Sharp Edges (10 page)

"Are you crazy?" She was beyond stunned surprise, she realized. She was beginning to get downright scared. She was sitting alone in a very weird house with a dead body in the wine cellar and a large delusional man in the kitchen.

"No, Eugenia, I'm not crazy. Neither are you. Talk to me. Fast."

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
Don't lose it now
. The deputy and the doctor would be here in a few minutes. All she had to do was keep Cyrus talking until they arrived.

"I know a little something about the legend, of course," she said. "But the cup, itself, hasn't been seen by a reliable witness since the early eighteen hundreds. Most experts think it was destroyed in the last century."

"It exists," Cyrus said. "It's been in a series of private collections. I saw it myself three years ago."

Three years ago. When he had been shot. When his wife had been killed. When his partner disappeared. When an extremely valuable object had vanished.

Impossible.

"You probably saw a forgery," she suggested gently. She strained to hear the crunch of tires on the graveled drive.

"It was the real thing. My partner, Damien March, and I were hired to see that it got to our client. But March set me up. He stole the cup, and then he murdered my wife, Katy, to cover his tracks."

She tightened one hand in her lap. "Are you telling me that it was the Hades cup that you and your partner were hired to protect three years ago?"

Cyrus looked mildly impressed. "I see you've done some research on me."

In a horrible kind of way, his story fit with what Sally Warren had managed to dig up on him. She stared at him, trying to decide if he was sane and dangerous or a candidate for a locked ward in a mental hospital. Neither possibility had a soothing effect on her nerves.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "Are you here because you think that Adam Daventry owned the cup?"

"He bought it a few months ago when it came up for auction on the underground art market."

"My God."
The Hades cup
. If it really existed, it might be sitting downstairs right this very minute. Eugenia pushed back her chair and leaped to her feet. "The vault…"

"Forget it." Cyrus looked coldly amused by her sudden excitement. "Assuming it's still here in the house, it will be well hidden. Only a fool would have kept it on display with the rest of his art collection. Daventry was no fool."

"This is too bizarre to be believed." Sanity returned. The Hades cup did not exist. Everyone in the world of glass knew that. She sank slowly back down into her chair.

"You said the Daventry estate hired you to look into Daventry's death." She searched his face. "Are you telling me that was true? Do you think he was murdered for the cup?"

Cyrus hesitated. "No. I don't. Odds are, the fall was an accident."

"What makes you so sure?"

"No pro would have tried to commit murder with such an uncertain method," he said calmly.

"You're saying that anyone who was after the Hades cup would be a pro?"

"Yeah. That's what I'm saying."

His steady, unwavering gaze convinced her that he believed everything he was telling her. He might be crazy, but he was not deliberately lying to her.

"So you did con the estate into hiring you," she whispered. "You needed a cover to get into this house to search for the cup."

"I picked up the rumors that the cup had resurfaced a few weeks ago. It took me a while to trace the leads. By the time I realized that Adam Daventry had bought it, he was dead, the Leabrook was preparing to acquire his collection of glass, and the estate was getting set to sell the house. I had to move quickly, and I didn't have many options."

She tensed. "What makes you think the cup is still here?"

"I don't know for certain that it is here," he admitted. "It's possible that it was stolen by one of the other members of the Connoisseurs' Club the night he died, but I doubt it."

"Why?"

"Daventry didn't trust his friends. The members of the Connoisseurs' Club enjoyed showing off their acquisitions to each other, but the bottom line was that they were all rivals. He would not have told any of them where he hid the cup."

"Why is it so important to you to find the Hades cup? Do you intend to sell it?"

"I don't want the damned cup." His eyes were frozen pools of green ice now. "I want the man who stole it three years ago."

A fresh wave of unease rolled through her stomach. "I see."

"I need the cup to find him. It's the only thing that will lure him out of hiding."

She swallowed again. "You really believe that your ex-partner stole it, don't you?"

"I don't think it was Damien March. I know it." There was not an ounce of doubt in his voice. "He murdered my wife in the process."

