When the cab stopped, Nigh was frowning. None of it made sense. They got out in front of a very modern building, all glass framed in steel, as cold as steel could be.
“Charming,” Nigh said, but Jace didn’t answer her. His face was set in a rigid mask that she couldn’t read.
A man wearing a loose suit—to hide his gun? Nigh wondered—met them in the lobby and took them up in an elevator that had only two buttons on the panel: lobby and penthouse.
They said nothing as they rode up. The apartment was exactly as Nigh would have imagined it: all white marble with a few touches of color obviously put there by some overpriced designer who didn’t care about the people living there, just that the place would photograph well.
They passed two more unsmiling men before entering a small, round room that seemed to jut out over London. A table was set for tea. The men left the room and for a moment Nigh and Jace stood in there alone.
“Pretty dishes,” Nigh whispered, but Jace didn’t speak. His eyes were on the door on the other side of the room. Within a minute, it opened and in walked a man who was only forty, but he looked fifty. His face was haggard, as though everything he’d ever done in his life was etched there. There were huge bags under his eyes. His clothes were as Carol had described them: shiny. They were expensive and made for his heavy-set body, but there was something about them that looked cheap. The man maketh the clothes, Nigh thought.
Graciously, he motioned to the chairs and told them to sit down. His voice was gruff but polite.
“Shall I pour?” Nigh asked. Jace had sat down, but his spine was rigid.
“So you’re the bloke Stacy was plannin’ to marry,” Tony Vine said, looking Jace up and down. “And now you want to talk about her.”
“I want to hear what you have to say,” Jace said, and there was so much anger and hostility in his voice that Nigh wanted to kick him under the table.
“Tea, Mr. Vine?” she asked loudly.
“Tony, please,” he said, smiling as he took the tea, and for a moment she could see the charm that this man had once exuded. He wasn’t handsome, but there was something interesting about him. But then, power was an aphrodisiac, wasn’t it?
“All right,” Tony said, “I’ll tell you about that night. I owe that to Stacy. But I’ll tell you right away that it wasn’t my fault that she killed herself. I had nothing to do with it.” He glanced at Jace’s expressionless face, then back at Nigh. “The last time I saw her, it was the worst time in my life.”
She smiled at him and handed him a plateful of little sandwiches.
Tony looked at Jace. “I know you were engaged to her and you look like the kind of man she should’ve married, but I can tell you now that I don’t have time to sugarcoat the story for you. Can you handle that?”
“I can handle anything you can dish out,” Jace said, his eyes flashing.
“How about a cake, Tony?” Nigh said to cover Jace’s open hostility.
“You’re a real lady, aren’t you?”
“Heavens no,” Nigh said. “I’m a reporter.”
That made Tony laugh so hard he nearly choked. “I like you,” he said. “Would you like to go out with me sometime?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m taken.” She didn’t say by whom, but he glanced at Jace, then away again.
“Okay, that’s enough chitchat. Let’s get on with it. I met Stacy Evans when we were equals. Yeah, I know I was a man and she was a kid in school, but she was a lot older than her years, and, well, I didn’t grow up until I had to. Whatever, we were well matched. And, besides, she was rebellin’ against her rich father who’d dumped her for his floozy of a wife, and I was crazy with anger against the toffs in the big house.”
“Priory House,” Jace said.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Stace and I met in Margate. She was sneaking into the pub and acting like she was old enough to drink. She fooled the barman, but not me. Let’s say that our attraction was instant. She was insatiable!” Tony said, smiling in memory.
Nigh reached across the table and put her hand on Jace’s.
“The house was empty then, as it usually was, and we made love in every room.”
“And no one knew about this?” Jace said, his tone implying that Tony was a liar.
Tony didn’t take offense. “I didn’t say that. Nana knew, but then she wanted me to marry Stace.”
“Nana?” Nigh asked.
“Everybody knows her as Mrs. Browne, but she’ll always be Nana to me.”
