Billionaires Prefer Blondes (7 page)

“Should I have fainted?” Richard asked coolly. “My house
was broken into, and a dozen policemen are wandering the halls. Something was stolen. No, I’m not surprised. And I doubt you were the only one to learn on the news tonight that I made several purchases from Sotheby’s.”

“Mm-hm. So all of Manhattan’s a suspect. What about your girlfriend?”

That hadn’t taken long. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“She’s not here, your painting’s not here, and she’s a Jellicoe.”

“She’ll be back, she had nothing to do with who her father was, and I would have given her the painting if she wanted it.”

Gorstein took out the toothpick, looked at the ragged end, and then stuck it back between his teeth again. “I’m glad you’re satisfied, but your opinion doesn’t help me fill out my paperwork. And we have this contest at the station where we get points for finding perps.”

“I appreciate sarcasm,” Richard said, “but I’d rather you find the actual ‘perp,’ as you call it, than waste time looking at someone whom I know to be innocent.”

“Look at it from my point of view,” the detective countered. “I see on the news that you just spent almost thirty million bucks. Then I get a call that you’ve had a break-in. Then I find out your girlfriend, the daughter of a notorious cat burglar, is missing. I think, ‘
Uh-oh, she vanishes on the night that those Hobart paintings c—’
”

“Hogarth,” Richard corrected, clenching his jaw.

“‘—Ho
garth
paintings come home. That can’t be good.’ But you, not an idiot, haven’t even bothered to check the whereabouts of the paintings until I practically force you to do it. It doesn’t look good, Mr. Addison. Like maybe you knew it was missing, and you knew why. And I bet it was insured.”

“I see. Then let’s stop this conversation right now, and I’ll call my attorney. I’d hate for you to have to go through your scenario more than twice.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Gorstein pushed upright. “Use the phone in here. And don’t go anywhere else in the house until we finish with it.”

Richard watched the detective out the kitchen door. Before he could summon relief at having a moment alone to think, another officer came in and took a seat at the table. Obviously he was there to observe and to listen. If not for Samantha, Richard would have flicked him away like a bug.

That was the bloody crux of the problem. Until he knew where Samantha was and what her involvement might be, his hands were tied. And if he wasn’t very careful, they might very well end up handcuffed.
Fuck
.

Samantha checked her watch as the taxi dropped her off around the corner from the townhouse. Three-twenty. Great. Rick was early-riser guy, so he’d be up in an hour or two. She didn’t mind losing sleep, but she preferred that it be because of sex or a good burglary. All she had was an hour in Central Park shrubbery.

Not that she’d be able to close her eyes if she
did
get the chance. She knew she hadn’t just imagined Martin. He’d been there, and even though he
knew
she’d seen him, he’d declined a meeting. She needed to call Stoney. And she needed to figure out how much—if anything—she wanted to tell Rick.

It would help if she knew something, herself. An unexplainable sighting and a bad feeling hardly made for anything a sane person would believe. Still, if—

“Stop right there!”

For a bare second she froze. One man did a half trot toward
her on the sidewalk. She could handle one guy, even if the dark thing he held in one hand was a gun. What the fuck had she been doing, though, letting herself get so distracted that she hadn’t noticed anything until he was practically on top of her?

Her heart began to pound, much-missed adrenaline flooding into her system. Samantha gave a half shrug, letting her purse slide off her shoulder and down to her wrist, where she clutched the strap. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he probably wouldn’t expect her to be proactive.

“Why don’t you slow down there, honey?” she drawled in a soft Southern accent. “You’ll scare a girl half to death, charging up like that.”

“Get down on your knees, hands behind your head.”

She’d heard that lingo on every episode of
COPS
she’d ever watched. Her heart bottomed out and began thumping harder as she spied the glint of his badge.

“I live right around the corner,” she said, edging toward the street and Central Park beyond. “At number twelve. With Rick Addison.”

“Down on your knees!”

Shit
. Every muscle, every instinct, screamed at her to run. Swallowing it back, Samantha knelt. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. Spending an hour hiding in Central Park in the middle of the night might be crazy, but it wasn’t illegal. Probably.

“Hands on your head. Interlace your fingers,” he repeated.

“Okay. Just calm down. It’s late, and I’m tired.”

The cop tapped the mike attached to one shoulder and said something that sounded like, “I’ve got her,” before he moved behind her and grabbed her hands.

