Heart vs. Humbug
M.J. Rodgers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Special Acknowledgment

My thanks to a very special friend, T. Lorraine Vassalo, of Ottawa, Ontario, for her wonderful recipes for Loin of Veal and Grand Marnier French Toast, both of which appear briefly in this story and everlastingly on my hips.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Octavia Osborne—A top-notch lawyer who is not afraid to let her heart lead the way to justice.

Brett Merlin—An infamous lawyer known as “the Magician,” a man who believes the law cannot afford to have a heart.

Mab Osborne—Octavia’s grandmother; a lady who breaks all the stereotypes.

Dole Scroogen—His nickname is “the Scrooge.” He lives up to it—and then some.

Nancy Scroogen—Scroogen’s wife; a lady who suffers in silence.

John Winslow—He has a key to the crucial locked door and maybe a key to grandmother’s heart.

Douglas Twitch—He is a genius at engineering, and maybe at murder, too.

Constance Kope—She has a knack for design and maybe a need for revenge.

Ronald Scroogen—His relationship with his father is full of conflict and confusion.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

The intruder crept silently beneath the shadowy wings of the December overcast that blacked out the moon like a swooping bird of prey.

Not much farther now. Just a few more steps.

A few more careful steps.

Perceptions in daylight took so many subtle visual cues for granted. Beneath the absolute black of this inky night, without even a horizontal reference, a sense of balance could falter and a sense of direction could quickly become disoriented.

Still, the intruder welcomed the absence of the light. The weak might gather around their paltry incandescents and fluorescents trying to push the darkness aside, but the strong sought the night’s cloak to open new doors to opportunity.

One such door lay just ahead. The intruder grasped its knob and slipped quietly inside the greenhouse.

The relative spacing of the rows of plants to either side of the center path had been memorized, even the exact number of steps to the storeroom at its back paced out. Nothing had been left to chance. Nothing.

The intruder started boldly forward...only to instantly trip and fall heavily to the ground, letting out a startled oath.

Luckily, the earthen path was cushioned with moss, and the intruder’s thick clothing and gloves prevented abraded skin.

But the intruder didn’t feel lucky. The intruder felt angry. How could this happen after all this planning!

Muffled curses spat through the intruder’s teeth, all the more angry because they had to be muffled. Nothing was worse than having to keep silent while the rage seethed inside.

The intruder sat back on the heels of black running shoes and dug into the deep pockets of black sweatpants to draw out a small penlight. The flashlight beam bobbed along the mossy path as the intruder searched for the obstruction.

There it was. An electric cord strung loosely across the path, connecting a string of Christmas tree lights draped over the miniature fir trees on either side. Some fool had stopped in the middle of decorating the trees, leaving the cord swinging ankle-high over the path, marked with strings of gold tinsel and a large orange plastic caution cone.

Lot of help those markers were in the dark. Better make sure there weren’t any more such surprises.

The intruder pointed the thin stream of the flashlight ahead. No more gold tinsel and orange caution cones stood in the way.

The intruder rose and began to resume the interrupted journey forward when suddenly the sounds of heavy boots crunched on the frozen gravel outside of the greenhouse.

The watchman!

The intruder quickly switched off the penlight, pulled up the hood of the black sweatshirt, dropped to the rich earth beside the path, jackknifed between the trunks of miniature fir trees, and lay concealed beneath the cover of their thick green branches.

The pungent odor of the dark, rich compost burned the intruder’s nose. But that discomfort was of far less concern than the question now burning in the intruder’s mind. Would the carefully selected dark clothing blend into the black earth?

The telltale sounds of the watchman’s boots stopped at the edge of the window-lined structure. The intruder remained stock-still as a strong beam of light flashed into the greenhouse.

“Somebody in there?” the watchman called, his voice thick and raspy with age.

The intruder knew about this watchman. His name was Hank. Hank had been given this job to keep him going after his wife died. Both Hank’s eyesight and hearing had seen better days. These were all things the intruder had considered before selecting this night to enter the greenhouse.

The intruder lay facedown, absolutely still, as Hank’s flashlight swept over the plants and then the path. Once. Twice. A third time. The intruder’s hands began to sweat within the heavy gloves.

Hank switched off his flashlight. He muttered beneath his breath as he shuffled back to the warm shed at the rear of the community center. The intruder knew Hank would now return to watching the old movies on his small TV set and carrying on conversations with his dead wife.

The intruder exhaled in relief. Whatever Hank might have seen or heard, he had satisfied himself nothing had gotten into the greenhouse. He would not be back.

As soon as the watchman’s footsteps faded into a soft, spongy echo, the intruder rose to hands and knees and crawled carefully forward.

No more obstructions blocked the path. All would now go according to plan.

And it was a brilliant plan. Getting into the locked storeroom at the back of this greenhouse had been the only risky part. As soon as it was accomplished, everything else should be easy.

But success hinged on no one knowing the intruder had been here this night. No one.

No one would. And when it all started to hit the fan, no one would ever suspect who was really behind it. The intruder smiled.

Yes, a truly brilliant plan.

Chapter One

“Romantic men don’t have penises,” seventy-six-year-old Mab Osborne announced distinctly over the FM radio waves to her devoted listeners of KRIS’s “Senior-Sex-Talk” program.

From her spectator position in the corner of the control room, Octavia Osborne nearly choked trying to subdue the resultant chuckle that rumbled in her throat as she listened to her grandmother’s outrageous pronouncement.

Seventy-two-year-old Constance Kope did not try to stifle her response. “Mab Osborne, we cannot discuss this...topic, and it is totally unnecessary for you to use that...that...word,” Constance said, her fusty Pekingese-like face spread open in prescient horror as she barked her loud protest. She shoved her glasses farther back on her button nose and leaned forward to poke the radio program hostess in the arm with a reprimanding index finger.

Mab took the interruption and poking with inherent good humor. “Precisely, Constance. A penis is totally unnecessary. Would you like to explain why to the radio audience?”

Mab’s direct challenge to her would-be critic worked like a dropped stitch in the knitting of Constance Kope’s thoughts. The tiny woman’s faded brown eyes began to water behind her glasses.

“Heavens, no! I don’t wish to discuss—”

“Yes, you’re quite right, Constance,” Mab interrupted. “This is a topic that I can best do justice to, I believe.”

Constance’s breath got caught in her throat and came out in a muffled sneeze through her tiny nostrils. She looked like she still wanted to bark but wasn’t sure at what.

Octavia stifled another chuckle. There was no telling what the feisty, frank and fun Mab Osborne might say next. Octavia’s grandmother was a sturdy five-eight with silver-streaked red hair, bright blue eyes, an even brighter pantsuit and a sense for the dramatic that never failed to delight Octavia and daunt the myriad guests who had appeared with Mab during her forty-year radio career.

Seventy-three-year-old John Winslow, another one of those guests who was currently sitting right next to Octavia in the tiny control room, leaned slightly forward. “Mab, I admit we agreed there were no holds barred in this discussion of ‘What Makes Good Sex in One’s Seventies,’ but don’t you think that eliminating a man’s penis is a trifle severe?”

Mab’s resultant laugh lifted the volume needle to the middle decibels on her radio station’s control board.

Octavia swung her attention to John Winslow’s neat presence and prescient smile. From his perfect diction to the white silk ascot tucked into his open-throat blue dress shirt, John reminded Octavia of one of those fast-disappearing, refined elderly gentlemen who actually knew what courtly dress and manners really meant.

“John, I’m not suggesting that a man’s penis needs to be surgically removed,” Mab said. “What I’m saying is that each one of us—whether we’re twenty-five or ninety-five—must first embrace the right word images in order to receive full enjoyment from any act.”

Seventy-five-year-old Douglas Twitch, Mab’s third and final guest on her “Senior-Sex-Talk” panel, leaned forward to grab the microphone.

“Word images? What in the hell are you talking about?”

Octavia watched Mab gaze calmly at the bushy-headed, rawboned man in the worn, faded jeans and gray-and-white checkered shirt. While Mab’s confident smile and bearing conjured up images of a thoroughbred charging confidently over a racetrack, Douglas Twitch’s beleaguered scowl bore far more resemblance to a plow horse chaffing under the weight of the harness.

“I’m referring to the full spectrum of human sexuality, Douglas,” Mab replied. “All of the important books on the subject never describe men as having penises. And quite correctly, I might add.”

Octavia watched as Constance Kope’s punched-in, Pekingese face colored to match the red Christmas bow that adorned the desk beneath the control panel. John Winslow’s hand covered the smirk spreading over his mouth as he bent his full white head of impeccably groomed hair. Douglas Twitch crossed his arms over his barrel chest as his long, horsey brow dug a deep trough.

Mab’s eyes were resting on Douglas’s long face as the breath shot out of his flared nostrils in short, snorting whinnies.

“Something you wanted to say, Douglas?” she asked.

He grabbed the microphone once again.

“You bet there is. I admit I’m not much of a reader and I never actually got through all the words in my high school biology text, but the pictures were clear enough and nothing on the male human’s torso was left out, woman.” He sent a meaningful glance around the room. “I repeat, nothing.”

He dropped the microphone back onto the control board table as his exclamation point and gave a final satisfied snort of vented spleen.

Mab shrugged her straight shoulders. “But then that was only a biology book, wasn’t it, Douglas?”

Constance’s brow puckered in confusion. “Only a biology book, Mab? What books are you talking about?”

Mab caught Octavia’s eye and winked. That was when Octavia knew that Constance had asked her grandmother the right question.

“Why, romance books, of course, Constance,” Mab replied. “They are the only books that really explore the profound and rich universe of human emotions.”

John leaned forward slightly. “Mab, do I understand you right? Are you saying that in romance books, romantic men don’t engage in intercourse?”

“On the contrary, John. In romance novels, romantic men engage in intercourse quite frequently. And enjoy it tremendously, too, I might add.”

Octavia felt certain Douglas Twitch’s resultant sharp snort registered on some Richter scale as he did his best to scoot his chair away from Mab in the tiny control room. Constance’s sigh dissembled into a reprobation.

John’s smile spread big enough to hurt. “Okay, Mab. I admit I’m stumped. If these romantic men engage in intercourse frequently and enjoy it tremendously and they don’t have penises, what do they use?”

“Why, their pulsing manhoods or hardened desire or—”

“Oh, you’re saying that it’s the word penis that isn’t used in connection with these romantic men?”

