The Complete Novels of the Lear Sister Trilogy

by Julia London

  “Will someone please tell me what is going on here?” Rachel begged as she fished around for the seat belt. “For starters, who is he?”

  “Like I said, Detective Keating,” the detective snapped.

  “Oh please,” Dagne muttered.

  But it was all beginning to sink in for Rachel—the police had come for her and Myron, and he’d used Flynn and Dagne to find her. “Oh God,” she said, looking at Flynn. “Oh God, I’m so sorry—”

  “What are you sorry for?” Detective Keating barked as he made a hard right behind Myron.

  “Oh for Chrissakes, will you stop acting like a big bad cop?” Dagne insisted, clearly exasperated.

  “You are interfering with official police business, Red,” the detective said to Dagne.

  “Well, someone needs to tell her what is going on!” Dagne shot back.

  “Actually, Joe, if you don’t mind . . . I’ll take this one,” Flynn said.

  Joe? Rachel looked at Flynn again; he was calmly considering her, as if he knew all this was going to happen.

  “Okay, that’s it!” she snapped. “Who are you really, Flynn? I thought you were a computer guy, so how do you know a cop and call him Joe? How do you know Dagne? I didn’t introduce you to Dagne! I want to know what is going on here!”

  “All right,” Flynn said, and put his hand on her leg, rubbing her thigh very gently, calming her. “Take a breath or two, will you? All right, here it is. The truth is . . . I’m not actually a computer guy. I’m a fraud investigator for Lloyds of London. Lloyds insures quite a lot of property in the United States, and one of their clients is the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Society.”

  “Oh my God.” Her head was going to explode. Literally. Right off her body and it would be a godsend. He was an insurance fraud investigator and her house was full of insurance fraud. But worse, much worse, far worse, she realized as her heart sank to her toes . . . “You mean you lied to me?” she asked weakly.

  “I’m afraid I did,” he said. “But more importantly, Rachel, you must be truthful now. Are you part of Professor Tidwell’s scheme?”

  “No!”

  “I told you!” Dagne said angrily. “Look, you’re making her cry. Stop it!”

  “Miss Delaney, if you please,” Flynn said sharply.

  “I mean it, you little wack-job,” the detective quickly interjected. “I’m about to pull over and put a gag in your mouth,” he added, and Dagne snorted indignantly.

  “Rachel, the items in your house,” Flynn continued.

  “I know,” she said, stopping him. “I thought he’d bought them at the gift shop with his cheap-ass employee discount,” she said, realizing instantly how foolish and ridiculous that sounded. “He . . . he owes me money, and he never pays me back, and I thought he got some huge discount, so that was his lame way of sort of paying me back.”

  “He had a discount, all right,” the detective snorted.

  “Oh God, oh God,” Rachel said, and began to hyperventilate. “What’s happened? What has he done?”

  She just barely glimpsed Joe’s roll of the eyes, because Flynn shoved her head down between her knees. “Breathe!” he commanded her. “Deep breaths, one, two, three . . . that’s right, there’s a good girl.” He held her head down a moment more until he was certain she was breathing. When he let her up, they had pulled into a parking lot.

  “Now then. It seems Myron has been stealing from the various museum properties—mostly estates in Newport,” Flynn explained.

  Rachel had guessed as much, but she still couldn’t figure out why. “But . . . but to what end? It doesn’t make any sense. If he stole stuff and hid it in my house, what good does it do him?”

  “Fraudulent claims,” Flynn said, as the detective pulled into a parking spot. “I’ll explain later.”

  The four of them watched Myron jog up the steps to one of the condominiums, fit a key into the lock, and go inside.

  “Let’s go,” Joe said. “We’ll take it slow and easy, let her go first,” he said, indicating Rachel. “He knows her. He’ll see her and open the door.

  “What about me?” Dagne whined.

