Flash Page 8

  “I wouldn’t put that theory to the test, if I were you. For your information, I sent no message to your office.” The light breeze fluttered the brim of her slouchy hat. She reached up to steady it. “How did you recognize me, anyway?”

  “No offense, but the disguise, assuming it was meant to be one, isn’t that great.”

  “Oh.” She could hardly argue that one.

  “Who was he?”

  Annoyed with the failure of her project, Olivia yanked the hat off her head and attempted to stuff it into the pocket of her voluminous shirt. It did not fit, so she jammed it back on her head.

  “Who was who?” she muttered.

  “The man you planned to meet here today?”

  Careful, Olivia thought. He’s smarter than the average bear, to say nothing of the average CEO. “What are you talking about?”

  “I assumed that the hat and the shades were meant to conceal your identity while you met with someone,” Jasper said with grim patience.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that he had assumed wrong. But it occurred to her that it might be better for him to leap to the conclusion that she had a secret lover than to guess that she had been spying on a blackmailer.

  She smiled coldly. “As I said, it’s really none of your business. This whole thing has been a complete waste of time, thanks to you. I’m going back to the office.”

  She rose quickly from the table and started to turn away.

  Jasper got to his feet. “Olivia.”

  Something in his voice, perhaps the very softness of it, made her stop. She glanced back over her shoulder.

  “Now what?” she said ungraciously.

  “I don’t have any idea yet what was going down here, but I do know that I’m at this particular place, at this particular time today because someone wanted me to be here. Between now and seven o’clock this evening when we’re scheduled to do take-out, why don’t you think about just what that might mean?”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed, as the implications finally hit her. Jasper had no idea just how terribly ominous this turn of events was.

  Of course. The blackmailer had known she was here. He or she had spotted her despite the disguise and devised a quick, simple, highly effective plan to distract her for a couple of crucial minutes.

  Someone knew a great deal about both her and Jasper.

  By the time Olivia got her mouth closed, Jasper was gone.

  At ten minutes after seven, warm paper sack in one hand, briefcase in the other, Jasper came to a halt on the sidewalk. He surveyed the heavy glass doors that marked the entrance to the lobby of Olivia’s condominium.

  Fortunately, he had made it ahead of the storm that was preparing to swoop down over Elliott Bay.

  He was ten minutes late because that was how long it had taken him to get here after discovering that the offices of Light Fantastic were closed for the day.

  He had been torn between quiet anger and an uneasy sense that something was very wrong, when he finally spotted the note someone had left in the door. It had been brief.

  Plans have changed. My place.

  It was unsigned, but he recognized Olivia’s handwriting. There had been plenty of samples of it on the papers he had seen on her desk that first day. The style of her penmanship echoed her own personal style. Bold, feminine, and intriguing.

  A formally attired doorman, with buzz-cut blond hair, and a discreet ring in his ear, admitted Jasper with a polite smile.

  “May I help you?”

  “Jasper Sloan. Ms. Chantry is expecting me.”

  “I’ll let her know you’re here.” The doorman picked up a phone and punched out a number. There was a brief pause before he spoke into the receiver. “Mr. Sloan is down here in the lobby, Ms. Chantry.”

  There was another pause. A longer one this time. The doorman’s covertly curious gaze went to Jasper. “Yes, of course. I’ll send him right up.”

  A short while later Jasper stepped off the elevator on the eleventh floor. The gray carpet and walls of the hushed hallway were accented with a gleaming black credenza and a mirror. An elegant black vase filled with white silk flowers stood in front of the mirror. Jasper counted four suites.

  He turned left and stopped in front of the door in the northeast corner. She’d have a view of Lake Union and the Space Needle, he thought. Morning sun. An early riser like himself.

  If the corridor was any indication of the tastes of the occupants on this floor, he was pretty sure he knew what to expect inside Olivia’s condo. He envisioned a lot of black leather and chrome furniture and tiny, twisty European lamps.

  The door opened just as he reached toward the bell. Olivia stood in the entrance. She was still clad in the jeans and the oversized denim shirt she’d worn to the Market earlier that afternoon.

  Clearly the prospect of having dinner with him had not inspired her to put on something silky and sexy. Well, what did you expect? he thought. You told her this was going to be a working dinner.

  Her hair was caught up in a loose twist at the back of her head. A few tendrils had come free. Jasper felt his insides tighten. When all was said and done, he was a simple man, he thought. He didn’t need to see her in slinky lounging pajamas. The jeans and those little tendrils of hair drifting down around her ears were all he needed to give him an erection.

  She looked at him with somber, shadowed eyes.

  “How bad is this?” he asked.

  “You’d better come into the living room and have a seat. I’ll pour you a glass of wine.”

  Her grim, subdued tone worried him as nothing else had in a long time.

  “Am I going to need the wine?” he asked.

  “You might not, but I certainly do.”

  Maybe he would finally get the whole story now. Jasper waited for her to close the door. He noticed that she set the dead bolt.

  He followed her through a small hall tiled with terra-cotta and into an open living and dining room lined with windows. He was oddly relieved to see that he’d been wrong about the black-and-chrome furniture and the trendy little lamps.

