Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (2 page)

And she couldn't help wondering if that strange man
really meant to find her – either because he wanted to be told
the story of the bracelet, or because he'd fallen in love with her
legs. In either case, the potential for trouble was great.

Still holding her skirt up, Jennifer hurried along the
very dark lane, and softly muttered, "Mother, you've really done
it this time!"

* * *

Some ten minutes later, Dane Prescott rejoined his
companion for the evening in the crowded ballroom downstairs. He
neatly took her away from two slightly inebriated and adoring
gentlemen, neither of whom felt able to fight for her.

"You're better than a Doberman," Raven Long
told him admiringly, accepting his arm and beginning to stroll with
him toward one of the many hallways the party had spilled into. "One
look at you and troublesome men suddenly feel a daunting lack of
muscles."

He looked down at her in amusement. "Does that
include your husband?"

"My husband isn't troublesome." she reminded
him "And I've never noticed a lack of muscles."

"Neither have I," Dane said with some feeling.

Two pairs of violet eyes met, and Raven laughed "Did
he make that strong an impression?"

"I'll say. You'd expect a business tycoon to be old
and crusty, or at the very least young and flabby. Josh looks like he
works for a living, and then works out for fun. And I'd hate to get
him mad."

"Somebody else did that," Raven pointed Out.
"And they got me mad too. I don't like it when some faceless
enemy tries to get at my husband. And that, in case you've forgotten,
is why you and I are attending this party." Her musical voice
never changed expression as she asked lightly, "Find anything?"

Dane was leading her down a long, well-lighted hallway
that served as a portrait gallery. He stopped at her question,
looking at the painting nearest them for a moment, then glancing
around to make certain they were alone.

"I was interrupted," he told her, "but I
did find something interesting. And not what I expected to find. I'll
tell you about that later."

Raven frowned a little, but accepted his enigmatic
words. "Who interrupted you?"

Leaning a shoulder against the wall beside the
painting, Dane crossed his arms over his chest. "A lady
with a stolen bracelet in one hand."

"Somebody else planned to burgle the place
tonight?"

"No. I don't think that was it. I didn't have much
time to talk to her, but she didn't strike me as a thief."

Raven began to look amused. "You two hit it off,
huh?"

"She looked scared. So I helped her hide the
bracelet."

"Should I ask where?"

"I wrapped it around one other garters."

After a blink. Raven said, "Oh. You certainly had
an Interesting interlude in the study."

"Bear with me." Dane smiled. "I think
we've stumbled into a mystery here. Thing is, I don't know if
it'll help us find what we're after."

"I'm listening."

Dane brooded for a moment, then began speaking softly
but rapidly. "First of all, I think the young lady crashed this
party; I can't be sure, but my instinct says yes. I noticed her
earlier, and she was jumpy as hell. Second, the gown she was wearing,
though it was beautiful and suited her well, was about ten years out
of date, and had been recently altered. The garters she was wearing
were made of very old lace, not elastic."

Raven nodded slowly. "So she's possibly from a
family that was once very well off, but isn't now."

"That was my reading. And she moved the way Kyle
does." he said, referring to one of Raven's close friends.

Beginning to look even more interested, Raven said,
"That expensive private school look. Every inch the lady."

"Right. Now, all this in itself doesn't mean much –
at least probably not to us. But there were a couple of other things.
She knew there was a safe behind the desk, even though I'd put the
painting back in place before she came in. I implied I was in the
room with dishonest intentions; she immediately looked at the safe
and suggested I'd been trying to open it. And I recognized her."

"Who is she?"

"I don't know her name yet, but she's the living
image of the woman in this portrait." Dane nodded toward the
painting they were standing in front of.

Raven turned her head to study the painting, her eyes
widening a bit. It was the portrait of a young woman done just after
the turn of the century. The woman's gown was a soft rose color with
a modest neckline and tightly cinched waist. She held a single pink
rose in slender white hands, and wore no jewelry. Her hair was
golden, her eyes a clear blue, and there was a look of mischief
behind her half smile.

