Plain Jane by Fern Michaels Read Free Book Online Page B

her sweats. She paused on the landing, turned, and looked down past the foyer to the parlor and imagined wide-eyed children standing where she was, gazing at the Christmas tree in front of the bay window.
    Her gaze switched back to the foyer when she heard a noise. One of the file folders in her briefcase had fallen out onto the floor. Odd, she thought, frowning. She clearly remembered zipping the compartments closed before leaving the office. She looked down at Olive, who was looking between the stair rails at the fallen file folder. The fur on her back was standing straight up. Jane was about to reach down and pet her when the chandelier tinkled. She looked around and saw the prisms swaying from side to side.
    Olive let loose with another ungodly howl, then bounded down the stairs and ran through the foyer to the parlor and beyond. Her barks echoed through the sparsely furnished house.
    â€œCome back here, Olive. What’s gotten into you?” Jane kept her eyes on the tinkling chandelier as she crept down the stairs. “Damn you, Mike Sorenson, if you’ve stirred something up, I’ll never forgive you!”
    The chandelier had stopped tinkling by the time Jane reached the bottom of the stairs. Nevertheless, she decided to give it a wide berth just in case the nuts and bolts that held it had come loose. She walked over to the bench where she’d tossed her briefcase, picked it up, and saw that all the zippers were open—the outside zipper; the inside, change-purse zipper; and the two file zippers. She dropped the briefcase like a hot potato. Her frightened gaze swept to the file folder on the floor. Frightened but curious, she stretched out her right leg and, with the toe of her shoe, pulled the folder toward her until she could see the tab. It was the Ramsey file.
    Shivers ran up her arms. Reluctantly, she squatted to pick it up and was knocked off-balance when Olive came from out of nowhere and threw herself onto Jane’s lap.
    â€œOlive! What the hell’s wrong with you?” she shouted as she tried to get the spaniel off her lap so she could sit up. “Damn it, Olive—” It suddenly dawned on her; Olive was terrified. She was panting heavily, and her entire body was trembling. Overcome with guilt, Jane grabbed the spaniel and held her close. “It’s okay, girl,” she crooned softly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It was probably just the house settling,” she said, thinking the dog’s fear was due to the tinkling chandelier, something she’d never heard before.
    Looking over Olive’s head, Jane watched in horror as the rest of her paperwork slithered, page by page, out of her briefcase and onto the old pine bench. “Easy, Olive, easy. I’m sure there is a very logical answer to all of this. I don’t know what it is yet, but once I analyze everything—” She chuckled. “It’s probably just a draft. Yeah, that’s what it is. A draft.” She twisted her head around to see if any of the windows were open in the parlor. They weren’t.
    â€œThis is silly. Get up, Ollie.” She pushed the dog off her lap and struggled to her feet. “After I pick all this up, I’m going to go—” She stared at the papers in her hand. “What we’re going to do is—” They were in order. They weren’t that way when she’d jammed them into her briefcase. “We’re going to the Ramsey house is what we’re going to do!” she said, shoving the folder and all the papers back into the briefcase and zipping all the zippers. She looked around to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. With trembling hands, she carefully hung the briefcase by its shoulder strap on the hall tree.
    Olive pawed at her leg.
    Jane glanced down at her. “You wanna go for a ride?”
    Olive stood up on her hind legs and grabbed the leash hanging from one of the hall tree’s