Out of Order Mass market paperbound - 2000

They moved in a pack, six young males, fit and feral, loping flank to
flank with an ice fog swirling at their feet and clouds of hot steam
puffing from their mouths. Berms of cindered gray snow rose up on both
sides of the road, and they ran between them in perfect unspoken
formation, as if cued by some pheromone only they could sniff.

Cam was alone on the narrow country lane, and she slowed as one of the
pack suddenly broke formation and surged toward her. He lifted something
as he ran, a long ellipse that gleamed to a high polish in the moonlight,
and swung it down into the curbside mailbox with a splintering crash.

She flipped on her high beams. Six boys and a baseball bat stood frozen on
the road before her, a tableau vivant of teenage vandalism, until a second
later the headlights scattered them like a laser blast.

"Kids," she muttered.

She was already late, and her nerves were strung tight. She'd spent the
last two hours in a frenzy of dressing and undressing, pinning up her hair
and tearing it down again, carefully applying makeup only to frantically
rub it all off, until at last Doug had mumbled that it might be bad form
to arrive late to a party in their own honor. Cam was afraid it was even
worse form to arrive separately, but finally she'd insisted that he go on
ahead.

Now, watching as the boys dived into the bushes and rolled out of sight,
she was glad she had. If Doug saw what she just had, he would have felt
duty-bound to stop and do something. It was his nature: if he could do
something, he did it. And more to the point, if he knew something, he
spoke it. Doug would never have remained silent about the boy who'd just
broken the spine of someone's mailbox--the same boy who should have been
passing canapÈs at the party tonight: Trey Ramsay, thirteen-year-old son
of their host, United States Senator Ashton Ramsay.

But keeping secrets was an old habit for Cam. She did with this
information what she did with most: she filed it away.

She drove on, but a moment later her headlights shone on something else: a
dark van was pulled over to the side of the road, and a man stood beside
it with a cell phone to his ear. Calling the police, she supposed, and
felt some relief that the matter was out of her hands. He was wearing
jeans and a ski jacket, respectable enough attire for a Friday night in
the suburbs of Wilmington. But there was something in his stance, a dark
edge to the way he turned away as she approached. Her eyes flicked up to
the mirror as she passed him. For a moment he looked as fit and feral as
that wolfpack; for a moment she wondered if he weren't more dangerous than
they were.

But only for a moment. She was on the brink of a new life, and no spoiled
delinquent or mysterious stranger was going to keep her from it. She kept
driving.



A cold February moon shone down on the unbroken snow of
the open fields and the hundred-year-old hedgerows that marked off the
boundaries of the old Greenville estates. This was the chéteau country of
northern Delaware, a region settled two hundred years before by a tribe of
Franco-Americans who came to establish a Utopian colony but ended up
manufacturing gunpowder instead. Today, the DuPont Company was an abiding
presence throughout Delaware. If only six degrees of separation existed
between any two people on earth, then only one or two existed between
DuPont and any son or daughter of Delaware. Cam smiled as it occurred to
her that she was part of that family now, too, a daughter-in-law of
Delaware.

The lights were blazing at the end of the Ramsays' driveway, and she
turned through the gate stanchions and drove around a circle of snowcapped
shrubs to the front steps of the house. It was a decaying old manor of
dingy white stucco and faded black shutters, but tonight Cam thought it
shone like a palace. Tonight the Ramsays were honoring the newlyweds
before what she expected to be the ionosphere of Delaware society.

A valet parker trotted around the side of the house, and madly she
shrugged out of her Gore-Tex parka and tossed it in the seat behind her.
Her dress was a strapless ball gown of velvet and satin that cost her two
months' salary. There was nothing left in the budget for an evening coat
after that.

"Evening, miss," the boy said and opened her door.

She hesitated a second, the span of a heart skip and a quick convulsive
shiver, then stepped out bare-shouldered into the cold night air.

Twin pillars flanked the front door, each one carved like a headstone with
the letter V--for victory, Senator Ramsay would have claimed, but first it
was for Vaughn. Margo Vaughn Ramsay was the one with the money, and this
was her ancestral home. Cam pressed the bell and prepared her smile, and
an instant later Margo threw the door open.

"Campbell, darling!" she cried, and scanned the street a moment before she
pulled her inside. "You're here at last!"

