Sharp Edges (26 page)

"Tell him that," Eugenia said. "He'll understand."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

Rick looked dubious. "It's hard to get Cyrus to change his mind after he decides what's best in a situation. He's kind of like an aircraft carrier."

"An aircraft carrier?"

A grin flickered briefly at the edge of Rick's mouth. "Not what you'd call real maneuverable. Hard to turn. Sets a course and just keeps going."

"I know what you mean." Eugenia thought about Cyrus's determination to find the Hades cup. "Still, I think if you remind him that he's done a pretty good job of helping you become a man and that you're ready to set your own course because of what he taught you, you might get through to him."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll just come right out with it."

The familiar sound of Cyrus's Jeep rumbled through the open window. Eugenia swiveled around on the wide seat and glanced down into the drive.

"He's back." She got to her feet and started toward the door. "About time. He'd better have the name I want, or I'm going to see about getting myself another professional detective for a partner."

Rick chuckled. "Don't worry. Cyrus always gets results."

"We'll see about that."

Eugenia flew down the staircase and went out onto the veranda. She stopped at the railing, gripped it with both hands, and watched Cyrus mount the steps.

"Well?" she said.

"I got the name of Rhonda's good buddy here on the island." He smiled wryly. "Take a guess."

"I haven't got a clue."

"Jacob Houston."

"Houston?" Startled, she examined that for a few seconds. "He smashed his own work in an effort to frighten me off? I don't believe it. It takes a lot to make any artist destroy his own creation."

"I doubt if he knew what was inside the package."

That gave her pause. "You're right. He couldn't have known." She eyed him with deep suspicion. "You didn't confront him by yourself, did you?"

"No. Thought we'd do that together." Cyrus came to a halt at the top of the steps. "
Partner
."

"We can go out to his workshop right now." Eugenia turned swiftly. "I'll get my purse. I can't wait to hear what Houston has to say for himself."

"Not so fast." Cyrus reached out to catch hold of her arm. "We're going to have a little strategy session before you go flying off half-cocked again."

"Who needs a strategy session? I want some answers."

"We'll get them. But we're not going to rush this. We're going to think first and then act. After extensive experience in the business, I can guarantee you that it will work better that way."

She whirled around. "If you think I'm going to waste time chitchatting about strategy when I could be grilling Houston…"

"Uncle Cyrus?" Rick spoke from the doorway.

Cyrus looked past Eugenia. "What have you got, Rick?"

"You said to keep my eyes open for anything that looked unusual. I found these. Think they might be useful?"

Eugenia saw that Rick was holding several rolls of faded blueprints. "What are they?"

"Architectural drawings of Glass House," Rick said. "I found them stashed in the back of a closet in the library. Looks like whoever stuck them in there forgot about them a long time ago."

"Let me see those." Cyrus plucked one of the rolls from Rick's arm and unfurled it quickly. He whistled softly. "As-builts. These are the final versions of the drawings that were used to build this house of mirrors. Rick, remind me to call my lawyer in the morning and have him put you into my will."

Rick grinned. "All I want is the Jeep."

"Don't get greedy."

Eugenia glanced at the drawings. "What good will these drawings do you?"

Cyrus raised his eyes from the faded blueprint. His smile bordered on wolfish. "Don't you get it? Daventry must have had the Hades cup hidden somewhere in this house. He needed a secret safe for that. These drawings may show me where it is. If my luck holds, the cup will still be there."

Seventeen

«
^
»

"I
s it okay if we talk while we do this?" Rick asked an hour later.

"Yeah." Cyrus walked to the far end of the library, tape measure in hand. He crouched to mark the length of the floor. "You want to chew me out again because your dad showed up at your graduation?"

"No."

Cyrus was relieved. "I appreciate that."

Rick grasped the end of the tape and held it steady on the opposite side of the room. "Eugenia says I should just be up front with you."

Cyrus looked up warily. "What the hell does Eugenia have to do with this?"

"She and I talked a little before you got back here this afternoon."

"This sounds ominous."

