Trust No One (9 page)

“I’m listening.”

“The vice president who married Julius’s ex is Edward Hastings. He’s one of the Seattle-real-estate-empire Hastingses.
Fourth-generation land developers. His family’s company owns a huge chunk of downtown Seattle real estate, including a few office towers.”

Grace considered the information briefly and then raised one shoulder in a dismissive little shrug.

“Why does that matter to me?” she asked.

“Shortly after Edward Hastings left Arkwright Ventures he not only married Julius’s ex, he also became the president and CEO of the Hastings family empire.”

“Still waiting for the other shoe to drop, Irene.”

“There are rumors that under Edward Hastings’s control the firm has stumbled a few times in the past eighteen months. Major deals have slipped away to competitors.”

Grace watched Irene over the rim of the coffee mug. “What does that have to do with Julius?”

“I’m a small-business person who swims in a very small pond here in Cloud Lake. I admit that I don’t know a lot about the shark pool in which Julius does his hunting. But I try to keep up with the Pacific Northwest business news, and because of Dev’s friendship with Julius, I sometimes hear bits and pieces of gossip.”

“What have you heard that is worrying you?” Grace asked.

Irene leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. “Hastings is in real trouble. Some people are predicting that under Edward Hastings’s leadership we will see the downfall of a family-held company that has been around for nearly a century. The business world is like a small town—once a rumor starts, it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Grace reflected briefly. “What does this have to do with Julius?”

“The gossip is that the downward slide of the Hastings family empire has been caused by one man—Julius Arkwright.”

“They think he’s out for revenge? That he’s somehow sabotaging Hastings?”

“Yes.”

Grace gave that some thought. “And this has been going on for how long?”

“Nearly two years. The timing is significant.”

“Because it coincides with the timing of Julius’s divorce?”

“People are saying that Julius intends to destroy Hastings. Dev tells me that when Julius sets his sights on a goal, he doesn’t quit. Like a heat-seeking missile, he just keeps going until he reaches his target.”

“I can’t believe you set me up on a blind date with a man you feel compelled to describe in military terms.”

“That’s Dev’s description,” Irene said. “I just wanted you to know about the rumors before you got any more involved with Julius. If it’s true that he’s plotting revenge, there may be collateral damage.”

“You’re the one who set up the blind date. Now you’re trying to warn me about Julius?”

“I really do think that you and Julius would be good together. But I will admit that Dev and I were also hoping that if you two hit it off, Julius might be . . . distracted from whatever it is he’s doing to Hastings.”

“Stop trying to make me feel sorry for Julius Arkwright.”

Irene blinked. “That is not exactly what I’m trying to accomplish here.”

“Yes, it is. You’re trying to make me think that he’s depressed and obsessed with revenge and in need of fixing. But as far as I can tell, Julius is more than capable of taking care of himself. I just told you, I have other priorities at the moment. I’m trying to get a life, remember?”

“Right. A life.” Irene sat back in her chair. “And you’ve hired Julius Arkwright to help you come up with a plan to get said life.”

“That’s it,” Grace said smoothly. “Just a business transaction. You can move along. Nothing to see here.”

“Don’t give me that. What happened when Julius took you home last night?”

Grace pursed her lips. “Among other things, he asked me flat-out if I murdered Witherspoon.”

“Oh, jeez,” Irene groaned. “Not exactly a great conversation-starter.”

“Nope. But it sure was a fine way to end one, which is what happened. Sort of. I kicked him out of the house. On his way out the door he assured me that he believed me.”

“But you kicked him out, anyway.”

“Of course.” Grace swallowed some coffee and lowered the mug. “But then he called me.”

“Did he, now?” Irene said very softly.

“I ended up telling him about the weird emails and the next thing I knew, he was ordering me to tell Devlin about the emails, which is why I went to Devlin’s office today, et cetera, et cetera. And there you have it. A complete portrait of a blind date gone bad but possibly a good sign for the future of my career planning.”

Irene tapped the pen on the desk again, very thoughtful now. “Is there any way that call last night could be described as phone sex?”

“Absolutely not.”

Talking to Julius on the phone had been a strangely intimate experience, Grace thought. But she refused to describe it as phone sex. Not that she’d ever had phone sex. It was simply that, after getting hit with the latest email from the stalker, she had felt a need to confide in someone. It just so happened that Julius had been the one to call her at that moment. Serendipity. Or coincidence. Or chaos theory. Something like that probably explained everything.

“I’m not sure what to say.” Irene shook her head. “Like Dev, Julius is a little deep in places.”

