Veiled Threats Read Online Free PDF

you're spending too much time on it instead of marketing for new business.”
    He was just trying to distract me, but I let him. “I'm only charging them our standard rate.”
    “Douglas Parry is not standard, for God's sakes. He makes millions off widows and orphans; you don't have to knock yourself out to hunt down good deals for him. Christ, we could charge him double on everything and he'd never notice!”
    “Eddie, I see your point, I really do. But Douglas Parry hasn't been convicted of anything, OK? In fact he hasn't even been accused, not yet. Even if he is, it won't affect us. This wedding is going to establish our reputation. What's left of it after last night.”
    “Louise can't pay her mortgage with our reputation,” he said. Louise was my mother, the widow of Eddie's oldest friend and a dear friend in her own right. “That payment deadline is coming up.”
    “Oh, Eddie, you're worried about her, aren't you? I'm going to pay her back soon, honest I am. If I have to I'll get another line of credit on the business. I won't let her down.”
    “I know you won't,” he relented. “I'm just fussing. You get yourself over to the Parrys’, and we'll take in a show tonight, OK? Get your mind off things.”
    Every couple of weeks the entire staff of Made in Heaven went out for a bad movie and a candy binge. Art films I saw with Lily. Eddie and I preferred science fiction, but we'd take natural disasters, gangsters, or spies, as long as it was loud, fast, and unbelievable.
    “It's a date. Thanks, Eddie.”
    He made a shooing motion with his hands. Resisting an impertinent urge to kiss him on top of his silky white head, I took the notebook on Nickie's wedding out to Vanna. Maybe he was right, and I was being overimaginative about the man in the rain. Well, I'd tell Douglas Parry about the mysterious stranger, and he could tell the police if he wanted to, and that would be that. I put the van in gear and the transmission made a faint but ominous new noise. Soon, I promised my faithful vehicle. You'll get a tune-up soon.
    I picked up a scone and a double cappuccino from Federal Espresso, my favorite caffeine pushers, and headedacross the Evergreen Point Bridge over Lake Washington, admiring the whitecaps on one side of the span and the calm silvery water on the other. The Parrys lived in Medina, a semirural enclave of the rich and rustic on the east side of the lake. Just a modest little cottage with a quarter mile of shoreline, a view of Mount Rainier, and a staff of five. Just a place to hang your hat, dock your sailboat, and have the chauffeur park your Rolls. Ray Ishigura, the groom, was a middle-class military brat whose family lived in a split-level in Tacoma, near McChord Air Force Base. But Ray had the potential to be a pianist of international reputation, which must have helped his courtship in Douglas Parry's eyes.
    I managed the scone just fine, scrounging on the floor for a tissue to wipe my fingers. But the coffee did me in just as I started up the Parrys’ half-mile driveway. I swerved to miss a jaywalking squirrel, and a stream of hot brown splotches suddenly bisected the front of my sweater. I had nothing on underneath, and nothing in the van to change into. Great.
    Swearing the way only children of the merchant marine can swear, I pulled up in front of the house, dabbed at the splotches, and walked past a line of cars that made Vanna look as downscale as her driver. Nickie's car was gone, of course, but there was Douglas Parry's splendid silver Rolls, and two sports cars, a hunter-green Jag and a blood-and-silver Alfa Romeo that looked fast standing still. I had some nail polish that color once, but it kept me awake at night.
    As I stepped up to the front door, I remembered my first visit to consult with Nickie. In my infinite wisdom, I'd known exactly what the Parry estate would look like: mock Tudor, maybe a French baronial tower or two, stiffly groomed grounds, lots of antiques. Wrong, on all