Mab’s mischievous eyes twinkled. “Exactly, John. I’m so glad you finally understand.”

John let out an amused chortle at being so intellectually reprimanded. “Well, I do and I don’t, Mab. Aren’t we just dealing with semantics here?”

“Yeah,” Douglas said. “You tell her, John. They’re the same thing.”

Mab shook her head. “No, they are not. Every act in life can be made ordinary or special, depending on how we approach it. The essential part of our approach involves the words we use. Words create the important messages that define our thoughts and feelings for everything.”

John arched a sliver of silver eyebrow. “Care to provide an example of what you mean, Mab?”

“Certainly, John. If I tell you I’m hungry and I’m going to grab something to eat, what image comes to mind?”

“You’re looking for something quick, whatever is handy.”

“Yes, quick and handy. Not very exciting words, are they? But, if, on the other hand, I asked you to dine with me this evening, what images would then come to your mind?”

“Well, I suppose a white tablecloth, candlelight, something special to eat, probably carefully selected.”

“Precisely, John—a beautifully set table offering something carefully selected. Words have lifted the ordinary act of eating into the stimulation of feelings that go beyond the mere satiation of hunger. In place of quick we now have special. In place of handy we now have carefully selected. The act of eating has been transcended into an act of caring and sharing appealing to all the senses. That’s why romantic men never have sex. They make love.”

Douglas squirmed in his chair, his big bony knee slamming into the edge of the control desk in the tiny room. “What in the hell does eating have to do with sex?”

Mab let out a little puff of impatience. “Words, Douglas, images of emotion—where true sensuality and romance come from. Sex is quick and handy. Insignificant. Making love is special and carefully selected. Important. The words we use so clearly create the emotion we anticipate and receive from the act.”

Constance nodded. “Oh, I see. You’re saying that the right words stimulate feelings that go beyond a mere sexual gratification?”

“Exactly, Constance. It’s the stimulation of those other feelings that makes us romantic, transforms an act of physical need into one of emotional fulfillment, and brings out the truly human part of ourselves. The feelings that lead up to and result from doing it are what make the sexual act, or any act, worthwhile.”

Douglas rubbed his stiff, grayish beard in apparent irritation. “Yeah, well I still don’t see what that has to do with using hardened desire in place of penis.”

Mab let out the frustrated sigh of a teacher trying to get through to her backward pupil.

“Douglas, when you describe a man using his penis in sexual intercourse, you’re talking biology, and clinical images come to mind. But when a man joins a woman to him with his hardened desire within the pages of a romance novel, he’s mated with her on an emotional plane, as well. It’s that emotional joining that causes the act to transcend the mere elimination of hunger and makes it become a feast at life’s most tasty and tantalizing banquet.”

Octavia smiled, thoroughly delighted with Mab’s triumphant crossing of her finish line. Her grandmother pointed meaningfully to the two incoming lines lit up on her console and announced that it was time for the panel to take calls from their listeners.

As the seniors chatted with the first caller, Octavia leaned back and let her mind wander. It had been years since she’d last been here. Yet in a way, it felt just like yesterday.

Some of her fondest memories with her grandmother were garnered in this tiny control room. Every day after school, she’d stop by. Hour after hour, she’d sit and watch and listen as Mab’s fingers reached out to connect with the switches on the control board and her voice reached out to connect with her listeners—sometimes offering them an interesting new thought about the world, sometimes just an irreverent spate of her own special brand of humor, but always with an honest compassion that came from her heart.

Octavia smiled as she looked up to see the colorful tinsel and the many, many Christmas cards from Mab’s devoted listeners taped across the top of the room’s walls.

Christmas time had always been the best time to sit in on Mab’s broadcasts. It was during the holiday season that Octavia and Mab had laughed the most in this room. And probably cried the most, too. Octavia knew she was who she was today because of what she had learned about life from her grandmother, right here.

And, after witnessing this morning’s program, Octavia was delighted to find Mab still as fun and fresh and feisty as ever.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I see our time is up,” Mab was saying. “I’d like to thank my guests from the executive committee of the Silver Power League for being with us this morning. Constance Kope, Douglas Twitch and Dr. John Winslow.

“Coming up now is some beautiful Christmas music to keep you company. I’ll return at two with our community’s news. Until then, this is Mab Osborne and KRIS, Bremerton’s senior citizens’ radio, reminding you to keep calling and writing the chamber of commerce and the Department of Community Development. Your action is needed to save our community center. Bye for now.”

Mab flipped the switch on the main control board to cut in the prerecorded Christmas music.

Octavia sat forward in concern at Mab’s final message to her listeners. This was the first she had heard that the community center was in jeopardy. Was that the reason for Mab’s call and urgent request for Octavia to come by this morning?

Mab seemed to read the concern in Octavia’s eyes. She shook her head at her granddaughter. Octavia understood that was Mab’s way of saying that any questions Octavia had would have to wait.

Octavia rose and reached for Constance’s hand as she started the rounds of giving each of the seniors a warm handshake and smile. “It was a stimulating show. Thanks for letting me sit in.”

As Constance rose to her feet to take Octavia’s hand, she gave her comfortably round, five-foot frame a small shake, like the miniature dog she so resembled.

“It had its moments,” she agreed.

Douglas scratched irritably at his stiff salt-and-pepper beard after he released Octavia’s hand.

“Personally, I could do without Mab always having to sensationalize everything. No penises on men! What a ridiculous thing to say. Isn’t that right, Constance?”

Constance’s head bent back as she squinted up at the much taller man.

“Now, Douglas, Mab had a commendable point, once she got to it. Although, I do believe the use of that word really wasn’t—”

Douglas swung away from Constance to face John. “Don’t you agree Mab should be muzzled?”

John’s palms came up, a humorous gleam in his eyes. “Doctors, even ophthalmologists, always stay neutral in fights, Douglas. We have to be available later to patch up the combatants.”

Mab turned to position herself squarely in front of the horsey, six-foot Douglas Twitch.

“Stop looking for support to gang up on me, Douglas. You never got it when we were in grade school together and you’re not getting it now. Muzzle me, indeed! I’m not surprised my point eluded you. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the subtleties of ‘Sesame Street’ elude you.”

Douglas’s sallow face colored. He grabbed the pipe hanging out of his checkered shirt pocket and took it like a bit between his prominent teeth, spluttering incoherently.

Mab turned away from his reddened face and calmly slipped her arm through Octavia’s.

“I’m glad you arrived in time to hear some of the show. Your being here takes me back, Octavia. Let’s go home and I’ll fix us both something nice and hot to drink and we can talk.”

Octavia nodded. But as they turned to leave the control room, she saw Mab suddenly halt and stiffen.

Octavia followed the direction of her grandmother’s fixed gaze. On the other side of the glass barrier that separated the radio control room from the visitors’ lounge, two men stood staring.

Octavia noted and dismissed the slouching, sour-pussed shorter man with the squinty dark eyes, thin ashen hair, baggy olive pants and green-and-black-checkered suspenders. But the taller man caught and completely held her attention.

He was at least six-four with bark-brown hair and broad, imposing shoulders in an expensive custom suit of charcoal gray, discreetly trimmed with a dove-gray tie and pocket handkerchief. He looked remarkably formal and forbidding, from the tight laces of his highly polished black shoes to the obdurate shine in his black-rimmed, silver-sprinkled eyes.

Octavia knew instantly that this was a man who had made his mark in the world and would continue to do so.

Those arresting eyes held hers in an intense scrutiny. Their silver shine was stronger than confidence, deeper than desire. For no reason that made any sense, she suddenly felt the rush of blood through her heart and a tingling in her fingertips.

“Who is he, Mab?” she asked.

She could feel her grandmother’s eyes dart to her face and then back to the men.

“I don’t know who the tall one is you’re fixating on, but the short, slimy one is Dole Scroogen. We call him the Scrooge around here.”

“And as long as the other one is with the Scrooge, he’s not worth your wondering about,” Constance announced in what sounded to Octavia like a definite warning.

“What does that damn Scrooge want besides our blood?” Douglas grumbled with more vehemence than Octavia had yet heard from the man.

“He only shows up in person when he can gloat over something,” the normally cool, suave John said with surprising heat. “We’d better go see what it is this time.”

Their collective comments told Octavia that despite the seniors’ previous differences over the content and conduct of the radio show, the appearance of Dole Scroogen had united them instantly in animosity against the man.

They left the tiny control room single file, Mab in the lead, Octavia right behind her, the rest following. Octavia could still feel the stranger’s eyes. They had not left her once since the moment she first felt them.

As Octavia and the seniors approached the two men in the waiting room, Dole Scroogen raised his arm to point at Mab.

“That’s her. That’s Mab Osborne.”

The impoliteness of the man’s pointing finger and his whiny, condescending tone immediately irritated Octavia. She knew at that precise moment that she was going to thoroughly dislike Dole Scroogen.

Scroogen’s tall companion shifted his eyes from Octavia to her grandmother. He took a step toward Mab. His deep, rich voice vibrated through the small waiting room like an ominous drumroll.

“Mrs. Osborne, I’m Brett Merlin.”

Brett Merlin? Octavia felt a small jolt of surprise as she instantly recognized his name. Could this really be the Magician of corporate law standing before her? The one whose name every attorney whispered in polite reverence? Well, well. No wonder the guy exuded the aura of the anointed.

Octavia watched, her initial interest heightened even more, as Brett Merlin slipped a sheet of folded paper from his pocket. He held it out to Mab.

“What’s this?” Mab asked as she took the paper from his hand.

“It’s a copy of a cover letter I faxed to the FCC this morning, Mrs. Osborne. I’ve also sent by Federal Express a two-hour tape of recorded highlights from your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ programs. I’m demanding the FCC revoke your radio license on the grounds of lewd and immoral content.”

Octavia couldn’t have been more surprised at Brett Merlin’s words than if the man had suddenly announced he was from Mars. He was bringing her grandmother up on a morals charge before the FCC? She didn’t know whether to laugh or have this obviously overrated fool of an attorney committed.

Before she could respond to either impulse, a photographer suddenly jumped out from where he had been hidden on the other side of a partition and snapped several photos of Mab. The unexpected flashes from his camera also blinded Octavia, who was standing just behind her grandmother.

By the time Octavia could see and think straight again, it was too late to do anything. The Magician, the Scrooge and the photographer had all vanished—right out the door of her grandmother’s radio station.