  His first thought was that he had walked into a sunbaked Mediterranean villa. Even the metallic gray sky outside could not dim the warm, golden glow inside the condo.

  The rustic-looking, rough-plastered walls were painted with the richly faded yellows, reds, and browns one associated with the stucco and stone of an Italian palazzo. Jasper saw that the terra-cotta flooring extended throughout the suite.

  A rug striped in dark, cloudy hues of green, blue, rust, and ochre framed a sitting area furnished with a low, wooden sofa. There were dull gold cushions on the sofa and the chairs across from it.

  The wide coffee table was covered with colorful mosaic tiles. Large, painted pottery containers filled with leafy foliage were scattered about on the floor. There were more pots filled with flowering plants on the tiled window seat.

  The effect was sultry, vibrant, and compellingly sensual in a way Jasper could not explain. Interior design had never ranked high on his list of interests. Straightforward comfort and clean functionality were his chief requirements in his personal environments. But Olivia’s sunny little villa on the eleventh floor made him see new possibilities.

  He held out the paper bag. “Dinner. It was a lot warmer ten minutes ago when I got to your office.”

  “Thanks.” She took the bag, but she did not bother to peek inside.

  Maybe she wasn’t hungry, Jasper thought. Another bad sign.

  “Have a seat.” She waved him to a low chair. “I’ll get the wine.”

  She went around the corner into a kitchen that looked as if it had been ripped out of an old farmhouse in the south of France. Through the opening above the counter that divided the two rooms, Jasper could see a lot of gleaming pans suspended from iron hooks. Not the kitchen of a woman who lived on take-out and microwave, he thought.

  He set his briefcase down on the striped rug beside one of the low chairs. He took off his jacket,
slung it over the sofa, and tugged at the knot of his tie.

  “Nice place,” he said.

  Olivia caught his eye as she removed the cork from a bottle of chardonnay. “Surprised?”

  “By your condo? A little. But it suits you.” He paused. “I was more surprised by the note in the door at Light Fantastic.”

  “Something came up.” She tossed the cork into the waste basket and poured two glasses. “We need to talk.”

  “I thought we were going to do that at your office.”

  “I didn’t feel like staying there alone until you arrived.” She picked up the glasses and walked around the corner into the living area. “It’s been what you might call a difficult day.”

  Jasper studied the wine in the glass she handed to him. It was almost the same buttery shade of yellow-gold as the art glass bowl that sat in the center of the coffee table.

  Olivia sank down in the chair across from him and tucked one leg under her thigh. She took a sip of wine and then nodded toward an envelope that lay on the mosaic table.

  “Take a look at that,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not really into the mysterious approach.” He did not pick up the envelope. Instead he took a swallow of the chardonnay. It was good, just as he’d anticipated. Lush and mouth-filling. It made him wonder what it would be like to kiss Olivia. “I like to do things in a logical progression.”

  “All right, we’ll do it your way. Where do you want to start?”

  “Why don’t you begin by telling me why you were trying to hide behind an old hat and a pair of shades at the Market this afternoon? Then I’ll open the envelope.”

  She shrugged. “I was trying to identify the person who is blackmailing my aunt.”

  Jasper stilled. He realized he had been braced for a completely different kind of admission. He had expected to be told that she had gone to the Market to meet someone, a married lover, perhaps, who had been scared off by Jasper’s appearance on the scene.

  The relief that surged through him was totally inappropriate to the situation, he told himself. But it sure felt good.

  He did not take his eyes off Olivia’s face. “Explain.”

  “When I returned from your office this morning I found Zara, in tears. She told me she’d found a blackmail note on the front seat of her car that morning. The instructions ordered her to leave five hundred dollars in a paper bag on a planter in the Pike Place Market.”

  “This is for real?”

  “You think I’d make up something as nasty as this?” Jasper went cold to the bone as he put the rest of the tale together. “You went to the Market to see if you could spot the blackmailer when he picked up the money.” He shut his eyes. “Shit.”

  “It seemed like a perfectly reasonable move to me.” She sounded offended.

  He opened his eyes and stared at her. “You and I obviously have two different definitions of the word reasonable. Let’s go back to the beginning. Why is your aunt being blackmailed?”

  Olivia’s mouth tightened. “It’s a personal matter.”

  “Of course it is.” He forced himself to exert some patience. “Blackmail is always a personal matter. If it wasn’t personal, there would be no threat. I need to know why your aunt was willing to pay for someone’s silence.”

  She frowned warily. “Why do you need to know the details?”

  “I always gather as much information as possible before I act. It’s the way I work.”

  “You sound just like Uncle Rollie,” she muttered. “I suppose your basement is full of file cabinets, too?”

  He had a brief, mental image of the row of black metal cabinets that lined one wall of his Bainbridge Island basement. He told himself he would rise above the goad.

  “Olivia, the fact that you’ve gone so far as to say the word blackmail means that, for some reason, you now consider me to be involved in this.”

  She groaned. “Unfortunately, you are. Sort of.”

  “If I’m in it, I have a right to all the details.”

