Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Bitchy petite fairy, he corrected. “I believe in feng shui about as much as I believe in astrology and space aliens. Return the favor by leaving my stuff alone, please.”

  Shooting him a scowl, then abruptly lighting up like a chandelier, she dashed to the garage. Frowning, Conan watched. She rummaged through the boxes she’d stored in his trunk and produced a wind chime. A wind chime.

  “What the hell are you doing with that?” he demanded. “I hate tinkling fairy bells.”

  She marched back down the path she’d cleared as if he hadn’t spoken. Looking around, she settled on his fishing rod. She tied the chime to it and propped the rod through the metal shelves at the front door. She waited a moment, letting the tinkling tubes settle, then nodded in approval and turned to him in expectation. “A bed?” she reminded him.

  Crazed. Utterly insane. But then, so was Pippa, and his brother seemed to tolerate his wife’s madness. All Conan had to do was give this woman a bed and keep her from playing in the street until tomorrow. Piece of cake—as long as he stayed five feet away so he didn’t notice her exotic scent and kept from watching the swing of her hips in that tight skirt when she stalked through his basement.

  He took her to the back room, the one that was a true cellar since it backed up against the hill rising behind it. He had friends who liked living like vampires, and this was their favorite cave. Well, that’s what they’d said. They hadn’t been around lately, but he’d been busy.

  Dorrie refrained from commenting about his decor beyond a long-suffering sigh. At least she didn’t freak when he flipped on the switch to reveal a real bed and mattress. He opened the closet and showed her a stack of sheets. He didn’t mention that an ex-girlfriend used to do his laundry, hence the stacked sheets instead of snarled linen mountains.

  “Shower is to the left,” he gestured at another door. “The cleaning service leaves my stuff alone but keeps the bathrooms clean.”

  “If I don’t fire you, I’ll have to revise your contract to cover service beyond the call of duty. You really think someone could have followed us?” she asked anxiously, examining the limestone and granite bathroom with approval.

  No, he didn’t, but he didn’t want to send a helpless nutcase out on the streets either. “Let’s take no chances until we have some leads on your tire-slashing scuzzbucket. I’d rather spend my evening digging into your computers than digging you out of a ditch.”

  Conan knew his sister-in-law’s mother had ended up in a ditch, crippled for life, because scuzzbuckets thought she had some kind of weird ESP. Out of caution, he needed to check his genealogy charts to see if Dorothea Franklin was somehow related to Pippa’s weird family.

  “Thanks, I think,” she offered.

  She looked so defeated, Conan suffered another of those unlikely urges to reach out and hug the witch. In a family of men, punches were more likely to be thrown than hugs.

  “Do you need anything else? Shampoo, toothpaste, whatnot?” he asked, eager to escape back to the cold components of computers before she unhinged the well-oiled machinery of his mind.

  Almond-shaped eyes regarded him with curiosity. Maybe she could read minds. Whatever, she seemed satisfied with what she saw.

  “No, a place to lay my head is all I need, thank you. This was very generous of you. I apologize for my hysteria.”

  Oddly, Conan missed the fit-throwing drama queen. The enigmatic expression she hid behind might look natural, except he knew it was a mask, and he missed the spark of passion that lit her face when she was being real.

  He left her making the bed and took himself upstairs so he could rummage through her office computers over the phone lines.

  Settling into his desk chair, he swore when his cell rang and a text from the Librarian scrolled across his screen.

  Chinese cellar danger.

  Conan flung his phone where his futon should be. This time, he emailed Oz to warn him the Librarian was back and to keep his head down. He didn’t need a mysterious harpy messing with his well-ordered life.

  His semi-well-ordered life. Even as he sent the message, he felt the walls of his personal fortress crumbling like the cliff in his guest’s garden.

  He wanted Magnus to be alive bad enough that he would put up with the Librarian and crazed Chinese witches until he learned the truth.

