Beguiled (11 page)

The same thing Marcel Gibbon had suggested—
find the connection between the objects, and you’ll find your man.

He downshifted as they approached a light. “The statue, clock, and jewelry casket were things you might notice during a visit, right?

And someone might have seen Latisha Petrie’s brooch while she was wearing it. Makes me wonder if our guy is one of their inner circle.”

“The jewelry casket wasn’t on display.”

He glanced at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

“It was in Karl’s closet.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was at his house when the police came by.”

“You’re kidding. I had no idea.”

“Yeah. I interrupted him.”

“Karl?”

“Robin Hood.”

He stared at her, stunned. Clearly Nate was holding back.

“Light’s green.”

Putting it in first, he eased forward. He’d interviewed hundreds of people in his years on the crime beat. Spotting a liar had become almost second nature to him. Wandering eyes. Fidgeting. Rapid speech. An exaggerated version of the sincere, furrowed-brow look.

Yet Rylee exhibited none of these. She sat relaxed against the seat cushions, her long legs crossed at the ankles.

“Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning.”

She talked him through the robbery, gesturing with her hands in an effort to assist him in seeing what she’d seen.

He braked, allowing a horse and carriage to pull in front of them.

The sun coming through the window gave her hair the same red-bathed tint as a glass of iced tea. So short in back it barely reached her raised collar, affording a clear view of her graceful jaw and long neck, but she had to keep flicking the longish strands in front away from her toffee eyes. Her blue checked top had very short sleeves, revealing the burnished tan line of her bare arms.

She turned suddenly and caught him looking.

He glanced away, tried to think of something to say. “What if it wasn’t Robin Hood?”

“What?” She tilted her head, calling his attention to the creamy length of neck she’d exposed.

He took a right on Market. “What if we have two cat burglars on our hands instead of one?”

“How do you figure that?”

“It’s just a theory,” he said. “And maybe I’m crazy. But the robberies aren’t quite the same, are they? Sometimes there’s a lot of violence and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes he hits at night and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he donates what he steals, and sometimes he doesn’t.”

“Maybe he donates everything, but the people don’t all report it.”

“Maybe,” he said. “The jewelry casket was the third robbery, right?”

“I can’t keep track anymore.”

“It was third. The statue was first. Then the clock. Then the jewelry casket. Then the brooch.”

She turned in her seat, the checked shirt twisting tight across her chest. “So what?”

“The Petrie break-in is different because of the violence. The Bosticks couldn’t even tell there’d been a break-in, and he didn’t trash the Sebastians’ home either. Something happened between the Sebastian break-in and the Petrie one, something to make him angry. Either that, or it was a different burglar.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “They all have so much in common. He always takes something of sentimental value. The brooch meant a lot to Latisha, and Karl . . . he seemed just devastated.”

Devastated?
Since the lawyer still hadn’t returned any of his calls, Logan had done a little digging—mainly in the society pages.

Why would one of the most eligible bachelors in Charleston be devastated over a jewelry box? What kind of man kept a jewelry box in his closet, anyway?

“What’s so special about this jewelry casket?” he asked.

“He said it had been in his family for years.”

“What was inside?”

“It was empty.”

“Then why did he keep it hidden in the closet?”

She scrunched up her nose. “It wasn’t really
hidden
. It was on a shelf.”

“And you didn’t know it was there?”

“Of course not. How would I know something like that?”

She fell silent, letting him drive aimlessly from street to street. The congenial, charming girl of a few moments before had grown somber during the conversation.

He pulled up in front of the Davidson house. “Well, thanks for answering my questions. It fleshes out the Sebastian break-in for me, anyway.”

She pulled her bag off the floor, then opened her door. “You’re not going to quote me in your paper or anything, are you?”

“I might summarize some of the stuff you said, but no, I can leave you out of it if you’d prefer.”

“Yes, please.” She unfolded herself from the car, then bent down. “See ya around, Logan.”

He lifted his hand good-bye and watched her head toward a yellow Honda Civic.
Daisy
. Ridiculous. What kind of person names a car?

