Flash

days?"
    "Why?"
    "It's dinnertime."
    She glanced at her watch and frowned. "Good grief. I didn't realize. We've been swamped getting ready for tomorrow night. I'd better tell the others to take a break."
    "They are on break even as we speak." He pulled up a chair.
    "Oh." she examined the contents of the box with deep interest. "What have you got there?"
    "Noodles and seaweed." He handed her a set of chopsticks.
    "Thanks." She put down the papers she had been working on and dug in with the chopsticks. "Where have you been all afternoon?"
    "Long story." He picked up his own chopsticks. "We need to talk."
    "So talk," she said around a mouthful of noodles dipped in sauce and hot green wasabi paste. "Did you have any luck with the Pri-Con Self-Storage attendant?"
    "Silas was very informative in his own way." Jasper dipped some of the noodles into the tamari-laced sauce. "He said there have been no move-outs from the fourth floor in at least two months. And he was pretty adamant about the fact that no one could have removed the entire contents of a locker without his knowing about it."
    "So what happened to the stuff Uncle Rollie stashed in locker number four-ninety?"
    Jasper shook his head. "We don't even know for certain that he had anything stored in that damned locker."
    "Why pay rent on a locker he never used?"
    "He may have had plans to put something in there and never got around to doing it."
    Silence fell.
    "Jasper?"
    Something in her tone of voice made him look at her very sharply. She was watching him with enigmatic eyes. "What is it?"
    "I had a wild thought this afternoon. I did a little checking. I'm still not sure, and I've got absolutely no proof, but…"
    "Talk fast."
    "Two words. Melwood Gill."
    Jasper hesitated while he assimilated that. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that it was your stated goal in life to protect poor Melwood."
    She shifted uncomfortably. "I admit he seems a little pathetic. And he hasn't been himself for the past few months."
    "He's an embezzler. What makes you think he's also into blackmail?"
    "His hat."

22
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    O livia gazed unhappily out the rain-spattered windshield as Jasper drove her car through the quiet streets of Queen Anne. The comfortable, well-established homes and dignified brick-faced apartment buildings climbed the hillside overlooking downtown and Elliott Bay. It was not the richest neighborhood in the city, but Olivia knew that there was a fair amount of wealth tucked away here and there in the cul-de-sacs and lanes of Queen Anne.
    "Melwood has lived here for as long as I can remember," Olivia said. "He once told me that the house belonged to his parents. He inherited it." She was chattering, she thought. A sure sign of nervousness. She clenched her back teeth together.
    Jasper did not look at her as he navigated the winding street. "You okay?"
    "Yes. Sort of." The truth was, the prospect of confronting Melwood Gill was proving to be far more disturbing than she had anticipated. "How do you look a person you've known for years in the eye and ask him if he's blackmailing you?"
    "Simple. Start by telling him that we can prove he's been embezzling from Glow for months. While he's still dealing with the shock of knowing that he's been found out, we'll hit him with the blackmail questions. My guess is Gill will crumple fast."
    Jasper's words were imbued with a calm ruthlessness that stunned her. She turned her head quickly to stare at him. His face was hard and unyielding in the last light of the dying day.
    Why was she so shocked? she wondered. Her intuition had warned her about this side of his nature. She had caught glimpses of it from time to time. She could not let a couple of nights of great sex blind her to his basic nature. She crossed her arms and hugged herself.
    "You've done this kind of thing before, I take it?" she asked.
    "It happens in business."
    She shivered. "It's never happened to me in my business."
    "It has now," Jasper said softly.
    She could not think of anything to say to that. "Next right."
    Jasper turned the corner. And drove immediately into a space at the curb.
    "Oh, my God." Olivia stared at the scene through the windshield.
    The flashing lights of the ambulance and the police cruiser were reflected on the rain-slick street. People stood in small clusters, some with umbrellas, watching the activity with the morbid fascination reserved for crime and accident scenes.
    Olivia saw a medic close the door of the aid car