Chapter 4 – Busy

The next few weeks passed in a blur of activity. Bobby oversaw the renovation of the warehouse and the construction and fitting out of the various workshops within it. Young people could learn how to fix cars, use computers, cook, sew, build, do carpentry, look after children, take care of their health, improve their basic skills and generally make themselves more employable. Both young men and young women were to be encouraged to study the skills usually associated with the other sex.

Bobby had plenty of contacts, and was soon able to sign up tutors for every subject. Before he knew it, he was ready to open the centre.

He and Louise Gardner had had meetings at least three times a week, but he had managed to keep his feelings under control. They seemed to be on the same wavelength about everything, but when it came to the grand opening of the centre, they had their first disagreement. Louise wanted to recruit a famous face from the city, Bobby wanted Louise to do the honours.

“We need someone with a high profile, someone the kids can relate to,” said Louise.

“And you fit the bill exactly,” Bobby replied.

“I have worked very hard to keep a low profile for all these years,” Louise countered. “And anyway, there’s an iconic actor who’s willing to help us out for free.”

So it was agreed that Sam Deed would cut the ribbon, but both he and Louise would make speeches.

“You can have two minutes maximum from me, Bobby,” she finally said.

I’d need a lot more than two minutes, thought Bobby, then squashed the thought to the back of his mind in the hope that it would die from lack of sustenance. How could he harbour such ideas about an innocent, sweet, thoughtful, generous young woman.

The big day arrived, and Bobby fussed around making sure that everything was perfect for the opening ceremony. A bunch of young people from the Projects had been chosen as the first recruits, and they turned up trying to look hard, but only succeeded in looking vulnerable.
Louise and Sam Deed arrived on a motorbike. He was a hero to the boys, a heart-throb to the girls. But Bobby had eyes only for Louise.

She was dressed from head to toe in soft black leather, tight-fitting and sensuous. Bobby lost track for a moment of the programme he had so carefully planned.

Suddenly two things struck him: Sam Deed was like a younger version if himself – tall, big-built and dark; and Deed and Louise were probably an item.

Bobby felt bereft. Throughout the proceedings, he watched them carefully. He listened as they praised one another in their speeches. OK, Louise praised him as well. But his eagle eyes were watching out for evidence of his theory. He just couldn’t find any. Did they even know one another before she approached him to open the centre? There were smiles all round, but no intimacy, no secret looks.

He had always assumed that Louise lived and breathed her charities, and had no social life outside the good works she performed. He would have to put his detective skills to work and see if he could find any indication that her heart was engaged anywhere.

At last the ceremony was over, the centre was closed up for the night ready for the start of its various projects in the morning. Sam Deed had gone off on his bike, but Louise wasn’t with him. She had stayed behind with him and the caterers to get everything cleaned up for the next day. As he locked up the building, the last to leave, he saw her waiting outside, leaning against his car.

“Give a girl a lift?” she asked.

“You looked dressed for a bike rather than a car,” he said.

“That was a good entrance we made, wasn’t it?”

“You didn’t tell me you had something like that planned,” Bobby replied.

“You’d arranged so much, Bobby, I had to give you one surprise.”

More like a shock, thought Bobby. He said, “You want that lift? You’ll have to lean up off the door.” Bobby opened the door for her, gentleman that he was, and closed it when she had climbed in. Once in the driver’s seat, he asked, “Where to?”

“You mean, your place or mine?” Louise said. He turned to look at her. She was smiling broadly. She was joking then.

“After all these months of working together, I don’t even know where your place is,” he told her.

“Looks like your place then,” she said, a lot more calmly than she felt.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Bobby said, “I don’t think I deserve that.”

Her face turned serious. “I’m not making fun. I mean it. But perhaps you...” He saw her bottom lip quiver for a moment before she regained her immaculate self-control.

“My place it is then,” Bobby said, started the car and drove off.

Chapter 3 – Second Impressions

Louise Gardner’s office was tidier than he had expected. A sturdy oak desk, sparsely covered with papers, stood sideways on to a big window overlooking the street, and the chairs in the room were all old, with scuffed legs and distressed fabric seats. There were filing cabinets lining all the walls, the labels showing which of her many charities each dealt with. In an ante-room, several clerks clattered away at keyboards or talked animatedly on the phone.

