His hand closed over hers for a second. ‘Please don’t apologize. The fact that you’re here is compliment enough.’
Oh yes, he had charisma all right. And ego. And style.
‘And what about your background, Jeremy?’ she went on determinedly, after a quick slurp of wine. ‘Your family, for instance. Do you come from a musical background?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Hardly. My parents were shopkeepers in Kent. I have very few relatives left, in fact. There was a wealthy and eccentric great-aunt some years back, a feminist before they were fashionable, but she’s long gone. There’s nothing in my family remotely interesting. No aristocratic ghosts, or skeletons in the cupboard to excite your American readers, I’m afraid.’
Maybe not, but there was plenty to interest Alex Best, Private Investigator. He had given her enough to feed on. Caroline was almost certainly due to inherit her money from the wealthy feminist great-aunt, and Jeremy Laver’s intense eyes had glittered with an almost obsessive anger the moment he spoke of her.
She could almost read his mind. He resented the fact that the aunt had left the money to Caroline, and he wanted it. How far he would go to get it, was something else. But the fact that Caroline was missing at this critical time was more than interesting...
‘I’m sure my readers will be very interested in all of this, Jeremy. Most of them are Anglophiles. You’ll be sure to give me a photograph, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
Predictably, he had a selection, taken from different angles and in different moods. She asked for several and got them. You never knew. Nick might want one for his collection eventually, when she had nailed him. Or his rogues’ gallery.
‘What do you like to do when you’re not performing or rehearsing?’ she asked next. ‘Our readers are always intrigued by a person’s pastimes and hobbies.’
‘I don’t have time for hobbies.’
As Alex waited, he went on, ‘Oh well, sometimes I get out of town and go down to a friend’s place in the country for a break, but he’s not there right now.’
‘Oh? On holiday, is he?’ she said conversationally.
‘Something like that. We don’t keep tabs on each other. but I find it a useful retreat occasionally.’
And why did she have the strongest feeling that he was talking about Caroline’s cottage, and that he was making all this up as he went along, just to give her some copy for her imaginary magazine.
‘It sounds just darling,’ she said. ‘So rural and olde worlde English.’
She had to resist from cringing as she said it. Gary was hovering nearby now, and he’d be just as likely to laugh out loud at her gushing voice. She snapped her notebook shut.
‘Well, I think I’ve got all I need for now, Jeremy. If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to contact you again.’
‘And you’ll let me see the piece when you’ve written it, won’t you? For the archives,’ he said with a smile.
Self-satisfied berk, Alex thought. She smiled back sweetly. ‘Of course I will. It will be my pleasure.’
It would also be her pleasure to see him behind bars if he’d done anything to harm Caroline, she thought savagely.
Chapter 7
Norman Price phoned again a few days later, aggressive as ever. Alex forestalled him before he could launch into an angry tirade about why she hadn’t found his daughter yet.
‘I wanted to talk to you, Mr Price. Do you have any idea where Caroline sends her crosswords, please? It’s important that I find out.’
Whether it was or not was immaterial at that moment. She just wanted to catch him off guard.
‘Why the devil should it be so important?’
‘Because she may deliver the work herself, and if so, the people concerned may have some idea of her movements. The editor would know her, certainly, and so far I haven’t been able to trace anyone. She may well have a confidante at the magazine or newspaper office concerned. She may even have gone on holiday with a friend and isn’t missing at all. I presume you’ve considered that.’
She heard him curse as she elaborated recklessly.
‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve told you these past weeks, woman? Caroline doesn’t make friends, and I don’t know where she sends the piddling crosswords. If you think it’s important to know, then it’s your job to find out.’
She winced as he slammed down the phone, obviously having forgotten why he’d called in the first place. But it prevented her from having to make further conversation with him, and admitting that she had really hit a block in her investigations.
It was one thing to be convinced that Jeremy Laver might have something to do with his cousin’s vanishing act; it was something else to be able to prove it — and even more so, to find out what he had done with her.
She was still puzzling over all the possibilities when she went home that evening and closed the door of her flat with a sigh of relief. Some days were good, and others were not, and this was definitely one of the baddies.
She was getting jittery again, and she knew it. Aspects of her job were dangerous, and she tried never to dwell on the thought for too long, otherwise she might really take fright and take up something simpler, like computer technology.
But there was always the chance that she could be on the trail of a potential killer. If that were so, then everything could back-fire on her, and she could be the one who was killed.
She had forced herself to think seriously about it since meeting Jeremy at the theatre. She had a sixth sense that there was a ruthless personality hidden behind the rather laid-back look of the musician. But did that mean he was capable of a crime? She tried to be analytical as she studied the various photographs he had given her.
That lean, hungry look was extremely sensual, but it could be menacing too. Some women liked a hint of danger and excitement in their men, and he had it in abundance. One look from those mesmeric eyes could make any woman go weak-kneed.
She ignored the sudden rush of adrenalin in her veins, and concentrated on checking off what he might have done to keep Caroline out of the way until her birthday came and went. There were only four — maybe five — that made any sense.
He could have killed her.
