. Which reminds me…" She set the coffee aside. Kate brewed it strong enough to pump iron. "Weren't you worried about risking a haunting by mocking Seraphina's ghost?"
Kate's face went blank. "What?"
"Huddling on a ledge and moaning in bad Spanish about your dowry. Laura and I weren't fooled for a minute."
"What are you… Oh. Oh!" As memory flooded back, Kate roared with laughter. It was not the laugh of a thin, serious-minded woman; it boomed straight from the gut, grew deeper in the throat, and tickled Margo into grinning back. "God, I'd forgotten that. Oh, I was so jealous, so pissed that you and Laura were dating and Uncle Tommy and Aunt Susan were making me wait another year. I didn't even want to date, but I hated you getting ahead of me." As she spoke, she got up to top off her coffee. "Christ, Josh always had the best and wildest ideas," she added, as she perched on the desk again.
"You're lucky you didn't slip off the ledge and get to meet Seraphina face to face."
"We had ropes." She chuckled into her coffee. "I was scared boneless at first, but I didn't want Josh to think I was lame. You know how he is about a dare."
"Mmm." Margo knew very well. A Templeton never refused a challenge. "Both of you would have been grounded for weeks."
"Yeah, those were the days," Kate said with a wistful smile. "Anyway, I got caught up in the whole thing. Playing Seraphina and listening to the two of you calling out to her was one of the highlights of my life. I can't believe he ratted on me."
"He probably thinks I'm too mature now to pull out your hair." Margo tilted her head and smiled. "I'm not, but you have so little of it to begin with." Then she clasped her hands around her knee. "Well, I know you, and you didn't ask me to come into such professional surroundings to have a giggle over old times. You might as well give it to me."
"All right." It was cowardly, Kate knew, to wish she could postpone the moment. "We can say there's good news and bad news."
"I can use some good."
"You still have your health." At Margo's nervous laugh, Kate set her own mug aside. She wished she had a better way to do this, wished she'd been smart enough or clever enough to find an escape clause for Margo. "Sorry, bad accountant joke. You have to have a pretty good idea that you don't have a hell of a lot else, Margo. Financially, you're fucked."
Margo pressed her lips together, nodded. "Don't soft-pedal it, Kate. I can take it."
Appreciating her, Kate slid off the desk, sat on the arm of Margo's chair, and hugged her. "I put everything in a computer program and printed out a hard copy." And got less than three hours' sleep, thanks to the extra workload. "But I thought you'd get more out of the whole picture if I boiled it down. You've got some choices."
"I don't…" She had to pause to level her voice. "I don't want to file bankruptcy. Only as a last resort, Kate. I know it's pride, but—"
Pride Kate understood, enormously well. "I think we can avoid that. But, honey, you're going to have to seriously consider liquidating, and you're going to have to be prepared to take a loss on some of your assets."
"I have assets?" Margo asked hollowly.
"You have the flat in Milan. There isn't a lot of equity, as you only bought it five years ago and your down payment was low. But you can get out what you put in, and with luck, a little more." Because it was personal, Kate didn't need her notes, or the file. She remembered all the details. "You have the Lamborghini, and it's almost paid for. We arrange to sell it, quickly, and you'll save on those exorbitant garage and maintenance fees."
"Okay." She tried not to regret her beautiful flat, lovingly furnished, or the glamorous car she'd adored driving fast in the countryside. There were a great many things she couldn't afford, Margo reminded herself. Top of the list was self-pity. "I'll put them on the market. I suppose I'll have to go over and pack everything up and…"
Saying nothing, Kate rose to open a file, not to refresh her memory but to give herself something to do with her hands. She perched her glasses back on her nose. "There's the dead animals."
Sunk in depression, Margo shook her head. "What?"
"Your furs."
"That's such an American attitude," Margo grumbled. "Anyway, I didn't kill those stupid minks."
"Or the sables," Kate said dryly, peering over the tops of her horn-rims. "Sell them and that also saves you cold storage fees. Now your jewelry."
It was an arrow straight to the heart. "Oh, Kate, not my jewelry."
"Toughen up. It's just rocks and minerals." With her free hand she picked up her coffee again, ignoring the faint burning under her breastbone. "The insurance premiums on it are killing you. You can't afford it. And you need the cash to meet your debts. Dressmakers' bills, salon bills. Taxes. Italian taxes are stiff, and you didn't exactly save for a rainy day."
"I had some savings. Alain had been siphoning them off." She realized her fingers were aching and made herself untwist them. "I didn't even know it until last week."
Bastard, Kate thought. But that was then and this was now. "You can prosecute."
