Sharp Edges (24 page)

"What's the name of your friend?"

Rhonda's jaw tightened. "None of your business. I'm not going to drag him into this."

"I just want to talk to him. Please, Rhonda."

"Forget it. I don't want him to get into trouble." Rhonda smashed the shirts into the suitcase. "The ferry will be leaving soon. I've got to get out of here."

"Tell me about Nellie Grant."

"There's nothing to tell."

"You were jealous of her."

"Not for long." Rhonda's mouth twisted. "As far as I'm concerned, she was just one more of his victims. He considered himself a connoisseur of artists. He liked to discover them, the same way he enjoyed finding a new piece of glass for his collection. When he had sucked everything he wanted out of them, he threw them aside."

"I know."

Rhonda spun around. "You knew Adam Daventry?"

"Briefly. It was a business relationship, not a personal one." Eugenia paused. "I was the one who introduced Nellie to Daventry."

"You didn't do her any favors, did you?"

"No." Eugenia took a breath. "Now she's gone, and I need to know what happened to her."

"Don't look at me." Rhonda hauled the suitcases off the bed and stood them on the floor. "As far as I know, she was washed overboard on her way back here to the island. But since you were such a terrific friend of hers, I'll give you the other
Glass
painting I found. It won't do me any good now."

Eugenia watched her go to the dresser and reach behind it. "Rhonda, don't you have any idea of who might have hit you the other night?"

"No." Rhonda hauled the painting out and leaned it against the wall. "But I've come to the conclusion that it may have had something to do with what happened at Glass House the night Daventry died. And that means I want no part of it."

"You were at that last party?"

"Sure. Everyone was there. Every last one of his naïve little pet artists. We all hoped we'd get discovered by one of Daventry's damned Connoisseurs, you see. We were such fools."

Slowly, Eugenia picked up the painting. "What did happen that night?"

"Adam Daventry fell down the stairs and broke his neck."

"Yes, I know. It was an accident."

"Think so?" Rhonda seized the suitcases. "I wouldn't be surprised if someone helped him take that fall down those stairs."

"Why would someone kill him?"

"Wrong question, Ms. Swift. The right question is, who wouldn't want to kill him?" Rhonda lurched toward the bedroom door with her suitcases.

Eugenia followed her down the hall. "Do you think someone tried to kill you because you saw something you shouldn't have seen that night at Glass House?"

"Maybe." Rhonda set the suitcases down in the living room and began to toss paints and brushes into a cardboard box. "Those parties up at Glass House got pretty wild. It would be easy to slip in during the middle of one, shove Adam down the staircase, and then leave without anyone noticing."

"What do you know that makes you dangerous to the killer?"

Rhonda gave her a scornful look. "If I knew that, I'd be able to figure out who cracked my head open and shoved me into the water the other night." She picked up the box of paints and brushes and carried it outside to the car.

Eugenia went to the doorway and watched Rhonda set the box into the open trunk.

"There's someone I'd like you to talk to," Eugenia said when Rhonda brushed past her to get the suitcases. "A private investigator. He owns a security firm. He can help you."

"Forget it." Rhonda dragged the suitcases out the front door. "I'm not talking to anyone. I'm getting out of here."

Eugenia opened her purse and dug out one of her cards. "Look, if you change your mind, call me at Glass House. I'll arrange for my friend to assist you."

Rhonda narrowed her eyes. "Your friend is the guy who's staying with you at Glass House, right? The big dude who wears the dippy aloha shirts?"

"Uh, yes. That's him. But I wouldn't draw too many conclusions about him based on his taste in shirts, if I were you. He really does own a very successful security firm. Honest."

Rhonda's mouth curved into a sneer. "No offense, but I think I'll pass on the offer."

She slammed the lid of the trunk, scrambled into the front seat, and fired up the compact. Without a backward glance, she roared out of the driveway.

Eugenia watched, frustrated, until Rhonda had vanished around the bend. Then she walked over to her Toyota and opened the door. Gently she rested Nellie's painting behind the front seat.

