by Nora Roberts
“I’d appreciate it. The insurance investigator will be here shortly, and Cook wants me again.”
“Oh.” She linked her hands together to keep them still. “Ms. Purdue, would you give us a moment?”
“Of course. I’ll set up the staff meeting, Dr. Jones.”
“Department heads,” Andrew told Miranda when the door closed again. “One o’clock.”
“All right. Andrew, about Cook. He’s going to want to know about last night. Where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. I told him we left here together about seven, and that both of us were home all night.”
“Fine.”
Her fingers twisted. “Were you?”
“What? Home? Yes.” He angled his head, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“I didn’t know if you’d gone out or not.” Unlinking her fingers, she rubbed her hands over her face. “I just thought it best to say you hadn’t.”
“You don’t have to protect me, Miranda. I haven’t done anything—which according to our mother is the problem.”
“I know you haven’t. I didn’t mean that.” She reached out, touched a hand to his arm. “It just seemed less complicated to say you’d been home all night. Then I started thinking, what if you had gone out, and you’d been seen . . .”
“Bellied up to a bar?” Bitter resentment coated his voice. “Or skulking around the building?”
“Oh, Andrew.” Miserable, she lowered herself to the arm of a chair. “Let’s not snipe at each other. It’s just that Cook makes me nervous, and I started to worry that if he caught me in a lie, however harmless, it would just make it all worse.”
With a sigh, he dropped into the chair. “Looks like we’re in shit up to our knees.”
“I’m up to my waist,” she muttered. “She ordered me to take a leave of absence. I refused.”
“Are you standing up for yourself, or just kicking at her?”
Miranda frowned and studied her nails. How does it feel to be a failure? No, she wouldn’t give in to that. “I can do both.”
“Be careful you don’t fall on your butt. Last night I would have agreed with her—not for the same reason, but I’d have agreed. Today changes things. I need you here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He patted her knee before he rose. “I’ll go talk to Cook. Send me a copy of the press release, and the letter. Oh, she gave me Father’s address in Utah.” He tore a piece of notepaper from the pad on his desk and handed it to her. “Overnight the letters. The sooner they have it in writing, the better.”
“I’ll see you at one, then. Oh, Andrew, Ryan said to tell you goodbye.”
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Goodbye?”
“He had to get back to New York tonight.”
“He was here? Damn it. He knows about this mess already? The Vasaris?”
“He’s completely supportive. He assured me this problem wouldn’t affect the trade. I’m, ah, thinking about going down to New York in a couple of weeks.” In fact, she’d just thought of it. “To . . . expedite the loan.”
Distracted, he nodded. “Good, that’s fine. We’ll talk about that later. A new exhibit’s just what we need to offset this mess.”
He started downstairs, glancing at his watch. It amazed him it was barely ten. It felt as if he’d been running on this particular wheel for days.
Cops, both uniformed and plainclothes, swarmed the main floor. What he assumed was fingerprint powder was smeared over the display cabinet. The little circle of glass was gone. Tucked away in some evidence bag, he figured.
Andrew questioned one of the uniformed officers and was told he’d find Detective Cook at the south entrance.
Andrew traveled the route, trying to imagine the thief doing the same. Dressed in black, he imagined, a man with a hard face. Maybe a scar sliced down the cheek. Had he carried a gun? A knife? A knife, Andrew decided. He would have wanted to kill quietly and quickly should it become necessary.
He thought of how many nights Miranda worked late in the lab or her office, and cursed violently.
Fresh fury was bubbling under his skin as he pushed into the anteroom and found Cook perusing the offerings of the snack machine.
“Is this how you find this son of a bitch?” Andrew demanded. “By munching on potato chips?”
“Actually, I’m going for the pretzels.” Calmly, Cook pushed the proper buttons. “I’m cutting down on fat grams.” The bag thunked against the metal tray. Cook pushed through the slot, nipped it out.
“Great. A health-conscious cop.”
“You got your health,” Cook claimed as he ripped open the bag, “you got everything.”
“I want to know what you’re doing to find the bastard who broke into my building.”
“My job, Dr. Jones. Why don’t we sit down here?” He gestured to one of the little cafe tables. “You look like you could use some coffee.”
Andrew’s eyes flashed, the sudden brilliant blue of temper that turned his aesthetic face into something tough and potentially mean. The quick change had Cook reconsidering the man.
“I don’t want to sit down,” Andrew shot back, “and I don’t want any coffee.” He would have killed for some. “My sister works late, Detective. She often works late, alone, in this building. If she hadn’t been ill last night, she might have been here when he broke in. I might have lost something a great deal more valuable to me than a bronze.”
“I understand your concern.”
“No, you couldn’t possibly.”
“I got family myself.” Despite Andrew’s refusal, Cook counted out coins and turned to the coffee machine. “How do you take it?”
“I said—Black,” Andrew muttered. “Just black.”
“I used to drink it the same way. Still miss it.” Cook breathed in deep as the coffee began to spurt into the insulated cup. “Let me relieve your mind a bit, Dr. Jones. Typically a B-and-E man—especially a smart one—isn’t looking to hurt anyone. Fact is he’ll back off a job before he’ll get into that kind of tangle. He won’t even carry a weapon, because if he does that adds years onto his time if he’s caught.”