He accelerated toward Meeting Street, joining a line of traffic. He’d never name his. Or if he did, it would be something like . . . Thor, strong and Germanic.

“Thor.”

But
no
. He was not going to name his car.

Chapter Ten

“Who in his right mind, when he’s got a 1793 Storioni staring him in the face—1793, for crying out loud!—moves it over so he can get to a Ladislav Prokop? From the
thirties
.”

Logan did his best with the spellings, writing as fast as he could. Despite the digital recorder, he often took notes by hand, just in case. A sudden pause made him look up. Jamison Ormsby, by all accounts a virtuoso on the violin, stared red-faced at the Storioni, as if he was angry it hadn’t been stolen, too.

The music room was filled with instruments, most of them glossy as antique furniture, which he supposed was what they were. One fiddle looked like another to him, but Ormsby, the latest victim of Charleston’s Robin Hood burglar, clearly knew what was valuable and what wasn’t.

“So a, um, Prokop . . . That’s not worth much?”

“A couple thousand bucks, maybe. I mean, it’s a nice violin, a very bright, warm tone. But that’s a Storioni right there. A Storioni!”

Logan tried to look shocked. Meanwhile, Wash moved the drapes back and forth, trying to focus a shaft of sunlight across the empty stand where the missing Prokop had stood. Now that he was shooting extra frames for possible use in Logan’s book, he was getting outrageous with the creative lighting effects.

“When I first walked through the door,” Ormsby said, “everything was quiet. Too quiet. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Then I heard footsteps thundering on the floorboards upstairs. I rushed up the front stairs without thinking. I mean, he could have had a gun, right? But that didn’t occur to me until later. I just about had a heart attack. But at the time, instinct took over.” He pressed his long fingers to his forehead. “As I went upstairs, though, he must have been tearing down the kitchen stairs. He was gone before I could catch up.”

“You didn’t get a look at him?” Logan asked, thinking of the leg Rylee had described seeing at the Sebastian house.

Ormsby shook his head.

“And what about the police?” Logan asked. “Did they seem to take it seriously?”

In the background, Wash shot him a look.

“Off the record?” Ormsby peered down at Logan’s notebook.

“They acted like it was just a nuisance. I knew immediately it was the Robin Hood burglar, but the detective kept saying, ‘Maybe so,’ like it could all be just a coincidence. They said they’d give me a copy of the report for the insurance company, but it’s not the money that matters so much. That Prokop has sentimental value.”

“Was it a gift?”

Ormsby hesitated. “It was . . . from an estate sale. I collect them, as you can see.”

Before he’d left his office, Logan had pulled up all the information on Ormsby he could find, mostly articles dating back to the late seventies when he’d made Charleston his home. There were concert reviews, which Logan skipped over, and a few gossipy notices about his trading in his wife of three decades for a red-headed accompanist, aged twenty-three.

“Mr. Ormsby, you don’t have any pets, do you?” Logan asked.

“Animals? No. They play havoc with my allergies.”

Logan nodded. Good. That meant the man wasn’t a client of Rylee’s.

“No.” Ormsby shook his head. “I can’t stand having animals in the house. That’s something I don’t miss about my ex-wife. When she left, she took that infernal dog with her.”

“Dog?” Logan’s pen stilled once more.

“A German Shepherd. Tiffany.” He pronounced the name with exaggerated loathing. “After thirty years, I can breathe in my own home again.”

“Did your wife employ a dogwalker?”

“Yes, there was a girl. A cute little thing, used to skate around the neighborhood. I still see her around every so often. Can’t think of her name, though.”

The summons came just as the next day’s edition was being put to bed. Logan tapped on the door, then entered to find Lacey Lamar at her desk, on which a huge screen displayed his latest copy, the account of the Ormsby break-in.

She turned, crossed her tightly skirted legs, and gazed up at him over the top of her tortoiseshell reading glasses.

“Close the door and plant yourself right there.” She pointed to a nearby chair.

He pushed the door shut and sat. He would much rather have had a desk between them, but Lacey was a big fan of open-plan seating.

