a big, imposing hunk who knew how to throw his weight around with class. She stared steadfastly into his incredibly alive quicksilver eyes.
“I’m going to have you investigated, Ms. Osborne. Thoroughly. Until I know about each and every breath you’ve taken since you were born. And when I connect you with that piece of fakery laying in that pit back there—and I will connect you with it—I am going to see that you are brought up on criminal charges and disbarred.”
Octavia could tell that Brett Merlin fully expected his awesome reputation, presence and words to effect fear and trepidation in her.
His unmitigated pomposity was absolutely magnificent. She put aside her admiration of it long enough to stand on her tiptoes, stretching tall until she was at eye level with him. She tossed her head back, waves of flaming-red hair falling off her cheeks.
“If you ever repeat those slanderous allegations to a third party, Mr. Magician, I will see to it that it is you, not I, who disappears from the legal scene in one highly publicized puff of courtroom smoke.”
She noted with enormous satisfaction the instant shifting of the silver light in his eyes. She sensed she was witnessing a very rare event. Brett Merlin, the deadly Magician of corporate law, reaching to pull a rabbit out of his hat only to find his hand grasping the ears of a tiger.
Octavia chuckled again, thoroughly enjoying the moment.
But the chuckle died in her throat the instant she heard the cry behind her. Startled, she swung in the direction of the outburst.
She was just in time to see her grandmother falling face-first into the excavation pit.
Chapter Three
Brett turned with Octavia at the sound of the cry. The second he saw Mab Osborne falling, he moved. He reached the rim of the pit and scrambled down its sides, slipping the last few feet to the soft, muddy bottom where the elderly woman lay. He dropped to his knees, gently lifting Mab’s head out of the mud and resting her on his knee as he pressed his finger to the pulse point in her neck.
But his fingers were caked in the slippery mud and he couldn’t feel her pulse.
“Mrs. Osborne?”
She lay limp and absolutely still in his hands.
A sudden movement beside him drew Brett’s eyes. Octavia dropped next to him. His first reaction was surprise at how fast she must have moved to have gotten here so soon after him.
His second was admiration for her coolheaded composure and farsightedness as she calmly dug into her shoulder bag for a compact mirror and immediately placed it beneath her grandmother’s nose.
“She’s breathing,” Octavia said as the mirror fogged.
Octavia raised her head and voice to address the quiet spectators watching from the rim of the pit. “Someone please get an ambulance.”
“John Winslow has already gone to call 911,” one of the seniors yelled down.
Brett watched Octavia nod solemnly and direct her attention back to her grandmother. She slipped out of her mud-splattered suit coat and draped it over the unconscious woman. She held her grandmother’s shoulders firmly as she spoke in a tone of stern sobriety that caught him completely off-guard.
“Listen to me, Mab Osborne, you wake up. You don’t have time for this nap. You have a radio broadcast to give this afternoon. You know how important your broadcasts are. There are homebound people out there counting on you.”
To Brett’s continuing surprise and amazement, Mab Osborne began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open. Octavia stared down into them and smiled.
“Hi.”
“Octavia,” Mab said. “What was all that about my missing my broadcast?”
“Not to worry. You have plenty of time now. How do you feel?”
Slowly, Mab lifted each arm and each leg in turn. “I think I’m a little bruised is all.”
“Any headache?”
“No, but it’s cold, isn’t it?”
Octavia scooted around in the mud in order to transfer Mab’s head from its resting place on Brett’s knee to a new resting place on hers. She wrapped her jacket more closely around her grandmother’s shoulders.
“We’ll have you out of this excavation pit just as soon as the medics get here,” she promised.
“Why am I in this pit?” Mab asked.
For the first time, Brett heard a small annotation of anxiety underlying the normally mellow mark of Octavia’s voice.
“Mab, don’t you remember falling?”
“I didn’t fall, Octavia. I was pushed. I want to know why.”
“Pushed?” Octavia said as though she must have heard wrong.
“Yes, pushed,” Mab repeated.
“Who pushed you?” Octavia asked.
“Let’s just say I can make a good guess,” Mab replied as she stared up at one particular face looking down at her.
Brett followed the direction of Mab’s eyes. He was decidedly uncomfortable, but not surprised, to find himself looking into his uncle’s sallow, bitter expression as he peered over the edge of the excavation pit.
“I’ll go flag down the medics,” Brett said as he got to his feet and climbed out of the pit.
When Brett reached the rim, he grabbed Scroogen and pulled him along toward the street where the medics would arrive. He waited until he and Scroogen were out of hearing distance of the crowd before he confronted him.
“Did you push her, Dole?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, I didn’t push the old bag,” Scroogen’s grating voice said, clearly angry at being asked.
“Where were you when it happened?” Brett asked.
“I was at the car placing that call,” Dole said.
“Who did you speak to at the Community Development Department?”
“The line was busy. I was just about to redial when I got distracted by the commotion at the pit. I hung up the phone and went over to see what was happening.”
“So you don’t have an alibi.”
“An alibi? For what? She topples five feet, face-first, into the mud, and she doesn’t even break anything.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed. That’s the one piece of good news we’ve gotten today. No one would have benefited by her being injured.”
“What