* * *

“OCTAVIA, I‘M NOT standing still for this FCC threat.”

Octavia smiled. That sounded just like the fearless, independently competent Mab that she had been admiring all her life.

She poured her grandmother’s homemade hot apple cider into both their cups and slipped in a cinnamon stick. The spicy fragrance filled the room and Octavia’s senses with the sweet, nostalgic past of other cold, overcast December days spent in this bright, cozy kitchen, baking Christmas goodies and stringing popcorn for the tree.

Octavia gathered up all the marvelous memories spilling out of her mind and set them firmly aside as she focused her attention on her grandmother’s perky head of silver-and-red curls.

“Before we talk about this FCC thing, Mab, tell me why you called last night and asked me to take the ferry over from Seattle this morning.”

Mab shook her straight shoulders, as though trying to disengage some annoying burden clinging to them.

“Because of the Scrooge, Octavia. All the trouble began with him.”

“What trouble?”

“When a group of us formed the Silver Power League five years ago, we did so in order to organize senior citizens and show them the kind of power we could wield if united against unfavorable legislation. One of our members gave us a ninety-nine-year lease to some land and an old barn that sat on it to use as our community center.”

“Yes, I remember visiting you there a couple of times when you first opened. You had cleaned and painted that old barn and made it very presentable. Now, what has this to do with Dole Scroogen?”

“He’s our new landlord.”

“And?”

“Remember those documents I asked you to look over nearly a year ago? The ones about the Silver Power League’s ninety-nine-year land lease?”

“Yes. You were worried about any loopholes. But the previous owner’s lawyer did a very good job drafting that protection clause against your eviction by a subsequent owner.”

“Except she didn’t anticipate that the Scrooge would levy a ridiculous rent on us.”

“Mab, he can’t do that. Remember my telling you? There are protection provisions in your lease that prohibit any rent being charged that is not commensurate with property value. The three acres of land your community center sits on has some value, but that old barn isn’t worth much.”

“You’ve been away too long, Octavia. We have a new Silver Power League community center.”

Yes, she had been away too long—too busy rushing through the arteries of her life to find the time to spend with this special person who had first put Octavia’s hand on life’s true pulse.

Octavia paused in the middle of her self-recrimination to let her grandmother’s last words register. “Wait a minute. Did you just say the new center?”

Her grandmother nodded.

“I kept looking at all this talent our members had just going to waste—retired architects, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, decorators. Our members may be over sixty, but most are still vital and strong and possess a lifetime of experience and expertise. So a couple of years ago I decided to get them off their duffs and put them to work on some renovations.”

“But, Mab—”

Mab raised her hand to halt Octavia’s interruption.

“Yes, I know. Any improvements on leased land become the property of the landowner. But you have to understand, Octavia, at that time the landowner was one of our members and a good friend. She was charging us only fifty dollars a month in rent. We knew that on her death everything in her estate was to go to her only surviving blood relative—her great-nephew, Dole Scroogen. She told us that she had spoken to him and he understood her wishes. Plus which, we had the ninety-nine-year lease and we never thought...well, we never thought he would do what he did.”

“Go on, Mab.”

“When she died, we’d already torn down that old barn and broken ground on the new Silver Power League Community Center and the extensive greenhouse that goes with it. Everyone was so involved by then, so excited at what we were creating.”

“And Scroogen?”

“Months went by and he never even contacted us. We thought that like his great aunt, he supported us. We went blissfully on with our plans. The buildings are magnificent. We’ve all been so proud. We held an open house two months ago. Invited everyone in the community.”

Octavia was certain she knew what was coming. “Let me guess. Scroogen showed up then with an appraiser?”

Mab nodded. “Because of our improvements, the property is now worth far more than it was before. He and the appraiser spent hours evaluating every inch before he presented us with an astronomical monthly rent and a six-month deposit demand, all payable by December 1. We barely managed to scrape together December’s rent and half of the deposit demand. It cleaned out our savings. He served us immediately with a thirty-day eviction notice. If we don’t come up with with the rest of the deposit and January’s rent by January 1, we’re out.”

Octavia sipped her cider. It would be so easy to get upset. But getting upset was not going to help her grandmother’s predicament. Only clear thinking could do that. Besides, Octavia had never been one to waste time wringing her hands over what was already done.

“Scroogen must have plans for that land to be so bent on forcing you seniors out.”

“About two and a half weeks ago, the bulldozers arrived and started leveling the houses on the rest of the block adjacent to our center. I checked the county assessor’s office and found that the Scrooge owns all the property. What’s more, he began buying it right after he acquired his great aunt’s land and we started building the new Silver Power League Community Center. A public notice went in the newspaper yesterday. He’s building a condominium complex.”

“Right next to your community center?”

“Right over our community center. We invited the workers driving the bulldozers in for tea and cookies and pumped them. Their foreman is Keneth George, a native American of the Suquamish Tribe, and a real nice young man. He told us the Scrooge has approval to build a very exclusive, high-priced condominium complex on all the land he owns.”

“So he’s been planning on evicting you all along.”

“Absolutely. The far-end parcel connects to the water. He’s going to build a private ferry system to Seattle for the owners of the condos. Keneth said he’s going to use our new community center as a clubhouse and our greenhouse as an indoor garden for the people who purchase the units.”

Octavia shook her head. “And he let you build them for him. This guy is a real piece of work. Your Scrooge label fits him only too well. Is the site zoned for multiple-family dwelling?”

“Yes. There was a small four-unit complex in the middle that was inhabited by seniors before he bought them out and tore it down. Octavia, he’s setting up the whole block to be a new bedroom community for Seattle.”

“And concentrated residences such as this condominium complex mean lots more people. Demands for water, electricity, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, shopping centers, everything rises. That will change the whole atmosphere of your quiet little community.”

“That’s precisely what I’ve been telling my radio listeners this last week. The Scrooge’s plan to push out the Silver Power League is only the start of the breakup of our community. It isn’t just our community center’s one block that will be affected. Our whole neighborhood for miles will be changed. With the influx of the affluent commuters, property values and taxes will skyrocket until the seniors on social security will be forced out from homes they’ve lived in all their lives. Unless he’s stopped.”

“Are you getting much response to your radio broadcasts?”

“The station has been deluged with callers—of all ages, I’m happy to say—all asking what they can do. I tell them to write letters and make phone calls to the mayor, the chamber of commerce and Bremerton’s Community Development Department. Still, every morning the bulldozers arrive at eight sharp.”

“Since the condominium complex is already allowed outright by the zoning code, even if these officials were sympathetic, they have no legal recourse to stop it.”

“I know. When I called the mayor’s office, I was told his hands are tied.”

“This complex would be thoroughly welcomed in other Bremerton neighborhoods, inasmuch as it would bring the promise of jobs and new industry. But your neighborhood is such a poor place to put it. Have you mentioned that fact to the Scrooge?”

“I called him as soon as I heard about the condo complex. But he wouldn’t listen. He hung up on me.”

“Feeling secure in his legal rights, no doubt.”

“I don’t care about legal rights, Octavia, only what is right. I’m going to raise the money to meet the Scrooge’s rent demand. Our little corner of Bremerton is made up mostly of seniors. We know one another. We help one another. We’re holding on to our life-style and our neighborhood. We’re not letting ourselves be shoved aside.”

Octavia rested her hand on her grandmother’s arm and gave it a supportive squeeze.

“You say you’ve been running your broadcasts against Scroogen this last week?”

“Once, sometimes twice, a day, I plead for a call to arms—phone-calling and letter-writing ones, of course. The radio station is our communicator, the only immediate information and entertainment line I have to many nonambulatory seniors. They count on me, Octavia. That’s why this business about an FCC complaint is so disturbing. I originally called you hoping you could suggest a legal way to fight the Scrooge’s astronomical rent demand. But this FCC complaint is more serious. I can’t lose my radio license. The seniors’ communication lifeline can’t be cut off. What can I do?”

Octavia sent her grandmother a reassuring smile.

“Mab, don’t worry about losing your license. This FCC complaint is a joke. Merlin never really thought there was anything lewd or improper about your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ programs. Nor does he expect the FCC to take the complaint seriously, much less revoke your license.”

“Then why did he do and say what he did?”

“My educated guess is that he staged that scene this morning for the sole purpose of getting the photographer to shoot some pictures to go along with a local newspaper story.”

“How do you know that photographer was from the newspaper?”

“Because this ridiculous, trumped-up charge is just the kind of sensational story a newspaper will eat up. Think about it, Mab. A seventy-six-year-old gal is being reported to the FCC because her ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ show is alleged to violate a morality clause. Could you ask for better?”

Mab laughed suddenly, relief rampant in the happy sound. “You’re right, Octavia! I don’t know why I didn’t see it. Even I would run a news brief on that storyline. It’s bound to give people a good laugh.”

“Yes, Mab. People are going to laugh,” Octavia said, not a vestige of humor in her voice. “And that’s the part I’m worried about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your radio campaign against Scroogen is being taken seriously. People are making calls and writing letters. What better way to draw attention away from the seriousness of what you have to say then by making you and your radio station into a joke?”

“I see. So the Scrooge had Merlin file that complaint with the FCC to make people laugh at me!”

“I doubt Scroogen thought of it. It’s too smooth and slick. I think this was the brainchild of the Magician.”

“The Magician?”

“It’s what Scroogen’s attorney, Brett Merlin, is called in legal circles, because he makes his clients’ problems just disappear. Merlin’s big time. He only takes on the momentous corporate cases that are considered worthy of his mettle. Scroogen is small fry. I can’t understand why Merlin is representing him.”

“You think that’s an important question?”

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my legal career, Mab, it’s that the players in any battle are what determine how big that battle is going to be. Today’s Tuesday. Since the Sunday edition of the Bremerton newspaper is the one with the highest circulation, more than likely that’s the edition in which Merlin has arranged for this foolish FCC story to be run.”

“What can I do to stop the story?”

“Trying to stop it would be a waste of time. We have to think of a way to cut it down and shove it to an obscure back page. Mab, do you know where Scroogen got all this money to buy up the land adjacent to your community center?”

“He owns a septic installation and servicing company that ministers to much of Kitsap County.”

Octavia rose to her feet and snatched up her shoulder bag. “And now he’s into land development. That raises one or two questions right there.”

