Sharp Edges (36 page)

"You would know." Cyrus watched Eugenia's eyes narrow faintly as he tugged off the leather jacket and tossed it aside.

Damien tut-tutted at the sight of the hibiscus-and-palm-covered shirt. "I see you still favor the casual look. And no gun. Really, Colfax, you're remarkably underdressed for the occasion."

"Eugenia doesn't like guns."

Damien chuckled. "How convenient."

Eugenia clenched her hand into a small, angry fist. "I'm rethinking my stand on the issue."

"Don't blame yourself, Ms. Swift. Even if Colfax had been armed, it wouldn't have done him any good. He would have had to shoot through you to hit me. I know him very well, and I can assure you that he lacks the guts to do anything so outrageous as to kill an innocent woman."

"Unlike you?" she retorted.

"I admit I do not trouble myself with archaic and outmoded concepts of honor that tend to stand in the way of my own success and survival. I am a realist, Ms. Swift. We realists take a more pragmatic view of the world."

"You're a vicious, cowardly thug, not a realist," she shot back. "There is a difference."

"If you believe that, my dear, then you very likely still believe in fairy tales."

"Oh, I do. Otherwise how could one explain the existence of monsters such as yourself?"

Cyrus stirred slightly. "I don't think this is a real good time to argue with him, honey."

"He's right, Ms. Swift. This is not the best moment for a discussion of the very fine line between good and evil." Damien watched Cyrus with amused but watchful eyes. "As I said, I would prefer never to have seen you again, Colfax, but given the situation, there was no choice."

"It was inevitable," Cyrus said. "I was pretty sure you wouldn't have the common decency to be dead."

"And you would never have stopped looking for me."

"Nope."

Damien gave a small, resigned sigh. "I knew I would have to do something about you eventually. You and your bloody, plodding, single-mindedness. You would have found me, sooner or later."

"Yeah."

"Well, I suppose I can't complain, can I? Your talents always were limited by your charmingly quaint notions of duty and responsibility. But I must admit that what you do, you do with unwavering determination."

"Gosh, thanks."

"I don't believe you've met Ms. Grant." Damien inclined his chin in the redhead's direction. "Allow me to introduce you. Nellie, my dear little thieving bitch, this is Cyrus Chandler Colfax."

Cyrus studied the dull defeat in Nellie's aqua eyes. She looked exhausted and scared.

"Thought you were lost at sea," he said.

"Ms. Grant tried to fake her own death." Damien chuckled again. "But she wasn't quite clever enough to pull it off, were you, my dear? My people found her a couple of days ago in a rather tacky hotel room in Las Vegas."

"How did you find her?" Eugenia asked.

"It wasn't difficult." Damien smiled. "She was preparing to auction off the Hades cup, you see. She was rather careless in her choice of contacts. One of them worked for an acquaintance of mine. He came directly to me."

"I don't understand." Eugenia glanced quickly at Nellie. "What is this about an auction?"

Nellie's eyes brimmed with tears. "I was a fool."

"Yes, you were, my dear," Damien said. "But you proved useful in the end, so don't be too hard on yourself."

"What, exactly, is going on here?" Eugenia demanded.

Damien smiled. "It's a long and somewhat complicated tale, Ms. Swift. You see, I knew that Colfax was on the trail of the Hades cup. I made certain that he heard the rumors of its theft and resale on the underground market. I knew he would pay close attention."

Cyrus groaned. "You made sure I learned of the rumors because you wanted me to find the cup for you, didn't you?"

"In a sense, I've been your client for some time now." Damien looked more amused than ever. "As the victim of a rather unusual, rather private theft, I could hardly go to the police. I wanted someone on the case who would have a strong, highly motivated reason to find my missing cup."

"Me."

Damien gave him a smile that dripped with condescending approval. "Yes, you, Colfax. I knew that once you heard the cup had surfaced you would be hot on the trail in hopes that it would lead you back to me."

"Damn. I was afraid of that."

It had always been a possibility, Cyrus thought. Nevertheless, it was irritating to learn that he had been used. Still, it was not as though he'd had a lot of options. One way or another, events had come together to lead him to Damien, just as he had sensed that they would. Unfortunately, the meeting was taking place under less than ideal circumstances.

