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to another and another, and then the insurance detective wasn't her only client anymore. Relay of information had to be conducted clandestinely, of course, and nowhere near the house; she was adamant about that. The intrigue of it, while abhorrent to her some days, on others considerably brightened a sometimes dull existence. The risk she was taking was huge. She rationalized that it was for a good cause, but she knew if she was caught the outcome would be ruinous.
    Her husband would hate her for jeopardizing his political life; her mother-in-law would hate her for being a blemish on his perfect record. And if word actually leaked out to the public, well, Arianne would be extinguished in their cross fire.
    And that was about what happened, except that the public annihilated her first. Then Reggie and his mother learned about her perfidy and were infuriated that they were the last to know. Suffice it to say that Arianne went up in a puff of smoke.
    Right from the beginning her last case had been a disaster. It had started so badly, with her would-be client accosting her in the grocery store, demanding help in finding a will the woman's sister had apparently lost. Heads turned when Arianne gasped a horrified, "Leave me alone!"
    She convinced everyone the lady was just a crackpot on the loose. The woman followed her home. Put on edge by her intensity and scared to death Reggie or one of the maids would discover them, Arianne tried desperately to get rid of her. She suggested the woman go to the police if the missing will was such an important document.
    Three days later, in the evening, Mrs. Sutherland had just walked in the front door, when this plague of a woman sneaked her way into the back. Arianne couldn't help her and didn't want anything to do with her. She pleaded with the woman to call the police and leave her out of it. At last the unhappy creature left, without having aroused the household to her presence, and Arianne thought she'd had the sheer luck to escape detection.
    But the next morning the reporters were leaning on the doorbell, screaming for interviews. Her would-be client's sister had not lost the will but had been kidnapped. Instead of going to the police with the ransom note, the woman went seeking aid elsewhere—to Arianne! And realizing that a kidnapping case would be reported immediately, she'd made up a phony story about a will, hoping Arianne would "see" the sister, anyway, and guide her to the captive. Due to the delay in getting the police involved, the sister met an unfortunate demise in a smashup at the end of the car chase between her kidnappers and the police who were attempting her rescue.
    The story made such dramatic news that the media snatched it up and chewed it over and over, from every angle. Somehow—she wasn't sure how—Arianne got to be the hex of the piece, and responsibility for the sister's death was laid at her feet. The doubtful merit of high-speed car chases was discussed briefly, but the brunt of the story focused on the unusual element—Arianne Sutherland, the medium's daughter. "A beguiling young witch in her own right," one gossip rag described her.
    Reggie got slaughtered in the press for keeping his wife's proclivities a secret, and in hounding him, reporters accidentally stumbled on the minor fact that Alderman Reggie Sutherland was having an affair with his secretary. Newsmongers danced all over the front pages with that juicy scoop. Newspapers could be so cruel.
    Was it any wonder Arianne had wanted to hide? It seemed every crackpot for a hundred miles showed up at her door, whining, pleading, crying for her help. The demands never ceased. The reporters never quit. It was hell on earth, with the divorce hitting hard on the heels of the secretarial catastrophy.
    Even the divorce was terribly embarrassing. In her naivete, Arianne had let Reggie put everything they had in his name. Then some years ago, Reggie had secretly put all his possessions into his mother's name,