… Both were unavailable for comment. Nick Chastain is the publicity-shy owner of Chastain’s Palace, a popular casino in Founders’ Square. Miss Spring is the daughter of the late Edward and Genevieve Spring. Readers will recall that Mr. and Mrs. Spring were lost at sea four years ago when their racing yacht went down in a sudden storm. Shortly after the tragic events, Spring Industries was reported to be experiencing financial difficulties. The company later went into bankruptcy.
Eighteen months ago, Miss Spring, an interior designer, figured prominently in a scandal involving one of her clients, Rexford Eaton, President of Eaton Shipping.
“So much for the virtues of optimism,” Zinnia muttered to herself as she walked back through the door of her loft.
The phone rang. It was not the first time. It had been ringing all morning. Zinnia tossed the copy of Synsation into the trash can as she waited for the answering machine to pick up the call.
It was her Aunt Wilhelmina this time, which made a change from the endless messages that had been left by reporters.
“Zinnia? What in the world is going on? I’ve just seen the morning papers. I am shocked. I cannot believe that you have become involved with that dreadful casino owner. You’re a Spring. We do not associate with his sort. And how could you put yourself into a situation involving murder and drugs?”
Zinnia yanked her red trench coat off the whimsical Early Exploration Period coat tree and headed for the door. She was in no mood to discuss the night’s events with her aunt but she owed Clementine Malone an explanation.
A screaming yellow van with the words READ SYNSATION FOR THE LATEST SENSATION painted in purple on the side rounded the corner at the end of the block just as she drove out of the underground garage.
Zinnia accelerated rapidly and swept past the vehicle. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a photographer inside the van lift his camera for a shot of her fleeing car.
She was tempted to give him the universally recognized single-digit salute, but she resisted. Aunt Willy would not have approved.
* * *
Byron Smyth-Jones—Psynergy, Inc.’s executive secretary, receptionist, and all-around gofer—was at his command post behind the front desk when Zinnia arrived fifteen minutes later.
Byron had recently abandoned the popular Western Islands look for the newer and decidedly more avant-garde Alien Artifact style. Both had been inspired by the New Seattle Art Museum’s exhibition of the mysterious and very ancient alien relics that Lucas Trent had discovered deep in an island jungle.
No one knew what to make of the strange artifacts because there was no trace of any other intelligent life on St. Helens. As far as the descendents of the Earth colonists could discern, they had the planet to themselves. The handful of mysterious relics were the only existing evidence that once, a long time ago, someone else had discovered St. Helens.
The Western Islands look had consisted of designer versions of the hard-wearing boots and khaki clothing favored by the rugged folk who prospected and mined the fuel source called jelly-ice. The attire had sometimes appeared a little silly on trendy urban types such as Byron, but at least it had looked as though it had been designed for real human beings. The Alien Artifact style, on the other hand, was over the top in Zinnia’s professional opinion.
Today Byron was a vision in tight-fitting acid-green pants and a matching shirt patterned with images of the artifacts. He wore a heavy necklace made out of plastic designed to resemble the strange silver-colored alloy the aliens had used for their tools. His blond hair was razored to within a quarter of an inch around his entire skull. The toes of his black-and-green knee-high patent leather boots were so pointed Zinnia wondered how he managed to walk.
“Sex, murder, and crazy-fog. How exciting can life get?” Byron chuckled gleefully as he put down the copy of Synsation. “How did you ever come to meet Nick Chastain? I want to hear every single juicy detail, Zinnia. Never in a million years would I have guessed that the two of you were involved in a relationship. You’ve been hiding things from your good buddy, Byron. I’m devastated.”
Zinnia glowered at him. “For the record, Mr. Chastain and I are not involved in a relationship.”
“The Times called you Chastain’s companion, a loaded word if ever there was one.” He stabbed a finger at the tabloid lying on the desk. “And Synsation clearly states that you two are a couple. So, which is it?”
“Neither. Is Clementine in yet?”
“I’m here, Zinnia.” Clementine stuck her head around the door of her office. “I nearly had a seizure when I opened the paper. You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Zinnia relaxed slightly. The sight of her part-time boss was somehow reassuring.
Clementine Malone could be brusque and acerbic, and she had a very short fuse, but she was also savvy, good-hearted, and loyal to her employees.
Unlike Byron, Clementine was not swayed by every passing gust of the fashion wind. Year in and year out she stuck with studded black leather and steel accessories. Her brush-cut, stark white hair was a brilliant contrast to her dark eyes.
“I tried to call you but there was no answer,” Clementine said. “Kept getting the machine so I hung up and didn’t leave a message.”
Zinnia grimaced. “The phone started ringing before I even got out of bed. I haven’t answered it all morning.”
Clementine eyed her thoughtfully. “Mind telling me how in five hells you wound up in the company of Nick Chastain last night?”
“It’s a long story. When I still couldn’t reach Morris Fenwick late yesterday evening, I sort of panicked. I leaped to the conclusion that Mr. Chastain had, uh, gotten hold of him.”
“Gotten hold of him?”