“Now there’s a startling revelation.”

Irene ignored her. “I guess it comes down to the fact that I think
you can trust him. And, like I said, he’s the kind of man who will do favors for friends. He took a chance on me when no one else would.”

“Any investment is a risk but you and Cloud Lake Kitchenware are as close as it gets to a sure thing.”

“Cloud Lake Kitchenware is working,” Irene said. Pride and satisfaction brightened her expression. “It’s actually going to turn a nice profit this year. But it will never make the kind of money that Julius is accustomed to raking in with his big investments. This particular project is petty cash for him.”

“As it happens, Julius told me that he’s got enough money.”

Surprise lit Irene’s eyes. Then she smiled. “Did he say that?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually say that before.”

“I told you, what Julius Arkwright is looking for these days is a way to escape boredom.”

“Considering the fact that you met Julius less than twenty-four hours ago, you sure seem to know a lot about him.”

“He’s hard to read but not impossible.” Grace drank the rest of her coffee and set the mug down. “I know you meant well, but promise me you won’t set me up with any more blind dates, at least not until I get my life together.” She rose to her feet. “I’d better be on my way. I have to do some grocery shopping and then I am scheduled to meet my consultant for a luncheon meeting. We are supposed to start building my business plan.”

“What will you do if you don’t come up with a strategy that leads you to your personal calling?”

“Fire my consultant.”

T
he rain had stopped by the time Grace finished her shopping and got behind the wheel to drive back to the lake house. The high cloud cover remained, however, infusing the atmosphere with the peculiar glary gray light that made sunglasses a necessity, even in winter.

She did not recognize the expensive-looking silver sedan parked in front of the lake house but she knew the blonde in the front seat all too well. Nyla Witherspoon.

First a visit with the local chief of police and now Nyla had decided to pay a call on her. The day was not improving markedly, Grace decided. She tried to come up with an affirmation that applied to the situation. Nothing sprang to mind.

She brought her car to a halt and mentally braced herself for the encounter. Nyla erupted from the front seat of the sedan.

She was a thin, sharp-faced woman who, if she smiled more, would have been quite attractive in a chic, elfin way. But when she was not
smiling—which was most of the time as far as Grace could tell—she looked like all she needed was a broomstick and a pointed hat to complete her ensemble. The bitterness and anger that simmered in her eyes seemed to bubble up from someplace deep inside.

She stalked over to the compact, arriving just as Grace got the door open.

“Did you think you could hide here in Cloud Lake?” Nyla’s sunglasses made it impossible to read her eyes but her voice was tight with rage. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

“I didn’t know you were looking for me,” Grace said. She took off her own shades. “You could have called. What do you want, Nyla?”

“You know why I’m here. I want my father’s money—the money that should have come to me.”

“I’ve told you before, I don’t have it.”

“You’re lying. You embezzled it from my father’s corporation. You’ve probably got it hidden in some offshore account.”

Grace closed her eyes for a couple of seconds and reminded herself that Nyla had some serious issues.

“I don’t know anything about the missing money,” she said. She tried to pitch her voice to a soothing level. “By the way, I told the police about those emails you’ve been sending to me from your father’s account. It amounts to stalking, you know.”

“What are you talking about? What emails?”

“Nyla, if you’re the one who has been emailing me, it has got to stop. The cops are trying to catch your father’s killer. They need your help. Focusing your rage on me won’t do any good.”

Nyla’s sharp features tightened. “A lot of people, including the police, think that you might be the one who murdered my father.”

Grace spread her hands. “Why would I kill my employer and cut off the cash flow? Think about it, Nyla. Sprague was the one who
brought in the money, not me. It was his name on the blog and on the cookbook. I was just his assistant. Trust me, with your father gone, the cash flow will dry up fast.”

“You shot him because he found out that you were stealing his money. He probably confronted you, maybe threatened to report you to the police. You had to get rid of him.”

“That simply is not true,” Grace said. “I was home the night your father was murdered.”

“Your so-called alibi won’t hold water. Yes, I know they say the security video shows your car parked in the apartment garage that night but that doesn’t mean you didn’t leave the building. You could have slipped out and taken a cab to my father’s house on Queen Anne.”

“You can’t prove that. No one can prove it, because it never happened.”

“Your prints were at the scene.” But Nyla sounded less certain now.

“My prints were at the scene because I’m the one who found the body,” Grace said, struggling to hold on to her patience. “Get real, Nyla. That’s not proof.”

“Someone must have seen you leave your apartment that night,” Nyla wailed.