  She contemplated him for a moment. He thought at first that she would continue to be stubborn for a while longer. But she proved to be as smart as he had believed she was.

  “Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “I guess you’ve got a point.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What I’m about to tell you was news to me, too. I was aware of Aunt Zara’s long career in television soaps, of course. But today I found out for the first time that before she got the role of Sybil on Crystal Cove, she, uh, had another job in the industry.”

  “X-rated films?”

  Olivia’s eyes widened. “How on earth did you know that?”

  “It seemed sort of obvious, given the direction you were already going.”

  “I see.” She frowned. “You’re right. Given her career and the blackmail threat, the conclusion is rather obvious, isn’t it? I’ll cut to the chase. Someone has learned about Zara’s past and has threatened to expose it.”

  “Why the hell does she care? She’s retired.”

  Olivia glared at him. “You don’t understand. Zara is very proud of her career in the soaps. In her day, she was quite popular. She still gets fan mail asking for autographs. The tabloids call once in a while to interview her for their what-are-they-doing-now columns.”

  Jasper put down his glass. “Let me get this straight. Your aunt, the ex-soap queen, is afraid she’ll be humiliated if word gets out that she once did porno flicks?”

  “She’s very conscious of the fact that her old fans still identify her with the character she played on Crystal Cove. Sybil was a heroine, not a villainess.”

  “Olivia, she was just a character in a soap opera.”

  Olivia’s delicate jaw went rigid. “I was afraid of this.”

  “Of what?”

  “That you would not be the least bit sympathetic or understanding.”

  “No offense,” Jasper said, “but I would have thought that a retired soap star would kill for a little splash of gossip in the tabloids.”

  “You don’t know my aunt. Zara would be much more likely to kill to keep her character’s reputation from being tarnished.”

  Jasper shook his head, amazed. “She’s actually willing to pay off a blackmailer to preserve the rep of a TV character?”

  “You have to understand, Zara is very upset. She’s kept the secret of her X-rated film career a secret for years. She’s afraid that all the rest of the Chantrys will be humiliated and embarrassed if the truth comes out.”

  Jasper raised one brow. “Is that true?”

  Olivia hesitated. “I have to tell you that, speaking as her niece, it’s a little mind-boggling to think of Aunt Zara as an X-rated actress. But I can’t say I’m overcome with shock and horror.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Zara’s worried about the others, though. My brother, for example, is involved not only professionally, but personally, with Eleanor Lancaster.”

  “Are you serious? Your brother has fallen for a politician?”

  Olivia nodded unhappily. “Uh-huh. Aunt Zara’s afraid that if the Lancaster campaign gets wind of Todd’s connection to a former porn star, it could hurt his career as well as his relationship with Eleanor Lancaster.”

  Jasper considered that angle for a few seconds and dismissed it. “It’s an old story that might be worth a couple of inches of newsprint, but that’s about it. Nothing that would endanger Lancaster’s run for the governor’s chair.”

  “I tend to agree with you, but Zara is convinced that if she doesn’t pay off the blackmailer, she might inadvertently ruin Todd’s career and personal life. And then there are all of the relatives in Zara’s generation. The Chantrys are a large family. There’s no denying that some of them are on the prissy side.”

  “So you tried to identify the blackmailer today.”

  “Yes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Unfortunately, you screwed things up at the last minute.”

  He held up one hand, palm out. “Don’t
blame me, lady. Whoever sent that message telling me that you wanted to see me ASAP is the one who screwed things up for you.”

  She sighed. “You’re right. I thought about it a lot after I left you this afternoon. The snafu at the market was my fault. The blackmailer spotted me and called your office. I guess it really wasn’t a very good disguise.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” He had recognized her instantly. The graceful curve of her spine, the tilt of her head, the shape of her hand as she gripped the coffee cup. Hell, he would have known her in a darkened room.

  “The bad news,” Olivia continued in very distinct tones, “is that because I messed up today, you are now involved in this problem.”

  He let a beat of silence go past before he said, very carefully, “I’m flattered as hell, of course, that you’ve seen fit to include me in your little adventure.”

  “You won’t be so thrilled once you open that envelope and find out what an active role you’ve got.”

  Her entire mood had changed since he had seen her at the Market, he reflected.

  He picked up the envelope and slowly raised the flap. There was a single sheet of letter-sized paper inside. It was the kind of ubiquitous, anonymous paper that was used in laser printers in offices and homes everywhere.

  He withdrew the note and read the computer-generated message.

  I do not tolerate interference in my business affairs. Now you and Sloan must be taught a lesson.

  9

  “You do realize,” Jasper said quietly, “that it’s time to go to the police.”

  “No. At least not yet.” Olivia uncurled herself very quickly and sat forward in her chair. She pressed her knees tensely together. “I know that there’s an implied threat to you in that note. That’s why I told you the whole story.”

  “The threat is to both of us,” he pointed out dryly.

  “Yes, but it’s probably meaningless.”

  “Meaningless?”

  “The blackmailer is lashing out in anger,” she said. “He must know that you and I are not the kind who would ever pay blackmail. He’s just trying to scare us off so that he can prey on Zara.”