Beguiled (5 page)

“They’re not like that,” she said, reading between the lines.

“They’ve lived here all their lives. They just like to travel, that’s all.”

“And what’s your name, ma’am?”

“Rylee Monroe. That’s R-y-l-e-e.”

He scratched out what he’d written and rewrote it. “Would you mind waiting here while I radio this in? I’m sure the detective will want to speak with you.”

She hesitated. “Detective Campbell?”

He looked up. “You know him?”

“I ran into him last night.”

Munn made another note, then headed for his cruiser. “Just sit tight and I’ll let you know what the detective wants to do.”

She didn’t want to see Detective Campbell again. Not ever again.

“Dr. Welch?” A woman in her forties stuck her head out the massive front door. “Your appointment’s here.”

He turned to Rylee. “Will you be okay? You want me to stay with you?”

“No, you go on. I’ll be fine. They just want to ask me a few questions.”

“Well, if you’re sure. If you need anything at all, you come round and get me. You hear?”

“I will. Thanks.”

A few minutes later, the detective drove up in his Mustang. The baseball uniform had been replaced with a boxy, bad-fitting suit and a tie with a mottled, synthetic sheen. He and the officer spoke quietly at the curb before Campbell headed toward her.

“Trouble seems to follow you around, Miss Monroe,” he said.

She tightened her lips.

“I did some checking this morning when I got to the office. I understand you were involved in a robbery on East Battery?”

“I wasn’t
involved
. I walked in on the burglar.”

“So you say.”

She opened her mouth to object.

“And you work for the owners of this statue right here?”

“That’s right.”

“And in the presence of Officer Munn you plastered your fingerprints all over it?”

She stiffened. “I didn’t
plaster
them all over it, I grabbed the bottom. I was going to return it to the Bosticks.”

“Convenient.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, Mr. Campbell. I saw something that belonged to my client. I was simply going to return it to them.”

“It’s
Detective
Campbell, and I’m just making sure I have all the facts.”

“Well, now you do. Is there anything else?”

“Matter of fact there is.” He rocked back on his heels. “Do you happen to work for Nathaniel Shelby over on Orange Street?”

“No.”

“Have you ever worked for him in the past, in any capacity?”

“
No
. What’s this about?”

“It’s about the fact that two of the three homes that have been burgled by Robin Hood are clients of yours.”

She gasped. “Has Karl Sebastian’s jewelry casket been donated too?”

“Not yet.” He gave her a penetrating stare. “All the same, I’d like a comprehensive list of your clients. Names. Addresses. How long you’ve been working for them.”

“Absolutely not. Don’t you need a warrant for that?”

“You got something to hide?”

“I have nothing to hide. But I do have clients whose privacy I’m expected to guard.” She wound Romeo’s leash around her hand.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, this whole thing has made a mess of my schedule.”

After a slight hesitation, Campbell stepped back and extended his hand in an after-you gesture. “Let’s keep in touch, Miss Monroe.”

This is the day,
Logan thought.

On his drive in to work, he’d checked his phone for messages twice, and again first thing when he reached his cubicle. Nothing so far. Now he sat in front of his glowing monitor, staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page. His agent would call in his own sweet time, so there was no use anticipating.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned, expecting Wash.

But it was Lacey Lamar, immaculate in a sleek pencil skirt and signature pearls. She wore perfume, a subtle bouquet, the only person with guts enough in their scent-free workplace.

He started to rise.

“Don’t get up.” She sized him up with those clear blue eyes of hers, drawing out the pause. “We need to talk about the Robin Hood pieces.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Is something wrong with them?”

“The story’s good, Logan. It’s front-page good. And as of now you’re not working on anything
but
the break-ins. We want regular coverage—unorthodox coverage. If the television news isn’t taking its cues from us on this, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Like I said, I don’t want you working on
anything
but this story.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“There’s a rumor that you’ve taken on an extracurricular project— and I’m not talking about the baseball team. Is it true you’re working on a book?”

