Captive Star (14 page)

Anyway, she adored her dad. Her mother tried to hold the business together, but it must have been rough. They lived up in Connecticut. You can still hear New England in her voice. It's classy."

She lapsed into silence a moment, struggling to push back the worry. "Her mother married again a few years later, sold the business, relocated in D.C. Bailey was fond of the guy. He treated her well, got her interested in gems—that was his area—sent her to college. Her mother died when she was in college—a car accident. It was a rough time for Bailey. Her stepfather died a couple years later."

"It's tough, losing people right and left."

"Yeah." She glanced at Jack, thought of him losing father, brother, mother.

Perhaps never really having them to lose. "I've really never lost anyone."

He understood where her mind had gone, and he shrugged. "You get through. You go on. Didn't Bailey?"

"Yeah, but it scarred her. It's got to scar a person, Jack."

"People live with scars."

He wouldn't discuss it, she realized, and turned back to the scenery. "Her stepfather left her a percentage of the business. Which didn't sit well with the creeps."

"Ah, yeah, the creeps."

"Thomas and Timothy Salvini—they're twins, by the way, mirror images.

Slick-looking characters in expensive suits, with hundred-dollar haircuts."

"That's one reason to dislike them," Jack noted. "But it's not your main one."

"Nope. I never liked their attitudes—toward

Bailey, and women in general. It's easiest to say Bailey considered them family from the get-go, and the sentiment wasn't returned. Timothy was particularly rough on her. I get the impression they mostly ignored her before their old man died, and then went ballistic when she inherited part of Salvini in the will."

"And what's Salvini?"

"That's their name, and the name of the gem business. They design, buy, sell gems and jewelry out of a fancy place in Chevy Chase."

"Salvini… Can't say I've heard of it, but then I don't buy a lot of baubles."

"They sell some awesome glitters—especially the ones Bailey designs. And they do consultant work for estates, museums. That's primarily Bailey's forte, too.

Though she loves design work."

"If Bailey does design work and consulting, what do the creeps do?"

"Thomas handles the business end—accounts, sales, takes a lot of trips to check out sources for gems. Timothy works in the lab when it suits him, and likes to stride around the showroom looking important."

Restless, she reached out to fiddle with the buttons of his stereo and had her fingers slapped. "Hands off."

"Touchy about your toys, aren't you?" she muttered. "Well, anyway, it's a pretty posh little firm, old established rep. It was her contacts at the Smithsonian that copped them the job with the Three Stars. She was dancing on the ceiling when it came through, couldn't wait to get her hands on them, put them under one of those machines she uses. The somethingmeters, and whattayascopes she uses in their lab."

"So she was verifying authenticity, assessing value."

"You got it. She was dying for us to see them, so Grace and I went in last week.

That was the first time I'd laid eyes on them—but they seemed almost familiar.

Spectacular, almost unreal, yet familiar. I suppose it's because Bailey'd described them to us." She rolled her shoulders to toss off the sensation, and the memory of the dreams. "You've seen the one, touched it. It's magnificent.

But to see the three of them, together, it just stops your heart."

"Sounds to me as though they stopped someone's conscience. If Bailey's as honest as you say—"

M.J. interrupted him. "She is."

"Then we'll have to check out the stepbrothers."

Her brows shot up. "Would they actually have the nerve to try to steal the Three Stars?" she wondered. "Could that be why Ralph was blackmailing one of them, rather than the gambling?"

"No."

"Well, why not?" Then she shook her head, answering her own question. "Couldn't be—the payments started months ago, and they'd just recently got the contract."

"There you go."

She brooded over it a moment longer. "But maybe they were planning to steal the Stars. If they were trying to pull a fast one, got away with it, it would destroy their business… the business their father slaved a lifetime to build,"

she added slowly. "And that would destroy Bailey. Even the thought of it. She'd do almost anything to prevent that from happening."

"Like ship off the stones to the two people in the world she felt she could trust without question."

"Yeah—and face down her stepbrothers. Alone." Fear was a claw in her throat.

"Jack."

