“I see.”
“We respect our clients’ right to determine how, when, and where to use their talents. We do not attempt to impose someone else’s standards on what is essentially a private decision. Do I make myself clear, Lucas?”
“Very clear. Now you can leave. I have a lot of untalented work to do today.”
A small furrow appeared in Gifford’s forehead. “Perhaps you don’t understand just what I’m offering. Surely you want the freedom to use your own personal talent in any way you see fit without worrying about the restrictions of some prissy little ex-academic who thinks she has the right to determine ethical guidelines for you.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Osterley. Lately I’ve begun to discover that virtue has its own rewards.”
“Lucas, it’s Amaryllis.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair and grinned into the phone. “Strangely enough, I recognized your voice.”
“Oh. Well, I’ve got some interesting news. Irene Dunley also went through those boxes containing Professor Landreth’s things.”
Lucas stopped grinning. “Landreth’s secretary searched them?”
“Right. She also admitted that she’s the one who sent me to Vivien.”
“Five hells.”
“Apparently she’s been suspicious of the way Landreth died ever since the accident happened. But she didn’t know what to do. Anyhow, when I showed up at the department and started asking questions about a case of unethical focusing, she got the idea of involving me in the questions surrounding the professor’s death.”
“Amaryllis, there aren’t any questions.”
“Then she decided to search those boxes in her office.”
“Why?” Lucas demanded.
“She was looking for Landreth’s special hot file.”
“Hot file?”
“Yes. It was his habit to keep one, and she distinctly recalls packing it after he died. But get this. The file was missing, Lucas.”
He did not like the excitement he heard in her voice. “Amaryllis—”
“Don’t you think that the missing file is a strong indication that Professor Landreth might have been murdered because of something in that file?”
“No.”
She ignored that in a headlong leap to her conclusions. “Maybe someone pushed him off that cliff and then searched his files to remove the evidence that could have linked the killer to his victim.”
“Why would this so-called killer bother to search the boxes? The police considered Landreth’s death an accident right from the start.”
“Yes, but the killer may have wanted to play it safe. Maybe he took the file just to be certain that no one ever found it. It all makes sense.”
Lucas groaned. “No, it doesn’t. Amaryllis, think about it. You only have Irene Dunley’s word that the file is missing. It could simply have been misplaced. From what you’ve told me, she was very upset by Landreth’s death. She may not have been thinking clearly when she packed up his things.”
There was a short pause while Amaryllis digested that. “She did say she was crying so hard that day that she didn’t even notice Gifford’s name on Landreth’s desk calendar. I suppose she might not have a clear memory of where she put the hot file. But, Lucas—”
“Let’s talk about it later.” Lucas glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a few things to finish here. It’s Friday and I feel like leaving the office early. I can pick you up around six. How does that sound?”
“Impossible, I’m afraid. My aunt and uncle are in town. Don’t you remember? I told you that I’d be cooking dinner for them at my place tonight.”
“I see.” Lucas reminded himself that he had no reason to expect an invitation to a family dinner. He didn’t even want one. After all, he wasn’t a real matrimonial candidate, just Amaryllis’s lover. Here in the city no one took much notice of an affair, but things were different in the country. A small-town farmer and his wife were hardly likely to approve of Lucas’s relationship with their precious niece. Amaryllis would be well aware of that. She wouldn’t want Lucas there, either. She was very keen on not embarrassing her family.
“Would you like to join us?” Amaryllis asked.
“What time?”
“Six?”
“I’ll be there.”
No doubt the evening was going to be a big mistake, Lucas thought as he hung up the phone. But he didn’t really have much to lose. After all, the entire relationship was a mistake.
Chapter
12
“So, Lucas, I understand you’re in the jelly-ice business,” Oscar Lark said as he polished off his straw-peach pie.
“Yes, sir.” Lucas eyed the last slice of straw-peach pie, which was sitting on a plate in the center of the table. He wondered if it would be rude to ask for it.
He glanced around surreptitiously. Everyone else seemed to be finished with dessert. No one appeared to be about to make a move on the one remaining slice of pie. It was practically staring Lucas in the face. It had been years since he’d had home-cooked straw-peach pie, and he could not recall ever having had any that tasted as good as this one had.
Amaryllis’s aunt, the small-town doctor, smiled at him from across the table. Hannah Lark was an attractive, petite, irrepressibly cheerful woman with bird-bright blue eyes and a short bob of graying red-blond hair. There was an air of great competence about her in spite of her size. There was also an aura of power. Without even bothering to employ his own talent, Lucas could sense the invisible hum of Hannah’s strong diagnostic talent. It simmered away inside her, a palpable force even without the aid of a prism’s focus. There was also something about her that made him fret about his manners.
Oscar Lark sat at the opposite end of the small table. He was as big as Lucas, a rock-hard agtalent whose years in the fields showed in the toughened planes of his face and in his large, calloused hands. It had taken Lucas only a moment to figure out why he looked vaguely familiar. Oscar could have stepped right out of a portrait of First Generation founders.
“How long have you been in jelly-ice?” Oscar probed.