He could have paid someone else to kill her.
He could have kidnapped her and hidden her.
He could have paid someone else to kidnap her.
He was in cahoots with somebody else anyway.
Alex thought hard about the choices, and didn’t want to believe the first two. She knew she had got ridiculously fond and protective of a woman she didn’t even know, and wanted to find her safe and well, but she honestly didn’t think Jeremy would have killed Caroline. And she preferred to keep an open mind about him employing a hitman to do the job.
He was an artiste, passionate and exciting in many ways, but still fastidious. She sensed that even being remotely involved in anything as distasteful as a murder would offend him. His fingers were long and sensitive, the fingernails beautifully kept, and his hands were so smooth they had to be regularly creamed because they were on show so much.
He was vain all right, but Alex didn’t condemn him for that. He played the violin with all the finesse of caressing a woman, and his smile was whiter than white. He was a man who took care of himself. She didn’t think for a moment that he was homo-sexual, and nor did she think he’d have the stomach for murder.
The other possibilities were more likely, but there was a big flaw in the first one. She didn’t know how close the relationship was between himself and Caroline, but she was his cousin, and therefore they must know one another well. Even if they didn’t meet frequently now, they would recognize one another physically. How could he possibly get away with kidnapping her and hiding her away himself, knowing of all the repercussions that would follow?
Of course, she could have been blindfolded and gagged and hidden away in some dark place all this time... and since she was deaf, she wouldn’
t have recognized a familiar voice...
The visual horror of this wasn’t lost on Alex. She hated dark places herself, and the fact that Caroline wouldn’t be able to hear anything if she was in captivity and in the dark, horrified her even more. Not even the scuttling of rats... the silent world of the deaf must be even more terrible in such circumstances.
Squeamishly Alex pushed the image away, and hurriedly thought of choice number four. This seemed the most likely one of all, except for the perfectly’ reasonable one of Caroline simply disappearing on a whim of her own. She was strong-willed and independent, and Alex admired her for that, considering what she had for a father.
There was a sidebar to the last choice. Jeremy and an accomplice, in it for mutual gain. Jeremy and Norman Price, perhaps? Now that she had met them both, Alex didn’t think so. They were poles apart in temperament, even if they did both hope to gain from Caroline’s inheritance.
But in different ways. Norman wanted her found in order to manipulate her, if Alex’s theories were right. He needed his factory to succeed for his own prestige. She wasn’t sure that Caroline was the type to be manipulated, but there were always ways for a father to persuade a daughter to go in with him in business matters. False accounts... pleading illness in order to pass the business on... there were ways.
And then there was Jeremy. He needed the inheritance to fund his theatre and make a name for himself. He might brag about the theatre being his life and not being ambitious in any razzmatazz way, but Alex made a pretty shrewd guess that he was as aspirational as the next man given the chance — and the money. Her head throbbed with the complexity of it all. It had seemed relatively simple at first, but there were always twists and turns that sent you up wrong alleys.
She finally gave up all thoughts of any more work for the evening, and took a long leisurely bath to relax her instead of a shower, and then turned on the television. Even an inane game show was preferable to letting her mind go round and round in endless circles and getting nowhere.
***
Jeremy Laver’s dark basement flat was in one of those tall houses in an outer London suburb that would have once housed a moderately affluent family with servants of the Upstairs Downstairs variety. Iron railings that hadn’t gone to the Second World War effort flanked every house on the square, and there was a minimum amount of space between the steps leading down to the flat and the street above.
Nowadays the narrow entry space merely held the obligatory dustbin and a tacked-on letterbox on the outside of the door to the flat. The basement occupants could only see the feet of passers-by, if they bothered to look up through the window, and the whole place would be claustrophobic for anyone so inclined.
Fortunately Jeremy wasn’t. The flat suited him admirably. He wasn’t a pauper, but he certainly wasn’t rich, and it pandered to his artistic mind to think that he lived in a style that artistes such as Beethoven and Mozart might have approved. One part of him accepted that it was good for the soul for a creative man to suffer for his art.
While the other, the more acquisitive side of him, said that if he had the money to buy his theatre he’d have no objection at all to seeing his name in neon lights and living the good life.
He was contemplating whether or not to go out for a late Chinese takeaway that evening or settle for whatever he had in his refrigerator, when he heard the footsteps come down the stone steps outside his flat, then heard the rap on his door.
Frowning, and not wanting or expecting company, he opened it a chink, and then swore an oath as he saw his visitor.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Daneman?’ he hissed. ‘We agreed not to make any kind of contact unless it was absolutely necessary.’
‘I needed to get away for a few hours, that’s what,’ the swarthy man said with a scowl. ‘The company’s not all that it might be and I ain’t sticking around all night to be abused.’
‘You didn’t object to the company in the past as far as I recall. Tired of it already, are you?’
‘Already? Man, I was tired of it before we began this caper. Now it’s got this bloody bee in its bonnet about needing some work to do because it’s bored.’
Jeremy grinned. That sounded about right. It was Caroline to a T. He felt briefly sorry for her, knowing of old how much she hated to be idle, but the sympathy soon faded as he quizzed Daneman some more.