“I’m not lying,” Grace said, trying to de-escalate the situation. “When the cops find your father’s killer, I’m sure they’ll find the money, too.”

But Nyla was no longer looking at her. She was staring past Grace’s shoulder. Uncertainty flashed across her face. She switched her attention back to Grace.

“I’m willing to negotiate,” Nyla said quickly. “I’ll give you a percentage. We can call it a finder’s fee or a commission. I swear you won’t walk away empty-handed. Return the money and I won’t press embezzlement charges. Think about it. I’ll give you forty-eight hours.”

Without waiting for a response, she swung around and went swiftly toward her car.

Curious to see who or what had distracted Nyla and inspired her to quit the scene, Grace turned and saw Julius coming around the side of the house. She realized he had used the footpath to walk from his place to hers.

He did not appear to be in a rush but he was covering a lot of ground in an efficient manner. He was dressed in jeans, a khaki shirt, low boots and a black leather bomber jacket. A pair of wraparound sunglasses glinted ominously in the grayish light. The overall effect was rather menacing. Grace understood why Nyla had decided to depart in a hurry.

Julius reached Grace’s side seconds before Nyla sped past, tires spitting out gravel. He seized Grace’s arm and hauled her out of the way of the small bits of flying rock.

“Was that, by any chance, Witherspoon’s daughter?” Julius asked.

“Good guess. Nyla Witherspoon.” Grace tried to gently extricate her arm from Julius’s hand. He seemed to have forgotten that he was holding on to her. “She’s convinced I stole her father’s money and murdered him. But the interesting thing is that she offered me a deal.”

Julius finally noticed that she was attempting to wriggle free of his fingers. He released her. “What kind of deal?”

Grace pondered her answer while she opened the rear door of the compact and took out a sack of groceries. “She wants the money so badly she offered to give me a finder’s fee if I return it. No questions asked. She promised she wouldn’t press embezzlement charges.”

Julius took the groceries from her, holding the heavy sack easily in one arm.

“Did she say anything else?” he asked.

“She seems to think that my alibi for the night of Sprague’s murder is weak. She reminded me that my prints are at the scene of the crime.”

“But all she cares about is getting her hands on the money?”

“It’s all she has left of her father,” Grace explained. “I think she’s grieving the loss of a relationship she never had. She thinks the money will somehow compensate.”

“Do you know the source of her issues?”

“Oh, yes. All of us who worked in the office were aware that Nyla blamed her father for her mother’s suicide years ago.”

Grace opened the front door. Julius followed her inside and into the kitchen.

“It feels chilly in here, doesn’t it?” Grace said.

She went to the thermostat on the wall and checked the setting. The controls were set to the usual daytime temperature.

“This is not good,” she said. “Looks like there may be a problem with the heating system. I’ll give the repair company a call after lunch. Luckily I’ve got the fireplace for backup.”

“Try rebooting the system first,” Julius said.

“Oh, yeah, like I know how to reboot an HVAC system.”

“I’ll take a look at the controls after lunch.”

She glanced at him. “Thanks.”

“No guarantees.”

He set the groceries on the kitchen table and took off his sunglasses. Dropping the glasses into the pocket of his jacket, he watched Grace remove the free-range eggs and a bag of organically grown red peppers from the sack. She set them on the counter next to the refrigerator and returned to the table.

“Back to Nyla Witherspoon,” he said. “Your theory is that she is more interested in the money now than in finding her father’s killer?”

“I think the money is important to her for emotional as well as financial reasons. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s also being pressured to get her hands on her inheritance.”

“What kind of pressure?” Julius’s eyes sharpened. “Is she in debt?”

“Not that I know of,” Grace said. She reached into the sack and took out the almonds, sunflower seeds and hazelnuts she planned to use for a batch of homemade granola. “Got a hunch her fiancé may be pushing her to find the money.”

“Dev mentioned a fiancé.”

“His name is Burke Marrick. Sprague did not approve of him. Kristy, Millicent and I had our doubts about him, too. Marrick showed up in Nyla’s life a few months ago and swept her off her feet. It was a whirlwind courtship. They got engaged within weeks. She thinks he’s Mr. Perfect.”

Julius got a knowing look in his eyes. “But you and your friends think that Marrick wants to marry Nyla for the traditional reason—her money.”

Grace opened a cupboard and stored the nuts and seeds on a shelf. “You’re not much of a romantic, are you?”

“I’m a realist.”