“Where are you going?”

Octavia paused on her way to the door to swing around and answer her grandmother’s question.

“To call A.J. She’s the head of a detective firm that my legal firm uses. I think it might be a good idea for her to do a background check on Scroogen.”

“You can use my phone to call her, Octavia.”

“No, I’ll use my car phone on the way to the Community Development Department. It’ll save some time. I want to do a little checking of my own on Scroogen’s construction permits for this condominium complex.”

“Then you’ll be back in plenty of time for dinner.”

“I’d better call you later and let you know.”

“You expect to spend all day at the Building Department?”

“No, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to discover why this magician has suddenly materialized on the scene.”

* * *

BRETT ANSWERED THE KNOCK on his hotel room door, impressed that room service had responded so quickly. When instead the gorgeous redhead who had been dancing in and out of his imaginings all day appeared on the other side, he blinked a few times to assure himself his eyes weren’t playing tricks.

“Good evening, Mr. Merlin. I’m Octavia Osborne,” she announced with a thick, liquid voice as smooth and sweet as cherry brandy. “I want to talk to you.”

She glided by him into the room—not waiting for an invitation—treating him to a tantalizing whiff of a subtle, sophisticated scent that reminded him of warm sands and seductive tropical breezes. Brett stayed where he was, holding the door purposely open.

“How did you know I was here, Ms. Osborne? I’m not registered under my name.”

“Yes, that was most inconsiderate of you. It took me several hours to track you down.”

Brett assessed the situation. The lady’s bearing, speech and dress all exuded a classy, cultivated air. But it was seven o’clock at night, she had walked uninvited into his hotel room, and this could very well be an attempt at entrapment.

It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had tried to get him into a compromising position for a little legal blackmail.

“Relax, Mr. Merlin. I promise I will not attack you,” she said as though reading his thoughts. “Unless seriously provoked, of course.”

She had turned to deliver those final words with the challenge of a smile playing around her full lips.

Every legally encoded cell in Brett’s brain flashed alarm, exhorting him to immediately escort this woman out of his room.

But her smile spoke to every red-blooded male cell in his body, overriding even his well-developed sense of circumspection. Brett closed the door and stood silently contemplating his unexpected guest.

Octavia Osborne was stunning. He could think of no other word to describe her. She was over six feet in her high heels, with long, flowing flame-red hair, a glowing, golden complexion, and eyes so deep and startling a blue that he had only seen their like in the heart of the fabulous blue-white diamond he had fought so hard to possess.

The moment he’d seen her at the KRIS radio station that morning, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Brett kept her in his peripheral vision now as he walked over to where he had left his drink on the coffee table.

Yes, she possessed that kind of dazzling sparkle that would always draw his eye, but he’d learned the hard way to pass up the breathtaking beauties of the flesh and make do with the plainer and saner—if less exciting—specimens of the female sex.

He would not offer her a drink. He would do nothing to prolong her stay. He would hear what she had to say and then show her the door.

She whirled gracefully out of her cape, the color of a flambéed peach, slipped off her matching gloves, then proceeded to commandeer the most comfortable chair in the room.

He picked up his glass of Scotch from the coffee table, took a swig and sat across the room opposite her on the bench seat beneath the window.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

“I’m Mab Osborne’s granddaughter.”

Yes, Brett had already noted they shared the same last name. And despite the more than forty years separating the two women, the same flame of Octavia’s hair was buried beneath the silver of Mab’s. Both women also possessed an elegant air in poise and carriage that marked the familial tie.

“Why did you come here, Ms. Osborne?”

“To stop you from making trouble for Mab, of course.”

Brett wondered how. Would Octavia be like the many who had treated him to a bout of unsavory pleading and tears? Or like the few who had offered their bodies? He immediately pushed the tempting thoughts of the latter aside and decided to try to stave off whatever stratagem she had in mind.

“Ms. Osborne, your concern for your grandmother is understandable. But coming here tonight to try to sway me to drop my complaint to the FCC is not the proper way to go about helping her.”

“I don’t care about your complaint to the FCC. But I do care that you’re having the newspaper carry the story about this ridiculous FCC morals charge in order to bring ridicule to my grandmother.”

Brett was a little surprised at Octavia’s words. He hadn’t expected her to figure out that it was the sensational attention of a news story he was after.

“Ms. Osborne, I’m certain the newspaper will be happy to print your grandmother’s side of the story. All she has to do is call them.”

“Yes, you would like that, wouldn’t you. The more space they give to this ridiculous morals charge the better, right?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mr. Merlin, let’s deal with each other honestly, please. You’re Dole Scroogen’s attorney. You’ve deliberately set up this trumped-up morals charge to detract from my grandmother’s campaign against Scroogen’s building plans—plans that will seriously endanger the life-style of many elderly citizens.”

So, Octavia Osborne knew he was a lawyer and that the FCC charge was merely a smokescreen to help Scroogen get on with his development plans.

Was it Scroogen’s presence that morning in the radio station that had given the game away? Must have been. He’d told Dole to stay home and let him handle it. Fool should have listened to him. Now he had to deal with the damage control.

Brett swallowed some Scotch and continued to maintain his civilized tone of polite distance, so important in these matters.

“Ms. Osborne, I realize that change is always difficult to accept for those embedded in comfortable grooves.”

“A community made up of people who know and care for one another is more than just a comfortable groove.”

“Nevertheless, the law is on Mr. Scroogen’s side, and the law must prevail if progress is to be made.”

“Progress? You call ripping apart the seniors’ simple and gentle way of life and replacing it with overpopulation and pollution progress? Scroogen’s great-aunt wanted the seniors to have use of her land. That’s why she gave them a ninety-nine-year lease. What Scroogen is doing circumvents his great aunt’s wishes. He is wrong. I urge you to rethink where your loyalties lie.”

“Ms. Osborne, according to the law, it is your grandmother who is wrong. Mr. Scroogen received his great-aunt’s property without entanglements on her death. He has every right to do with his property as he pleases. And, as for my loyalties, they lie with my client. It is my sworn duty to fight for Dole Scroogen.”

She surprised him completely then by laughing, full and luscious, a sound that filled the room with music and inexplicably tightened the muscles at the back of his neck and down his spine.

“Your sworn duty,” she repeated, amusement still in her tone after she had gotten her laughter under control. “You say that as though you had no choice. Why are you, of all people, representing a man like Dole Scroogen?”

“What do you mean ‘of all people’?”

“I’ve approached you with candor and honesty, Mr. Merlin. I am disappointed that you do not choose to return them.”

“And I am disappointed that you refuse to accept that Mr. Scroogen is within his legal rights to proceed with the building of the condominium complex and evicting the Silver Power League for nonpayment of what is clearly reasonable rent for the facilities they are inhabiting.”

She was up and out of her chair in a flash. She crossed the distance between them with a deliberate, determined stride. She stopped directly in front of him. She stood hands on hips, feet planted. Combative blue eyes bore into him. Yet her voice remained warmly mellow and richly resonant.

“Scroogen is trying to evict the seniors from the land that is rightfully theirs to use and from buildings that they built with their own money and moxie. He is determined to turn their sweet and sane neighborhood into yet another crowded, crime-filled Seattle suburb. And you dare talk to me about his legal rights? Where is your heart?”

“The law has no room for a heart, Ms. Osborne. If human beings decided their fate based on their emotions instead of their minds, our civilization would descend into chaos.”

“And if human beings decided their fate based only on their minds, they might as well be manikins. Mr. Merlin, the law came into being for the sole purpose of sustaining justice between human beings. But like everything else, unless the law is administered by people with hearts—as well as heads—even its great and lofty goal can be corrupted. What you are trying to do for Scroogen will not achieve justice. The man is both beneath contempt and certainly beneath your legal expertise.”

Brett had to admit she spoke well. And he admired the fact that despite the considerable physical arsenal at her disposal, it was her words she wielded at him and not her feminine wiles.

He turned away from the stunning beauty and fire of the lady to down the rest of his drink.

“Who I choose to represent and why is my business.”

“No, Mr. Merlin. By attacking my grandmother you have made it mine.”

His eyes were drawn back to her face. The liquid richness of her voice had not altered. But both the toss of her fiery hair and the sudden blue sparks in her eyes conveyed pure threat. So far this conversation had been full of confrontation and totally lacking in the kind of feminine cajoling he had expected.

Octavia Osborne had a strong will, and it was that will on which she relied. He found himself as stunned by her inner core as he had been by her outer packaging.

Far too stunned.

In a move that he knew to be both prudent and absolutely necessary, he got to his feet and started toward the door.

“Let me show you out, Ms. Osborne. I’m certain your time is valuable and you don’t want to waste it here in a futile attempt to get me to drop my client.”

She joined him at the door a moment later, hurtling her cape expertly across her shoulders and fitting her gloves to her fingers in quick, competent clasps.

“You are making a very grave error representing that man, Mr. Merlin. You will be sorry.”

“The law is on Mr. Scroogen’s side, and I am never sorry to represent the law. Nothing personal, Ms. Osborne.”

She moved closer and looked him straight in the eye, a bold body position reserved only for the fiercest of fighters—or lovers. Her warmth and scent struck him like a blow below the belt, leaving him momentarily both mentally and physically winded.

“If you do not leave my grandmother alone, I will go after your Scrooge of a client and grind him down until the size of his wallet makes even his heart look huge.”

She leaned closer, her sweet breath blowing tantalizingly against his lips. “And everything about it will be personal, believe me.”

She turned then and swept out of his hotel room on that subtle, sophisticated scent that swam in his head until his senses started to spin.

By the time the blaring telephone registered in his ears, Brett realized it had probably gone through several ringing cycles.

He forced himself out of his mental and physical fog, enormously irritated that he had let the woman affect him so strongly. He closed the hotel room door on the now empty hallway. Then he strode toward the phone, grabbed the receiver and said hello.

“It’s Dole,” Scroogen announced on the other end of the line. “I just hung up on a damn irate anonymous caller on my home telephone number!”

“Settle down, Dole. What did the caller say?”

“That they were going to get me. I’m sure it was Mab Osborne’s voice, although she was trying to disguise it. I tell you, Merlin, this morals charge thing is not threatening enough. I want Mab Osborne off the air. She has to be silenced. Forever.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You heard me. I’m going to do whatever it takes to put an end to that woman. Whatever it takes.”