Whoever was receiving that call obviously knew who
“her” was, which meant they were looking for her specifically. This was very, very bad.

A cuff clicked shut around her left wrist, cold, hard, and way too confining. “Jeez,” she muttered, fighting back panic at the thought that she’d actually been caught, “will you at least tell me what’s going on? Is Rick okay?”

The cop pulled her right arm around behind her back, yanking the left one down by hauling on the handcuffs. In a second, both wrists were caught.

“On your feet, miss.”

At least he was still being relatively polite. Samantha rocked back onto her toes and then straightened her legs, standing. One hand holding the joint of the cuffs, the cop ran the other up and down her legs and arms, neck, and around her waist. He missed the paperclip in her front left pants pocket, which put her considerably closer to being at ease. With the ’clip she could be out of the cuffs faster than the cop could say “MacGyver.”

More troubling at the moment was the fact that the cop hadn’t answered her question. “Please tell me what’s happened,” she pleaded, moving forward as he gave her a light push between the shoulder blades. “Is Rick all right?”

“You can talk to Detective Gorstein about that.”

“Homicide?” she asked, willing this Gorstein not to be.

“Robbery.”

Thank God
. Rick wasn’t dead. Nobody was dead, which was an improvement over the way surprises usually went where she was concerned. The cop nudged her forward again. Obviously the guy was used to arresting thugs and drunks; if she’d wanted to, she could have knocked a heel into his groin and been gone into the night by now.

The flash of red and blue lights reflecting on the trees and
buildings greeted her as they neared the corner. That figured. Another few feet and she would have realized that something was wrong and either made herself scarce or gone in through the alley.

She counted five police cars, a van, and an unmarked car with a light in the rear window. No ambulances and no fire trucks, but something had definitely happened—and it had happened in her—Rick’s—house.

A good-looking guy in a dark suit met them at the foot of the front steps. “You must be Gorstein,” she said.

“And you’re Miss Jellicoe, I presume,” he returned, his lips curled around a bent toothpick. Ex-smoker, probably—still not comfortable unless he had something stuck in his mouth. Well dressed for a cop, though.

For a heartbeat she weighed going friendly against being belligerent. With the handcuffs on and now outnumbered, friendly made more sense.

“I’m Sam Jellicoe. I’d offer my hand, but it’s otherwise occupied.”

He cracked a half grin. “I tracked one of your dad’s burglaries about eight years ago. An Andy Warhol we never recovered. I’ll bet you’re even slicker than he was.”

Christ
. The Andy Warhol job hadn’t been Martin’s work; it had been hers. The thought shook her a little. “I’m not my dad,” she said. “And I’d really like to know what’s going on.”

“I have a couple of questions for you, first.”

“No.” Samantha shook her head. “Not until you tell me whether Rick is okay.”

“Addison’s okay. He’s sitting in the kitchen, probably on the phone with his lawyer.”

Great
. As if she wanted Tom Donner, Boy Scout, tangled in the middle of whatever this was. Then what Gorstein
had said dawned on her. “Why does Rick need a lawyer?”

“You’d have to ask him. Now, where were you between about midnight and now?”

“This doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere good,” she returned. “Am I under arrest?”

He looked at her for a minute. “Yeah.”

“Then I’d like you to read me my rights. And I’d like to see Rick Addison.”

“No. Ruiz, read the lady her rights.”

The cop who’d handcuffed her pulled a small card out of his breast pocket. As he did so, Samantha glanced up at the windows of the surrounding townhouses. Half their neighbors looked back at her. Two of them even had cameras.
Wonderfuckenful
.

She drew a deep breath.

“You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that r—”

“RICK!”

Gorstein chomped through his toothpick. “Put her in a car. We’ll do this at the station.”

Samantha set her feet as Ruiz tried to steer her to the nearest patrol car. “At least tell me what I’m under arrest for.”

With a mournful look at the two halves of toothpick in his hand, the detective dropped them to the sidewalk. “Grand larceny.”

“Of what?”

The cop standing in the open townhouse doorway stumbled sideways. Rick, in his blue dressing robe and barefooted, charged down the steps toward her. “Samantha!”

“Get her in the damn car,” Gorstein grunted, taking her free elbow and half lifting her in the air as another cop
pulled the rear passenger door open. “I do not want them talking to each other.”

Rick was a suspect in something, too?
“What the hell’s going on?” she yelled.

