by Nora Roberts
“None of us knew she’d resort to murder,” Gideon told her.
“Well, we know now.” She looked at Tia.
“If this is true, why haven’t you gone to the police?”
“And tell them what?” Gideon jammed his hands in his pockets. “That we believe a respected businesswoman is directly responsible for the murder of a young black dancer? A murder that very likely took place while she was at some public place or in some meeting? And we tell them we know this because she’s stolen a statue while in Dublin and agreed to buy another? I suppose we can tell the police they’ll just have to take our word on it when they ask for proof of any sort. No doubt they’ll clap the cuffs on her.”
“Regardless, you expect me to believe you.” Tia lifted the sputtering kettle off the burner.
“Do you?” Gideon asked.
She looked at him, then at Cleo. “Yes, I guess I do, but I intend to research if insanity runs in my family. There’s a pull-out sofa in my office here. You can use that tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“It isn’t free,” she told Gideon and lifted the tea tray. “From this point on, I stop being a tool and become an active participant in this little . . . quest.”
Cleo smiled as Tia carted the tray into the living room. “Translated, Slick, the doc just informed you she’s your fucking partner.”
“Yes, I did. Lemon or sugar?”
Twelve
“AN accident.”Anita studied the two men whohad come to the private entrance of her office. It served her right, she supposed, for selecting brawn over brains. But really, she’d given them such a simple task, with such specific, follow-the-dots instructions.
“The guy went nuts on me.” Carl Dubrowsky, the shorter, stockier of the two, had a belligerent expression on his pockmarked face. He’d been a bouncer at a club before Anita had enlisted him to handle a few pesky chores.
She’d had reason to know he’d needed a job and wouldn’t quibble about a few minor legalities, as he’d been arrested twice for assault and had barely beaten a charge of manslaughter.
Such activities didn’t look well on a résumé.
She studied him now as he stood in one of the dark, Savile Row suits she’d paid for. You can dress them up, she thought. But you can’t take them out.
“Your instructions, Mr. Dubrowsky, were to follow Ms. Toliver, and/or any companions she might have brought with her to our meeting. To detain her and/or those companions only if it should become necessary. And to, most important, retrieve my property, using persuasion of a physical nature if such action was warranted. I don’t believe there were any instructions in there to fracture anyone’s skull.”
“It was an accident,” he repeated stubbornly. “I tailed the black guy and Jasper took the girl. Black guy went to the apartment, like I said. I went in behind him, like I said. Had to soften him up a little so he’d pay attention while I was asking him about the statue. Went through the place looking for it, didn’t find it, so I softened him up some more.”
“And you let him answer the phone.”
“Figured maybe it was the girl, and I’m thinking I put the arm on him while she’s on the hook, maybe she’ll talk—or with Jasper on her, she could maybe take off for the piece you’re after. Guy starts screaming, warns her off, so I gave him a good jab. Fell wrong, is all. Guy fell wrong and fucked himself.”
“I’ve warned you about your language, Mr. Dubrowsky,” she said coolly. “I see the problem here is that you attempted something in an area where you have no skill. You attempted to think. Don’t do so again. And you, Mr. Jasper.” She paused for a long-suffering sigh. “I’m very disappointed. I had more faith in you. This is the second time you haven’t been able to keep up with a second-rate stripper.”
“She’s got fast feet. And she ain’t as dumb as you think.”
Marvin Jasper was flat-faced and kept his hair in the same needle-sharp buzz cut he’d worn as an MP during his stint in the army. He’d hoped to turn that into a stint with the police force but had washed out during the psych test. He was still bitter about it.
“Apparently she has brains enough to outmaneuver both of you. Now she could be anywhere, and so could the Fate.”
Moreover, she thought, the police were involved. She had no doubt Dubrowsky had been foolish enough to leave some sort of evidence behind. Fingerprints, a stray hair, something that would, eventually, tie him to the murder. Something that could, potentially, tie her.
That would never do.
“Mr. Jasper, I want you to go back, keep a surveillance on this apartment where Mr. Dubrowsky had his accident. Perhaps she’ll go back there. If you see her, I want her taken. Quickly and quietly. Then contact me. I have a place where we can discuss business in private. Mr. Dubrowsky, you’ll come with me. We’ll go prepare for that business.”
ONE OF THE advantages of marrying a wealthy, older man was that wealthy, older men so often had myriad holdings. And clever businessmen often kept those holdings buried under a morass of corporations and twisting red tape.