"She's lovely." Raven looked at the brass
nameplate attached to the ornate frame, and read aloud, "Jennifer
Louise Chantry."

"I checked the other paintings a few minutes ago,"
Dane told her. "The majority of these
family
portraits
are Chantrys. Garrett Kelly, unless through a female line, doesn't
have an ancestor to boast of on these walls."

"So why does he own the house?"

"That's what I was wondering. Granted, a lot of
these old Southern places have changed hands a number of times, but
it doesn't feel right to me."

Raven was silent for a moment, then asked, "What's
your feeling about the girl in the study?"

"I think she was taking back something others."

"Kelly's a compulsive gambler," Raven reminded
him. "Maybe she lost it to him."

"He won't play cards with women," Dane said
flatly.

After a moment, Raven shook her head. "As you said,
I don't see that this helps us. At the same time, all we have to go
on is that Kelly's head of security tested our defenses at least
once. We knew somebody was trying to get at Josh, and during that
attempt a couple of weeks ago, he left a nice, clear thumbprint on
the apartment's electronic lock. Clumsy, to say the least."

"I suppose there's no question about the print's
being Brady Seton's?"

"None. Zach triple-checked. No criminal record, but
Seton was in the military, and his prints are on file. His last
known, and present, employer is Garrett Kelly."

"How about a little icing on the cake?" Dane
said dryly.

"What?"

"In Kelly's safe, I found, and removed, one half of
a set of plates used to counterfeit one-hundred-dollar bills. And it
wasn't made by an amateur."

Raven's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Curiouser and
curiouser," she murmured.

"I'll say. Aside from his gambling, Kelly doesn't
have a smear anywhere on his name. Not even an unpaid parking ticket.
So what's he doing with a counterfeit plate? And where's the other
one?"

"And how, if at all, does it tie up with an attempt
to get at Josh?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Dane confessed.
"But I have to admit I'm intrigued."

A bit restlessly, she said, "Damn, I wish I didn't
have to fly back to New York first thing tomorrow."

"The whole point of your being here tonight,"
he reminded her, "was to find out if this lead was worth
pursuing. I'd say it's a definite yes. I'm in now; Kelly's already
invited me to one of his pseudosecret card games tomorrow night. We
agreed from the beginning it'd be best to let me work this joker."

"I know. But I really hate leaving you alone down
here with no backup. If Kelly's counterfeiting on any scale at all,
then he's Into some pretty big stakes. It could turn out to be a real
mess, Dane."

He hesitated, then smiled. "Well, I won't exactly
be alone. Remember that friend of mine who helped us out down in
Florida a few weeks ago?"

"The one we never saw?" she asked.

"That's the man."

"He's here?"

"Close. And he ... um, knows a bit about
counterfeit plates and the like."

"You know, I always suspected you wore more than
one hat, pal."

"Who, me?"

She didn't push it. "Just tell me this friend of
yours is a good backup, that's all."

"Rock solid."

Raven sighed, then shrugged. "I don't like it, but
there's nothing I can do at the moment. We've had two near-leaks
since Josh and the guys vanished from the public eye. If anyone finds
out the head of Long Enterprises has disappeared, then a number
of stocks are going to go into tallspins. I have to get back and hold
down the fort."

"You could be a drawback here anyway," Dane
reminded her. "If Kelly is behind the attempt to get to
Josh, and if he finds out who you are, our hand's tipped for sure."

She nodded reluctantly. "I know, I know. And you're
the best man for this Job."

"Thank you." Dane was obviously moved.

"Unless," she added gently, "you get
distracted by stray blondes with stolen bracelets."

"I'm a professional," he protested in a
wounded tone.

Raven's violet eyes gleamed. "Yes, I know."
Then, as she began turning away, she added with amusement, "It's
just that I've always wondered what, exactly, your profession is."

Dane whistled "Waltzing Matilda" under his
breath and didn't respond. Not that Raven expected a response of a
different sort. If she'd learned anything in her years as a federal
agent. It was not to ask too many questions.