Margo was wearing yards of green and gold brocade cut something like a
kimono, and her steel-gray hair was gathered up in a topknot and shot
through with a lethal-looking ivory rod. The first time Cam met her, she'd
worn Mao-style silk pajamas, a curious look for Christmas Day, but later
Doug explained: Margo spent her childhood in the Far East with her State
Department father, and she continued to maintain an affection for all
things Asian.

"Mrs. Ramsay, I'm so sorry I'm late--"

"Nonsense. No one's late but Ash." Margo's black eyebrows arched up over
flinty gray eyes and high-cut cheekbones. "The train. Again."

Doug had also explained this: the Senator kept a monk's cell on Capitol
Hill and commuted home by Metroliner on the weekends. The
Tuesday-to-Thursday Club was the derogatory term for such legislators,
although, according to Doug, Ramsay adhered strictly to a
Monday-through-Friday schedule.

"Everyone!" Margo called. "It's Campbell! At last!"

A buzz of voices rose up, and as the bodies began to spill out into the
center hall, Cam felt a stab of her old insecurity. The men were all in
tuxedos, and the women in ash-blond pageboys and severe black gowns, while
there she stood in a dazzling white ball gown with her hair tumbling long
and loose down her back. Once again she'd dressed wrong; once again she
was out of place. But quickly she reminded herself: she was the bride and
the guest of honor here tonight; this time it was proper to stand out.

A pianist was playing Gershwin in the living room to the left, and a
babble of voices still came from the library to the right, while here in
the hall, a swarm of guests pressed in close around her. "A pleasure,
young lady," someone said. "A pleasure."

"Best wishes to you both!"

A wiry woman seized Cam by both hands. "Oh, I've been so anxious to meet
you!" she cried.

"Campbell, Maggie Heller," Margo said.

"Doug's told us so much about you!" the woman gushed. She was overanimated
and overthin, as if a hypercharged metabolism was burning off calories
faster than she could stuff them into her mouth. "And you know we all
adore him, and we wish you all the best!"

"And here's someone you must meet." Margo pulled her
free from Maggie Heller and steered her in the other direction, toward a
man with pocked skin and deep vertical creases through the hollows of his
cheeks. "Norman Finn."

"Congratulations!" he said, stepping forward with the stench of tobacco
smoldering from his tuxedo.

Cam shook his hand briefly, repelled by the reek of cigarettes and by that
word--congratulations--that always struck her as double-edged. "How do you
do, Mr. Finn?"

"No, just Finn. Everybody calls me Finn."

"Finn," she repeated doubtfully, then gave a start as a man behind her
leaned in too close. She turned to find a video camera zooming in on her
face. Strange, she thought, turning away; the society pages could only use
stills. Margo continued to pull her along, and Cam continued to clasp
hands and murmur greetings as the faces whirled past and the pianist
played "'S Wonderful."

"What a wonderful occasion!" the next woman said. "We only wish you'd had
your wedding here."

"Yes, why were we cheated out of a wedding?" someone else asked.

Cam smiled and explained. Since she had no family and Doug's mother
couldn't travel, they'd kept it a simple affair, a civil ceremony in
Florida with only Doug's mother and aunt as witnesses, followed by a
honeymoon on St. Bart's.

"I'm sure it was all lovely," Margo said. "But Ash and I decided: if we
couldn't have a Delaware wedding, we'd at least have a Delaware wedding
reception!"

"Good thing, too," said the pock-faced man, Norman Finn, just Finn. "Gives
us a chance to look you over."

Cam gave him an uncertain glance. She didn't know what he meant, nor even
what he was doing here. There was something disquieting about him, an
undercurrent of crude power, as if he were a plantation overseer or a
casino boss.

"Campbell," said the overeager woman, Maggie Heller. "That's such a lovely
name!"

"Thank you." A second later Cam winced--wrong response--though appropriate
enough if they knew the truth.

"You're a lawyer in Philadelphia?"

"Yes. With Jackson, Rieders and Clark."

Finn announced to the crowd, "That's the outfit that acquired Doug's firm
last year."

Cam's lips curved in a coy denial. "Oh, not acquired, Mr. Finn. Our firm
merged with Doug's."

"I'd say it's a merger now," he said with a coarse laugh.

"Are you planning to sit for the Delaware bar?" another man asked.

"I already did, last summer. Passed, too!" she added pertly.

"What's your specialty?"

"Oh, I'm just an associate," she said airily. "I do whatever they tell me
to do."

"But what department are you in?" the man pressed her.

Her smile dimmed. "Family law," she said after a beat.

