"You wouldn't dare," Overland said, trying to maintain his tough persona but doing a poor job of it. He had paled considerably during Jake's speech and fear was plainly evident in his eyes.
"Try me," Jake said. "The gloves are off now."
And before Overland could even respond to him, Jake had walked away. He was bluffing, of course. He knew no thugs willing to break bones or toss pipe bombs, let alone willing to kill a prominent local businessman's family, and he wouldn't go to such extremes even if he did, but it seemed that Overland had believed him, or at least was unsure enough not to risk the consequences Jake had outlined. In this case Jake's reputation — that he was a badass, quick-tempered, violent Satanist — worked for him.
As he parked his Corvette in the four-car garage next to Rachel's Cabriolet and his housekeeper's Toyota Corolla, he was tired and hungry, his nerves on edge from another day of arguing with Matt and Nerdly. He trudged from the garage across the open cement path that led to the main house and entered the side door into the kitchen. His mood immediately improved when he smelled the mouth-watering aroma of garlic and tomato sauce in the air.
Elsa Tyler, the woman he'd hired as his live-in housekeeper and cook, was standing at the counter in the middle of the kitchen, cutting up romaine lettuce and fresh spinach greens for a salad. A pot of something was boiling away on the stovetop alongside a huge covered skillet.
"What is that smell, Elsa?" he asked, putting his car keys on a hook next to the door (failing to do this would incur the unencumbered wrath of Elsa when he asked her where his keys were). "It's Italian with lots of garlic, but I can't quite pin down the actual dish."
"Welcome home, Jake," she said. "It's Chicken Parmesan cooked in extra virgin olive oil with freshly grated Parmesan and homemade Italian breadcrumbs. I'll be serving it in exactly ten minutes with garlic-laced rigatoni and a fresh garden salad. I also have two bottles of Italian Chardonnay from the southern vineyards chilling in the refrigerator."
Elsa's accent was upper class British — proper Queen's English taught to her in the finest finishing schools of London. Elsa herself, however, was not British. She was Nigerian and the blackest woman Jake had ever seen in person. Her skin was as dark as could be found on planet Earth, so dark that light didn't seem to reflect off it at all.
She was fifty years old and had lived most of her life in England where she'd been educated and had made a career of housekeeping and cooking for many of the movers, shakers, and entertainers of Britain through the sixties, seventies, and early eighties. She had been the live-in help for two members of the House of Lords, one member of the House of Commons, one member of Monty Python, and had even done a two-year stint working for Roger Waters of Pink Floyd before emigrating to the United States to be near her daughter and granddaughter who lived in Orange County. She had a bachelor's degree in literature and a degree from a prestigious British culinary school.
Jake had decided to hire a live-in housekeeper when it had become apparent that his thrice-weekly maid service was simply inadequate to keep up with the demands he placed upon them. He'd discovered Elsa through the same ad agency that Pauline had used to hire her domestic help and had interviewed her using much the same process that Mindy Snow had used to find hers — namely, he'd made her cook for him as part of the interview. She'd prepared a complete meal of Filet Mignon, marinated garlic mushrooms, rice pilaf, and salad, every bite of which had melted in Jake's mouth. The housekeeping questions had been almost secondary after that.
She had expressed a certain amount of trepidation at first about working for a musician as notorious as Jake until he'd assured her that nine out of ten of the stories she'd heard about him were nothing but fabrication on the part of the media.
"What about the story of you snorting cocaine from the buttocks of that common trollop?" she'd asked. "Is that a fabrication as well?"
"Uh... well... unfortunately that one is kind of true," he'd responded. "That was in my early days. You know how it is?"
"Actually I don't," she said. "I've never imbibed in cocaine use before, neither from a mirror or a buttock. I trust you would not engage in such behavior in my presence?"
"I wouldn't dream of it," he assured her.
"Then I guess you have yourself a housekeeper," she said. "If you'll have me, that is?"
Jake wanted her, and, like anyone in his employ who maintained loyalty to him and did not try to screw him, he made sure she was well compensated. Her base salary was $2500 a month. She was given the downstairs bedroom and bathroom as her own and she paid not a penny in rent. She was given a budget of $800 per month for household groceries, including her personal groceries but not including any alcohol except for wines to be served with dinner (the bar stock came out of a separate budget that was currently running in the vicinity of $1100 per month). Whatever she didn't spend of the budget was hers to keep — which wasn't very much right now, but when Jake left to go on tour for five or six months it would be considerable. Since she used her personal vehicle to go shopping and to take care of other household errand, Jake had also given her a gas station credit card to use for fueling it and he had agreed to pay for any repairs the vehicle might need. He also paid the one hundred and twelve dollar a month premium on her health insurance. Basically, except when Jake was entertaining, the entire downstairs portion of the house belonged to Elsa. She was particularly protective over the kitchen and everything in it.
In exchange for all this Elsa cooked dinner for him every weeknight and on the occasional weekend, she did all of the laundry, including folding it, ironing it, and putting it away, she kept the entire house clean enough to perform surgery in, and she oversaw the landscaping service that kept the grounds in good repair and the pool service that kept the pool and spa operating. She also kept her mouth firmly closed whenever a reporter tracked her down in the grocery store or the fish mongers or the butcher shop and wanted to squeeze details out of her about Jake and/or Rachel's private lives.
So far she was working out much better than Jake would have ever thought possible. She took her job very seriously and she was an amazing cook. She hardly blinked an eye at some of the more sordid things her employer engaged in. When Jake had given his housewarming party after all of his new furniture arrived she had served appetizers to the guests while walking through thick clouds of marijuana smoke. When she had walked in one day and found Jake screwing Rachel atop the pool table her only comment had been "Do you have any idea what that is going to do to the felt? Did it occur to either of you to put down a towel first?"
Now, she was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a white blouse and had an apron tied around her waist. Jake walked up behind her and took a good smell of her chicken Parmesan. "What can I have a bite of?" he asked her, reaching for the diced tomatoes she'd just added to the salad bowl.
She slapped his hand away before he could get within a foot of his target. "You'll have a bite of nothing until dinner," she scolded. "Who knows where your hands have been today."
"Mostly on mixing boards," he said, shifting his attention to the right. "How about some of this garlic bread? It looks like it just came out of the oven."