Zinnia groaned. “If you must know, I decided that Chastain had kidnapped him in order to try to intimidate him into turning over that journal that Morris had discovered. So I finally went to see him.”
“Who? Fenwick?”
“No, Nick Chastain.”
Byron uttered a soft low whistle. “Holy synergy.”
Clementine’s eyes narrowed. “Let me get this straight. You actually confronted Chastain in his own casino and accused him of snatching Fenwick?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Byron cleared his throat. “I hate to ask this, but does Chastain know that you work here part-time?”
“Yes, he does.” Zinnia glanced at him. “Why?”
Byron shuddered. “Just wanted to know if we should be prepared for a visit from some of his security personnel.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Byron.” Zinnia frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You accused him of kidnapping?” Clementine fell back against the door. “Say it ain’t so, Zin. Tell me that you’re just having a little cruel fun at poor old Clem’s expense.”
For some obscure reason, Zinnia felt obliged to defend Nick. “He was actually quite decent about the whole thing. I don’t think he’s the type to hold a grudge.”
“Decent?” Clementine pushed herself away from the door. “Not hold a grudge? For your information, Nick Chastain has a reputation in this city-state. No one screws Chastain and gets away with it. Nor does he take insults well. And he absolutely hates publicity, especially the kind he got in this morning’s papers.”
“How do you know so much about him?” Zinnia asked.
Clementine made a face. “Everybody who knows anything knows something about Chastain’s reputation. Gracie filled me in on some of the lesser-known tidbits, such as his dislike of publicity.”
Gracie Proud, owner of Proud Prisms, was Clementine’s permanent partner. Same-sex alliances were treated just as seriously by society and the law as heterosexual marriages. Gracie and Clementine had been matched by a professional match-making agency several years ago and had been blissfully happy ever since, in spite of the fact that they were fierce business rivals. Gracie was always a fountain of inside information, rumors, and gossip, much of which tended to be extremely accurate.
/> Zinnia drew herself up. “It certainly wasn’t my fault that Mr. Chastain chose to have me followed after I left the casino last night and that the guy who did the following called him when he saw me go into Fenwick’s Books.”
Byron gazed at her, goggle-eyed. “Nick Chastain had you followed?”
“He had a business arrangement with poor Morris. He wanted to see what was going on and therefore happened to be on the scene when I discovered the body.”
“He actually had you followed,” Byron repeated in a voice infused with delicious horror. “There was nothing about that in the papers.”
“He was just making certain that I got home safely.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Clementine muttered. “This gets worse by the minute. The owner of Chastain’s Palace has you followed after you leave the casino and you think it’s just business as usual.”
“It probably is for Chastain,” Byron said.
Zinnia had had enough. “Look, I can’t hang around here all morning just to entertain the two of you. If you need me, I’ll be at home, working. I’ll be screening my calls with my answering machine, so stay on the line if you want to talk to me.”
Clementine gave her a level look. “If you have any more problems with Nick Chastain, call me. I don’t know what the hell I can do about it, but I’ll think of something.”
Zinnia smiled wryly. “Thanks, Clementine, but I really don’t think there’s any need to worry about Mr. Chastain. My biggest problem at the moment is my family.”
“Hey, everybody’s biggest problem is family,” Byron said cheerfully.
Chapter
6
* * * * * * * * * *
“Zin? Are you there? It’s me, Leo. I just saw the papers. Talk to me, big sister. What’s going on? Are you really seeing that Chastain guy? Aunt Willy and Uncle Stanley are having fits and cousin Maribeth is making an appointment with a therapist. She says she can’t take this kind of stress.”
Zinnia put down the letter she had been about to open and picked up the phone. “Leo? I’m here. Hang on a second.” She stabbed various buttons in a random manner until the answering machine clicked off with a last beep of protest. “Sorry about that. I’ve been screening my calls.”
“I don’t blame you. Unfortunately when no one in the family could get hold of you, they all decided to call me. I had to go out and buy a paper to see what was happening with my own sister. What’s this about you and the owner of Chastain’s Palace finding a murdered man last night? I assume the reporters got everything screwed up, as usual?”
“Not entirely.” Zinnia leaned back in her chair and stared at the stack of mail that she had just started to open.
It was good to hear her brother’s voice. Leo was the one person she could depend on to remain calm and rational in the face of a family crisis. He was in his senior year at the University of New Seattle. A class-nine psychometric-talent with an intuitive feel for the age and past history of old objects, he was majoring in Synergistic Historical Analysis.
As far as Zinnia was concerned, Leo was destined for a career in academia. He had a passion for his studies and she was certain that he would leave his mark on his field. The rest of the family was already starting to fret about that very possibility.
For four generations, the Spring fortunes had been firmly founded in the world of business. The bankruptcy which had followed the death of Edward Spring had stunned the family. Everyone except Zinnia was obsessed with the notion that Leo should assume the responsibility of rebuilding Spring Industries. Zinnia was determined to protect him from the mounting pressure.
“One of my focus clients was killed yesterday,” she explained. “I found the body late last night. Mr. Chastain happened to be with me at the time. We both had to give statements to the police.”