Rick smiled wryly. "Nah. She just helped me get some of my thoughts straight."

"Twenty-four feet, six inches. What thoughts?"

"Hang on while I write that down." Rick scrawled the numbers on the pad. "I know why you made Dad come to my graduation."

"I thought this wasn't going to be about your father."

"I'm not mad at you anymore about that." Rick made a face. "I have a feeling it wasn't the first time you helped Dad remember an
appointment
with me."

Cyrus straightened and took the tape to the window seat. "Look, your dad got some of his priorities mixed up somewhere along the line. All I did was straighten him out on a couple of occasions."

"I'll bet you did."

Cyrus concentrated on noting the length of the window seat. "Six feet, three inches. One of these days, he'll probably get his priorities straight again all by himself."

"Maybe. Maybe not. In the meantime, all he cares about is the next deal he's got cooking. I know that. Hell, Cyrus, I've always known it."

"Remember, when you have a kid of your own, you don't have to set your priorities the same way your father did."

"I won't," Rick said quietly. "I'm going to set them the way you did."

Cyrus stared at the numbers on the tape measure. They suddenly made no sense. "Yeah? Well, I may not be the best example to follow."

"You're the best example I had. So you're the one I'm going to follow."

Cyrus could not think of anything to say. A curious warmth rose inside him. He focused hard on the tape measure. "Width of the window seat is three feet exactly."

"Got it." Rick wrote busily.

A short silence came and went. Cyrus rewound the tape measure, aware that Rick was spending an inordinate length of time writing down the new measurements.

After a while Rick cleared his throat. "Anyhow, about what I wanted to say."

"I'm listening."

"When I talked to Eugenia earlier, it hit me that you've done a lot of things for me since that night you came to get me at the police station. I guess I just took you for granted. I never thought about how busy you must have been, especially during the past three years when you had to rebuild your business."

Cyrus swung around to face him. "Rick, whatever I did, I did because I wanted to do it, okay? You're a great kid. If I ever have a son, I hope he turns out like you."

Rick flushed a deep shade of crimson. "Yeah? Well, thanks."

"So what did you want to talk about?"

Rick sighed. "The kid thing."

"Kid thing?"

"I'm not one anymore, Uncle Cyrus." Rick met his eyes across the width of the room. "It was one thing to do stuff like you did with Dad and graduation when I was younger. You wanted to protect me. But I don't need you to do it anymore, okay?"

Images from the past five years flitted through Cyrus's mind. He saw himself teaching Rick how to build a campfire. How to paint a room. How to use a condom. Most of all, how to control the anger and the pain that Jake Tasker's careless betrayal of his responsibilities had created. Yes, he had wanted to protect Rick. Rick had needed him.

But it looked as though Rick didn't need him anymore.

"Okay," he said.

"You've told me that a man has to be able to handle the fact that other people don't always live up to his expectations. You said the important thing was to set your own expectations for yourself and do your damnedest to meet them. You said that was the only way I'd be able to face myself in a mirror for the rest of my life."

Cyrus frowned. "Did I really say all that?"

"About a million and a half times."

"Damn. That sounds like something Grandpappy Beau used to say to me. Maybe I am turning into an old codger."

Rick ignored that. "I can take care of myself now, Uncle Cyrus. You gave me the tools to do the job. Let me handle it."

"Does this mean you aren't going to borrow my Jeep anymore?"

Rick grinned. He looked as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "I said I could take care of myself. I didn't say I would have any quality of life without occasional access to your Jeep."

Cyrus relaxed. Rick was not the only one who felt as though a burden had been lifted, he thought. "I was afraid of that. Let's get back to work. How are the measurements matching up to the dimensions on the floor plan of this room?"

Rick glanced at the drawing and then at his notes. "Everything's the same in here."

"No room for a hidden vault, then. Let's go try the master bedroom."

"Sure." Rick picked up the notebook and followed Cyrus out of the library. "I get the feeling Eugenia doesn't think you're going to find the Hades cup. She thinks you're wasting your time."

"That's one of the interesting things about Eugenia," Cyrus said. "She's not shy about giving you her opinion."