“A Hogarth’s missing,” Rick returned as Gorstein left her and charged him, herding him backward—or trying to. “I told them you’d gone sightseeing,” he called, “but they obviously don’t realize what a mistake they’re making!”

Ruiz pushed her, and she fell into the back seat. Her expression must have mirrored some of what she felt, because Rick said something very quietly to Gorstein, and the detective abruptly moved aside.

“One minute,” he said.

“Samantha,” Rick murmured, coming forward to lean into the open car door, “don’t do anything rash. I’ll follow you to the station, and you’ll be out by breakfast.”

“Promise?” She gulped air, knowing how juvenile she sounded, and still needing to hear the reassurance.

His gaze met hers squarely. “I promise. Don’t run, Sam.”

Obviously he knew more about her skills than the cops did. “Okay,” she grumbled.

She could have run; she would have run—except for one thing. Running would mean never seeing Rick again. To prevent that, she would even let herself be fingerprinted. Her father would be spinning in his grave—except that Martin wasn’t dead. She, on the other hand, might very well be headed in that direction.

Wednesday, 3:32 a.m.

O
nce the police closed Samantha in the back of a car and drove her away, the gloves came off.

“I haven’t reported a bloody crime,” Rick snapped, blocking Gorstein’s way back to the townhouse. “I want your people out of my home, and I want Samantha Jellicoe un-handcuffed, apologized to, and returned here immediately. At that point I’ll decide whether I should sue your department for wrongful arrest and harassment.”

“Look, Mr. Addison, your butler confirmed a break-in, and your security company dispatched us. You’ve already admitted that a painting is missing.”

“I was in error. Get out.”

“Can’t. Once we note that something is missing, we have to investigate. And if these paintings are insured, it’s not your best interests I’m concerned about. It’s getting to the truth.”

“Very noble. I hope when you find your next employment
as a dishwasher or cabdriver, you feel the same way.”

“How about we just get this over with as fast and painlessly as possible?” the detective returned, pulling a new toothpick from his pocket and jamming it between his teeth. “If you’ll go back to the kitchen, we should be finished here fairly soon.”

“
Fairly
soon isn’t good enough. We’re finished now.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll have to get my answers from Miss Jellicoe, then.”

That was the wrong damned threat to make. “I suggest you get to it,” Richard said in a low, barely controlled voice. “Good luck.”

Gorstein grimaced. “This would go better if you’d cooperate.”

“This would have gone better if you hadn’t arrested Samantha.”

“I could have arrested you. Don’t make me change my mind.”

Richard smiled, though he didn’t feel anything close to amused. “I do wish you would.”

Silence.

“No? Good day, then. You have two minutes to get your people off my property. Come back with a warrant. If someone wants to know why I’ve kicked you out, tell them it’s because you arrested Samantha on sight.” Turning his back, Rick strode inside. Grabbing his cell phone off its cradle, he hit speed-dial number three.

The phone rang three times and then scraped off the receiver. “Hello?” came raspily.

“Tom. Apologies for waking you, but I need your help,” Richard said, climbing the stairs for the bedroom.

“Rick?” The voice became immediately more alert. “What’s wrong?”

“We had a break-in, and one of my new paintings was stolen.” Slamming the bedroom door, he shed his robe and dug for his clothes again.

“You okay?”

“I slept through it, apparently.” He shrugged into his jeans.

“A stolen painting, huh? Where’s Jellicoe?”

“On her way to the police station, in handcuffs.” Richard couldn’t keep the deep anger from his voice. Whatever her ultimate involvement might be, Samantha was his. Nobody got to take her away against her own bloody wishes.

“And did she do—”

“Don’t you bloody dare ask me that. I’m going down to the station. I need you to call Phil Ripton and get him to roust his associates and every judge in Manhattan, if that’s what it takes to have her out by sunrise.”

“Rick, it’s four o’cl—”

“Can you handle that?” Richard interrupted. “I’m asking you to do this because you know Samantha’s history, and because I trust you with it.”

Tom audibly blew out his breath. “I’m on it.”

“Thank you. Call me on my mobile when you have some information.”

Richard snapped the phone closed and tossed it on the bed to pull on a shirt and light jacket. For a second he debated calling for Ben and the limousine, but a limo at a police station would draw attention that he didn’t want, and that Samantha didn’t need.