It was often safer not to know.

* * *

"Jennifer!" The accent was still thick after
nearly thirty years on this side of the Atlantic, but tended to pass
almost unnoticed in Louisiana, where both French and Spanish
Influence had been felt so heavily. But anyone who spent more than
ten minutes with Francesca Maria Modesta Lorenzo Chantry realized she
was Italian to her bones.

She was a tall woman, still beautiful in her fifties,
with coal black hair and flashing black eyes, a husky voice that
could switch from madonna to shrew in an Instant, and a voluptuous
figure that never failed to turn heads. And she embodied every
volatile trait attributed to her hot-blooded ancestors.

Jennifer had often wondered if her mother did that
deliberately, but since her own cool blond surface concealed a
number of volatile traits she could only have inherited from
Francesca, she had eventually recognized the truth. The
mercurial temperament was perfectly real; it was just that
Francesca enjoyed a dramatic nature to boot.

"Jennifer, the bracelet?"

Moving into the tiny living room of their small house
about two miles from the plantation, Jennifer collapsed into a
somewhat shabby chair and hauled her skirt up. Unfastening the
bracelet from her garter, she said sternly, "Mother, you've
got
to stop doing things like this!"

Ignoring the command, Francesca watched curiously. "Why
did you put it there?"

"Because it was the only way I could think of to
get it safely out of the house." It was impossible to tell her
mother the truth, Jennifer reflected.

Her mother laughed infectiously. "So smart, my
baby! Oh, my bracelet, my bracelet!"

Jennifer handed it over, sighing. Useless to try to
persuade her mother that what she had done was wrong –
especially since it was perfectly understandable. Taking one's
own belongings back, Francesca would declare, was not stealing. And
Jennifer knew her own arguments would lack force for the very reason
that she was half Italian herself, and she understood.

Francesca clasped the diamond bracelet around her slim
wrist and held it out admiringly. Then, in one of her lightning
changes of mood, her sparkling eyes filled with tears. "Your
father gave this to me as a betrothal present, my baby. He put it on
me with his own hands. That horrible man has no right to It, no right
at all! He must be punished, Jennifer!"

"I know. Mother." She brooded about that,
forgetting, for the moment, the events of tonight. "If we
could just prove he cheated in that card game. I know he did, I
know
it. But none of the others saw him cheat. And Daddy signed over the
plantation. What else could he do?"

"A duel," Francesca declared. "My Rufus
should have challenged him to a duel." Then, obviously deciding
she was being overly critical of her adored late husband, she
added magnanimously, "But he was ill, my poor darling."

He had been dying, in fact, though neither Jennifer nor
her mother had known that four years ago. Losing his family's
plantation, Belle Retour, had been more than his overstrained heart
could bear. He had died two months later.

And Garrett Kelly had taken possession of the house
immediately after the funeral.

The small house Jennifer and her mother now occupied
was, in a sense, a part of Belle Retour. Like most huge old estates,
the plantation had suffered runs of bad luck in the past, requiring
that parcels of land be sold off from time to time. This small house
had been built twenty years before on a ten-acre parcel that had been
sold to a cousin. When the cousin had died and willed the house and
land back to Rufus Chantry, Jennifer's father had deeded the
place to her.

She had used it during her teen years as a studio, where
she had worked on her dream of becoming a great artist. In the years
between high school and college, Jennifer had faced reality. She
was a good artist, but not a great one. Reluctantly giving up her
dream, she settled for being a commercial artist.

Now she and her mother lived in the house, and Jennifer
more or less supported them both with her work. Her father had been
Insured, though little of that money was left now. Jennifer and her
mother lived comfortably. But neither had ever been reconciled to
Kelly s possession of Belle Retour, and neither had given up the
determination to get their plantation back.

"I should not have taken the bracelet."
Francesca said suddenly.

Jennifer looked at her warily. Such statements from her
mother rarely indicated a sense of guilt. "You shouldn't have?"
she inquired in a careful tone.