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asking for a handout.”
    Now Ali was really confused. “Billy?” she interjected. “I thought you just told me he was dead.”
    “Bill Junior is dead,” Arabella replied. “Billy is his son, my nephew, and a chip off the old block if ever there was one. Every bit as contemptible as his father and his grandfather. DNA is spooky that way, don’t you think? I wonder if the human genome project is looking into that? Billy’s my nephew, but until he showed up Sunday afternoon, I hadn’t ever laid eyes on him. Looks just like his father. That gave me a bit of a shock.”
    “How old is he?” Ali asked.
    “Billy? Late fifties.”
    “And you’d never met him before?”
    “Never.”
    “So why did he look you up after all this time?”
    “Money,” Arabella answered. “He’s gone through what my father left him. He came here under the mistaken impression that I still had loads of Mother’s money, and that I’d be happy to give him some of that, too. It turns out, of course, that Mother’s money is pretty much gone, and I wouldn’t give him any of it even if it wasn’t. When I told him he wasn’t getting a dime’s worth of what I had left, things went from bad to worse.”
    “How so?” Ali asked.
    “He threatened me.”
    “With bodily harm?”
    “It sounded like bodily harm to me. He said that someone in my condition, whatever that is, shouldn’t be left living on my own with only an aging butler to look after me. I told him Mr. Brooks is quite capable—he’s only seventy-six by the way—and we’re managing quite nicely. Have been for years. At which point Billy ran his finger across the table and said the place could use some dusting—the arrogant twit. Who cares about dusting anyway?”
    Ali immediately regretted her own critical thoughts about how things were slipping a bit in the housekeeping department. She said nothing.
    Arabella continued. “He went on to tell me that if I was going to insist on staying in this big, drafty old house, I should let him do a reverse mortgage on the place so I could hire some adequate help and do some fix-up kinds of repairs. That was when I told him I wasn’t interested and he could put his reverse mortgage scheme where the sun don’t shine.”
    Ali managed to suppress a smile. “What happened then?”
    Arabella sighed. “That’s when the nicey-nice long-lost nephew act ended. The gloves came off, and he went downright ballistic. I’m afraid having a dreadful temper is DNA-related, too. His father was the same way. Billy came right out and told me that if I refused to listen to reason and do what he said, he’d go to court to have me declared incompetent. He said that once that happened he’d see to it that I was locked away in one of those dreadful assisted living places.”
    She shivered slightly and rubbed the tops of her arms as though a chill draft had blown across her shoulders. “I wouldn’t last a week in one of those,” she added.
    “Wait a minute,” Ali objected. “You’re anything but incompetent.”
    Arabella smiled a little sadly. “Thank you for saying that,” she said.
    “I didn’t just say it; I mean it!” Ali declared. “It sounds to me as though Billy was trying to blackmail you, and blackmail happens to be illegal. Did you call the cops?”
    “No,” Arabella answered.
    “Why not?”
    “Because, if I did, I’m sure he’d convince them that, as my last living blood relative, he was just watching out for my best interests, that he was looking after his dotty old auntie.”
    “People who know you would never believe that,” Ali said.
    “They might,” Arabella allowed. “Billy came off as a really slick operator. Probably a good salesman as well. If he takes me to court, he seems entirely capable of convincing some unsuspecting family court judge that I’m a complete nutcase—which I am on occasion, I’m told. And it would be that much easier if he brought up my past, which, of course, he’s threatening to