by Amanda Quick
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you want to believe that she’s telling you the truth.”
Amalie flashed him a steely smile. “Are you always this suspicious?”
“Always.”
“It must be a hard way to go through life.”
“You have no idea,” he admitted.
“Is that why you aren’t married? Has your obsession with finding a road map to the truth made it impossible for you to trust anyone, especially a lover?”
He felt as if she had just kicked him in the gut.
“I probably had that coming,” he said.
“Tell me,” Amalie said, “have you ever been wrong in your suspicions?”
“Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Emotions complicate things,” he admitted. “Strong emotion is like a fog across the highway. I have to slow down and go through it very carefully in order to find the road on the other side.”
“Let me take a wild guess here. I’ll bet that while you’re taking your own sweet time picking a path through the fog, the woman you’re dating gives up on you and looks for someone else.”
The sign he had been watching for came up in the headlights. He slowed the speedster and turned onto the road that would take them to the Carousel.
“Let’s change the subject,” he said.
She smiled. “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
“Are we finished with Abbotsville?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “Why?”
“Because I have a feeling there is something you’re not telling me.”
“I’m impressed. You’re right. There is one more thing I can tell you about Abbotsville, but you probably won’t believe me. To be honest, I’m not sure I trust my own memories of that night.”
“Try me.”
“I was literally shivering with fear that night and I still had some of the drug in my system. I have absolutely no facts to back up my theory, and the police didn’t find any evidence, either.”
The icy waves of truth oscillated powerfully through the fog of strong emotion. Whatever she was about to tell him, there was no doubt but that she believed it.
He braked very gently for a stop sign at a deserted intersection.
“Evidence of what, Amalie?” he asked.
“I think someone else was there that night,” she said. “I heard him laugh from time to time, a kind of excited giggle. Whoever it was watched it all from the shadows. It was as if he was just another paying customer who had bought a ticket to my performance. He couldn’t wait to see me fly to my death.”
Chapter 21
The small casino in the back of the Carousel was smoky, crowded, and illegal. The rattle and clang of dice and slots created a dull roar. The smell of the hot sweat unique to gambling fever infused the room.
“Who are you and what the hell do you want with me?” Seymour Webster asked. He did not take the cigarette out of the corner of his mouth. “I’m busy here.”
He shoved another nickel into the slot machine, pulled the handle, and stared, mesmerized, at the whirling fruit. He was a narrow-faced, thin-lipped man in his early thirties. He gazed at the front of the machine with the intense concentration of a confirmed gambler.
“I want to ask you a couple of questions,” Matthias said. “I’m willing to compensate you for your time.”
He took out his wallet, removed a couple of bills, and very deliberately placed the money on the table in front of the machine. Webster did not notice. He was focused on the whirling fruit.
When the wheels stopped spinning, the cherries did not line up in a neat little row. Neither did anything else. Seymour grunted in disgust and looked down at the cash. He was clearly startled but he reacted immediately. He grabbed the money, shoved it into a pocket, and shot straight up from the stool. His pale eyes glittered with eagerness.
“What questions?” he asked.
“Let’s talk in the other room.”
Webster cast a longing look at the slot machine. “Is this gonna take very long?”
“No,” Matthias said.
He led the way through the throng of eager gamblers. A big guard in an ill-fitting suit opened the door.
Amalie was waiting in a booth. She was not alone. Matthias suppressed a groan. She had been by herself for only the three minutes it had taken him to locate Seymour Webster, but that was long enough for two bar patrons with heavily oiled hair to move in on her.
Not that she needed him to protect her, Matthias concluded. Somehow she managed to get rid of both of her visitors before he and Webster got to the table.
Webster dropped into the empty seat. Matthias slid in beside him, blocking the only available escape route, and looked at Amalie across the table.
“What did you tell those two that made them disappear so fast?” he asked.
Amalie gave him her mysterious smile. “I mentioned that the man I’m with tonight carries a gun and has mob connections.”
Webster’s eyes widened. “What?”
Matthias sighed. “My reputation here in Burning Cove continues to sink lower with each passing day.”
Amalie gave Webster a bright, vivacious warm-up-the-crowd smile.
“You must be Mr. Webster,” she said. “Thank you so much for talking to us tonight.”
Webster stared at her, slightly stunned. “Look, I don’t want no trouble.”
“Neither do we,” Matthias said. “I thought I made it clear—we just have a couple of questions for you.”
Webster beetled his brows. “Yeah?”
“You told the reporter for the Herald that Dr. Pickwell had a few last words,” Matthias said. “What were they?”
Whatever Webster had been expecting, that question wasn’t it.
“Huh?” he said. His expression of nervous bewilderment dissolved into relief. “Oh, yeah, right. Pickwell’s last words. Like I told that reporter, he said he knew his monster robot would turn on him someday and that he shouldn’t have tried to play Frankenstein.”
