Partners in Crime (10 page)

She nodded. “I can believe it. What are you going to try to sell me?” The question was lightly spoken, but Sandy wasn’t fooled. She didn’t trust him, on a very basic level. He shouldn’t expect her to, he’d done everything to foster her belief in him as a sleazy crook. It shouldn’t bother him in the slightest.

“Nothing you don’t want to buy,” he said.

Her smile was slightly lopsided. “That’s just what a con man would say.”

He wanted to tell her the truth, but that would only brand him a bigger liar and far less trustworthy than he’d proven so far. For the time being he had to keep his mouth shut. “Be nice to me,” he warned, “or I won’t take you to Burger King.”

It was the right thing to say. She smiled, the shadows leaving her eyes. “I’ll hitchhike if I have to.”

“Don’t worry, Madame X. I have to keep my partner in good working condition.” He’d reached her by then, and he kept himself from touching her.

“What about all this?” She gestured to the mess.

“What would happen if we just left it for a few days?”

Her smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “Sounds good to me. Maybe I’ll take Uncle Stephen up on his offer of assistance. Can you picture Elinor Peabody repacking these boxes?”

“It boggles the mind. Come on, partner. It’s fast food time, and then maybe we’ll see if
The Untouchables
is playing anywhere. We could use a few pointers on how to be real criminals.”

“Aren’t you a real criminal?”

Damn, he had to watch every word he said. Even exhausted and starving, Jane Dexter was too damned sharp. “There’s always room for improvement,” he said cheerfully, snapping off the light and plunging the trashed room into darkness.

Within minutes they were crammed into his MGB and heading toward Route One, the engine coughing and jerking and sputtering. Neither of them noticed that Stephen Tremaine’s goons were watching them from the front seat of an anonymous sedan. Or that the American car pulled out and followed them into the warm October night.

“Wake up, lazybones.” The voice was coming from a spot unacceptably close to her ear. Jane reached up and batted at it, pushing her face deeper into the pillow.

But the irritating voice wasn’t the sort to be easily routed. “Wake up,” it said again, and as Jane slowly struggled up from the mists of sleep she recognized it as Sandy’s. Beside her. On the bed.

Her eyes shot open and she flipped over in sudden outrage. She would have taken the sheet with her, but Sandy’s body was keeping it in place. She ended up sitting there, wearing nothing but an oversize T-shirt that had ridden too high on her thighs, glaring into her felonious partner’s smoky-gray eyes.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me you picked the lock. I’ve seen you in action—you do much better with a key.”

“We have a connecting door,” he said, unchastened. “I took the precaution of unlocking it last night.”

“Take the precaution of locking it, buster,” she snarled. “And get off my sheet.”

He moved, reluctantly, and while he kept his expression suitably sober, she could see the light of laughter lingering in the back of his eyes. “You’re grumpy when you wake up.”

“I’m grumpy when I’m woken up,” she corrected. “What time is it, anyway?” She peered out at the sunshine filtering through the threadbare curtains. “We didn’t have anything planned, did we? You were just going to get in touch with a few of your underworld contacts and see what you could dig up.”

It must have been her nearsightedness that made him look so peculiar for a moment. Almost guilty. She reached for her glasses, settling them on her nose, and his expression was as bland as ever.

“It’s after ten. And the situation’s changed.”

She pulled herself up, wrapping the sheet around her body, suddenly alert. “What’s happened?”

“Your godfather took off this morning for parts unknown.”

“And just how do you know that?”

“I don’t sleep till all hours of the morning,” he said in a lofty tone. “I woke up at six, went running, and then decided to kill some time waiting for you to emerge from your beauty sleep. So I staked out Tremaine’s house. I got there just in time to follow him and his two henchmen to the Mercer County Airport.”

“Where’s he going?”

“I couldn’t very well walk up and ask him, now could I?”

“You’re supposed to be a con man,” she grumbled. “Why didn’t you con it out of the flight controller or whoever they had working there?”

“I thought I’d con it out of Tremaine’s wife.”

Jane sat back, running an absent hand through her sleep-tangled hair. “We could certainly try.”

“What’s this we? You don’t run a con on people you know,” he said severely.

