by Kay Hooper
After a moment, Raven shook her head. "As you said, I don't see that this helps us. At the same time, all we have to go on is that Kelly's head of security tested our defenses at least once. We knew somebody was trying to get at Josh, and during that attempt a couple of weeks ago, he left a nice, clear thumbprint on the apartment's electronic lock. Clumsy, to say the least."
"I suppose there's no question about the print's being Brady Seton's?"
"None. Zach triple-checked. No criminal record, but Seton was in the military, and his prints are on file. His last known, and present, employer is Garrett Kelly."
"How about a little icing on the cake?" Dane said dryly.
"What?"
"In Kelly's safe, I found, and removed, one half of a set of plates used to counterfeit one-hundred-dollar bills. And it wasn't made by an amateur."
Raven's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured.
"I'll say. Aside from his gambling, Kelly doesn't have a smear anywhere on his name. Not even an unpaid parking ticket. So what's he doing with a counterfeit plate? And where's the other one?"
"And how, if at all, does it tie up with an attempt to get at Josh?"
"Beats the hell out of me," Dane confessed. "But I have to admit I'm intrigued."
A bit restlessly, she said, "Damn, I wish I didn't have to fly back to New York first thing tomorrow."
"The whole point of your being here tonight," he reminded her, "was to find out if this lead was worth pursuing. I'd say it's a definite yes. I'm in now; Kelly's already invited me to one of his pseudosecret card games tomorrow night. We agreed from the beginning it'd be best to let me work this joker."
"I know. But I really hate leaving you alone down here with no backup. If Kelly's counterfeiting on any scale at all, then he's Into some pretty big stakes. It could turn out to be a real mess, Dane."
He hesitated, then smiled. "Well, I won't exactly be alone. Remember that friend of mine who helped us out down in Florida a few weeks ago?"
"The one we never saw?" she asked.
"That's the man."
"He's here?"
"Close. And he ... um, knows a bit about counterfeit plates and the like."
"You know, I always suspected you wore more than one hat, pal."
"Who, me?"
She didn't push it. "Just tell me this friend of yours is a good backup, that's all."
"Rock solid."
Raven sighed, then shrugged. "I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do at the moment. We've had two near-leaks since Josh and the guys vanished from the public eye. If anyone finds out the head of Long Enterprises has disappeared, then a number of stocks are going to go into tallspins. I have to get back and hold down the fort."
"You could be a drawback here anyway," Dane reminded her. "If Kelly is behind the attempt to get to Josh, and if he finds out who you are, our hand's tipped for sure."
She nodded reluctantly. "I know, I know. And you're the best man for this Job."
"Thank you." Dane was obviously moved.
"Unless," she added gently, "you get distracted by stray blondes with stolen bracelets."
"I'm a professional," he protested in a wounded tone.
Raven's violet eyes gleamed. "Yes, I know." Then, as she began turning away, she added with amusement, "It's just that I've always wondered what, exactly, your profession is."
Dane whistled "Waltzing Matilda" under his breath and didn't respond. Not that Raven expected a response of a different sort. If she'd learned anything in her years as a federal agent. It was not to ask too many questions.
It was often safer not to know.
* * *
"Jennifer!" The accent was still thick after nearly thirty years on this side of the Atlantic, but tended to pass almost unnoticed in Louisiana, where both French and Spanish Influence had been felt so heavily. But anyone who spent more than ten minutes with Francesca Maria Modesta Lorenzo Chantry realized she was Italian to her bones.
She was a tall woman, still beautiful in her fifties, with coal black hair and flashing black eyes, a husky voice that could switch from madonna to shrew in an Instant, and a voluptuous figure that never failed to turn heads. And she embodied every volatile trait attributed to her hot-blooded ancestors.
Jennifer had often wondered if her mother did that deliberately, but since her own cool blond surface concealed a number of volatile traits she could only have inherited from Francesca, she had eventually recognized the truth. The mercurial temperament was perfectly real; it was just that Francesca enjoyed a dramatic nature to boot.
