Home Free - Fern Michaels [26]
“Sure, Maggie. Are you sure nothing is wrong? Look, just because we aren’t a couple anymore doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I do. I would try to move the earth for you if you needed me to do it. I’m just saying you can count on me.”
Hot tears pricked Maggie’s eyes. “I know that, Ted, and I would do the same for you.”
Espinosa took that moment to enter the kitchen. He took one look at the intense expressions on his boss’s and his colleague’s face and turned around to leave.
“Come on in, Espinosa. Have a cream puff. Ted made fresh coffee. I just gave Ted an assignment, and I want you on it, too. You two kick it around a while. I have to get back to work.”
When the kitchen door closed behind Maggie, the two reporters looked at one another. “Maggie has been personally invited to Camp David by the president for Thanksgiving,” Ted said, his voice so flat, Espinosa reared up in his chair.
“She’s blowing off Annie and the girls?” There was such outrage in Espinosa’s voice, Ted actually laughed out loud.
“Guess so.”
“That’s not good. It isn’t good, is it, Ted?”
“It is the president. It is Camp David. The president herself called Maggie. What would you do, Espinosa?”
“I’d go to Annie’s. Switching up is like saying I got a better offer. Not nice, Ted, not nice at all. What would you do?”
“Well, the reporter in me would want to go to Camp David to find out why and what the president wanted from me. It’s a given that she wants something. The personal side of me agrees with you. I’d go to Annie’s. Obviously, Maggie made her choice based on what? I don’t have a clue. That financial guru is going, too. I know that means something. Even more so now that Maggie wants us to check him out from the day he slipped out of his mother’s womb.”
“That far back, huh?” Espinosa grinned. “That has to mean she’s onto something, and I’m sure Annie will forgive her.”
Ted allowed his voice to drop to a hushed whisper. “Listen, I didn’t tell this to Maggie . . . why, I don’t know. I guess because she was off and running, and I wanted to hear her out. Anyway, about six months ago, I invested five thousand dollars with that guy’s firm. In six months I made fifteen hundred. He guarantees to double your money.”
Espinosa narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t know you were the investment type. I thought you kept your money in the bank like me. Especially in this lousy economy.”
“Yeah, well, I do but at one percent interest, I thought I’d take a flyer. It paid off, too, even in this economy. I heard these two Channel Five anchors talking at the Memorial Day parade, and they were both heavy investors. I figured if anyone had the skinny on the firm, they would, so I took a shot at it. My gut is telling me to cash it in now. What do you think, Espinosa?”
“I think you should listen to your gut is what I think. If Maggie is on his tail, then something smells somewhere. I saw him getting into the elevator. He reminded me of someone my mother would call a ‘dandy.’ He has a lot of teeth. I think they’re capped.”
“And that means what?” Ted said sourly.
“Too many teeth, looks like a dandy means he can’t be trusted. Take your money and run.”
“So where did you park your money from Global Securities?”
“In the bank, in CDs at two percent interest. I can sleep nights, Ted. That’s more money than I can save in a lifetime working here at the paper, so I want to make sure it’s safe even if it doesn’t earn much. I thought you did the same thing.”
“I did, with the exception of the five grand. Okay, okay, I’m going to cash out as soon as I get my next statement.”
Espinosa crumpled up the bakery box and jammed it into the trash container. He poured the last of the coffee into his cup, then threw away the grounds and rinsed the pot as Ted watched him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re so tidy. I admire that,” Ted said.
“My mother taught me to be tidy, so the person who comes behind me doesn’t call me a slob. My mother is a saint and is never wrong, in case you don