Jennifer Crusie Bundle (65 page)

The pounding stopped, and Mitch rolled his eyes and moved toward the window.

“What are you doing?”

Mitch threw one leg over the sill and grinned back at her. “There is no end to my talents.”

“You'll get killed!” She grabbed his arm, but he kissed her, enjoying her mouth as if it were the first time, and then he pried her fingers off.

“There's a trellis.” He found it with his foot and pulled his other leg through the window. “See? Piece of cake.” He climbed down, and when he was on the ground, he looked up and saw her framed in the window, the morning breeze tossing her curls. She was smiling down at him, and her face was like the sun, and he stood there, rapt, amazed all over again that they were together, and that she was smiling at him.

“What's wrong?” she called down softly.

Mitch had always thought that “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,” was the dumbest pick-up line he'd ever heard, but it suddenly made sense. “I just figured out why Romeo killed himself.”

Mae's smile widened. “Well, don't do it, even if you see my corpse. It'll be a trick. I'm staying alive just to drive you crazy.”

“Thank you,” Mitch said fervently.

Mae jerked her head around to look back into the room. “I've got to go. Get out of here. I'll see you tonight.”

“Count on it,” Mitch said, and then she was gone, and the day seemed a little dimmer, and he turned dizzily toward the back of the house and Mae's Mercedes.

M
AE OPENED
the door and glared as Carlo came stomping into the room. “Listen to me. This stops now. I've had it with you. You can stop following me around, and threatening my dates, and acting like you own me. We're cousins. That's all we're going to be. Ever.” She stopped because the misery on Carlo's face was overwhelming. “I'm sorry, Carlo, but it's never going to be anything else. I grew up with you. You're like my brother.”

“It's that Peatwick guy, isn't it?”

“No. I'd feel like this even without the Peatwick guy.” Mae put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek. “It's us. I don't feel that way about you, and I never will. And you don't feel that way about me, either. You just think you should, so you go around acting all proprietary.”

“I love you,” Carlo protested.

“Then why have you slept with everything that moved and said yes since puberty?”

“If that's all this is about,” Carlo began.

“No, that's not what this is about.” Mae fought back her exasperation. “People who are in love do not sleep with other people they're not in love with.” Carlo opened his mouth to protest, and she held up her hand to stop him. “I know, I know, you were saving me for marriage, but Carlo, I wasn't saving me for marriage, why should you? You just got this idea in your mind. Well, it's time to let go of it.”

“No,” Carlo said, and before Mae could start again, June knocked on the door and opened it.

“I'm sorry,” she said, looking terrified. “But the police are here.”

M
AE FOLLOWED
Carlo downstairs, still wrapped in her white satin robe, trying to remember when she'd had a twenty-four hours like her last one.

“Mae Belle Sullivan?” one of the officers said when she reached the bottom step.

“Yes.” She took a step back.

“You're—”

“Back off,” Carlo snarled.

“Hey.” The other cop stared at him. “You're Carlo Donatello.”

Carlo glared back. “So?”

“So you're under arrest. There's a warrant out for you. Malicious destruction on some guy's car.”

“Oh, no.” Mae sank onto the step.

“They lifted your prints, pretty boy,” the cop said cheerfully. “You're screwed. You also have the right to remain silent—”

“What about her?” The other officer jerked his head at Mae.

“Wait a minute.” Carlo turned back to her, and Mae stood up.

“I'll call Uncle Gio,” she began, but he put his arms around her. She tried to pull away, and then he whispered in her ear, “They're here for you, too. Get out of here.”

She blinked up at him, and then he said aloud, “I'll call Grandpa from the station. You go upstairs and get dressed,” and she nodded and turned to stumble blindly up the stairs.

“Wait a minute,” one of the cops called after her, and the last thing she heard was Carlo growling, “Let her get dressed.”

She closed the door behind her and immediately moved to the closet, yanking out the first dress her hand touched. She dropped her robe to the floor and pulled the pink flowered dress over her head, trying to think as she moved but not having much success. Nothing made sense. She grabbed underwear out of the drawer and crammed it in her purse, and then she went to the window.

If Mitch could do it, she could, too.

A minute later, she was running across the backyard of the mansion to the street that ran behind it.

She had no idea where she was going, she just knew it was away.

M
ITCH PULLED UP
in front of his office feeling like the king of the world. He was showered, shaved and dressed, he was driving a Mercedes and he was going to marry the most amazing woman he'd ever met.

It occurred to him in the elevator that he hadn't mentioned marriage the night before, and made a mental note to propose the next time he saw her. He was pretty sure it was going to be a formality. Judging by the previous night,
no
was not a word Mae was familiar with.

