Flash

"I won't bore you with the details. It took me nearly three months to work through them, myself. But the bottom line was that the investment was a total fraud. The equivalent of a very complicated pyramid scheme. God only knows how Fletcher intended to pull it off. He must have figured he could keep it going like a game of three-card monte."
    "What did you do?"
    "It cost me a bundle, and I nearly went bankrupt before it was over, but in the end I managed to cancel the deal and pay off the consortium's investment. The clients weren't happy when I told them some mistakes had been made in the original projections, but at least they hadn't been defrauded."
    "And after you had cleaned up the mess, you destroyed the evidence of Fletcher's involvement, didn't you?"
    "Yes."
    She got to her feet and came toward him. Her eyes were deep and knowing. "Because you didn't want Kirby and Paul ever to know that their father had been a swindler and a thief."
    "Hell, I had a hard enough time facing the truth, myself. Fletcher was my big brother. I trusted him. Kirby and Paul loved him. I did not want his memory tarnished in their eyes. He was, after all, their father."
    She smiled tremulously. "Believe me, I understand."
    Something eased slightly inside him. He thought about her desire to protect Nina and Zara and everyone else around her. "Yes, you do, don't you?"
    "Tell me, was it after you cleaned up the mess Fletcher left behind that you began doing serious background checks on potential clients?"
    He smiled humorlessly. "You could say the incident taught me a lesson. I learned a lot about the importance of information. If you can't trust your big brother, who can you trust?"
    She touched his arm, but she said nothing.
    "That's it. I burned all of the records I could locate that related to Fletcher's scheme. Until I found that blackmail note in my Jeep this morning, I thought I had erased all the evidence."
    "But Uncle Rollie may have found something and filed it."
    "Yes." Jasper thought about the cabinets in his basement. "I guess I can't blame him. I've got the same bad habits."
    Olivia studied his face. "What's done is done. We'll both be hearing from the blackmailer again soon. We need a new plan."
    "True." He brushed his fingers lightly against hers. "We've got a lot of information to work with, and I think I know where I can get some more."
    "Where?"
    "From Silas at Pri-Con Self-Storage."
    She frowned. "You're going back there to talk to him?"
    "Yes. Right now, in fact." Jasper shifted her gently out of his path. He went across the room to where his jacket lay on the back of the sofa. "That padlock on Rollie's locker looked new, didn't it?"
    "Yes."
    "What if the blackmailer broke in, took out whatever was inside, and then installed another lock to make it look as though no one had opened the locker?"
    Her eyes widened. "Good thought. If someone removed the entire contents of a locker during the past month, Silas would have been aware of it. Whoever did it would have had to use the elevator to bring everything downstairs and put it into a car or a truck."
    "Right. With any luck, Silas will have some kind of record of the move-ins and move-outs. His office looked fairly well organized. All I need is a name."
    Olivia frowned. "Silas didn't mention anyone else asking him about locker four-ninety, though."
    "If the blackmailer already knew about Rollie's locker, he wouldn't have had to ask Silas about it. You saw how the system worked. If you know your locker number, you get inside without too many questions."
    She glanced at the clock. "I wish I could go with you, but I've got a meeting with Todd and Dixon Haggard."
    Jasper walked to the front door. "I'll let you know what I find out from Silas."
    "All right." She grabbed her purse, slung it over her shoulder, and hurried after him.
    "By the way," Jasper said as they went out into the hall. "I'm going to fire Melwood Gill this afternoon."
    Olivia gave a half-strangled yelp of outrage and spun around. Behind the lenses of her sleek glasses Jasper saw green flames leap in her eyes.
    "What are you talking about?" She blocked the path to the elevator. "You can't fire poor Mel. I won't allow it."
    Jasper reached past her to push the elevator call button. "Olivia, Gill is guilty of more than bad management. He's embezzled over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Glow in the past four months. What do you want me to do? Give him a medal?"
    She was still staring at him,