The Chase: A Novel

by Brenda Joyce

  Ian stared.

  “You think it’s him!” she cried, horrified. It was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  “Go home, Claire,” Ian Marshall said, sounding tired. He walked over to the closet and took out a garment bag, throwing it on the bed. Then he turned, removing his jacket, which he tossed on the chair. He unbuckled and slid off his holster. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you might be in danger.”

  “But why?” Claire managed.

  He was unbuttoning his pale blue shirt. “The killer may be someone you know, and that’s all I can say right now.”

  Claire stared. Oh, God. It could not be William Duke!

  He stripped off the shirt, tossing it aside, and shrugged on a red polo shirt.

  Claire flushed. The man was all muscle—either he had a great metabolism or he worked out. She suspected both. “I can’t go home,” she said.

  He put two suits into the garment bag, and a pair of shoes. “How come I thought you’d say that?”

  Claire hadn’t moved since he had come into the room. Now she wrung her hands. “Why is my uncle’s name on that pad?” she asked fearfully.

  He zipped up the garment bag, and folded it over. He straightened and turned. Their eyes met. He was silent.

  “My uncle died over half a century ago,” she cried. But she was feeling ill.

  His face darkened with anger. “Fine. I give up. You know what, you’re a ballsy lady for a society dame, and being as you are hounding me out of all patience, I concede the day, Claire. You win.”

  He was shouting. Claire pressed her spine into the door.

  “I’m not sure your uncle is dead,” Ian Marshall said. “I’m not sure he’s dead, and I’m not sure that he isn’t Lionel Elgin.”

  CHAPTER 4

  If a bomb had exploded right in front of her, she would not have been more stunned. “Are you nuts?” she demanded, but she began to shake.

  He crossed his arms and stared. “No. I’m not crazy, Claire.” He hesitated. “And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.”

  “The bearer of bad tidings?” She felt shell-shocked. “Excuse me. My uncle died in May of 1944. So if he was Elgin, Elgin is dead—and someone is a copycat killer!”

  “Elgin is alive,” Ian said.

  “And my uncle was a Frenchman,” Claire cried. “What are you suggesting, that he was born in England, that he was born an Elgin—which would make my father what, Ian?” Fury overcame her. “A liar, that’s what it would make him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ian repeated grimly. “I am more sorry than you can know.”

  Claire didn’t like that. She stiffened in alarm. But this would explain why Ian had been so reluctant to be honest with her. “My father was born in a small village in France, about a hundred kilometers south of Paris. So was Robert. End of story. And Robert is dead.”

  “So it’s been claimed,” Ian said.

  Claire stared at him, her breathing fast and shallow. So much fear consumed her that she could hardly think straight or see clearly. “Maybe you’re Elgin,” she said, jabbing her hand in his direction.

  “I’m thirty-nine, Claire,” Ian said quietly. “Maybe you’d better sit down. You are as white as a sheet.” Kindness had crept into his tone. He seemed reluctant to allow it in.

  “I’m not sitting anywhere,” Claire shouted. “You know what I meant. Maybe you’re copycatting Elgin!”

  “You’re hysterical. I’m hunting Elgin, Claire. I’m hunting the man who killed your husband, George Suttill, and a number of others as well.”

  Her uncle was dead. And he was a Frenchman—her father was a Frenchman. Robert Ducasse was not alive, and he was not an alias for Lionel Elgin. It was impossible.

  “But you suspect William, too.” She met his gaze. She had been hoping to calm herself, but accusing William Duke, who was more of an uncle to her than Robert had ever been—obviously, since Robert had died twenty-odd years before she was born—did not help her to recover her composure.

  ’There’s three years missing from William Duke’s life in the mid-forties—it’s highly suspicious and too damn coincidental for me.”

  Claire turned away. She felt ravaged, more so than she had ever thought it possible to be. But her father could not have deceived her all of these years, claiming to be a Frenchman, claiming that his brother was dead. “My father is fluent in French,” she said.

