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"And you read her mind and quickly realized work wasn't the problem," Jake suggested.
"I realized it wasn't the only problem." Marguerite corrected. "She was taking on too many commissions and working too hard . . . at Rodolfo's insistence. She's much sought after with clients from all over the world. She usually has to refuse a good many of them, or book them years in advance she is so busy, but Rodolfo was insisting she could do more and should accept them all. He insisted she should strike while the iron was hot, the commissions might dry up one day and she should make all the money she could before that happened. He had her working around the clock . . . and all the while he wasn't working at all."
"Nice," Jake murmured.
"Yes, well, while that was helping to sap her energy, the real problem that she was trying to hide was that he was terribly controlling and hyper critical. While he was insisting she should do all these commissions, he would then complain that she spent no time with him. He was also tearing at her self-esteem and independence and basically making her miserable. By the time she came to Toronto, he had demoralized her to the point that I don't think she could have left him on her own, so . . ." She paused and glanced down with a sigh and then admitted guiltily, "I gave her a mental nudge to make her leave him."
"Ah," Jake murmured. It was all he could say. He'd never thought much of the way immortals tended to control the minds of mortals and make them do things they might not otherwise have done. The truth was, he didn't like it. But in this instance, Marguerite's heart had been in the right place at least.
"Here we are."
Jake glanced to the side and sat back to get out of the way as their waitress arrived with their meals.
"Thank you," he murmured as she set his plate in front of him.
"You're more than welcome," she said brightly, beamed at him and then slipped away.
They were both silent for a moment as they tasted their food. As Jake had expected, his steak was amazing. But then it always was. It was the first thing he'd tried here and the last. He tended to stick with things when he liked them. Although, glancing at Marguerite's quail, he now wondered if he shouldn't try some of the other dishes here. It looked delicious too.
"It is delicious," she assured him, and Jake grimaced, aware that she was reading his mind. While he too was immortal now, it was a new state for him and he knew most older immortals could read him as easily as if he were mortal.
"Sorry," she muttered.
He shrugged with a wry smile. Marguerite was immortal, she could and would read the minds of mortals and the young immortals that she could. It was second nature. Swallowing the steak in his mouth, he asked, "So you prodded this Nicole and she left her Rodolfo?"
Marguerite nodded as she took a sip of her water, and then said, "It all seemed good at first. She left him and started divorce proceedings. She also started to see a counselor to try to undo the damage he'd done." Marguerite smiled. "It's working, Nicole's becoming the happy, strong young woman she was before the marriage again."
"But?" Jake prompted. If everything were going so rosy, Marguerite wouldn't need his help.
"But there have been some incidents," Marguerite said on a sigh, cutting viciously into her quail.
"Incidents?" Jake queried.
"Three gas explosions narrowly avoided."
His eyebrows rose. "You think Rodolfo's trying to kill her?"
Marguerite's mouth tightened and rather than answer outright, she said, "He's going after her money, hard. He's claiming he left his country, friends, family etc. to marry her and move to Canada and she's now abandoning him. No one's buying it," she added grimly. "He was actually let go before the marriage and suggested the move back to Canada himself. Besides, Nicole had arranged interviews for him with companies in his field here before he even landed in Canada. He refused to go, though, claiming he wanted to switch fields. But then he didn't look for work in any field, but lived off of her."
Marguerite shook her head with disgust. "Her lawyer doesn't think he'll get much at all. However, if she dies before the divorce is final . . ."
"He gets it all," Jake finished for her and she nodded solemnly. He was silent for a moment and then guessed, "And you feel guilty because you are the one who nudged her into leaving him."
She nodded again and then said firmly, "I am not sorry I did it. As I say, she's regaining her self-esteem and returning to the cheerful, strong woman she was before the marriage. She's much happier. But--"
"But she's also under threat now, which she wouldn't have been had you not interfered," he suggested quietly and Marguerite sighed and nodded again.
Jake considered her briefly as she took a bite of her quail and then said, "I'm surprised you haven't just taken care of the husband yourself. Wiped his mind and sent him back to Europe or something."
Marguerite bit her lip and then grimaced and admitted, "That's why I'm in Ottawa. Julius thinks I came to go over photos for the portrait Nicole's doing of Christian and Carolyn, and so does she, but really I intended to take care of Rodolfo and send him back to Europe. Unfortunately, I can't locate him. Nicole moved out and left him the house at first, the understanding being that she pay the bills and he live there and act as caretaker until it sold . . . at which point they would split the proceeds. But he was apparently enjoying the free rent and making sure it wouldn't sell, so she had to buy him out of the house. Nicole has no idea where he moved to after that."
Marguerite scowled and shook her head. "I thought, no problem, I'd get Rodolfo's address from his divorce lawyer. So I got his name from Nicole and then paid him a visit, but even his divorce lawyer doesn't know Rodolfo's actual address. His contact with him is a P.O. Box and a cell phone number that is still registered to the marital house address." She scowled. "It's like he's hiding out. Nicole says when she asked him where he'd moved to, he refused to say, joking that she might send a hitman after him."
Jake's eyebrows rose. He was a firm believer in that old saying, a skunk smells it's own hole first. In this case, Rodolfo's thinking she might try to bump him off suggested he was thinking that way himself. He probably was trying to inherit rather than divorce, but . . . "Why me?"
Marguerite paused with a forkful of rutabaga halfway to her mouth, and cast him an uncertain look. "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean, why me?" he repeated. "Why has Nicole not hired a company for protection? And why are you coming to me? I work for an agency, I don't run it, Marguerite."
"Oh, yes, I see."
She slid the rutabaga into her mouth and chewed, her expression thoughtful and Jake guessed she was gathering her thoughts, so turned his attention to his own meal, surprised to find that he'd eaten half of it while they'd talked. That was a damned shame. The steak was good enough it should be savored, not eaten absently and without really tasting it while you were distracted by conversation. He took a bite of steak now, savoring the delicious flavors.
"Well," Marguerite said finally, "The problem is that Nicole is in total denial and refuses to believe she's under threat."
His eyebrows rose and he swallowed before saying, "This doesn't sound like something easy to deny. You did say there were three narrowly escaped explosions."
"Yes." She set her fork down, obviously preparing for a long explanation, and said, "Nicole bought Rodolfo out of the house last month and moved back in herself. Pierina came up to help her unpack. She says they were sitting talking after the move, exhausted and achy and Pierina suggested a glass of wine and a dip in the hot tub would be nice. So, they went to open the sliding glass doors to check and be sure that the hot tub was on, but couldn't get the door open. Wood was jammed in the door that was keeping it from opening."
"Many people do that to prevent thieves breaking in," Jake commented with a shrug.
"The house is about twenty-five years old, and so are the sliding glass doors. They're a reverse set. The glass door that opens is outside the screen, and the wood was jammed in the track outside," Margueri
te said dryly. "A thief could have plucked it out. It was stopping the door from opening from the inside."
"Oh," he said quietly.
Marguerite nodded. "So they went around to her studio to go out that way and it was the same thing. Every sliding glass door on the main floor of the house was blocked shut from the outside."
"Interesting," Jake murmured.
Marguerite nodded. "Pierina says they just thought Rodolfo was an idiot at that point and actually laughed about it."
"But something changed their minds?" Jake guessed.