She caught sight of the package she had left on the passenger seat just as she fitted the key into the ignition. There was something wrong with the shape of it.

It had been smashed flat.

Slowly Eugenia reached out to pick it up. Her stomach fell away as she listened to the broken shards of the ruined glass sculpture shift ominously inside the brown paper wrapping.

Whoever had crushed the Jacob Houston piece had left a note. It was scrawled in large block letters on a sheet of paper that had been torn from an artist's sketch pad.

The message was simple and to the point:

Stay away from her. Leave the island while you still can.

Sixteen

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T
he instant he saw Eugenia standing in the driveway of Rhonda Price's cabin with what looked like a large, crumpled paper sack in her hands, Cyrus knew that something very unpleasant had happened.

As usual with Eugenia, his worst fears were confirmed.

She looked up at the sound of the Jeep engine, a deeply troubled expression on her face.

"Damn." He brought the Jeep to a halt and shoved open the door. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I was about to ask you the same question. Rhonda Price came back to the island."

"I know. I just passed her driving hell-for-leather back toward town."

Eugenia narrowed her eyes. "How come you didn't know she had been released from the hospital?"

"I got a call from Quint about twenty minutes ago." Cyrus eyed the package in her hands as he went toward her. "He said she walked out of the hospital this morning."

"No offense, but it would have been nice to have had a little advance warning from your hotshot security team. As it was, I was lucky to see her as she drove off the ferry. Five minutes either way and I would have missed her."

"Rhonda didn't bother to check herself out of the hospital, she just walked off through the emergency room entrance. No one noticed that she was gone for a while. By the time Quint was alerted, she was already on board the ferry."

Eugenia's brows lifted. "How much do you pay your people, Cyrus?"

"Too much, apparently." There was no point telling her how he had chewed Quint into small bite-sized pieces when he had got the news of Rhonda's unscheduled departure. He rarely lost his temper with his staff. The fact that he had done so over a relatively minor screwup this morning was just one more disturbing indication that he did not have this situation under full control.

Eugenia frowned. "How did you know where to find me?"

"Elementary, my dear Swift. When I heard that Rhonda was headed back here, I put that fact together with the fact that you had gone shopping for groceries. I then got what you might call a blinding flash of the obvious."

"I don't understand."

"Let's just say that, given my luck lately, it was inevitable that the two of you would cross paths in town. I also knew that if you saw Rhonda, you would confront her. When I didn't spot either of your cars parked on Waterfront Street, I drove out here to see what was happening."

She nodded. "Logical."

"I thought so. Now tell me what the hell went on here."

"Well, among other things, I learned that Rhonda was the intruder we chased out of Glass House the first night."

"Damn." He decided to ignore the note of cool one-upmanship in her voice. She was entitled. "Are you sure?"

"She admitted it. Said it was the second time she'd snuck into the house since Daventry's death. She was after Nellie's
Glass
paintings. She knows that there are four of them. She got two."

He considered that briefly. "So three of the four are now accounted for."

"Right. The one hanging in my condo, the one I bought in the Midnight Gallery, and the one Rhonda just gave me."

"Why did she give you the third one?"

Eugenia grimaced. "I think she's concluded that anything to do with Glass House is bad luck."

"She may have a point. She say anything else interesting?"

"She's concluded that Daventry's death might not have been an accident. She thinks someone hit her on the head and pushed her into the marina because she saw something she shouldn't have seen at Glass House the night he died."

"I see. And does she have any idea of what it was she might have seen?"

Eugenia gave him a disgruntled glare. "Well, no."

"In other words, she's concocted a neat little conspiracy to explain her own fall into the marina. That's why she's on the run, I take it? She's afraid someone's out to kill her?"

Eugenia sighed. "It does sound a little improbable, doesn't it?"

"Sounds neurotic as hell, is what it sounds." He leaned back against the Jeep fender and folded his arms. "It's about as improbable as Nellie Grant being murdered for similar reasons."

