Sharp Edges (32 page)

"So many unanswered questions," Eugenia whispered.

"Yes." Fenella's voice sharpened. "And I was afraid that, because of the painting, you would ask too many of your own."

Eugenia whistled softly. "In other words, you tried to kill Rhonda because she had unwittingly shown you that you were vulnerable."

"Silly little Daventry whore. I didn't really set out to kill her. Frankly, I don't care if she lives or dies. She knows nothing. I simply followed her to the restaurant to see what she was up to that night."

"And when she went running out the back door, you were waiting?"

Fenella took a step forward. The movement caused the fabric of her black dress to rustle and slither in the shadows. "I took advantage of the moment to smack her good with a length of board that happened to be close at hand. She deserved it."

Eugenia stared at her. "You hated Rhonda. Not just because she had made you nervous by producing one of Nellie's paintings, but because she was one of Daventry's ex-lovers."

"Five years ago that bastard, Daventry, tossed me aside for a series of little no-talents like Rhonda Price," Fenella said harshly.

"Why?"

"Why? Because I frightened him, of course." The edgy amusement returned to Rhonda's voice. "He knew I had a great talent, but he was afraid of it. It was too big for him. Too strong. He knew he could not suck it out of me the way he did with all the others. Deep down, he was terrified that I would destroy him."

Eugenia glanced at the horrific glass and metal sculpture in her hands. She thought she understood why Daventry had become uneasy about Fenella's artistic talent. She looked up again. "When he walked out on you, you vowed to make him pay, right?"

"Oh, yes.
Yes
, I promised myself that he would pay."

"One question. Why did you wait five years?"

Fenella uttered a grating, high-pitched laugh. "Because it took me that long to create a truly satisfying way to destroy him. I am an artist, after all. The destruction of Adam Daventry had to be a masterpiece."

"Excuse me? It took five years to come up with the brilliant idea of shoving him down a flight of stairs? No offense, but that doesn't sound all that creative."

"I didn't intend to kill him that night," Fenella snapped. "We quarreled. I got very angry. I lost my temper and I shoved him. Hard. He was stoned on some of his special drugs. He lost his balance and fell. But I never meant to do it."

"I see."

"Why would I want to murder him when he was paying so well for his crime against me?"

"How was he paying for it?"

Fenella moved close to another beam of light. "I was blackmailing him."

"With what? Daventry didn't fear anyone enough to pay blackmail. He would have laughed in your face."

"He didn't laugh at me," Fenella said proudly. "He paid through the nose to keep me quiet."

"I'm impressed. What did you have on him?"

"For five long years, I kept close tabs on Adam Daventry. He was so damned arrogant that he never guessed I was there in the shadows, waiting and watching. He thought that I was out of his life because he had ended our affair. But I was closer to him than he ever knew. Closer than any of his whores. And when he made his great mistake, I was ready."

Eugenia went very still. She thought she knew what was coming, but she also knew it would be folly to try to one-up Fenella. The other woman's ego was her only vulnerable point at that moment.

"Okay, I'll bite," Eugenia said. "What was Daventry's big mistake?"

"A few months ago when he became interested in ancient glass, he began to dabble in the underground art market. His contacts with the people who provided him with his special drugs led him to other people who knew how to get hold of very dangerous, extremely valuable things."

"Things such as what, Fenella?"

"In this case, a piece of very old glass known as the Hades cup."

Eugenia said nothing, but she took a very deep, very shaky breath.

Fenella laughed softly. "You know about glass, Eugenia Swift. You're an expert. Surely you're aware of the legends surrounding that cup."

"I've heard a few of them."

"People have died because of that glass. Daventry had been warned that the former owner of the cup would gladly kill to get it back. He had to protect his secret. Only a handful of people knew that he possessed it. He never realized that I was one of those people."

"Until you popped up out of the past and began to blackmail him."