"Jennifer, the bracelet?"
Moving into the tiny living room of their small house about two miles from the plantation, Jennifer collapsed into a somewhat shabby chair and hauled her skirt up. Unfastening the bracelet from her garter, she said sternly, "Mother, you've got to stop doing things like this!"
Ignoring the command, Francesca watched curiously. "Why did you put it there?"
"Because it was the only way I could think of to get it safely out of the house." It was impossible to tell her mother the truth, Jennifer reflected.
Her mother laughed infectiously. "So smart, my baby! Oh, my bracelet, my bracelet!"
Jennifer handed it over, sighing. Useless to try to persuade her mother that what she had done was wrong – especially since it was perfectly understandable. Taking one's own belongings back, Francesca would declare, was not stealing. And Jennifer knew her own arguments would lack force for the very reason that she was half Italian herself, and she understood.
Francesca clasped the diamond bracelet around her slim wrist and held it out admiringly. Then, in one of her lightning changes of mood, her sparkling eyes filled with tears. "Your father gave this to me as a betrothal present, my baby. He put it on me with his own hands. That horrible man has no right to It, no right at all! He must be punished, Jennifer!"
"I know. Mother." She brooded about that, forgetting, for the moment, the events of tonight. "If we could just prove he cheated in that card game. I know he did, I know it. But none of the others saw him cheat. And Daddy signed over the plantation. What else could he do?"
"A duel," Francesca declared. "My Rufus should have challenged him to a duel." Then, obviously deciding she was being overly critical of her adored late husband, she added magnanimously, "But he was ill, my poor darling."
He had been dying, in fact, though neither Jennifer nor her mother had known that four years ago. Losing his family's plantation, Belle Retour, had been more than his overstrained heart could bear. He had died two months later.
And Garrett Kelly had taken possession of the house immediately after the funeral.
The small house Jennifer and her mother now occupied was, in a sense, a part of Belle Retour. Like most huge old estates, the plantation had suffered runs of bad luck in the past, requiring that parcels of land be sold off from time to time. This small house had been built twenty years before on a ten-acre parcel that had been sold to a cousin. When the cousin had died and willed the house and land back to Rufus Chantry, Jennifer's father had deeded the place to her.
She had used it during her teen years as a studio, where she had worked on her dream of becoming a great artist. In the years between high school and college, Jennifer had faced reality. She was a good artist, but not a great one. Reluctantly giving up her dream, she settled for being a commercial artist.
Now she and her mother lived in the house, and Jennifer more or less supported them both with her work. Her father had been Insured, though little of that money was left now. Jennifer and her mother lived comfortably. But neither had ever been reconciled to Kelly s possession of Belle Retour, and neither had given up the determination to get their plantation back.
"I should not have taken the bracelet." Francesca said suddenly.
Jennifer looked at her warily. Such statements from her mother rarely indicated a sense of guilt. "You shouldn't have?" she inquired in a careful tone.
"No. I s
hould have taken one of your father's guns from the cabinet in the study," Francesca decided. Her black eyes snapped. "Yes! Then I could shoot that bastard."
Jennifer winced, but more because she remembered what had been going on in the study tonight than out of any real dismay at her mother's words. Long experience with Francesca's way of reasoning made her appeal to her mother's maternal feelings rather than her good sense. "You'd be arrested for murder, and I'd be all alone. Do you really want that?"
"My baby!" Francesca sat on the arm of her daughter's chair and hugged her tempestuously. "Of course, I would never abandon my baby – even to shoot that man in the heart. But we must get our Belle back, Jennifer. We must!"
"We will," Jennifer assured her. "I've promised you that. Mother."
"Vendetta."
"Well, the American version, anyway."
Francesca looked at her suspiciously. "You sound like your father, my baby. How can you wish for less than that despicable man's blood? He killed your father and stole our home!"
