High Tide

by Jude Deveraux

  Fiona knew it was her turn to be the calm, sane one. “We’re not going to figure out anything if you keep destroying the evidence.” She reached down to pick up the papers, but then leaned back against the couch. How could such a beautiful room feel like a prison?

  The thought of prison made her look back at the papers. They had been reading for hours but they had found out nothing, for there was nothing to find out. Roy Hudson’s life had been without excitement—unless you thought that having three wives was exciting. Each of his former wives had cited his attraction to other women as the cause of the separation.

  “But this is the teddy bear everyone loved,” Fiona said bitterly. “I bet they didn’t love him before he was a national dead man.”

  Ace smiled. “As opposed to a national celebrity?”

  “Exactly. You find out anything at all?”

  “Nothing.” His papers dealt with Smokey, and there was very little information in them. He’d wanted to read them before Fiona in case they needed to be censored. But Smokey was a man who kept to himself and what dealings he’d had with people weren’t put on paper.

  At one o’clock, Fiona yawned and said she was going to take a shower.

  “Another one?”

  “I think some of the mold in that cabin took root in my hair.”

  “When you get back, let’s talk about what you wrote during the night. Maybe you had some ideas.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said as she headed for the bathroom.

  “I’ll put that video in and get started on that,” Ace called after her.

  “Sure,” she mumbled as she closed the bathroom door. Truth was, she wanted privacy so she could give way to the tears she was holding back. She’d spent most of the night trying to find some connection between her and Ace. She’d tried to remember anything her father might have said about his own life, but she’d always been filled with so much that she wanted to tell him, and John Burkenhalter had been an excellent listener.

  She got into the shower and let the tears flow. She was a doer, and this inactivity was maddening to her. If they could just find a clue, some connection in all this, then they could do something.

  It was quite some time before she got out of the shower and went into the bedroom to dress. She put on a scrumptious Italian silk blouse, man-tailored but feminine at the same time. As she fastened the silver belt buckle over gabardine trousers, she thought, I won’t get to wear silk in prison.

  As soon as she opened the door to the living room, Ace muted the TV. “Frank is right,” he said in disgust. “This is the most horrible show I’ve ever seen. I can’t even figure out why it’s called Raphael.”

  She kept her face averted so he couldn’t see her eyes. She’d tried to cover the redness with makeup, but her tears were still obvious. “How’s it bad?” she asked.

  “Mike included copies of reviews printed in Texas and a couple from New York, where the show has already been shown. They can say it better than I can. Listen to this. ‘Raphael is a cross between Home Alone and Treasure Island, and it is deceptively complicated. Six of the most degenerate men imaginable are looking for treasure—and they will do anything to anyone to get it. Is this what we want to teach our children?’”

  Ace looked up at Fiona, but she said nothing. “Here’s another one,” he said. “ ‘Even though Raphael is said to be for children, the show has sexual overtones—especially homosexual. There’s thievery, betrayal, and not a likable or honorable person in the show. Ma Mills is obviously a madam, and Ludlow, with his lisp and twirling pearl-handled knife, is despicable. Craddock has—’”

  “A nervous tic,” Fiona said, her head coming up, her eyes widening.

  “‘A nervous tic,’” Ace said in unison. “‘And Hazen has …’” Trailing off, he looked at Fiona in question. “I thought you said you’d never seen the show.”

  “Give me that paper,” she said, then half snatched it from him. “ ‘Hazen, with his—’” She looked up at Ace. “ ‘Hazen, with his scar across his hand that reaches up his arm as though he had fought some monster and nearly lost—’”

  At that Fiona sat down on the couch, and the paper fell from her hands.

  Ace could see that she was in shock, but he didn’t know why. “Have you seen this show before? Is that the problem? Maybe Hudson knew—”

  “This is my father’s story,” Fiona whispered. “And it’s not called Raphael, it’s Raffles. The bastard stole the story from my father.”