  Ian was studying her very closely.

  Claire shivered.

  “What is it, Claire? What is it that you really want to ask me?” Ian asked softly.

  Claire continued to tremble. She went to the bed and sat down, gripping the edge of the mattress. She hadn’t really heard him. “I need to understand now, Ian. I need to understand everything. Tell me about David . . . and Elgin.”

  He seemed somewhat surprised by her response. “You don’t need to know.”

  Claire launched herself at him. She grabbed his arms, on the verge of tears. “You can’t do this to me!” she cried. “You can’t appear in my life, and then the next thing I know, David is dead! You can’t come into my life this way and accuse someone I love of being a horrible, horrible liar.” She knew she referred to her father now, when it had been William she wanted to discuss. “If you have any ethics—and any kindness—you will explain everything to me.” Tears swam in her eyes. His face, so close to hers, was blurring. Claire released him abruptly. There was too much compassion in his eyes—and too much pity.

  Claire turned her back to him. There was something else there, but she must not consider it.“Besides,” she said harshly, “I’m your partner now.”

  He grabbed her arm with incomprehensible speed and whipped her around. “Like hell.”

  “I’m your partner now, and if you don’t like it, that’s tough!”

  “I need a rich, blue-blooded socialite in my work like I need a hole in the head,” he said, his voice raised.

  “I happen to be broke, flat broke—David lost almost everything. And,” she snapped angrily, “my blood is red, not blue. You’ve just told me that William, a dear friend, whose wife has been a mother to me ever since my own mother died, could be Elgin. Then you say that maybe my uncle is alive—and that my father has been lying to me my entire life! Not to mention that my husband has been murdered—and you said I may be in danger, too! Well guess what? You’re stuck with me.”

  He stared. “Like hell,” he said.

  She faced him unblinkingly, and amazingly, she did not feel any fear. Not from him. She was too afraid of the truth to be afraid of Ian Marshall now. “Which flight are you on?”

  He turned away, cursing and pacing and raking one hand through his dark, curly hair.

  “I can find out,” Claire said to his rigid back. It was a threat, said sweetly. “Any of the concierges will tell me which airline your driver is taking you to and at what time. If you’re going back to New York, the last flights are after six. You’d be leaving here by four-fifteen at the latest, just in case there’s traffic. I won’t have to be a genius to figure out which flight you’re on.”

  “So now you’re a detective,” he said with disgust.

  “No, now I am your partner. Spill the beans, Marshall.” Her hands were on her hips.

  He turned. “What will you do if I call security and have you hauled out on your ass?”

  “I’ll go to William, who I believe is innocent anyway. And I’ll warn him.”

  Ian’s eyes went wide with unfeigned shock. “That is low and dirty, Claire. That isn’t you. You cannot breathe a word of this to anybody, not William, not your father, and not even that bigmouth, Murphy.”

  She had him, Claire thought, astonished. He was afraid of her now. “I don’t know who I am anymore. How do you like that? I only know that William is dear to me and he is not Elgin, and that my father was born in St. Michele, and his last name is Ducasse.” She stared coldly. But it was true. Was this really her? The Claire Hayden she knew would never be so bold, so brave, or so aggressive. Not in a mil
lion years.

  Perhaps the old Claire had died along with David.

  “What if William is the killer? What if he really murdered George Suttill—and David?” Ian asked, his gaze as hard as hers. But Claire also saw real worry flickering there.

  “I just don’t believe it.”

  “Appearances are always deceiving.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Nothing is ever what you expect it to be.”

  “I agree.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Claire smiled, triumphant. She had done it. She had Victory Number One. “Start with David and Elgin.”

  Ian glanced at his watch. Then he walked over to the chair behind the desk and pulled it out, turning it around. He straddled it. “I’m leaving at four,” he said, making it clear that their time was limited.

  “American or United?” They both had six-fifteen or six-thirty departures for La Guardia.

