Smoke in Mirrors

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Absently she traced the bold relief of the design in the tile work that wrapped the edge of the counter. “What happened to your parents?”

  “They’re doing fine. They split up when Deke and I were kids. It was one of those nasty divorces. You know, the kind where everyone argues about child support and visitation rights and each person tries to get even with the other. But things have settled down. Dad married his girlfriend. She’s about twenty years younger. Mom joined an artists’ commune. They both seem reasonably happy.”

  “But you and Deke got caught in the riptide.”

  “That’s the way it goes, sometimes. Deke and I stuck together. We did okay. What about you?”

  “My parents died when I was three. I don’t remember them. All I have are some photos. My grandparents raised me. Now there’s just me and Gloria. Gloria is my grandmother.”

  He put two brandies down on the counter, positioning the glasses on two napkins. Instead of coming around to her side of the barrier to take a stool he remained standing across from her.

  He raised his glass. “Here’s to Grandma.”

  She smiled. “I’ll drink to that.”

  She took a tiny sip of the potent brandy and thought about how she hadn’t intended to come back here with him tonight. After dinner he had said something about continuing their conversation someplace where they couldn’t be overheard. She had agreed, thinking he intended to take her home to her place.

  She had been struggling with the big question of whether she should make a truly bold move, maybe invite him in and offer him tea, when she had finally noticed that they were headed for his place, not hers.

  The part of her that didn’t take chances had immediately gone on red-alert status. She had shut down the alarms by reminding herself that there was nothing sexual about their relationship. This was a wary partnership at best, one she had more or less blackmailed him into.

  Make that more, not less. It was a good bet that he didn’t think too much of her, personally, let alone find her sexy and alluring. The number of that offshore account had endowed her with a lot of bargaining power. The fact that she had used that leverage without mercy had probably given him a rather jaundiced view of her character.

  But somewhere along the line she had begun to revise her initial impression of him, she realized. He still made her think of a junkyard dog, but at least this dog was on her side. For the time being, at any rate.

  Thomas took a swallow of brandy. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “What is it?”

  “How did you and Meredith become friends? I can’t see a lot of similarities.”

  “She showed up when I was in college. Used her computer to fiddle with the dorm assignments. Ended up on my floor.”

  “Why did she go to the trouble?”

  “It’s a long story.” She drew her finger around the rim of the brandy glass. “Meredith had a very unusual history. She never knew her father. Her mother was an intelligent, but deeply troubled woman who refused to get psychiatric help. At some point Meredith’s mom went to a sperm bank and had herself impregnated by an anonymous donor who was selected for intelligence, good health and good looks.”

  “A sperm bank.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, hell.” Thomas rested his forearms on the counter, cradled the glass between his hands and shook his head, looking bemused. “A sperm bank.”

  “Uh huh.”

  They drank brandy in silence for a while.

  “On the one hand, she hated her father, even though she never knew him.”

  “Probably because she never knew him.”

  Leonora looked up quickly. “Probably.”

  “Don’t look so surprised. Guys have insights, too. Once in a while.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.” She paused. “On the surface, Meredith was one of the most confident people I’ve ever met. But I think she had some major self-esteem problems. She was always making grim jokes about how she was the offspring of a man who cared so little about fathering her that he hadn’t even bothered to meet her mother, let alone sleep with her. He was a man who literally hadn’t given a damn about his own kid. Didn’t even bother to find out if she had been born. Didn’t want to know her name.”

  Thomas said nothing.

  “Meredith said her mother assured her that she was the product of good genes that had been carefully chosen. But Meredith saw it differently. As far as she was concerned she was the product of some seriously flawed genes. She always said that a man who felt so little concern for his daughter had to be damaged goods, himself, in some really fundamental way. No commitment genes, or something.”

  “By definition,” Thomas agreed.

  “Maybe things would have been different if Meredith’s mother had been more stable. Or if there had been other close relatives who could have stepped in and taken care of a little girl. But she wasn’t and there weren’t.”

  “Must have been rough.”

  “About as rough as it gets, I think. Meredith’s mom wouldn’t get professional help but apparently she had no qualms about self-medicating with a variety of drugs, legal and illegal. Eventually she managed to commit suicide with them. Meredith was seventeen years old when she walked into her mother’s bedroom and found the body.”

  “Christ.” Thomas was quiet for a moment, thinking. “That kind of addiction costs a lot of money.”

  “It also makes it difficult to hold a steady job or make house payments or eat regular meals. I guess Meredith and her mother moved around a lot. And there were a number of men who came and went in her mother’s life.”

  “Figures,” Thomas said.

  “I think that the extreme insecurity of that time left its mark. Meredith was obsessed with money-making scams. Always talked about the big score. Everything she did was done with a view toward ensuring her own financial stability.”

  “How did she get into your life?”

  “After her mother died, Meredith went looking for her father. There was no one else, you see. She had to find someone.”

  “Sure.” Thomas nodded. “I’d have probably done the same in her shoes.”

