The Private Eye

see you at breakfast.”
    “Right.” Josh relaxed as he realized the Colonel was oblivious to Maggie's present location. He concentrated on the task of splicing the control wire as the older man went back up the stairs.
    A few minutes later Josh replaced the access panel, dusted his hands and took a last look around the basement. The ground-level windows were definitely locked and they could not have been relocked from the outside—not after the way he had rigged them this morning. That meant whoever had sabotaged the furnace must have entered the basement through the doorway at the top of the stairs.
    Which meant that the intruder had let himself into the main part of the manor through a door or window upstairs while three of the residents were at home. It was the first time, as far as Josh could tell, that the vandal had taken such a daring risk. The bastard had walked straight down the front hall, as if he owned the place.
    Josh frowned as he climbed the stairs to the first floor, He didn't like the idea that whoever was staging the “incidents” was apparently getting bolder. It was a sign that the sabotage and vandalism might soon grow more menacing. At the rate things were going, someone would eventually get hurt.
    He had to put a stop to this now, before it got out of hand. Josh decided. He had hoped his presence in the house would discourage whoever was behind the incidents, but clearly that was not the case. And now the guy was getting desperate. Desperate men did dangerous things.
    Josh walked through every room on the first floor, checking locks. Every window and door was securely fastened. An inside job? Josh wondered as he went up the stairs to his room. He thought of the list of suspects and motives he had given Maggie over dinner.
    He doubted that Odessa or Shirley would have known how to disable the furnace. On the other hand, it didn't take a lot of mechanical aptitude to figure out that cutting a wire would cause trouble. But then, there was the water-pipe incident. Someone had definitely entered the house from outside to pull that one off. Or had someone inside merely wanted it to look that way?
    Possibilities and motives clicked rapidly through Josh's brain as he reached the top of the stairs and opened the door of his room. The first thing he saw was Maggie sitting in front of the computer. The eerie blue glow of the screen bathed her face in a cold light. She looked up as he entered the room.
    Josh saw the suspicion and anger in her gaze and his stomach clenched with despair. What a fool he had been! He'd forgotten all about the computer and the book when Maggie had come knocking on his door asking him to kiss her good-night. And now he was going to pay the price of his stupidity.
    “Maggie, honey.” Josh closed the door very softly and stood there, trying to think clearly. His brain, which had been in overdrive a minute earlier, suddenly seemed to have turned to cobwebs. He had to explain this, he told himself desperately-He had to make her understand. He took a deep breath and tried again. “I know you must be wondering about what you're seeing there on that screen.”
    She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs under her robe and folded her arms. She gave him a disdainful look. “I suppose you're going to tell me that since you're posing as a writer, you wanted to have some props around in case anyone came snooping. I suppose you think I'll believe that you just selected some mystery novel at random and typed up a few chapters so anyone who came in here would believe you really are a writer.”
    Josh watched her carefully, aware that he wasn't quite certain of her mood. He felt as if he were walking on eggs. “I wrote that myself,” he admitted.
    “I know.” She shot to her feet and strode over to the window. Her arms were still folded across her chest and her chin was tilted at a proud, defiant angle. “As soon as I'd read a few pages, I was sure of it.”
    “Maggie, I know what you're thinking.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes. You think you've been ripped off. That you ordered up a private investigator and got a con artist, instead.”
    “And did I?”
    “No, damn it.” Josh hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans and braced his feet. He felt as if he were getting ready for battle—one of the most important of his life. The stakes, he suddenly realized, were higher than he had ever dreamed they could be. But then, he'd never wanted a woman the way he wanted Maggie