“Of course you don’t. But I’ve never met Annabel Tremaine.”

“Why not?”

“She wasn’t home the other day when I met with Uncle Stephen. She’s his second wife—the first one dumped him when she got tired of his playing around. I imagine Annabel will do the same when she finds out about Elinor Peabody. Particularly since Annabel was Uncle Stephen’s administrative assistant when he was married to Aunt Alice.”

“Sounds like
Dynasty
” Sandy drawled.

“Uncle Stephen has the morals of a reptile. So how are we going to con Annabel?”

Sandy looked blank for a moment. “Give me a minute. It’ll come to me.”

“Door-to-door salesmen?” Jane suggested. “Religious fanatics?”

He shook his head reprovingly. “We wouldn’t even get in the door. What about environmental activists? Save the dolphins and that sort of thing.”

“Uncle Stephen probably eats dolphins for breakfast. We need something more esoteric.”

“Loons?” Sandy suggested.

“Loons,” she echoed. “I like it. They have a summer place in Maine on a lake with loons. That should appeal to Annabel enough at least to let us in. Once we do that, it’s up to you to get the information out of her.”

“Why up to me?”

“You’re the professional crook around here,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

For some reason Jimmy the Stoolie alias Sandy looked abashed. “So I am,” he said with the air of one making a discovery. “So I am.”

I
t was just after one when Jane’s rented Escort pulled up in front of the Tremaine’s home on Cleveland Lane in the heart of old Princeton. Jane sat behind the wheel for a long moment, admiring the stately grace of the huge old house, with its ancient boxwoods, its perfect landscaping, its beautiful flagstoned walkway up to the wide front door. When she looked more closely, though, she saw signs of decay that she hadn’t noticed in her earlier visit. The boxwoods needed trimming, the red paint on the front door was faded and just beginning to peel, the dead leaves of autumn lay scattered on a lawn that hadn’t been cut. The signs weren’t obvious, just the subtle warning signals that all was not well with the Tremaine finances.

“Nice place,” Sandy said in a neutral tone of voice. Jane shrugged. “I grew up in a house very much like this one. A little smaller, a little more haphazard looking, but the same general idea.”

“Was your father a captain of industry like Tremaine?” “Not exactly. My parents were college professors.” “I didn’t think even Princeton paid its professors well enough to afford this kind of life-style.”

“Princeton doesn’t.” Jane stared out the window, trying to fight the old sense of inadequacy that was settling down around her. “They came from an older class of moneyed educators. They inherited enough to enable them to indulge themselves in teaching. My parents were so impractical they couldn’t have survived if they had to do anything as simple as follow a budget and live on their salaries.”

“Your brother didn’t sound very practical, either.”

“He wasn’t. But I am,” she added with a trace of defiance. “Sensible Jane.” The plain was left unspoken, but she knew he had to be thinking it.”

“How’d you get along with your parents?”

“Sandy, they’ve been dead for more than seven years now. They were killed in a plane crash when they were on their way to a conference. It’s not the issue right now.”

“Maybe,” he said, “maybe not.”

Jane allowed herself a weary sigh, answering him anyway. “I got along with them about as well as I got along with Richard. In other words, they basically ignored my existence.”

“Why?”

“Richard was enough of a challenge for them. He was extremely gifted, even from the start. He could read by the time he was three, solve algebraic equations when he was five, balance mother’s checkbook when he was eight, which was the most impressive feat of all. In comparison I was just a normal little girl, walking when I should, talking when I should, playing with dolls and reading Nancy Drew books. My parents must have thought I was a changeling.”

Sandy just looked at her. “What about your sister? Was she one of the brilliant ones?”

Jane shook her head. “Sally went the other route. When she saw how things were she decided to be stupid. She was always in the lowest classes in school, got rotten report cards, and simply refused to try. The funny thing about it, though, is that in certain ways she’s much smarter than my parents or Richard ever were. She just hides it.”

“So we’ve got the brilliant Dexters, the slow one, and ordinary old plain Jane. Is that it?” His voice was just slightly taunting, and she turned from her perusal of the old house to stare at him in outrage.

“How dare you...?” she began.

