The Throwbacks (23 page)

“Don’t you worry. You’re not a suspect. I’ll let the CSI people know you touched the body and they might possibly find a trace from you. But for future reference, the Pixie here is right—you shouldn’t go touching dead bodies.” He sent them on their way.

She gave him a grateful nod, followed closely by a shudder at the thought of “next time.”

“Don’t leave town—we may have more questions for you,” he said with a raise of his brow and a mischievous smile as she and Pixie walked toward her car.

“What do you mean don’t leave town?” Pixie’s eyes popped with alarm.

“Don’t panic, Pixie—I’m your alibi. Besides, the chief was just pulling your leg. He knows we’re not going anywhere. I’m practically an assistant deputy on the case. Isn’t that right, Chief?” Grace raised her chin in his direction. He was grinning now.

“Is that what your boyfriend Sherlock told you?” He shook his head and waved them away.

Grace frowned as she got in the car. She wasn’t very reassured about her role in this investigation, but she’d clear all that up with David. After all, she was one of the few people who knew the truth about Nick not being dead. And she’d found the smuggled relics in the vase, and now she and Pixie had found Lester’s dead body. She couldn’t possibly get any more involved in the case than that. Although she wondered if that was a good thing or a dangerous thing. One more thing to drive her mad until David came home. She couldn’t wait to see him.

But she would have to wait, she realized, as she checked her watch.

“I have to be at the warehouse in twenty minutes,” she told Pixie and rushed to get in the car.

“Hey, don’t forget you have to get me back to the office.” Pixie hastily hopped into the passenger side.

“No problem,” Grace said. It was an automatic response because she’d always refused to consider anything too big a problem. No matter what. Ever.

“I hope David’s inquisition is going well. He didn’t say anything about it. I forgot all about asking in my rush to tell him about poor dead Lester.” Grace bit her lip in remorse. Her hand itched to reach for the phone and call David again. But she had to get to the warehouse and finalize the hardware choices for the plumbers to start work on his bathrooms. She really should have told him about that too. Poor David’s bathrooms would be under construction for a week, and he’d need to make plans to stay somewhere else for the duration.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell David about the bathroom construction that’s scheduled to start tomorrow,” she admitted to Pixie as they pulled up to the curb right in front of their building. Pixie’s head snapped around and her mouth was open for a full five seconds before she uttered a word.

“You’re kidding. What were you thinking? Oh, I can’t wait for this—too bad I won’t be there to see the look on his face when he gets in from London to find he hasn’t got a loo.” Her hand poised on the door latch, Pixie leaned forward, ready to jump from the car. But the look of amusement on her face turned to concern and she stopped. Grace felt compelled to explain.

“I know, I know. I don’t know why I didn’t say a thing about it. It’s all the excitement of working on the murder case. I guess it must have distracted me,” Grace said. It was a lame excuse, she knew.

“No. That’s not it. You wanted to put David in a position where he’d have nowhere to go except to stay with you. That’s what you’re doing,” Pixie said with only a small amount of accusation and mostly an amused shake of her head.

“I could dream, but the truth is David has a million other places he could go—like Mabel’s or the chief’s. He wouldn’t be stuck at all.” She realized the acknowledgement bothered her. “You’re right, but I can do better. I’ll win David over because we’re right for each other. I don’t need to force him to stay at my apartment with me—although it would be a heavenly experience. All I need is time with him. Working with him and laughing with him.”

“You’ll have that. Speaking of Mabel—I wonder what Oscar is up to? Never mind. I have no business wondering that. I have to go,” Pixie said. She gave Grace a pat on the arm as the car came to a stop at their building. Then she flew out the door as if she really were a pixie.

David and his barrister, Roland, left the building through the front door but had to hurry as if they were butchers being chased by a pack of wild dogs. The mob of press had found them. David realized their mistake in not taking a rear exit from the Empress State Building. The commissioner thought that holding the proceedings at the administrative offices instead of at Ten Broadway where New Scotland Yard was located might allow them to avoid media attention, but no.

“Damn. I’ll handle the press until we catch a cab and get you to the hotel,” Roland said under his breath.

“How about if we take a walk to the Inspectors’ Pub down the street? Too late to duck the publicity.” David didn’t mean to rub it in, but Roland’s dramatic behavior at the inquisition had guaranteed they’d get every reporter on them the minute they walked out the door. It was big news that he’d blown up at the magistrates on the committee for browbeating his client. David chuckled at the memory.

“I know. I can’t say how sorry I am,” Roland apologized for the fiftieth time in twenty minutes.

“We may as well meet them head on.” David gave his friend a slap on his back for fortification. They walked down the steps, and the onslaught of questions began. David waved and smiled. Not all the questions were meant to skewer him, after all. He and Roland got to the bottom step and waved the cabbie away. Reporters and photographers followed, chattering more loudly in their excitement.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, if you all quiet down, I’ll make a statement now.” David turned to them on the sidewalk. There was quite a crowd gathered at this point, including curious bystanders as well as media and a news camera. David spied the CNN logo and maintained his affable smile in spite of the realization that the world was watching him. The Mayor of Boston and the city council may not be pleased, and he was already on precarious ground. That didn’t bother him. He’d solve his murder and smuggling case, and then none of them would mind so much about his influential in-laws trying to cast him as a rogue whose carelessness led to his wife’s murder.