He gave her a look of baffled innocence. “We’re on the same page here. The Robin Hood burglar is all I’m working on. Twenty-four seven. Scout’s honor, Lacey.”

“All right,” she said with a skeptical nod. “But if I hear otherwise . . .”

“You won’t.”

He could say this with all sincerity. Even though it was true he was writing a book after hours, it was also true that the Robin Hood burglaries were the only thing he was working on.

For months, his agent, Seth, had been trying to sell Logan’s manuscript in New York, but without much success. His collection of true tales from the Low Country underworld, packed with a cast of likeable, larger-than-life bad guys, was missing something.

Editors seemed to like the writing, but the story needed some kind of hook, a narrative thread to tie all the anecdotes together.

That’s what the Robin Hood burglaries offered. At first, he was uncertain, but when the culprit struck the second time, he was convinced—along with the rest of Charleston—that this was no anomaly. Robin Hood was planning to stick around. The thief had some kind of message to impart, which meant there would be more break-ins—a series of future incidents to serve as a backbone to his history of the city’s crime.

His agent liked the new approach and found an editor who was interested. Today, Logan was supposed to hear one way or the other. But until his book was sold, he really needed his day job. And that meant placating Lacey. He dragged his attention back to her.

“You’re a good kid,” Lacey said. “You’ll turn into a good reporter some day, too—assuming there are still newspapers when you get to be my age. In the meantime, don’t go getting any ideas.

And don’t do anything stupid.”

“Who, me?”

She gave him a pointed look. “Be careful, Logan. I want you on the story, but not if you’re harboring any illusions. You may think this Robin Hood character is some kind of wacky eccentric from a Southern Gothic fairy tale, but trust me, guys like this are dangerous.”

“Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? What’s the danger in that?”

“Whatever his motives are, they aren’t altruistic. Crime is crime. The moment you forget that, you’re in trouble.”

Turning, she walked down the aisle, her slim skirt and gray stiletto pumps drawing the eye of every man on the floor. Watching her go, Logan thought about the warning. Was it the Robin Hood burglar she wanted him to be wary of, or was it moonlighting?

With a vibrate-mode ring, his phone crawled an inch across the desk. He grabbed it and headed into the storeroom for privacy.

“You sitting down?” Seth asked.

The electricity was unmistakable. They’d been roommates in college long before Seth left for New York, so he could read the agent pretty well.

“Just tell me. Is it a go?”

“Almost. We’re at ninety-five percent.”

Logan’s throat tightened. “What do you mean, ninety-five? What happened to one hundred?”

“The good news is, Dora loves it. She took it to the committee, and it sounds like they were pretty impressed, too.”

“So what’s the snag? Are they going to offer a contract or not?”

“There’s no snag,” Seth said. “But there is a wrinkle. You’re a first-time author, and you’re trying to sell a story that isn’t finished yet.”

“Of course it isn’t. They haven’t caught the guy. As long as he’s robbing houses, the story keeps going.”

“Which is great for the book. But not so great for the deal. They’re going to need a finished manuscript before they’ll make an offer. They want to be sure the end is as good as the beginning.”

By now, Logan was used to almost-but-not-quite successes. Most of the illusions he’d entertained about publishing were long since gone. But he still held onto a dream he could never admit to Seth. He wanted editors to be moved by his writing, to love it without qualification. No snags. No wrinkles. He’d thought this time it would happen.

“Logan, are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Look, this is excellent news. Finish the book, and if it’s as good as what you’ve written so far, they
will
make an offer. I promise. You’ve been after this too long to give up now.”

He sighed. “I know. It’s just, this story could drag on forever—” “Just write it, man. Don’t worry about the rest. And think about this. You have an opportunity a lot of writers don’t. You are part of the story. You’re the one who dubbed the guy the Robin Hood burglar. You’re covering it. Hey, you might even be the one who reveals his identity.”

