Dangerous to Know by Barbara Taylor Bradford Read Free Book Online Page B

mumble from him, I added sharply, “So, we’re Maungy this morning, are we?”
    The use of this word caught his attention at once, and he glanced at me rapidly. “Maungy. What does that mean?”
    “You’ve heard it before so don’t pretend you haven’t. It was a favorite of Gran’s. She often used to call you maungy when you were a snot nosed little boy in short pants.”
    Ignoring my acerbity, he said evenly, “I don’t remember,” and flopped into the nearest chair. “And I don’t know its meaning.”
    “Then I’ll tell you,” I answered, leaning over the table, peering into his face. “It means peevish, bad tempered, or sulky, and it’s a York shire word from the West Riding where my great-grandfather came from.” I paused, said in a lighter voice, “Surely you haven’t forgotten Gran’s marvelous stories about her father? She never failed to make us laugh.”
    “George Spence. That was his name,” Jack said, and then grimaced.
    -“I need a life-saving transfusion. Strong coffee. Immediately, sugar.”
    He reached for the pot, poured cups of coffee for both of us, and took a gulp of his.
    “Jack, don’t start the day by calling me sugar. Please. And so that’s it, is it? You have a hangover.”
    “A beaut. Hung one on. Last night. When I got back to the farm.”
    His occasional bouts of drinking were nothing new and had worried -me off and on, but I had stopped trying to reform him, nor did I chastise him anymore, since it was a futile waste of time. And so I refrained from commenting now. I simply sat down opposite him, eyeing the newspapers as I did. “How bad are they?”
    “Not as bad as we expected. Quite laudatory, in fact. Not much muckraking. You’re mentioned. As one of his five wives. Front page stories. Obituaries inside.”
    I pulled the newspapers toward me. Jack had brought the New York Post, the New York Times, and the Daily News, and as I spread them out in front of me I saw that they were more or less saying the same thing in their different ways. A great and good man had been found dead, circumstances suspicious. All three papers decried his death, sang his praises, mourned his passing. They carried photographs of Sebastian and they were all fairly recent ones, taken in the last couple of years.
    He looked wonderful, distinguished, handsome and loaded with glamour, dangerously so. But that had ceased to matter.
    Skipping the Post and the News for the moment, I concentrated on the Times. The front page story by the reporter who had spoken to me on the phone yesterday was well written, careful in its details, cautious in its tone, and scrupulous in its accuracy. Furthermore, I was quoted verbatim and without one word I’d said being altered or paraphrased.
    So much for that. And certainly there was nothing sensationalized here.
    I turned to the obituary section of the New York Times. A whole page was devoted to Sebastian Lyon Locke, scion of a great American dynasty, billionaire tycoon, head of Locke Industries, chairman of the Locke Foundation, and the world’s greatest philanthropist. There was a simplified version of his life story; every one of his good deeds was listed along with the charities he supported in America, and there was a fund of information about the charity work he did abroad, especially in Third World countries and they were all fairly recent ones, taken in the last couple of years.
    It had obviously been written some years earlier, as most obituaries of famous people were, with the introduction and the last paragraph left open, to be added after the death of the particular individual had occurred.
    Glancing at the end of the story, I was surprised to see only four names. I was mentioned as his former ward and his ex-wife-as if the others had not existed-along with Jack and Luciana, his children, and Cyrus Lyon Locke, his father, whom I’d completely forgotten about until now.
    “Oh my God! Cyrus!” I cried, lowering the paper, looking over the top of