Annie’s face turned pink. She was so flustered she forgot to talk.
“And to think we did all of this without a plan,” Nikki said. “You know what I mean—without a diagram, a road map, a list, the kind of thing Charles always sent us away with.”
At the mention of Charles, the group grew solemn again.
Annie finally found her tongue. “We should have heard something by now. But since we haven’t, we have to make some decisions. I want to take a vote now. Winter is coming, so we have to decide if we plan on staying here on the mountain or if we should ask Avery Snowden to relocate us. It would appear that Charles will not be returning. Should we continue as if we know what we’re doing and at some point hope we attain Charles’s exalted position? Or should we pack it in?”
The other Sisters looked at one another. Without a moment’s hesitation every hand shot in the air including Annie’s.
“I’m voting for Myra in absentia,” she said.
“Seven to zip,” Nikki said gleefully. “Come on, girls, Charles is just a guy. We’re women! There’s nothing we can’t do if we work together. We have a hell of a team here. Even the FBI says so. So does the Post. And let’s not forget the TV news.”
Murphy and Grady growled deep in their throats, the fur on the back of their necks standing on end as they raced to the door, the Sisters right behind them.
Off in the distance they could hear the sound of an engine and see a speck in the sky.
“Maybe it’s Myra!” Annie cried, as she and the others raced over to the helicopter pad.
Holding hands, the women waited. They could barely hear the dogs’ barks with the earsplitting sound of the helicopter as it prepared to land. A man jumped out, then reached up to pick up Myra and settle her on the ground. There was no sign of Charles, but they already knew he wouldn’t be with Myra.
Bending her head to clear the wings, Myra ran as fast as she could to the waiting women, who were all laughing and crying at the same time. The two dogs vied for attention. Myra bent over, then sat down in a pile of colorful leaves as she tickled and crooned to both animals.
Once her Sisters realized she wanted to stay where she was for the moment, they all sat down, everyone talking at once.
“Is Charles all right?”
“Is Charles coming back?”
“Do you know anything about the generator?”
“Why didn’t you stay for the funeral?”
Myra stopped tickling the dogs long enough to hold up her hands. “One at a time, girls. Charles is…I guess ‘okay’ is the right word. It would seem at first blush—no, that’s not true. According to Geoffrey’s wife, Charles’s son was a cad, and I believe Charles is having a hard time accepting that fact. And Geoffrey wanted nothing to do with Charles when he found out who his father was, and from what I was able to gather, Geoffrey has known for a long time about Charles. Charles’s people do…What they do…is…Let’s just say they make our people look incompetent. They wouldn’t even let his wife into her husband’s room. Then they whisked her away. More than likely to shut her up so she didn’t talk to the press about the hero that wasn’t such a hero after all. There were other women involved. It’s rather sordid, so let’s not talk about that anymore.
“I don’t know if Charles will be returning or not. I would hope that he will try to make some overtures to his daughter-in-law if she allows it, which I don’t think she will. She has three children and is worried about how to take care of them. I want to believe Charles will step up to the plate.
“As to why I didn’t stay for the funeral. Charles and his people did not want me there. As I said, they do things differently. And before you can ask, I’m fine. I couldn’t wait to get here. What’s for dinner?”
The dogs bounded up and raced for the house at the sound of their favorite word.
“Meat loaf,” they chorused as one.
“Well, meat loaf is better than scones and that…that pissy tea I had to drink over there. Now, it’s your turn, tell me everything that happened, and tell me everything I missed out on. Don’t leave a thing out.”
“Myra, we’ll tell you over dinner. Right now, you can’t handle hearing what we went through.”
Myra huffed and puffed, and said, “Wherever did you get the idea I am some kind of delicate flower, Annie? If you handled it, I could have handled it.”
“If you say so, Myra. We lost half our hair and most of the skin off our faces when we flew in those crop dusters. We had to puke in bags. Going and coming, Myra.”