“All of my life, Mr. Lark.” Maybe he could get the slice of straw-peach pie later, Lucas thought. After everyone had left. Unless someone else ate it first.
“I told you that Lucas was with Lodestar Exploration, dear,” Hannah said. “You’ve heard of Lodestar.”
“Lodestar, eh?” Oscar gave Lucas a shrewd glance. “Big company. What do you do with the firm?”
“I own it, sir.”
“Is that a fact?” Oscar looked skeptical. “Rather young to own a company that size. Are you sure it isn’t your father who owns the firm?”
Lucas took his eyes off the pie to meet Oscar’s gaze. “My parents were both killed when I was three. I built Lodestar from the ground up. The company is mine.”
Oscar blinked owlishly. “I see.” He cleared his throat. “What about the rest of your family? Are they all employed at Lodestar?”
A tense silence gripped the table.
“There are no other members of my family,” Lucas said bluntly. “Or, at least no one close enough to count.”
“No family?”
“No, sir.” Lucas made up his mind. The lack of a proper family was no doubt the last nail in his coffin. He had nothing else to lose. He reached out and seized the pie pan. “But I intend to change that soon.” He shoveled the last slice of straw-peach pie onto his plate.
“Lucas is registered at a marriage agency, Uncle Oscar.” Amaryllis rose abruptly and started to clear the table. “He expects to go in for the final interview soon.”
Oscar narrowed his eyes. “Same as you, eh, Amaryllis?”
“That’s right.” Amaryllis carried a stack of plates into the kitchen.
“Registration with a good agency is the only way to go,” Oscar said. “A decision as important as marriage should never be made without proper guidance. Runaway marriages always end in disaster.”
Lucas fell to the
pie. He told himself it might be a long time, if ever, before he got a chance at another slice of homemade straw-peach pie.
“Anyone for coff-tea?” Amaryllis asked from behind the counter.
Hannah got to her feet. “I’ll fix it, dear.” She gave Oscar a meaningful look. “Why don’t you two men go into the living room? Amaryllis and I will take care of these dishes.”
“Whatever you say, dear.” Oscar gave Lucas a stony stare. “You finished, Lucas?”
Lucas wolfed down the last bite and met Oscar’s grim gaze. “Probably, but what the hell.”
There was no avoiding the inevitable, so he got to his feet and followed Oscar into Amaryllis’s tiny living room. His instincts warned him that the grilling was not yet over. He had a feeling the worst was yet to come.
Things hadn’t been too bad until now. Hannah’s graciousness had offset Oscar’s ill-concealed scrutiny of his niece’s new “friend.” Lucas thought he had handled himself quite well in the circumstances. Everyone had been polite. The conversation had not flagged during the mouthwatering meal. He had even indulged himself in a harmless little fantasy in which he and Amaryllis were married and entertaining relatives for the evening.
But the illusion Lucas had woven for himself was about to be smashed to pieces. He could not blame Oscar Lark. If he were in the older man’s boots, he would do the same thing. It was Oscar’s duty to protect Amaryllis.
Oscar lowered himself into a fragile-looking chair near the miniature jelly-ice fire that blazed on the hearth. “Well, now. So, you’re both registered with an agency.”
“Yes, sir.” Lucas sat down in the small chair on the other side of the fire.
“My niece tells me you’re a strong talent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“She’s a full-spectrum prism.”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Lark.”
“Not much chance of a match between the two of you.”
“No, sir.”
Oscar gazed into the flames. “A man and a woman can get some strange notions when they first register with an agency. The business of getting serious about marriage makes some people a little skittish.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They start to wonder if the agency will really be able to find someone who’s right. Someone they’ll want to spend the rest of their lives with.”
“It does make you think.”
Oscar peered at him. “Some people even tell themselves that they can make better decisions than an agency counselor can.”
Lucas said nothing.
“Other people figure they better have a few flings before they settle down,” Oscar said. “Everyone knows that here in the city folks are more inclined to fool around both before and after marriage.”
Lucas didn’t see any smart response to that heavily loaded remark, so he maintained his silence.
“I don’t want to see Amaryllis hurt, Trent.”
Lucas met Oscar’s determined eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“Nor will I allow her to ruin her life the way her mother did. You know about that?”
“Amaryllis told me the story.”
“Amaryllis’s mother, Eugenia, was my sister.” Oscar turned his attention back to the fire. “That sonofabitch who persuaded her to run off with him was from the richest family in Lower Bellevue. The Baileys. I suppose Amaryllis told you that he was married.”
“Yes.”
“It was one of those family-arranged marriages. No counseling, unfortunately. It was no secret that Elizabeth Bailey was more concerned with property and social standing than she was with her son’s happiness. Young Matt didn’t know how to stand up to her. He was only twenty-one when she bullied him into the marriage. Much too young.”
“Yes.”
“Still, that’s no excuse for what happened. Matt was married and that was the bottom line. We don’t approve of affairs in Lower Bellevue, but we all know they happen on occasion. It’s sort of understood that married folk who fool around are supposed to do it with other married folk, and they’re supposed to be discreet. Young Bailey broke all the rules when he involved Eugenia in an affair.”
