St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

stared at her legs every chance he got.
    She wondered if he’d be so flirty if he knew she made out the employment checks Elena signed.
    “Mrs. B. says you can go up, but please hurry,” Hamm said, coming out of the shack and smiling at Kayla. “Are you late? You’re never late.”
    Kayla glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Nope.”
    “She’s been edgy,” Hamm said, leaning against the Explorer’s door. “The old man is back.”
    “Mr. Bertone?”
    “He got in late Thursday night. At least I think that was him in the back of the limo. Never seen him to swear to it.” Hamm leaned close and whispered, “Never seen him in daylight, either. You think he’s a vampire?”
    Kayla rolled her eyes. “He’s a globe-trotting businessman.”
    “Yeah? What business? Drugs?”
    “Drugs?” She laughed and shook her head. “Switch to decaf, Jimmy. Mr. Bertone trades in oil and other natural resources. Now open the gate before you make me late.”
    Reluctantly Hamm stepped back from the Explorer. He leaned inside the guard-shack door and triggered the gate mechanism.
    Kayla shifted into gear and rolled through, both amused and irritated by Hamm’s persistent interest in her and his employers. She could handle the smiling come-ons, but the Bertones put a high value on their physical and fiscal privacy. Wealthy families were targets for everyone from civic and political fund-raisers to thieves and kidnappers. The wealthy kept the world at bay with gates and security cameras and a thick layer of servants, lawyers, and bankers.
    In the Bertones’ shoes, she would have done the same. Especially as they had three young children to protect from the world’s predators.
    Mentally going over the final details of the Bertones’ big art party tomorrow, Kayla pulled into the car park behind the five-car garage. She turned off the engine and automatically gathered her leather valise and purse. She hesitated, put the escrow envelope in the valise, and headed for the back of the house, where Elena had her office. Along the way Kayla waved to the Brazilian chauffeur, Antonio, who was washing a massive black Hummer. Head-high lilies bloomed along the flagstone path to the house. Everything looked and smelled green.
    Money green.
    “Down here,” Elena called.
    Kayla swerved without breaking rhythm. Apparently Elena was on the terrace between the Olympic-size pool and the children’s splash pool.
    “You’re late,” Elena said. “But I saved you some brunch.”
    Kayla slid onto a chair beneath the sunshade and dropped her leather bag on the flagstone.
    “I’m a minute off, by my clock,” she said cheerfully, “and you can blame that on your gate guard, who keeps trying to charm me out of my tiny little mind every time I come by.”
    “Of course he does.” Elena gave her the million-candle-power smile of the international beauty queen she’d once been. “You’re an attractive young thing who makes a good living and he’s a former athlete who doesn’t like working for his bread and butter.”
    The cool social calculation in the words was pure Elena. She was a stunningly beautiful woman whose figure had only been improved by having three children. She was shrewd, opinionated, socially ambitious, and arrogant in the way that only a gorgeous woman with a few hundred million in the bank could be.
    In the quiet of her own mind, Kayla admitted that she would never like Elena, didn’t really trust her, but was fascinated by her just the same.
    Then there was the fact that Elena was a loving mother to three energetic, utterly confident children. Raised just short of the Brazilian slums herself, Elena had a gut-deep understanding of the difference between poverty and wealth, family and standing alone against the world. The children were home-schooled, as the public schools in America simply weren’t equipped to handle kidnap targets.
    No matter what Kayla might think of Elena as a person, she respected her client’s dedication to her children.
    “Where are the kids?” Kayla asked.
    She looked around the grounds, half expecting to see Miranda or Xavier or Jonathan peering out from behind one of the marble columns in front of the pool house. In truth, she visitedElena more often than business required because she enjoyed the children.
    “I asked Maria to keep them in the house for a few minutes, while we conduct my business,” Elena said.
    Oooookay, Kayla thought. No small talk.
    “What do you need?” she