Windfall

I felt a wave of cold rush over me, and in its backwash came another one of heat, burning down from the top of my head and taking up residence somewhere in my gullet. In the memo, Paul practically accused me of collusion with two other Wardens—one of them Bad Bob—in carrying out a scheme to steer tropical storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes toward certain areas of the coastline, where an outfit named Paradise Kingdom seemed to be making a business of building expensive resorts and condominiums, only to have them destroyed before opening by bad weather.

For the insurance money.

The score so far: storms four, ParadiseKingdom zero. They’d never actually opened a single property.

Paradise Kingdom. I remembered that name, and it came back with a jolt… the drive out along the coast. A dead dad and kids. Tornadoes twisting the under-construction hotel to wreckage.

I flipped pages. The photos showed shoddy construction, with detailed notes.

Substandard parts. Bad wiring. Reused materials. If the buildings had ever actually opened, they’d have been deathtraps—but the insurance records showed payouts as if the construction had been to the finest possible standards.

I’d never even heard of ParadiseKingdom, but I was starting to shake with fury and a little bit of fear.

The folder was snatched out of my hands and slapped shut. John frowned at me, handed it to Ella, who mutely began straightening up the papers inside it.

“Let me guess,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to see that.” Except Ella must have thought differently; she’d pointedly ignored the folder lying all by itself, and left it to me to pick up.

“You know I can’t talk to you about it.”

“Don’t I have the right to at least try to clear my name?”

“Nobody’s blackened your name,” he said, and crossed his arms. He looked tired.

There was more gray in his hair than I remembered. “Look, yes, there’s talk; there has been talk ever since Bad Bob died. Lots of people think you killed him to shut him up.”

“It was self-defense!” I practically yelled it. He nodded, arms folded; the body language of rejection. “Dammit, John, don’t you believe me? You knew that old bastard! He was a corrupt, scary old man—”

“He was a legend,” John said softly. “You killed a legend. You have to understand that no matter what he was, what bad things he did, nobody’s going to remember that now. What they remember are his accomplishments, not his flaws.”

He stuck a demon down my throat! I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. And it didn’t matter. John was right, Bad Bob was an untouchable saint, and I was the evil, scheming bitch who’d slaughtered a helpless old guy in his own home. No doubt the ParadiseKingdom scheme had been all his; it had all the hallmarks of his style. He’d probably involved a few other Wardens in it, for profit, but he hadn’t included me. He’d known that I would have busted him.

I could practically hear him laughing, out there in hell. I hoped it was extra hot and he was drinking Tabasco sauce to cool off.

“I don’t know anything about this,” I said. John gave me a fu

“John can’t say anything about this,” Ella said, “but I’ve only got a couple of years to retirement; I couldn’t give a shit what the Wardens do to me. Petal, claiming ignorance about ParadiseKingdom isn’t going to do you any good. You’d better come up with another story, fast.”

“What? Why?”

She straightened more papers in my file, reached for a bracket, and pushed it through the holes of the folder. Began systematically attaching reports to it.

“ParadiseKingdom’s owned by your boss, Marvin McLarty. Marvelous Marvin. You know, the ‘weatherman.’ ” She paused to give it air quotes and an eyeroll. “So you can’t exactly claim that you don’t have a co

That bastard. That snake. That… horny, no-good little poodle! I couldn’t believe it. He was too stupid to be venal. Right? Marvelous Marvin, investing in property fraud schemes with Wardens? That meant he knew about them, in the first place… and she was right, I’d sent in a resume, and Marvin had hired me after giving me one look. I’d thought it was, well, for the cheesecake value, and I’m sure that made the deal sweeter for him. But it must have been something more.

Somebody must have told him to do it. Somebody, maybe, who wanted a convenient scapegoat if things got scary for them. Because on paper, I damn sure looked guilty.

If Marvin was involved with Bad Bob, that explained a lot. His percent accuracy rate, for one thing, which would have been a source of amusement to somebody like Bad Bob. He’d have been able to pull it off, too, without attracting Warden notice. Bad Bob’s rating had been far higher than John Foster’s, and besides, he was a legend. Who questioned a legend?

Bad Bob Biringanine had been willing to sell his ethics and reputation for a nice house, a tidy bank account, and all the comforts of organized crime. But … Marvelous Marvin? Who could take him seriously as a bad guy? And maybe that was precisely the point.

Ella was watching me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t have one.

“Don’t you believe I’m i

“Of course I do, honey. Don’t be ridiculous!” I saw her eyes stay fixed and steady on me, in a way that only happens when the answer is a flat-out lie.

“Even if you did do it, hell, the whole organization’s falling apart. It’s pretty much every woman for herself right now.” She kept staring at me.

And I realized something fairly significant. There was still weather manipulation going on, even with Bad Bob dead. If I took myself out of the equation, there was a pretty limited pool of suspects.

Not John. I shifted my stare to him, watching the way he talked with his Dji

Carol Shearer, whom I hadn’t known well, might have been in it, but I’d never know, would I? Because she was dead, killed in a car accident.

If it hadn’t been Carol…

Why was Ella still looking at me?

“Does John know?” I asked her.

“About… ?”

“Marvin.”

“Oh, sure. That’s why he won’t talk to you. It’s killing him, you know; he wants to believe in you, but… ah, hell, honey, he’s an idealist. You know how John can get. No sense of the real world.”

I decided to jump in the alligator pond. “Well,” I said, lowering my voice to a just-us-girls whisper, “confidentially, I wasn’t in on it. But you know that, right? I mean, Bad Bob told me about it that morning, and I was thinking it over, but I had no idea it was still going on. It is still going on, though. Right?”

She blinked and said, “You don’t think I have anything to do with it, do you?”

I raised my eyebrows.

And, after a split second, she lowered her eyelids and whispered, “Not while he’s here.”

I’m glad I wasn’t quite looking at her; she probably would have read the heartbreak in my eyes. But she didn’t notice. She turned away and finished putting the papers of my file in order, and bent the brackets to hold everything inside, nice and neat. I noticed there were some papers she hadn’t put back. She shifted the stack in my direction with an unmistakable take-them nod.

I felt sick, but managed to hold on to my smile. I collected the papers and stuck them into my purse, trying to look casual about it. Ella watched me with a strange little smile, then winked and turned away to grub in folders again.