Read Online Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online Page B

to her room without saying a word. She opened the door. I stepped in first; she followed.
    “We have to go to First Mutual Insurance Company at one. I’m addressing a women’s group there. Could you pick me up about twelve thirty?” Her voice was quite calm now.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “I’d like to rest for a while,” she said, “so please excuse me.”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be here at quarter to one.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
    “Lock the door behind me,” I said.
    She nodded. I went out and waited until I heard the bolt click behind me. Then I went to the elevator and down.

12
    “I’m meeting with a caucus of women employees at First Mutual Insurance,” Rachel said. “This is their lunch hour and they’ve asked me to eat with them. I know you have to be close by, but I would like it if you didn’t actually join us.” We were walking along Boylston Street.
    “Okay,” I said. “As I recall from your book, First Mutual is one of the baddies.”
    “I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes. They are discriminatory in their hiring and wage practices. There are almost no women in management. They have systematically refused to employ gay people and have fired any that they discovered in their employ.”
    “Didn’t you turn up discriminatory practices in their sales policy?”
    “Yes. They discourage sales to blacks.”
    “What’s the company slogan?”
    Rachel smiled. “We’re in the people business.”
    We went into the lobby of First Mutual and took an elevator to the twentieth floor. The cafeteria was at one end of the corridor. A young woman in camel’s-hair slacks and vest topped with a dark-brown blazer was waiting outside. When she saw Rachel she came forward and said, “Rachel Wallace?” She wore small gold-rimmed glasses and no make-up. Her hair was brown and sensible.
    Rachel put out her hand. “Yes,” she said. “Are you Dorothy Collela?”
    “Yes, come on in. We’re all at a table in the corner.” She looked at me uncertainly.
    “My name is Spenser,” I said. “I just hang around Ms. Wallace. Don’t think about me for a moment.”
    “Will you be joining us?” Dorothy said.
    Rachel said, “No. Mr. Spenser is just going to stay by if I need anything.”
    Dorothy smiled a little blankly and led Rachel to a long table at one end of the cafeteria. There were eight other women gathered there. I leaned against the wall maybe twenty feet away where I could see Rachel and not hear them and not be in the flow of diners.
    There was a good deal of chair-scraping and jostling at the table when Rachel sat down. There were introductions and people standing and sitting, and then all but two of the women got up and went to the food line to get lunch. The luncheon special was Scrambled Hamburg Oriental, and I decided to pass on lunch.
    The cafeteria had a low ceiling with a lot of fluorescent panels in it. The walls were painted a brilliant yellow on three sides with a bank of windows looking out over Back Bay on the fourth side. The bright yellow paint was almost painful. Music filtered through the cafeteria noise. It sounded like Mantovani, but it always does.
    Working with a writer, you get into the glamour scene. After we left here, we’d probably go down to Filene’s basement and autograph corsets. Maybe Norman would be there, and Truman and Gore. Rachel took her tray and sat down. She had eschewed the Oriental hamburg. On her tray was a sandwich and a cup of tea.
    A girl not long out of the high-school corridors came past me wearing very expensive clothes, very snugly. She had on blue harlequin glasses with small jewels on them, and she smelled like a French sunset.
    She smiled at me and said, “Well, foxy, what are you looking at?”
    “A size-nine body in a size-seven dress,” I said.
    “You should see it without the dress,” she said.
    “I certainly should,” I said.
    She smiled and joined two other kids her age at a table. They whispered together and