He pocketed his wallet and the phone and went back downstairs. “Wilder,” he said, spying his butler handing out cups of coffee to the police out standing on the public sidewalk, “I’m going out. I have my phone, if you need to reach me. Do not let them back in without a warrant.” He wanted to stop the
coffee bit, but he supposed Wilder had a point. Making enemies of the entire NYPD wouldn’t be a good idea, especially with Samantha in their custody. His argument at the moment was with Detective Gorstein.

“I’ll keep an eye on things, sir.”

Spanolli stood outside drinking coffee and talking with a pair of other officers. “I assume Detective Gorstein has gone?” Richard said.

“He went back to the station. Do you need—”

“I’ll see him there, then.”

“Mr. Addison, you’re not supposed to go anywhere until we wrap things up here.”

“I’m going to the police station,” Richard returned, half wishing the police
would
try to stop him. “If you have a problem with that, please tell me.”

“Uh, no, sir.”

Despite his dislike of assaults on his privacy, Richard supposed the gathered crowd of curious onlookers and paparazzi did have its benefits. The police were not going to do anything dicey with spectators about. Ignoring the flash of cameras, he hailed one of the taxis having to slow for the mess.

“Where to?”

He read out the address of the police station from Gorstein’s card and sat back. The cab smelled faintly of something he didn’t care to define. He noted that only in passing, though. Most of his attention was on what he was going to say to Samantha after she went free. It would have to be good to keep her from disappearing somewhere she felt safe—which would be somewhere no one, including him, could find her.

If she’d taken the painting, she wouldn’t have called for him. He knew that as well as he knew anything. So therefore
someone else had broken into his house and stolen something that belonged to him. A twelve-million-dollar something.

Odds were, though, that she wasn’t completely ignorant. She’d vanished somewhere, and then reappeared just as the police were swarming over the premises. Under the circumstances, he wanted some damned answers from her. And he felt entitled to them, as well.

Richard cursed under his breath. Five months ago and with Samantha’s help he’d discovered that someone he’d trusted had been removing his paintings and replacing them with forgeries. Three people had ended up in jail, and three more had died because of it. This hadn’t begun much more auspiciously.

Yes, his collection was insured, and yes, he knew what Gorstein was suggesting—that he could fairly easily take a twelve-million-dollar insurance payout
and
still have a painting he could hide away for his private enjoyment.

What the detective didn’t realize was that he would never tolerate the public reputation that he was a mark, even if he’d secretly arranged for and profited from the dealings. It wasn’t the money that mattered; it was the fact that someone had stolen from him. And once he’d extricated Samantha from this mess, he had every intention of finding out who was responsible.

His cell phone rang. “Addison,” he answered.

“Rick,” Tom’s voice came, “I woke up Phil, and he’s working on getting Jellicoe released. He asked if you would give him a call so the firm can start on damage control.”

“Damage control?”

“The morning news just started, and you’re a teaser. They’ve already got cameras at the police station.”

Richard cursed. “
I’m
not even at the bloody police station yet.”

“Call Phil before you get there, okay? He’s got a couple of ideas. It’s not just about Jellicoe, Rick. This could damage your reputation, too.”

“I know that.”

“Okay. I know you’re mad. I’m just trying to be the voice of reason.”

He probably needed to listen to one this morning. As a plan, storming the jail and rescuing Samantha seemed a bit light on the details, and he hadn’t exactly made a friend of Gorstein. “Give me Ripton’s number,” he said, remembering that he’d left his Palm Pilot on the dressing table.

He hung up on Tom and dialed the attorney’s number. “Phil? It’s Rick.”

“Rick. Hell of a way to wake up, isn’t it? Only in New York.”

“What did Tom tell you?”

“That your girl got arrested, and that her dad has a record for this kind of burglary. It’s pretty weak.”

“Weak or not, she’s at the police station being interrogated. That is not acceptable.”

“Where are you right now?”

“In a taxi, about five minutes from the station.”

For a moment he heard muffled voices on the other end of the line. “Rick, there’s a Starbucks about a block south of the station. Wait for me there.”

“I’m going in to get Samantha.”

“If you go in there alone, they’ll run you around and try to rile you up. They love it when rich guys make threats against the NYPD, especially when he’s standing there empty-handed and the press is milling around outside. Makes the cops really want to put together a case.”

“I’m not a fool,” Richard retorted. And he had to admit that he was already riled up, and had already made some
threats. “And I won’t leave Samantha in there for a second longer than I have to.”