  Chapter 5

  After a miserable night’s sleep, Dorrie dragged out of bed Saturday morning when Toto began prancing anxiously, his nails clicking on the tile floor. The room needed a carpet. She’d tossed and turned half the night until she’d finally given up and rearranged the bed. The damned man had set every piece of furniture on the wrong wall.

  Being a human divining rod for energy was not all fun and games. Come to think of it, she only enjoyed her gift when she was decorating. Even then, creating harmony in a place like her father’s office was a lost cause. Too many conflicting energies gave her a headache, and if someone had just had a fight with their significant other, their negativity flooded the cubicle farm.

  If she had a thief who hated her on the staff, she could no more track him down by energy than she could by numbers. She wasn’t psychic.

  She knew Conan Oswin thought she was crazy. She’d learned to expect that. There were times when she doubted herself. After all, he had apparently been living happily in this house that she swore should have killed him. Yet she was the one facing the loss of her home.

  He could have at least painted the walls, she thought glumly, splashing water on her face to wake up. Everything was as beige as his limestone tile. Chi energy needed fire and light.

  Sometimes, only the memory of her mother’s confidence that she was talented sustained Dorrie’s belief in herself. Bo’s talent had been so much easier to accept—he could tell his location within a degree of latitude and longitude, even blindfolded. A GPS could prove him right.

  She missed her older brother, even if he’d seldom been around. He’d stayed with their father after the divorce, and had been in the military by the time their mother died. But Bo hadn’t scoffed at her redecorating as her father had.

  She pulled a jacket on over the sweats she’d slept in, disabled the door alarm using the code she’d seen Conan use, and took Toto for a brisk walk in the cool morning air. She inhaled the crisp ocean breeze and replenished her deprived energy. Worrying about herself was nonproductive.

  She had to think about Bo. Except she couldn’t think. Why would the government say the helicopter crashed if it hadn’t? If Conan couldn’t help her, where else could she turn?

  And if what she suspected about the theft of FF’s money was true, she had still another problem she didn’t know how to solve. What if her father’s foundation was dragged into the media because she’d hired the wrong people or looked the wrong way?

  She wondered if her life could get any worse. Then she returned to a house that spilled bad vibrations and almost guaranteed failure. Conan was a walking Five Yellow Disaster Star.

  She soaked her head in a steamy shower rather than think about it and used the dryer to pull her frizzy hair straight, pinning it firmly into place.

  It was the weekend, but she had nowhere to go except the office. She needed to study the financial statements. She didn’t know how much she should tell her father. It would only spike his blood pressure, but at some point, if money really was being misappropriated and not misplaced, she’d have to report it to the police.

  First, she needed to call AAA about her tires and be at the office when the repair truck arrived. She hoped by then that Conan would be up and have a plan prepared for hacking government websites to find out what they weren’t telling her about Bo’s accident.

  Donning an Ann Taylor power red suit and setting out the food she’d brought for Toto, Dorrie let curiosity and hunger spur her up the stairs to the second level. At the top, she gazed in dismay at her host’s spectacular—slovenly—living quarters.

  How could he live like this? The view of the ocean out the two-story
windows was superb, magnificent, even. He needed a cozy table and welcoming chairs where he could enjoy his morning coffee and enjoy the view. Instead, he had practically obliterated the space with a makeshift computer desk spilling paper and components, a futon buried in magazines, and equipment and files scattered everywhere.

  She wanted to close her eyes and feel her way to the kitchen rather than see any more, but she’d be a wall of bruises if she tried. Unable to resist deflecting some of the bad energy, she moved a flamboyantly red oil painting to the room’s prosperity corner and some red candles into the reputation sector, and she felt better immediately.

  Conan would be able to find Bo much easier with positive chi working for him. And because she couldn’t tolerate such a blatant bad arrow, she scooted his work chair to the far side of his table desk so he would face the entrance, moved his wireless keyboard, and swiveled his monitor to the new position. All his paperwork would be upside down, but he’d figure it out.