So he was feeling pretty chipper when he got to his office and began to tackle the work that had backed up in the week he'd been dealing with Mae. He sorted through the mail, tossing the ads and the catalogs, and then, as he slit open the first envelope, he punched the button on his answering machine.

There were seven messages, and every one of them was a client firing him.

By the time he'd listened to the last one, Mitch had given up any pretense of reading his mail. He pulled the phone toward him and dialed the number of the last client on the machine. “Mr. Belden? This is Mitch Peatwick,” he began, only to hear a dial tone in his ear. He got hang-ups on the next three calls, but the fifth one finally gave him a clue. “I don't know what the hell you did, Peatwick,” the guy said, “but it was dumb. Good luck.” Then he hung up, too.

Mitch pushed the phone away, no longer interested in talking to ex-clients. Someone had obviously gotten to them. It didn't take a rocket scientist to narrow down the list of who that might be.

He was getting one hell of a set of in-laws.

The only question left was, why? Aside from pure cussedness, there was no reason for them to want to put him out of business. Unless he was getting close to something someone didn't want him to know about. Like the diary.

A rap on the office door broke him out of his reverie. “What?” he said, and his dried-up little landlord came in. Mitch scowled at him. “The rent is paid, Mr. Richardson, and I'm having a bad day. Go away.”

“It's gonna get worse,” Richardson rasped. “You're evicted.”

“I'm what?”

“Evicted.” Richardson put a check on the desk. “There's your rent back. Get out of here.”

Mitch sat back and stared at him until the man broke a sweat. “Why?” he asked.

“New owner.” Richardson edged his way to the door. “Doesn't like P.I.s. Says they bring down the tone of the place.”

“This place has no tone.” Mitch stood. “Who's the new owner?”

“I don't know, and I don't care. You're evicted.” Richardson had managed to sidle his way through the door by now, and he reached out and slammed it behind him.

Mitch sat back down in his chair.

None of it made sense.

And it wasn't going to as long as he sat there.

He grabbed his jacket, ran downstairs and pointed the Mercedes toward the art museum and Mae, stopping at an ATM only long enough to pick up cash to pay her back for the gas money the night before. He was just getting back in the car, when the police pulled up.

There were two of them, one tall and female and the other short and male, and they didn't look amused to see him.

“Is this your car?” The male cop looked up at him, seemingly annoyed about having to look up at him.

“No, it belongs to a friend of mine,” Mitch said. “Do not tell me it's been reported stolen.”

“Nope.” The woman officer took a notebook out of her breast pocket. “What's your friend's name?”

Mitch shifted his eyes from one to the other. “Mae Belle Sullivan. What's going on here?”

“You wouldn't happen to know where she is, would you?” the male officer asked.

“Yes,” Mitch said with exaggerated patience. “She's at the Riverbend Art Institute. She works there.”

“Nope.” The woman moved her head once to the right and once to the left, conserving her strength. “We checked. She's not there. When was the last time you saw her?”

“This morning.” Mitch scowled at both of them. “What the hell is this about?”

“She's wanted for murder,” the male cop said. “We'd like you to come downtown with us.”

“Just a few questions,” the policewoman said.

“I want my lawyer,” Mitch said.

N
ick was jovial when he joined Mitch in the interrogation room. “What did you do now, Sundance? Sell Bolivian tin mines to somebody besides me?”

“It's not me,” Mitch said, and Nick's smile faded at his tone. “They want Mae for murder.”

Nick blinked. “Whose murder?”

“On a guess, Armand's. He's the only body in the picture at the moment.” Mitch got up and started to pace. “There's something going on here, Nick. I thought Armand was doing it, looting his own estate, but now there's other stuff coming down.” He stopped pacing. “There's no chance that Armand is still alive, is there? I mean, people did see the body?”

“Tess heard that the university med school got the remains,” Nick pointed out. “And somebody signed a death certificate.”

“Somebody could have been bought off.”

Nick sat down. “Let's take this from the top. Exactly whom am I representing, you or Mae?”

“Well, preferably both, but if you have to choose, choose Mae. I'm just in here for driving her car and not knowing where she is.”

“You really don't know?”

Mitch held up his hand. “Scout's honor. The last I saw of her was this morning. She didn't mention anything about going on the lam later.”

“If you don't know, tell them you don't know.”

“I did. They didn't seem to find it convincing.”

Nick pushed back his chair. “Let me see what I can do, but then you and I are going to have a long talk.”

“No problem.” Mitch slumped back in his chair. “All my clients fired me this morning, and my landlord evicted me from my office. I'm pretty much free.”

“One problem at a time,” Nick said and left to spring Mitch.