  “Sit here and keep your mouth shut and don’t touch anything,” he said, stepping out of the car, and leaned down, said to Flynn, “I’m calling for backup.”

  “Oh wow,” Dagne exclaimed, and got out of the car, too, in spite of being told not to.

  But Rachel was too stunned; her mind was whirling around the improbable and impossible events. As she stared at Flynn, the pieces were coming together, coming to the realization that their chance meeting had been no chance at all. “Did you . . . did you ever see me on campus?” she asked tearfully. “Or was that a lie, too?”

  Flynn pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  “So it was all a lie? Everything was a lie?”

  “No, no, not everything, Rachel. Everything between us, that was real, just as I tried to tell you.”

  “You were using me to get to Myron,” she said, ignoring him.

  Flynn did not deny it.

  “But why?” she asked as the detective knocked impatiently on Flynn’s window. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you were doing? Why did you have to lie about the computers and the homicide—”

  “Actually, the homicide was not a lie.”

  “You could have just said—”

  “No, I couldn’t have, because we thought—at least in the beginning—that you were perhaps involved somehow.”

  This had to be her worst nightmare, and she was humiliated beyond comprehension. She should have trusted her instincts—guys like Flynn did not fall for chicks like her. “You honestly think that I could do something like this?” she asked, fighting tears.

  “Of course not!” he said. “But there are other opinions to consider.”

  “Oliver! Let’s go!” the detective yelled.

  He had doubted her. He had wondered if she could be part of this, and Rachel was out of her mind now, because the only person who could clear her was a man who had used their friendship unconscionably.

  It was more than she could endure, and abruptly, she was moving with blind emotion, fumbling with the door, practically falling out of the car, racing to Myron’s apartment as the detective yelled at her to stop. But she didn’t stop, she ran up the steps and banged on the door, and shouted Myron’s name.

  He opened the door a moment later. He was stoned again, she could tell from the lazy look in his eye and the fact that he laughed when he saw her. “Rachel!” he exclaimed. “What a surprise! What are you doing here?”

  “I want my goddamn phone back,” she said.

  Myron blinked. “All right already—” And then his eyes bugged out, just like in the cartoons.

  As it turned out, that was the last thing Myron would say as a free man, because at that precise moment, Flynn came flying past Rachel to grab Myron by the collar and push him up against the wall.

  But Rachel tripped when he shoved past, and fell into Flynn and Myron, which made Myron flounder and try to struggle free, and Dagne shrieked, and there was a flurry of arms and legs and a lot of scuffling around and then Flynn was manhandling Myron as Myron bellowed like a cow.

  Everything seemed to happen in one huge blur. Someone was helping her up; Myron was sitting on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back. Flynn and Detective Keating and two cops in uniforms were inside the condo, and one of the cops had another man up against the wall, spread eagle as he patted him down.

  There were several antiquities inside, too, scattered around the small living room—china, silver candelabra, hand-painted bowls, and gold commodes set into mahogany chests.

  The other man, the one against the wall, was a Brit, as it turned out. He handed Flynn his identification as Rachel wandered around stunned. Flynn took one look, said, “Hallo, Geoffrey. Fancied a life of luxury, did you?”

  And then more cops came, taking statements from everyone. Flynn and Joe asked Rachel a long list of questi
ons: When did the items first begin to appear, how many of them had she seen, where they were kept, what had she done with them. Had she ever asked Myron why he continued to bring her gifts, since they were no longer lovers? How long had it been since she and Myron were lovers? How long were they actually lovers? They were lovers, weren’t they?

  Rachel went from frightened to humiliated to numb.

  Later, after they had taken Myron and the British guy off in handcuffs (and Rachel’s phone was given over to evidence), the detective and Flynn drove Dagne and Rachel to the Hilton Head airstrip, and ordered her plane to be readied for the flight back to Providence.

  “So what happens next?” Dagne asked the detective.

  “We’ll stay behind to inventory the stuff and get our reports in order,” he said.