“Isn’t that what you’ve been calling yourself? All your life, even now, when you should be years removed from the slights of childhood, you go around dressing like plain Jane, thinking like plain Jane, acting like plain Jane. Maybe you should learn to lighten up.”

“Maybe you should learn to—” she stopped the obscene sentiment before she uttered it, replacing it with something safer “—should learn to mind your own business. I’ll be whoever I want to be.”

“Exactly. And you’ve chosen to be plain Jane.”

Outrage and hurt had vanished long ago, to be replaced by a simmering, bristling anger. “Well, honey, you’re a fine one to talk. You’ve decided to be Jimmy the Stoolie, Sandor Whatsisname, among other names. How many aliases do you have?”

He blinked for a moment, like a lizard facing bright sunlight. “At least I have a little variety in my life.”

“I like constancy.”

“Do you ever find it?”

“Not in someone like you,” she snapped.

“Were you looking for it?”

That silenced her. He was sitting very still in the passenger seat of the stripped-down Ford, his thick blond hair rumpled over his high forehead, his tanned, beautiful face composed and no more than slightly curious. He was wearing a suit that was far too conservative and far too expensive for either a conservation fund-raiser or a felon, but she had to admit he was absolutely gorgeous. And completely out of reach.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.” But even though she knew better, she would have liked to have found constancy of any sort in the man beside her.

“Are you sure?” His voice was soft, beguiling, teasing at her senses.
He
’
s a con man,
she reminded herself.
He knows how to use people.

“This conversation is going nowhere,” she said abruptly. “Are we going to talk to Annabel Tremaine or aren’t we?”

He smiled at her, that brilliant, heart-stopping smile that she knew would haunt her. “We are. Actually, I am. You’re going to stand by and look serious and concerned while I pitch her. Think you can handle that?”

“I can handle anything you dish out.”

The golden smile broadened to a grin. “I’ll hold you to it.”

It took a while for someone to answer the door. Jane could hear the melodious chimes echo through the house, but there was no sound of life, or scurrying footsteps. “No one’s home,” she hissed. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Tremaine went alone, and someone kissed him goodbye,” Sandy said, pressing the doorbell again. “And that BMW was in the driveway this morning and it hasn’t been moved. She’s home.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“You can always wait in the car, Jane,” he said, not bothering to look at her.

“The hell I...”

The door swung open, and a slender, willowy figure stood in the darkness of the hallway, peering out into the bright autumn sunlight. Jane watched in utter fascination as Sandy smiled at the shadowy figure. He knew just the right level of wattage to turn on. Not too overwhelming—the shy creature hiding from them would have probably run. Not too subdued, just enough to coax Annabel Tremaine out of hiding.

“Hi,” he said, his voice warm and soothing and just faintly tinged with a Southern accent. “I’m Ashley Wilkes and this is my wife Melanie. We’re representing the Northeast Conservation Alliance for Saving the Loons. James MacDougal suggested you might be interested in helping us in our quest. We tried to call before showing up like this, but there was no answer.”

Jane allowed herself a cautious, curious glance at her companion. She had no idea who James MacDougal was, but apparently Annabel Tremaine did. She also hadn’t read
Gone With the Wind
very recently. She opened the faded red door wider, exposing herself to the brutal sunlight, and smiled up into Sandy’s beautiful gray eyes, ignoring his putative wife completely.

“This is rather a bad time,” she said vaguely, running a slender hand through a carefully styled mane of silver-blond hair. “My husband’s away right now, and I’m afraid I’m between maids, but if you want to come in...”

“We’d love to,” Sandy said firmly, turning his back on his beloved Melanie and putting one strong hand under Annabel’s elbow. Jane followed in their wake, allowing herself the brief, totally satisfying treat of sticking her tongue out at his beautiful back.

Annabel Tremaine must have been between maids for quite a while. The house was very dark—all the curtains were drawn, shadowing the disarray. Their hostess picked her way with exaggerated care over the piles of clothing, magazines, and dishes, dropping down on a damask-covered sofa and pushing a chintz comforter onto the floor.

“Could I offer you a drink?” she cooed, and everything clicked into place for a confused Jane. At eleven o’clock in the morning Annabel Tremaine was well and truly sloshed.