LITMIR.BIZ

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morning,” she told Olivia. “Can I finish looking over the notes on the case right afterward and let you know what I decide?”

      “This afternoon?” Olivia’s eyes widened in alarm as she tracked Elise’s progress out of the room. “Joel was frantic when he called this morning, Elise. I don’t know if putting this off until this afternoon is such a good idea.” Her wispy hair rode the wind as she swiveled in her chair. “He mentioned something about her having behavioral problems. Something could happen to her by then, if it hasn’t already.”

      Elise thought about the possibility for a moment. “I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing down the hallway.

      “Okay, but if your videoconference isn’t until this afternoon, where are you going now? It’s still morning,” Olivia called after her.

      “I have a teleconference in ten minutes, and I can’t miss it. My last case isn’t going to close itself,” Elise called back. “When the phone rings, it’ll probably be for me, so I’ll pick up the extension in the study.”

      Hoping that she had escaped having to make a decision on the Barclay case, if only for a little while, Elise closed the study door at her back and took a seat at the conference table across the room. She was almost done setting up her temporary base of operations when Olivia opened the door and stuck her head inside the room. Elise couldn’t say that she was all that surprised.

      “I have an idea. Why don’t I have Harriet call Joel and set up a meeting with him for this afternoon?” she said, referring to the gray-haired dynamo who was their administrative assistant. “Just in case,” she added when Elise’s amber gaze rose from the computer screen to meet hers and narrowed in warning.

      “You’re not going to let up until I agree to take this case, are you?”

      “Why do you ask questions that you already know the answers to?”

      “All right,” she said, nodding reluctantly. “All right. Have Harriet schedule an early-evening meeting. I should be done with everything by then, so I’ll go to him instead of having him come here. I need some fresh air, anyway. But I’m telling you, after this case, I’m officially on vacation.”

      She looked away from Olivia’s smiling face when the phone rang. Pushing a button to accept the call, she didn’t see the victory fist pump that Olivia executed before the door closed softly in her wake.

      * * *

      Working from home did have its advantages, Elise mused as she stepped into the shower and quickly soaped herself from head to toe. It certainly made transitioning from one task to the next on her to-do list a lot easier. Ironically enough, that was precisely the argument that Olivia had used three years ago when the question of where they would set up Carrington Consulting’s business offices had come up. Elise was in favor of leasing office space in downtown St. Louis, so they could at least try to keep their private investigations business and their personal lives separate, but Olivia’s arguments to the contrary had eventually worn her down. There was more than enough room in the house for both business and pleasure to coexist, she’d pointed out, and they could save money on overhead expenses. Put that way, Elise could hardly refuse. Olivia was right on both counts, though Elise would cut out her tongue before she’d admit it.

      Her parents had built the house five years ago, after her father decided to give up his thriving Clayton law practice and retire early, and, for a while, decorating it had kept both Lance and Yolanda Carrington busy. It was a showplace, something tangible that they could both appreciate and enjoy after years of hard work. It wasn’t until after it was finally completed and each room had been meticulously appointed that her parents had suddenly decided that they didn’t want to live there, after all. Almost thirty years of living in the States was long enough, her father had said. He was homesick for London, where he’d been born and raised. Leaving the house to their daughters, they had updated their passports, packed up their personal belongings and left the country seemingly in the blink of an eye, a decision that hadn’t surprised Olivia at all but that had finally confirmed for Elise the origin of Olivia’s flighty tendencies.

      True to form, Olivia hadn’t wasted any time ditching her South County condo and moving in, but Elise hadn’t been quite so eager to let go of her Clayton town house. Her sister had already been living in the house a full six months before she sublet her town house and joined her.

      After showering and moisturizing, she paired a cream-colored cashmere sweater dress with a wide chocolate-brown belt and matching suede boots. The steam from the shower had completely wrung the life out of her hair, so she brushed it until it was smooth and caught her wild, curly locks at the crown of her head with a jeweled clip. As a finishing touch, she added mascara and gold-tinted lip gloss before tossing her cell phone and iPad in her red Kate Spade tote and slipping her favorite Chanel sunglasses over her eyes.

      Downstairs in the foyer, she grabbed a red vintage leather coat from the coat closet and then swiped her car keys from the entry table on her way out the door. With just about forty-five minutes to spare, she could just barely make it to Joel Barclay’s Waterloo, Illinois, estate on time.

       Chapter 2

      Half an hour later, Elise’s Jaguar was stuck in rush-hour traffic on Interstate 40, sandwiched between an ancient bright green Beetle that had obscene bumper stickers plastered all over it, and a snarling black Hummer with tinted windows and aggressive tendencies. Every few minutes, the Beetle crept forward a couple of feet, putting her that much closer to the exit she wanted, which, thankfully, was only about a half mile up ahead. Thanks to the pushy Hummer that had been riding her rear bumper nonstop for the last twenty minutes, a half mile seemed more like a million. The thing practically growled every time she hit the brakes and forced it to stop on a dime barely an inch from her bumper, as if her car and her car alone was responsible for the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

      Jerk. She eyed the idling bully in her rearview mirror steadily. The windows weren’t just tinted, they were also reflective, making it completely impossible to see who, or, in this case, what was inside, behind the wheel. But she didn’t need to actually see the face of evil to know that it existed, did she? He—and she was convinced that it was a he—was probably one of those corporate types, with a string of vengeful ex-wives, dangerously high blood pressure and out-of-control anger issues. He probably laughed maniacally every time that his rolling bully narrowly avoided tagging her bumper because driving like a maniac and terrorizing everyone else on the road made him feel powerful.

      Elise docked her iPod into the dashboard, scrolled through her music and selected her Marsha Ambrosius playlist. Turning up the volume a couple of notches, she sat back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the rhythm. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been nervous about anything.

      Before Carrington Consulting, she’d been a police officer for two years and then a US marshal for seven, and, by now, there was very little about criminal behavior that surprised her. She’d dealt with bullies every day on the job, and most of them were men who were on the same side of the badge that she’d been on. Compared to that particular brand of chaos, this maniac and his souped-up Hummer were child’s play. Still, his theatrics were starting to get on her nerves, especially since she was in just as much of a hurry to get where she was going as he apparently was.

      I’m stuck in traffic, she texted Harriet. Please contact the Barclays and advise them that I’m going to be—

      A car horn blared behind her, calling her attention to the fact that the Beetle had moved forward in front of her just about a fraction of an inch. She rolled her eyes at the culprit in her rearview mirror, then slowly caught up to the Beetle, with the Hummer riding her rear bumper the entire time. Its tires squealed when it suddenly stopped behind her and she sighed long and hard.

      —a little late, she finished texting. She was this close to her exit. Another fifty yards, give or take, and she could ditch the Hummer from hell for good. Waiting for the moment that she could escape was like watching paint dry.

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