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“Just one,” she said, her eyebrow raised. In the good way. “Am I president or CEO?”
Chase smiled and met her on the bed.
“Let the negotiations begin…”
THE HOUSEKEEPERS
James Patterson and Julie Margaret Hogben
CHAPTER 1
MASHA POPLOV COULD kill a live chicken by snapping its neck, but she liked to do it in Jimmy Choos. Chanel, Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, spider-leg lashes and acrylic nails, so what if she had to work hard for a living? She did it in style.
Cleaning houses.
Stealing from them.
It was two o’clock and sunny when she and her cousin, Sophie Poplov, both Russian beauties, both approaching their thirty-third birthdays, pushed their carts down the Sumners’ drive in Hancock Park.
The carts were filled with brooms and rags, plus cleaning supplies that Masha stole from the Sumners’ pantry that afternoon; all the expensive Whole Foods brands. Organic, natural. Method, Honest. Blah-blah. The stuff the LA housewives liked. Masha refused to pay for that crap. Not when ammonia from the 99 Cent Store did the same job at twice the speed. And Mrs. Sumner would never notice.
She wouldn’t notice the missing diamond either.
Masha had swiped a two-carat ring.
“It’s wrong,” Sophie said of her cousin’s never-ending schemes. She didn’t approve. Especially now, after what happened at the Bel Air house with Dr. Parks. They had to be careful. They shouldn’t be doing anything sketchy. The people they worked for trusted them; allowed them into their refuges.
“What’s wrong is her hiding this beautiful ring. This rock lives in shadow. In the dark. In a box. It’s time for this rock to see the sun,” Masha argued.
“It’s stealing.”
Sophie would not steal like Masha. At the grocery store once, she popped a loose grape into her mouth. After feeling guilty for days, she finally went back and paid the cashier 25 cents and told him she’d stolen some fruit. He thought she was nuts.
“I’m giving this ring its freedom,” Masha said. “This diamond would thank me if it could. And cubic zirconia shines bright, too!”
The ring was stamped. A Tiffany’s classic. Platinum, with a pavé setting. New it was maybe worth thirty grand.
But Masha only wanted the diamond.
She’d drive to Glendale right then and there and give it to Gor, a jeweler on North Brand Boulevard. Gor, an Armenian, ran a “diamond downgrade” business.
He’d swipe the stone out, set a fake, give Masha a third of the after-market cash, all in the time of a legal cleaning. About an hour. In the morning, Masha would go to the Sumners’, put the ring back, and Ellen Sumner would never be the wiser.
“It’s Lent,” Sophie said. It was. It was March. They had survived the pandemic. People were opening their houses again and letting in the cleaning crews. They should be grateful. “Try to control yourself. Ask God to help.”
Sophie preferred to clean houses in Adidas, and she was concerned for her cousin’s soul. “Try to steal nothing for forty days. Can’t you try?”
“No,” said Masha. “I can’t do nothing about my habit.” She laughed. She loved to steal. “I don’t do drugs. I don’t sleep around. This is how I ease my demons. What can I do?”
“You can stop,” Sophie said, and then she froze. Something down the street caught her eye. Her face fell, concerned.
Masha turned to see what it was.
Down at the Stop sign, two blocks away, three men in suits climbed from a big black Escalade. They all turned and looked toward the cousins.
“What is this?” Masha said, a rhetorical question.
The four men studied them, too, but not in the way the cousins were normally ogled. The men were focused. Serious. Fast. In tandem, they started walking toward them.
