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continued. “Which is how he knew about their accident. And about your being a detective and all.”
    Nick nodded, then sat staring out at the passing countryside, his thoughts returning to the story Gus had told Carly.
    He’d certainly been a sly old fox, because the truth was what Nick’s parents had told him. There was no doubt about that. From the day his grandfather discovered that Gus had made off with their money, he’d never even allowed his elder son’s name to be spoken in his presence.
    But Gus had obviously reinvented his past, making it tragically romantic—which certainly fit with everything Nick had ever heard about him.
    Glancing across the van, he eyed Carly for a minute. In the bright sunlight, he could see there were pale freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose. Between that and the way the air conditioner’s breeze was playing with strands of her hair, she seemed a lot younger than she had in Brown’s office. Younger and very innocent-looking—the kind of woman who aroused a man’s protective instincts without even trying.
    Not that she’d aroused his. The only reason he was hanging around was to protect his own interests. Hers simply happened to coincide.
    “What did you know about your uncle?” she asked.
    He hesitated, then said, “I guess not as much as I thought” For half a second, he’d considered telling her the truth. But since she’d cared for Gus, it would only upset her—assuming she’d even believe it
    And she likely wouldn’t. If she’d worked with him for twelve years and referred to him as the sweetest man in the world, he must have really cleaned up his act
    “You obviously didn’t know he’d gotten into the animal-actor business,” she said. “But you’ll get a kick out of hearing how it happened. Initially, he won a share of Wild Action in a poker game.”
    Nick grinned. That sounded more like the uncle he’d always heard about He’d bet Gus had been cheating, too.
    Carly looked over at Nick once more, thinking that while he was smiling might be a good time to bringthe conversation back to the subject of Attila. But when she tried, she couldn’t make the bear’s name come out, so she said, “Then, eventually, Gus took over the entire agency. It was a smaller operation in those days, and it wasn’t doing very well, but he’d discovered he was good with animals. So he bought a big piece of property and began gradually attracting clients.”
    Focusing on the road ahead once more, she told herself she was a chicken. And that she was going to have to tell Nick about the problem with Attila very soon.
    But maybe it would be better to wait until they got home and he’d unpacked. And it would probably help to give him a stiff drink of Gus’s best Scotch first.
    “What’s this movie we’re involved with?” he asked after she’d turned north onto Highway 12.
    “It’s called Two for Trouble. And it’s basically about two ten-year-old boys who take off from summer camp and get lost in the woods. That’s the part of the film Jay will be shooting on Gus’s…our property. A lot of it’s forest.”
    “And the stuff he’s shooting in Toronto?”
    “Oh, those scenes are supposedly in Manhattan. And the summer camp’s supposedly in upper New York State—but they’ll actually be using Camp Runa-Muck, near Lindsay.
    “At any rate, the opening scenes in the city show the parents getting the boys ready for camp. The adults are the name actors—Sarina Westlake and Garth Richards. You know them? She looks a lot like Meg Ryan, and he’s the Latin-lover type.”
    “Uh-huh. I know the two you mean. They’re married in real life, aren’t they?”
    “Yes. But in the movie they play single parents who fall in love while they’re helping search for their kids.”
    Nick waited for Carly to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “That’s it? That’s all there is to the plot?”
    “Well, Jay’s the kind of director who improvises, so I expect he’ll