Standing in the Shadows Read Free Page B

and arranged an e-ticket for the SeaTac-Portland shuttle for you tomorrow. A limo will be waiting in Portland to take you to the coast. We can examine the pieces together Monday morning, and then have lunch, if time permits.
    I hope you do not find me presumptuous. Please come. I look forward to meeting you in person, since I continue to have the strangest feeling that I know you already.
    I trust the same economic arrangement as before will be acceptable. JPGs of the items that I want you to examine are attached.
    Sincerely yours,
    Claude Mueller
    Quicksilver Foundation
     
    Erin leaped out of her chair and hopped for joy. The walls of the studio apartments in the Kinsdale Arms were too thin to permit herself howls of triumph, so she pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle the howls into ecstatic squeaking noises. She reread the e-mail on the screen again and again, just to make sure it still said the same thing.
    This job was going to save her sorry butt, and in the nick of time, too. She was probably knocking the rotten ceiling plaster onto the head of her cantankerous downstairs neighbor with her jumping, but she didn't care. Maybe the great Whoever had decided she'd had enough piss-poor luck lately, and it was time to give her a breather.
    Edna demanded an explanation for this unseemly excitement with a disapproving meow. Erin picked her up, but she cuddled the finicky cat too tightly. Edna leaped out of her arms with a disgusted
prrrt
.
    Erin spun around in a goofy dance step. Her luck was finally turning. Her eyes fell on the cross-stitch that hung over her computer, which read: "You Shape Your Own Reality Every Day." For the first time in months, it didn't make her feel as if someone were asking her, in the snootiest of tones, "
And is this the best you can do?"
    She'd stitched the damned thing four months ago, right after getting fired from her job. She had been so angry, she could barely see straight, and the project had been an effort to channel all that negative, destructive energy into a positive direction. She'd written it off as a failed experiment, though. Especially since every time she looked at the thing she wanted to rip it off the wall and hurl it across the room.
    Oh, well. It was the effort that counted. And she had to at least try to think positively. With Dad in jail, Mom crumbling in on herself, and Cindy acting out, she couldn't afford one instant of self-pity.
    She printed out Mueller's e-mail and the e-ticket itinerary attached to it. First class. How lovely. Not that she would've minded economy. A Greyhound bus would've been fine. Hell, she'd have cheerfully agreed to hitchhike down to Silver Fork, but being pampered was such a balm to her bruised ego. She glanced around the water-stained walls of the dismal studio apartment, the single window that looked out at a sooty, blank brick wall, and sighed.
    First things first. She grabbed her organizer, riffled through it until she found today's To Do list, and added:
Call temp agency. Call Tonia to feed Edna. Call Mom. Pack
. She dialed the temp agency.
    "Hello, this is Erin Riggs, leaving a message for Kelly. I won't be able to make it in to Winger, Drexler & Lowe on Monday. I have a last-minute business trip tomorrow. I'm caught up on all the current case transcriptions, so all they'll need is someone to cover their phones. Of course, I'll be back in on Tuesday. Thanks, and have a nice weekend."
    She forcibly suppressed her guilt about missing a day's work with no notice as she hung up the phone. Her fee for one of these consulting jobs equaled almost two weeks' pay from the temp agency at thirteen bucks an hour. And wasn't that what temping was all about? Less commitment from both parties, right? Right. Like one of those relationships where you were free to see other people. Not that she was an expert on those. Or any other kind of relationship, for that matter.
    The easy-come, easy-go temp concept was hard to get used to. She liked to fling herself