Myra fingered her pearls. “Well, I would have given it a fair shot, Annie. I don’t want to think I would have embarrassed myself or the rest of you.”
Annie threw her arms around Myra. “Welcome home, Myra.”
“When it comes right down to it, Annie, it’s the only place to be. And, believe it or not, I do know about the generators.”
“Myra, I cast your vote to continue without Charles at the helm. I hope that was all right and the way you would have voted.”
“Charles who?” Myra asked as she and Annie walked together toward the main building. “We’ll all be fine, Annie. I know it. I feel it in here,” she said, thumping her breast. “Barbara talked to me on the ride to the airport,” she whispered. “She said it’s going to be okay.”
Annie smiled as she hugged Myra again.
The other Sisters had run ahead and were lined up on the porch shouting and hollering that it was time to celebrate their recent victory.
“We’re coming, you darling girls, we’re coming!” Annie and Myra shouted in unison.
If you enjoyed Under the Radar, don’t miss the next exciting novel in Fern Michaels’s Sisterhood series!
Turn the page for a special preview of RAZOR SHARP, a Zebra paperback on sale in October 2009.
Chapter 1
Cosmo Cricket looked at the Mickey Mouse clock on his desk, a gift from a grateful client. Because, as the client put it, what do you give to a man who has everything except maybe a part of his childhood to remember? For some reason, this particular clock meant the world to him and not because Mickey Mouse was part of his childhood—because he hadn’t really had a childhood, at least not a normal one. Someday, when he had nothing else to do, he’d figure it all out. He wished he could remember the client, but he couldn’t. Mickey told him it was the end of the workday. But the city that he lived and worked in, one that never slept, was about to come alive just as he was about to head home.
This was always the time of day when he sat back with a diet drink and reflected. On his life. On his work. On his past. And, on his future. He never reflected on the present because he knew who he was and what was going on, right down to the minute, thanks to Mickey. He’d known who he was from the day he was born. There were those who would take issue with that statement, but those people didn’t know his mother and father. There wasn’t an hour of his life that he didn’t know about because his parents insisted he know everything. He always smiled when he got to this point in his reverie.
He knew he weighed fourteen whopping pounds when he was born and looked like he was four months old at birth. He knew that his parents fought over who got to hold him. And was told that he was rocked in a chair from day one until he was three years old, at which point he’d announced he was no longer a baby and needed to be a big boy, and he wanted his own chair, which appeared within hours, thanks to his doting father. There had been a succession of rocking chairs as he grew. He was sitting, right now, this very second, in the last one.
The rocking chair was battered and worn, and was on its tenth, maybe even its twentieth, set of cushions, he couldn’t remember. The chair was at odds with the rest of his plush office and a far cry from the kind of furnishings that were in the house he’d grown up in. Everything in this penthouse suite of rooms was elegant, as top-of-line as the decorator could make it. Ankle-deep carpeting, an array of built-ins, pricey paintings on the walls, soft, buttery furniture, and a view of Las Vegas that had no e
qual. The palatial suite had its own bathroom, where everything was oversize to accommodate him. He was almost ashamed to admit he never used anything but the towels. He did like the bidet, though. The suite was one massive perk arranged by the Nevada Gaming Commission to get him to sign on as their legal counsel. He’d argued over the Gaming Commission’s contract, saying he wanted to be able to practice law with a few select clients and do some pro bono work, and he wouldn’t budge. He’d actually walked away when they wouldn’t cave in, but they caught up with him at the elevator and agreed to his demands, then threw in what they thought was the clunker, but to Cosmo it was the icing on the proverbial cake. He was to be on call to all the casino owners, who would pay him his six-hundred-dollar-an-hour fee for whatever work he did for them plus a year-end bonus. The only stipulation was that his private clients and the casino owners not interfere with the commission’s work. It was a solid-gold deal that worked for everyone.