The warehouse in New Jersey was just one of the many. Anita had sold it only the day before to a developer who planned to open one of those cavernous discount stores.
One-stop shopping, she mused as she drove across the cracked concrete. She wasn’t planning on shopping, but she was going to take care of her task with one, final stop.
“Sure is out in bumfuck,” Dubrowsky muttered, and in the dimming light pulled back his lips in a sneer at her prissy order to watch his language.
“We can keep her here for several days, if necessary.” Anita crossed to the loading bay doors, careful not to catch the heels of her Pradas in the cracks. “I want you to go over the security, to make certain once we have her in, she won’t get out.”
“No problem.”
“These loading doors operate electrically and require a code. I’m more concerned with the side doors, the windows.”
He pursed his lips, studied the sooty block of the building. “She’d have to be a monkey to get to the windows, and you got riot bars on them.”
She studied them as if weighing his opinion. Paul might have left her a number of properties, but Anita had taken the time to tour them all. Inside and out. “What about around the sides?”
He trudged around, turning the corner. Weeds sprung up through the broken stone, and though he could hear the sound of traffic from the turnpike, it was a distant whoosh. Bumfuck, he thought again, shaking his head.
“Broken lock on this side door,” he called out.
“Is there?” She knew it. She’d had a complete and extensive report from the appraisal. “That’s a problem. I wonder if it’s locked from the inside.”
He gave it a hard shove, shrugged. “Might be. Or it’s jammed or something.”
“Well, we won’t . . . No,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Best to see if we can get in through it so we know what has to be done. Can you push or kick it in?”
He was built like a bull and proud of it. Proud enough that he didn’t think to ask why she didn’t just unlock the damn door.
Slamming his bulk against the thick wood soothed the ego she’d scraped raw in her office. He hated the bitch, but she paid well. That didn’t mean he was going to tolerate getting sniped at by a woman.
He imagined she was the door, gave it one good kick and snapped the thin bolt lock on the inside.
“Like paper,” he claimed. “Gonna want to put a steel door on here, a police lock if you want to keep out vandals and shit.”
“You’re quite right. It’s dark inside. I have a flashlight in my bag.”
“Light switch right here.”
“No! We don’t want to advertise we’re here, do we?” She aimed the thin beam inside, scanned the room. It was another concrete box, dark, dusty and smelling of rodents.
It was, she thought, perfect.
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“Over there in the corn
er,” she said, gesturing with her light.
He walked over, kicked listlessly. “Just an old tarp. You want us to keep her out here for any time, you gotta think about how we’re going to get food out here.”
“You won’t have to worry about it.”
“Ain’t no Chinese carry-out on the corner,” he began as he turned. He saw the gun in her hand, held as steady as the pencil light. “What the fuck?”
“Language, Mr. Dubrowsky,” she said with a tsk. And shot him.
The gun kicked, the sound echoed, and both sent a thrill through her. He took a lurching step toward her, so she shot him again, then a third time. When he was down, she stepped very carefully around the blood spilling into a slow river on the concrete floor. Tilting her head like a woman considering a new bauble in a shop window, she sent one more bullet into the back of his head.
It was a first for her, a killing. Now that it was done, very well done, her hand shook lightly and her breath came fast and shallow. She shined the light in his pupils, just to be sure, to be absolutely sure. The beam bobbed a bit, but she bore down and saw that his eyes were open and staring. And empty.
Paul had been like that after she’d waited out his final heart attack with his medication tight in her fist. She didn’t consider that killing. That, she thought now as she steadied herself, had been patience.
She stepped back, took the old broom from the corner and meticulously brushed at the dust, smearing any footprints on her backward trip to the door. Taking out a lace-trimmed handkerchief, she wiped the broom handle before tossing it aside, then covered her hand with the silk and lace to pull the door closed.
It was a bad fit now, she mused, as Dubrowsky had conveniently jarred the jamb. An obvious break-in, an obvious murder.
Finally, she wiped off her dead husband’s unregistered Beretta and heaved it as far as she could into the scrubby brush bordering the lot. The police would find it, of course. She wanted them to find it.
There was nothing to tie her here but the fact that her husband had once owned the building. There was nothing to tie her to some nasty little man who’d made his living breaking arms. There were no records of employment, no tax forms, no witnesses to their dealings. Except for Jasper. She didn’t think he’d run to the police when he heard his associate had been shot.
No, she had a feeling Marvin Jasper would become a sterling employee. Nothing like a little incentive to inspire loyalty and hard work.
