Sharp Edges (9 page)

"I noticed."

"Whoever he is, he knows his way around, and you don't. It would be a complete waste of time to rush out into the woods to look for him. Not to mention a little stupid."

"Yeah, but it's the sort of bold move that impresses clients."

She glared. "Your clients aren't here at the moment."

"Good point. Speaking of stupid moves," he added laconically, "I should mention that a few minutes ago you didn't hesitate to pursue our visitor down here into the basement."

"That's when I thought he was you."

"Which reminds me, I want to thank you for that little display of trust."

She had the grace to blush. "Okay, so I assumed that you were up to no good. What was I supposed to think under the circumstances?"

"Beats me. Maybe that I was upstairs asleep in my room?"

"I had no reason to assume that you were innocently asleep," she said.

"Especially given the fact that you were not innocently asleep, yourself. Which brings up a very interesting question. Just what are you doing running around at this hour of the night?"

"I couldn't sleep," she muttered. She glanced at the gleaming stainless steel door on the right. "What if he got into the glass vault?"

Cyrus glanced at the code box beside the vault door. "Relax. It's still locked."

"You're right." Her eyes narrowed as she studied the unblinking green lights. "But whoever he was, he obviously knew his way around the house. This may not have been his first visit."

"I'd say that's a certainty."

"For all we know, he's been raiding the glass vault on a nightly basis since Daventry's death. When we open that door we may discover that there's not a single piece left inside. Damn, we should have checked it when we first arrived this evening."

"Take it easy. Leonard Hastings was here to keep an eye on things, remember?"

"Yes, but there's no sign of him tonight."

For some reason he felt compelled to try to soothe the rising anxiety he could hear in her voice. "We'll take a look in a few minutes."

He was not overly concerned with the contents of the glass vault. Logic and common sense told him that Daventry would not have stored an object as dangerous and as valuable as the Hades cup in a collection that was frequently shown to visitors and guests. If the cup was here at Glass House, it would be well concealed.

"We'll need to get all the house locks reprogrammed first thing tomorrow." Eugenia sounded as if she were jotting down notes. "I wonder if Leonard Hastings knows how to do it, or if we'll have to send for a computer locksmith from the mainland."

"I know this brand. I can reprogram them."

"You can?" She sounded surprised and somewhat dubious.

"You know, a lesser man might be easily crushed by your lack of respect for his professional skills."

"Something tells me you don't crush very easily." She paused, frowning. "I just had another thought. Whoever was down here tonight had to know that the house was occupied. Both of our cars are parked in the drive."

"I don't think we're dealing with a very smart burglar here."

"It's a big house. Maybe he assumed it would be safe to enter it, even knowing it was occupied. Burglars break into inhabited homes every day of the week."

"Little did he know that you'd be prowling around in the middle of the night waiting to pounce on him."

Her chin came up swiftly. "I was not prowling."

"What would you call it? You sure as hell weren't sleepwalking." He came to a halt in front of a door that stood ajar. Cold night air poured through the crack. He could see the shadows of the unlit pantry at the top of the narrow flight of stairs. "Are you sure you don't want to tell me why you were taking a midnight tour of the house?"

"There's nothing to explain. I just wasn't sleepy, that's all." She examined the door. "So this is how he entered and left."

"Looks like it."

She gave him a worried glance. "He knows the house security codes, Cyrus."

"Yeah."

"Who would have access to them?"

"Could be anyone, I guess, but there is one real obvious suspect."

She searched his face with a quizzical expression. "For heaven's sake, who?"

"Leonard Hastings."

She blinked a couple of times. "Good thinking. Of course, he would know the codes. You're right, he's definitely a suspect."

"I can't tell you how much your good opinion means to me."

"Very funny. You know, the fact that he wasn't here to let us into the house is very strange. Downright suspicious, in fact. I wonder if he planned to steal the Daventry glass before we arrived and didn't quite finish the job."

"Let's not leap to any more conclusions. Hang on while I take a look around."