"You should have seen his face when he discovered that I had moved to the island and opened my gallery." Fenella giggled. It was not a pleasant sound. "I told him that the information that he was the new owner of the Hades cup was contained in a letter that would be mailed to certain parties if anything ever happened to me. It was a lie, of course."

"There is no letter?"

"I could hardly trust anyone else with that sort of information, now, could I?" Fenella said it as if Eugenia were not very bright. "But Daventry believed me."

"He was willing to pay you for your silence?"

"Oh, he tried everything else first." Scorn burned in Fenella's words. "He told me we could take up where we had left off. Claimed that he bad come to realize that I was the most brilliant artist he had ever known. The fool actually thought he could seduce me."

"But you made him pay, instead."

"Yes, I made him pay." Fenella's voice shook with fury. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"Until the quarrel at the top of the stairs."

"It was all very ironic in a way."

"What do you mean?" Eugenia asked.

"He once told me that the thing that attracted him to artists was their unpredictable temperaments. He enjoyed the fire, he said. He liked to see them in a temper. It excited him."

"In the end, he died because you lost your temper with him."

"Yes," Fenella whispered. "And now, you must die also."

Eugenia realized that she needed a serious distraction and she needed it immediately. She remembered the tears that had welled in Jacob Houston's eyes when he had learned that he had inadvertently destroyed his own creation.

"You know something, Fenella? You really do have talent." She took a step closer to the light. She wanted Fenella to see that she still held the sculpture. "Too bad you can only produce monstrosities."

"That's not true," Fenella shouted. "My work is far too brilliant for you even to begin to comprehend. Put down my
Flower
."

"Whatever you say." Eugenia raised the ugly glass and metal sculpture and hurled it to the floor.

Fenella screamed.

Glass shattered. Metal shrieked as it scraped against a mirrored surface.

Fenella pulled the trigger.

Twenty

«
^
»

T
he shot slammed into the wall beside Eugenia. She forced herself to move through the fear. She only had a few seconds during which Fenella's attention would be focused on the destruction of her
Flower
.

She dove for the cover of the dark shadows near the floor and crawled on hands and knees to the nearest black glass pedestal.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you." Fenella's voice rose in a keening wale of anguished fury. "You know nothing about art, Eugenia Swift. Nothing."

Another shot cracked loudly in the room. Eugenia huddled behind the pedestal and cringed when a glass case shattered. Shards rained down onto the floor beside her. Something heavy fell off a stand and grazed her thigh.

She listened to Fenella prowl through the maze of display stands.

"Stupid bitch. Stupid museum director. You think you know art? You haven't got a clue about the true nature of art. Only another artist can know art. And you're no artist. None of Adam Daventry's whores were artists."

Another glass case exploded. Not a gunshot this time, Eugenia thought. Fenella had smashed it.

"Were you one of Daventry's whores, Eugenia Swift? Were you one of these silly bitches who called themselves artists?"

More glass shattered. Something heavy and fragile cracked when it struck the tile.

"No-talents, every last one of you."

Another display case dissolved into shards.

"My talent terrified Daventry, you know," Fenella crooned with delight. "That's why he turned to these whores. He couldn't handle my talent."

Another case fractured when Fenella struck it with the gun.

"He could not take the fire of real genius," she shouted.

Eugenia realized that Fenella was working her way systematically through the pedestals. She was destroying the display cases and the art inside.

It would only take a minute or two for the enraged woman to reach Eugenia's pedestal.

She waited tensely until Fenella hammered the next display case.

"Superficial. Pedestrian. Amateurs, all of you," Fenella screamed as glass exploded.

Under cover of the noise of breaking glass, Eugenia rose to a crouch.

"Where are you, Eugenia Swift? You can't hide much longer." Fenella smashed another case. "I'm going to destroy all of Daventry's whores, and that includes you."

Eugenia listened to Fenella's footsteps. She was coming down the aisle on the right. Fortunately, she appeared to be going about the destruction of the art in a methodical manner. The nearest case on left and then the one on the right.

Left, right.

Left, right.