Twenty-three years later he had so much money, he didn’t know what to do with it, so he let other people manage it, people who made even more money for him.
In the beginning, when the money started flowing in, he moved his parents to a mansion, got them live-in help, and bought them fancy cars all without asking them first. That lasted one whole week before they moved out in the middle of the night and went back to their little house in the desert, where they had lived out their lives. He still owned that house, and it was where he himself lived. He’d updated it and was snug as a bug in a rug.
Cosmo chuckled when he thought of the other perk he’d negotiated, the entire floor below his suite of offices. He’d been disappointed that he hadn’t had to go to the mat on that one. The “powers that be” gave in meekly, and he rented it out for outrageous sums of money, which he, in turn, donated to his favorite charities.
Cosmo looked at Mickey again and saw that it was almost six o’clock, which meant it was almost nine o’clock back East. He looked forward to calling Elizabeth and talking for an hour or so. God, how he loved that woman.
Mickey told him he had fifteen more minutes to reflect before he headed home. Thinking about Elizabeth Fox made him smile. Never in his wildest dreams had he ever thought a woman like Elizabeth would fall in love with him. Or that he could love her as much as he’d loved his parents. It just boggled his mind.
Cosmo’s smile widened when he remembered his parents sitting him down when he turned six and was about to go off to school. They told him how he was different and how the other children were going to react to him. He’d listened, but he hadn’t understood the cruelty of children; he learned quickly. It hadn’t gotten any better as he aged, but by the time he went off to college, he didn’t give a shit what anyone said about him. He accepted that he was big and that his feet were like canoes and that he was ugly, with outrigger ears and a flat slab for a face and that he had to have specially made clothes and shoes and a bed that would accommodate his body. He was comfortable in his own skin and made a life for himself.
And then along came Elizabeth Fox, or as she was known in legal circles, the Silver Fox. At first he couldn’t believe she loved him, or as she put it, I don’t just love you, Cosmo, I love every inch of you. And she meant it. He was so light-headed with that declaration, he’d almost passed out. She’d laughed, a glorious, tinkling sound that made him shiver all the way to his toes. Then she’d sat him down and told him everything she was involved in.
“You can walk away from me right now, Cosmo, and I will understand. If we stay together, you will know I’m breaking the law, and so will you. I’m giving you a choice.”
Like there was a choice to be made. He’d signed on and never looked back. He was now a male member of that elite little group called the Vigilantes.
Cosmo looked over at Mickey and saw that it was time to fight the Vegas traffic and head for home. He looked around to see where his jacket was. Ah, just where he’d thrown it when he came back from lunch, half on one of the chairs and half-dangling on the floor. He was heaving himself out of his rocking chair when he heard the door to his secretary’s office open and close. Mona Stevens, his secretary, always left at five o’clock on the dot because she had to pick her son up from day care. Mona had been one of his pro bono cases. A friend of a friend had asked him to help her out because her husband had taken off and left her and her son to fend for themselves. He’d hired her once he’d straightened out her problem and gotten her child support, and he paid her three times what other secretaries earned on the Strip. She was so grateful and loyal she would have brushed his teeth for him if he’d allowed it.
Cosmo opened the door to see a woman sitting primly on one of the chairs. She looked worried as well as uncomfortable. When the door opened she looked up, a deer caught in the headlights. “Can I help you?”
She was maybe in her midforties—he was never good at women’s ages—well dressed, with a large leather bag at her feet. Her hair looked nice to his eye, and she wasn’t slathered in makeup. All in all a pleasant-looking woman whose husband had probably gambled away their life savings and the house as well. He liked to think he was a good judge of character and always, no matter what, he waited to see a client’s reaction to meeting him for the first time. This lady, whoever she was, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t do anything other than ask, “Are you Mr. Cricket?”
“I am. I was just leaving. Do you have an appointment I forgot about?”
