Hounded by David Rosenfelt Page B

back up.”
    I have never been comfortable sitting on the floor. It’s hard, and there’s no back, and no place to hang your legs. Floors are actually the reason they invented chairs. Yet some people seem quite fine doing it.
    But I crouch down and assume the very uncomfortable position. “So what’s the problem?” I ask, noticing that he is eagerly writing something in the book.
    “Never mind,” he says, “I got it.”
    “So I should get up?”
    “Okay.”
    I work my way back to a standing position, not the easiest thing to do. Then, “Hey, next time I take Tara and Sebastian to the park, you want to come? There’s a whole bunch of people with dogs there.”
    He lights up. “Yeah!”
    “Great … that’s a plan. We’ll have fun.”

 
     
    If you’re a big shot in need of a root canal, you call Dr. Robbie Hambler.
    His office is on Central Park South in Manhattan, and if you think that your “canals” are worth three times as much as anyone else’s, but you want to get rid of the root, then Robbie’s your guy. At least that is what Pete told me, and there is nothing about the office, or its location, to make me think otherwise.
    I’m afraid of a lot of stuff—snakes, bugs, mice, guns, Laurie, Marcus, you name it—but for some reason I’ve never been afraid of dentists. Unless, of course, I’m in the chair, and they have a drill in their hand.
    But Robbie is waiting for me in his private office, with no drills or needles in sight. Pete had called and told him what I wanted to talk about, so I didn’t need to do much in the way of a preamble.
    “Why do you think your father was murdered?”
    “He was the picture of health. He ran marathons, never sick a day in his life, and had a complete physical six weeks before he died. They found nothing wrong.”
    “Heart attacks happen, very often without warning.”
    He nods, but frowning as if he is talking to a dope. “Of course they do. They can be unpredictable.”
    “Right.”
    “But he predicted this one,” he says.
    “Tell me about that.”
    “My father owned gas stations; he bought one about twenty years ago, and slowly was able to expand by buying more. About seven years ago, it became advantageous to merge with his chief competitor, a man named Lawrence Winters. Their businesses were of equal size, and so they were equal partners.”
    “How big a business are we talking about?”
    “Last year they did a billion one in sales.”
    “That’s a lot of gas.”
    “Yes it is. During the past year, or at least a year ago is when my father first mentioned it to me, he came to believe that there were serious problems with Winters. He was acting erratically, possibly drugs, possibly not. But he was uncharacteristically detached from work, often not showing up for meetings without explanation. He also often talked about people he knew, friends he had, making them sound like they were dangerous people.” He continues, “But that was only part of it; my father came to believe that he was stealing from their company.”
    “Did your father confront him?”
    He nods. “He did, and Winters denied it. So my father offered to buy him out. This was just three months ago.”
    “But Winters refused?”
    “Yes, and he professed to be outraged. They had a huge fight about it, and my father told him that he would be bringing in outside auditors to check the company books. Soon after that, he and I had a conversation that I will never forget. He told me that Winters might be capable of dangerous things, and that he was going to look into hiring private security. But that if anything should happen to him, it was Winters who would be behind it.”
    “Did he hire the security?”
    “He never got the chance.”
    “So what happens to the company now?”
    “There is an automatic buyout triggered, partially funded by life insurance that the partners held. The rest comes from the company; my mother will be a very rich woman. But of course she was already a