"Ahh." He gave a too-knowing nod. "We called that domestic relations in
our firm. Until one of our clients thought that meant her husband was
having an affair with the maid!"

"I remember that case, Owen," put in a man behind him. "And damned if she
wasn't right!"

Cam gave a strained smile through the crowd's laughter.

"No, wait a minute," Finn said. "Doug told us you're an
asset-finder."

"Yes," she said, brightening. "I do a lot of that. Executing on judgments,
and tracing assets the defendant might have stashed away."

"Oh, I see the connection," a woman remarked dryly. "Since nobody conceals
assets better than a man heading for divorce court."

"Damn, is that what asset-finding means?" Finn said. "Here
I was hoping it meant Campbell could help us with our
fund-raising."

She gave him a confused look as another round of laughter broke out. He
stepped closer and brought a vapor of cigarette stench with him. "Margo,
let me take over the introductions here. I got some folks Campbell needs
to meet."

"By all means, Finn." Margo relinquished Cam's arm and turned at once to
work the crowd. "Why, there you are!" she cried. "How long has it been?
Oh, I know--the train! Again!"

More names and faces scrolled past Cam as Finn pulled her along through
the hall. Owen Willoughby; Webb Black; Carl Baldini--you know, Baldini
Construction?; Chubb Heller--you met his wife, Maggie, already, didn't you;
Ron March--as in the U.S. Attorney Ronald March?--that's right; John Simon,
because every party needs a friendly banker. Cam nodded and smiled and
felt a ripple of unease. None of these names was familiar to her, though
she'd been following the Wilmington society pages for months. She tried to
tune into the snippets of conversation around her. It was the usual party
banter that month--the latest movies at the multiplex, the latest White
House sex scandal, the latest showdown with Saddam Hussein. A sharper
exchange sounded behind her. Numbers look good. You see that poll
yesterday? Yeah, but without the cash, what can he do . . . ? Margo's
voice sounded distantly, its pitch dropping in Doppler effect as she moved
to the back of the house. "Yes, Jesse's waiting at the station for him.
Trey . . . ? I don't know--he must still be upstairs. He's probably trying
to find something to wear. He's been growing out of everything! He's all
wrists and ankles these days!"

Finn veered off course and pulled Cam through a cluster of people to reach
an old man slumped in a wheelchair. "Jonathan, this is Doug's bride," he
announced loudly. "Campbell, meet Jonathan Fletcher."

At last, a name she'd expected to hear tonight. Jonathan Fletcher was a
member of Delaware aristocracy, a third- or fourth-generation millionaire.
"How do you do, Mr. Fletcher?"

The old man looked up with a squint under woolly white eyebrows and said
nothing.

"Campbell--" spoke a woman behind the wheelchair. "Is that a family name?"

"Yes." Cam watched peripherally as Margo picked up the telephone on a
console table by the stairs. "It was my mother's maiden name."

"Sounds Scotch," the old man said in a deep rumble that shivered the loose
flaps of his jowls.

Cam lip-read as Margo spoke into the phone across the hall: ". . .
wondering if you've seen Trey anywhere tonight . . . ?"

"Hundred proof," Cam quipped.

"You don't look Scotch," Fletcher said with a suspicious growl. "More
Irish maybe."

She tossed her head and sent her hair cascading down her back. "Aahh, go
on with ye," she said in a brogue that brought a loud burst of laughter
from the crowd.

The alert pianist made a quick segue into "They All Laughed."

Twenty feet away Margo hung up the phone. The bones showed in her face for
a second before her flesh slackened into a smile once more.

"Where do you hail from, Campbell?" someone asked.

"Pennsylvania. Lancaster County?"

"A TOP-NOTCH THRILLER . . . HIGH ON SUSPENSE."
--Chicago Tribune

"SUSPENSEFUL . . . An intriguing exploration of the territory where wealth, privilege, law, and corruption collide--and lead to betrayal and murder."
--Detroit Free Press

"NOTHING IS QUITE AS IT APPEARS. . . . When the truth finally surfaces, the result is an explosion from which no one emerges unscathed. . . . MacDougal knows how to tell a story."
--San Diego Union Tribune

Bonnie MacDougal is a trial attorney who has practiced law in Philadelphia; Anchorage, Alaska; and Little Rock, Arkansas. Ms. MacDougal is the author of Breach of Trust and Angle of Impact. She lives with her husband and two daughters on Philadelphia's Main Line