Lethal Justice. Fern Michaels

you accuse me of such a dastardly thing, Ted! How dare you! It’s not my fault that you get sloppy sometimes. I’m not your keeper, I can’t oversee your every movement. You forgot in the excitement of the evening. Admit it.”

      “You know what, Maggie, I knew you’d say what you just said. You aren’t the person I thought you were. I think we should go our separate ways. I’d like my key back. Since you never saw fit to give me a key to your pad, I have nothing to give back.”

      She didn’t hear what she just heard, did she? Suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. “You’re dumping me! Because you forgot to put a cassette in your recorder! Well, here you go, hot shot,” Maggie said as she ripped his key off her key ring. She tossed it on the metal desk. “You know what else, you aren’t the person I thought you were either. From now on, get your own coffee and doughnuts in the morning. Don’t call me either.”

      Maggie’s eyes were filling with tears. She turned and ran from the newsroom. God, what if that old curmudgeon, Adele, was wrong?

      Outside in the late afternoon sunshine, Maggie let the tears flow. “He dumped me! He just … he just cast me aside like an old shoe.” She climbed into her car when she realized she’d been screaming and people were staring at her. “Well, screw you, Ted Robinson.”

      Inside the newsroom, Ted opened his backpack and fished around until he found what he was looking for. Two days ago he’d picked the lock on Maggie’s apartment so he could search it. He’d found the tiny cassette in her tampon box. He’d felt like a thief, which he was, when he copied the tape before he stuck the cassette in his pocket. The tape was very poor quality, the voices indistinguishable.

      Ted felt like he was a hundred years old when he trudged his way to his boss’s office. “Can you put this in your safe for now?” He tossed a small sealed yellow envelope across the desk. His step was a little lighter when he walked back to his desk, grabbed his backpack, slipped it on, and left the newsroom.

      Sometimes life was a bitch.

      Maggie let herself into her apartment and was immediately welcomed with sharp barks and wet kisses from Daisy. She reached for the leash, hooked it onto the dog’s collar and took the stairs back down to the first floor. She walked the dog for a full hour before she headed out to the boulevard to pick up some Chinese food for her dinner.

      Back in the apartment, Maggie made a production out of changing her clothes, feeding Daisy, going through her mail, making coffee before she tackled the dinner she really didn’t want. Dumped. Ted had told her to get out of his life. Well, what did she expect. She’d betrayed her partner, the man who’d asked her to marry him. Tears dripped into her shrimp chow mein. Finally, she shoved the cardboard container across the table.

      Swiping at her tears, Maggie headed for the bathroom and her tampon box. Her fingers fumbled around at the bottom until she was able to grasp the tiny cassette. She carried it into the bedroom and slipped it into the mini recorder. She hit Play and waited. And waited. All she could hear were smatterings of words, lots of static, the rain and more static. She opened the recorder and turned the tape over to the other side. All she could hear was a soft whirring sound. Ted had outsmarted her.

      “You bastard! You stinking bastard! You stole my tape!”

      Ted arrived home in a foul mood. Even Mickey and Minnie couldn’t make him smile. He headed straight for the kitchen where he picked up the phone, hit the speed dial, popped a Michelob and said, “Espinosa, Ted Robinson. Look, I need you to take my place tonight. You’re taking the last shuttle to New York to cover the UN thing in the morning. I’m going to fax you the itinerary right now. Just sign in at the ticket counter. Your name is on the roster. What do you mean, why are you going? You’re going because I said you’re going. The old man doesn’t care who goes as long as the story gets covered. I’m senior to your junior. No, no, I don’t owe you anything. It’s your job. Wait for the fax.”

      Ted slugged at his beer as he trooped down the hall to his computer room. He yanked the itinerary out of his backpack and faxed it off to Jesus Espinosa.

      Back in the kitchen, Ted opened the refrigerator, knowing there was nothing in it but orange juice, milk, and three wilted apples. No magic fairy had done the grocery shopping while he was at work. He did, however, have boxed macaroni and cheese. He made two boxes, chowed down, and then fed the hissing, snarling cats. So what if he missed a few food groups. Then he watched the early evening news as he waited for it to get dark.

      At seven-thirty, Ted changed his clothes to an all-black outfit, got in his car and headed for Pinewood. His reporter’s nose had been twitching for two days now. He had to pay attention. The nose twitch, he told himself over and over, had nothing to do with Maggie Spritzer. He wondered if Jack Emery would be proud of him. Jack had warned him early on, dump them before they dump you. That way you get to keep your ego. You get to see her cry. Better she should cry than you, a grown man. Jack just didn’t say how much the betrayal was going to hurt. Smart ass Jack Emery. “I hate your fucking guts, you district attorney. Another thing, you asshole, don’t think for one minute you fooled me out there at that cemetery. I know that was you. You aided and abetted those women. I got you on tape, you son of a bitch.”

      Ted hated it when he talked out loud to himself. What he hated even more was when he answered himself. He continued talking to himself as his car ate up the miles. Before he knew it, he was a mile from the entrance to Pinewood. He parked his car on a wide shoulder of the road, got out and hiked the rest of the way to the security gates that led to the private compound. He was pulling out his night binoculars when he felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck move. He didn’t stop to think; he made a mad dive into the bushes, clamped his hand over his mouth and lay still. Maggie? Charles Martin’s private cops, the ones with the special gold shields? Jack? Maybe a wild animal and maybe none of the above. He lay quietly until he felt something crawl up his leg. A rat? He shook his leg and felt rather than saw something fly to the side. Yes, a rat. God, how he hated vermin.

      Ted listened to the quiet spring night as he crept forward, the binoculars at his eyes. Aha! His twitching nose was right on target. All the ladies appeared to be in residence; even the big rig was there.

      So, the ladies of Pinewood were getting ready to kick some ass. Yee haw!

      Chapter 2

      The ladies of Pinewood were having cocktails on the terrace, much to Myra’s delight. She truly enjoyed seeing “her girls” and watching them interact with one another. These days they were like an extended family. It wasn’t that way in the beginning, though. Back when she’d formed the Sisterhood the young women had been hostile, suspicious, afraid to open up to one another. She hoped she was at least a small part of their blossoming, as she liked to call it.

      The girls were doing what Charles called kibitzing. Myra let her mind drift as she listened to them, to the birds singing in the trees, to Kathryn’s dog Murphy and Alexis’s dog Grady barking and chasing each other around the yard.

      “I bought this racy-looking dress,” Yoko said. “I have nowhere to wear it.”

      Frugal, ever practical Kathryn said, “Then why did you buy it? How much was it? What color?”

      “In case. I’m not telling you how much it was because you’ll say I should have put the money in the bank for a rainy day. I never go anywhere on rainy days. The dress will get ruined in the rain because it’s silk. It’s sky blue.”

      Kathryn grinned. “Forget it. We have a language problem here. You wouldn’t wear the dress on a rainy day because you wouldn’t have bought the dress. Instead of buying the dress you would have put the money in the bank.”

      Yoko looked perplexed. “Then I would have no dress, in case.”

      Alexis jumped into the fray. “Hold on here. Is there a man somewhere in regard to this dress?”

      Yoko tried to look demure. “In a manner of speaking. I was shopping in the Asian market and met a … person there. This person was buying some of the same things I was buying. He looked at me with