  “Me, too.” She fell silent for a moment, letting the sadness well up.

  “What happened?” Thomas prompted.

  “She hacked into the records of the sperm bank her mother had used. Got her father’s name out of the supposedly anonymous files.” Leonora hesitated. “She discovered that he had died many years earlier. Plane crash. So she went in search of her relatives on that side of the family.”

  Thomas set his glass down on the counter and looked at her. “Oh, man. Don’t tell me—?”

  Wrench came to sit by Leonora’s stool. She rested her hand on his head. “Meredith found her half sister.”

  Thomas did not take his eyes off her face.

  “That would be you?” he said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.”

  There was another silence. The fire crackled on the hearth.

  “Goes to show,” Thomas said after a while, “that the gene pool isn’t destiny. You and Meredith are as different as night and day.”

  “That bothered her, you know. She asked me once why I thought we had turned out so differently.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What could I say?” She raised one shoulder in a small shrug. “I lost my own parents, but I had my grandparents to take their place. There was no one to take care of Meredith. She learned the hard way how to fend for herself.”

  Thomas drank more brandy.

  “Well,” he said eventually, “that information does help to fill out a big chunk of the puzzle.”

  “What puzzle?”

  “You,” Thomas said. “I’ve been trying to figure you out from the beginning.”

  She liked the idea that he had been trying to figure her out. She had never considered herself the mysterious type.

  She took off her glasses. The small action was desi
gned to buy her a little time to contemplate his comment. Absently, she fiddled with the temple.

  “I always thought of Meredith as the mystery woman in the family,” she said.

  “Nah, she was easy to understand compared to you. You, on the other hand, are a real enigma. At first, I assumed you were Meredith’s accomplice. Thought you were after the money.”

  “I know.”

  “You shredded that theory when you made the deal to hand over the number of that offshore account in exchange for my help in finding out whether or not she was murdered.”

  “Did you come up with another theory?”

  “I was damn sure Meredith wasn’t the type who had close friends. Couldn’t see any of her acquaintances giving up a good job and moving here to Wing Cove for a while just to get some answers about her death. Knew there had to be another reason why . . .” He broke off abruptly.

  She arched one brow. “What?”

  He looked at the eyeglasses in her hand, frowning intently. “That temple looks a little loose.”

  She followed his gaze. “Yes, I know. I’ve been meaning to find an optometrist and get it tightened. Haven’t had a chance.”

  “You’re going to lose that screw if you’re not careful. Here, let me see those.”

  He reached across the counter and plucked the glasses from her fingers. Before she could ask him what he planned to do he opened a door next to the refrigerator and disappeared. A light came on in a small room.

  She hopped down off the stool and went to stand in the doorway. She found herself gazing into a room filled with gleaming tools of all sizes and descriptions.

  Thomas stood at a workbench, studying a box filled with very small screwdrivers.

  “Thomas?”

  “I think I’ve got one that will fit. Yeah, here we go.”

  He took a tiny screwdriver out of the box and went to work on her glasses.

  When he was finished he handed them back to her. “How’s that?”

  She tested the temples. They were both snug.

  She put on the glasses. And was oddly pleased.

  “This is great,” she said. “I’ll have to get myself one of those itty-bitty screwdrivers. Then I wouldn’t have to look up an optometrist every time I need to tighten a temple. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She looked at him. “I’m here in Wing Cove for the same reason you are, Thomas.”

  “I know,” he said. “A family thing. I’ve got that much figured out now.”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled faintly. “And here I’ve been thinking that you and I had nothing in common.”

  She’d been telling herself the same thing. Over and over again.

  Thomas and Wrench walked her back across the footbridge a short time later. The fog had moved in, cloaking the cove. The low lamps that marked the jogging trail and the narrow bridge glowed weakly. The lights of the town at the tip of the wing were a blurry glow in the distance.

  At her door, she said good night, locked up and then went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. She stood there, watching, until Thomas and Wrench disappeared into the mist.

  There was something similar about the way both man and beast moved, she mused. An easy, fluid, deceptively unhurried quality that was the hallmark of natural-born hunters.

  A couple of junkyard dogs, all right. She wasn’t buying that line about Wrench being a reincarnated miniature poodle for a minute.

  Chapter Seven

  The ancient swivel chair squeaked when Leonora leaned back in it. She waited a couple of seconds to make sure it wasn’t going to collapse under her weight. When she was sure it would hold, she stacked her ankles on the edge of the battered wooden desk and reached for the phone. She punched out a familiar number.

  Gloria answered on the second ring, sounding slightly distracted.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Grandma. How was bridge last night?”

  “I came in first.”

  “Of course you did. Someday you’ll have to decide how you’re going to invest all those quarters you’ve won during the past couple of years. You could probably afford to open up your own personal casino by now.”

  “I had good cards,” Gloria said, brimming with false modesty. “It’s about time you called. I’ve been worrying about you. Are you all right? What’s going on up there in Washington?”