Nigh could feel some of the tension leave Jace. He was interested in this new twist to the story.
“Your grandmother wanted you to marry Stacy?” Nigh asked.
“She never said so in so many words, but I knew she did. Stacy was a strong-willed girl and her family was rich. I was already involved in a lot of things that Nana didn’t like even back then. I think she thought that a good woman could straighten me out.”
Tony’s features took on a dreamy appearance. “I want to say that Stacy was the love of my life. I’ve never felt about anybody like I did her. I adored her, the way she looked and smelled. The way she talked. She was everything I’d seen in the rich people that used to live in Priory House, but that I could never have. I never got over that she was in love with me, with common-as-dirt Tony Vine.”
“Was she in love with you?” Nigh asked.
“Oh yeah. She really was.” He looked down at his teacup. “I don’t know what would have happened if her dad hadn’t come to his senses and let her go home.” Tony gave a sigh. “She wanted to stay with me. She wanted to drop out of school and live with me, but I talked her into going back. I said I’d write her, but I never did.”
“But why did you send her away?” Nigh couldn’t help asking.
“Pride. She didn’t think so, but I knew that her rich dad would take one look at me and…” Tony shrugged.
“Did you see her again after she left?” Nigh asked softly.
“Not for years. As I said, May of 2002 was a real low point in my life. The lowest. I was in some serious trouble with some goons from Liverpool.” He shrugged. “I played the horses and lost everything. They were after me.
“I went to the only place where I knew I’d be safe: Priory House. Nana fed me and mothered me, and I hid in the rooms, sleeping in one bed after another. But I was bored. Bored to being crazy. I had a computer and an Internet hookup and on impulse I typed in Stacy’s name. I saw that she was about to marry some rich guy and I wondered what it would be like to see her again.
“The house was for sale and Nana used to make me hide in the old tunnel when the agent brought buyers to look at the place. I used to go up into the tower room and make haunting noises and scare them away.
“Anyway, I cut up a sale brochure and sent her a note.”
“Ours again. Together forever. See you there on 11 May 2002,” Jace said quietly.
“I see you found the note,” Tony said, smiling. “I didn’t expect her to show up, but she did.” Turning in his chair, he looked out the window at London. “But it wasn’t the same. We weren’t equals anymore. She was a lady and I was…”
“A thug,” Jace said.
Tony’s eyes flashed anger, then he smiled. “Compared to her, you are a thug.”
Jace nodded once, as though to say touché.
“She was…” Tony paused, as though trying to find the right words. “She was repulsed by me.” He grinned. “She tried to hide it, but it was there in that one quick flash across her eyes. I saw it, she knew I saw it, and that was the end of it. All those years I’d thought about what might have been, and I guess she had too because she’d left her wedding plans to come to me.”
“What did you do?” Nigh asked.
“We stayed up all night and talked,” Tony said, smiling in memory. “We shared a bottle of wine and talked, as friends, not lovers. You know, I think she was relieved that she didn’t love me anymore.”
“But you weren’t relieved, were you?” Nigh
asked.
“I was cryin’ in me beer, so to speak. I was miserable. She was so beautiful and elegant, while the women I deal with…” Tony took a moment to calm himself. “I kept rememberin’ that I was the one that broke up with her. She said she’d live over a garage with me because she loved me so much, but I said no.”
Tony took a breath. “Like I said, I was too proud to let her stay. I picked a fight with her and told her I wanted nothing to do with her kind. I said all the things I knew she’d hate.”
“That’s just what she did to me,” Jace said.
“Yeah, she told me about that. She felt real bad about what she did and she hoped she could make you forgive her. But she said that she couldn’t very well ask her fiancé if he minded if she spent the night with her old boyfriend, now could she?”
“Spend the night,” Jace said under his breath.