Eugenia widened her eyes. "You sound somewhat serious. Don't tell me you're starting to buy into my theory of how Nellie died."

"Let's just say that, given the weirdness of this whole mess, I'm keeping an open mind. Might be interesting to see where Rhonda goes now and what she does next."

Eugenia smiled much too sweetly. "Think Colfax Security is up to the challenge of keeping track of Rhonda Price this time?"

"It better be up to it, or I may have to hire you and put you in charge of the business." He looked at the package she held. "What's this? Something from Fenella Weeks's gallery?"

"It is. Or was. This is the crowning jewel of my morning's detective work." She turned the package in her hand. Glass tinkled.

"You broke it already?"

"I had some assistance. It was on the front seat of my car. Someone smashed it while I was inside the cottage. Whoever did it very kindly left a note explaining why he went to all the trouble."

With a flourish, Eugenia handed him a sheet of torn paper.

Cyrus looked down at the note. He went cold. "Oh, shit."

"Succinctly put. What do you make of it, Sherlock?"

"Nothing good, that's for damn sure." He looked up. "But whatever else it is, it's personal."

Eugenia raised her brows. "I figured that out right off. The note was lying on the front seat of my car."

"That's not what I meant. It says
stay away from her
. Whoever wrote this isn't just warning you away from the island. He's trying to protect Rhonda."

"Well, yes, I can see that." She gave him a narrow-eyed, quizzical look. "Why do you keep saying
he?
"

"Could be a woman," Cyrus admitted. "But I doubt it. Looks like a man's writing. Either way, there's an implied relationship. Quint said no one visited Rhonda in the hospital, but a man called twice to check on her condition."

Eugenia frowned. "She mentioned a friend. Said Daventry had told him about Nellie's
Glass
portraits. That's how she knew there were four of them."

"She give you a name?"

"No. She said she didn't want to get him involved in this."

"Another artist?"

"Yes, I think so." Eugenia tapped the package in her hand with one finger. "That message is written on paper that was torn from an artist's sketch pad."

They both looked at the note.

"An artist, then," Cyrus said slowly, thinking it through. "Someone local. Someone who must have been in town and saw the ferry arrive and followed the two of you out here."

Eugenia examined the crushed package. "Whoever he is, he owes me. He destroyed my Jacob Houston."

"Who's Jacob Houston?" Cyrus asked, distracted.

"The artist who made this. Or what's left of it. Fenella Weeks mentioned him, remember?"

"Vaguely. A glass artist?"

"Yes. He's very, very good. I want to see more of his work before I leave the island. I'd like to display some of it in the Leabrook's Cutting Edge exhibition in the fall. Houston's got an incredible sense of intuitive, organic design. He's also got a master's technical expertise. The way he works color in the glass is phenomenal—" She broke off. "Am I boring you, Cyrus?"

"Sorry. Were my eyes glazing over?"

"I think so."

He shrugged. "It happens sometimes. I think I'd better have a talk with the guy who wrote this note."

"How will you find him?"

"I figure he must have been waiting for the ferry in town."

She scowled. "So? Oh, I see what you mean. He must have been in town when I was in Fenella's gallery."

"Yeah."

"Frog Cove is a very small place." Excitement kindled in her expression. "If Rhonda had a close relationship with someone, any number of people probably know about it."

"Yeah."

"It should be simple to figure out who he is."

"Piece of cake." Cyrus smiled. "And because it is so simple, I think I can just about handle it. I'll go into town and get a name."

"I'll come with you."

He braced himself. "I think it will work better if I do this alone."

"What possible difference could it make if I come with you?"

"It might not make any difference at all. But I'd rather do this by myself. I have a hunch it will look a little less obvious that way."

"Nonsense." She opened the door of her car, slipped behind the wheel, and slammed the door shut. "I'll follow you."

"Sure." He gripped the edge of the Toyota roof. "That's real subtle. We both drive into town and start asking pointed questions about Rhonda Price and her boyfriend. You don't think anyone will notice?"

"I can be subtle."