LITMIR.BIZ

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squinted as he regarded his son. “You’re talking about the fire, the hacking and the sabotaging of the real estate dealings?” he wanted to know.

      “Yes,” Connor replied stoically.

      “One person is behind all this?” Zach asked, wanting to get his facts clear.

      Relieved to hear a nonjudgmental voice, Connor glanced at Maddie’s husband. “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking.”

      “That must be one very energetic person,” Kenneth commented. The sarcasm was hard to miss.

      “People can be hired to carry out these things. But I believe there’s one person orchestrating all these things being executed against the family,” Connor told them.

      As he looked around at their faces, Connor could see that his mother and sisters, as well as Zach, were more than willing to be convinced. His father, however, was still digging in his heels. Whether it was because the man didn’t agree with the theory or because he was angry over the fact that Connor had suddenly switched careers, Connor didn’t know.

      He waited for his father to say something. He didn’t have long to wait.

      “And just who is this vengeful person targeting the family?” Kenneth wanted to know. “Do you know, or is this all just one big theory you’re hoping to get us to buy into?”

      Connor kept his eyes on his father as he answered. “I found evidence of rumormongering.”

      “You’re going to have to explain that to me,” his mother said. “What does rumormongering mean?”

      Kenneth began to open his mouth, undoubtedly to define the term for his wife, but Connor was already explaining it to his mother in what he felt would be simpler terms than his father was wont to use.

      “Someone has been bad-mouthing Fortunado Real Estate’s dealings on the internet, Mother, causing business to drop. Because of the so-called rumors, people have withdrawn their business from the company and taken it elsewhere.”

      “And does this ‘someone’ have a name?” Kenneth asked again, his impatient tone suggesting that he sincerely doubted his son had gotten that far in his so-called “investigation.”

      Connor managed to surprise his father, as well as his mother, by answering, “Yes.”

      “Well?” Kenneth asked, waiting to hear who this person was.

      “From everything I’ve managed to learn, I believe the person who’s causing all this chaos is Charlotte Prendergast Robinson.”

      “Gerald’s wife?” Barbara cried, astonished at the revelation.

      “Uncle Gerald’s ex-wife,” Connor corrected his mother. It was being Gerald’s ex that had caused the woman to launch her vendetta in the first place, he believed.

      Kenneth looked at his son skeptically, although in all truthfulness, the woman’s name had been mentioned in connection to all these acts once or twice before.

      “I know that Charlotte’s angry,” his father began, rolling the idea over in his mind.

      “She’s way more than that, Dad,” Valene interjected. “You know that line about a woman scorned,” she reminded her father.

      “Val’s right,” Maddie said, adding her voice to her sister’s as well as Connor’s. “Aunt Charlotte wasn’t exactly a hundred percent stable before Uncle Gerald finally left her to go back with that woman he called his first love, Deborah. Think about it,” Maddie stressed. “I mean, who in their right mind puts together a whole big binder devoted to her husband’s illegitimate children?” She shook her head at the very thought.

      “Maybe the woman just wanted to have a book devoted to her family’s genealogy,” Barbara said. Connor knew his mother was always ready to see the good in everyone.

      “More like having a book she could use to blackmail everyone,” Maddie said. “Besides, I doubt she thinks of the people in that binder as ‘her’ family. It’s more like his family—not that Uncle Gerald even knew some of them existed until Charlotte got started collecting names.”

      “I wouldn’t put anything past Aunt Charlotte,” Connor told the others.

      “I think it was finding out that Deborah was the mother of his triplets that did it,” Maddie suggested. “It was the last straw, the thing that finally unhinged Charlotte.”

      “Why would that do it any more than knowing about the other illegitimate ones?” Kenneth asked. He frowned. It was obvious that he didn’t like or welcome the fact that he was actually related to Gerald. “That man spread his seed more than anyone ever cited in the Bible,” he said with disgust.

      “Kenneth,” Barbara chided, obviously surprised at her husband saying something like that.

      “Well, it’s true,” Kenneth told his wife. “He didn’t care who he impregnated. The man should have been neutered.”

      “Are you sure we’re actually related to Gerald Robinson?” Maddie asked. “Maybe there was some mistake made.”

      Connor sympathized with his sister’s desire to sever ties, but it wasn’t that simple. “Dad and Gerald are both Grandpa Julius’s sons,” he pointed out.

      “We’re half brothers,” Kenneth corrected tersely. “For what that’s worth.”

      “That was when Gerald was still known as Jerome Fortune, before he decided to run off and assume another complete identity,” Barbara explained to her children, no doubt to keep things straight in case the fact had gotten lost among the preponderance of offspring who had been discovered.

      Maddie squinted as if she was trying to reconcile a few facts with ones that already existed. “Wait, my head hurts,” she said as she dramatically put her hand to her forehead.

      Valene laughed at her sister’s theatrics as she shook her own head. “One thing I have to say about this family. We are definitely not boring.”

      “No, Gerald and his extended family aren’t boring,” Kenneth corrected with feeling. “We are just an average, run-of-the-mill family with some decent monetary holdings,” he insisted. “Or we were,” he said as he looked in Connor’s direction, “until one of my sons decided to completely turn his life inside out and become a—” his eyes met Connor’s “—PI,” Kenneth concluded.

      Connor wanted to put this behind them once and for all. His father had to understand that his new career would only help the family in the long run, not embarrass it. “Dad, you’re getting off track here,” Connor respectfully pointed out.

      “And your ‘track’ is that this was all done by Charlotte as her way of getting even, is that it?” Kenneth asked.

      “Yes,” Connor answered simply.

      “But why would she do all this?” Kenneth asked. “Wouldn’t her vengeance be focused directly on Gerald, not the rest of the family?” He rethought his words. “Or better yet, on Deborah? After all, in Charlotte’s warped mind wouldn’t she think Deborah is responsible for stealing her husband away from her?” Kenneth insisted.

      There was no simple, hard-and-fast answer to that. “I think we can all agree that Aunt Charlotte is a complicated person. I wouldn’t begin to try to analyze exactly what’s on her mind. I would be lost in that maze for days,” Connor predicted.

      “And yet you think she’s the one behind this?” Barbara asked her son.

      The two were not mutually exclusive. “Yes, I do,” Connor answered.

      “She might be a cold, vengeful person, but she is still family, Connor. I really don’t think she’d go to such great lengths to get back at Gerald or Jerome or whatever he wants to call himself,” Barbara argued.

      “Well, Mother, I’m not as kindhearted as you. And according

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