“Yeah, she spent the night with me, but not like you mean. Nobody took his—or her—clothes off. We drank and we talked. And I thought about what my life would have been if I hadn’t been so damned full of pride. Worse, that night, the more I drank, the more I wanted her. I told myself that we were still young. There was still time.”
Tony looked at Jace. “But she started talking about you.”
“What did she say?” Jace asked and seemed to prepare himself for bad news.
“That she was mad about you, that she wanted to live with you forever and have a hundred children and—”
“What?!” Jace said. “She wanted to have my children?”
“Yeah, sure.” Tony looked back out at London. “Remember I told you that when I made her leave Margate I started a fight with her? I told her I didn’t want to have kids. That made her cry and…and I liked it. I was glad I could make her cry because I was crying on the inside.”
“You said you told her you didn’t want children and she cried,” Jace said. “Then she did want children. Are you sure of that?”
“You were planning to marry her but you didn’t know that about her?” Tony asked, looking at Jace with a sneer curling his upper lip.
“I thought I knew everything about her until that night when she picked a fight with me. She told me she didn’t want kids.”
“And you fell for it?”
“Completely. Totally and absolutely,” Jace said.
Tony gave a little smile. “She did to you what I did to her, didn’t she? That means I taught her something. She carried some of me inside her.”
“What else did she tell you about us?” Jace asked. “It’s not just prurient interest, it’s that I need to know.”
Tony played with the heavy gold ring on the little finger of his left hand. “Prurient. I didn’t get the education to use words like that. You know what I dreamed of doing? Remember that book where the stable boy runs away and comes back years later a rich gentleman?”
“Wuthering Heights,” Nigh said. “Heathcliff.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I had to read it in school. The girls were all drippy about it, but us boys hated it—or said we did. Anyway, when I told Stacy it was over I had it in mind that someday I’d come back and get her. I’d have made my fortune and would be wearing a tuxedo.”
He smiled. “I made a fortune. Actually, I made half a dozen of ’em, but I lost most of ’em. And I’ve never been in a tuxedo in my life.”
“So you two talked all night,” Nigh said.
“And drank. Don’t forget the drink. I got pretty drunk that night and Stacy was so beautiful. I guess I made a pass at her.”
“You tore her dress and scratched her shoulder,” Jace said.
“Did I? I don’t remember. I know she ran outta the house and got in her car. It’s the last I ever saw of her. Later, after I heard what she did, I knew I was a lot to blame. She was pretty drunk that night and I sent her out in a car. I’m glad she stopped in the village and got a room at the pub. If she’d died in a car wreck I never would have forgiven myself.”
Jace’s face showed his rising anger. “When you heard about her, why didn’t you go to the police?”
“It doesn’t matter why somebody offs themselves, it just matters that they did it,” Tony said, also getting angry.
Jace didn’t back down. “Everyone thought I was the reason she killed herself.”
Tony looked at Jace. “That must’ve been one hell of a fight you two had. I’ve never said anything so bad to a woman that she killed herself.”
Nigh put her hand back on Jace’s arm, trying to keep him calm.
“Maybe she should’ve stayed with me that night,” Tony said, standing up. “Maybe she and I should have—”
“Stop it!” Nigh said, standing up and glaring at the two men. “Stacy doesn’t deserve this! Now sit down both of you and act like human beings.”
Reluctantly, both men sat down, but they wouldn’t look at each other or at Nigh.
“Tony,” she said, “we already know that when Stacy died you were in hospital. It seems that you too tried to kill yourself. Would you please tell us the truth about what happened?”
Tony looked as though he’d rather do anything than tell them what happened that horrible night.
“For Stacy?” she asked.
Tony took a deep breath. “All right, I did try to kill myself. Is that what you wanted to hear? I said it was the low point of my life. Some goons were after me and I didn’t have the money to pay them. But worse, when I saw Stacy that night, I saw what could have been mine. But I threw it away.”