“Look, I’m on my way to see Judge Penoza. Give me thirty minutes, and I’ll meet you at Starbucks. We go in together with a court order, and then we get her out of there, no runaround, no delays.”

It was a good plan, and the stronger they entered the fight, the better they would look later. For a long second Richard weighed the logic of Phil Ripton’s approach against what Samantha referred to as his white-knight tendencies. “Thirty minutes, Phil. After that, I will call the governor and go in there with the National Guard, if necessary.”

“Okay. I understand your feelings on this, Rick. Just wait for me.”

He would wait. For thirty minutes. And not a bloody second more.

Detective Gorstein circled the gray metal table, then without warning slammed the flat of his hand down on the scratched surface.

Stifling a fake yawn, Samantha looked up at him. “Are you the bad cop, or the good cop?”

“I’m just the guy who wants to give you a break, if you’d tell me where you were last night.”

Now that she had the handcuffs off and had gotten over her initial panic at being arrested and dragged into a police station, this was becoming…well, not enjoyable, but she definitely knew how to play people, and she meant to have fun with this guy. She didn’t even have to be nice, because he’d already put the cuffs on—and because they both knew that Rick would raise the
Titanic
if that was what it took to get her out of there. In fact, the worst part of this was turning out to be the fact that she’d been fingerprinted and photographed.
Figuring out how to get herself out of the system—she’d worry about that later.

“I’d be more inclined to believe your sincerity,” she drawled, “if you’d get me a Diet Coke and let me make a phone call.”

He grabbed the phone from the far end of the table and thunked it down in front of her. “I’m not stopping you.”

“And you’re not leaving, either, I presume?”

“I’ll leave.”

“And you’ll go stand on the other side of the mirror, right?”

His toothpick twitched. “Yep.”

She blew out her breath. “Fine.” If he’d given her a minute of privacy she would have called Stoney; she
knew
Rick was working to get her released, and she needed someone to help her with the Martin problem—especially now that she knew the Hogarth had gone missing at the very same time she’d told her father she would be elsewhere.

Noting that Gorstein watched, she dialed Rick’s cell. It only rang once before he picked up. “Addison.”

For the moment she pretended that a weight hadn’t lifted from her shoulders just at the sound of his voice. “Hi, studmuffin.”

“Samantha. Are you all right?”

“They are totally shining lights in my face and making me listen to Manilow,” she offered.

Silence. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he finally said, “considering that I’m bordering on a stroke.”

“Don’t tell Mom about that,” she returned smoothly.

“They’re listening?” he asked immediately, his voice sharpening.

“You bet.”

“Give me ten more minutes, love. Try to behave.”

“Easy breezy. How—”

“Okay,” Gorstein interrupted. “Time’s up.”

Samantha blew him a raspberry as she hung up the phone. She’d known Rick was on the way, but hearing him say it made her feel nearly giddy with relief.

“You may think this is pretty funny,” the detective continued, leaning a haunch on the table, “but
I’m
trying to find a twelve-million-dollar painting.”

“Then you shouldn’t be wasting your time leaning on me, pal. Because if this is how you investigate,
I’ll
find that painting way before you do.”

“Why don’t you tell me where to start looking, then?”

She had a good idea, actually—if not where, then who. “Hey, my business is protecting people’s valuables, not stealing them.”

“Then you weren’t doing your job, either, were you?”

“Bite me.” No, she hadn’t been doing her job. In fact, her absence had probably made it possible for the cat—okay, for Martin—to break in. Dammit, she hated being played. Especially when she should have known better.

“Touched a nerve, did I?”

She looked up at him. “And what does that tell you?”

“That you’re either telling the truth, or you’re as slick as I thought you were. In other words, it doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Well, since I’m still waiting for a lawyer and for my soda, you’ll just have to make do.”

Gorstein chewed on his toothpick. He probably carried extras with him. “If I hadn’t arrested you, would we be having a different conversation?”

Samantha was almost tempted to give him a straight answer. This guy was pretty slick himself, and she needed to remember that. “Probably not,” she mused, “unless you gave
me some information and brought me a soda so we could go through the facts together.”

“So you would help me.”

She smiled, not amused. “If you hadn’t arrested me. That kind of thing can put a real damper on a relationship.”

“You’re a Jellicoe. In my book, that’s reason enough for a lot of things.”

“Well, your book is stupid. And where’s my damned soda?”

Gorstein looked toward the wall-sized mirror. “Get her a soda, will you?”