"Quit hiding from me, you sneaky piece of junk!"
Sam dug through the stacks of receipts and file folders,
frantic as a starving squirrel looking for its winter
cache of nuts. One heavy binder slid off the chair in
front of her and toppled dead center onto the neat piles
of checks and bank statements spread out on the carpet.
With horror, she watched an hour's worth of sorting
flutter into its former chaos. Muttering a curse beneath
her breath, she listened more carefully. The muffled chirp
of the new cordless phone was coming from behind a tower
of IRS pamphlets piled on the love seat next to the chair.
"It used to be so much easier — just start at the jack and
pull the phone through the rubble," she muttered.
Crawling on hands and knees to the sofa, she tossed aside
manuals with print so fine she couldn't read them with the
magnification of the Hubble telescope. "Might've known it
was the IRS's fault," she said, seizing the phone, which
had been wedged behind a cushion.
Just before the final ring set off her answering machine —
if she'd remembered to reactivate it — Sam
answered, "Ballanger Retrievals," in her most professional
voice. She pushed another stack of manuals onto the floor
to create a narrow empty space where she could sit. The
small sofa was so full of folders, pamphlets and papers
that only the brown leather armrests were visible. Risking
an avalanche that might bury her five-four frame if either
side toppled, she gingerly leaned back, trying to catch
her breath so she would not be huffing like an asthmatic
marathon runner.
"Ms. Samantha Ballanger, please," a male voice with a
clipped upper-class accent said, as if accustomed to
instant acquiescence. She'd heard the type before.
"This is Sam Ballanger." If he expected her to have a
private secretary to screen her calls, he was in for an
unavoidable disappointment. After growing up poor in a big
south Boston blue-collar family, Sam never wasted money on
things she could do herself.
"My name is Upton Winchester IV, Ms. Ballanger. I
understand you find and return runaways...discreetly."
"Who referred my service to you, Mr. Winchester?" She
always wanted to know her clients were legit and not
wasting her time. Lots of wacko husbands who used their
wives and kids for punching bags wanted her to haul the
victims back. No dice. She'd seen too much when she'd
worked as a para-medic and then a police officer after
moving to Miami.
There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the
line. "I was referred by Jayson Page Layton. Jay and I
golf together," he replied, expecting her to be impressed.
She was. Layton was a Bal Harbor real estate tycoon whose
daughter had joined a religious cult and vanished into a
commune in the Everglades a couple of years ago. Sam had
literally wrestled an alligator while rescuing the poor
kid from her nutcase captors, who'd been little more than
child molesters and responsible for at least one dead cult
member. That was Sergeant Will "Pat" Patowski's take on
it. He was her mentor at the Miami-Dade Police Department,
where she had spent seven years as a police officer. The
Kingdom Come "prophet" and his "deacons" were presently
serving ten to life in the state pen at Raiford.
"What seems to be the problem, Mr. Winchester?"
"I'd rather not discuss the matter over the phone, Ms.
Ballanger. Please come to my office at the Seascape
Building, say —" he paused as if consulting his day-
planner " — four this afternoon. Winchester, Grayson &
Kent Accounting is on the fifteenth floor."
She paused, as if consulting her own day-planner, which
was a scratch pad and ballpoint buried somewhere in the
income tax debris smothering her office. "Yeah, that'll
work for me. Oh, my retainer's three hundred for
consultation. If I take the case, I get three-fifty a day
plus expenses," she said, figuring any guy with a Roman
numeral in his name could afford a little extra.
"Very well. I'll expect you at four promptly."
She found herself holding a dead phone. "Jerk," she
muttered. Obviously used to getting his way. But the
address was in the Brickell high-rent district and he
hadn't haggled over the price. She scanned the wreckage of
the room, looking for the yellow pages, then spotted the
volume on her desk next to the empty phone charger. Two
feet of books and other papers were piled on top of it.
"Screw it," she said, getting up to dig for it. As she
scooted out from between the piles of IRS manuals, they
toppled, then slid with a loud series of thumps onto the
mess on the floor.
