up my daughter from class and drop her at home before going to see Connie. You can either follow me or meet me at the jail. Up to you.”
A daughter? Damn. His hopes for something personal developing out of this assignment took an immediate and definitive nosedive.
Jack was very particular about the women he dated. And one of the things he was most particular about was that they not have any children.
“I’ll follow you,” he said.
SIZING UP PEOPLE quickly was an essential skill for a trial attorney, one that couldn’t be gleaned from a law book. Diana paid attention to all the signs and made her decisions accordingly.
Jack’s good looks and background in the entertainment field had prepared her for the kind of man who presented a convincing image, but who couldn’t handle the hard facts of life or come through when it counted.
She had personal experience with the type. For a brief time in her younger and far-less-wise years, she’d been married to a rock musician.
But her openly expressed and brutally honest reservations about Jack’s abilities hadn’t seemed to bother him a bit. He’d barely even flinched when she told him she wanted his help in getting her guilty client off.
This was not going well.
She had counted on him turning tail and running for the nearest exit. That would have given her the perfect excuse to phone Charles Knight and convince him of the need to free up Richard or David to help her on this case.
Only Jack hadn’t run. He was hanging in there, even displaying an open mind. Damn him. She needed an investigator with a proven track record, not some TV star who had decided to play at being a private investigator until another role came up.
She stopped her car in front of the school, feeling the weight of yet another problem she did not have the time to handle. But the moment her daughter opened the passenger door and got in, Diana felt a smile on her lips.
“Hi, Mom.”
Definitely two of Diana’s favorite words.
“Hi, Cute Stuff. How did astronomy class go?”
“The universe is expanding at an ever accelerating rate,” Mel said in her typically matter-of-fact tone as she buckled up. “With all that extra space being created, you’d think we could find a new place to live.”
Diana checked her mirrors before pulling away from the curb and reentering the stream of traffic. “We’ll resume apartment-hunting tonight after dinner.”
“You’ve given up on finding us a house?”
Diana watched as Jack’s car mimicked her actions and moved in behind her.
“Finding a house doesn’t look too promising,” she said. “I’ve exhausted every lead from the newspaper and friends alike.”
“Grandma did say we could stay with her as long as we wanted to,” Mel said, trying to sound nonchalant, but not quite pulling it off.
Diana knew that her daughter hated the idea of moving as much as she did.
“Your grandmother loves us so much she’s willing to compromise her privacy and maybe even her chance for happiness with Ray. We have to show her how much we love her by not letting her sacrifice those things.”
“We’re not going to see Grandma nearly as much now that she’s marrying Ray,” Mel said, obviously not pleased with the fact.
“Maybe not as much, but we’ll still see her. She’s not moving away.”
“But Ray’s moving in. Everything’s going to change.”
That was true. Diana knew pretending otherwise would be foolish. Besides, she never lied to Mel.
“Everything changes, Cute Stuff. Embracing change—even when we think the change less than ideal—is the best way to handle life if we want to be happy.”
Mel thought about that a moment before glancing over at her mom and asking, “Do you suppose the universe is embracing the fact that it’s continuing to expand?”
“Only if it’s not female,” Diana said.
Mel burst forth with a happy giggle.
Ah, to be nine again and able to giggle like that! Women needed daughters if for no other reason than to help them remember those moments of delight.
“You keep glancing into the rearview mirror,” Mel said, twisting in her seat to look behind them. “Is someone following us?”
“The private investigator who’ll be working on Connie’s case. He’s driving the white Porsche back there. You’re never going to guess who he is.”
Mel squinted. “I can’t see his face, but he can’t be Richard Knight or you wouldn’t be making me guess. Who is he?”
“Remember that paper you wrote a little over a year ago where you contrasted fictional villains from the beginning of the twentieth century with their popular counterparts from the twenty-first?”
Mel nodded. “And concluded that the steady advance of a culture embracing diversity and tolerance had given birth to the creation of an increasing number of fictional villains as three-dimensional characters,” she quoted, displaying not only her perfect memory, but a mental capacity and clarity that still frequently left her mother in awe.
Diana had been startled when her daughter had started talking in complete and complex sentences at two. She was floored when she’d later learned that Mel’s IQ was in excess of one hundred and sixty.
“How does my paper on fictional villains relate to the private investigator following us?” Mel asked.
“He was one of your study subjects, your favorite one.”
Mel whirled around in her seat again. “Derek Dementer, from the soap, Seattle!” she yelled, sounding very much like an excited nine-year-old.
Diana smiled at her daughter’s exuberance.
Mel turned back to her mom, her voice still high with her discovery. “Jack Knight is a private investigator now?”
“Apparently.”
“He must be Richard Knight’s brother. Richard never said he had a brother in show business.”
Diana nodded as she took a corner. “Richard’s too much of a professional to even discuss his personal business, much less brag. If I hadn’t taped all those Seattle episodes for you, I never would have known his brother was the Jack Knight when he showed up at the firm this morning.”
“Why did he become a private investigator?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I can’t wait to meet him. Will he stay for lunch?”
Seemed even her brilliant daughter had been struck by the show business bug.