“Chastain just happened to be there, huh? Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to wash with the family. This is your brother speaking, Zin. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s complicated. Mr. Chastain was involved in negotiations with my client, Morris Fenwick.” She gave Leo a quick summary of events. “So, you see,” she concluded. “We had a mutual interest in poor Morris.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Leo admitted. “But I think I understand why Aunt Willy and the others are in hysterics. Especially after what happened eighteen months ago when that bastard, Eaton, set you up to take the fall as his mistress.”
“I assure you, Nick Chastain and Rexford Eaton have absolutely nothing in common.”
That was nothing less than the truth, she thought. Rexford Eaton, patron of the arts, major contributor to the Founders’ Values political party and all-around very-important person, had hired her to design new interiors for the Eaton estate.
At the time, she had been fervently grateful for the lucrative commission. The death of her parents, followed by the downfall of Spring Industries had put her and Leo in bad financial straits. The fortunes of the rest of the extended Spring family had gone down with the business so there was no one she could turn to for help.
She had poured all of her energy into building Zinnia Spring Interiors into a viable design firm. She had been thrilled when she had secured the Eaton project, not just because it paid well, but because it gave her an entree into the closed world of the high-end design market. She knew that if she satisfied the Eatons, they would tell others in their exclusive circle.
But less than two weeks after she had begun work on the Eaton estate, she had found herself on the front page of Synsation as well as several other tabloids. When she saw the photo of herself emerging from a bedroom of the Eaton estate into a garden with Rexford Eaton at her side, she realized that she had been set up. No one believed that she and Eaton had been examining wallpaper samples inside that bedroom.
It had taken her a while to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.
Rexford and his elegant wife, Bethany, had conspired to use her as a cover for the ménage-à-trois affair that they had been conducting with Daria Gardener, a powerful politician in the Founders’ Values political party.
Following the trail of rumors deliberately leaked by one of Gardener’s political rivals, reporters had begun asking pointed questions. The Eatons and Daria Gardener had crafted a scheme to throw a chunk of raw meat to the wolf-dogs of the press in an effort to put them off the scent. Zinnia was the dish they had served up on a silver platter.
It had all gone off like clockwork. Bethany Eaton had staged a tastefully tearful scene as the wronged spouse when the tabloids portrayed Zinnia as her husband’s mistress.
On the surface, it appeared to be just one more unfortunate tale of a philandering husband caught with his passing fancy who just happened to be the daughter of a once-prominent city-state family. No one suspected the three-way arrangement with Daria Gardener.
An affair was regrettable but survivable. A threesome involving one of the most prominent couples in society and an important politician, on the other hand, would have done serious damage to both the Eatons and Gardener. None of the three lovers would have made it through such a scandal unscathed.
In the end Zinnia was the only one who had been hurt. Daria Gardener was never once mentioned in the press. There was quiet sympathy for Bethany Eaton who bore up nobly. As for Rexford, most people just shook their heads when they read about his affair.
Straying husbands were not all that uncommon, especially among the elite where people were not always matched by an agency. It was an open secret that the very wealthy sometimes entered into marriages for reasons of property and money rather than with the goal of a happy, stable relationship. With divorce an impossibility, there had been no question but that the Eaton marriage would make it through the unpleasantness.
The whole thing had been forgotten by the press within three days.
But three days of sensationalistic journalism, it turned out, was long enough to cost Zinnia mu
ch of the design business that she had labored so hard to build after the fall of Spring Industries.
Three days had also been long enough to shred her own personal reputation. When she had finally accepted that she could not outrun the label of the “Scarlet Lady,” she had defiantly adopted the color as her business trademark.
To her family’s horror and chagrin, she now had a closet full of red. Coats, suits, pants, jackets, skirts, dresses, the garments spanned the red spectrum from bright vermilion to deep dark cherry-berry. There were some obvious limitations, Zinnia conceded, but on the positive side, accessorizing was a snap.
She had lost her shot at the exclusive high-end market after the scandal, but during the past eighteen months she had slowly begun to attract the attention of the up-and-coming entrepreneurial crowd. She was determined to hang on to her new market niche.
“Aunt Willy and cousin Maribeth are frothing at the mouth,” Leo said. “I think their biggest fear is that Luttrell will cancel his next date with you.”
“Between you and me, it wouldn’t break my heart. Duncan’s a nice man and I enjoy his company but that’s about as far as it goes.”
“You’re forgetting the very high F factor here, Zin.”
“F factor?”
“Family factor,” Leo explained. “Duncan Luttrell doubled his net worth overnight when he pulled off the recent expansion of his company. When he releases his new generation of software, he’ll probably triple his bottom line. I have a feeling that Aunt Willy, Uncle Stanley, and the others will soon start hinting that it’s as easy to fall in love with a wealthy man as it is a poor one.”
“So what?” Zinnia flipped through some bills and a couple of catalogs. “If they get pushy, I’ll play my ace card.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Leo’s voice took on a comically pathetic, melodramatic whine. “You would never dream of contracting an unmatched marriage and the best agency in town, Synergistic Connections, declared you to be unmatchable.”