"Stay logical." His voice snapped to combat the waver in hers. "If they're involved in this—and I'd say it fits—it means they've got a client, a buyer. And they need all three Stars. She's safe as long as they don't. She's safe as long as we're out of reach."

"They'd be desperate. They could be holding her somewhere. They might have hurt her."

"Hurt's a long way from dead. They'd need her alive, M.J., until they round up all three. And from the rundown you've just given me, your pal may have a fragile side, and she may be naive, but she's not a chump."

"No, she's not." Steadying herself, M.J. looked at the phone in her lap. The call, she realized, wasn't just a risk for herself, but a risk for all of them.

"If you want to drive to New York before I use this, it's okay with me."

He reached out, squeezed a hand over hers. "We're not going to Yankee Stadium, no matter how much you beg."

"I don't just owe you for me now. I should have realized it before. I owe you for Bailey, and for Grace. I've put them in your hands, Jack."

He drew his away, clamped it on the wheel. "Don't get sloppy on me, sugar. It pisses me off."

"I love you."

His heart did a long, slow circle in his chest, made him sigh. "Hell. I guess you want me to say it again, now."

"I guess I do."

"I love you. What's the M.J. stand for?"

It made her smile, as he'd hoped it would. "Look, Jack, wild sex and declarations of love are one thing. But I haven't known you long enough for that one."

"Martha Jane. I really think it's Martha Jane."

She made a rude buzzing sound. "Wrong. And that puts you out of this round, sir, better luck next time."

There'd be a birth certificate somewhere, he mused. He knew how to hunt. "Okay, tell me about Grace."

"Grace is a complicated woman. She's utterly, unbelievably beautiful. That's not an exaggeration. I've seen grown men turn into stuttering fools after one flash of her baby blues."

"I'm looking forward to meeting her."

"You'll probably swallow your tongue, but that's all right, I'm not the jealous sort. And it's kind of a kick to watch guys go into instant meltdown around Grace. You flipped through the pictures in my wallet when you searched my purse, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I took a look."

"There's a couple of me with Grace and Bailey in there."

He skimmed his mind back, focused in. And didn't want to tell her he'd barely noted the blonde or the brunette. The redhead had taken most of his attention.

"The brunette—wearing a big silly hat in one of them."

"Yeah, that was on our rockhounding trip last year. We had a tourist snap it.

Anyway, she's gorgeous, and she grew up privileged. And orphaned. She lost her folks young and lived with an aunt. The Fontaines are filthy rich."

"Fontaine… Fontaine…" His mind circled. "As in Fontaine Department Stores?"

"Right the first time. They're rich, stuffy, snotty snobs. Grace enjoys shocking them. She was expected to do her stint at Radcliffe, do the obligatory tour of Europe, and land the appropriate rich, stuffy, snotty snob husband. She's done everything but cooperate, and since she's got mountains of money of her own, she doesn't really give two damns what her family thinks."

She paused, considered. "I don't think she'd give two damns if she was flat broke, either. Money doesn't drive Grace. She enjoys it, spends it lavishly, but she doesn't respect it."

"People who work for their money respect it."

"She's not a do-nothing trust-funder." M.J. said, immediately defensive. "She just doesn't care if people see her that way. She does a lot of charity work—quietly. That's private. She's one of the most generous people I know. And she's loyal. She's also contrary and moody. She'll take off for days at a time when the whim strikes her. Just go. It might be Rome—or it might be Duluth. She just has to go. She has a place up in western Maryland—I guess you'd call it a country home, but it's small and sweet. Lots of land, very isolated. No phone, no neighbors. I think she was going there this weekend."

She shut her eyes, tried to image. "I don't know if I could find the place. I've only been up there once, and Bailey did the driving. Once I get out of the city, all those country roads look the same. It's in the mountains, near some state forest."

"It might be worth checking out. We'll see. Would she go to her family if there was trouble?"

"The last place."

"How about a man?'

"Why would you depend on something you could twist into knots with a smile? No, there's no man she'd go to."

He thought about that one awhile, then blinked, remembered and grinned. "Grace Fontaine—the Ivy League Miss April. It was the hat in the wallet shot that threw me off. I'd never forget that… face."