Lucas nodded in solemn understanding.
Oscar shook his head. “I don’t know what Eugenia and Matt Bailey told themselves to justify the pain and humiliation they caused their families, but I will always put the bulk of the blame on Bailey. My sister was just a girl. Barely eighteen years old. She hadn’t had her birth control shots because there had been a recent scare about the quality of the vaccine.”
“I see.”
“Bailey’s vaccination had been temporarily neutralized because he and his wife were attempting to have a child of their own.”
“So neither one of them was protected.”
Oscar’s hand curled into a meaty fist. “I wanted to murder Bailey when I found out what he had done to my sister. We all did. But there wasn’t a damn thing we could do. And then they were both lost at sea. Poor little Amaryllis was left to bear the burden of being a bastard. A heavy load to carry, especially in a small town.”
It didn’t take a prism’s intuition to sense the fires of old anguish and rage that still burned within Oscar. His guilt at having failed to protect his sister only made the volatile mix especially dangerous.
“I understand,” Lucas said quietly.
Oscar turned his head once more to fix Lucas with piercing eyes. “Amaryllis is not eighteen. She’s a mature adult. If she wants to have a romantic fling before she gets married, that’s her choice. My wife assures me that her birth control shots are current, and I assume yours are, too.”
“Yeah.”
Oscar nodded brusquely. “Good. Because I warn you, Trent, I won’t stand by and see Amaryllis put into the same situation her mother was. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want Amaryllis to have a decent chance at happiness. We both know that means a proper agency marriage. It’s the only way to provide some guarantee of contentment between two people. Short-term passion, no matter how powerful, is never a good substitute for long-term compatibility.”
“No, sir.” Lucas decided it would not be wise to assure Oscar that he had already learned his lesson about runaway marriages the hard way. Things were awkward enough as it was.
“Amaryllis is a fine young woman. Her aunt and I and the rest of the family saw to it that she was raised with a good, solid sense of responsibility.”
Lucas morosely considered all the pithy little lectures he had heard Amaryllis give on the subject of family honor and responsibility. “I’m aware of her feelings on the subject.”
“My wife worried for a time that we did our job a little too well. She was afraid that Amaryllis was a bit too prim and proper. Too rigid.” Oscar shot Lucas a speculative glance and then cleared his throat again. “If you know what I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now you’ve come along. I can’t say I approve of you having an affair with her, but the most important thing is that she doesn’t get pregnant out of wedlock the way her mother did. I will not stand by and see my niece ruined and left with an illegitimate child to raise. Do you hear me, Trent?”
“Yes, sir.”
Oscar gripped the arms of his chair. He leaned forward, his expression as grimly determined as that of any stalwart founder. “Then you best make damn sure Amaryllis doesn’t get pregnant because if she does, I’ll haul you into court so fast, you’ll never know what hit you.”
Lucas raised his brows but said nothing.
“I don’t care who you are or how much money you have, Trent. Keep your shots current. If you get my niece in trouble, I’ll follow you all the way to the Western Islands, if necessary. And we both know I’ll win in the courts. You won’t be able to hide behind a wife. You’ll be forced to marry my niece.”
“I know that, sir.” Lucas met Oscar’s stony gaze. “I give you my word of honor that I won’t disgrace Amaryllis or her family.”
Oscar conti
nued to eye him closely for another moment, and then he visibly relaxed. “That’s all right, then. You may not have a family of your own, but I have a feeling you know what family means.”
“I know exactly what family means.”
Lucas wondered if the extra slice of straw-peach pie had been laced with a little straw-peach brandy. He was feeling light-headed. Forced to marry Amaryllis. For some reason Oscar’s threat did not send any chills of dread down his spine.
In the next instant, however, the knowledge that the notion of a nonagency marriage would horrify Amaryllis rendered him stone-cold sober.
“Elizabeth Bailey came to the office two days ago.” Hannah dried a glass and set it in a cupboard. “First time she’s been to see me since Matt and Eugenia died. She always drives into the city for her medical care.”
Amaryllis scrubbed industriously on a pot. “Was she ill?”
“No. She wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?”
Hannah reached for another wet glass. “She told me that she wants to see you.”
Amaryllis looked up quickly. “Why?”
“I don’t know. She just said that she needed to speak to you.”
“What do you think she wants?”
Hannah smiled sadly. “I expect she’s feeling the weight of the years. Something tells me she’s begun to realize just how much she lost when she refused to acknowledge you.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.” Amaryllis hoisted the clean pot out of the sink and set it on the drain board. “Elizabeth Bailey doesn’t care about me. She’s got plenty of legitimate grandchildren. Matt Bailey was not an only child. His brothers and sisters have married.”
“But Matt was her eldest son.”
“So?”
Hannah paused in her drying. “Aunt Sophy says that Elizabeth probably feels guilty because she pushed Matt into an early marriage with the wrong woman.”
“I doubt that Elizabeth Bailey knows the meaning of guilt. The only reason she might want to see me is to tell me how my mother ruined her son’s life and got him killed. I can do without that kind of scene.”