Wolf in the Shadows Read Online Free

the background investigations she was working. The
     office, a converted closet that the building’s former owner had the gall to call a den, was overly warm and stuffy; I glanced
     at the ficus plant Rae nurtured under an ultraviolet bulb and saw its leaves were dusty and drooping from lack of water. Rae
     herself seemed similarly uncared for; her curly auburn hair needed washing, and her jeans and sweater looked as if she’d slept
     in them. It didn’t surprise me; she’d had a big disappointment the week before. Her current love, jewelry chain owner Willie
     Whelan, had demanded she sign a prenuptial agreement before he’d present her with a diamond engagement ring, and Rae had flown
     into a rage at his remarks on her inability to wisely handle her own finances. Since then she’d handled her hurt with alternating
     fits of fury and dejection. This must be a dejected period, because when she hung up the phone and swiveled toward me, I saw
     her eyes were red.
    “You all right?” I asked.
    “Oh …” She waggled an outstretched hand from side to side.
    “Another fight with Willie?”
    “Look, I can’t talk about him, I’d just start crying again. What’s with you?”
    I’d come here for diversion, so I wasn’t about to explain the Hy situation. “I’ve been summoned to the partners’ meeting.”
    “Uh-oh. How come?”
    “Don’t know, but Hank acted mighty shifty when he asked me to be there.”
    “Weird.” She screwed up her freckled face in thought. “I’ve been hearing a word around here lately—‘reorganization.’ ”
    “Yes, Hank said that’s what they want to talk about.”
    “Well, it sounds to me like a euphemism for demotions or layoffs. This place is getting too corporate, if you know what I
     mean.”
    “I do. And I hate to sound like I’m wallowing in nostalgia, but I miss the good old days.” In the old days All Souls had possessed
     a certain laid-back ambience as well as an excitement about the challenge we were presenting to the legal establishment. Now
     we
were
establishment. We’d incorporated; we’d bought the Victorian and spiffed it up with its first paint job in decades; we’d rented
     two additional houses across the park out front for our support staff; we had an 800-number hotline for clients; we had marketing
     people to sell the membership plan to large northern California employers.
    But those were only surface changes. Others went much deeper, and the fact that I was currently sweating over attending a
     meeting of the partners told me just how deep. The partners: my friends.
    Hank Zahn, senior partner and sole remaining co-founder of All Souls, was my oldest and closest male friend. He was one of
     several people I’d shared a house with in Berkeley while getting my degree in sociology. His wife, Anne-Marie Altman, another
     founder of the co-op, had left to become head counsel for a coalition of environmental organizations—including the foundation
     Hy ran—but she remained my closest woman friend.
    Jack Stuart, our criminal specialist, wouldn’t be at today’s meeting because he’d left town this morning to sort through some
     painful feelings about the case he and I had just concluded. But Larry Koslowski, our corporate specialist, would be present.
     Larry, our resident health nut whose good intentions and peculiar culinary concoctions had nearly poisoned me on any number
     of occasions. And then there was Pam Ogata, the tax attorney who had filled Anne-Marie’s shoes—a Japanese-Hawaiian whose
     exquisitely decorated quarters on the second floor spoke of her homesickness for the islands. Pam, with whom I’d shared many
     an expedition to flea markets, thrift stores, and antique shops.
    How on earth could I shrink from a meeting with such friends? Of course, there
were
two relatively unknown quantitie.…
    Rae asked, “Shar, what do you think of Mike Tobias?”
    It was as if she’d overheard my thoughts. Mike Tobias was one of the