He went up the steps and pulled the pantry door fully open. Another door, the one that opened onto the veranda, was flung wide. He contemplated the darkness and the dense forest that loomed just beyond the edge of the clearing. Rain dripped steadily from the eaves.

"Be careful," Eugenia called as she climbed the basement stairs behind him.

"You're a fine one to talk. But don't worry, I'm not going out there." He closed the door on a gust of wet air and relocked it. "No point in it. The rain will have wiped out any footprints. Our man is long gone, and like you said, he knows his way around and I don't."

"I suppose we ought to report this to that Deputy Peaceful person you mentioned." She frowned. "But I'm not sure how much good it will do."

"I think it's safe to say it won't do any good at all. This kind of crime rarely gets solved, especially if nothing was taken."

"I'll go get the security code for the glass vault. I want to see if there's any sign that the intruder got into the Daventry collection." She went past him into the pantry. "I'll be right back."

Cyrus listened to her retreating footsteps. Interesting that she did not have the security code with her even though she was up, dressed, and busily sneaking around in the middle of the night, he thought. It implied that whatever her goal had been, she had evidently not planned to pay a midnight visit to the glass vault.

He wondered where she had been going when she'd spotted the intruder.

And just to complicate things, he wished that she had been headed toward his bedroom.

He sighed as he walked back along the basement hall toward the glass vault. Obviously his prolonged stretch of celibacy was beginning to impact his thinking processes. He knew that he was capable of controlling himself and the situation, but that knowledge did nothing to ease the tightness in his lower body.

She was not his type, he reminded himself. He did not go in for lady cat burglars. Furthermore, there was far too much riding on the outcome of this project to screw it up by screwing around with a woman he could not trust. He had to keep his priorities straight. The Hades cup came first.

A moment later she appeared at the top of the basement stairs. She looked flushed and breathless from her hasty trip to and from the second floor.

"I've got the code." She hurried down into the basement. "I swear, I don't know what I'm going to do if we open that door and discover that all of the Daventry glass is missing. What a catastrophe that would be. Tabitha would never get over it."

Cyrus could not resist. "You could always hire a trained professional investigator to find it for you."

She gave him a speaking glance as she halted in front of the steel vault door. "I suppose the next thing you're going to tell me is that you're available to take on the job?"

"I might be able to make room in my schedule. Assuming that we could agree on a fee, of course."

"Don't hold your breath." She unfolded a piece of paper and studied the numbers written on it. Then she raised her eyes to the security lock. "Okay, here goes."

Cyrus glanced down the intersecting passage and saw a winking red light. "Hold it."

She paused, one finger hovering over the code box. "What's wrong?"

"This door is still locked, but the one at the end of that hall is not."

She moved away from the steel door and walked to the intersection. "I didn't notice that door earlier."

"Neither did I." Cyrus led the way to the door at the end of the hall.

It was stainless steel, just like the door of the glass vault. It was tightly closed, but the code box indicated that it was unlocked.

"The lawyer gave Tabitha a code for one room down here, not two," Eugenia said. "Maybe that lock takes the same code as the glass vault."

"I doubt it."

"But why would there be two security-coded doors?" Frowning, she stepped briskly around him and hurried down the passage.

She stopped in front of the steel door and tugged on the handle. The door opened slowly. Cyrus came up behind her as she looked through the widening crack.

"It's a wine cellar," she announced. "I should have guessed. Daventry considered himself a connoisseur of wines as well as art. There's probably a fortune in old vintages down here." She wrinkled her nose. "What on earth is that awful smell?"

The stench that spilled from the opening was all the warning Cyrus needed. "Oh, shit. Wait, don't—"

He clamped a hand around her shoulder to pull her back, but he was too late. Eugenia had already found the light switch on the inside wall.

She stiffened beneath his hand, her face twisted with shock as she stared into the wine cellar. "
Oh, my God
."

