Lost and Found (36 page)

Someone finally turned around and noticed Cady.

Another scream sliced through the night. Cady winced and covered her ears. Maybe she did look that bad.

“Could I please borrow someone’s costume?” With an effort, she managed to keep her voice very polite. “I’m cold.”

“
I
think I may be having an anxiety attack,” Mack said in a quietly savage voice. He stopped in front of the French doors and stared out into the night. “I can’t believe you followed Arden out onto the docks.”

“I didn’t follow him,” Cady said wearily. “It happened just like I told the police. I stopped near the marina office and tried to call you. That’s when Stanford Felgrove came up behind me with a gun.”

“Damn it to hell.” He clenched one hand into a fist and braced it against the nearest door. “You shouldn’t have followed him in the first place.”

Randall spoke up behind him. “Take it easy, Mack. She’s been through an ordeal.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said loyally. “This is no time to chew her out.”

“Sylvia’s right,” Gardner added. “I know where you’re coming from here, Mack, but Cady’s had a rough evening. Maybe you’d better save the lectures until tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Leandra said firmly. “Can it, Easton. Cady’s had enough to deal with tonight.”

They were right, Mack thought. The last thing he wanted to do was yell at Cady. But it seemed to be the only thing he was good at right now.

“Shit,” he muttered.

There was a short, startled silence.

Cady started to giggle.

Mack swung around and glowered at her. She was curled up in the largest of the wingback chairs, wrapped in a fuzzy throw that Sylvia had found in one of the closets. She had showered and changed clothes hours ago before the interview with the police, but she still complained of a chill.

As he watched, her giggles became laughter. But it didn’t sound right. There was a disturbing edge to it. Sylvia, Gardner, Leandra and Randall must have noticed the strange tone, too. All of them were gazing at her with worried expressions.

“Are you okay?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes.” But the odd, high laughter continued. Cady huddled into herself and buried her face against the fuzzy blanket. Her shoulders shook. The sounds she was making changed to another note.

Randall scowled at Mack. “Now look what you’ve done.”

“Hell, she’s crying.” Mack started toward her.

“Sorry,” Cady gasped into the blanket. “Can’t stop.”

Leandra sat up swiftly. “It’s okay, Cady. I’ve read that it’s good to have a cathartic emotional release after a traumatic incident. Gets rid of a lot of the physical side effects of stress.”

Cady sobbed harder.

Mack crossed the room in three long strides and plucked her up out of the chair. He sat down and cradled
her fiercely against his chest. She turned her face into his shoulder and sobbed.

No one said a word until it was over. Gardner got to his feet and went to the liquor cabinet. He opened the door and removed a bottle. Mack could see the label from where he was sitting with Cady locked in his arms. It was a very old and very expensive brand of whiskey.

Eventually the tears eased. After a while Cady raised her head, blinking away the last of the moisture. Mack felt her relax against him.

“Sorry about that. I think I’m okay now.”

“Delayed reaction,” Sylvia said gently. “You couldn’t afford to panic earlier so you held on. Your nerves finally got even.”

Gardner handed Cady a small glass of whiskey. “Here. Vesta’s cure for the common cold and everything else.”

“Thanks.” She sipped cautiously and looked at Mack over the rim of the glass. Was he going to start yelling at her again, she wondered.

“I’ll finish the lecture some other time,” he said. “Like tomorrow.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” She took another sip of the whiskey.

She sounded much better, he thought. She looked weary but she no longer seemed so edgy.

Gardner propped one hip on the arm of the sofa on which Sylvia sat. “I didn’t get to hear the details you gave the cops, Cady, but I got the impression that Arden and Felgrove had arranged to meet at the marina tonight?”

She nodded. “Stanford said Arden had summoned him there to talk about a blackmail payoff.”

“How on earth did you spot Arden?” Sylvia asked.

“I had a good view of the crowds from where I was standing at the back of the stage. I noticed him when he went past on his way to the marina. I recognized the mask
and the costume he’d ordered for Carnival Night because I’d seen them the day they were delivered to him.”

“Stanford went to the docks intending to kill Arden?” Gardner asked.

