Naomi of Nob Hill

Gerhard J. W. Munster

Description

A down-on-her-luck African American woman lands a housekeeping job at a lavish California estate and uncovers dangerous secrets about its occupants in this exciting rags to riches tale.
Naomi LaFontaine isn’t enjoying life. Bill collectors keep calling her San Francisco apartment, her stepmother just passed away, and she’s unemployed and flat broke. Fortunately for Naomi, life is about to change—in a big way.

After spotting a classified ad to become a live-in housekeeper at Nob Hill, Naomi sets off to the ritzy section of town. She’s overjoyed when she lands the job and even better, the kindly cab driver, Leroy, has taken a shine to her. Naomi hasn’t met a nice person in a long, long time, and Leroy fits the bill quite well.

A few days on the job and Naomi wonders what she’s gotten herself into, but she decides to stick it out.

Ruthless people abound at Nob Hill Estate and Naomi isn’t immune to their slings and arrows. But her hardworking, resourceful, and caring nature brings change to the home and is especially noticed by the invalid owner of the estate, Henry Sanderforth.

Things take a dangerous turn when Naomi discovers how Sanderforth’s authority has been completely usurped by his employees, even to the point of him being held hostage in his room. With Leroy’s help and sheer determination, Naomi sets out to uncover the house’s twisted secrets, even if it means losing everything she holds dear…

Sujets

• Literary
• Germán
• Nueva Orleans
• Hawái
• Tuscany
• New Orleans
• Hawaii
• German
• Naomi
• La Nouvelle-Orléans
• Fiction
• Hawaï
• San Francisco

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781440164446
• Langue: English

Extrait

Naomi Of Nob Hill
 
Gerhard J. W. Munster
 
 
 
iUniverse, Inc.
New York Bloomington
 
 
Copyright © 2009 by Gerhard J. W. Munster
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:
 
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6445-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6443-9 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6444-6 (ebook)
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 09/22/2009
Contents
Chapter I  
Chapter II  
Chapter III  
Chapter IV  
Chapter V  
Chapter VI  
Chapter VII  
Chapter VIII  
Chapter IX  
Chapter X  
Chapter XI  
Chapter XII  
Chapter XIII  
Chapter XIV  
Chapter XV  
Chapter XVI  
Chapter XVII  
Chapter XVIII  
Chapter XIX  
Chapter XX  
Chapter XXI  
 
 
 
 
My foremost gratitude goes to my beautiful wife, Karen, who has selflessly provided me with countless breakfasts, snacks, and dinners while I was spending time with my laptop instead of her.
 
 
When we are systematically deprived of our dignity,
it influences the human mind to victimize itself
and thus becomes the weakest link in our quest for survival.
Yet there are some amongst us who have the rare ability
to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Those are the true survivors, who at their bleakest hour
find a starting point for a new life!
 
