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just it; he won’t tell me. Let’s go. I don’t want to end up at the Landon house too late. They have guard dogs. I don’t care to tangle with a Rottweiler. I’ve had a bad enough week.”
    Clarence laughed.
     
    * * *
     
     
    Clarence grumbled about my choice in music on the way to Olivia’s house. “Is there a reason your music only fits into three categories?”
    Offended, I countered, “What do you mean? There’s variety.”
    He cycled through the playlist and stopped on a Sarah McLachlan song. He rolled his eyes. “All the artists on here are women who are either angry, Canadians, or lesbians. Hell, you have a few that fit all three categories on a Venn diagram.”
    “Will you stop picking on my music? I have a lot of classical and show tunes on there too.”
    Clarence laughed. “That makes you any less lame how? Classical and show tunes? I get enough of that at work. I like something I can shake my ass to.” Clarence shimmied in his seat to a fake beat. “Tell you what, I’ll stop picking on your music if you tell me why Peters came by today.” He drummed his fingers on my window, waiting.
    “Take your fingers off the glass, unless you’re planning on cleaning it.” I glanced in his direction. “I shouldn’t tell you anything after picking on my music, but…he came by the office today to drop off a check from Overton. Thank you for that, I owe you big time…fifty thousand! Whatever you said convinced him.”
    “That is great news. That puts us in a great place. But it didn’t sound like you two were celebrating my fabulous success. Spill it. What in the hell were you two yelling about?”
    I grumbled. “He accused me of acting like a tart to get money out of Willoughby. He’s such a fucking charmer. He even went as far as propositioning me to prove a point, but not before calling me a whore.”
    “Wait, isn’t that exactly what you were doing?”
    “Fuck you, Clarence.”
    He laughed. “I have to admit, that guy has balls.” A long speculative silence followed his words.
    “Clarence!” The last thing I needed was him fantasizing about Cyril too.
    “What? I can only imagine…”
    I shot him an admonishing look, and then quickly focused back on the road.
    We pulled up to the gated entrance at the beginning of the long, winding driveway to Olivia Landon’s house.
    I reached out and pressed the button on the call box. Max, the Landons’s driver, answered.
    “Max, it’s Linden. Is Olivia home?”
    “No, I’m sorry. Her calendar says she was supposed to be with you.”
    I flashed a worried look at Clarence and leaned a little farther to the window. “I haven’t seen her since Friday. Did she come home?”
    “No. Mr. Landon got called out of town on Friday and left the performance early. He called today looking for her and told me she might be staying with you. Oh dear…”
    I put the car in reverse, but kept my foot on the brake. “Mr. Landon called, but I haven’t seen Olivia. If you hear anything, call me immediately. You have my number, right?”
    The speaker crackled. “Yes.”
    “Good. If Mr. Landon calls you, let him know that we’ll have her call right away, when we find her. I’m going back to the office to see if she left me a note.”
    My tires squealed as I peeled out in the loose asphalt at the side of the road.
    For the first few minutes of the drive, Clarence was silent. “When was the last time you saw him?”
    “Ten years ago, on December twenty-first.” Fuck it . I was too worried about Olivia to put up defenses against Clarence’s insistent curiosity.
    “That’s specific. What happened? Where’d he go?”
    “You could say…Cyril made a rather dramatic exit from my life and I never expected to see him again.” I rolled my neck, easing the tension that seized my muscles.
    “Still doesn’t explain why after ten years he’d care about how you behaved?”
    “I have no idea either.” Even I heard the defeat in my voice.
    “So, you really