“Yes.” Cady made no move to get out of Mack’s lap. “And Arden obviously went there prepared to defend himself.”

“Or because he had intended to kill Stanford all along,” Sylvia suggested. “Maybe he wanted to tie up the loose ends of the scam. When you think about it, Felgrove was the only one who could testify against him.”

“Maybe.” Cady settled deeper against Mack. “But there’s no way to know for certain what Arden’s intentions were until the cops catch up with him.”

“And you got caught in the middle,” Mack growled. “Of all the damn fool—”

“Mack, you promised to save the lectures until tomorrow.”

“Sorry.” He removed the glass from her fingers and took a healthy swallow of the remaining whiskey. “Just slipped out. Couldn’t help myself.”

Cady turned back to Sylvia and Gardner. “The police think the whole event amounted to a falling-out among thieves. Each one wanted to silence the other.”

“Looks like Arden was a little faster than Stanford,” Gardner mused.

Mack felt the shudder that went through Cady. He tightened his hold on her.

“Felgrove seriously underestimated Jonathan Arden,” he said thoughtfully. “Probably assumed Arden was just a two-bit con artist. It never occurred to him that he might be a very dangerous two-bit con artist.”

“I would never have dreamed that Stanford was capable of murder, either,” Sylvia said. “The man was a full-blown sociopath and none of us suspected it.”

“I always knew it,” Randall said softly.

They all looked at him.

“Yes,” Cady said. “You did.”

“I’ll never be able to prove that he murdered my mother, but I’ll go to my grave believing it.” Randall drained his glass. “If nothing else, he pushed her deeper into the bottle.”

Sylvia frowned. “I’ve got to admit, Cady, I’m starting to wonder if there might be something to your theory that he killed Aunt Vesta.”

“We’ll never know for certain now,” Cady whispered.

There was another long silence. Mack wasn’t sure what everyone else was thinking, but he knew that he was contemplating the dismal fact that life doesn’t always give you answers.

“Wonder how long it will take the cops to find Arden?” Gardner said after a while.

Mack looked at him. “Probably not very long.”

“Unless he leaves the country,” Leandra volunteered.

“There is that possibility,” Mack agreed.

Randall exhaled on a long sigh. “Well, one thing is certain. Austrey-Post is in worse shape now than it ever was. When the news hits the papers tomorrow, there won’t be any way to keep the facts about the forgery scam quiet. I’ll have to go public and hope for the best.”

“You’ll get through it,” Cady assured him forcefully. “Galleries have survived this kind of thing before. It will all blow over eventually.”

But Randall looked unconvinced. “Maybe. If we can hold on long enough. But there’s no getting around the fact that we’re going to take a huge hit when this gets out. When you add the projected reduction in income to the losses we’ll have to sustain in order to make the refunds to the clients who got ripped off, we’ll be lucky to survive. And that’s without taking into account the damage to our reputation.”

Cady studied him for a moment. “You’ll find a way to keep the gallery open. That’s not the real problem, is it? You’re afraid that if the business has to struggle for a few years, Brooke won’t stick around.”

Randall cupped his whiskey glass in both hands and stared down into the dregs. When he raised his head, his expression was bleak. “She always said that I was too obsessed with getting control of the galleries. Now I’ve got control but I’ve got nothing to show for it except a business that’s headed for the rocks. I wanted to give her at least some of the same things that George Langworth was able to give her. But there’s no chance of that now.”

Mack noticed that neither Sylvia nor Gardner rushed to reassure him that everything would turn out all right in the end. Leandra just gave him a pitying glance.

It was Cady who spoke up.

“I think,” she said gently, “that you’re seriously underestimating Brooke.”

“
Y
ou really believe that she’ll marry him when she finds out that his company is in such precarious shape?” Mack asked much later when they were alone.

“Yes.” Cady sat on the edge of die bed and yawned widely.

He thought about it while he unbuttoned his shirt. “What makes you so sure?”

She closed her mouth and contemplated the question for a moment. “It’s hard to explain. Maybe it was the way she stayed with George Langworth after she learned that he was dying. She could have walked out.”

