High Rhymes and Misdemeanors (27 page)

“In the case!” Uselessly, she tried to twist away.

“They’re not! I looked!”

Where was Peter? Where were Calum and Monica? What had those other shots meant? How had Ferdy had time to check the case?

“I dropped them!” Even as she said it, Grace realized she should never have admitted to carrying the cameos, but reason didn’t seem to be something Ferdy would listen to.

“Where?” Ferdy’s fingers bit into her shoulder muscles. He was stronger than he looked. “Show me.”

“I don’t know where. Back there. They’re gone, that’s all!” But she was stumbling forward, urged on by Ferdy’s grip. He was a small man, but he was enraged and scared and apparently believed he had nothing to lose. All in all, a bad combination—made worse by the gun he was jamming in her side.

“Where’s Peter?” she asked dully. She was afraid to ask.

“Sid’s taking care of Mr. Fox,” Ferdy said, his breath coming in little gasps that sounded close to childish sobs. Apparently he was in worse physical shape than she was. Or a lot more upset.

“Did you kill Danny Delon?” In books they always kept the murderer talking to give the cavalry time to show up. Was any of the cavalry left in one piece? Grace had no idea.

“Who?” Ferdy’s foot slipped on the grass and the gun jammed harder against Grace’s side. She cringed away, terrified his finger would slip on the trigger. He kept his grip on her, using her to steady himself. “Oh, that creature. I spotted him for what he was when he came here to meet with the old man. It wasn’t hard to figure out their stupid little scheme.”

“What scheme? He was just going to buy the cameos from Danny Delon, wasn’t he?”

“With
my
inheritance!” Ferdy’s voice shook with outrage. “Do you know what it’s been like watching him squander it all away, year after year? And he wouldn’t have sold the bloody things. Oh no, he’d have locked them up in his cabinet to gloat over while the place fell to rack and ruin around him.”

“So you killed him. And you killed Danny Delon.”

Ferdy concentrated on his footing for a moment before saying off-handedly, “
That
was an accident. He should have just handed the damn things over to me. I explained the situation to him. Instead he tried to double-cross me. He went straight to Fox. I followed him. I watched him break in, and I followed him inside.”

An accident? With a battle-ax? Who, besides Vikings, had accidents like that?

“Then why didn’t you find the cameos? You knew about the secret passage.” Grace’s questions were motivated by genuine curiosity as much as the conviction that she needed to keep this unbalanced twerp talking.

“There wasn’t time!” Ferdy sounded irate, whether from Grace’s lack of understanding or the situation itself. “The phone kept ringing and then that stupid girl showed up. Alley Oop or whatever her name is. The old hag’s niece. She kept snooping around, and cars kept driving past to see if the shop was open. It was
intolerable!
”

“So who wrote Astarte in …” Grace swallowed hard, “blood.”

“Me, naturally.” Ferdy was smug for a moment. “And a very nice touch it was, too. A nice little warning to hand over the jewels.”

Except that no one had understood his message, which is the downside of cryptic messages in blood. And also the downside of trying to deal with psychopaths.

“This is where they fell,” Grace said, stopping in her tracks. She pretended to search the grass. “There! What’s that shining by the tree root?”

Ferdy peered at the ground. Grace shoved against him with all her might, and he toppled forward, letting go of her.

She whirled and ran, zigzagging through the trees, boots stamping the damp earth. Every moment she expected to hear a shot ring out. Her legs were shaking, making it hard to run; her heart thundered against her ribs. She gulped the damp night air in great gusts that burned in her lungs.

Why didn’t he shoot? Why didn’t she hear him? Not that she could hear anything above the blood pounding in her temples. She ran on, narrowly avoiding tripping over a tree root. A low branch slapped her in the face.

Where was she? Where were the others?

And then abruptly, Grace knew where she was, pulling back in time to save herself from falling over the ledge above the sunken garden. She had managed to double back. That meant the crypt stood behind that copse of trees, and that Penwith Hall was only a few yards away if she could make it without bumping into Ferdy or his cohorts.

But that was what Ferdy and his pals would expect her to do. They would be waiting for her to try to reach the Hall and its relative safety.

Grace paused at the head of the steps, panting. She remembered Peter clowning by the poolside just a few days before.

“In mossy skulls that nest and lie, ever singing, ‘Die, oh! Die.’ ”

She pulled out the handkerchief in her jacket pocket. It chinked as she dropped it into the tall stone urn at the head of the stone staircase.

