the Do Not Disturb card. Actually, I was pretty disturbed when it came to the butterflies in my stomach region doing a maraca rumba.
Sure enough. Ric was watching for me with his arm thrown over Dolly's front seat and an expensively high-lighted blond head of hair sitting in the passenger seat. He was either using Dolly to chauffeur a glam rock 'n' roll dude or ... another woman.
Dog, I thought. Whoops. I'd never known I was the jealous type.
Quicksilver didn't pause in shock. He lofted over Dolly's polished black side into the backseat and arfed loud and sharp right into the nape of the blonde's neck.
That turned her around pronto.
Oh. Ric's mother. Foster mother. The star psychoanalyst and Washington, D.C., professor. Georgetown University and all that jazz.
I raced to the passenger seat. "Dr. Burnside! I must apologize for my dog."
She turned around again to regard his now-grinning face. "My, what big teeth he has. But he also has his mother's eyes," she added wryly. Then she got a good look at my undercover gray contacts. "You certainly can hide your lying eyes, Delilah. Ric's explained the situation to me."
"He shouldn't have. I mean, he shouldn't have dragged you into this, Dr. Burnside."
"I thought I was 'Helena.' Has something changed?" Her eyes were a paler shade of blue than mine, but they narrowed with understanding into the transparency of water. "Ah. Goldilocks is sitting in your chair, Mama Bear."
She pushed the heavy door open and stepped onto the parking lot asphalt. "You sit up front. I'll take the rear."
"But ... the dog."
Ric spoke for the first time. "I suppose he doesn't want to wait and scare the maid?"
"No," I said.
"That's fine," Helena said. "I go for younger men. What is he, three or four? That would be the twenties in human years. Move over, bud. Ladies last. And last."
Quicksilver gave a small whimper of confusion and edged over ... to the middle.
"Like that, is it?" Helena said. She reached into the side door pocket. "These yours, fellah?" She held up the extra-large sunglasses.
Quicksilver bowed his head so she could slip them on his long snout.
"Ric," I said warningly in a low tone as I sat in the passenger seat. Now I knew why dogs growled softly.
"Wait and watch," he said. "You clean up nice too."
So I shrugged. I'd let my hair grow from its TV-reporter neat bob since moving to Vegas, and the ends were waving a bit so I got some blue-black highlights to match my eyes. Which were now hidden, of course. Still, my clipped-back bun had some oomph and the silver familiar had made itself into a three-inch-long piece of vintage Eisenberg Ice rhinestones on my tame navy lapel.
"Where are we having that late lunch?" I asked.
"Closest decent place," he answered. "I'm starved, but on to Mrs. Haliburton first. I want to be hungry when I back her into a corner."
"She so does not deserve us," I said.
Chapter Sixteen
THREE MOLDED-WOOD CHAIRS were now lined up before Mrs. Haliburton's desk, Ric and I flanking Helena Troy Burnside, whose suit was a smashing power red, probably Prada.
Quicksilver was guarding Dolly in the parking lot, but he'd made his druthers clear. He'd rather be intimidating the bureaucrat in the office above.
Mrs. Haliburton shifted on her wheeled desk chair, which squealed like a little boy. She didn't quite glance at anything but the computer screen facing her.
"All the proper authorizations have reached your email address?" Helena inquired.
"Yes," Mrs. Haliburton murmured, her pink face turning fuchsia. She licked pale, dry lips. "From the secretary at the Department of Human Services in Washington, the assistant director of the FBI." She frowned at Ric. "And the lieutenant governor. This is most unprecedented, but I'll download the files to any device you wish, Dr. Burnside."
Helena extended a business card across the desk that Mrs. Haliburton whisked into her custody. "Both addresses?" she inquired.
"I always like a backup, don't you?" Helena replied.
Mrs. Haliburton ignored her while clicking in the e-addresses. She hit enter with the high-handed flare of a concert pianist, totally unlike her tightly wired self.
"I think you will find that this young woman, Delilah Street," she spat out, still addressing her computer screen rather than our party, "will be very sorry indeed to have the contents of these files in anyone else's hands, even hands with so many highly placed connections. I know your specialty, Dr. Burnside, is severely damaged, and damaging, children, but you will have those therapeutic skills sorely tried in this case,