“That’s okay,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as nervous as I felt. After all, just because I’d refused Joseph as an escort, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t jump out at me from behind a shrub between there and the backyard, presumably where I’d find the guesthouse.

“Nonsense,” my uncle argued. “Joseph!”

The troll stuck his head in from the kitchen. “Yes, sir?”

“If you’d see Miss Sheepshanks to the casita, I’d appreciate it. Mrs. Larimer is ill, and I’d like to get back upstairs and sit with her until the doctor arrives. You’ll watch for him and let him in when he gets here?”

Joseph almost saluted. “Of course, Senator,” he said.

Shit, I thought.

“I really don’t want to impose,” I said, but my uncle had already turned his back, and he was walking away. If he heard me, he gave no sign of it.

“No imposition,” Joseph told me, with a little grin of triumph.

Besides bolting, my choices were limited. And, I remembered, the redoubtable assistant/bodyguard had driven my car around back when I arrived anyway. Since I couldn’t leave without the Volvo, I sighed and reluctantly followed Joseph through a kitchen large enough to serve a mid-size hotel, toward a rear door.

“Don’t get any ideas about ingratiating yourself with Senator and Mrs. Larimer and moving into the casita on a permanent basis,” Joseph warned quietly, once we were outside.

Every cicada in the state must have been in that yard, singing backup.

“I have a job, an apartment and a life,” I answered evenly. What I wanted to say was considerably less polite, but I was alone in the dark with the man, and if I yelled for help, nobody would hear me over the bug chorus. Assuming there was anyone around in the first place.

“Keep it that way,” Joseph said, leading the way along a broad flagstone path. I noted towering topiary on either side, and heard a waterfall somewhere nearby.

“How do you know I’m not a nice person?” I challenged.

Joseph didn’t answer.

We must have triggered a motion light somewhere, because suddenly the “casita” sprang into sharp relief against the night sky. It was about the size of the three-bedroom tract houses in one of Nick’s better developments, with its own modified courtyard and burbling fountain. Lamps behind the wooden blinds in the windows came on automatically, issuing an uncertain welcome.

“I put your…stuff inside,” Joseph informed me, swinging open the front door. So he’d seen my garbage-bag luggage. I’d been hoping, foolishly, I know, that he’d overlooked it somehow. “Don’t get too comfortable, and if you need anything, call somebody else.”