Webster was lying. The currents of energy in his voice oscillated in lazy, erratic waves. Not a concealing lie, Matthias decided. It was the kind of lie people used when they wanted to impress someone. It was more of a look-at-me-I’m-important-because-I’ve-got-inside-information lie. For the most part such mild deceptions were harmless. But in this case there was a possibility that they shrouded the truth; a truth that Webster himself did not consider particularly significant.
“Just like a line out of a movie,” Amalie said with an admiring look.
Webster brightened. “Yeah. Just like in a movie.”
Amalie’s smile went up a couple of watts. “Are you absolutely certain those were Dr. Pickwell’s final words? Is it possible he said something else?”
Slick, Matthias thought. She had very cleverly avoided calling Webster a liar to his face. Instead, she had invited him to expand on his original statement and impress her further.
Still mesmerized by Amalie’s smile, Webster swallowed a couple of times.
“Well, there, uh, maybe there was something else,” he mumbled.
Amalie continued to fix him with an expression of rapt attention. Hanging on every word.
“Go on,” she urged.
“It didn’t make any sense,” Webster said. “Pickwell was in shock. He was delirious. You see that a lot when a patient is dying.”
Matthias looked at him. “What else did Pickwell say?”
Webster grunted. “Something about his keys.”
Cold truth.
“Go on,” Matthias said.
“Look, I told you, Pickwell was delirious. He said he had given the keys to the robot and no one would ever find them.”
Chapter 22
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br /> Amalie paused before she slipped into the passenger seat of the speedster. She looked at Matthias, who was holding the door for her. The atmosphere around him was electric. She smiled, recognizing the intoxicating sensation. It was akin to the thrill that used to sweep through her whenever she grabbed the bar and flew.
“I think I understand why you are drawn to your investigation work,” she said.
“It has its moments,” he said.
She sank into the buttery-soft leather seat. Matthias closed the door and smiled at her. She laughed because she knew that he was flying.
“You think Seymour Webster told us the truth, don’t you?” she said. “Dr. Pickwell’s last words about the keys are important.”
“The quote about playing Frankenstein was nonsense. As you predicted, Webster just wanted to say something suitable to the occasion and get his name in the papers. But the business about giving the keys to the robot? Yes, that rang true. The question is, what does it mean?”
Matthias sounded absolutely certain of his conclusion. In the otherworldly glow of the neon sign that spelled out Carousel Club it was impossible to read his expression, but she sensed that he was satisfied. Webster had given him the lead he had been seeking.
She watched him walk around the long, sleek hood of the Packard. In the shadows he was exciting and fascinating; utterly compelling. She was drawn to the invisible energy around him. This kind of attraction was new to her. She wasn’t sure how to deal with it. She probably ought to be careful around him, but the part of her that remembered the exhilaration of flying was not the least bit afraid.
Matthias opened the driver’s side door and got behind the wheel.
“We probably ought to consider the possibility that Seymour Webster was right,” she warned. “Maybe Pickwell was simply delirious.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t saying something important.” Matthias turned the key in the ignition. “In his situation, hiding the keys made sense. It would certainly explain a lot.”
“I gather we’re not talking about car keys.”
“Unlikely. Pickwell did not drive to Burning Cove, remember? He arrived on the train from L.A. He was here to do a very dangerous deal. His car keys would have been the last thing on his mind.”
Amalie watched Matthias’s profile as he motored slowly out of the parking lot, heading toward Cliff Road. A shiver of intense awareness swept through her. The dark intimacy of the vehicle’s front seat stirred all of her senses. Not for the first time that night she wished they were on a real date.
She forced herself to focus on what they had learned from Webster—not on the smooth, easy manner in which Matthias controlled his powerful vehicle; not on the way his strong hand gripped the polished gearshift.
“You’ve got a theory about the keys, don’t you?” she said.
“I can’t be sure, not yet at any rate, but I think there is a possibility that Pickwell was referring to some critical components of the cipher machine. We need to take Futuro apart piece by piece and see if we find anything inside.”
“If Pickwell was nervous about selling the Ares on the black market, why would he risk withholding some valuable part of the machine? You would think that he would want to take the money and run back to L.A. Why take a chance?”
“He knew that he was dealing in the criminal underworld. He was probably afraid that someone might try to cheat him. Maybe he thought that hiding the keys would give him leverage in the event that he didn’t get his money.”
“Hmm.”
Matthias glanced at her. “What?”
“Maybe he had qualms at the end. Maybe he changed his mind about handing over a top secret cipher machine to an unknown buyer who was very likely an agent for a foreign power.”
“Do you really think Pickwell had an attack of conscience?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“His motive for hiding the keys doesn’t matter now.” Matthias changed gears with a fluid motion. “Our first priority is to find them.”