Louise ushered Bobby to an armchair in the corner and asked him if he would care for something to drink. “There’s only tea, coffee or water,” she said. “We don’t waste money on sodas or alcohol, there are too many important things to spend money on.”
Bobby asked for black coffee, and Louise opened the door into the next office and asked a busily typing young man to fetch the drink for their visitor, and one for her. Then she turned back to Bobby.

“I do have one indulgence,” she said. “Behind that door (she pointed) is a private bathroom, and when I’m this grubby, it’s a godsend. Would you mind if I freshened up a little while we wait for our drinks?

Bobby said he wouldn’t mind at all, and settled back in his chair with a report on one of the charities from the coffee table.

Five minutes later, just as the coffee was brought in, the bathroom door opened and Louise came out. Bobby suppressed a moan.

Before him stood a vision that banished all thought of being careful.

Louise Gardner had cleaned the dirt from her face, released and brushed her hair, and changed into a soft pink sweater that clung in all the right places, and some fresh jeans that made him wonder how on earth she was going to manage to sit down. It was a sight guaranteed to make any red-blooded man catch his breath at the very least.

But what struck him most were her features. Her eyes were round and wide, a deep, deep brown, with long curved lashes. They seemed to contain a permanent smile. Her nose was small and slightly tip-tilted, her mouth, though not full, was generous. Her face was a perfect combination of rounded and oval, with a shapely curve to the jaw. He admitted that, though she gave the immediate impression of being pretty, she was nothing outstanding in the details, but the sum of those details made her beautiful, stunning, the good nature written on her face transforming it into something truly special.

He could barely prevent himself from falling at her feet and declaring undying love. Only one thing stopped him, and it wasn’t his good sense or a feeling of embarrassment or decorum.

It was just that she was so young.

Louise performed the miracle of sitting down in the painted-on jeans, apparently without doing herself any injury. She took the chair opposite Bobby.

“Mr Goren,” Louise began, “I know from the news coverage about your current situation. Let me say that I believe you have been treated very unfairly. But I hope the NYPD’s loss will be my gain.”

Bobby smiled. “What do you have in mind for me, Ms Gardner,” he asked.

“I need someone to be my right hand. A lot of people work with me to carry out all our projects successfully. Things run pretty well. But I’m only one person, and I feel that a second brain keeping track of the overall mission will make a big difference as we take on more causes.”

“Mission?” Bobby asked, a frown appearing on his forehead. “You aren’t a religious foundation?” If there was one thing his work had taught him it was that being in any religious organisation was not for him.

“No, not at all. It’s just a convenient way of talking about what we do.”

“I think I need to know more about exactly what you do before I can consider working for your company,” said Bobby cagily. He hated himself for saying it. He wanted to jump at the job just so that he could spend happy hours getting to know, not the job or the organisation, but its founder. As if she read his mind, Louise Gardner said, “Of course. I’d be happy to have you working with me for a trial period with no commitment on your side, but I must insist on paying you.” Bobby opened his mouth to speak, but Louise continued, “I won’t take no for an answer on this matter. You cannot afford to work for nothing, and I’m not in the business of exploiting people. I thought $200,000 would be fair. So, are we on?”

Bobby’s eyes nearly popped out. She didn’t give him time to protest.

“There is one particular new project I’d like you to consider taking charge of. It’s a centre for young people who’ve slipped through all the nets to get their lives back on track. An old warehouse owned by one of my family’s interests is going to be converted into a series of workshops. Young men and women will be able to improve their literacy and numeracy, learn new skills, and get advice on careers, health, you name it. And I mean that – you name it, you can do it.”

Bobby felt himself reeling from the possibilities he had just been offered. This would be good for kids, and for him too, not to mention his shattered finances. But he would have to get his hormones under control.

Well Bobby, he thought, good luck with that, working closely every day with Louise Gardner.