  Except for the grubby coffeemaker, the granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen looked as if it had seldom been touched. Scrubbing out the machine and relocating it to a corner better situated for metal and boiling water, she set a pot cooking and rummaged for milk and cereal. She could cook, but it didn’t interest her, and she wasn’t about to send nest-making vibes.

  She rolled her eyes at discovering a television in the refrigerator door, but she turned the local news on mute. Leaning against the counter, eating her cereal, she watched the film of her father’s street being shut down until officials could check the damage from the mud slide. She didn’t need the text scrolling across the screen to tell her she wouldn’t be returning home soon.

  Conan stumbled out when she’d reached her second cup of coffee. He was wearing drawstring jams and an unbuttoned blue work shirt, an interesting contrast of play and work clothes. After an uncharacteristic episode of staring, Dorrie dragged her gaze from his tanned, washboard abs and pretended to watch television. Computer geeks shouldn’t look like sun-burnished beach bums, but she’d seen his sports equipment. He was an athletic geek. Who owned his own company. She couldn’t imagine how.

  She tried not to wonder what it would feel like if he held her against that admirable chest. Most of her boyfriends had spent way too much time at desks.

  “I called one of the neighbors and they can drop me off near the office,” she said, trying to sound casual, as if she were used to bumming rides and beds. “It’s convenient that you live in my old neighborhood.”

  He shoved a coffee-stained mug at the pot and poured. “I’ll take you to work if you insist on going in. I’m meeting a security expert at ten to look at your personnel files. You may have more problems than you thought.”

  Ignoring this indication that he’d spent the night inside her computers, she replied, “I’d rather you concentrated on Bo and your brother. The foundation can’t afford outside help.”

  “Screw that.” He sipped the coffee, and then narrowed his eyes as he registered the rearrangement of his small appliances. “Your life could be in danger. That’s more important than money. Good security is cheaper than theft.”

  “I can’t pay for security if word gets out that FF is losing money,” she corrected.

  “We’ll work something out. You’ll need guards in that garage and at the ground floor lobby entrance, too. I’ll talk to your landlord.” He gulped his coffee and began pacing the tiled floor as he spoke. “I can’t find any sign of a hacker, so your problem has to be internal. Those slashed tires look like the work of a disgruntled employee.”

  “My father owns the building, and the foundation employs people dedicated to our cause. We’ve had basically the same staff since forever.”

  “Two new hires,” he said reflexively.

  Her hires. She hid her wince. “Bo can handle the financials—if he’s still alive. Did you look into the helicopter crash at all?”

  “Couldn’t tell you if I did. It’s classified. I’ll get dressed,” he said. “You call your friend and tell him you have a ride. I don’t want you wandering the streets alone.”

  Supergeekman walked away, giving her no room to argue. Dorrie sipped her coffee and winged mental energy arrows at his broad back. He massaged his shoulder as if one had hit him.

  ***

  Ever since his nose for trouble had detected something off about the nanny his older brother had hired, Conan had regretted ignoring his instinct in not telling Oz to hire someone else. At the time, he hadn’t wanted a nice girl to lose her job.

  Instead, his nephew had ended up kidnapped and Oz had suffered a year of hell because Conan had been too chickenshit dull to acknowledge what his gut—or his nose—was telling him.

  And now, after spending a night rooting through computer innards, his nose said the Franklin Foundation had a lot of dead files, and he had the Librarian’s weird—and oddly correct—warnings to set his gut on fire. Could it be a coincidence that the half-Chinese heir to a real estate fortune disappeared while his father’s money was being siphoned off?

  Dorrie hadn’t lied about her mother’s murder either, but Conan couldn’t see how a random event over a dozen years ago could affect a helicopter crash.

  Logically, he could write off dotty Dorrie as a screwball and probably a screw-up, but if his instinct meant anything, her brother and the money hadn’t disappeared by mistake. And Magnus had gone down with her brother. That really gripped his gut. If there was any possibility whatsoever that his older brother was still alive, he’d rip apart walls and laws to find him.