Amalie did a little drumroll on her small handbag with her polished nails.
“Do you think whoever shot Pickwell and stole the machine knows that there are some missing parts?”
Matthias turned onto Cliff Road. “No way to know for sure but it would explain the break-in at your inn the other night.”
“What do you think the keys look like?”
“I have no idea. I told you, all I found in the workshop of the inventor who created the Ares was a rough sketch. That’s how I figured out that the machine looks a lot like a typewriter. But I don’t have any more details.”
“I don’t suppose the Ares machine came with an instruction manual?”
“No, but there must have been some detailed wiring schematics,” Matthias said. He paused. “Huh.”
He fell silent. Amalie glanced at him and knew that he was lost in thought, examining the problem in his head, looking for the road map that would lead to the answers. He would talk when he was ready.
She settled back and contemplated the moonlight-infused fog that was rolling in off the sea. She could become accustomed to late-night drives in a convertible with Matthias beside her, she decided.
After a while he surfaced from his thoughts.
“If Pickwell hid the keys, maybe he also concealed the schematics,” he said. “I need to get back into his workshop.”
She turned her head to look at him. “You searched it already?”
“As soon as I picked up his trail. But the place is a junkyard, Amalie. And I was in a hurry. There’s a real possibility that I overlooked something important.”
“Where is Pickwell’s workshop?”
“Playa Dorada. It’s a small town south of L.A.”
“Why would Pickwell leave something critically important and extremely valuable in his workshop? I would think that he would want to keep it with him or hide it in a safe.”
“Safes are too obvious. Trust me, if I had found a safe in his workshop, I would have cracked it.”
“You can crack safes?”
“I’m good with locks.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
He hesitated and then nodded once. “Go ahead. You’ve got a right. I asked you about Abbotsville.”
“Yes, you did. And you appeared to believe me when I told you my story, even though the police and the press doubted my version of events. Tonight you seemed very certain that Seymour Webster was telling the truth when he said Pickwell’s last words were about giving the keys to the robot.”
“Weren’t you inclined to believe him, too?”
“Well, yes. It seems an unlikely story to invent on the spur of the moment. But that’s not my point. You trust your intuition when it comes to separating truth and lies, don’t you?”
“Most of the time. I’m not infallible.”
“Evidently you’ve got people like Luther Pell convinced that you’re very, very good at what you do.”
Matthias flexed his hands on the steering wheel. She got the feeling that he was bracing himself.
“There are a lot of people in my family who have better than average intuition,” he said. “I’m one of them.”
“Right. You said there were a lot of psychics on your family tree. No offense, but everyone thinks they have better than average intuition. My father always claimed that I have flyer’s intuition.”
Matthias glanced at her. “It’s obvious from the way you move that you have a sense of balance and timing and an awareness of the space around you that is unusually intuitive. I’m sure you’ve got great reflexes, too. Those things usually go together.”
“You’re not joking, are you?” she said.
He did not take his eyes off the road. “Is it so hard to believe I’ve got a certain talent for detecting lies?”
Onc
e again he appeared to be steeling himself.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It just strikes me as a somewhat unusual claim. Have you always been able to tell when people are lying?”
“For as long as I can remember. But that’s the easy part. People lie all the time. The hard part is figuring out why they are lying.”
“You care about why they do it?” she asked.
“When you have a talent like mine, you learn very quickly that intent is everything.”
She reflected on the implications. “I can understand how that kind of ability would be useful to an investigator or a cop, but doesn’t it drive you crazy the rest of the time?”
He was momentarily flummoxed. Then he smiled.
“How did you guess?” he asked.
“It just seemed obvious.”
“Most lies are harmless and often well-intentioned,” he said. “They have some social value. The ability to lie helps make it possible for people to be polite and civil to each other. How’s your day going? It’s going great, thank you. Did you enjoy the cake I baked for you? It was wonderful, thanks.”
“Okay, I never considered those kinds of questions and answers to be outright lies.”
“Because you are aware of the intent behind them. Everyone knows that conversations like that are a kind of social glue. You are so comfortable with little white lies that you automatically tune out the dissonance. It’s not so easy for me. And when people find out what I can do, they are often . . . uncomfortable around me.”
She smiled. “Had a lot of relationships end badly, have you?”
“Yes.” He cast her a quick, searching look. “You think that’s amusing?”
“Nope. But I do know how it feels.”
That startled him. “You do?”
“People tend to make assumptions about female trapeze artists. Men, especially, see us as exciting. Bold. Daring. Free. We take thrilling risks before their very eyes. They imagine that we will be happy to engage in a night or two of reckless passion because we are reckless women. They tell themselves they will be safe because we won’t make any emotional demands. After all, we’ll be gone in the morning, when the circus leaves town.”