He looked across the table at Nigh. “I was drunk, broke, and depressed, so I took a bunch of pills. Washed them down with whiskey.”
“Who found you and saved you?” Nigh asked softly.
“Dear ol’ Nana,” Tony said with a little smile. “She found me and got me to hospital.”
“Did you tell her that Stacy turned you down?” Jace asked.
“If I remember correctly, I told her that Stacy was sick at the sight of me.”
“What else?”
“What do you want from me?” Tony demanded. “You won her and I lost.”
“No,” Nigh said. “Everybody lost.”
“All right. So I lied. I lied big to my own grandmother. I told her Stacy broke up with me when we were kids and again when we were grown-ups. I told Nana lots of things to make me look good and Stacy look bad, but if you can’t lie to your own nana, who can you lie to?”
Nigh looked at Jace and the color had drained from his face. “No one, Mr. Vine. You don’t lie to anyone,” he said, then he stood up. “We have to go.” With that, he turned and left the room.
Nigh made hasty thanks to Tony and scurried after Jace. She caught him at the elevator. “You know, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Do you?”
“Only too well. What do we do now?”
“We go to Scotland Yard.”
Nigh breathed a sigh of relief. She had feared that Jace was going to try to handle this by himself.
22
Nigh watched as the police took Mrs. Browne away in handcuffs. When confronted by the police she had easily admitted her guilt. She said that Stacy Evans had deserved to die because she’d broken her grandson Tony’s heart not once, but twice.
Before she was taken away, Jace asked if he could talk to her and the police agreed—as long as they could tape record all of it. Jace took her into the main sitting room and treated her as an honored guest, fetching tea for her and even pushing the ottoman toward her so she could rest her feet.
Mrs. Browne had no remorse for what she’d done. She readily admitted that if she had to do it over again, she would. She told Jace that if she’d had any idea he’d come there after her dear Tony, she would have tried to kill him much earlier. “No offense,” she said.
“None taken,” Jace answered. “You blew up the tunnel, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I saw that you had Tony’s address in London, so I knew everything and that you had to go. I learned about bombs on the Internet and
made some in the kitchen. But the whole tunnel didn’t blow. Those old beams were good ones. They used to know how to build.”
“Could you tell me about Stacy?”
“Regular little slut, she was. Much like that Nightingale that’s always hangin’ around you. In my day, women had morals. They had pride. They had—”
“What about the night Stacy died?”
Mrs. Browne’s face twisted into a look of hate. “Do you know what she did to my Tony? When I found him, he was half-dead. She’d played with him, like a snake with a mouse. She’d almost killed him with her wicked ways. She came back into his life to tell him she wouldn’t have somebody like him. Can you imagine what I went through as I got my Tony to hospital? I had to watch them pump his stomach.”
“So you killed Stacy for what she did to your grandson,” Jace said calmly.
“That I did. And she well deserved it.”
“But how did you do it? Her room at the pub was locked from the inside.”
“All of you so smart and you couldn’t figure out the simplest of things. I went up the back stairs and knocked on her door. You didn’t know there was a back stairs, did you? That uppity Emma Carew don’t want people to think she has a back stairs. She wants a new stairs that everybody can see and admire. But I used to clean that pub and I know it well. I went up the back stairs and I knocked on the door of that Stacy.”
“And she opened it to you.”
“She was drunk. My Tony hadn’t had a drink in over a year, but she shows up and he gets drunk again. I said I wanted to talk to her so she let me in. I’d brought a bottle of wine and I knew she had pills with her, so I turned my back to her, opened them, and put them in the wine, then asked her to drink with me.”
“And Stacy was always polite so she drank with you.”
Mrs. Browne shrugged. “If destroying the life of a decent young man can be called polite, then she was.”
“Stacy was alive when you left because she locked the door behind you.”
“And put the Do Not Disturb sign on it.” Mrs. Browne was smiling. “Did you see my Tony today?”
Someone to Love Page 25