Chapter Two

Octavia strode down the dark hallway of the Seattle law offices of Justice Inc., heading for the one door under which the light still burned. She knocked.

The voice on the other side responded instantly, crisply. She opened the door and stepped inside.

Octavia’s senior partner, Adam Justice, sat behind his desk, his black hair still scrupulously in place, his white shirt unwrinkled, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight and Octavia knew he’d been here since dawn.

“What brings you by so late?” Adam asked, putting down his pen and shifting his paperwork aside.

Octavia had always liked that about Adam. No matter how busy or involved he was on a case, he never failed to stop what he was doing and give her his complete attention.

She swung into a utilitarian steel-and-leather chair in front of his black metal desk. Like the man who inhabited it, this office had been stripped of all but necessary business essentials.

“An attorney is causing some legal problems for my grandmother, and I need to spend time across the Sound in Bremerton to straighten it out.”

“This attorney anyone we know?”

“Brett Merlin. He’s representing a real Scrooge of a small businessman who has it in for my grandmother.”

Adam was silent for a moment before responding.

“Taking on the Magician won’t be easy,” he said.

“I know,” Octavia agreed, thinking about her earlier meeting with Brett in his hotel room. She had hoped to reach him, but he had shown neither compassion nor compromise—a real letter-of-the-law kind of attorney.

The law has no room for a heart. What a perfectly imbecilic thing to say!

Octavia lifted her chin. “He’s about to find out that taking me on won’t be easy, either.”

Her senior partner almost smiled. Almost.

“I...see. But what I don’t see is why Brett Merlin would represent a small businessman against your grandmother. Not more than three weeks ago he was responsible for getting a record 55.5 million jury verdict favoring one of his big corporate clients here in Seattle.”

“It’s a question that’s been on my mind, too, Adam. I’m going to have to rely on A.J. and her detective team to sleuth out the answer.”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to oblige. If you need my legal assistance or that of any of your fellow partners, you know you only have to ask.”

“I appreciate that. But this is family and that makes it a very personal fight for me.”

“You know how long you’ll be away?”

“Probably through Christmas.”

“Any cases you’re working on that need to be picked up by someone else?”

“Just one. My associate can handle it. I’ve written a few notes to her and left the complete case file on her desk, along with a request to keep you informed of the progress.”

Adam leaned back in his chair as she paused. Octavia knew he was waiting for her to tell him why she was here in person. They both knew there was more, that Octavia could have settled all this with a few telephone calls. She took a deep breath, knowing there was never going to be a “right” moment to broach the subject.

“I want to retain you as my personal counsel, Adam.”

A small frown creased Adam’s brow. “You want me to become your attorney? Officially?”

“As of this moment.” Octavia pulled out a standard Justice Inc. office contract she had already signed and had notarized and passed it across the desk to him along with a check.

Adam scanned the paperwork and check and leaned his forearms on his desk. His light eyes stared into hers.

“This is a bit formal, isn’t it? What’s the story?”

Octavia knew if either Kay Kellogg or Marc Truesdale, her other partners at Justice Inc., had asked her that question, she wouldn’t have told them. She certainly wasn’t about to tell Adam Justice, their firm’s senior partner—not after watching Adam turn from man to legal machine during the last six years.

She sent him a large, charming smile, the kind that she knew he didn’t know how to take. She hoped it might just make him uncomfortable enough to back off the question.

“Insurance,” she said.

The light eyes before her now pointed like two blue lasers. “What do you mean, insurance?”

The smile hadn’t worked. Octavia knew there was only one sure way to effectively distract the legal mind that was now so firmly fixed on what she had no intention of revealing. She was the only partner at Justice Inc. who both knew Adam Justice’s Achilles heel and had the guts to aim for it.

“Six years ago, Adam, you and I were involved in something that neither of us wish to share with anyone else. I want to ensure that neither of us will be forced to speak of it.”

Unconsciously, Adam’s fingers found and stroked the long white scar that disappeared down his neck into his starched white collar.

“You anticipate that someone might try to force answers from you or me about that...time? Why?”

“Anything is possible when it comes to an attorney of Brett Merlin’s ability. I intend to be thorough and aggressive in representing my grandmother. I have no doubt that the Magician will be equally as thorough and aggressive in representing his client. As we both know, his trademark is an uncanny knack for pulling obscure facts and laws out of his legal hat and combining the two to effect his adversary’s demise. I prefer to limit the facts he finds.”

“So by putting our relationship under a formal legal umbrella, you have placed our knowledge of each other and our communications under the attorney-client privilege.”

“Exactly.”

Octavia waited. Nothing showed on Adam Justice’s stone face in the long moment that passed. Only Octavia’s knowledge and sensitivity to the situation allowed her to see the fleeting, tiny flicker of light behind his pale blue eyes.

“All right,” he said finally.

Octavia didn’t show the relief that poured through her. She didn’t dare. Her senior partner was far too observant. He would have immediately suspected her “other” agenda.

Everything had to be done by the book with Adam Justice. Like Brett Merlin, he lived by the letter of the law.

But Octavia was not that kind of lawyer. She used her knowledge of the law to support what she knew to be its true code of justice. And now that the letters in some dusty law book were getting in the way of the spirit with which they were originally formed, Octavia knew it was time to get creative and find a footnote somewhere.

Or pencil one in.

Adam had been the only weak link in the bold plan that she had formulated today. Now that weak link had been braced. Now she could go ahead and fight for justice her way.

* * *

“BRETT, YOU REALLY SHOULD stay here. We’ve plenty of room. It will be no trouble,” Nancy Scroogen insisted as she dished out blueberry pancakes onto Brett’s breakfast plate.

Brett looked up at his aunt, still unsettled to see the deep lines that had dug themselves around her eyes and mouth, seemingly overnight.

Nancy Scroogen was his mother’s youngest sister, a mere ten years older than Brett. Brett had gotten along well with his aunt, admiring Nancy’s tomboy spirit and sense of adventure.

They had corresponded regularly after Nancy had used her journalism degree to land herself a job as a foreign correspondent. Over the years he had enjoyed her light, breezy postcards from exotic ports of call.

Then, seven years before, Nancy had surprised him completely by suddenly giving up her profession and spirit of wanderlust to settle down and marry Dole Scroogen. Brett had barely heard from or seen her since. Until a week ago.

Now, as he looked at her across the dining-room table in Dole Scroogen’s East Bremerton home, he was sad to note how tired she appeared. Despite her assurances to the contrary, he was certain she didn’t need someone else in the house to look after. Not when she already had her hands full, he thought, as he noted the scowling faces of Dole and his son Ronald.

“Thanks, Nancy, but I’m comfortable at the hotel. This matter I’m handling for Dole is very simple and should be settled soon. Then I’ll be on my way to tackle Rainier. I’ve climbed it in summer, but I’m told the real test is in winter.”

“You want to spend Christmas climbing a mountain, Cousin Brett?” six-year-old Katlyn asked.

Brett smiled at Nancy’s little girl sitting beside him. Fortunately for Katlyn, she had inherited her mother’s peachy complexion—and attitude.

“The sunlight sparkling on the snow and trees beats any artificial string of lights, Katlyn.”

“But don’t you want to be home Christmas morning to open all your presents under the Christmas tree?”

Brett stared into his little cousin’s eyes, so obviously full of delighted anticipation for that highlight of the season. Sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to have been brought up believing in fantasy instead of staunchly facing reality.

“Your cousin Brett has never been a big fan of Christmas,” Nancy told her daughter. “Probably because my sister and her husband didn’t believe in decorating or exchanging gifts.”

“You didn’t get Christmas presents when you were a kid?” Katlyn asked in obvious dismay.

“I was given what I needed at other times of the year,” Brett explained.

“Even Santa Claus forgot you at Christmas?”

Brett prided himself on never lying, for any reason. But he also knew from the warning look on Nancy’s face that his answer to Katlyn’s last question had better be the right one.

“What did you ask Santa for this year?” Brett asked, trying to both deflect his inquisitive cousin and to maintain his integrity.

“I sent Santa a whole list. I sure hope he reads it. Why don’t you ask Santa to bring you a mountain so you don’t have to go away?”

“Katlyn,” Nancy intervened, “leave your cousin alone now so he can eat his breakfast in peace.”

“I’m out of syrup,” Ronald Scroogen complained in his typically too loud and too sour tone.

Nancy immediately rushed to her feet to get more from the kitchen. Brett flashed Ronald a disapproving look. The young man could have easily gone to the kitchen and gotten it himself.

Ronald was Dole Scroogen’s twenty-two-year-old son from a previous marriage. He resembled his father physically, right down to the sour puss and whiny tone of voice. He also had that insecure, young man’s way of making everything that came out of his mouth sound like a challenge or a complaint.

Nancy returned to the table with the syrup. Ronald took it out of her hand without a word of thanks.

Brett caught Nancy’s eye over the beautiful handmade wreath of fragrant bay leaves adorning the table’s center. He sent her an appreciative smile.

“Everything smells, looks and tastes wonderful.”

The surprise and gratitude of her returning smile confirmed Brett’s suspicion that his aunt wasn’t accustomed to getting any appreciation from the two other males sitting at this table. He took a sip of her excellent coffee and worked on controlling his growing irritation.

Brett was only here because of Nancy’s call for help. If it hadn’t been for Nancy and her little girl, he’d be long gone on his postponed climb. Seeing how her husband and stepson treated her, Brett was surprised that the full-spirited Nancy he once knew wasn’t long gone, too. What was keeping her here?

Love, he supposed. Brett stabbed his pancake and shoved it into his mouth, knowing it did no good to wonder how anyone could love Dole Scroogen.

Love was an incredibly imbecilic malady that struck even the sanest of souls and overnight turned clear reasoning power into gooey rubber cement. He remembered the affliction well.

He also remembered what it felt like to wake up the next morning only to realize he’d fallen for a fantasy.

Thank God that nonsense was all behind him.

“I don’t suppose you came over this morning just for pancakes, Merlin,” Dole said in his usual sour tone. “What’s on your mind?”

Brett swallowed and took another sip of coffee, trying not to let his uncle’s naturally abrasive manner get to him.

“What you said last night on the telephone disturbed me. It also disturbed me that you hung up afterward when I asked you to wait while I let in room service with my dinner.”

“I’m not a man accustomed to waiting, Merlin. And I meant what I said about that Osborne woman.”