“Whatever.” Grace removed the Brussels sprouts from the sack and set them on the counter next to the other items she was going to store in the refrigerator. She paused for a moment and met Julius’s eyes. “Here’s what I think—Nyla is afraid that if she loses the money, she’ll lose Mr. Perfect, too. That possibility, coming on the heels of her father’s murder, it’s just too much for her. She’s falling apart—consumed with anger, resentment and a deep sense of loss. Internally she’s probably a cauldron of seething emotion so she’s lashing out.”

“People who are lashing out are dangerous, Grace.”

“I know.”

Julius went silent for a moment. She studied him covertly while she removed the last items from the grocery sack. She could almost see the computer in his head doing its thing, processing a lot of ones and zeroes. Arkwright the Alchemist was calculating; probably working on a strategy. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing. True, she had invited
him into her life with the breakfast picnic bribe but she knew that she had to tread cautiously. Men like Julius tended to take charge in a hurry. It was their nature.

Out of nowhere, one of the Witherspoon affirmations brightened with the intensity of a halogen bulb in her mind.
Embrace the unknown. It is the only certainty.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“About the missing Witherspoon money.” Julius looked out the window at the gray surface of the lake as if it were a divining mirror that reflected answers. “It seems to be one of the keys to whatever is going on here. You’re the expert on pithy sayings. I’ll bet you know the one that applies in this instance.”

“Follow the money?”

“That’s one affirmation I do believe in,” he said. He met her eyes. “It never lets me down.”

“I’m sure the cops believe in it, too,” Grace said. “They probably watch television, just like the rest of us.”

“They may be looking into the money angle but it won’t hurt to have someone from our side take a look as well.”

She stilled. “Someone from our side?”

His brows rose. His eyes glittered with dark amusement. “If there’s one thing Arkwright Ventures can provide here, it’s financial expertise. There are people on my staff who are very, very good at following the money.”

“I see,” she said. She was not certain where to go with that.

“Now, about lunch and your business plan,” he said.

“Whoa.” Grace held up a hand, palm out. “Stop. Just a second, here. I need to think about your offer.”

Julius somehow managed to look bewildered and possibly a bit hurt. “You don’t want me to look into the money angle?”

“It’s not that.” She paused, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for her objections. The reality was that her impulsive reaction had been emotional, not logical.

“What is the problem?” Julius asked.

It was a reasonable question.

“I know you mean well and I appreciate your good intentions,” she said carefully. “Really I do.”

“This isn’t a matter of good intentions. It’s a simple, logical approach to a problem.” He looked around the kitchen. “What were you planning for lunch?”

“Forget lunch,” she said, putting a little steel into the words.

If he had appeared bewildered and a little hurt a moment ago, he was downright crushed now.

“I thought there would be lunch,” he said.

“Pay attention, Arkwright. This isn’t a corporation I’m running here and no one elected you CEO. This is my life, my future. If you’re going to do stuff that impacts one or both of those things, you need to discuss it with me first. You do not just waltz into my house and announce that you’re going to appoint someone I’ve never even met to examine the finances of a man some people think I may have murdered. It may be a good idea or it may not. The point is, I need to be involved in the conversation. Is that clear?”

There was a charged silence in the kitchen while Julius considered her declaration of independence. Then he evidently came to a conclusion.

“Okay,” he said.

She eyed him with deep suspicion. “Okay? That’s it? Just okay?”

Julius’s expression was one of polite bewilderment. “Should there be more?”

“No, I guess not.”

“So,” Julius said. “What do you think about having one of the Arkwright financial wizards try to trace the embezzled Witherspoon money?”

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “There are privacy issues, for heaven’s sake. Not to mention legal issues.”

“Not a problem,” Julius said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It won’t be the first time that Arkwright Ventures has offered its professional expertise to the police for the purposes of some forensic accounting work. I’ll talk to Dev. He’ll coordinate with his contacts at the Seattle PD. He’s worked with them before on cases that spilled over the city limits.”

“I see.” She thought about that for a moment. “Well, okay, then.”

“Excellent. I’ll get right on it after lunch.” Julius cleared his throat. “I would remind you that I did not waltz into your kitchen. I just walked in. Carrying the groceries for you.”

“Whatever.” She pushed herself away from the counter. “All right, we have an understanding.
New day, new opportunities to shape the future.
”

“Is that one of the Witherspoon affirmations?”

“Yes, it is, as a matter of fact. It accompanied the recipe for granola in the Witherspoon Way cookbook.” She paused, trying to decide what to do next. Julius was standing in the middle of her kitchen and showing no signs of going anywhere. She needed to do something with him. “Where were we?”