  “I’m fine.” Leonora glanced out the door of the tiny office. She checked the aisles between the floor-to-ceiling bookstacks to make sure she was alone. “Nothing to report yet but, as we in the detective business like to say, progress is being made.”

  “Forget the progress, get to the good stuff. How are you and your Mr. Walker getting along?”

  “I keep telling you, he’s not my Mr. Walker. For the record, Gloria, Thomas and I have both concluded that we don’t have anything in common other than a mutual interest in finding out what happened to Meredith and his brother’s wife, Bethany.”

  “Hmm.”

  “But if it makes you feel better, Thomas’s dog likes me.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s a start. Has Mr. Walker taken you to dinner?”

  “Well, yes. Last night, as a matter of fact. But it was solely for the purpose of discussing our mutual problem.”

  “Did you go back to his place or your place?”

  Leonora took the phone away from her ear, stared at it for a second and then put it back to her ear. “His place. But only for a few minutes. It was on the way. Sort of.”

  “Did he make a pass?”

  “No.” Leonora took her feet down off the desk and sat forward. “He tightened the screw in my glasses.”

  “Ah.”

  “It was amazing. He had one of those little tiny screwdrivers. You know, the kind that optometrists use.”

  “Imagine that. I do like a man who is handy with his tools. Such a useful talent.”

  It was impossible to argue in the face of such determined optimism. Leonora gave up, told Gloria to say hello to Herb and ended the call.

  She sat back, steepled her fingers and brooded for a while.

  It was a strange experience. She rarely brooded. She tried to get into it. It wasn’t like she didn’t have stuff to brood about. It just wasn’t easy. Her thoughts kept going back to Thomas and his little jewel of a house.

  A low, sighing groan snapped her out of the odd mood. The sound emanated from the other side of the wall behind the card catalog.

  Startled, she swung around in the chair and stared at the old wooden catalog. A second groan and a squeak followed hard on the heels of the first. She could have sworn she also heard a muffled giggle.

  The easy explanation was that the sounds were coming from people in the room next to the library. But she was certain that there was no one in that chamber. The door was closed and locked.

  She left the office and hurried through the stacks to the door of the library. She was about to step out into the hall to see if anyone was about when she caught the dim flicker of movement in the old convex mirror that hung on the opposite wall directly across from where she stood.

  The bulging curve of the heavily framed looking glass reflected the corridor for a distance of several feet on either side. The shifting of light in the dark glass was a reflection of the hall to her right. As she watched, a section of the corridor wall swung open.

  Two figures slipped out into the hall. One of them paused to make certain that the hidden door swung shut. Then they both turned and disappeared in the direction of the main staircase at the far end of the passage. There was more muffled laughter and soft conversation.

  Julie Bromley and her boyfriend, Travis Todd. Julie had introduced him to Leonora that morning.

  She waited until the two students had vanished downstairs and then walked to where she had seen them emerge from the wall. A narrow seam in the paneling was the only evidence of a door.

  She pushed gently. Nothing happened. She pushed a little harder. T
he invisible door swung inward with a creak of rusty hinges.

  There was just enough light coming from the hall behind her to reveal a narrow flight of steps that curved around itself. It led to the closed floor above.

  An old-fashioned set of servants’ stairs, she thought. Julie and Travis were no doubt using a room on the third floor for a trysting spot.

  Personally, she couldn’t see how anyone could get into a romantic mood in this grim house but maybe that was her age showing.

  She let the door swing shut and continued along the shadowy hall toward the main staircase. The dark mirrors glittered unpleasantly on the walls. She glanced at one as she went past. The frame was made of wood, heavily carved with crests and scrolls. The design and workmanship were typical of mirrors from the end of the seventeen hundreds, according to what she had read.

  She saw her own image reflected dimly back at her in the old glass. There was something wrong with her reflection. She stopped and examined it more closely.

  There were two reflections, she realized. The second was a ghostly duplicate of the first, slightly off-center. The result was an eerie doppelganger effect that made her shiver.

  You can’t sleep yet.

  Where had that stray thought come from? It drifted through her mind, a ghostly whisper with no form or obvious source. Her heart pounded. Her hands went cold. Her breath felt tight in her lungs.

  Stop it. Get a grip.

  She quickly averted her gaze and hurried off down the hall.

  There was no reason to be unnerved by the double image, she told herself. It was simply the result of deficiencies in the early manufacturing process. The techniques of mirror making had been closely guarded trade secrets in the old days. The results produced had been less than perfect by today’s standards.

  But she knew, deep down, what had sent the chill through her. It was because, for just an instant, the second reflection imposed over her own had looked a lot like Meredith.

  She went quickly down the stairs, relieved to be able to descend into the hubbub of activity on the first floor.

  She made her way through a pile of electrical equipment and a maze of folded tables and rushed out into the parking lot. Outside, she was relieved to see that a crisp, chilled sunlight had, temporarily at least, driven off the fog. It also banished what was left of the strange panic that had welled up inside her when she had looked into the double-image mirror.