“Look, Dole, we’ve already gone over all the reasons for handling this matter my way. Mab Osborne is popular. Insisting on a head-to-head confrontation would just generate more sympathy for her cause. Getting people to laugh at her instead of listen to her is the proper approach.”

“The Community Development Department is uneasy about all the mail and telephone calls they’ve received,” Dole said. “I’m getting heat from the chamber of commerce, too.”

“They are reacting to the public opinion Mab Osborne has stirred up. But the chamber can’t stop you, and I’m not letting Community Development withdraw your building permits. They were legally filed and approved and I’m making sure they abide by them.”

“But it’s getting worse every day. I even received a threatening letter from the old fools.”

“I wish you didn’t have to force the seniors out of their center, dear,” Nancy interjected.

Dole turned to his wife, his sour puss and whiny voice in full evidence. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded.

“Yours, of course, dear,” Nancy said, sounding immediately conciliatory. “I just wish there was another way.”

“Was the threatening letter signed?” Brett asked.

“No. But I’m certain it’s on Silver Power League stationery and Mab Osborne sent it.”

“Hand it over to the police. Let them investigate.”

“I’ve already done that. They say it could be weeks before they know,” Scroogen grumbled.

“All these irritations are temporary,” Brett assured him. “Once Mab Osborne has been defused, so will that public opinion.”

“What if your plan doesn’t work? What if she continues to whip up public sentiment against me?”

“After the initial article in this Sunday’s paper, I have three follow-up articles scheduled to be released over the next week with selected excerpts from her ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ programs.”

“What good will that do?”

“Mab Osborne likes to say shocking things to get her listeners’ attention. Each excerpt I’ve selected is taken out of context and is more sensational than the last. She’ll be so busy defending herself, she’ll have no time to whip up anything. Be patient. These things take time to work, but they do work.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then I will take the next appropriate step. Mab Osborne is like a fly on your wall, Dole. Its buzzing may be annoying, but we don’t need a shotgun blast to get rid of it. A flyswatter should do the trick.”

“It had better, Merlin.”

Brett didn’t take that kind of sour tone and threatening language from his paying clients, much less from a man he was only representing for the sake of his aunt. Enough was enough. He put down his fork.

“Dole, if you don’t like what I’m doing, then you can go—”

“No!” Nancy interrupted, obviously reading the look on Brett’s face and eager to stop what he would say. She leaned across the table to rest her hand on his.

“No, Brett,” she said in a calmer tone. “Dole is grateful, as I am, for all your help. He’s worked so hard to make this condominium complex happen. It’s the dream of a lifetime. We need you to stand by us to see this dream come true. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Dole deigned to look up from his breakfast.

“Yeah. You do your thing, Merlin, so I can do mine. I need more coffee here, Nancy.”

For once Nancy didn’t obediently jump up. Her hand remained on Brett’s arm, her pleading eyes on his face, waiting for his response. “Brett?”

Brett exhaled a frustrated breath as he nodded.

“The coffee?” Dole’s irritated voice reminded.

Nancy smiled as she rose to her feet. “Coming, dear.”

Brett shook his head as he witnessed the domestic scene. Whoever said someone could become a slave to love knew what he was talking about.

“The city water and sewer lines were connected a day ago,” Scroogen said, sounding pleased for once. “The land should be completely dug out for the underground garage in the next few days. In a week or so, the concrete guys can come in and start on the foundation. Tami, my secretary, is arranging for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The mayor, the city council, the chamber—everyone who is anyone is being invited.”

“Can I cut the ribbon?” Ronald asked his father, the eagerness and excitement clear in his voice.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Scroogen said. “Someone important, like the mayor, has to cut the ribbon.”

Brett saw what might have been anger or disappointment or both flare through Ronald’s eyes as he rose to his feet and stalked silently away from the breakfast table.

Dole didn’t even look up from his refilled coffee cup. Although not a fan of Dole’s son, Brett felt sorry for him at that moment. No doubt about it, Scroogen could be pretty damn insensitive.

“So, did you ever find out who the redhead was with those old fogys?” Scroogen asked.

The lady’s stunning face and figure flashed through Brett’s mind and with it a very annoying automatic tightening of the muscles down his back.

“She’s Octavia Osborne,” he said, concentrating his eyes on the swirling coffee in his cup. “Mab’s granddaughter.”

“How did you find out?”

“She came to see me last night just before you called.”

“Why did she come to see you?”

Brett looked up at the suspicious tone that had entered Dole’s voice. Did this guy trust anybody?

“To try to warn me away,” Brett answered. “Her threats were dramatic, but empty. Neither Mab Osborne nor her granddaughter can stop progress, no matter how much they might want to.”

“So you’re sure this granddaughter can’t cause any trouble?”

“I’m sure,” Brett said, his words replete with confidence. “Octavia Osborne is no one to worry about. The law is on your side, and I’m here to see it’s enforced.”

The telephone blared at the instant Brett had finished giving his client that positive and unwavering assurance. Nancy got up to answer it and brought the cordless receiver to the table to hand to her husband.

“It’s the foreman at the construction site, dear.”

Dole took the phone. “Yeah?”

Brett watched his uncle’s greenish-tinged face turn positively purple. Finally, Dole threw his napkin onto the floor and flew to his feet.

“What?” he yelled into the mouthpiece.

* * *

OCTAVIA’S GENUINE appreciation flowed through her voice. “Mab, this new community center of yours is outstanding. Its long rectangular shape, myriad skylights, ribbons of leaded glass windows and spotless white tile floor make it marvelously open and spacious. And the soft upholstered furniture you’ve selected adds just the right amount of warmth.”

Mab beamed. “I admit I had my doubts at first about the simplicity of the center’s design, but the natural light and clean lines are effective and efficient. We can cordon off any area with partitions, or open up the whole floor space for a large event, like our annual Christmas party coming up in a couple of weeks. How much better it will be now that we don’t have to crowd everyone into that old barn. Constance’s design was right, as always.”

“Constance Kope designed this center?” Octavia asked. “That little lady who was on your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ program yesterday?”

“Yes, Constance and her husband owned an architectural design firm before he became ill, and they both retired a few years back. She has an infallible eye for what works.”

“When I think that your Silver Power League single-handedly created this building and all its beauty, I am in awe, Mab.”

Mab smiled proudly. “Wait until you see the greenhouse. Douglas Twitch engineered its habitat to maintain temperature, moisture and lighting control.”

“Douglas is an environmental engineer?” Octavia asked.

“A very fine one, who was put out to pasture only because the big firm he worked at for forty years checked the calendar instead of his contributions.”

“I thought you and Douglas didn’t get along.”

“His mental limitations are irksome. But the greenhouse he designed is an engineering marvel.”

Octavia chuckled at her grandmother’s unmitigated contradiction on the intellectual credentials of Douglas Twitch.

“Lead the way to this greenhouse, Mab.”

“No, first I want you to see what we are doing to raise money for our rent. It’s just a stopgap measure, of course. I’m counting on you to put all your legal training to work to come up with something more permanent. But for now, well, our members are busy working on them over in this room.”

Octavia gave her watch a quick glance. “Them?” she repeated.

Mab smiled. “Come see for yourself.”

Octavia followed her grandmother to the other side of a partition and saw that an assembly line of sorts had been set up. Seniors sat on both sides of a long set of tables drawn close to the windows to receive an optimum of natural light.

Each member of the assembly line had a task. The first attached legs to a stuffed doll’s torso. The second affixed arms that crossed over the doll’s chest. The third screwed on a head. The fourth, hair. And so on down the line until the finished doll emerged at the end, holding in its fist a white piece of paper filled with scribbles.

Octavia picked up one of the completed dolls, examined its thin, ashen-colored hair, tiny dark eyes, sour puss, baggy olive pants and green-and-black-checkered suspenders, and chuckled.

“This doll looks exactly like Scroogen.”

“Squeeze it,” Mab urged.

Octavia did. “Read it and weep, I’m raising your rent.”

Octavia laughed. “It sounds exactly like him, too.”

“John Winslow did the voice. He’s very good at mimicking.”

“When do they go on sale?”

“Today. I’m advertising them on the radio this afternoon. We’re calling it the Scroogen Doll.”

Octavia shook her head as she set the sour-pussed, eight-inch specimen back on the table. “No, could be a legal problem there. Better call it the Scrooge Doll.”

“But we want people to associate it with Scroogen,” Mab protested.

“You think someone could mistake it for anyone else?”

“I guess not. The design is ours, a couple of our members got the materials wholesale, and the rest of our members are doing all the assembly. Our profit is nearly eighty-five percent on each doll. If we can just sell enough of them, we can stave off the Scrooge’s kicking us out for another two months.”

“You’re a marvel, Mab.”

“But as I said, Octavia, it’s only a stopgap measure. We need to find a substantial and consistent money-maker to meet the Scrooge’s ridiculous rent. Although, I must tell you, it galls me to think the money we’re working so hard to raise is all going to line that man’s pockets.”

“Yes, it galls me, too,” Octavia agreed.

“Have you thought of a way to stop him?”

“Let’s just say I’m working on it.”

“What is it, Octavia?”

“What’s what, Mab?”

“Ever since you arrived at my house this morning with your bags and a promise to stay awhile, you’ve been deliberately deflecting my every question about what you did yesterday, and you’ve been purposely vague about how you plan to attack this problem.”

“Have I?”

“Octavia, you’re only vague when you’re involved in something you don’t want me to know about. What is it? And why do you keep looking at your watch?”

Octavia refocused her eyes back on Mab’s face as she wrapped an arm around her grandmother’s shoulders.

“It’s just after nine. Let’s go see that engineering marvel of a greenhouse now.”

“You’re not going to tell me what you’re up to, are you.”

“You are a wise and perceptive lady.”

“And you are an exasperating one.”

Octavia chuckled.

“Oh, come on,” Mab said, her tone resigned. “The greenhouse is this way.”

They stepped out of the brightness of the center into a heavy, overcast day and made their way up a rise and along a graveled path to the large and lovely white-and-glass English-style conservatory that spread elegantly over an entire acre.

“Oh, that is marvelous,” Octavia said in appreciation at the classical, elegant lines of the structure. “When you said greenhouse, I was thinking utilitarian. But using the classic design of an English conservatory makes it absolutely charming.”

“Yes,” Mab agreed mechanically. Her head was turned and she obviously wasn’t listening to her granddaughter.