Daventry had certainly had a lot of women artists in his life, Eugenia thought. At the moment, approximately four more of them stood between her and a bullet.

She edged around the corner of the pedestal, moving to put it squarely between herself and Fenella.

The footsteps came closer. Fenella was moaning in rage now. The sound had the same effect on Eugenia's nerves that the gun had on the glass. It turned them into jagged shards.

Fenella smashed another case. Another piece of art struck the tile. Something soft this time.

Left, right.

Fenella was less than three feet away now. Eugenia peeked around the edge of the pedestal and saw an upraised arm silhouetted against a narrow beam of stark white light. The gauzy black dress drifted like a gossamer shroud.

"Stupid Daventry whore. Did you believe his lies, too? Of course you did. They all did."

For that single instant Fenella's back was turned. This would be her only chance, Eugenia decided.

She lunged forward from her crouched position with all of her strength. Fenella shrieked in fury as Eugenia slammed into her.

The impact carried them both toward the floor.

The arc of the fall was halted by a jarring thud when the back of Fenella's head struck the edge of a display case. The gun clattered loudly on the nearby tiles.

Fenella went limp as she hit the floor. She lay unmoving. Eugenia fell on top of her. The shock of the impact took away her breath.

When she recovered enough to scramble to her feet, she realized that Fenella was unconscious.

Deputy Peaceful Jones passed solemn judgment as he watched his wife straighten the small clinic. "Real sad situation."

Meditation sighed as she put away her instruments. "A very strange aura. The color was malignant. Dark and muddy. There was no clarity in it at all."

Cyrus looked at them and decided there was nothing more to say.

The authorities had taken Fenella Weeks to the mainland in a helicopter. She had been awake, but not what anyone could call lucid. Cyrus had heard her babbling about a bizarre scheme to kill all of Daventry's previous lovers. It was all she could talk about. Meditation Jones said that she was lost somewhere inside herself.

Peaceful had supervised the management of the crime scene with surprising efficiency. Eugenia gave a quiet, detailed statement. When it was finished, Peaceful shook his head.

"Imagine her thinking she could blackmail someone like Daventry. Man like that wouldn't have given a damn if she revealed one of his old scandals."

"You wouldn't think so," Eugenia said.

Something in her voice caught Cyrus's attention. She did not meet his eye.

"Wonder what she had on him," Peaceful mused.

Eugenia cleared her throat. "I think it had something to do with a shady art deal."

"Wouldn't surprise me." Peaceful grimaced. "I'll bet most of Daventry's art deals were on the shady side."

"Are you sure you're all right?" Cyrus asked as he bundled Eugenia into the Jeep. Her strangely quiet mood worried him as nothing else had in a long time. "Maybe I should take you back to Seattle to see your own doctor."

"No." Eugenia buckled her seat belt with unnatural care. "I'm not ill. Just a little shaken."

"Damn. You and me both." Cyrus got in beside her and put on his dark glasses with grim precision. "It's a wonder I'm not having hysterics."

A reluctant smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. "That would be an interesting sight. Somehow I can't imagine you having hysterics, regardless of the circumstances."

"Everyone has his breaking point." Cyrus put one hand on the wheel and the other on the back of the seat. "I think I may have reached mine today."

"Not likely."

"Damn it, Eugenia, you could have been killed by that wacko." He backed the Jeep out of the space and headed for the main road.

"You don't have to spell it out for me." Her voice sounded oddly detached. "I was there. Saw the whole thing."

"Why in hell did you go racing off to Glass House by yourself after you found the sculpture in Fenella's back room?"

"I told you, I had to be sure that Fenella was the artist who had created both of those sculptures. After I left the gallery, Fenella realized I was on to her. She followed me."

He gripped the wheel very tightly. "You should have waited until I got back to the island."

"If you're going to yell at me, I want out, here."

"Damn." He had not meant to yell at her. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But he did not know how to explain that the remains of the fear in the pit of his stomach made it difficult to maintain full control.