No, what bothered him was that Grace might be watching—and then surely worrying, bless her beautiful heart. Bless her beautiful everything from head to toe, inside and out, he thought before dragging himself back to focus on the crowd at hand. It was time to fashion an image of himself for the world to see. He decided to play the role of a legendary Scotland Yard investigator who, after rising to the exalted rank of Chief Superintendent of the Flying Squad, had gone slightly rogue, but for good cause—to avenge his wife’s murder. He would be a consummate professional, yet with a rakish air. Then he’d disappear across the pond until the furor died down.

He asked the mob of work-a-day journalists, reminding himself that they were doing their jobs and how he often had relied on them in the past to do just that, “What is the burning question that you must get the answer to, and if you get a satisfactory answer, you’ll leave me alone for the duration of my short visit to London?” He recognized more than one face in the crowd. The most familiar face, Robby, decided to speak up first and play spokesperson.

“Are you guilty of cold-blooded murder?”

D
AVID’S gut reaction was to laugh at the play for melodrama, but instead he answered in his most commanding, unquestionable voice.

“No.”

“Did you hunt down the infamous Bennett “The Rattler” Pingsley for the sole purpose of avenging your wife’s murder? And if so, how did you know he was actually guilty of her murder?” Robby continued with a more reasonable line of questioning.

The kind of questions that David could work with.

“Yes, I hunted him down to avenge my wife’s death. Fortunately for me, it also happened to be my job as a Scotland Yard professional to investigate crimes such as murder,” he said with not one speck of anything less than one-hundred-percent seriousness. He felt the corners of his mouth draw down in his most dire expression. His heartbeat picked up as he gathered himself to answer the second question, remembering the moment. “I knew Pingsley murdered my wife because he told me he did. With great relish, he shared with me every detail of his deed so there could be no doubt,” he said in a low and menacing voice, the kind used to tell the climax in a hair-raising story.

He was greeted with an abrupt silence. There was a complete lack of raucous follow-up questioning from the crowd. None of them moved even their pens. The red light of he CNN camera stayed steady in the distance, waiting.

“But I didn’t kill him to avenge my wife. I killed him because he left me no choice. I would have gladly dragged him in for trial to watch him slowly come to terms with the end of his life as he knew it.” He felt his barrister put his hand on his shoulder. There were a few murmured questions, and some notes and head nodding, but the questioning was over. All in all, he’d much rather suffer the questioning of the press than the Scotland Yard tribunal, if there’d ever been a choice. He and Roland turned to walk the remaining short distance along the cobblestones to the pub of choice for all the junior Sherlocks in London—and those visiting from out of town. He reminded himself as he pushed through the door to the dark interior that he was only visiting now.

His cell phone rang the minute he and Roland took a couple of seats at the bar. The others had started gathering around, and one familiar face ordered him a Scotch. The bartender put it in front of him as he slipped the phone from his pocket, knowing it would be Dan.

“Is it your chief back in Boston?” Roland asked.

“The only question is whether or not he’s seen CNN yet or only heard about it from the mayor.” David put the phone to his ear. He was in a mood to multi-task, so while he said hello, he picked up his shot of Scotch and downed it while he listened to his oldest friend.

“How bad is it? I heard about the blow-up at the hearing—Scotland Yard is all over the news. The mayor is beside himself—so they say. I’ve been ignoring him.” Tension was clear in Dan’s voice.

“Relax and have a drink with me,” David said.

“Where are you?” The background noise must have just reached Dan’s overly anxious consciousness. “Are you at a bar?”

“A pub to be exact. The official pub for all Sherlock Holmes wannabees.” He motioned to the bartender to fill his glass again. Roland gave him a shake of the head and joined him in another drink while he eavesdropped.

“Good for you. I think I will join you as soon as I get home, but it’s a little earlier in the day here. So tell me, are they going to approve the exchange program after all the furor has died down?”

“If I were a betting man, and I am as you well know, I would say yes. This is all to show how thoroughly fair and evenhanded and above-board the Yard is with their own—it’s all to maintain their impeccable reputation.” He watched the bartender put another drink down in front of him and give him a wink. Roland raised his glass and David obliged, drinking the second down. As always the second one went down more smoothly until he felt as calm and cool as he sounded. But it could have been the fact that he was among friends.

“Besides, public sentiment is clearly on my side. I made sure of that with my latest impromptu press conference. How’s the real murder investigation going—to change to a more pertinent subject. I’ll be back home in Boston by morning.”

“Glad to hear it.” Dan paused and sighed. “Your Grace is making me nervous. She’s too involved and I can’t seem to extricate her from the case.” He sounded half disgruntled and half concerned.