She managed to extract the phone book without disturbing
the "ordered chaos" on her desk. Sam thumbed through the
accounting section until she reached the Ws, then
whistled. A full-page ad, tastefully done in black and
white — or black and yellow, more properly — proclaimed
Winchester, Grayson & Kent had been in business for over
fifty years. Corporate taxes were their specialty.
"Yeah, I did smell money. Must be a family business. Too
bad I didn't up my fee even higher. Looks like Winchester
could afford a lot more than three and a half bennies a
day," she said regretfully.
Her mother, God rest her Irish Catholic soul, used to
light candles and pray for Sam to abandon her avaricious
ways. Avarice was one of the seven deadly sins, after all.
But stretching a beer driver's income to feed six sons who
ate as if each meal was going to be their last, Mary
Elizabeth Ballanger never had an abundance of time to fret
over her daughter's vices. Sam had elevated what she liked
to think of as "fiscal prudence" to an art form.
Her ruminations about family back home were interrupted by
a loud crash, followed by an oath as the front door
slammed. "Dammit, Sam, I thought we agreed you'd call that
cleaning service while I was gone," her husband yelled
down the hall.
"Welcome home. I missed you, too, darling," she called
back, walking down the hall into the living room of their
condo.
Matt Granger sat like a disgruntled yoga student, rubbing
the toes of his right foot while cursing inventively. "A
man needs steel-toed construction boots to walk in this
sty."
Returning from a weeklong assignment for the Miami Herald,
he'd unlocked the door, juggling his suiter and laptop as
he entered the dark room only to trip on one of an
assortment of free weights Sam had forgotten to pick up.
In a last-ditch save, he'd cradled his computer in both
arms and pitched forward. He landed on an empty pizza
carton.
"Let me guess. Double cheese and pepperoni, right?" He
glowered at the orange stain on the knee of his best
tropical wool worsted slacks. "You take these to the dry
cleaners," he said, knowing it would provoke her, but not
caring at the moment.
"No way. I have some cleaning solution here that will take
that out in a jiff."
"Way. You're not touching my Natazzi slacks with some junk
you bought in the discount store."
"Well, since they're Italian, they go with pizza," she
said, stooping to pick up the carton and toss it in the
general direction of an overflowing wastebasket. "You
know, we could afford professional dry cleaning if you let
me —"
"Let's not go there, Sam," he said, interrupting before
she could restart the old argument. Why had he given her
the opening? On the subject of money, his wife was as
tenacious as a Boston bull terrier with teeth sunk into a
letter carrier's leg. "I have a ton of work to do. Kiss
and make up?" he suggested hopefully as he climbed to his
feet.
She gave him a grudging peck that ripened into a long,
languorous welcome. When they finally broke apart, she
said, "I've been too busy working on income taxes to think
of the mess. It is April, and besides, I have a business
to run, too."
He looked around his once neat-as-a-pin bachelor pad. When
had the hurricane hit? Everything from fast-food packaging
to dirty laundry littered the room. He could only imagine
what the kitchen looked like. No, on second thought, he
didn't even want to imagine it. "You promised to get a
maid."
"Do you know what they want an hour just to straighten up
a little? I'll get around to it." She gestured vaguely.
"No, you won't. Like you said, you have a business to run
and so do I. We're both gainfully employed, Sam."
"We don't make enough to afford a cleaning service...but
we could if —"
"Don't start with Aunt Claudia again," he warned. "We can
afford a damn maid — if any of them are brave enough to
set foot in this landfill. And we don't need the
Witherspoon millions to live quite comfortably."
Sam threw up her hands, cocking her head so she could look
up at Matt. At six-six, he towered over her, but she never
backed down. "You are nuts, you know that? First, after
graduating from Yale, you turn your back on a trust fund
Paris Hilton wouldn't sniff at." She ticked off number one
on her finger, then moved to number two. "Whaddya do
instead of living the high life in Boston? You enlist in
the army!" Finger number three. "Now you bust your ass
working the news beat at the Herald when we could have the
deal of the century.