  He ignored her. “I believe that David stumbled onto the truth about Elgin. I also think that Elgin was blackmailing him for his silence, which would explain the cash he’d deposited before his death. These are the facts: David was having lunch with someone we have not been able to identify. I think it was Elgin, in his alias. George Suttill was having lunch at the same restaurant with his girlfriend, Frances Cookson. Apparently Suttill spoke to David’s companion, and I can only assume he recognized Elgin. You see, Suttill was Elgin’s aide during the war.”

  “The photograph of them both in uniform,” Claire remarked, interested in spite of herself.

  “Believe it or not, Elgin was assigned to the ministry of information. He was army intelligence.” Ian shook his head.

  “Oh my God,” Claire whispered. “They had a spy right in their midst.”

  Ian’s face hardened. “Yes, they did. Anyway, David saw Suttill murdered. I’m guessing that he went to Suttil’s hotel, hoping to learn more about Elgin. That was when he called the center—not the police—and we had a very brief phone conversation. I wanted David to identify the killer. He said he would think about it. He was afraid.”

  “He didn’t go to the police because of the scandal that would have come out for his part in a blackmail scheme,” Claire said grimly. “I know David. He’d be smart enough to make a deal to avoid prosecution, but he would want to avoid scandal at all costs.”

  “Maybe. Unfortunately, David and I never had a chance to speak again at length. When we met at his birthday party, it was face-to-face for the first time, and I could see he had changed his mind. He was very hostile. It was pretty obvious he was regretting ever having contacted me. We did speak privately once. He told me he would handle this alone, his own way. We were interrupted before I could talk him out of it.”

  “So he wasn’t flying to New York the following day to meet you?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know for sure, Ian, that the murders were committed by Elgin, who must be in his late seventies or eighties by now, and not someone else?” She thought about what she had read on his laptop. “The Elgin file says he was born in 1922. William Duke is older than that.” Claire was wondering now if Robert was born in 1922. It seemed like a possibility—her own father was born in 1925 and Robert was a few years older.

  As if reading her mind, Ian said, “Birth dates can be fudged, Claire. We have to look for a ballpark age on this guy. And how do I know it’s Elgin? Suttill and David were not his first victims. There was an RAF pilot whose throat was slit and his body dumped in a pond not far from Elgin Hall. Two other intelligence officers also bought it the same way. And there were two other murders, an SOE agent and a German agent who had rowed himself to shore but was caught in Dymchurch by the Home Guard. The last two murders were different, but Elgin always leaves a thumbprint of some kind. The SOE agent was killed with a German-made explosive. Of course, being SOE, he might have had the explosive on him and it was used against him. But the German agent had a sketch in his pocket. A sketch of a swan.”

  Claire’s mind was spinning now. There was so much to absorb. “A swan?”

  “The one thing we do know was that Elgin’s code name was Swan. And that was just before Elgin vanished, in late ’forty-four, when it was clear that Germany was losing the war.”

  “How in God’s name does someone simply disappear?”

  “I believe he fled first to either Belgium or France before emigrating to the United States—under a new identity, possibly the very same identity he uses today. Some of the coded material was found in an empty flat adjacent to his, with instructions on how to slip out of the country with a newly forged identity. It wasn’t hard to do back then. Also, Elgin was fluent in French.”

  Claire was beginning to piece it all together. “So he vanished and hasn’t been seen—or heard from—since.”

  “Yeah. The file on Elgin has been open but forgotten—until I got that call from your husband.”

  “Until Suttill ran into Elgin at that restaurant. And since he could have identified Elgin, he’s dead. David could have made the ID as well. So now they’re both dead.” Claire shivered. “But there’s something I don’t understand. Why would Elgin reappear this way? By using that thumb knife, he’s sending us a red flag that he’s here. Why not shoot his victims?”

  Ian was grim. “I know he’s arrogant, Claire. But actually, it’s simpler than that. Guns make noise. Guns can be traced.”

  Claire stared. “I’m surprised Elgin doesn’t want to go after you.”