Jennifer didn't deny the accusations, even though she could have pointed out that no one had forced Rufus Chantry at gunpoint to play poker, much less to put up the deed of Belle Retour when he had lost practically everything else. She had loved her father, but gambling had been his weakness and she knew it too well.
"We'll get even with Kelly, Mother. And we'll get Belle away from him. I promise. Just please promise me that you won't do anything yourself. I have to come up with a plan, and if you try to steal, I mean take anything else out of the house. It'll just make it more complicated for me."
Francesca looked doubtful. "If you say so, but I cannot wait much longer for revenge."
Much later, as she lay in her small bedroom and stared at the dark celling, Jennifer accepted the fact that she was now on a deadline. Her mother's patience these last years had indeed been remarkable, and due partly to the fact that she and her daughter had gone to Italy to spend months with her family after the death of Rufus. A return to her native land had reminded Francesca of Just who and what she was.
She was Italian, and her family was known for at least one vendetta that had lasted half a century. So Francesca would be content to wait for her revenge – as long as she was sure she would get it.
Jennifer was half Italian, and though the years in expensive schools had added a ladylike polish to her cool blond looks, under the surface her mother's blood ran strong in her. And without the calming influence of her father, who had been quite adept at handling the tempests of Latin temper and impulsiveness, Jennifer knew she was apt to be reckless.
But she wanted revenge, and no amount of sensible thought had changed that. She wanted her home back, she wanted to prove Garrett Kelly a thief and a cheat, and she wanted to keep her mother out of it If at all possible.
Which was why, of course, she had crashed the party at Belle Retour tonight in search of her wayward mother. And thank God she had found her before Kelly knew either of them was there.
Remembering that, Jennifer suddenly recalled the big stranger with the laughing violet eyes. A thief? What had he taken from the safe? Who was he? She remembered his kiss, and shivered suddenly, unsettled.
Just a stranger, of course, and she wasn't likely to see him again. Still, she couldn't help wondering what he had taken from the safe. . . .
Two
In a large hotel on the outskirts of Lake Charles, Dane Prescott turned from the window of his sitting room and lifted a questioning brow at the man seated on the couch. "Well?"
"It's a beauty all right." The man was turning a counterfeit plate over in his hands. "Someone with real talent made this. And you took it out of Kelly's safe?"
"Yeah. I've never heard a whisper of his name connected with counterfeiting operations; how about you, Skye?"
"No. But it wouldn't be the first time a pristine reputation covered something dirty." He looked up suddenly. "Or the opposite. You did say Raven had gone back to New York?"
"First thing this morning." Dane smiled. "She knows you're here backing me up, but she doesn't know who you are."
Skye shook his head. "We've been running this scam for too many years," he said. "It can't go on forever. I figure our time's running out."
"Probably," Dane agreed. "We'll have to see if we can pull it off one more time. This is a case that demands both of us work on it. I can get into Kelly's house, I may even be able to look around a little, but if we're going to tie Kelly to a counterfeiting operation, we'll need more than the plate. If he's printing money himself, where's the press? How's he passing the fake money?"
"His infamous poker games?" Skye suggested.
"Maybe. I may have that answered by tonight. We've got to nail it down, though."
"Agreed." Skye looked thoughtful. "By the way, I've got the answers to those questions you called in last night. Belle Retour is owned by Kelly, legally. It was officially listed as a transfer for 'debts owed.' For that. you can read poker losses."
"He won the plantation?"
"Four years ago, from Rufus Chantry. The place had been in his family for two hundred years. Chantry was apparently a compulsive gambler, or at least close to it. He lost the plantation and everything else he owned in a single high-stakes poker game. Two months later, he died of a heart attack. He left behind a widow who wasn't allowed to take anything but her clothes out of the house, and a daughter who was in college at the time."
Dane was looking very intent. "A daughter?"
"Yeah. Your guess about the portrait was on target. Jennifer Louise Chantry is the great-granddaughter of the woman in the painting. She's twenty-six, a commercial artist, and lives with her mother in a small house that was once a part of Belle Retour. Her father deeded it to her on her sixteenth birthday, apparently for a studio."