He set the coffee on the table, sat, waited. After a moment Andrew relented and joined him. As the hot edge of temper faded from his eyes, his narrow face smoothed out, his shoulders slipped back into their slight hunch. “Maybe this guy wasn’t typical.”
“I’d say he wasn’t—but if he’s as smart as I think, he’d have followed that rule. No weapons, no contact with people. In and out. If your sister had been here, he’d have avoided her.”
“You don’t know my sister.” The coffee made him feel slightly more human.
“A strong lady, your sister?”
“She’s had to be. But she was mugged recently, right in front of our house. The guy had a knife—she’s terrified of knives. There was nothing she could do.”
Cook pursed his lips. “When was this?”
“A couple of weeks ago, I guess.” He dug fingers through his hair. “He knocked her down, took her purse, her briefcase.” He trailed off, took another breath, another sip of coffee. “It shook her, shook us both. And thinking that she might have been here when this guy broke in—”
“This type of thief, it’s not his style to knock women around and grab their purses.”
“Maybe not. But they never caught him. He terrified her, took her things, then he walked. Miranda’s had enough—between that and the problems in Florence.” Andrew caught himself, realizing he was relaxing, and chatting about Miranda, for God’s sake. “This isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about.”
“Actually, it’s helpful, Dr. Jones.” A mugging and a burglary in less than a month. Same victim? It was, Cook decided, interesting. “You say your sister wasn’t well last night. What was wrong with her?”
“A problem in Florence,” he said briefly. “Some difficulty with our mother. It upset her.”
“Your mother’s in Italy?”
“She live
s there. She works there. She heads Standjo. It’s a laboratory for testing art and artifacts. It’s part of the family business. An offshoot of the Institute.”
“So there’s some friction between your mother and your sister?”
Andrew took another sip of coffee to steady himself and watched Cook over the rim. His eyes went hard again. “My family relationships aren’t police business.”
“Just trying to get the whole picture. This is a family organization, after all. There’s no sign of forced entry.”
Andrew’s hand jerked, nearly spilling his coffee as he tried to make the sharp turn. “Excuse me?”
“There’s no overt sign of forced entry on either of these doors.” Cook wagged a finger to the exterior and interior doors. “Both were locked. Outside, you need a key card and a code, correct?”
“Yes. Only department heads can use this entrance. This area is used as a staff lounge. There’s another lounge for general staff on level three.”
“I’ll need a list of department heads.”
“Of course. You think it’s someone who works here?”
“I don’t think anything. Biggest mistake is to come onto a scene with an idea.” He smiled a little. “It’s just procedure.”
• • •
The break-in at the Institute was the lead story on the local eleven o’clock news. In New York, it earned thirty seconds in the lower half of the hour. Stretched out on the sofa in his apartment on Central Park South, Ryan sipped a brandy, enjoyed the tang of a slim Cuban cigar, and noted the details.
There weren’t many. Then New York had plenty of its own crime and scandals to fill the time. If the Institute hadn’t been a landmark and the Joneses quite such a prominent New England family, the burglary wouldn’t have merited so much as a blip outside of Maine.
Police were investigating. Ryan grinned around the cigar as he thought of Cook. He knew the type. Dogged, thorough, with a solid record of closing cases. It was satisfying to have a good cop investigating his last job. Rounded off his career nicely.
Pursuing several leads. Well, that was bullshit. There were no leads, but they would have to say there were and save face.
He sat up as he caught a glimpse of Miranda leaving the building. Her hair was smoothed back in a twist. She’d done that for the cameras, he thought, remembering how it had been loose and tangled when he’d kissed her goodbye. Her face was calm, composed. Cold, he decided. The lady had quite a cold streak, which inspired him to melt her. Which he would have done, he thought, if there’d been a bit more time.
Still, he was pleased to see she was handling the situation well. She was a tough one. Even with those pockets of shyness and sadness, she was tough. Another day or two, he calculated, and her life would slip back into routine. The little bump he’d put into it would smooth out, the insurance would kick in, and the cops would file the case and forget it.
And he, Ryan thought as he blew cheerful smoke rings at the ceiling, had a satisfied client, a perfect record, and some leisure time coming.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d bend the rules in this case and take Miranda to the West Indies for a couple of weeks. Sun, sand, and sex. It would do her good, he decided. And it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt him any.
Annie McLean’s apartment would have fit into Ryan’s living room, but she did have a view of the park. If she leaned far enough out her bedroom window, twisted her neck until it ached, and strained her eyes. But that was good enough for her.
Maybe the furniture was secondhand, but she had bright colors. The rug might have come from a garage sale, but it had shampooed up just fine. And she liked the overblown cabbage roses around the border.
She’d put the shelves together herself, painted them a deep dark green, and crammed them with books she bought when the library held its annual sale.