"I'm happy to say that you performed the task with your customary unflagging perseverance," Damien continued. "You managed to discover that Adam Daventry had bought my cup. But by the time you realized he was the new owner, he was dead, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," Cyrus said. "Sucker got shoved down a flight of stairs before I could get to him." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nellie flinch.

Damien gave him a pitying look. "I had followed your progress at a discreet distance. I admit I was curious about your alliance with Ms. Swift. I know she's an expert on glass, but you didn't require her expertise to locate the cup or to identify it. When I learned that Daventry had left his glass collection to the Leabrook, however, things fell into place."

"What do you mean?" Eugenia asked.

"As the representative of the Leabrook, you were given unrestricted access to Glass House. Which was exactly what Colfax needed. All he had to do was find a way to attach himself to you and he was inside." Damien paused with what was no doubt meant to be a droll, lascivious wink. "So to speak."

Eugenia stared fixedly at Cyrus. "I see."

"What confused the issue for me, Ms. Swift," Damien continued, "was your peculiar interest in Ms. Grant. I did not understand, at first, why you purchased her painting in that pathetic little island gallery."

Eugenia frowned. "Why did that surprise you?"

Cyrus glanced at her. "Don't you get it? He figured the real reason you took advantage of the chance to stay in Glass House was because you had also heard the rumors about the Hades cup."

"
What?
" Eugenia stared at Damien. "But that wasn't true. I didn't even believe the cup existed until very recently. I went to the island to find out what had happened to Nellie."

Nellie's head came up. "You went to look for me?"

"I thought you were dead," Eugenia said gently. "But I didn't buy the accident story. I believed you'd been murdered."

"And you wanted to find out who had done it. Oh, Eugenia. I never realized—" Nellie broke off on a sob.

"I beg your pardon, Ms. Swift." Damien gave Eugenia a charming smile. "I naturally assumed that it was the cup you were after. I admit it never occurred to me that you might want to investigate Ms. Grant's supposed death. After all, she was just a foolish little artist who happened to have worked for you. Why would you care what became of her?"

"I doubt if you would understand," Eugenia said.

Nellie's flame-colored hair tumbled forward as she bowed her head. "I'm so sorry, Eugenia."

"Don't cry, Nellie." Eugenia reached out to touch her.

March tightened his fingers on the gun. "Don't move, Ms. Swift."

Eugenia stilled, the hand she had been about to put on Nellie's shoulder frozen in midair. "You're a very loathsome creature, aren't you, March?"

"It depends on your point of view," Damien said.

Cyrus saw the mutinous expression in Eugenia's eyes. "Eugenia. No."

He did not inhale until she reluctantly lowered her hand.

"Best listen to him, my dear," Damien said softly. "He knows me very well."

"He's going to kill us," Nellie whispered in a broken voice.

"Now, now, now, Ms. Grant," Damien scolded. "No need to be so pessimistic. I told you that as long as everyone cooperates, there's no reason we can't all arrange to walk away from this and never see each other again. Live and let live is my motto."

"Except when someone becomes a liability the way Katy did," Cyrus said.

"Ah, yes. Little Katy." Damien shook his head with mock regret. "She was a problem. She had not only helped me arrange the theft of the Hades cup three years ago, she also knew about my plans to disappear. I had no intention of taking her with me into my new life, of course. She wasn't really my type."

"You used her," Cyrus said very softly.

"You know, I've always wondered why you felt the need to avenge the silly little slut. She betrayed you without a moment's hesitation."

"You seduced her, you son-of-a-bitch."

"It didn't take much effort, I assure you. Do you know, she told me once that she married you because you made her feel safe and secure. But then she discovered that safety and security can become extremely boring after a while."

Cyrus felt the familiar anger, but it was as old and cold as the affection he had once had for Katy. She was gone, and so was most of what he had felt for her. Only the task of avenging her remained.

"So you offered her excitement, is that it?" Cyrus asked.

"Which she mistook for true love and enduring passion." Damien's fine mouth twisted with scorn. "She began to cling. When she discovered that I planned to vanish with the cup, she became hysterical."

"You killed her," Cyrus said. "Shot her down in cold blood. Made it look as if she'd been the victim of a carjacking."

"I had no choice. She would have gone straight to you, Colfax, the way she always did when things went wrong."