“I told you, that move could easily be interpreted as having been very much in her own financial interests. She will soon be a very wealthy widow.”

Cady shook her head slowly. “No, I think she did it because it was the right thing to do.”

He was not so sure, but he decided to let it go. “Guess we’ll all find out what she’s going to do soon enough. The news about the big shoot-out down at the marina will be in the headlines in another few hours.”

Cady said nothing but he could almost feel the shivers going through her.

“You gave me one hell of a scare tonight,” he said very neutrally. “You know that, don’t you?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said automatically.

He ignored that. “This is the second time in the relatively short period that we have known each other that you have nearly gotten yourself killed. It’s an unnerving habit.”

“I don’t know what to say.” She spread her hands wide. “Normally, I live a very boring life. That’s why I started taking those freelance consulting jobs you offered.”

“You went to work for me because you were bored?”

“Uh-huh.” She braced her hands behind herself on the bed. “I suppose I could have joined the Marine Corps instead but they don’t have a lot of openings for experts in European decorative arts.”

He tossed the shirt aside. “Nice to know I beat out the Marine Corps recruitment guys.”

“It wasn’t much of a contest. I didn’t like the thought of wearing a uniform.”

Her flippant tone irritated him. She had been through a lot this evening, he reminded himself. He had to make allowances.

Dressed in only his trousers, he walked back across the room and sat down beside her on the edge of the bed.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“Okay?”

“Do you need anything? A sedative, maybe, to help you get to sleep?”

“No.” She stared straight ahead at a small, gracefully
shaped vase that sat on the antique washstand. “I’ll be fine.”

He followed her gaze to the vase. It looked French. Probably early nineteenth century, judging by the design. “You’re trying to make it all add up, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But it doesn’t add up, does it?”

“Not quite,” he agreed.

“It all happened so quickly. And I admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to details. But I don’t think Arden was there to negotiate a blackmail deal. He had that gun in his hand when he appeared on the bow of the boat. He came prepared to do murder.”

“I suppose it’s possible that he brought the gun along to defend himself in case Felgrove tried something violent. But why try to hunt you down later?”

“Because he realized that I could identify him. He has no way of knowing that I recognized his mask and costume, of course, but he certainly knows that I heard Stanford call him by name.”

“According to the info that Ambrose dug up on Jonathan Arden, there’s nothing to indicate a history of violence.”

“People change. You’re the one who said that just because Dillon had no record of being a stalker, it didn’t mean that he might not become one.”

“True.”

He fell silent, thinking.

“What is it?” she asked eventually.

“I don’t want to add to the confusion, but what makes you so sure that it was Jonathan Arden behind that mask tonight?”

She stilled. “I told you, Stanford called him by name.”

“Stanford didn’t see his face, either, did he?”

“Well, no.”

“Stanford said he got a note? Not a phone call?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But he and Arden had been working together for quite a while. They were partners in the scam. If Arden decided to blackmail Stanford, why didn’t he just pick up the phone and issue the threat verbally? Why send a note?”

Cady’s eyes narrowed. “Because Stanford would realize that the voice on the other end of the line was not Jonathan Arden’s?”

“When you think about it,” Mack said, “Arden would have to be a complete fool to wear a costume that might be noticed and traced to him and to the scene of a murder.”

A
short time later he sat in front of the computer and contemplated possibilities. He needed to see the pattern more clearly. He could make out some vague outlines but he could not bring the picture into focus. Thoughts of how close he had come to losing Cady kept interfering with his concentration.

After a while he opened the file that contained his notes regarding Jonathan Arden. He studied the contents for a few minutes and then he called up an e-mail form and addressed it.

Cady materialized in the doorway. “Mack? What are you doing?”

“Sending a message to Jonathan Arden.”

“You’re kidding.” She hurried into the room. “Where did you get his e-mail address?”

“Ambrose pulled it off the internet.” He did not look up from the screen. “There’s no way of knowing whether or not Arden will check his e-mail. He’s on the run, after all. But it occurred to me that he might be interested in doing a deal.”