  For a moment Ace just sat there blinking at her; then he smiled; then he smiled some more; then his face nearly cracked as he grinned so wide. The next moment he leaped up from his chair, grabbed Fiona about the waist, and lifted her into his arms. “We found it!” he said, then began to dance about with her. “We found it.”

  Fiona was still in a daze at hearing her favorite childhood story, her own very private story, being read aloud.

  Ace had no mixed feelings as he led Fiona across the room; then he punched some buttons on a sound system and the room came alive with music—ZZ Top.

  And it was the music, the wild acid rock that Fiona played when she was alone and wanted to celebrate, that made her come out of her daze.

  She raised her arms above her head and began to gyrate in a way that she only did when she was alone—and Ace was right with her. Hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, the music blasting away.

  “On the trip to Alaska,” Ace shouted as he leaned over Fiona, making her bend backward.

  “It rained,” she shouted back. “My father loved to tell stories.”

  Ace parted his knees and went down, moving his hips all the way; Fiona was with him. “Hudson felt guilty,” Ace shouted, “so he left everything to Smokey’s daughter.”

  “Me!” Fiona shouted back, then came up, her arms again lifted. “Ahhhhh haaaaa!” she yelled, country style.

  Ace grabbed her in his arms and whirled her about. “We did it. We did it. We did it,” he said over and over as he went round and round. “We did it.”

  Fiona twisted away from him and danced harder and as lustily as she’d ever danced in her life, tossing back her head and letting the wild music seep into her. “Jeremy hates this music,” she yelled.

  “So does Lisa,” Ace shouted back.

  “I’d never have thought you would like it!” she yelled. “Not Mr. Birdman.”

  “There’s lots you don’t know about me,” he said in a suggestive way; then in the next moment their arms were around each other and they were kissing. Fiona’s leg came up Ace’s leg, he grabbed it and pulled it onto his hip, then began to move his hips into hers, closer and closer and—

  The song ended, the CD ended, and suddenly they were in silence. And the quiet was deafening.

  Fiona pulled away first. “I, ah,” she said, her body still wrapped about his.

  “Right,” Ace said, then dropped her thigh.

  Fiona stepped back from him. Her chest was heaving both from the strenuous dance and from the emotion of kissing him, of feeling him close to her. “Jeremy,” she said firmly, as though the word were a battle call. “We have to think of them, of Jeremy and Lisa,” she said. “They’re risking everything for us, working night and day and—”

  “Sure,” Ace said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” With that he left to go into the bedroom.

  And Fiona sat down on the couch, trying to calm herself. Hands off, she told herself. This situation is not real. In a way it was as though they were stranded on a deserted island and they had no choice of companion but each other. In a normal situation she would never, ever be attracted to a man like Ace. A man who could be depended on in any emergency, who kept a cool head no matter what, who protected her, who—

  She picked up the remote control and started the tape. Better to put her mind on getting them out of this unreal situation than to think about what wasn’t to be.

  Fourteen

  “So what have you found out?” Ace asked thirty minutes later. He was wearing a thick sweat s
uit with the heavy terry cloth robe over it, and he had another towel about his neck.

  “You all right?”

  “Sure,” he snapped. “I asked if you’d found out anything.”

  “You don’t have to take my head off. What’s with you anyway? Minutes ago you were all over me, and now you can’t even be cordial? And why are you bundled up like you’re on an Arctic trek?”

  He didn’t answer her question, but picked up the telephone on the side table. “What do you want for lunch? My cousin will bring up anything you want.”

  She was still puzzling over his attire when realization suddenly hit her. “You took a cold shower, didn’t you? A very, very cold shower.”

  Ace frowned, the phone receiver in his hand. “Tuna salad sandwiches? Or you want a hot lunch?”

  Fiona smiled sweetly. “I’ll have what you’re having. But you better ask for a pot of coffee to be sent up. Hot coffee.”

  At that Ace unfastened his robe, gave her a quelling look, and said into the receiver that he wanted a dozen oysters on the half shell.