“What’s going on over there?” Mab asked finally, pointing to the adjacent property where a bulldozer lay idle as several workers stood looking down into a muddy pit.

Octavia leisurely turned in the direction of Mab’s pointing finger. Then her eyes swung immediately to the brand-new bronze Bentley with the license plate reading LAW MAN pulling up to the side of the curb. She smiled as she watched Brett Merlin get out of the driver’s side and Dole Scroogen exit the passenger door.

“The workers seem to have found something,” Mab said, her eyes still fixed on the construction crew.

“Have they? Well, why don’t we go see what it is?” Octavia suggested as she gently steered Mab into the direction of the workers and the pit.

* * *

BRETT SAW OCTAVIA the instant he swung out of the driver’s seat of his Bentley. She wore a turquoise suit with gold trim today, as classy and colorful as the lady herself. Her long flowing hair as before was unfettered, her heels as usual were high. Yet despite those high heels, she somehow seemed to glide across the soft earth toward the construction site.

Brett and Dole reached the construction workers as Octavia and her grandmother strolled up over the slight rise.

“Good morning,” Octavia said with a vivid graciousness that sprayed out like luminous paint over the canvas of the dull day. She was as stunning and self-composed as she had been in his hotel room the night before. Brett found himself instantly on guard. He returned her gracious greeting with a simple nod of the head.

He watched as the grubby workmen around the pit turned to stare at the beautifully groomed woman with the flame-red hair. They quickly got off their knees and onto their feet.

“Morning, ma’am,” they murmured.

Octavia continued to smile as she moved to the edge of the pit and looked over its side at the lone workman at its bottom.

“You seem to have found something there,” she said.

“I don’t appreciate being called and told to drop everything to come out here, George,” Scroogen shouted before the man had a chance to answer Octavia. “What’s going on?”

The stocky, black-haired man in the pit lost the smile he had flashed at Octavia the moment he turned to face Scroogen. “We found this.”

He pointed to a large black stone sticking up out of the pit.

“Well, what is it?” Dole asked.

“It looks like something’s been carved on that stone,” Octavia said, peering down. “You don’t suppose it’s early native American handiwork, do you?”

“I believe it is,” the foreman said, his black eyes glowing above his high cheekbones.

“How would you know?” Scroogen challenged.

“I am Suquamish, the tribe of Chief Sealth for whom Seattle was named. My people hunted and fished this land long before the white man came.”

“So you found this beautiful and important symbol of early native American culture right here?” Octavia asked, the awe clearly in her voice.

“The rain last night must have washed some of the covering dirt away,” the foreman explained. “We only realized it was buried here when we arrived this morning and the jaws of the bulldozer started to lift it out of the mud. I withdrew the machinery immediately when I saw the carving.”

Brett moved around Scroogen to get a better look at the gray scars on the dark stone that stuck out of the mud. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a dozen or so seniors emerging from the community center and heading in the direction of the pit. He felt distinctly uneasy with this find and the crowd gathering to view it. And with the less-than-languid smile that played around Octavia’s lips.

“This place has nothing to do with Indians,” Scroogen protested, irritation making his tone even whinier than usual. “This was all farmland before those rinky-dink houses were put up after World War II.”

“Their foundations did not go very deep, Mr. Scroogen,” George said. “We have had to dig far deeper to accommodate the foundation for the condominium and underground parking structure. It is at this greater depth that this carved stone has been uncovered.”

The curious seniors arrived then and crowded behind Octavia and Mab Osborne, asking what was going on and trying to get a better look.

“Is that what the workmen dug up?” a voice suddenly asked from beside Brett. Brett looked over in surprise to see the young, eager eyes of a man with a reporter’s badge on the flap of his windbreaker and a 35-mm camera slung over his shoulder.

“Where did you come from?” Brett asked.

“I’m with the Bremerton newspaper. We got a call that you guys dug up some ancient Indian stuff.”

The reporter turned to the workman beside the stone. “What do those markings mean?”

“We do not know,” George said.

Brett tried to get the reporter’s attention. “Who called you and when?”

“We got an anonymous tip about thirty minutes ago.” The reporter turned back toward the foreman. “You the one who found this?”

“Yes. I’m the construction foreman, Keneth George.”

The reporter slung his camera around and started to take pictures. “Can you get rid of the rest of the dirt to see if there is more carving farther down the stone?”

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Octavia said. “If this is a previously unknown site of early native American habitation, professionals need to be called in to excavate properly. It would be best to stop all work here immediately.”

“Yes,” the foreman said as he nodded toward Octavia. “As I told Mr. Scroogen when I phoned him, we must stop all work.”

“The hell you will,” Scroogen protested. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. This land has to be excavated and graded by next week. Dig that damn thing up and send it to whoever has to decide what it is.”

“That is not how the law works, Mr. Scroogen,” Octavia said. “Artifacts must be examined at the site of their unearthing by the proper authorities. There may be other precious native American objects buried here. I’m certain your attorney would not advise you to do anything against the law.”

She turned to Brett, that elusive smile just lifting the sides of her ample lips. Out of the corner of his eye, Brett could see the reporter stepping back to take a shot of the crowd.

“Isn’t that right, Mr. Merlin?” she asked.

“Only if it is a bona fide artifact,” Brett said, doubting it more and more by the second. From that smile on Octavia’s face and the way he had watched her orchestrating this little scene, Brett was certain that somehow she had to be behind this far too “coincidental” find and the call to the newspaper. He didn’t like this. Not at all.

“I will call in my tribe’s cultural expert,” George said.

“No, you won’t,” Scroogen protested. “I’m not stopping these bulldozers just because you’ve dug up some stupid stone.”

George’s face darkened perceptively. He scrambled up the sloping, five-foot-high muddy pit wall to stand before Scroogen.

“The stone must be examined,” George said, anger in his eyes and voice.

Brett stepped between the two men, hearing the click of the news reporter’s camera. If he didn’t take control of this situation now, it could quickly escalate beyond anyone’s control.

“Mr. George, I’m Brett Merlin, Mr. Scroogen’s attorney. Mr. Scroogen is merely skeptical about the authenticity of this stone carving, as am I. We’d both appreciate your calling your tribe’s professional archaeologist to settle the matter.”

“Mr. Merlin, I’m surprised you would suggest such a thing,” Octavia said. “Surely you know that is not the proper legal procedure in a case like this.”

“Oh?” Brett said, turning to her. “And what would you know of the proper legal procedure?”

“Mr. Scroogen must first report this find to the group issuing the building permit for this site—namely, Bremerton’s Community Development Department. They in turn will have to contact the state representative of the Archaeology and Historical Preservation Department in Olympia, who will then contact the professional archaeologists from the tribes so they can visit this site to do a thorough examination.”

She knew the proper legal procedure, all right. Too well. It was just as Brett had suspected from the first. She had to be behind this business.

He stepped closer and faced her squarely. “How do you know this?” he challenged.

“Because I’m a lawyer.”

She was a lawyer?

Brett watched the satisfied smile on Octavia’s face as she delivered that piece of unexpected news. He couldn’t be more surprised—or more annoyed—to realize how completely off-guard she had caught him.

But what irritated him most was that he knew she had expected the error. She knew he had not taken her threats seriously. She knew he had been misled and bamboozled by her beauty, just like probably every other poor sap who had met her. She knew it, and she had counted on it.

It seemed he had made a couple of very serious errors when it came to this lady. He gave himself a moment to regroup his thoughts before going on the offensive to save what he could from the situation.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he demanded. “Why have you hidden the fact that you are an attorney?”

A single eyebrow arched up her forehead. “You, Brett Merlin, accuse me of hiding the fact that I’m an attorney? You, who marched into my grandmother’s radio station yesterday and handed her a fallacious complaint you sent to the FCC without mentioning the fact that you were only doing it because you are a high-powered attorney hired by Scroogen to make trouble for her?”

She paused in her ultra-composed—and obviously rehearsed—indignation to turn to the reporter standing just beside her.

“You did get all that, didn’t you?” she asked sweetly.

“Every word,” he answered as he pointed at the tape recorder that had suddenly materialized in his hand. The young man then turned and shoved the mike into Brett’s face.

“Is what Ms. Osborne said true? Is your FCC complaint against Mab Osborne merely an attempt to make trouble for her?”

“Let’s not get off the subject here,” Brett said quickly. “We are at the future site of an exciting new condominium complex that will bring both jobs and prosperity to this community, a complex that could be delayed by the discovery of this stone carving. The question you should be asking is, who might be responsible for putting the carving on this stone?”

“Are you saying you don’t believe this is an Indian relic, Mr. Merlin?” the reporter asked, the inflection in his voice obviously hoping Brett would say just that.

“I’m saying that no one here is qualified to make such a determination,” Brett answered cautiously.

“Is the legal procedure that Ms. Osborne delineated accurate, as you understand it?” the reporter pressed.

“Only if this really is an ancient native American artifact,” Brett said.

Brett turned back to the foreman. “Mr. George, would you ask your tribe’s cultural representative to come over now? If he looks at the carving and says it isn’t early native American, it would be a quick and easy solution that would save a lot of time and needless involvement of others.”

“I’ll use the phone in my truck,” George said, and quickly made for his vehicle parked at the curb.

“This carving may originate with another tribe and, therefore, be beyond the expertise of a Suquamish cultural anthropologist,” Octavia said. “No, Mr. Merlin. Quick and easy will not suffice. This find must be reported and handled according to the prescribed law for its protection.”

Octavia then turned to the reporter. “You appear to be in on the beginning of what could be a major new native American find. This could make an excellent continuing story.”

Her words had the effect of redoubling the young man’s photographic efforts. With every picture the news reporter snapped, Brett watched Octavia’s smile grow.

“Stop this,” Scroogen yelled at the reporter, and then waved his arms at the seniors. “Get out of here. You’re trespassing. The rest of you construction workers, get back to work.”

“Wait, Dole,” Brett said, wondering if this wasn’t exactly what Octavia Osborne wanted Scroogen to do—right in front of a reporter.

“I can’t wait!” Scroogen protested.

Brett grabbed Dole’s arm and lowered his voice so the others couldn’t hear.

“Legally, you have to wait, Dole.”

“I’m under time-sensitive contracts to develop this land. If I renege on those contracts, I’ll be ruined!”

