Raising The Stakes. Sandra Marton

had won him a clerkship with a Federal judge and then interviews at a number of important firms. He’d picked the one where he’d figured he’d have a straight shot at the top after putting in the requisite seventy-five hours a week of grunt work for a couple of years. He’d been right. Those years got him noticed; he landed a partnership even sooner than he expected without having to curry favors from anybody. Watching his father go through life as a suck-up had convinced him he’d sooner end up flipping burgers than repeat Leighton’s pattern.

      Now it looked as if he’d been blissfully living a lie, that his successes were all traceable to Jonas’s largesse. Okay. Maybe that was an overstatement. He’d made it to where he was on his own, but his uncle’s money was the reason he’d been able to get his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He was just where he’d sworn he’d never be, beholden to the old man, and now Jonas was calling in the debt.

      “Sir?”

      But facts were facts. You couldn’t change them; you could only use them to serve your client’s best interests. That was one of the things he’d learned in law school. First, make a dispassionate assessment of a case. Then use your knowledge to get the outcome you wanted. Well, he was his own client right now, and what would serve his interests was to do what had to be done so he could get on with his own life.

      Truth was, he wouldn’t have to spend much time dealing with Jonas’s situation. He had all sorts of contacts, including private investigators whose fields of expertise involved tracking people even if the trail was old and cold. Actually he didn’t have to do much of anything personally except give Jonas’s information to one of those people, then sit back and wait for the answers to drop in his lap.

      Then, if—and it was a huge “if,” considering that Jonas didn’t even know if this Ben Lincoln actually had a granddaughter—if there was such a woman, and if a P.I. could find her, Gray would meet her, spend ten minutes in conversation before contacting his uncle.

      “Mr. Baron?”

      What the old man did with his money was none of his business. All he wanted was to erase this debt. Hell had to be going through life, knowing you had an obligation to Jonas Baron.

      “Mr. Baron. Sir, would you like to see the lunch menu?”

      Gray looked up. The flight attendant, smiling politely, leaned toward him. For the first time since he’d stormed out of his uncle’s library, Gray felt good enough to smile back.

      “Sure,” he said, “why not?”

      Why not, indeed? A couple of days, maybe a week at the most, and he’d be able to tell Jonas to go scratch.

      “Here’s the report on the woman you wanted to find,” he’d say. “And now, uncle, for all I give a damn, you can go straight to hell.”

      It was such a welcome thought that he went right on smiling, even after the flight attendant placed the airline’s version of lunch in front of him.

      * * *

      The next morning Gray phoned Jack Ballard, a P.I. who’d done some good work for him in the past.

      “I can come by on Monday,” Ballard said.

      Gray said it would be better if he could come by right away. Ballard sighed, said he’d be there in about an hour. When he showed up, the men went through a couple of minutes of inconsequential talk before getting down to business. Gray said he’d been asked to do a favor for a client. He told Ballard only as much of the story as necessary, mostly that he wanted him to locate a woman whose only link to his client was through a relationship half a century old, and shoved Jonas’s still-sealed manila envelope across the desk.

      Ballard lifted an eyebrow as he looked at it. “You didn’t open this to see what’s in it?”

      Gray shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the detective. Not me.”

      Ballard grinned, ripped the envelope open and peered inside. “Well, it looks as if there wasn’t all that much to see.”

      Three pieces of paper fluttered onto the surface of Gray’s always-neat desk. One bore notes in what Gray recognized as Jonas’s hand. The other two were black-and-white photographs, the edges torn and yellowed. Ballard reached for the notes; Gray scooped up the pictures and looked at them.

      The first was of two men dressed in suits, though neither man looked as if he belonged in one. They stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders and grinned into the camera. The men were in their thirties or early forties, strong and young. Curious, he turned the photo over. Ben and Jonas, Venezuela 1950. The words were scrawled across the back of the picture, again in his uncle’s handwriting.

      Gray took another look at the photo.

      Yeah, he could see it now. One of the men was definitely Jonas. The mouth, the eyes, the grin…none of that had changed. It was just weird to see him so young. Somehow, though he’d always thought of his uncle as fit and powerful, he’d never imagined him as anything but old. The other man, Ben Lincoln, had lighter hair and sharper features. Except for that, Jonas and he seemed like duplicates, tall and handsome and broad-shouldered, looking into the camera through eyes that said they already owned the world.

      The second photo was of a woman. Gray flipped the picture over. Nora Lincoln, someone had printed on the back. She stood in a grassy square, maybe in a park somewhere, hands planted on slender hips, chin elevated in a posture of what seemed defiance. She was a pretty woman or she would have been, if she’d unbent just a little. Her expression was hard to read. Were her eyes cool? They seemed to be. Her hair was long and light-colored. It looked windblown and maybe in need of taming, but another look at those eyes and Gray figured everything about her had probably needed taming.

      Two powerful, tough-looking men in the prime of life. And a woman who looked as if she’d be a challenge to either of them. Gray felt a stir of interest. What did these people have to do with a sample of ore from a Venezuelan gold mine?

      “Well,” Ballard said, “this sure isn’t much to go on.”

      He handed the handwritten page of notes to Gray. Ben Lincoln, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown, had been married to a woman named Nora sometime around 1950. They’d been divorced early in 1952 and Nora had given birth to a child she’d named Orianna in the summer of that year. Orianna had given birth to a baby girl, too, in 1976 or ‘77. The father was unknown. The child had probably been born somewhere in southern Utah or northern Arizona. That baby girl, if she existed, if all the other information was correct, Jonas had written, would be Ben Lincoln’s granddaughter. But, he’d added, there was no way to be sure. Ben Lincoln had died a long time ago. He’d heard that Nora and Orianna were dead, too.

      Gray turned the page over. The reverse side was blank. “That’s it?”

      “That’s it,” Ballard said, and grinned. “This one’s gonna cost a bundle. I’ll have to hire a bunch of guys to do the legwork. There’ll probably be a couple of dozen leads to check out and the odds are good they’ll all go nowhere long before I can find something usable.” He tapped a pencil against his teeth. “We’re talking six figures here.”

      Gray tossed the paper on the desk, tilted back his chair and folded his hands over his flat belly. “That’s okay, Jack. Just do it and send me the bill.” He smiled tightly. “Don’t worry about the cost.”

      Ballard laughed. “I never do.”

      “Good. My client deserves to pay through the nose.”

      The investigator chuckled as he scooped the photos and the single sheet of information into the manila envelope, then got to his feet.

      “You disappoint me, Gray. Here I thought you defense attorneys were supposed to be protective of your clients.”

      “Nobody needs to protect this one,” Gray said. He rose, too, and came around his desk. “As always, this is confidential, okay?”

      Ballard clapped his hand to his heart. “Man, you wound