Eclipse Bay

what he’s been up to during the past eight years?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?”
    “None of my business.” Perry went hastily down the last step. “Well, got to be on my way. Lots to do before tomorrow night. See you at the reception.”
    “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
    She stayed where she was, lounging against the post, until the Volvo disappeared at the end of the drive. When she finally turned around, she saw Rafe and Winston gazing at her through the screen door.
    “You’ll be happy to hear that Perry doesn’t believe for one moment that anything went on here last night,” she said.
    “Hell of a relief,” Rafe said. “Someone who wasn’t quite so high-minded as Decatur might have drawn all the wrong conclusions.”
    “Yes.”
    “He’s still a jerk,” Rafe said.
    “Yes.”
    A speculative look gleamed in his eyes. “Are you serious about going to that political reception?”
    “Very serious. Luckily I packed a black dress and a pair of heels. There’s just one more thing I need.”
    “Yeah?” Rafe looked at her. “What’s that?”
    “A date.”
    “I got the impression that Decatur thinks he’s going to be your date for the evening.”
    “He couldn’t even be bothered to pick me up. I don’t count that as a date.”
    “Got someone else in mind?”
    She gave him her brightest smile. “I figure you owe me.”

chapter 9
    “What caused the feud?” Octavia asked after a while.
    Mitchell paused in the process of removing dead blooms from the rosebushes. “A woman. What else?”
    Octavia folded her arms on top of the fence and rested her chin on her hands. She watched him nip off another faded flower. “What was her name?”
    “Her name was Claudia Banner.”
    “Was she very beautiful?”
    Mitchell opened his mouth to say yes, but then he hesitated, thinking back through the years to his first impression of Claudia. “She was fascinating,” he said finally. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. But I never really thought of her as beautiful. I just knew that I wanted her so badly that nothing else mattered. Unfortunately, my partner, Sullivan, wanted her too. For a while.”
    “What do you mean, for a while?”
    Mitchell snorted softly. “Sullivan Harte was always too logical and too coolheaded to let himself be led around by his balls for long. He figured out what Claudia was up to long before I did. I refused to believe him. We fought. End of story.”
    “How did it happen?”
    Mitchell tossed a dead bloom into a sack. “Sullivan and I set up Harte-Madison right after we got out of the army. We had us some mighty big dreams in those days. The plan was simple. We’d pick up a few cheap parking lots in downtown Portland and Seattle and then sit on ’em for as long as it took.”
    “As long as it took for what?”
    “For the boom times to come, naturally. We both knew that sooner or later the Northwest cities were going to be important. What with the Pacific Rim trade taking off, property values were bound to skyrocket. We figured that when the time was right, we’d sell the parking lots to developers and make our fortunes. In the meantime, we’d have income off some very low-maintenance properties in the heart of the cities.”
    “How did Claudia Banner get involved?”
    “Things started happening faster than we expected. We hired Claudia to help us negotiate the first sale. She’d had experience in that kind of thing, you see. Sullivan and I were novices.”
    “She did the deal for you?”
    “Yep.” Mitchell moved on to the next rosebush. “And it was a hell of a deal. Sullivan and I were suddenly rolling in dough. Both richer than we’d ever been in our lives. Couldn’t wait to sell the next parking lot. Claudia found us a buyer right off the bat. More money fell down out of the sky. We were golden. Couldn’t miss.”
    “What went wrong?”
    “Somewhere in the middle of the sale of the third lot, a big one in downtown Seattle, Claudia pointed out that Harte-Madison could structure the deal in such a way that we’d be able to keep a stake in the future profits of the office tower that was slated to be built on the site.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “Yep.” Mitchell dropped another dead rose into his sack. “Uh-oh pretty much sums it up. Sullivan and I had financial stars in our eyes. We trusted Claudia. She took us for a ride and then vanished with the company profits on all three parking lots. Harte-Madison got