“Yeah, right—”

“Actually,
that
would be great for the book. But the point is, you should be living, eating, and sleeping this story from now until the end. Make it yours, okay? Do that and let me take care of the rest.”

They hung up and Logan tucked his phone away. Lacey and Seth might be on opposite sides in this situation, but for once they were both telling him the same thing. This Robin Hood story was his future. It was everything.

Which meant he had to do more than sneak Wash Tillman out for some dramatic nighttime photos. He had to get in front of the Robin Hood burglaries and stay there.

Chapter Four

Logan slipped into Wash’s office, converted out of the old darkroom from the pre-digital days. To enter, you still had to squeeze into the pitch-black cylinder and slide the opening around, only now the glowing red submarine lights were gone, replaced by bald fluorescents.

Wash sat with his back to the door, browsing Facebook.

“You don’t leave a buddy in the lurch,” Logan snapped.

He glanced around in surprise. “Bro, that’s not how it went down—”

“Don’t bro me.”

“You think I abandoned you? I had your back, man . . . from the shadows.” He cocked his head toward his computer. “Take a look.”

Wash tethered one of his cameras to the computer with a length of gray cable. Soon his photos began to load onscreen.

Logan saw a blurry image of himself running, his name indecipherable on the back of his uniform shirt, then another one from a wider angle that showed the dog snapping at his heels. In a third, he was leaping for the memorial statue.

The photographer smiled. “I can’t believe how fast you were moving.”

“So you just stood there and snapped pictures?”

“I figured you had things under control.”

The back of the girl’s head was just visible in the next shot.

Then in the next one she had turned, and Logan saw her from the front. Dark hair. Slender build. Legs that went on forever.

She bent out of the next frame to remove the rollerblades.

“Do you have any—” The following image cut him off. She was looking right at the camera, though she didn’t realize it, and the focus was dead on. He stared into her bottomless brown eyes, half-hidden by a reckless fringe of bangs. Maybe he imagined the slight curve at the edge of her lips, the hint of dimples on her sunglazed cheeks.

“She’s . . .”

“Hot,” Wash said.

“Unhinged.”

“But kind of hot, too, don’t you think?”

“She walks dogs for a living. On rollerblades. In the middle of the night. During all these break-ins. Textbook example of crazy.”

“Yeah,” Wash said, drawing the word out. “A man like you, with big ambitions, he needs to stay focused and keep his eyes on the prize. You don’t want to get mixed up with this kind of girl. And I know you don’t want me to print this one out or anything.”

“Print it out? No way.” Logan turned to go, pausing at the revolving door. “You can go ahead and delete them. All of them.”

Wash ignored his instructions and by the time Logan reached his desk, the girl’s picture was waiting in his e-mail.

He’d been staring at it trying to think of her name. It was something funny. A boy’s name.

The lens had caught her unaware, between expressions. Her face wasn’t at all how he remembered. Viewing the picture was like seeing her for the first time.

Then it came to him. Reilly.

Or maybe it was spelled Riley, like the nba coach Pat Riley. Maybe her parents had been Showtime-era Lakers fans and named her after him.

He tried to work out her age, looking at the photo. Younger than he was, for sure. Early twenties, maybe.

Riley. Honestly, what kind of name was that for a girl? Did she hold it against them?

He clicked on the corner of the picture and it disappeared. He had work to do. He needed a lead. Some new info. Something.

Pulling up his notes, he summarized the first break-in. The thief entered through a window and stole a two-foot-tall bronze of a horse jockey. His story on the crime barely received three inches. If it hadn’t been for the historic angle—a picturesque treasure in a creaky historic house—the theft would have gone unreported.

The second incident was more interesting. The thief, striking at night when no one was home, entered through a back door and made off with a nineteenth-century ormolu clock. Once again, there had been more valuable pieces in the house, and the thief left them untouched.

After his story on the stolen clock ran, things really got crazy. A nonprofit in North Charleston called the police to report that the clock turned up at their back door, still ticking away. Nate Campbell had tipped him off, but it was Logan who christened the thief.