"She knew too much," Cyrus said.

"She did, indeed." Damien smiled his alligator smile at Nellie. "Just as Ms. Grant does."

Nellie raised her head. She focused on Eugenia. "I tried to stall him. I did my best."

"You told him about your
Glass
series, didn't you?" Eugenia said.

Nellie shut her eyes. "I had no choice. When his goons found me, I had to tell them something. They promised to do terrible things to me if I didn't talk."

"Hush," Eugenia said. "It's all right. I understand."

"Ms. Grant concocted quite a story," Damien said. "She told me that Daventry instructed her to paint certain clues into the portrait of the Hades cup. Clues that she, herself, did not comprehend, but that an expert in glass would understand."

Cyrus frowned. "Clues?"

Nellie's lips trembled. "It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. I told him that Daventry had never told me where he hid the cup, but that he had wanted to leave a record of its location in case something ever happened to him."

Damien smiled ruefully. "It was a rather clever story. I believed her because I knew that Daventry was very anxious to leave a lasting monument to himself. It made sense to me that he would want his greatest treasure, the Hades cup, to be associated with the Daventry collection after his death. To do that, of course, he had to leave a record of its location."

"But an obvious record would have been dangerous." Cyrus looked at Nellie. "Your little story wasn't entirely a lie, was it? The only difference was that you were the one who left the clues in the painting, not Daventry."

Nellie nodded forlornly.

Cyrus turned back to Damien. "So you went looking for the four paintings."

Damien nodded. "Unfortunately, by the time my people got to the island, one of the
Glass
pictures had appeared in a gallery and had been sold. I realized that someone had already taken the paintings from Glass House and intended to sell them for cash."

"Rhonda Price?" Cyrus suggested.

"Yes." Damien's eyes hardened. "But by the time my people figured out what had happened, she was gone. They went to her boyfriend's house and found nothing. Unfortunately, they ran into you, Colfax."

Eugenia looked at Nellie. "Why did you take the Hades cup in the first place?"

"It was stupid, I know, but I couldn't resist." Nellie closed her eyes for a few seconds. "I saw Fenella Weeks push Daventry down the stairs. That night, after Deputy Peaceful and the others left, I realized that, with Daventry dead, I was the only person on the face of the earth who knew that the Hades cup was in the hidden safe in the wine cellar. I also knew where Daventry kept the combination."

"What about Fenella Weeks? Weren't you a little worried about her?" Cyrus asked. "She knew you were a witness to the murder."

"Fenella was crazy." Nellie's shoulders moved in a listless shrug. "I could have dealt with her. She wasn't the reason I faked the boat accident. I was more concerned about the cup. I knew it was dangerous."

"And since you were an obvious person of interest for anyone who came looking for the missing cup, you decided to disappear," Cyrus said.

Damien's brows rose. "Ms. Grant's biggest mistake was in believing that she could be a player in the big leagues of the private art market."

"A little goldfish in a sea full of sharks, as my Grandpappy Beau would say," Cyrus muttered.

"Precisely." Damien smiled broadly. "And I was the first shark on the scene."  Eugenia frowned at Nellie. "That night after Daventry died, you repainted the background of the Hades cup portrait. You brought the cup here to Seattle and hid it. Then you faked your own death on the way back to Frog Cove Island. But why did you leave the painting in the safe?"

Nellie caught her trembling lower lip between her front teeth. For a moment Cyrus thought she would fall apart right there on the carpet. Instead, she appeared to rally slightly.

"I knew that what I planned to do was very dangerous," she said. "If… if something happened to me, I wanted you to have the cup for the Leabrook, Eugenia."

"You expected me to find it?"

"You were my friend. You gave me that job when I needed it. You encouraged my art. You tried to warn me about Daventry."

"But how on earth was I supposed to find the hidden safe?" Eugenia demanded.

"It was only a matter of time," Nellie said. "The information about the hidden safe is in Daventry's will. But I figured that it would take months, maybe a year or two, before the lawyers actually got around to finalizing the details of such a huge estate. If, for some reason, I didn't make it back to Glass House to get the picture out of the safe, someone would open it and find
Glass IV
. When you saw it, you'd know it was my work and you'd figure out the clues."