  Laughing, Fiona turned back to the TV. Ace was a man who could give as good as he got, she thought, then remembered that Jeremy hated to be teased.

  “Enough of that,” she mumbled.

  Ace sat down beside her. “Did you know that you talk to yourself?”

  “And you snore, so we’re even.”

  “And would you mind putting the cap back on the toothpaste? And don’t use my razor.”

  “I will when you stop leaving your wet towels on the floor for me to pick up,” she snapped. “And you ate all the strawberries off the pancakes this morning. Strawberries are my favorite.”

  “Mine too,” Ace said. “Lisa likes bananas.”

  “So does Jeremy,” Fiona said in surprise; then she realized that she and Ace were staring into each other’s eyes. “ Bananas and strawberries are fabulous together,” she said, her mouth set in a firm line.

  “The best,” Ace said, then looked back at the TV. “Now tell me what you’ve found out.”

  “Nothing that I didn’t already know.”

  “Come on, you must have seen something more.”

  “More?” As Fiona spoke, she seemed to read what was in Ace’s mind. “Oh, yeah, I see. I guess I killed Roy in revenge for stealing my father’s story.”

  “Exactly. So tell me everything about this story that you know.”

  “All right.” She picked up the remote, rewound the tape, then played it back. “See that man there?”

  “Darsey.”

  “Very good. I assume he’s the one the critics are connecting to homosexuality, right?”

  Ace nodded. “He lusts after the other men.”

  “No, she lusts after the other men. Darsey is a woman. My father revealed it well into the story.”

  “Okay, so give me an overview of the story.”

  “There’s a treasure, a couple of gold lions, that a man named Raffles—not Raphael—was taking back to the U.S. back in eighteen-something-or-other, but the ship went down and everything was lost.”

  “Except for the lions.”

  “They were lost too, but they were so big that a diver found them; then he and some other men pulled them out of the sea and hid them. The men made a map telling where the lions were; then they all died in rather mysterious and gruesome ways.” Fiona gave a wicked grin. “All of which my father described to me in gory detail.”

  “When did your father tell this story to you?”

  “He didn’t actually tell it to me. He wrote it over the course of six months while I was laid up with a broken leg when I was a kid. He sent me a letter every day, with the story unfolding more in each letter.”

  “Okay,” Ace said, “go on. What happened after the men were murdered?”

  “The last man died in a freak accident. He—”

  “Ah,” Ace said, “saved by the bell.” He got up to answer the door for room service.

  Fiona craned her neck around to see who was wielding the cart, but the person kept out of sight. Ace talked to the person for some minutes, then returned pushing the room service table. “Go on,” he said as he motioned for her to take a seat.

  “The man died, but the map survived. The story goes that it was in his effects and no one knew what it was for many years. His landlady thought it was pretty, so she had it framed and it hung on her wall for many years. When she died, the map was sold along with everything else to pay her debts.”

  “You want chicken or fish?”

  “Some of both, and don’t take all that salad,” Fiona said, reaching for a roll. “It wasn’t until … Let’s see, I’m thirty-two and I was eleven that summer that I broke my leg, so—”

  “Twenty-one, if you’re trying to subtract,” he said. “I wanted that roll. Why don’t you take the one that has raisins in it?”

  “Too sweet,” she said as she broke the roll in half and gave him a share. “Butter,” she said, and he handed it to her. “Okay, according to the story—and my father worked hard to make it seem real—about twenty-three years ago someone saw the map, realized it was genuine, then got with five other people and began searching for the lions. Only they didn’t know that lions were the treasure. At first they had no idea what the map led to.”

  “Wait a minute. Where did your father hear this story?” With her mouth full—the food was very, very good, everything fresh, as though it had just been taken from the sea or plucked from the vine—she almost snapped that he had not stolen it, if that’s what Ace was implying. Instead, calmly, she began to backtrack as she told Ace about that Christmas holiday when she’d broken her leg and as a result, she’d been so alone. She couldn’t go home with any of her friends, since she was in a cast from crotch to toes. And she’d been nearly hysterical when her father said he wouldn’t be able to make his usual Christmas visit.