Softly she crept down the stairs into the overgrown garden. The brackish water lay like black oil in the shifting moonlight. The waist-high weeds swayed gently in the night breeze. They wouldn’t look for her here; she could take a few minutes to catch her breath. She needed time to think, to figure out her next move. Peter, Monica, and Calum’s lives might all be depending on her.

Sticking close to the long stone wall, Grace moved down the length of the garden. At the sound of a foot scraping the stairs above, she froze. She flattened herself against the rough surface.

She could see him, silhouetted against the moon. An incongruously sinister figure in a bow tie. Slowly, he came down the steps.

Grace held her breath.

She could see him scanning the bramble-choked yard. She knew the moment he spotted her, by the way his body relaxed.

“Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Grace turned and ran for the pool. It was instinct, but it was not a good instinct. She splashed into the water, slipped on the slimy bottom and went down on her knees. It wasn’t deep—certainly not deep enough to hide in—where had she got the idea it would be?

Ferdy laughed and pointed the gun at her.

“Get out. Now.”

She crouched there a moment, shivering, trying to think. Nothing came immediately to mind.

Movement on the ledge above caught Grace’s eye. A black figure launched itself from the precipice onto Ferdy who pitched from the stairs with a squeal and hit the ground like a thunderbolt had struck him.

Peter, landing on top, reached for the nearest weapon. It turned out to be the half-shattered stone head of the Grecian statue still resting beside the mossy pool. He brought it down hard on Ferdy’s head and the other man went limp.

“I thought—I was afraid—I didn’t know—” Grace heard herself and quit babbling. Bad enough to feel this way without dribbling it all over Peter Fox.

Peter got to his feet, breathing hard. He reached a hand down to Grace, drawing her out of the pool. She squelched onto the bank. Full circle, she thought.

“Why, it’s the Lady of the Lake,” said Peter.

· · ·

Calum was sitting on the doorstep of the crypt. Monica hovered over him while above their heads, the ladies in the stone relief wept into their hankies. The big man was holding his head and keening—or swearing.

“He knocked himself out running into the marble cornice,” Monica explained wryly.

“Ouch,” Grace sympathized. There didn’t seem to be much blood, though it was difficult to tell from the way Calum carried on.

“He’s very upset at missing all the action.”

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Peter remarked. He opened the ball of linen-wrapped cameos that they had retrieved from the stone urn. The stones twinkled in the moonlight like tiny fallen stars.

Staring up at them, Calum swore more loudly. “D’you mean to tell me she had them all the time?”

“A precaution,” Grace said apologetically.

Peter handed the jewels her way with such alacrity that Grace wondered if he was tempted to keep them. He grinned a little, meeting her gaze.

“Wow,” Monica said. “I don’t know if I’m relieved you had them safe or hurt that you apparently didn’t trust us.”

“It was kind of a last-minute impulse,” Grace explained.

“I know something about those.”

Grace’s eyes fell on Sid’s sprawled form, which was artistically draped at Calum’s feet. “Is he … dead?” The Penwith estate seemed littered with dead or unconscious bodies.

“Not that I can tell,” Monica said. She held up her cell phone. “The cops are on the way.”

“That’s the first time I recall thinking that was good news,” Peter remarked.

The last miles of their drive had passed in a silence more weary than companionable. There was so much she would have liked to say, but …

Instead Grace said, trying to postpone the inevitable, “Do you know that a fragment—fourteen stanzas—of ‘Don Juan’ was found in Byron’s quarters in Missolonghi? They were published in 1903.”

“Yes?”

“The story about the cameos was true. Maybe there
is
a missing manuscript?”

“I suppose it’s possible.” Peter glanced at Craddock House. He seemed to find something fascinating in the arrangement of its chimneys.

Silence. The surrounding woods were already turning autumn gold and brown. A few red leaves drifted gently down. One settled on the windshield.

“Well,” Grace said brightly, “It was quite an ad-venture.”

“Rather.”

“What do you suppose will happen to the cameos once the police are finished with them?”

“A museum, I imagine. Although Byron’s heirs might lay claim, I suppose.” He didn’t sound terribly interested in the fate of the cameos. Or in anything, really.

He glanced at his watch.

That was her cue. Grace reached for the door handle. “Oh. Well, I suppose I should be packing. I’ve got a plane to catch.” She scooted over. “There shouldn’t be any problem now in getting the consulate to re—”

Peter’s hand prevented her exit. “About that plane,” he said.

“Yes?” There was something in his eyes, something that gave her pause, that started her heart beating fast.

Peter cleared his throat. With unaccustomed diffidence he said, “Perhaps … we could talk about that over breakfast?”