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Clearly, she had seen her granddaughter’s mad leap for the instrument.
    “For you,” Ellen said sheepishly, handing over the receiver.
    “A spy mission, my Aunt Muffy,” Lettice said in a quelling voice. She raised the receiver to her ear. “Hello? Yes, Margery, that was Ellen playingtelephone operator.… Yes, I’m thrilled my granddaughter, Anne, got the Olympic equestrian team for us this year. It will be wonderful. Lovely child Anne …”
    Ellen gritted her teeth at her grandmother’s effusive tone. She walked to the front door and went outside, leaving Lettice in her grand planning stages for the annual horse show in Devon. It was a charity benefit for the children’s hospital, and Ellen knew she’d be expected to put in an appearance. Life was definitely back to normal.
    And she was hating every minute of it.
    “Damn, damn, damn!” she muttered.
    She had to rid herself of this … curiosity about the sauce. And she definitely had to get rid of her attraction to Joe.
    She would take a drive, she decided, turning toward the garages. A long drive. And she wouldn’t come back until she was rid of all thoughts of Joe Carlini.
    Three hours later, Ellen strode into the kitchen. Mamie, her grandmother’s housekeeper, glanced up from her dinner preparations.
    “I need to use the kitchen line,” Ellen announced. “And you didn’t hear this conversation, okay?”
    Mamie grinned at her. “Ya, sure, Ellen.”
    Ellen took a deep breath, told the little protesting voice inside her to shut up, then picked up the telephone and dialed.
    “Carlini Foods.”
    She took another deep breath.
    “Joe Carlini, please.”

Five
    “Joe Carlini, line five.”
    The page on the intercom echoed off the thick, impossibly white tile walls of the spice room in the Carlini Foods main processing plant.
    “Dammit,” Joe muttered, his concentration disrupted when he heard his name. He straightened from the small bowl on the stainless steel counter. “I think you’re right, Terry. That oregano does smell … old. I think. It’s hard for me to tell exactly what’s wrong with it. I don’t have the gift like you do, Terry. All I know is that the oregano is definitely not up to our standards.”
    “They’ve covered it very cleverly with some kind of oregano essence,” the foreman said. “That’s why I called you down here to confirm. It’s subtle, but it’s there.”
    Terry Kowalski’s nose could smell a rose at a hundred paces, Joe thought gratefully. The spice room was kept immaculately clean. It had to befor those like Terry to distinguish the various scents they worked with. He frowned, hearing himself paged again. He was tempted to ignore it because of the problems here, but he knew it must be important or his secretary would have taken a message. She usually did when he was in the plant.
    “Okay,” he said to Terry as he walked over to the wall telephone. “I’ll call Marcus Spicers. Jim Marcus won’t like knowing someone’s pulling this switch with his customers.”
    “This isn’t from Marcus,” Terry said. Joe turned around in surprise, and Terry added, “Mario changed spicers, Joe. I thought you knew.”
    Anger shot through Joe in a jolting red haze. Carlini Foods had an excellent contract with Marcus Spicers. That Mario had somehow circumvented it was appalling. And if the new spice was lousy, Joe was positive the price was higher—and that Mario was getting a kickback. That little creep wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d drained the company in any way he could.
    He controlled his fury enough to say, “I didn’t know, Terry. I’ll call Marcus and get good oregano over here right away. And I’ll take care of this garbage. Anything else Mario changes, clear with me personally first.”
    “I’m sorry, Joe,” Terry said. “He said the change was cleared in the office. I thought it wasn’t right, but he’s one of the family—”
    “The fault is mine, not yours,” Joe said. He realized that