A
N HOUR LATER
, Mitch stood outside the police station, wilting under the blast of the noon sun and figuring out his next move.

Nick came out to join him and jerked his head toward the Mercedes. “Get in.”

Once inside with the air conditioner on, he turned to Mitch. “This isn't good. The police got an anonymous tip Saturday afternoon that Armand had been poisoned. Then this morning they got a page from his diary in the mail that implies that somebody was putting the squeeze on him to put money in Mae's trust fund. That somebody is logically Mae.”

Mitch relaxed. “That can't be right. She doesn't have any money.”

“She didn't have until a couple of weeks ago.” Nick looked unhappy. “According to bank statements, during the past fourteen weeks, right up to his death, Armand deposited almost eight million dollars to her trust fund account.”

Mitch blinked. “How many?”

Nick smiled grimly. “Eight big ones. One deposit alone was for six million. She's got a motive, Mitch.”

Mitch swallowed. “Nick, everybody in Riverbend had a motive to kill Armand. She'd have to get in line.”

“She also had means. The police got a warrant and went to the house this morning and found Armand's pill bottle in his room. Mae's prints are all over the bottle.”

“Big deal. So are mine. We both handled it last night.” Mitch frowned. “How the hell did they get Mae's prints?”

“They took them from her room.”

“And while they were doing that, she skipped?”

“No, she skipped while they were arresting Carlo. For vandalizing your car.”

Mitch started. “I didn't call in a police report on that yet.”

“Newton did it for you last night. He told the police it was probably Carlo. The Riverbend PD is very enthusiastic about Carlo. That bit with the finger really annoyed them, and then they showed up at Mae's with the warrant and got him as a bonus. They're pretty pleased in general.”

Mitch put his head on the steering wheel. “So now Carlo thinks I turned him in. Great. The last time he thought somebody ratted on him, Armand died. Thank you, Newton.”

“Forget Carlo. Think Mae. As soon as you find her, bring her in.”

“I don't know where—”

“Don't mess with me on this, Mitch.” Nick looked grim. “As soon as you find her, bring her to me, and I will go with her to the police. This fugitive bit is not good. We've got to get her off the street.”

“I don't want her to have an arrest record.”

“I may be able to stall them on that.” Nick shifted in his seat. “They've got enough to charge her, but I don't think they're happy about it. They're not dumb, these guys. If I can guarantee she'll stay put, they may release her to me. But she's got to come in. If they find her, they'll arrest her, and all I'll be able to do is mop up.”

“And get her off,” Mitch prompted.

“That, too, but let's hope to hell it never gets to court. Mae's awfully photogenic. She could be the
Hard Copy
flavor-of-the-month.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Forget that for now. Just find her.” Nick started to get out of the car. “Oh, I forgot. What do you want me to do about the eviction?”

“Find out who's evicting me, for starters. But I have a pretty good idea whose behind it.”

Nick nodded. “Sure. I'll get somebody on it. Wrongful eviction. Financial harassment. I'll make something up. Anything else while I'm at it? Paternity suit? Breach of promise? Prenuptial?”

“Nah. Mae can have anything I've got.”

Nick grinned. “You and Mae, huh?”

“You don't sound very surprised.”

“I'm a lawyer. Nothing surprises me.”

Mitch shook his head. “Nothing used to surprise me until I met Mae. Now everything does.”

Nick's expression sobered. “Find her, Mitch.”

Mitch nodded. “That's my plan.”

M
AE HAD WALKED
for an hour before she realized where she was going.

She stopped and looked at the tree-lined, lust-drunken street. Armand's town house was just around the corner.

Where would the police look for her first? Gio's or Claud's, probably. Work, definitely. Mitch's, maybe.

And sooner or later, Armand's place. But probably later.

She turned the corner and walked to Armand's front door, fumbling in her purse for the key so she could unlock the door and get inside as swiftly as possible. But once inside the cool dimness of the hall, she stood trembling, finally reacting to the shock of the police. “They're here for you,” Carlo had said, and she'd accepted it at once. Carlo knew about police. If he said they'd come for her, they had.

And it could only be for one thing. Somebody was finally taking her lie about Armand's death seriously.

She moved slowly through the archway into the living room, listening to see if anyone else was in the house. It seemed filled with the empty silence that only deserted places have, a desolation born of loss. People had been happy here once, and now it was empty. She could feel the unhappiness in her groin, like a cramp, and she ached for Stormy and what she had lost. Even though Armand had been a jerk, Stormy had still loved him, and in his own way, he'd loved her. And love was a terrible thing to lose.

She knew that because now she had love to lose. She had Mitch.

She sank onto the soft amber couch and tried to think.