After a moment, Dane said reflectively. "I don't think I like Garrett Kelly very much."
"He was certainly a dyed-in-the-wool bastard about the plantation. Mrs. Chantry, who's very Italian, by the way, wasn't even allowed to take her jewelry. Kelly maintained that every last rock was part of the 'house and contents' signed over to him by Chantry, and the law backed him up because the insurance inventory of jewelry listed everything as a part of the family property rather than Chantry's personal belongings, assigned historical value."
"I'm surprised she didn't sue him on that one," Dane commented, frowning.
"I bet she wanted to. Word has it she's a combustible lady. She didn't go to court over it, though, and I couldn't find out whose idea that was." Skye rubbed his nose, suddenly amused. "I managed to get a bit of gossip from some of the locals this morning. It seems most everyone in the area has been waiting, with baited breath, for Mrs. Chantry either to haul off and deck Kelly, or else to stab him when he isn't looking."
Dane lifted an eyebrow. "She's that Italian, huh?"
"In spades. And people around these parts figure she's waited as long as she can stand it to get even."
Skye grinned. "We're sitting on a powder keg here."
"Maybe. But I'm not willing to pull out. How about you?"
"Oh, I'm game."
"Good." Dane went over to the compact bar to fix two drinks, then carried them to the couch and sat down. Handing one to Skye, he said thoughtfully, "We have to find out about that security man of Kelly's, Brady Seton, and if Kelly gave him orders to try and get to Josh Long. If so, why? What's his game? We also have to find out what Kelly's doing with a counterfeit plate, If he's running a press somewhere, if he's passing the money and how, and if he's on his own."
"Tall order," Skye commented.
Dane nodded, but said, "The counterfeiting business first, I think. If we can get Kelly tied to that, it'll give us a lever to find out what his Interest is in Josh Long."
"So what's your plan?"
With a wry laugh, Dane replied, "To do what we do best, of course."
* * *
Jennifer tried to concentrate on the advertising layout she was working on, but her mind wande
red. She looked around the tiny extra bedroom that had become her studio without really seeing it. Vendetta. Her mother meant the word in its fullest sense: a blood feud, an all-out, hell-for-leather taking of revenge, no matter what the cost.
The problem was, a part of Jennifer wanted that as well. She tried to temper the desire, assuring herself that no blood need be spilled, that just getting the plantation back would be enough. But the few times she'd seen Garrett Kelly she had been unsettled by the powerful urge to leap at him and scratch his eyes out.
Her mother would have approved wholeheartedly.
Jennifer wanted to get even, but she didn't know hour. All her efforts to prove Kelly had cheated in the poker game had come to nothing. Her father had signed over the deed before reputable witnesses; the law was on Kelly's side. And though Francesca periodically accused the man of being the worst kind of crook, Jennifer hadn't been able to find evidence that he was anything but a model citizen with a taste for private gambling.
Vaguely, she was aware of the doorbell ringing. She just didn't know –
"How dare you!"
She heard those words from her mother and leaped up, hurried out of her studio, down the hall and toward the front door. That particular tone in her mother's voice was reserved for Garrett Kelly, and if that man had dared to come here, her mother was perfectly capable of killing him.
She stopped at the end of the hallway, knowing she couldn't be seen by whoever was outside, while she could see clearly. Francesca had the front door blocked with her stiff body, every angle showing proud outrage. And Kelly's angry voice was perfectly audible to Jennifer.
"You were both there last night, and don't deny it! But I'm prepared to be generous. I won't press charges against you, but I will have my property returned."
"Your property?" Francesca's voice rose to a magnificent soprano, steady as a rock. "You soulless cur, the bracelet is my property! Mine, do you hear? My dear husband gave it to me, and I will not see it in your hands!"
"Bracelet?" Kelly sounded surprised, but his voice quickly hardened again. "I don't give a damn about any bracelet. I just want what you took from my safe."