"Dear God, Cyrus. Are you sure? Do you have any proof? I understood your wife was killed in a carjacking."

A flicker of surprise came and went on his gunslinger's face. "You really did do your research, didn't you? The carjacking was staged by March to cover his tracks. The only way to prove any of it is to get my hands on him. And to do that, I need the Hades cup."

"You're sure March is still alive and that the cup was recently stolen from him?"

"Every scrap of rumor points in that direction. This is the first solid lead I've had in three years. I have to follow it to the end."

"What makes you think that the cup will bring him out into the open?"

"March will do whatever he can to get it back. He was obsessed with it three years ago, and obsessions like that don't change."

He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, she thought. Maybe he did. He was obviously obsessed with finding Damien March.

Cyrus watched her steadily. "Okay, I showed you my hand. Now it's your turn. Tell me where you fit into this. And don't give me that garbage about being here to inventory the Daventry glass collection."

She raised her chin. "I certainly didn't come here because of the cup. I only have your word that it exists. Personally, I think you're on the trail of a fantasy."

Her gaze was uncompromisingly steady. "I'd like to believe that you're not after the cup. It would simplify matters."

"I don't care if you believe me or not." It had been a long day. Her anger and frustration boiled over without warning. "You want to know why I'm here? I'll tell you. I'm here because of Nellie Grant. The authorities say that she was washed overboard during a storm, but I think she may have been murdered."

He looked at her, obviously dumbfounded. "Nellie Grant? Daventry's last lover?"

Abruptly she realized she had said more than she had intended. But it was too late to retreat. "Yes."

"What the hell makes you think she was murdered?"

Eugenia hesitated. After a few seconds she got to her feet and carried her empty mug to the sink. "Nellie grew up on the water. She knew boats, and she was big on following the safety rules. I think it's highly unlikely that she would have taken a small boat out in bad weather, let alone get washed overboard by accident."

Cyrus was quiet for a few seconds. "You're sure about her skill with boats?"

"Yes." Eugenia whirled around and braced herself against the sink. "There's more. She came to see me the morning after Daventry died. She was in a very strange mood. Agitated and restless. She told me that she was going back to the island that afternoon to pack up the rest of her things, and then she planned to return to Seattle."

Cyrus considered that. "Anything else?"

Eugenia began to pace the kitchen. "She told me that in the weeks before his death, Daventry had grown tense and more secretive than usual."

"Go on."

"There isn't much else to tell. I don't have anything concrete. Just a feeling."

"Just a feeling?" he repeated neutrally.

"Yes." She frowned. "And don't you dare ridicule my intuition. Everyone knows I have very good instincts."

He lounged back in his chair, skepticism plain in his eyes. "Any idea of a motive here? Why would someone want to kill Nellie Grant?"

"I don't know how to explain this. But her anxious mood the day after Daventry died made me wonder if she'd seen something the night of his death. She hinted that Daventry used a lot of drugs. I wondered if maybe—"

"She'd witnessed a drug deal and someone wanted her dead?"

"Well, yes." She shoved her hands into her back pockets, turned, and paced in the other direction. "You have to admit it's a possibility."

"Uh-huh. A possibility. A real remote one."

He didn't believe her, she thought. In all fairness, she had to admit that she had not exactly leaped to accept his story at face value either.

Cyrus watched her as she paced. "Mind telling me why you've decided that it's your job to find out what happened to Nellie Grant?"

"She worked for me. She handled graphic design in the Leabrook's publicity department."

"How long did she work for you?"

"Almost a year."

"Do you always go rushing off to investigate when something happens to one of your employees?"

The ache in her jaw warned her that she was clenching her teeth. "No. But Nellie was my friend as well as my employee. She was an artist. She came from a very unhappy background. She was fragile."

"A lot of people have it tough. A lot of them are fragile. A lot of them come to bad ends." Cyrus's hand closed around the edge of the table. "Tell me why you feel you have to know what happened to this particular woman."