  This time, he couldn’t ignore his internal alarms, even if they made about as much sense to him as Hungarian written in Cyrillic.

  Conan wasn’t a people person like Oz. He didn’t know what made Dorothea Franklin tick. But the posturing hysteric he’d seen last night did not compute with the uptight witch in her power red suit who stalked through her office this morning. She walked as if she had a broomstick up her ass as she cruised the windowed corridor past empty employee cubicles.

  In the rain, she’d not only looked human, but sexy cuddly. Weird. What made the difference? The hair wound so tight it looked as if it should pull her head off her shoulders?

  At least he’d taken time to pull a brown blazer over his black polo and jeans, faking businesslike as they cruised her office. He’d been kind of ticked that she hadn’t taken him seriously yesterday. Maybe the clothes would make a difference.

  He followed in Dorrie’s wake, not sorry there were no employees available to interview personally. He couldn’t spot a crook if one stood in front of him. He needed machines to detect patterns. He read computers the way other people read books.

  With a bit of luck, he should have time to clean up FF’s little bookkeeping mess while he was waiting on that defense contract. He didn’t want anyone blaming his security walls for a breach in a charitable foundation’s accounts. That would cream his career for certain. Small businesses like his relied heavily on reputation.

  Of course, if the government found out he’d been poking through their computers, he’d be going to jail, but that was another matter entirely. Magnus was worth risking prison time.

  His brother could take an engine apart and put it back together faster than any mechanic he knew. Magnus had hot-rodded all their cars when they’d been teens. Which only aggravated Conan’s itchy instincts. Magnus worked on top secret government engines these days. He’d have known if anything was wrong with the helicopter’s mechanics.

  With every ounce of his pathetic existence, Conan wanted Dorothea to be right that their brothers were still alive.

  Taking a desk that overlooked her corner office, Conan had a good view of Dottie Frost as she settled her furball into a dog bed, threw her coat on a hook, and got down to work. The concern etched in her brow marred the façade of inscrutability while she clicked through her keyboard.

  He tuned into her computer system and hunted through personnel files but nothing obvious—like employees with prison recor
ds—jumped out at him. Working his way through employee Internet histories, he could see the foundation’s treasurer had a fondness for porn sites but not online gambling. The bookkeeper amused herself on YouTube and shopped on bargain sites. He could have done all this from home, but he didn’t want to leave the dragon lady alone.

  He began sifting through client records. As he’d discovered in his preliminary search, the foundation’s money financed individuals who fell through the system, people who were working hard but just not able to get a grip and pull out of the hole.

  No wonder Miss Frosty was so uptight. She had the weight of hundreds of families on her shoulders.

  Conan glanced up to see Dorothea reading over his shoulder.

  At his frown of annoyance, she said, “Your security guy just buzzed up from the garage. Do you want to let him in?”

  The shiny straight hair she’d wrenched into a knot was already starting to escape and curl. Conan remembered how soft and curvy she was under that stiff suit, but he wasn’t in the habit of sexually harassing the clientele and needed to stop thinking like that. He shoved his chair back and headed for the elevator without speaking.

  Because of the Librarian’s eccentric warning, he had deliberately called Grogan Security instead of Chong’s, but the man Grogan’s sent was every bit as Asian as Chong. Conan grimaced, shook hands, and led Fred Liu upstairs to introduce him to Dorothea.

  Fred tried speaking Chinese to her—Conan assumed it was some form of Chinese since he didn’t know the difference in language much less dialect—but Dorothea merely nodded and glanced at Conan. “Is this firm insured and bonded?”

  “I wouldn’t settle for less,” he said irritably. He wasn’t accustomed to his clients questioning his judgment. Of course, most of them had read his credentials. He didn’t think Miss Frosty had. She was probably judging him by his bad feng shui. Maybe he should let her read his palm.

  Fred produced a folder. “Here are our references and copies of bonds. We would not consider working without presenting these.”