did this happen?” his father wanted to know. “Did you wake up one morning and just say, ‘Gee, I’m tired of my high-paying executive job. Let me throw it all away and do something totally mindless, like become a private eye.’ Is that what happened?” Kenneth demanded hotly.
“Private detective, dear,” Barbara corrected her husband.
“Private investigator,” Connor said calmly, correcting them both. “And no, I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to become a private investigator,” he told his father. “My boss suspected that there was someone embezzling money from the firm, but he didn’t know how to go about finding out who was behind it. He shared his concern with me and I told him I’d do a little snooping around. I did and as it turns out, I discovered who was stealing the firm’s money in a little less than a week.”
Kenneth dourly dismissed the accounting. “You got lucky.”
“No, I didn’t,” Connor informed his father. “I was persistent. And I found that I had a natural aptitude for ferreting things out.”
Kenneth snorted. “My son the Ferret. I can’t wait to tell people your new job description.”
“Dad, you’re missing the point here,” Valene insisted, looking at her father with a touch of annoyance as she came to her brother’s aid. “Connor said he was here to help us get to the bottom of what’s been happening to the family lately.”
She looked at her father, waiting for her words to sink in.
“That’s for the police to do,” Barbara reminded her children. No doubt she didn’t like the idea of any of her children getting involved with something that could be dangerous.
“And how far have they gotten with their investigation?” Maddie challenged her mother.
Barbara raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug, then offered an excuse to Maddie. “It’s still early,” Barbara said.
“Do you really want to wait until someone’s killed before we do anything, Mother?” Connor asked his mother gently.
Barbara’s eyes widened, as if she hadn’t thought about that possibility. “Do you really think that could happen?” she asked Connor.
His inclination was to shelter his mother, but he had to be honest. “The way things are escalating, there’s no reason to believe that it couldn’t.”
Kenneth was still unconvinced. “Okay, hotshot, let’s hear it. What’s your big ‘theory’ about what’s been going on?” the senior Fortunado asked. “Do you even have one?”
Mindful that his father was judging every word out of his mouth, Connor began slowly, speaking distinctly. “I think that these aren’t just random acts the way the police initially thought.” He paused for a half beat, looking at each of them before delivering his bombshell. “I think there’s one person behind everything that’s been happening.”
Kenneth’s eyes squinted as he regarded his son. “You’re talking about the fire, the hacking and the sabotaging of the real estate dealings?” he wanted to know.
“Yes,” Connor replied stoically.
“One person is behind all this?” Zach asked, wanting to get his facts clear.
Relieved to hear a nonjudgmental voice, Connor glanced at Maddie’s husband. “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“That must be one very energetic person,” Kenneth commented. The sarcasm was hard to miss.
“People can be hired to carry out these things. But I believe there’s one person orchestrating all these things being executed against the family,” Connor told them.
As he looked around at their faces, Connor could see that his mother and sisters, as well as Zach, were more than willing to be convinced. His father, however, was still digging in his heels. Whether it was because the man didn’t agree with the theory or because he was angry over the fact that Connor had suddenly switched careers, Connor didn’t know.
He waited for his father to say something. He didn’t have long to wait.
“And just who is this vengeful person targeting the family?” Kenneth wanted to know. “Do you know, or is this all just one big theory you’re hoping to get us to buy into?”
Connor kept his eyes on his father as he answered. “I found evidence of rumormongering.”
“You’re going to have to explain that to me,” his mother said. “What does rumormongering mean?”
Kenneth began to open his mouth, undoubtedly to define the term for his wife, but Connor was already explaining it to his mother in what he felt would be simpler terms than his father was wont to use.
“Someone has been bad-mouthing Fortunado Real Estate’s dealings on the internet, Mother, causing business to drop. Because of the so-called rumors, people have withdrawn their business from the company and taken it elsewhere.”
“And does this ‘someone’ have a name?” Kenneth asked again, his impatient tone suggesting that he sincerely doubted his son had gotten that far in his so-called “investigation.”
Connor managed to surprise his father, as well as his mother, by answering, “Yes.”
“Well?” Kenneth asked, waiting to hear who this person was.
“From everything I’ve managed to learn, I believe the person who’s causing all this chaos is Charlotte Prendergast Robinson.”
“Gerald’s wife?” Barbara cried, astonished at the revelation.
“Uncle Gerald’s ex-wife,” Connor corrected his mother. It was being Gerald’s ex that had caused the woman to launch her vendetta in the first place, he believed.
Kenneth looked at his son skeptically, although in all truthfulness, the woman’s name had been mentioned in connection to all these acts once or twice before.
“I know that Charlotte’s angry,” his father began, rolling the idea over in his mind.
“She’s way more than that, Dad,” Valene interjected. “You know that line about a woman scorned,” she reminded her father.
“Val’s right,” Maddie said, adding her voice to her sister’s as well as Connor’s. “Aunt Charlotte wasn’t exactly a hundred percent stable before Uncle Gerald finally left her to go back with that woman he called his first love, Deborah. Think about it,” Maddie stressed. “I mean, who in their right mind puts together a whole big binder devoted to her husband’s illegitimate children?” She shook her head at the very thought.
“Maybe the woman just wanted to have a book devoted to her family’s genealogy,” Barbara said. Connor knew his mother was always ready to see the good in everyone.
“More like having a book she could use to blackmail everyone,” Maddie said. “Besides, I doubt she thinks of the people in that binder as ‘her’ family. It’s more like his family—not that Uncle Gerald even knew some of them existed until Charlotte got started collecting names.”
“I