“Keep your voice down and slow down. A little delay will not ruin you, Dole, so save the dramatics. I very much doubt this so-called ancient carving is legitimate. Far more likely it is a contemporary artistic endeavor.”

Brett paused to look directly at Octavia, who was urging the reporter to take even more pictures.

He returned his attention to his recalcitrant client. “Look, Dole, you have no choice now but to report this as prescribed by law. But if what I suspect is true, it won’t take long before this supposed relic is relegated to the trash bin as a phony. At the most, it should only be a few days’ delay. A few days won’t jeopardize your schedule.”

“But—”

Brett poked Dole in the ribs before conveying the rest of his caution beneath his breath. “Would you rather someone serve you with a court order to cease and desist all your building operations, giving the media a chance to turn this so called ‘find’ and your construction site into a real sideshow?”

“That could happen?”

“I’ve no doubt that Octavia Osborne would see to it,” Brett said. “Dole, don’t you get it? This attorney wants you to screw up and turn this into a fight. That’s why she made sure that damn reporter is on hand. This has all been carefully orchestrated to cause you trouble.”

“I thought you told me less than an hour ago that Octavia Osborne couldn’t cause me any trouble?”

“Yes, well, I admit I underestimated the lady and the foolish lengths she’d go to. Still, she’ll find she’s caused more trouble for herself than you. Now, use the car phone to call the Community Development Department and report this ‘find.’”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“Because you’re the developer. And because I’m going to be having a word with this reckless attorney and put the fear of God into her, so we don’t find ourselves facing any more of this kind of foolishness. Go, Dole. The sooner you make the call, the sooner we can put an end to this delay.”

As soon as Dole obediently, albeit reluctantly, turned toward the direction of the car, Brett turned toward Octavia. She stood in the middle of the seniors and the workmen and the reporter, jabbering confidently.

He could have understood her taking any legal avenue available to protect her grandmother’s interests. But not this flagrant disregard for the law.

Brett Merlin knew how to quell an unscrupulous adversary’s slams at his clients. He knew how to make such an unethical attorney quaver and crawl.

And he knew he was about to do all this to Octavia Osborne.

* * *

OCTAVIA DIDN’T HAVE to see Brett’s eyes to feel them. She wasn’t sure why this was so. She suspected it was because of the power behind those eyes, a power that was almost palpable.

He was coming at her from behind. She could feel the change in the air pressure, the spark along her skin, the rush of blood through her heart, the tingle in her fingertips, with every step that drew him closer.

At the precise second he came to a stop behind her, she cut short an answer to the reporter’s question and swung around to face him squarely. He was a man to be faced squarely.

“Yes?” she asked.

The sprinkle of light silver in the center of his black eyes had solidified into stone. She sensed his surface anger and something deeper and more dangerous—and much more difficult to control. The tingling in her fingertips increased.

“I want to talk to you,” Brett said. “Alone, please. This way.”

He bowed in the direction he wished her to go, and then simply waited with the stiff dignity of someone who was accustomed to being obeyed.

Men had made the mistake of trying to order Octavia around. One or two had even tried to take her arm to coerce her. None got a second chance to repeat either mistake.

But Octavia was rather fascinated by the approach Brett Merlin was using to get his way. There was such a polite refinement to it, such an outrageous self-assurance.

What a thoroughly annoying and exciting man. She could barely wait to find out what other emotions this man would engender in her.

But she controlled her curiosity, deliberately making Brett wait, while she turned back to the reporter to conclude their interview. Only then did she deign to accompany Brett to a point some twenty-five feet away from the crowd. She stopped when he did and turned to face him.

He folded his arms across his chest and scowled at her, like a judge about to give a three-time offender a life sentence. The cold anger that solidified the silver in his eyes could have frozen fire.

“You are in serious trouble, Ms. Osborne.”

His voice was rigid and stern. He stood before her so marvelously self-assured and self-important. Octavia’s laughter bubbled up from her throat and erupted into a short, spontaneous roar.

And all the while she laughed, she watched Brett Merlin’s countenance darken until it matched the blackened clouds hanging ominously in the heavy sky overhead.

“What’s so funny?” he asked in a voice that thundered as the silver in his eyes shot through with lightning.

“You are an interesting man, Mr. Merlin,” she said after she had finally gotten her merriment under control. “Your client’s building plans are about to be buried beneath an ancient Indian stone carving and you call me aside to tell me I’m in serious trouble?”

He stepped closer and towered over her—deliberately, she knew. She admired the calculated cunning of the move, almost as much as she admired the breadth of his broad shoulders. The guy was a big, imposing hunk who knew how to throw his weight around with class. She stared steadfastly into his incredibly alive quicksilver eyes.

“I’m going to have you investigated, Ms. Osborne. Thoroughly. Until I know about each and every breath you’ve taken since you were born. And when I connect you with that piece of fakery laying in that pit back there—and I will connect you with it—I am going to see that you are brought up on criminal charges and disbarred.”

Octavia could tell that Brett Merlin fully expected his awesome reputation, presence and words to effect fear and trepidation in her.

His unmitigated pomposity was absolutely magnificent. She put aside her admiration of it long enough to stand on her tiptoes, stretching tall until she was at eye level with him. She tossed her head back, waves of flaming-red hair falling off her cheeks.

“If you ever repeat those slanderous allegations to a third party, Mr. Magician, I will see to it that it is you, not I, who disappears from the legal scene in one highly publicized puff of courtroom smoke.”

She noted with enormous satisfaction the instant shifting of the silver light in his eyes. She sensed she was witnessing a very rare event. Brett Merlin, the deadly Magician of corporate law, reaching to pull a rabbit out of his hat only to find his hand grasping the ears of a tiger.

Octavia chuckled again, thoroughly enjoying the moment.

But the chuckle died in her throat the instant she heard the cry behind her. Startled, she swung in the direction of the outburst.

She was just in time to see her grandmother falling face-first into the excavation pit.

Chapter Three

Brett turned with Octavia at the sound of the cry. The second he saw Mab Osborne falling, he moved. He reached the rim of the pit and scrambled down its sides, slipping the last few feet to the soft, muddy bottom where the elderly woman lay. He dropped to his knees, gently lifting Mab’s head out of the mud and resting her on his knee as he pressed his finger to the pulse point in her neck.

But his fingers were caked in the slippery mud and he couldn’t feel her pulse.

“Mrs. Osborne?”

She lay limp and absolutely still in his hands.

A sudden movement beside him drew Brett’s eyes. Octavia dropped next to him. His first reaction was surprise at how fast she must have moved to have gotten here so soon after him.

His second was admiration for her coolheaded composure and farsightedness as she calmly dug into her shoulder bag for a compact mirror and immediately placed it beneath her grandmother’s nose.

“She’s breathing,” Octavia said as the mirror fogged.

Octavia raised her head and voice to address the quiet spectators watching from the rim of the pit. “Someone please get an ambulance.”

“John Winslow has already gone to call 911,” one of the seniors yelled down.

Brett watched Octavia nod solemnly and direct her attention back to her grandmother. She slipped out of her mud-splattered suit coat and draped it over the unconscious woman. She held her grandmother’s shoulders firmly as she spoke in a tone of stern sobriety that caught him completely off-guard.

“Listen to me, Mab Osborne, you wake up. You don’t have time for this nap. You have a radio broadcast to give this afternoon. You know how important your broadcasts are. There are homebound people out there counting on you.”

To Brett’s continuing surprise and amazement, Mab Osborne began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open. Octavia stared down into them and smiled.

“Hi.”

“Octavia,” Mab said. “What was all that about my missing my broadcast?”

“Not to worry. You have plenty of time now. How do you feel?”

Slowly, Mab lifted each arm and each leg in turn. “I think I’m a little bruised is all.”

“Any headache?”

“No, but it’s cold, isn’t it?”

Octavia scooted around in the mud in order to transfer Mab’s head from its resting place on Brett’s knee to a new resting place on hers. She wrapped her jacket more closely around her grandmother’s shoulders.

“We’ll have you out of this excavation pit just as soon as the medics get here,” she promised.

“Why am I in this pit?” Mab asked.

For the first time, Brett heard a small annotation of anxiety underlying the normally mellow mark of Octavia’s voice.

“Mab, don’t you remember falling?”

“I didn’t fall, Octavia. I was pushed. I want to know why.”

“Pushed?” Octavia said as though she must have heard wrong.

“Yes, pushed,” Mab repeated.

“Who pushed you?” Octavia asked.

“Let’s just say I can make a good guess,” Mab replied as she stared up at one particular face looking down at her.

Brett followed the direction of Mab’s eyes. He was decidedly uncomfortable, but not surprised, to find himself looking into his uncle’s sallow, bitter expression as he peered over the edge of the excavation pit.

“I’ll go flag down the medics,” Brett said as he got to his feet and climbed out of the pit.

When Brett reached the rim, he grabbed Scroogen and pulled him along toward the street where the medics would arrive. He waited until he and Scroogen were out of hearing distance of the crowd before he confronted him.

“Did you push her, Dole?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I didn’t push the old bag,” Scroogen’s grating voice said, clearly angry at being asked.

“Where were you when it happened?” Brett asked.

“I was at the car placing that call,” Dole said.

“Who did you speak to at the Community Development Department?”

“The line was busy. I was just about to redial when I got distracted by the commotion at the pit. I hung up the phone and went over to see what was happening.”

“So you don’t have an alibi.”

“An alibi? For what? She topples five feet, face-first, into the mud, and she doesn’t even break anything.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed. That’s the one piece of good news we’ve gotten today. No one would have benefited by her being injured.”

“What do you mean no one would have benefited? I’m no hypocrite. If the old bag had broken a few bones—or even better her neck—that would have been an end to her and her trouble-making. And that would have been a huge benefit to me.”

It rather sickened Brett to see a human being so caught up in himself and the furthering of his own interests that he couldn’t find even a little compassion for the pain and suffering of another. He consoled himself that at least no blood tied him to Scroogen.

“You would do well to refrain from expressing those sentiments to anyone else, Dole.”

“I’m no fool, Merlin. I know who I can talk to.”

“Go on and make that call to Community Development,” Brett told him through a tight jaw. “Let’s just try to get this mess over with as quickly as possible.”

* * *

“MRS. OSBORNE, ARE YOU sure someone pushed you?” Detective Sergeant Paul Patterson of the Bremerton Police asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” Mab answered.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.