“The reason I wanted to see you is, I got a call from someone.”

“Are you naming names?”

She ignored the question. “Apparently you had a chitchat with Marcel Gibbon—is that right? How is the Cherub?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Now, I can imagine all sorts of reasons why you’d want to sound him out, but I’m guessing it has something to do with this.” She jabbed her thumb at the screen over her shoulder, his words set off against the opal luminescence. “I’m also assuming, because Marcel is Marcel, that he gave you some kind of lead to explore?”

Now it was Logan’s turn to ignore the question.

“The reason I ask is, I expect to see the fruit of this information in my newspaper. I don’t want to read about it for the first time in your forthcoming book. Am I making myself clear?”

“I got nothing from Marcel.”

She arched a brow in skepticism.

He could understand her doubt. In the past, Gibbon had been relatively generous with information, as if he had an ulterior motive in passing it along. But not this time.

“Let me make something painfully clear to you, Logan. I realize you have this dream of publishing a book and leaving journalism behind. Up to now, I’ve been fairly indulgent. But your coverage on the Petrie break-in was thin, and the Sebastian piece, downright pitiful.”

“I’ve been chasing the Sebastian police report, but the whole department is giving me the runaround.”

“So you interview the owner.”

“He won’t return my calls.”

“And since when has that stopped you?”

“I’ve interviewed his dogwalker and have what I need now.”

“It’s a little late, don’t you think?” She whipped off her glasses. “Listen, if I suspect, even for a minute, that you’re sacrificing my story so you’ll have an exclusive in your book, I’ll see to it you leave journalism behind a whole lot sooner than you were planning. You get my drift?”

He did. “Honestly. Marcel gave me nothing. As for Karl Sebastian, I’ll do better. The Ormsby piece is good, though. You have to admit that.”

She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I don’t have to admit anything. And if the next piece isn’t what I want, you’re off the story.”

The Davidsons’ gate squeaked, and Rylee turned to see Detective Campbell striding across the lawn, his eyes fixed on her. He glanced at George in the bushes, then paused, checking his stride. But the distraction was momentary.

“Miss Monroe,” he said. “I’d like you to come with me down to the station to make a formal statement.”

She blinked. “A statement? What do you mean? Am I in some kind of trouble?”

George lifted the handles of his wheelbarrow and moved to the back of the house.

“Not at all. We’re just trying to connect some dots, and it would be awfully helpful if you’d come in. Won’t take but a minute.”

Her first impulse was to hedge and say she had a dog to walk, but Toro was the last one of the morning. She wasn’t due at another house until midafternoon. And she had a feeling Campbell already knew this.

Retrieving her bag from the porch, she passed through the gate the detective held open.

“Pendergrass Gardening,” he said, pointing to George’s truck. “That belong to the fella you were talking with?”

“Yes.” She tucked herself into Nate’s Mustang.

Unlike Logan’s car, the interior was a mess. The upholstery was sticky against the back of her legs, and the entire car smelled like stale food. The seats were splitting at the seams. The floors had no mats. A grease-stained Popeye’s Chicken box lay open on the floor. Balancing in the detective’s cup holder, a giant Jack-inthe-Box soda pearled with condensation.

He pumped the accelerator several times before turning over the engine. “I guess you and him are pretty good friends, working at the same house and all.”

“George, you mean?”

“What was that last name again?”

“Pendergrass.”

“Ah.” Picking up his soda, he pulled onto the street, his transmission jerking. “How long you known him?”

“I don’t
know
him at all. But he’s worked for the Davidsons almost as long as I have.”

He sucked from the straw protruding out the center of his cup.

“That right? He work for any of your other clients?”

“He just started with the Bosticks, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s been with the Sebastians a long, long time.”

“Good people, the Sebastians—for lawyers.” He smiled and gave her a wink.

She turned her face toward the passenger window.

He made several more attempts at small talk, but she kept her answers clipped. She didn’t like him, and he didn’t like her. She saw no reason to pretend otherwise.