‘You’ve made everything secure, I hope. It’s madness to leave her alone. I thought you had more sense—’
‘You stick to your fiddling, and leave me to know my own business, Laver,’ Daneman said coldly. ‘A few pills slipped into its drink and it’ll be out cold for the rest of the night. And every-thing’s completely secure. In fact, it’ll be so peaceful there for a change, I’d probably have done better to stay behind. Its perpetual whinging is enough to drive a man to drink. It don’t like the surroundings—’
‘No details, remember?’ Jeremy said sharply. ‘That’s your end of it. I don’t want to know where she is — as long as you’re not — well, you know... ’
‘Sticking a knife in its guts?’ Daneman taunted as he saw the other man wince. ‘Don’t worry, pansy-boy, it’ll not come to harm, providing it don’t drive me nuts in the meantime.’
He despised Laver, for all their collusion. Laver wanted the dibbs, but he didn’t want to get involved. He didn’t even want to know where Daneman had taken his cousin.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep referring to her as it,’ Jeremy snapped. ‘She has a name, damn it. And you weren’t so averse to her in the beginning. You said it was a treat to convert a drudge of a woman to a sex bomb, if I recall the choice words you used,’ he added, wishing he hadn’t managed to produce such vivid imagery of Caroline and this oaf, and feeling briefly sorry for her.
‘That was all part of the job. If you don’t like my methods you should have got somebody else. It’s not too late now, if you want to pay me off.’
‘You know I can’t. Not yet.’
‘Then keep your trap shut and listen to me. I didn’t come all this way just to make small talk,’ Daneman snapped back.
Jeremy eyed him with real dislike, but their plotting had tied them inexorably together now. He was slightly built and Daneman was a bull of a man. He supposed the local police would refer to them as unlikely partners in crime. Not that he considered this a real crime.
He was just getting what he thought he deserved and, but for an accident of birth or fate, he’d be getting the old trout’s money instead of his cousin. The fact that his great-aunt had decided a woman was the only fit person to inherit her money, only incensed him more, since he considered himself far more worthy than a female who spent her days doing crosswords for a hobby. The skill of it completely escaped him. He could only see the unfairness of it all, and it was something that had festered inside him all his adult life.
‘It sent me to the cottage a while back to get more of those bloody grids that it calls them,’ Daneman went on. ‘I only agreed to do it to stop it screeching all day long.’
‘Go on,’ Jeremy said, knowing there must be more to come. ‘There was somebody there—’
‘What?’
‘Somebody was standing near the bedroom window, so I got away pretty damn quick. I didn’t go back until the next day, then I trashed it to make it look like a break-in, just in case. I saw the woman come back though. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I thought you might want to know.’
‘What woman?’ Jeremy snarled. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just a cleaning woman or something?’
Daneman grinned for the first time. He had thick fleshy lips and a face that some would liken to an unmade bed. Jeremy sup-posed that certain women would find him sexy. Amazingly, Caroline had.
‘Did you ever see a slinky cleaning woman dressed all in black, with great tits and big hips, and flaming red hair long enough to claw through while you were on the job?’
Any other time his graphic description and thrusting gestures would have ma
de Jeremy sick, but not now, when he could visualize the woman so clearly in his mind it was almost as if she was sitting beside him, notebook in hand while she flicked back that stunning, pike-straight red hair.
‘Made you horny, have I?’ Daneman said with a leer, when his companion seemed too dumbstruck to respond for the moment.
‘Red hair?’ Jeremy said hoarsely. ‘And in her mid-twenties, would you say? Green eyes?’
‘Christ almighty, I never got close enough to see her eyes. The age would be about right. Why? What is she to you?’
He finally caught on that Jeremy had gone a sickly colour and was pouring himself a stiff brandy that he downed in one swallow. Since it didn’t look as if he was going to be offered one, Daneman strode over to the decanter and poured one for him-self, sinking it as fast as Jeremy had.
‘All right, so talk,’ he said, sprawling out on the sofa. ‘But I warn you, if things are going wrong at this stage I’m out of here.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jeremy said agitatedly. ‘A journalist called me out of the blue recently, saying she was doing a feature for some American magazine and wanted to interview me. I sent her two concert tickets, and she fits the description you’ve given me exactly.’
‘And you didn’t think to query a stranger wanting to do an interview on you?’ Daneman yelled.
‘It’s not unheard of,’ Jeremy said angrily, mortified at the implication that he wasn’t newsworthy. ‘But I’ll let that pass for now. What’s more to the point is that if it’s the same person, what was she was doing at Caroline’s cottage?’
‘If the woman was a journalist,’ Daneman said.
They looked at each other and Daneman’s voice became vitriolic. ‘Somebody’s on to us. God knows how, but it looks as if this woman’s got wind of the operation. Maybe she’s after a cut. She may need to be silenced—’
Jeremy shuddered. ‘Can’t you stop talking like some American gangster for one minute? We need to think. And we’re not silencing anybody. That wasn’t part of the deal.’
Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1) Page 12