Father Fever. Muriel Jensen

      Prologue

      February

      “I feel like someone in a crowd of suspects,” Alexis Ames said to her sister Athena, “in the last scene of a murder mystery where the detective gathers everyone into a room and says, ‘I’ve called you all here…”’

      Athena smiled at Alexis’s gravelly voiced imitation of a fictional detective. But as she looked around at the austere surroundings in the small law firm’s conference room, she couldn’t make the same connection.

      They sat at a long, glass-topped table in a pearl-gray room whose color seemed to bring the gunmetal Oregon winter sky right indoors. Or maybe it was Aunt Sadie’s death that made the world a dull, monochromatic place.

      Athena shook her head. “Those things usually take place aboard a glamorous yacht, or in a warm library with a fireplace and antique furniture.” Here there weren’t even draperies on the windows, only chic vertical blinds in the same cold shade.

      “And there are only three of us,” Augusta, the third sister, argued in a hushed tone. “Hardly a crowd.”

      Alexis sighed. “I know, I know. And there hasn’t even been a murder. Just a…death. Remember how Aunt Sadie always used to say she wanted to die in bed?”

      Athena couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory. “Yes,” she replied. “And then she’d add, ‘Mel Gibson’s bed.”’

      They laughed together for a moment, the first time they’d laughed since meeting at the airport hotel yesterday afternoon.

      “I know it’s small comfort,” Alexis said, “but she died doing what she loved. Hawaii was her favorite place in the world. She loved relaxing in Lahaina and taking a plane to Oahu to go shopping for us.”

      “Yeah.” Athena was unable to find comfort in anything. A woman in the prime of her maturity at just over sixty should not be entombed in the wreck of a tiny commuter plane at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

      Sadie Richmond, long retired from a career as a Broadway dancer, had always provided the love, compassion and understanding that her sister—their mother—was incapable of giving. Athena and her sisters had spent spring breaks and summer vacations at her place on the beach where she encouraged them to explore their feelings, their talents and their hopes for the future.

      “I can’t believe we’ll never see her again,” Augusta whispered. She was the sensitive one who taught third grade and was in tune with her students. She wore an ankle-length flowered dress and strappy sandals. Her long red hair was piled into a loose bundle, tendrils spilling from her temples and the nape of her neck.

      Alexis patted Augusta’s knee. “I’ll paint her portrait for you,” she promised, then smiled ruefully, “if I ever recover my skills.” Alexis was an artist and, if she was to be believed at the moment, an artist who could no longer paint. But she looked the part in a silky white blouse with billowing sleeves, and black pants and boots. Her hair, the dark-flame shade of red they all shared, fell to the middle of her back in ripples and waves. She wore no bangs and a frown now marred her forehead.

      “It’s just a slump and you’ll get over it. No one can be brilliant all the time.” Athena spoke with the same conviction she used in the courtroom. She was the practical one, the one who tried to have the answers.

      Alexis gave her a look that said as clearly as words, A lot you know. You don’t have an artistic bone in your body. Her eyes swept over Athena’s blue suit and simple white blouse, over her hair caught in a thick knot at the back of her neck and added silently, Just look at the way you dress.

      Athena didn’t bother to argue. Her professional mode of dress helped her hold her own in negotiations and litigations dominated by men. It was an unfortunate truth that women who dressed with any style in the courtroom were often accused of doing so to distract or confuse.

      She hadn’t expected the severe suits to invade her private life as well, but now that she’d opened her own office, she had very little time for one anyway. And what private time she did have was spent in the company of other lawyers. However unconsciously, the sexless suit seemed to have become who she was.

      As she studied her sisters, beautiful and curvaceous and alight with the gentle qualities of womanhood, she compared their attributes and appearance with her own steely determination to succeed. She felt as though they had acquired the womanliness she’d always admired in Sadie.

      She’d wanted to be a lawyer even as a child, but she hadn’t imagined that work would be the only thing in her life.

      “Whoa!” Alexis whispered as a balding, mustachioed man pushed open the door. “Heads up! It’s Poirot!”

      The man’s mustache was more of a simple brush than Poirot’s elaborate handlebar affair, but he was dark and small and close enough in appearance to the fictional detective for them to appreciate the whimsy. Athena was grateful for the light moment considering their sad purpose in being here.

      The man walked into the room with a sheaf of papers and stood across the table from the sisters as he introduced himself.

      “Good afternoon,” he said in slightly accented English that only served to heighten the Poirot effect. “Welcome to Portland. I’m…”

      Then he seemed to forget who he was as his eyes went from Alexis to Athena, back to Alexis, on to Augusta, widening with every pass. “I’m, ah…”

      “Bernard Pineau,” Athena said, taking charge. She’d been born nineteen minutes before Alexis, and thirty-seven minutes before Augusta. She’d always thought of herself as the eldest. “You’re Bernard Pineau. Didn’t Aunt Sadie tell you we’re identical triplets?”

      “She did, yes,” he replied with a self-conscious laugh. “But knowing that and seeing it for oneself are two very different things. Please, pardon me for staring.”

      Athena nodded. As children, she and her sisters had grown accustomed to the gasps and stares their identical appearances created. But now with careers on opposite coasts and Alexis on another continent, that seldom happened. There were moments when she missed it.

      Athena introduced herself, then Lex and Gusty.

      Pineau shook hands across the table and took his chair.

      “You must be the lawyer from Washington, D.C.,” Pineau guessed, focusing on Athena. She wouldn’t have cared that he’d guessed, except that she knew he’d done it after a glance at her suit jacket—all that was visible above the table. It made her feel morose.

      “Sadie was very proud of you,” he added sincerely.

      Resentment fell away and she experienced a moment’s comfort. “Thank you.”

      He studied the other two women, then smiled at Alexis. “You have the studio in Rome?”

      Alexis nodded. “I do.”

      “I have your Madonna 4 in my study at home,” he said. “Sadie gave it to me for my birthday. My wife and I treasure it.”

      Alexis was surprised. “I’m glad. Aunt Sadie was my self-appointed PR person and one-man sales force.”

      “She was.” He turned to Augusta.

      “I’m the teacher,” she said. “In Pansy Junction, California. Third grade. I love it.”

      He smiled indulgently at her. Augusta always inspired smiles.

      Then he folded his hands atop the documents he’d brought with him and asked solicitously, “Would you like coffee before we begin?”

      Three heads shook.

      “We’ve