She couldn't stay here too long. Sooner or later, they'd come here, if only to look for clues. The temptation to go upstairs and crawl into a bed and never come out again was overwhelming. She could live there forever, going out into the garden at night to see the stars. It would be a sanctuary, and she could stay there alone forever and no one would hurt her.

Except that someone had to take care of June and Harold, and the police would definitely show up sooner or later, and there were no sanctuaries. There were no safe places in life. That's why you had to keep moving.

And besides, she didn't want to be alone. She wanted to be with Mitch.

Think,
she told herself, but she didn't know enough to puzzle out what was happening to her. Something had happened to all that money, but she didn't know what. Someone was shooting at her, but she didn't know who. The police wanted her, but she didn't know why. She thought longingly of Mitch, not as a savior because he wasn't the savior type, but as a partner, somebody to share the puzzle with. She wanted to tell him everything and say, “What do you think?” and argue the possibilities with him, go and find out things with him, and just be with him. Not for comfort, not for support, just for the rightness of being with him.

But he wasn't there, and she was alone, and she had to think of something fast. She let herself fall back against the couch and rest for just a minute. She was so tired from no sleep the night before and the adrenaline rush that morning and the six-mile walk in a daze that thinking became as strenuous as lifting heavy weights. She was so very tired. She closed her eyes, and tried hard to think, and tried very hard not to panic.

“O
H
,
THANK
G
OD
, Mitch!” June dragged him through the front door and threw her arms around him. “She's gone, and the police were here!”

Mitch patted her on the back. “Get a grip, kid. Are you okay?”

“No.” June sniffed. “I don't know where she is. And Harold's eye is swelled shut.”

Mitch blinked at her. “What does Harold's eye have to do with this?”

“Carlo hit him this morning when Harold tried to stop him from going up to Mae's room.” June sniffed again, her expression a hybrid of anger and sorrow. “We're trying to decide what to do.”

“Let me see this eye.” Mitch prodded her toward the back of the house. “And then I'll take care of the rest.”

“Oh, good.” June's shoulders sagged with relief as she led him toward the kitchen, her usual glide degenerating into more of a totter. “I knew you were going to be good for us when Mae brought you home the first time.”

Us?
Up until then, Mitch's plans for commitment had centered on Mae, but June's assumption brought him up to date. Mae meant June and Harold, too. And Bob. He watched June's platinum head bob in front of him as she shoved open the kitchen door, and felt a rush of affection for her. She wasn't particularly deep or intelligent, and God knew, Harold wasn't anybody's grandpa, but they'd loved Mae and brought her up to be the woman he couldn't leave, and he owed them. They were good people.

Harold looked up as they came in, his eye purple and swelled completely shut, and Mitch felt rage tighten his throat.

“Carlo needs smacking,” he said to Harold.

“I tried.” Harold's face fell into morose pleats. “He's a fast son of a bitch.”

“Then I'll have to hit him from behind.” Mitch bent to get a better look at Harold's eye. “How's your head feel?”

“I'm okay.”

“Stop being a hero.” Mitch gently lifted the swollen lid back and checked Harold's pupil. “Headache?”

“Yeah.” Harold's good eye shifted to June. “It's not bad.”

“Dizziness?”

“No.” For the first time since they'd met, Harold looked at Mitch without glaring at him. “It's not a concussion. It's just one hell of a bad black eye.”

“Okay.” Mitch straightened. “I have to find Mae. Are you two going to be okay on your own for a while?”

June swallowed, but Harold said, “Hell, yes.”

“Stay here,” Mitch told him. “I have no idea when I'll be back, but if Mae's in a mess and I need to reach you, I want you here.”

Harold nodded. “Right.”

“Do you know where she might have gone?”

Harold shook his head and winced. “I don't even know how she got out of her room.”

Mitch grinned. “She climbed down the trellis. I'm her role model.”

“That's probably why she's in this mess now,” Harold said, but his voice held no venom. “Go find her.”

“Please,” June quavered.

Mitch patted her shoulder. “I've got this all under control. Don't worry about a thing. Just keep ice on that eye.”

On an impulse, he stopped in the library and picked up the 1952 diary, and then he walked back out into the heat and stood looking at the Mercedes Mae hated and thought,
What the hell do I do now?

M
AE STARTED
out of her reverie when the postman shoved the mail through the slot. She moved silently to the front door to see who was there, and then relaxed when she saw the stack of junk mail on the carpet. She picked up the mail and sorted through it, but there was nothing personal, nothing that every other resident on the block wasn't getting, too: catalogs for bedding and fashion and toys, sale reminders, coupon fliers. She dropped the mail on the table and went upstairs, trailing her fingers over the railing as she went.