"Really?" Voice dry as dirt, she shifted to look at him over the top of her sunglasses. "Do you spend a lot of your time drooling over centerfolds, Dakota?"

"I did over Miss April," he admitted cheerfully, and rubbed a hand over his heart. "My God, you're pals with Miss April."

"Her name's Grace, and she posed for that years ago, when we were in college.

She did it to needle her family."

"Thank the Lord. I think I still have that issue somewhere. I'm going to have to take a much closer look now. What a body," he remembered, fondly. "Women built like that are a gift to mankind."

"Perhaps you'd like to pull over, and we'll have a moment of silence."

He looked over, kept right on grinning. "Gee, M.J., your eyes are greener. And you said you weren't the jealous sort."

"I'm not." Normally. "It's a matter of dignity. You're having some revolting, prurient fantasy about my best friend."

"It's not revolting, I promise. Prurient, maybe, but not revolting." He took the punch on the arm without complaint. "But it's you I love, sugar."

"Shut up."

"Do you think she'll sign the picture for me? Maybe right across the—"

"I'm warning you."

Fun was fun, he thought, but a man could push his luck. In more ways than one.

He turned off 15, headed east.

"Wait, I thought we were going up to P.A. to call."

"You just said Grace had a place in western Maryland. It wouldn't be smart to head in that general direction just now. Change of plans. We head in toward Baltimore first. Go ahead and make the call. I think we've said our last goodbye to our little motel paradise." He smiled patted her hand. "Don't worry, sugar, we'll find another."

"It couldn't possibly be the same. I hope," she added, and dialed hurriedly.

"It's ringing."

"Keep it short, don't say where you are. Just tell her to go to a public phone, public place, and call you back."

"I—" She swore. "It's her machine. I was afraid of this." She tapped her fist impatiently against her knees as Grace's recorded voice flowed through the receiver. "Grace, pick up, damn it. It's urgent. If you check in for messages, don't go home. Don't go to the house. Get to a public phone and call my portable. We're in trouble, serious trouble."

"Wrap it up, M.J."

"Oh, God. Grace, be careful. Call me." She disconnected with a little catch of breath. "She's up in the mountains—or she got a wild hair and decided to fly to London for the Fourth. Or she's on the beach in the West Indies. Or… they've already found her."

"Doesn't sound like a lady who's easy to track. I'm leaning toward your first choice." He cut off on the interstate, headed north. "We're going to circle around a little, then stop and fill up the tank. And buy a map. Let's see if we can jog some of your memory and find Grace's mountain hideaway."

The prospect settled her nerves. "Thanks."

"Isolated, huh?"

"It's stuck in the middle of the woods, and the woods are stuck in the middle of nowhere."

"Hmm. I don't suppose she walks around naked up there." He chuckled when she hit him. "Just a thought."

They found a gas station, and a map. In a truck stop just off the interstate, they stopped for lunch.

With the map spread out over the table, they got down to business.

"Well, there's only, like, a half a dozen state forests in western Maryland,"

Jack commented, and forked up some of his meat-loaf special. "Any one of them ring a bell?"

"What's the difference? They're all trees."

"A real urbanite, aren't you?"

She shrugged, bit into her ham sandwich. "Aren't you?"

"Guess so. I never could understand why people want to live in the woods, or in the hills. I mean, where do they eat?"

"At home."

They looked at each other, shook their heads. "Most every night, too," he agreed. "And where do they go for fun, for a little after-work relaxation? On the patio. That's a scary thought."

"No people, no "traffic, no restaurants or movie theaters. No life."

"I'm with you. Obviously our pal Grace isn't."

"My pal," she said with an arched brow. "She likes solitude. She gardens."

"What, like tomatoes?"

"Yeah, and flowers. The time we went up, she'd been grubbing in the dirt, planting—I don't know, petunias or something. I like flowers, but all you have to do is buy them. Nobody says you have to grow them. There were deer in the woods. That was pretty cool," she remembered. "Bailey got into the whole business. It was okay for a couple days, but she doesn't even have a television up there."

"That's barbaric."