Triple Pursuit Read Online Free Page A

knee.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œHe left the office. He left her sitting there. It was a full minute before she strutted off to her own office.”
    This was sweet indeed for Colleen. Still, a rival dispersed is not a victory won. Her relationship to Mario settled into that of co-workers. Colleen was no longer at the disposal of the other lawyers; it came to be understood that as a paralegal, she was permanently assigned to Mr. Liberati. Simply on a professional basis, he was a joy to work with. He had an unerring sense of what was relevant and irrelevant in a case, and nothing stimulated him so much as an opponent with a battery of lawyers and limitless supplies of money to sustain those lawyers. Given the prestige of Mallard and Bill, he was not often cast in the role of underdog, but his suit against a major pharmaceutical firm for selling a supposedly surefire way to quit smoking, was David against Goliath.
    â€œThe judgments against the tobacco companies gave these people a license to steal.” Mario’s client was suing because he had not quit
smoking after using the product longer than the minimal period during which his desire for tobacco was supposed to have faded away.
    â€œDoes he still smoke?” The client, Harrison, a burly little man, bald, both his arms and legs bowed as he stood, had never asked to smoke during the depositions.
    â€œNo, he quit.”
    â€œBut …”
    â€œThere’s no relation. It was months afterward. He went on retreat and made a novena to Saint Anthony of Padua. He hasn’t smoked since.”
    â€œSaint Anthony!”
    â€œHaven’t you heard of him?”
    â€œOf course.” Colleen was about to tell him that her special devotion was to Saint Anne; and then she did—why not?
    â€œI was stationed at Santa Ana when I was in the Marines.”
    â€œSanta Ana,” she repeated. “What a coincidence.”
    The pharmaceutical company settled out of court. Mario was more than ever the rising star in the firmament of Mallard and Bill. He and Colleen had their private celebration in the same restaurant where they had dined before, but not until after an office party in which Mallard himself announced that young Liberati was to become a junior partner in the firm.
    â€œI met your brother,” Aggie said to Colleen one morning. “You didn’t tell me there was a lawyer in the family.”
    Aggie had met Tim at a legal seminar. Her eyes widened as she spoke of him and Colleen forgave her. Let this lithe Venus with the petulant lips talk of married men. It seemed an ultimate concession of defeat.
    â€œIs everyone in your family blond?”
    Her raven-haired mother had marveled at her four blond children, as in a way had her father until his sister, who had married Austin
Rooney, reminded him of the golden-haired Gallaghers among their relations.
    â€œIreland is alive with blonds,” her aunt told Colleen, she of the prayer to Saint Anne. “It all goes back to the Danes.”
    Aggie tapped her plush lower lip with a philosophical air. “Of course Italians go wild for blonds.” And Agatha Rossner shook her brunette locks as if they explained her failure with Mario.
    Their private dinner was only intermittently private. Mario had informed Luigi of his good fortune and Luigi and his family surrounded their table and serenaded them with Neapolitan songs. Is this what the wedding would be like? Mario’s own parents had returned to Sicily and a property where they would receive the news of their son’s triumph, looking out at the azure Mediterranean.
    â€œIf you saw the place, you’d understand why they went back.”
    â€œI’m sure it must be beautiful.”
    He hunched toward her over the table. “So Timothy Gallagher is your brother. I should have known.”
    â€œDid Aggie tell you?”
    He nodded, but there was a frown on his face. “Tell your brother to buckle on his