Chapter 2 – An Impressive Start

Louise Gardner was an heiress. A very rich heiress. Her family’s diverse investments and business interests had produced an eye-watering fortune. Louise had inherited the lot aged 25, when her large-living parents had been killed in a plane crash on a private flight to Acapulco. It seemed that the parents had no interest in using their resources to help those less fortunate than themselves (which included most of the rest of the world) but had spent their time gallivanting around the planet in search of new pleasures.

Their daughter, meanwhile, their only child, busied herself studying any and every subject that caught her attention and interest. She had acquired several bachelors degrees, four masters and two PhDs by the time her parents died. Bobby couldn’t see how she could have spent much time in their company, since they appeared never to have been at home, and her path in life was in a quite different direction.

He no longer had access to DMV records, and there seemed to be no pictures of her online, so he had no idea what she looked like when he arrived at the headquarters of her charity operation next day. He had been trying to remember what stood at the address she had given him, and when he got there, he discovered it was a large office building whose ground floor had once housed a department store. The huge windows now carried art work showing the causes Good Works Inc helped out. He thought it was a waste of money to rent a place like this when the money could go to the causes, till he noticed an old plaque declaring that the building was opened by the Gardner Corporation in 1910. No rent to pay here, then. And the family fortune was well-established.

Bobby parked his car and walked to the entrance to the upper floors, as Ms Gardner had directed him. There was a foyer of faded grandeur and an elevator next to a list of occupants of the building. A bright-eyed young receptionist greeted him.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?”

“Thank you, I’m here to see Ms Gardner.” He expected her to consult a list and pick up a telephone, but she pointed to a door that appeared to lead into the old department store section of the building. “Louise just went in to check on some new supplies.” Bobby followed her directions.

Through the door he was confronted by organised chaos. The old shop floor was covered in storage – shelves, bins, you name it – but everything was clearly labelled and signposted. Human activity was busiest in a section called Disaster Contingency Supplies (Tropics). Bobby walked towards the 10 or so people. They turned to watch his approach.

“Hi. My name’s Robert Goren. I’m looking for Ms Gardner.”

A pretty young woman in her twenties stepped forward. She was the right age and, without any idea of what Louise Gardner looked like, Goren assumed this was her. But she said, “Let me take you to her” and peeled off towards the front of the store. There, a pair of jeans contained the bottom half of a body bent over a large packing crate.



His guide called, “Louise, Mr Goren is here.” The jeans straightened up and revealed a white cotton top smeared in dust, a thick sheet of dark hair tied in a band and, as she turned around, a face half masked by dirty smudges. She was quite petite – about 5’3” or 5’4” – and gave the overall impression of being slim, until you noticed the curves under her tight shirt.

Mentally, Bobby slapped himself and reminded himself he was here to be appraised for a job, not himself to appraise a potential employer.

Louise Gardner stepped forward, wiped her grubby hands on her jeans, then proffered the right one for Bobby to shake. “Pleased to meet you, Mr Goren,” she said, with a wide, sincere-looking smile. Bobby felt his own mouth respond. How could you not smile back at this woman?

It was impossible to tell anything about her age or features because of the smudges on her face, which she proceeded to make worse by trying to rub them away with her still-messy hands. “Glad you didn’t wear a suit, Mr Goren, but even so, you might regret not being more casually dressed. I should have mentioned the mess we tend to get in.”

Bobby looked down at his black shirt and trousers, already dusty and looking far from smart, and remembered all the days when he’d been covered in grease working on vintage cars. Then he recalled the snappy suits and ties from his early days at Major Case, before his life began to overwhelm him.

Louise Gardner was very observant. She noticed immediately the flicker of sadness in his eyes. She had read enough of his recent history to understand that this man was wounded, and needed to mend. She was more sure than ever that her plans for him would relegate his sadness to a less prominent place in his mind and relieve his unhappiness for long periods at a time. He wouldn’t accept charity, but he was one of her causes anyway. No one should serve their city and their country so faithfully and then be treated so abysmally by the representatives of those he had served.