 
—Gerhard J. W. Munster
Chapter I  
Naomi
M ost of San Francisco was still in a deep sleep, but that did not make a hair of difference to those pesky collection agencies calling long distance from the East Side of New York.
Naomi’s crummy old dial telephone kept on ringing relentlessly through the night, keeping her from a good night’s sleep. Just a few days ago she had considered unplugging that damn phone, but the health of Tilly—her aging stepmother, who lived in a nursing home for indigents on the outskirts of New Orleans—forced Naomi to put up with having to pick up the phone over and over again, thinking the call could be about Tilly. She was stricken by dementia and a failing heart. Naomi felt that because of that unfortunate situation she had to pick up every call, and when it was not about Tilly, it was one of those collection agency calls. Naomi was tired of having to come up with a new excuse as to why she could not make her long-overdue payments.
Life was hell right now. Naomi sighed loudly. Her eyes raised toward the heavens …“God,” she called out, “let me sleep. Why me? Why now?…Please … make ’em all go away … Lord, please help me find any job that pays more than just my rent!” She swung around, reached under her bed, got hold of a half-empty gallon bottle of cheap Chablis. She unscrewed the cap and filled her empty coffee cup to the rim. The wine was warm but soothing. Lying down on her bed, Naomi reminisced about her past and thought about all the ups and downs she had gone through in life. Well, at least I have my health, she thought, and with this she finally was able to go to sleep.
It was almost six in the morning when the phone rang again. This call was different. It was Laquisha Johnson, the unpleasant night nurse from Shady Pines Nursing Home in New Orleans. She informed Naomi that her stepmother had passed away that night and that Shady Pines needed instructions from Naomi as to what to do with Tilly’s remains. They also needed some money to cover the final expenses. The news was somewhat expected, yet still sad and painful. Naomi knew that her stepmother had been in a lot of pain for far too long, and with her health failing rapidly, Naomi felt, Tilly was better off in heaven than in that horrible decaying nursing home. “God bless her, she was such a loving woman and hardworking person,” Naomi thought out loud. With much sadness, she realized that she would not even be able to afford a funeral for Tilly. Naomi thanked the nurse for calling and told her that she was not able to come up with any money right now, but that she would try to send some money as soon as she got a job again.
The nurse said, “I guess we’ll have to call the city to bury her,” and then growled some more nasty words into the receiver and hung up.
Tilly’s soul must have been in heaven already, and if there was such a thing, she must have known how sad Naomi was, because through that dark and angry-looking sky there suddenly opened a small window, and the sun peaked through beautifully, hitting her small kitchen window with the glint of a tiny sunbeam. Naomi sat down on her wobbly kitchen chair, and she took out some old photographs that she had kept in a rusty old-fashioned coffee can that Tilly gave her many years ago. She looked up at that little hole in the sky and said, “Thanks, Tilly. I love you and I’ll miss you and you’ll be in my heart forever … and Tilly, please forgive me for not being able to give you a nice funeral.”
Suddenly, a little cloud high up in the sky changed its shape and began to look like an angel. Good-bye, Tilly, Naomi thought. Then she lovingly looked at those pictures while clutching some of them to her chest. They brought back cherished memories, some good, some sad, but they were her memories and only hers to keep forever!
Naomi always called Tilly by her first name. That’s what Tilly wanted. She once told her “I’m not your real mom, but I’ll always love you, as your mom would have.” Tilly had lost her husband and only child in a fire and probably didn’t want to get too close to her, Naomi thought. Naomi never knew her biological mother. Tilly told her that her mother died of complications while giving birth to her. Naomi never really got to know her father either. After her mother died, he apparently was looking for a woman to raise his child. He married Tilly, who was all too willing to care for this little baby girl, after losing her own daughter. According to Tilly, Naomi’s father was never able to hold a job. Tilly told her that sometimes he would disappear for weeks on end. One day he never returned. Nobody has ever seen nor heard from him since.
Naomi LaFontaine knew she was broke. She had no money to travel and no means to take care of Tilly’s final burial arrangements. She had to let the City of New Orleans take care of this and bury her in a pauper’s grave. Naomi shuddered at the thought of lying in a dark, cold grave. Would this be her fate also when her time came, with no one to mourn, no proper funeral? After all, she had no relatives or family that she knew of.
Just four months ago, Naomi had lost her low-paying and mind-numbing quality control job at Associated Pool Supplies. Bruce Rutherford, her supervisor, was a jerk. That sleazy old two-faced bastard wanted her to work late, wait until everyone was gone for the day, and hit her up for “personal favors,” like skinny-dipping in one of the salesroom’s hot tubs. She had put up with this for too long because she really needed a paycheck. However, during her last days at the company, Naomi just couldn’t fake the enthusiasm for this any longer to please the jerk. He retaliated and started interviewing new “talent.” Within a few days he hired a new girl with a very short skirt and a tight, low-cut blouse, exposing her voluptuous boobs. That same afternoon he let Naomi go.
Ignoring the ringing phone again, she went to her tiny kitchenette in her sparsely furnished efficiency and opened her last can of beans, took some leftover gravy, and made herself a late breakfast. Besides several empty bottles of cheap wine and a few crushed beer cans in the trash bin, there was one lonely can of beer in the back of her small refrigerator. She looked at it and said, “Cheers … you are going to be the last cold one for a long while.”
Chapter II  
The Job Search
I t was as hot as blazes. Her window air conditioner had not worked for several days when Pete Fox, the apartment manager, pounded impatiently on her front door.
“Hey, Naomi, open up. I need some rent money—this ain’t a shelter for homeless hookers.” He then hollered, “You give me some sugar, sweet thing, and I will let you stay a few more days!”
“Screw you, Pete,” she yelled back through the closed door, raising her eyes to the heavens above. Oh crap. What now? What next? she thought.
Whenever she was in a jam like this, she took the back fire escape, so no one knew that she was coming or going. She walked for almost an hour to the wharf, sat down on a bench, and grabbed a copy of the Chronicle that someone had left behind, before the wind could blow it away.
Suddenly she held on to that newspaper like her life depended on it and tried to turn the pages to the classifieds. The wind was annoying, but she finally managed to handle the mangled newspaper pages and find the job section. “Help wanted,”. it read. Yup, how low can you go? she said to herself, reading the personals and the employment columns. “Help wanted—fi