Eugenia held her patience until after dinner. When she had polished off the last taco, she sat back in her chair and regarded Cyrus and Rick across the remains of the feast. "All right, you two have had your chance to do your thing. I take it you haven't found any discrepancies between the actual measurements and those on the drawings?"

"Not yet," Rick said. "It's amazing how hard it is to measure every single dimension in a room."

"We haven't even done the basement yet," Cyrus added. "Thought we'd get to it tonight after dinner."

"No way." Eugenia glared at him. "It's my turn. Let's talk about how we're going to deal with Jacob Houston."

"Oh, yeah. The strategy bit."

"Yes. The strategy bit."

Cyrus smiled benignly. "Don't worry. I'll deal with him in the morning."

"No, you will not." Eugenia had had enough. She pushed herself up out of the chair. "I'll deal with him tonight. With or without your professional advice on strategy. He's an artist. I know how to deal with artists."

"I said I'd handle it."

"Hah. You haven't paid any attention to my case since Rick produced those house plans this afternoon. All you can think about is finding some mysterious hidden chamber."

"I'm not ignoring your case, I'm just taking things in logical sequence. I'm staying focused."

She gave him her brightest smile. "Focus on this, Mr. Detective." She waggled her fingers in a mockery of a good-bye salute, turned her back, and grabbed her keys off a Venetian glass mosaic table.

"Damn." The rubber-tipped legs of Cyrus's chair squeaked on the tile as he shoved it back. "I told you, this kind of thing takes patience."

"I've waited all afternoon for you two to finish fiddling with those drawings. I'm not going to wait any longer."

"You're not going to see Houston alone." Cyrus pursued her toward the hall.

"You're free to come with me." She threw him a cool smile over her shoulder as she stepped into her black loafers at the front door. "If you can tear yourself away from your hunt for secret vaults and hidden passages, that is."

"Okay, okay, I'm coming." Cyrus looked at Rick. "You want to go with us or stay here?"

"I'll come with you." Rick was already on his feet. "Is the detective business always this interesting?"

"No," Cyrus said. "Luckily for me."

The view through the glory hole in the side of the glass furnace was a window into the heart of a miniature volcano. Eugenia stood in the doorway of Jacob Houston's workshop and watched as the glassmaker eased a blowpipe through the opening and dipped it into the molten glass inside the crucible.

Cyrus and Rick gazed curiously over her shoulder, briefly silenced by the scene before them.

She understood their fascination. In the course of her career she had watched glass worked many times, but the process never failed to enthrall. The contradictions and mysteries of a substance that retained its characteristics as a liquid even while it took solid shape, a substance that could be transformed into endless shapes and that could transmit and reflect light, compelled and fascinated her.

The ancient history of glassmaking, a craft and an art with roots that reached back thousands of years, was an inescapable part of the allure, she thought. Tonight, Jacob Houston used a blowpipe to work glass in a manner that would have been familiar to Roman artisans two thousand years ago.

She had often thought that if it weren't for the fact that glass was so common, more people would see it for the amazing material that it truly was.

Jacob was unaware of his audience. His entire attention was concentrated on his work. Fenella had been right about one thing, Eugenia reflected as she watched him; Jacob was sure and steady when he practiced his art. But this was the same man who had smashed the package on the front seat of her car that morning, she reminded herself. He had a quick temper.

"Jacob Houston?" she called over the roar of the furnace.

"I'm busy." Jacob did not turn to see who stood in the doorway. He was focused on gathering a quantity of molten glass on the end of the pipe.

"I spoke to your friend, Rhonda Price, today," Eugenia said.

"What the hell—?" Jacob turned, mouth open in shock. His eyes narrowed quickly. Something that could have been fear appeared in his gaze. The glob of molten glass on the tip of his blowpipe glowed white-hot.

Eugenia concluded that Jacob was in his mid-forties. He had lost most of the hair on the top of his head. The remainder was gathered into a small, thin ponytail. He was a heavy-set man with bearlike features and massive hands.