Missing barely a beat, she said, “I have an office on the next floor. Let’s go up there and discuss what we can do for each other.” She strode back towards the door and Bobby followed, trying not to admire the neat butt with the dusty handprints on. At the elevator she stopped and pressed the up button. Once inside, she took one look in the elderly mirrors and burst out laughing. “This is bad, even for me!” she said. Her good nature infused her voice with a quality that made you want to make her happy, so that she would never stop laughing. Bobby leaned forward and brushed a cobweb from her hair. She’s so young, he thought, I have to be careful.

He didn’t dare ask himself, “Careful of what?”

Good Works

Chapter 1 – Helping Hands

Robert Goren walked out of the Major Case squad room with his mind in a turmoil. He no longer had a job. He was not even suspended – he was fired. All he wanted to do was employ his intellect, his knowledge of human nature, to solve crimes. Now that door had slammed loudly behind him. What now?




He had so many debts. All those months with no income while he was suspended before, the expense of his mother’s care and her funeral. He needed a job fast, but he had no idea what to do or even where to look.

At home that night, he allowed himself to just flop in front of the TV, something he never did under normal circumstances. When the news came on, he was devastated to see that the Captain’s murder case was reported in detail, and his own name was mentioned, including the fact that his conduct in the case had led to his dismissal. The implication was that somehow it was his fault that the case was unsolved.

Bobby shuffled dejectedly over to his drinks cabinet and succumbed to the temptation he had been fighting all evening. He poured himself a generous measure of malt, and sat back down, holding the glass up to the light to admire the golden glow. Just as he was about to take a sip, the phone jangled into life.

Slamming the glass down on the side table, Bobby leapt up and crossed the room to lift it from the cradle and silence the shrill tone. He didn’t know whether to experience anticipation or dread. Was he in more trouble? Or did a friend want to offer him some kind of support?
Friends? Where had they all disappeared to? Misery prefers solitude, and since his troubles first began, he had let his friends drift from his life. Not one of them had tried to press support on to him.

“Robert Goren,” he said into the receiver.

“Good evening, Mr Goren. I’m sorry to bother you.” The voice was female, educated, the timbre resonant, a pleasant voice on the ear.

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“You don’t know me, Mr Goren. My name is Louise Gardner. I run a group of charities – ”

“I don’t need charity, I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out of this difficulty by myself,” he said, protesting rather too much. Too late, he realised he was treating Ms Gardner as if she had read his own recent thoughts and was offering to help him solve his financial problems.

“That’s good news, Mr Goren. I hope it doesn’t mean you aren’t hoping to find a new job that might interest you?”

A job. So she had read his thoughts a little.

“I’m sorry Ms Gardner,” he apologised. “I am intending to find a new job. I just haven’t had any clear ideas about what I might do.”

Most people offered ex-cops security work, some officers went into private detection services. Neither of these appealed to Bobby. But Louise Gardner had mentioned charities. His interest had been roused. Before he could inquire further, she told him what he needed to know.

“I form new charities whenever I see a new need. There’s one for Haiti, another for New Orleans, a charity for endangered wildlife, for inner city kids, for providing musical instruments for schools in deprived areas. I also have a foundation for archaeological research and one to provide finance for advances in psychiatric medicine. And that is nowhere near an exhaustive list.”

He was dumbstruck. How did one person endow so many causes, and still find time to take an individual interest in each one and its work, as it would appear Ms Gardner did.

After a long pause, Bobby replied, “What role did you have in mind for me?”

“I take an active role in all my charities, Mr Goren. I may spend time on a dig in Egypt, or helping to set up shelter and food aid in a disaster area. But what I need now is someone to keep me focused, up-to-date and safe no matter where I am or what needs doing. I think you may have the skills I’m looking for.”

Bobby paused before answering. This was not investigation. It was not solving puzzles. But it was logistics. It was good causes, and the psychiatric foundation in particular interested him greatly.

“I’d certainly be happy to discuss a few possibilities, Ms Gardner. Just say where and when.”

Louise Gardner suggested 10am the next day at her offices, and gave Bobby the address.

As soon as the connection was broken, Bobby booted up his computer and entered Ms Gardner’s name in a search engine. What he found made his eyes pop and his jaw drop.