Free The Edge of Ruin by Melinda Snodgrass Page B

and saved the message. And then I entered the number in my address book.

NINE
    P amela had pulled a chair around behind the broad granite desk so she could sit next to her father. They were studying the webs of interlocking contracts between Lumina Enterprises and a surprising variety of subsidiary companies. Pamela’s specialty was criminal procedure and constitutional law, so she wasn’t all that familiar with contract law—at least as played at this level—but even lacking the background she was impressed. It was almost impossible for someone to use a subsidiary and reach through to Lumina proper.
    After a glance at her father’s profile Pamela realized her instincts were correct. Her father’s expression held grudging respect, and it wasn’t easy to earn that. He had been a partner at one of Rhode Island’s most prestigious white-shoe law firms, and Pamela had hoped to join him there when she finished law school.
    But by the time she was done and had passed the bar, he had been appointed to the federal bench. She opted not to court the inevitable comparison, and so had turned down an offer from the firm. Instead she’d gone to the public defender’s office. She liked litigating, and she had earned a fearsome reputation as the PD most DAs wanted to avoid. Her father had been pleased.
    She knew that Richard was, supposedly, studying the same information upstairs. Someone would probably have to explain it to him. It still gave her an odd shiver of pleasure that she had been the one to take the accouterments of his life as a policeman down to APD headquarters. She had ignored Weber’s coldness; she and her father were right.
    The elaborately carved double doors swung open, and Jeannette stepped into the office. The judge looked up and pulled off his glasses inquiringly. Pamela resented the woman’s intrusion without buzzing first to see if it was convenient.
    “Our company’s COO has arrived, sir. Since Mr. Oort … Richard, is upstairs I’ll—”
    “No,” her father said. “I want to talk to him first. Give me a minute and then send him in.”
    “I’m a her, actually,” said a woman, who stepped around Jeannette and walked toward the desk. She was dressed in a rather wrinkled rose wool skirt, an eighteenth-century-inspired matching coat, an ivory cashmere sweater with a coral necklace, and high-heeled brown boots. She carried an expensive briefcase in one hand and a newspaper in the other. She paused to glance down at the picture on the front page, then looked up and studied the judge critically.
    “No, you are not, in fact, the man who runs this company.” She had a German accent, and she sounded snotty. She turned back to Jeannette. Pamela noted that her shoulder-length brown hair had been expertly highlighted. “So, I would like to see my employer now.”
    Pamela could feel her face going stiff.
    “Judge Oort is Richard’s father. I’d start with him.” There was a pause, and then Jeannette added, “If I were you.” Pamela caught the significant look the two women exchanged.
    Richard needs to fire this woman. She acts like
she
runs the company.
    “Fine.
Gut
.”
    Jeannette withdrew and closed the doors behind her.
    Her father stood and extended his hand. “Perhaps I was out of line, but my son is convalescing.”
    “Convalescing? Why? What has happened?” She looked again at the paper that showed the bruising on Richard’s face. “Is it this? Was he hurt more badly than reports indicated?”
    Pamela couldn’t help but smile at the little throat-clearing her father made, and the way it had the COO’s attention instantly focused on him.
    “You are?” her father asked.
    The woman hurried to the desk and reached across. As they shook hands she said, “Dagmar Reitlingen.” Something niggled at the back of Pamela’s mind, but when she reached for the elusive memory it went skittering away.
    “And I am Robert Oort, and this is my daughter, Pamela.”
    “Pleased to meet