  “I still don’t get it,” Dagne said thoughtfully. “What were they going to do with all that stuff?”

  “Perhaps sell it on eBay, just as you did,” Flynn guessed. “Or dump it in the ocean. It’s terribly difficult to move that sort of art and antiquities on the black market.”

  “But I still don’t get it,” Dagne insisted.

  “It went something like this,” Flynn said patiently. “Geoffrey is a claims adjuster for Lloyds. He and Myron met up somewhere along the way and concocted the scheme that would make them rich . . . or so they hoped. Essentially, they took small items from the various RIHPS properties and dumped them in Rachel’s basement, or in Geoffrey’s car—he brought them here, you see. Apparently, it’s only used in the summer months, so they were quite safe here for a time. And at Rachel’s, well . . .” He looked at Rachel, smiled a little. “They were lost, or used as fruit bowls or what have you.”

  “Back at the offices,” the detective said, “Myron would make the claim for the loss, and Geoffrey would process it. But the claims were always significantly higher than the property was worth.”

  “Lloyds took the claim,” Flynn continued, “submitted by their adjuster and substantiated by both the adjuster and a professor from Brown University. Somehow, they arranged for the claim to be paid to Myron at RIHPS. RIHPS got the actual value for the lost property, and these two chaps split the additional claim money—they were skimming the gray area. Quite clever, really.”

  “So how did they get caught?” Dagne asked.

  “As is usually the case with such scams,” Flynn said, “they got greedy. Our fraud detection unit noticed an unusually high number of claims were being submitted. Their excuse was, of course, a series of thefts had occurred. But our colleagues in America,” he said, looking at Joe, “had determined those thefts to be an inside job.”

  Dagne let out a long sigh and shook her head. “What a jackass,” she said. “I just can’t understand why Myron would risk so much,” she said. “It wasn’t like he didn’t have a good job. A professor at Brown?”

  “Tenure,” Rachel muttered miserably. “He couldn’t get tenure. He had another few months and they were going to let him go.”

  “Ah,” the detective said. “That explains a lot.”

  A man appeared at Rachel’s left. “Miss Lear? We’re ready for you now.”

  “Thanks, Ted,” she said, and sighed wearily as she came to her feet.

  “All right, ladies, don’t go anywhere for a couple of weeks, okay? We’ll need to talk to you again,” the detective said, just like on Law & Order.

  “Fine,” Dagne said, sounding exasperated, but Rachel knew that lilt in her voice meant she’d be more than happy for Detective Keating to question her again.

  As for Rachel . . . she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Flynn. Between her humiliation at having been duped by Myron for all the world to see, and the pain of having fallen in love with someone who was using her to get to Myron . . . she just wanted out of there.

  She got up, put her bag on her shoulder, and started walking without a word, without looking back to anyone, hardly caring if Dagne followed her or not, not even looking at Ted, who smiled and pointed to the jet on the tarmac.

  “Rachel!” Flynn called after her, but she did not turn around. When her foot hit the tarmac, she began to run, not caring that she looked like a fool, running across the tarmac. She was already strapped into her seat by the time Dagne managed to get on.

  “My God, this is your dad’s?” Dagne said reverently, gaping in disbelief.

  “One, anyway,” Rachel muttered miserably, and Dagne gleefully prattled on about the gold fixtures, the bed, and the leather seats and monogrammed towels, and on and on . . .

  Rachel said nothing. She couldn’t speak. Tears were streaming down her face as she stared out the little portal window at Flynn. He was standing at the edge of the tarmac. His hair was all messed up, and she imagined he had dragged his fingers through it several times in the course of the day. With his weight braced on one leg, he had a hand on his waist and was staring at the Lear plane with an expression that Rachel could not quite make out.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  By the time Flynn and Joe arrived back in Providence the next afternoon, the press was all over the breaking story. They picked up the Providence Journal on the drive from Boston to Providence. The headline read:

  BROWN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR IS

  MASTERMIND BEHIND INSURANCE SCAM

  “Oh, Christ,” Flynn muttered, and read the article aloud to Joe, who beamed like a bloody idiot. There were several quotes in the article. Myron’s boss at the RIHPS claimed Myron had been a fringe employee for some time, often missing work or coming in late, and misplacing items in their catalog. His dean at Brown University called him a “mediocre” professor whose path to tenure had never materialized.