Cyrus jerked her out of the doorway and stepped into the opening. The wine cellar was mirrored like all the other rooms in Glass House. Light from the overhead fluorescent tube gleamed dully on hundreds of dusty wine bottles.

It also shone coldly on the body that lay crumpled facedown on the floor.

Cyrus took a handkerchief out of his back pocket. He crouched down beside the dead man and carefully tugged the wallet out of a worn back pocket.

He flipped it open and studied the driver's license inside. "We've found Leonard Hastings."

Eugenia wrapped her hands around the hot mug of tea that Cyrus had placed in front of her. "I can't believe it." She realized she had said that several times in the past ten minutes. "I just can't believe it. I wonder how long he's been there?"

"A while. Three or four days, at least." Cyrus plucked the tea bag out of his mug and tossed it into the clear acrylic trash container. He walked across the kitchen and sat down at the glass table opposite Eugenia.

He had put on a shirt. This one had brilliant orange and pink birds of paradise all over it. Eugenia told herself she was glad he had covered himself, but she knew she was not going to be able to forget the sight of his bare chest anytime soon.

"When I talked to him on the phone a few minutes ago, Peaceful Jones said it was probably a heart attack."

Eugenia frowned. "How does he know that?"

"He said his wife is the local doctor. She's been treating Hastings for a bad heart for years. Apparently Hastings took a lot of medication. According to his license, he was seventy-three."

Eugenia took a swallow of tea. Her eyes met his over the rim of the mug. "Know what I thought when I first saw him lying there?"

"Yeah." Cyrus leaned back in his chair. "That he'd been murdered. Don't feel bad, that was my first thought, too."

She shuddered. "Did Jones say how long it would take him to get out here?"

"About forty minutes. He's bringing his wife, the doctor, with him. He said there's one first aid car on the island. They'll use it to take Hastings back to the clinic."

"Then what?"

Cyrus shrugged. "He said there's no funeral home on the island. Usual procedure is to call an air ambulance service to transport the body to the mainland. He said his wife handles that end of things."

"I feel terrible." Eugenia gulped tea. "Here I was thinking what a lousy caretaker Leonard Hastings was."

Cyrus studied her with an enigmatic expression. "We've got about half an hour before Deputy Peaceful and the first aid car arrive. I think we'd better go over our story."

She stared at him, bewildered. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's been an eventful evening. We've got a dead body down in the basement, and we chased a prowler out of the house tonight. That kind of stuff tends to be a little stressful even if you're used to it. And I don't think you are."

Eugenia bristled. "If you think I'm going to fall apart when Deputy Peaceful gets here and blow your stupid cover story, relax. I can handle it."

"I'm not so sure about that. I think you're playing out of your league, Ms. Swift."

A trickle of panic whispered through her. How much did he know, she wondered. How much had he guessed? Why did he care? She made herself take several deep breaths.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked as calmly as possible.

He put down his mug, sat forward, and folded his arms on the table. His green eyes were coldly intent, deadly serious. "I've had enough of the fun and games. Let's put our cards on the table. I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours."

She narrowed her eyes. "So you admit you've got a secret agenda here?"

"Yeah. And I know damn well you've got one, too. Tell me why you're really here on Frog Cove Island. We may be able to work together."

"What makes you think I'm here for anything other than a working vacation?"

His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed cold. "As Grandpappy Beau used to say, just because a man moves a little slow and talks a little slow, it doesn't mean that he thinks a little slow. You're here because of the Hades cup, aren't you?"

Her jaw dropped. "The Hades cup?"

"Skip the innocent act. We don't have time."

She swallowed. Maybe she had a bigger problem on her hands than she had realized, she thought.

"Are you speaking of
the
Hades cup?" she asked carefully.

"There's only one that I know of."

"As in the fourth-century
A.D.
cage cup that's supposed to have been brought back to England from Italy by the Earl of Radstone in the early nineteenth century?"

Cyrus raised his brows. "I see you're familiar with it."