  Ian shrugged. “I can’t ID him without a reasonable doubt. And Frances Cookson, a potential witness, seems to have been in the rest room during the exchange. She told the police that when she came out, Suttill had paid their check, and they left without finishing their meal.”

  “A dead end.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. She’s with family in Florida right now, grieving, but she’ll be back in a few days, and I have an appointment to speak with her.”

  Claire felt a ripple of excitement. “When?”

  He gave her a dirty look. “You’re not coming.” He stood. “So that’s the story. Elgin is as clever as they come, and very arrogant. After all these years, he’s back in the game—he’s taunting us, Claire. Because he thinks he can outwit everyone again.”

  Claire also stood.

  “The only problem is, as much as I’d like to see Elgin put away for treason, I’ll take murder one. Because the authorities only have circumstantial evidence as far as his activities during the war go. So far,” Ian said, his eyes glittering, “Scotland Yard believes the same perp got the RAF pilot, the intelligence officers, Suttill, and David. They’re working with the feds and the San Francisco Police Department now that Elgin is back in the game. If we can identify Elgin, and the other agencies do their job we should put him away for the rest of his life.”

  Claire felt a flicker of answering excitement; Ian’s was contagious. Then she became grim. He was hunting William and, worse, Robert Ducasse.

  Ian looked at her closely. “Are you okay?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m fine.”

  He gave her a look. “Can the socialite act, Claire. I don’t like it.”

  She was hurt. Inexplicably so. The artificial congeniality that had served her for so long, so well, did not work with Ian. It helped her raise millions of dollars for her charities. It helped her win, define, and prolong important relationships. She had thought her persona pleasant and charming. And when she had first met Ian, he seemed to think so, too.

  But now she knew why he had been at David’s party, and why he had been flirting with her. It had been a ruse. A simple ruse. Now the knowledge was a very bitter pill.

  She did find him attractive, mostly when they were not arguing, but clearly, he found her too blue-blooded, rich, and phony for his taste. Claire was half Polish and half French. Her mother had been Jewish, and Claire had been bat mitzvahed at thirteen. Her father was a French Baptist, although he never went to church.

  Her blood was hardl
y blue. It was damned red and certainly ethnic, as far as she could see.

  She looked up at Ian. “Excuse me for not being born in Queens.” She walked to the door.

  “You’re leaving?” He sounded surprised and eager.

  “You have a flight to catch,” she said, turning so she could give him her best and most perfect society smile.

  “Yeah, I do.” He scowled.

  “Bon voyage,” Claire said nicely.

  Suspicion crossed his face.

  Claire left. She had a flight to catch and, if possible, some minor packing to do. And she had to speak with her father first, before it was too late.

  Claire drove at a frantic pace back to her father’s art gallery. As she did so, she called her travel agent and instructed her to book any seat on Ian’s flight, which was the six-fifteen on United. One of the concierges had been more than willing to tell her which airline Ian was being driven to.

  Miraculously, there was a parking space not far from the gallery, and when Claire ran inside, Beth told her that Jean-Léon was in his office alone, and on the phone. Claire thanked Beth and dashed across the showroom.

  Jean-Léon smiled at her as she came inside, gesturing for her to close the door behind her. Claire was more than happy to oblige.

  Ian’s stern admonition that she not tell a soul any of what she had learned thus far came to mind, but she felt no guilt. Claire felt certain that Robert Ducasse was dead. If he was alive, and that was a very big “if,” then her father had been lying all these years to protect the brother he so loved. But would that make him an accomplice? And would that mean he knew that his brother had been a traitor and a killer for so long?

  Claire did not want to let her thoughts race so far ahead. There was no point, because she just did not believe that Robert was alive. But she had a feeling of dread hanging over her now, like a dark and frightening shadow.

  Jean-Léon hung up the phone, smiling. “And to what do I owe this surprise?”

  “Hi, Dad.” Claire realized she was nervous. “I dropped by to tell you that I’m going out of town for a few days.” Actually, she had no idea how long she would be gone.