“No. I did call three different times but…no, I don’t have an appointment. Should I make one and come back? If I do that, I might not…”
“I have time. Come on in,” Cosmo said, stepping aside so the woman could enter. He knew little about women’s fashion and wondered what she carried in the bag that was heavy enough to drag her shoulder downward. He wasn’t even sure whether the bag should be called a handbag, a backpack, or a travel case. His mother always referred to her bag as her pocketbook. It was where she kept a fresh hanky with lace on it, a small change purse, a comb, and a tube of lipstick. This woman’s bag looked like it contained a twenty-pound rock and maybe the hammer she’d used to dig it out. He felt pleased with his assessment when the bag landed next to the chair with a loud thump.
Cosmo made a second assessment. The woman didn’t want to be here. But she was, and she’d called three times, and had hung up probably because she lost her nerve. For some reason women did that when their problems involved errant husbands. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a clean yellow legal pad and a pencil. He never used pens, just in case he had to erase something. His first rule was: never commit something to paper you don’t want anyone else to see.
Pencil poised, Cosmo spoke, his tone gentle for such a big man. “We’ve established that I’m Cosmo Cricket, attorney at law. Who might you be?”
“Right now I’m Lily Flowers. Last week I was Crystal Clark. Before that Ann Marie Anders. And before that I was Caroline Summers. I don’t care to tell you at this time what my real birth name is. I have”—she bent down to poke in the bag at her feet, her voice muffled as she fumbled around for what she wanted, finally finding a small envelope and spreading the contents out on Cosmo’s pristine desk—“a passport in each name, a driver’s license in the same name, along with a credit card that matches the picture ID on the driver’s license. Each one of these identities has a bank account with minimal activity, rent receipts, and utility receipts. In different parts of the country. And a birth certificate,” she said breathlessly.
Cosmo made no move to inspect the documents on his desk. “I assume you got these,” he said, pointing to the lineup on his desk, “illegally.”
“It depends on your definition of the word ‘illegal.’ That’s me in every photo. Just a different hairdo, a little spirit gum here or there to alter the facial features, a little shoulder padding, but it is me.”
“At the outset I say to all my clients, ‘Tell me the truth, or I can’t help you.’ I’m sure you are aware of the confidentiality agreement between client and lawyer
. If you aren’t, what that means is I can never divulge anything you tell me to a third party. So whatever you say to me today, here in this room, I cannot tell another soul. Whatever your secrets are, they are safe with me. Having said that, I now need to ask you why you feel you need four identities other than your real one? What kind of trouble are you in?”
The woman of many names drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Right now I am not in any trouble, but I will be very shortly. I’m here because…because…I want to know if there is any way I can head it off. What my options are, assuming I have any.”
“Okay. But you have to tell me what type of trouble you think is headed your way.”
Lily Flowers took another deep breath. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Cosmo shook his head. “No, I don’t recognize you. Should I? Have we met somewhere? Right now you appear to me to be a potential client in distress. Like I said, you have to tell me your problem; otherwise, I can’t help you.”
“I operate the Happy Day Camp for Boys and Girls in Pahrump. Until a month ago, our revenues exceeded those of Sheri’s and the Chicken Ranch. Uh, that’s according to my accountant.”
Shit! Good judge of character, my ass. “Prostitution is legal in Pahrump, which is over sixty miles from Vegas. What’s the problem? Did your girls fall short of the medical requirements?”
“No, nothing like that. I operate the cleanest, safest brothel in the state. My girls are the highest paid in the state. My problem is that some of my powerful, wealthy clients asked me to branch out for special occasions. They arranged all the details, a rustic atmosphere, right down to the summer camp theme I operate here. There was nothing in my name. I made sure of that. My girls are independent contractors and pay their taxes and everything that goes with it. As you know, there is no state income tax here in Nevada. I can give you an operations lesson later on. Right now word has filtered down to me that I’m likely to be arrested for my activities. Not here in Nevada but back East.”
13. Under the Radar Page 20