  And then, of course, was the paragraph about the “girlfriend,” naming Rachel, who, according to the paper, had not yet been charged, but in whose house the stolen goods had been stored.

  “It’s a bloody circus,” Flynn said.

  “Yeah.” Joe beamed.

  They arrived at police headquarters, and a dozen or more reporters were waiting for them, all anxious to have a word with them about their work on the case. They held a joint press conference, speaking on behalf of their respective organizations. Joe was a natural, parading around like a peacock, but Flynn stood back, let Joe have the spotlight, particularly when his higher-ups praised the work he’d done.

  They filed their joint reports and spoke with prosecutors, who assured them that while Myron and his accomplice faced extradition hearings from South Carolina, that a full range of theft and fraud charges would be brought against each of them, as well as a charge for possession of a significant amount of marijuana, convictions for which guaranteed at least twenty years behind bars before there was any hope of parole.

  The media frenzy increased throughout the week as the national news media picked up the story. Images of items being carted out of Rachel’s house were broadcast over and over again.

  With all the media attention, Flynn didn’t want to go to her house and draw more. Nevertheless, he tried to ring Rachel, of course he tried, but she hung up—rather, slammed the phone down—refusing to talk to him. And then she had her phone disconnected altogether.

  Flynn busied himself with the smaller but important case details that had to be attended, biding his time until he could find a way to reach her.

  His superiors hoped he might track down the things Dagne Delaney had sold on eBay, which took a bit of time. And there was the thorough examination of the contents of Rachel’s house. While Flynn did not attend the gutting of her house, he did examine the items in an RIHPS warehouse. He believed, as he told his superiors in London, that they would be able to recover most, if not all of the items.

  There was the media, too, which had yet to complete their feeding on this particular story. It wasn’t until the end of that extraordinary week that Flynn was certain no media was following him around and that things were secure enough to drive to Rachel’s house. He arrived on a gray Sunday afternoon, parked in the drive, just behind her c
ar. He walked up the porch steps and knocked on her door.

  Before she could possibly answer, her neighbor was instantly at the side of the yard. “Are you a policeman?” he called out to Flynn.

  Flynn glanced impatiently at the man “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh . . . you’re the Englishman!” he said, smiling now. “I hope a policeman comes, because I got more things to tell them.”

  Now Flynn turned fully and looked at him with all the disgust he felt. “Do you, indeed? What sort of things?”

  “Well, I am suing her because she won’t move the tree,” he said, gesturing wildly toward the back of her house. “And she has this friend, and they do some strange things at night. I’ve seen them.”

  “Go on, Flynn said as he walked down the porch steps to where the man was standing.

  “I saw her carry some things to the garage, too. I think it’s stolen property.”

  Flynn stopped just inches from the worm. “What’s your name?”

  “Tony Valicielo.”

  “Tony Valicielo, let me offer you a bit of friendly advice, if I may,” he said pleasantly, then roughly grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up to his tiptoes.

  “Hey!” Valicielo yelped.

  “I am still quite involved in this case, and if I hear you or hear of you saying even the slightest thing against Miss Lear, I will personally come to your house and beat the living shit out of you.”

  Tony Valicielo blinked.

  “Just so that we are perfectly clear, I do mean the living shit out of you. And furthermore, if you do not cease and desist in your spying on Miss Lear, I shall personally have you arrested and thrown into a jail cell where you will promptly be forgotten for all eternity.”

  Valicielo swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple dipped almost to his waist.