Eugenia halted facing the window. She shut her eyes. The words she had not yet spoken aloud welled up in her throat "I'm the one who introduced her to Adam Daventry. If it hadn't been for me, she would never have met him. If not for me, she would never have fallen in love with him. She would never have come here to Glass House. She would never have died."

Cyrus whistled softly. "Well, hell. So that's how it is. You blame yourself."

Eugenia heard the distant rumble of an automobile engine. She opened her eyes, turned, and looked straight at Cyrus. "I have to know what happened to her. It's as important to me as finding the Hades cup is to you."

"In that case," he said, "I think that you and I can do a deal here."

"A
deal?
What kind of a deal?"

"You may be one hell of a museum director, but I doubt if you've had much experience with the private investigation business."

"So?" The vehicle was in the drive. Eugenia could hear the crunch of gravel under tires.

"So here's my best offer. If you agree to keep quiet about the Hades cup and everything else I've told you tonight, I'll help you investigate the circumstances surrounding Nellie Grant's death."

She hesitated.

"For free," Cyrus added deliberately.

Outside, van doors slammed. Eugenia could feel the pressure that Cyrus was applying. It lapped at her in waves. He needed her cooperation badly. But he was willing to trade for it.

"I've told you what I think of free stuff," she said.

Voices on the veranda. A man and a woman.

"When it comes to this kind of thing, I'm very good," Cyrus said.

A knock on the door.

Decision time.

"All right," Eugenia said. "It's a deal."

Deputy Peaceful Jones shook his head in a sorrowful manner as he hoisted one end of the body bag. "A real shame about poor old Leonard."

Cyrus nodded, his hands full with the other end of the body bag that contained poor old Leonard. "Yeah. Real shame."

With his gray ponytail, beads, and a T-shirt embroidered with a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy and a little sign that read
You Are Here
, Peaceful was definitely not your stereotypical lawman. But he seemed solid enough to Cyrus.

"I reckon it's no surprise, eh, Meditation?" Peaceful looked at his wife as she held open the door of the van.

Dr. Meditation Jones, dressed in a long, flowing gown and a beaded headband, smiled a serene smile. "No. His aura had grown very weak in recent months." Her high, breathy voice made her sound much younger than one would have guessed from her gray braids. "His time had come."

Cyrus caught Eugenia's eye as he helped ease the body bag into the van. He could not be certain, but he could have sworn that, in spite of the macabre scene, her mouth twitched. He realized he was having to work to suppress a grin.

Peaceful slammed the van door and squinted at Cyrus through a pair of small, round spectacles. "Too bad you folks had to be the ones to stumble over old Leonard like this. But I guess someone had to find him."

"I take it no one had noticed that he was missing?" Cyrus asked.

"Old Leonard didn't have what you'd call any close friends," Peaceful said.

"He had a very disturbed aura," Meditation confided gently. "It made people unconsciously want to avoid him. I tried to get him to meditate and fast in order to clear his essence, but he refused."

Eugenia came down the steps. "It must be hard on a doctor when her good advice is ignored by the patient."

"Yes," Meditation said. "But in the end we are all responsible for our own auras. All a doctor can do is point the way. It's up to the patient to walk the path."

Cyrus looked at her. "Sounds like something my grandfather would have said."

She smiled. "Your grandfather must have been a very wise man."

"Yeah," Cyrus said. "He was." He looked at Peaceful. "Something else happened this evening. We had an intruder earlier. That's what got us out of bed."

Peaceful frowned. "Anything taken?"

"Not as far as we can tell. We scared him off. I'll recode the locks in the morning."

"Can't hurt," Peaceful said. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, though. Probably just some local kids fooling around. We haven't had a genuine burglary on this island in years. Frog Cove is the kind of place where people never lock their doors."

"Daventry locked his doors," Cyrus pointed out.

Peaceful squinted against the glare of the van's headlights. "Mr. Daventry was a little different. He wasn't really one of us, if you know what I mean. I hear you folks are here on vacation?"