  “I was the most miserable child on earth,” she told Ace. “But my father said he’d keep me company while I healed by telling me all about his job.” Fiona smiled in memory. “That first letter made me cry harder because what could he write me about drawing maps? ‘Dearest Fee, Today I measured six acres and tomorrow I measure four.’ That’s what I expected.”

  “But instead you got Raffles.”

  “Exactly. I knew my father had a great sense of humor. Every year on my birthday he sent me a fantasy map, something about faraway places with exotic names like Caramel Lake and Ice Cream Mountain.”

  “Very exotic,” Ace said, refilling her iced tea glass.

  “They were wonderful to a child,” she said, sounding defensive.

  “I just meant …” Pausing for a moment, he smiled. “Never mind. Go on. How did he create Raffles?”

  “He did it day by day, I guess. But he wrote as though he were actually on the trip, actually with the five other people, and that everything was really happening and …”

  Trailing off, she looked up at him. Ace wasn’t saying a word. His head was bent over his food, and he was saying nothing.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Fiona said.

  “Don’t what?” Ace blinked at her in puzzlement.

  “Don’t give me that look, Montgomery. I’ve seen it before, and I know you’re up to something.”

  “What if the story isn’t made up? What if it was really happening just as your father said?”

  At that Fiona gave a look of disgust. “You have no idea what you’re saying. When I was a kid, I thought the characters my father wrote about were the funniest people on earth. But what did I know? I was a kid and what I loved was seeing adults humiliated.”

  “Not to mention murdered,” Ace said. “And robbed and betrayed and—”

  “Exactly. As an adult I can see how really horrible the people were.” She leaned toward him. “And don’t forget—if it really happened then my father was one of those people looking for the treasure. But I still don’t believe that’s possible.”

  Ace got up from the table and went to the newspaper cli
ppings that his cousin had included with the video. “ ‘Hazen, with his scar across his hand that reaches up his arm as though he had fought some monster and nearly lost,’” he read from the paper.

  “Oh, no,” Fiona said. “You’re not going to do this to me. The story was made up; it was stolen by Roy Hudson, and that’s why he was murdered.”

  “In that scenario, only you have a reason to kill him, since the stories were your father’s alone, and you wanted to prevent Hudson from making money on them.”

  “If I was to inherit, it would have been in my best interest to have them make lots of money.”

  “So you waited until Raphael went national; then you offed Roy and now you stand to inherit.”

  “But why would I have killed him so publicly?” she half shouted, the logic of his words making her angry.

  “I didn’t say you were smart, just greedy.”

  When Fiona lifted a spoon to throw at him, he gave her a knowing smirk and said, “I knew you couldn’t take it. Want me to call the police and turn us in?”

  Fiona started to make a comeback to him, but suddenly she was deflated. “You do realize, don’t you, that, actually, we aren’t any further along than we were before? Roy Hudson stole stories my father made up or maybe my father actually lived them.”

  “If these are true stories, then I don’t think the participants would want them shown on national TV. Someone is bound to recognize the people involved.”

  “Great. I just hope the bad guys are recognized before we get the gas chamber,” she said.

  “Didn’t you say that your apartment was robbed and someone took letters your father wrote you?”

  “Aren’t you clever to remember that?” she said, one side of her mouth turned down.

  “The Raffles letters?” he asked.

  “The Raffles letters,” she answered.

  Before Ace could make another comment, the telephone rang and he picked it up. “Yes. Sure, why not?” he said, then hung up and looked at Fiona. “That was my cousin Frank and he said he’s sending up something that he thinks we should see.” As Ace said the last words, the doorbell rang. He answered the door, and in moments he was back with a thin parcel in his hands.