"Your aunt — your very, very wealthy aunt — has forgiven
you for being nuts. Or maybe she's forgiven you because
she knows I'm not nuts. She offered me — out of the
goodness of her heart — a monthly stipend to stay married
to you."
"Stipend," Matt snorted. "Try bribe!"
"Try allowance for the fodder and stabling of my jackass
husband!"
Matt looked down into his wife's stubborn little
face. "You know, you mercenary little runt, if I weren't
kinda fond of you, I'd drop you off one of the causeways
into the bay." There were days that it didn't seem like a
half-bad idea. This was shaping up to be one of them.
"And if I weren't afraid of getting a hernia, I'd do the
same to you, you Godzilla-sized jerk...wait a sec, if you
were fish bait, I betAunt Claudia would settle a widow's
jointure on me."
Matt couldn't help it. He burst out laughing in spite of
the aggravation. "You've been reading those historical
romances again. A jointure is something out of the last
century."
"Yeah?" Sam poked her husband in the chest with a stiff
finger. "Aunt Claudia is out of the last century. Hell,
she's probably out of the nineteenth century!"
Matt grunted, rubbing his sore chest. "Don't bother me.
I'm thinking." Sam shushed him before he could
interrupt. "With that money I could hire a maid..."
"And have our taxes done," Matt added.
"That maid would give me time to work on my own damn
taxes. You know it's April and the vultures are circling."
"We should hire an accountant. You don't have to battle
the IRS like the Lone Ranger —"
"Accountant! Damn, I'll be late. Gotta scoot, sweetie,"
she said, stretching up on tiptoe to plant another fulsome
kiss on his mouth before she dashed down the hall.
As he watched her sleek little derriere disappear into
their bedroom, Matt shook his head at her mercurial mood
swing. He could never stay mad at her even when she drove
him crazy. Their argument was over...but only for the
moment. Matt knew she'd renew it. But he was damned if he
wanted his eccentric millionaire aunt paying his wife to
stay married to him!
Sam simply didn't understand how hard he'd struggled to
break free of the smothering boardroom mentality of his
rich family. Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth
choked some kids. The Grangers and Witherspoons were a
stuffy bunch of humorless old farts who only mingled
with "the better sort." In other words, other Boston
Brahmins. His great-aunt Claudia ought to know. She'd run
away to Europe to escape. But since he was the last of the
Granger men, she now felt it her duty to see that he
fulfilled the very obligations she'd fled.
"Out of the goodness of her heart!" he parroted, kicking
the offending pizza carton that had tumbled from the waste-
basket. His aunt Claudia didn't have a heart — a spleen,
sure, but a heart? Ha! If he gave in to her manipulations,
she'd have him back in Boston, in charge of the family
brokerage firm, attending high teas and charity auctions!
He was an adrenaline junkie, addicted to the thrill of
chasing after a hot story. He had acquired friends in low
places and liked it that way.
"I'll never go back to that gilded cage — not even for
Sammie. Damn, one week trying to be a society matron and
she'd go crazy herself!" But he'd never been able to
convince her that luring them back to Boston was Aunt
Claudia's ultimate goal. His aunt and his wife had bonded
the first time they met. Small wonder. Claudia had made
Sam an offer a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks
couldn't refuse — a ton of money.
In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, they
were sisters under the skin — ruthless schemers. He loved
them both to distraction, but that was all the more reason
to keep them separated. Claudia a thousand miles away was
a good thing. The very thought of the two of them united
and working together made him shudder.
Abandoning the ongoing argument that was giving him an
ulcer, he trailed her into the walk-in closet where she
was hastily stripping off a pair of shorts and a T-
shirt. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you're taking
our records to a tax accountant," he said, but could see
she was too rushed to hear him.
Sam hated panty hose for a number of reasons besides the
humid South Florida heat that fused them to her legs, but
she grabbed a pair from an overflowing drawer. Shoving her
way past Matt, she lay back on the bed and yanked them up
her legs in one quick motion. "Gotta look like class to
impress a guy with a 'fourth' tacked on the end of his
name, after all," she muttered to herself.