The Case of the Missing Secretary. Diana Palmer

fool. He simply couldn’t live with it. He committed suicide.” Kit shook her head, her eyes never leaving Betsy’s paper-white face. “If I were that woman, I’d choke on my own greed. And I’d deserve to.”

      “None of that has anything to do with Betsy!” Logan said angrily.

      “No, of course not,” Kit replied, smiling at him. “Did I say that it had?”

      “It’s all right, Logan,” Betsy said, having regained her composure if not her color. “You and I have so much, and poor Kit has nothing. Not even a man’s love.”

      Touché, Kit thought. Betsy gave her a smile that would have curled leather.

      “Where can we drop you, dear?” Betsy purred.

      “I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way. I’ll just pop onto a bus downstairs. Do have a lovely lunch. Ta, ta.” Kit smiled and waltzed to the staircase.

      “Morris, come back here…!”

      She ignored the demand and kept going. She was shaking inside with rage at Betsy’s blatant playacting. The woman was as guilty as sin and felt no remorse at all. She was going to cut Logan up just the way she’d cut up Kingsley. And how was Kit going to stop her? In Logan’s eyes, Betsy could do no wrong. But there had to be a way to stop Betsy and save him in time!

      She worried the question all the way back to the office, where she had to explain to Dane what had happened.

      “I’m sorry,” Dane apologized when he could finally stop laughing. “But that’s such a dandy little tale….”

      “It’s the truth!” Kit threw up her hands. “He’s my nemesis, I tell you! And one of his very own employees—his third cousin, in fact!—offered me an electrical device and said she’d swear I was innocent if I’d just bump him off for them!”

      “Kit, are you sure you’ve done the right thing to leave an office like that?” he asked her. “Logan is never going to be the same again.”

      “Good. I hope Margo gets him pregnant.”

      “Stop that!” He leaned forward and picked up a notepad, whipping off a sheet. “Well, I can solve your problems for a day or so. Take this.”

      “What is it?” she murmured, reading a street address.

      “Emmett’s address. Get on the next flight to San Antonio and follow these directions. They should lead you right to Tansy Deverell.”

      “Hallelujah! I’ll kidnap her and send Logan a ransom note….”

      “Not while you’re on my payroll, please.”

      “It was just a thought.” She folded the note. “I’m sorry about losing the lady I was trailing for you.”

      “That was hardly your fault. It’s okay.”

      She shrugged, fingering the note. “I seem to get in deeper all the time. I had a neighbor who Betsy Corley took for everything he had.” She looked up. “She’ll do that to Logan, you know. He’s so besotted he won’t believe a bad thing about her. She’ll lead him right to the slaughter and make him think he’s heaven-bound. Just like she did poor old Bill.”

      “You don’t give Logan credit for having much sense, do you?” he asked gently.

      She shrugged. “How can I? After all, he sacrificed three years of loyal, slavish devotion and adoration over a cup of spilled coffee, didn’t he?”

      “He was an idiot there,” Dane had to agree. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough deal. Maybe this job will open new doors for you.”

      She smiled. “Maybe it will. Do you know any more about this address besides its location?”

      “Just that Tansy’s nephew is something of a hell-raiser. He and Tansy should get along just fine.”

      “Another Chris,” she said, shaking her head.

      “Well…not exactly,” he replied slowly. “Never mind, just go out there and find out. And, if you get in trouble or have any problems, any at all, just phone here and I’ll demand that you come right home to work on another case. Okay?”

      That sounded very much as if he were keeping something from her. She wondered what. Her eyebrows lifted. “Now I’m intrigued.”

      “You will be. That’s a promise.” He chuckled. “From what we ferreted out, intrigued is an understatement for what most people think when they meet Emmett.”

      She put a hand on her hip. “Emmett?”

      “Well, most people don’t call him that if they want to stay out of emergency rooms. Better make it Mr. Deverell until you know him.”

      “Should I invest in one of those electrical devices…?”

      “Doris will have your ticket.”

      “Yes, sir.” She saluted and walked out. Sure enough, Doris was waving it at her when she approached. Adams was nearby, grinning.

      “Don’t get involved with the natives,” Doris told her. “Those San Antonio men are tornadoes when you get them wound up.”

      “I’ll try to remember that. See you when I can. Goodbye, Adams,” she added, waving at him and smiling.

      Adams seemed to gain height and masculine beauty as he grinned back.

      “Hands off,” Doris whispered. “He’s all mine.”

      She said it just loud enough that Adams could hear it, which made his smile even broader. “Good luck,” she whispered back to Doris. And with a wave of her hand, she went to get the necessary things out of her desk before she left for her trip.

      San Antonio was big. It boasted a million in population and some of the most interesting things to see and do in the country, including the Alamo and the Paseo Del Rio.

      Before she went searching for the address and directions in her purse, she checked into the nearest hotel and took time to get a bite of lunch and rest.

      Then she got into her rental car and set out for the address Dane had given her.

      It was on the southeastern side of town, and not in a subdivision. In fact, the address was something of a ranch, complete with oil wells pumping in the pastures and white fences all around. Red-coated cattle grazed in thickets of mesquite, past flatland that had patches of prickly pear cactus to hallmark it.

      She looked at the address a second time to be sure, but there it was. No one had ever said that the Deverells had a cattle-raising relative out here in Texas.

      As she drove across the cattle grate and down the long, winding dirt driveway to the elegant two-story Victorian house in the distance, she was suddenly assailed by three war-painted buckskin-clad midgets with bows and arrows and chicken-feather warbonnets.

      “Hold it right there, palefacette,” one of them drawled “You’re our captive.”

      She shouldn’t have stopped, she supposed, but they’d looked so cute! Now they looked menacing and ferocious—if you could call grammar-school kids dangerous.

      They all looked like boys, but one of them turned out to be a girl. They piled into the backseat and commanded Kit to drive.

      “We’re the Deverell gang,” the spokesperson said. “I’m Guy. That’s Polk. She’s Amy.”

      “Yes, we’re the reason our daddy can’t get married.” Polk piped up. “We’re savages, like our lus…illl…us…”

      “Illustrious,” Amy said for him.

      “Thanks! Illustrious ancestors, that is,” Polk continued.

      “They were Comanches!” Amy whispered.

      “One of them, Amy, only one,” Polk muttered,