Classics for the most part. Books she’d neglected to read in school and longed to explore now. She did so whenever she had a free hour or two, bundling under the cheerful blue-and-green-striped throw her mother had crocheted and diving into Hemingway or Steinbeck or Fitzgerald.
Her CD player had been an indulgent Christmas present to herself two years before. Deliberately, she’d collected a wide range of music—eclectic, she liked to think of it.
She’d been too busy working to develop a wide range of tastes in books and music when she was in her teens and early twenties. A pregnancy, miscarriage, and broken heart all before her eighteenth birthday had changed her direction. She’d been determined to make something of herself, to have something for herself.
Then she’d let herself be charmed by slick-talking, high-living, no-good son-of-a-bitching Buster.
Hormones, she thought, and a need to make a home, to build her own family, had blinded her to the impossibility of marriage with a mostly unemployed mechanic with a taste for Coors and blondes.
She’d wanted a child, she thought now. Maybe, Lord help her, to make up for the one she’d lost.
Live and learn, she often told herself. She’d done both. Now she was an independent woman with a solid business, one who was taking the time and making the effort to improve her mind.
She liked to listen to her customers, their opinions and views, and measure them against her own. She was broadening her outlook, and calculated that in the seven years she’d had Annie’s Place, she’d learned more about politics, religion, sex, and the economy than any college graduate.
If there were some nights when, slipping into bed alone, she longed for someone to listen to her, to hold her, to laugh with her when she spoke of her day, it was a small price to pay for independence.
In her experience, men didn’t want to listen to what you had to say, they just wanted to do a little bitching and scratch their butts. Then yank off your nightgown and fuck.
She was much better off on her own.
One day, she thought, she might buy a house, with a yard. She wouldn’t mind having a dog. She would cut back on her hours, hire a bar manager, maybe take a vacation. Ireland first, naturally. She wanted to see the hills—and the pubs, of course.
But she’d suffered the humiliation of not having enough money, of having doors shut in her face when she asked for a loan, of being told she was a bad risk.
She never intended to go through that again.
So her profits were fed back into her business, and what she sliced off of them was tucked into conservative stocks and bonds. She didn’t need to be rich, but she would never be poor again.
Her parents had skirted the slippery edge of poor all of Annie’s life. They’d done what they could for her, but her father—bless him—had held on to money as a man holds a handful of water. It had continually trickled through his fingers.
When they moved to Florida three winters before, Annie had kissed them both goodbye, cried a little, and slipped her mother five hundred dollars. It had been hard-earned, but she knew her mother could make it stretch through several of her father’s get-rich-quick schemes.
She called them every week, on Sunday afternoons when the rates were down, and sent her mother another check every three months. She promised to visit often, but had managed only two short trips in three years.
Annie thought of them now as she watched the end of the late news and closed the book she’d been struggling to read. Her parents adored Andrew. Of course, they’d never known about that night on the beach, about the baby she’d conceived, then lost.
With a shake of her head she put it all out of her mind. She switched off the television, picked up the mug of tea she’d let go cold, and took it into the closet her landlord claimed was a kitchen.
She was reaching to switch off the light when someone knocked at her door. Annie glanced at the Louisville Slugger she kept by the door—the twin of one she kept behind the bar at work. Though she’d never had occasion to use either, they made her feel secure.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Andrew. Let me in, will you? Your landlord keeps these halls in a deep free
ze.”
Though she wasn’t particularly pleased to find him on her doorstep, Annie slipped off the chain, released the dead bolt and thumb lock, and opened the door. “It’s late, Andrew.”
“You’re telling me,” he said, though she wore a plaid robe and thick black socks. “I saw your light under the door. Come on, Annie, be a pal and let me in.”
“I’m not giving you a drink.”
“That’s okay.” Once he was inside, he reached under his coat and pulled out a bottle. “I brought my own. It’s been a long, miserable day, Annie.” He gave her a hound dog look that wrenched at her heart. “I didn’t want to be home.”
“Fine.” Annoyed, she stalked to the kitchen and got out a short glass. “You’re a grown man, you’ll drink if you want.”
“I want.” He poured, lifted his glass in a half-salute. “Thanks. I guess you’ve heard the news.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” She sat on the couch and slipped the copy of Moby Dick out of sight between the cushions, though she couldn’t have explained why it would embarrass her to have him see it.
“Cops think it was an inside job.” He drank, laughed a little. “I never thought I’d use that phrase in a sentence. They’re taking a hard look at Miranda and me first.”
“Why in the world would they think you’d steal from yourself?”
“People do, all the time. Insurance company’s investigating. We’re being thoroughly studied.”
“It’s just routine.” Concerned now, she reached up to take his hand and draw him down beside her.
“Yeah. Routine sucks. I loved that bronze.”
“What? The one that was taken?”
“It said something to me. The young David taking on the giant, willing to pit a stone against a sword. Courage. The kind I’ve never had.”
“Why do you do that to yourself?” Irritation rang in her voice as she shoved against him.
“I never take on the giants,” he said, and reached for the bottle again. “I just roll with the flow and follow orders. My parents say, It’s time you took over the running of the Institute, Andrew. And I say, When do you want me to start?”