She walked back to her car, and inside smoothed her hair, freshened her lipstick.
She drove away thinking that it was absolutely true if you wanted something done right, you did it yourself.
JACK AWOKE TO church bells. The pretty peal of them brought him out of a sound sleep on top of the bedspread and made him aware of the steady flow of the breeze through the window he’d left wide open.
He liked the smell of it, the hint of sea it carried. He lay as he was a moment, letting it wash over him until the bells faded to echoes.
He’d arrived in Cobh too early to do anything more productive than admire the harbor and get the general lay of the land.
What had once been a port that had given so many of the country’s immigrants their last look at their homeland was now more of a resort town. And pretty as a postcard. He had a strong view of the low street, the square and the water from his windows. On another trip he would have taken his time absorbing the place, acquainting himself with the rhythms of it, with the locals. He enjoyed that aspect of traveling, and traveling alone.
But in this case there was only one local he had any interest in. Malachi Sullivan.
He intended to find out what he needed to know, make his second stop, and be back in New York within three days. Anita Gaye needed watching, and he’d do a better job of it in New York.
When he was finished here, he intended to contact Tia Marsh again as well. The woman might know more than she realized or more than she’d let on.
Business aside, he’d make time for a pilgrimage before he left Cobh. He checked his watch and decided to order up coffee and a light breakfast before he showered.
The room service waiter had a face full of freckles.
“And isn’t it a fine, fresh day?” he said as he set up the meal. “You can’t do better for sightseeing. If you’d be needing any arrangements made for touring, Mr. Burdett sir, the hotel’s happy to see to it for you. We might have rain tomorrow, so you’ll want to take advantage of the weather while you have it. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”
Jack took the little folder holding the bill. “Do you know a Malachi Sullivan?”
“Ah, it’s a boat tour you’re wanting, then.”
“Sorry?”
“You want to tour around to the head of Kinsale, where the Lusitania was sunk. Fine views, even if it’s a sad place all in all. Tours run three times daily this time of year. You’ve missed the first boat, but the second leaves at noon, so you’ve plenty of time for that. Would you like us to book that for you?”
“Thanks.” Jack added a generous tip. “Does Sullivan run the tour himself?”
“One Sullivan or the other,” the boy said cheerfully. “Gideon’s away just now—that’s the second son—so it’s likely to be Mal or Becca, or one of the Curry crew, who are in the way of being cousins to the Sullivans. It’s a family enterprise, and a fine value for the money. We’ll see to the booking for you, and you’ve only to be down the dock by a quarter to noon.”
SO HE HAD time to wander a bit after all.
He picked up his tour voucher at the front desk, pocketed it while he headed out. He walked down the steeply sloped street to the square, where the angel of peace stood over the statues of the weeping fishermen who mourned the Lusitania’s dead.
It was a powerful choice in memorials, he thought, the rough-clad men, the shattered faces. Men who’d made their living from the sea and had cried for strangers taken by it.
He supposed it was very Irish, and he found it very apt.
A block over was a monument to the doomed Titanic, and her Irish dead. Around them were shops, and the shops were decked with barrels and baskets of flourishing flowers that turned the sad into the picturesque. That, he thought, was probably Irish as well.
Along the streets, in and out of shops, people strolled or moved briskly about their business.
The side streets climbed up very impressive hills and were lined with painted houses whose doors opened straight onto the narrow sidewalks or into tiny, tidy front gardens.
Overhead the sky was a deep and pure blue with the waters of Cork Harbor mirroring it.
Boats were being serviced at the quay, the same quay, his pamphlet told him, as had been in service during the era that White Star and Cunard ran their grand ships.
He walked down to the dock and took his first study of Sullivan’s tour boat.
It looked to seat about twenty, and resembled a party boat, with its bold red canopy stretched over the deck to protect passengers from the sun. Or around here, he assumed, the rain. The seats were red as well, and a cheerful contrast to the shiny white of the hull. The red script on the side identified it as The Maid of Cobh.
There was a woman already on board, and Jack watched as she checked the number of life jackets, seat cushions, ticking items off on a clipboard as she worked.
She wore jeans faded to nearly white at the stress points, and a bright blue sweater with the sleeves shoved up to her elbows. In them she appeared slim and slight. There was a shoulder-length tumble of curls spilling out of her blue cap. The hair color his mother would have called strawberry blond.
A pair of dark glasses and the cap’s brim shielded most of her face, but what he could see—a full, unpainted mouth, a strong curve of jawline—was a nice addition to the view.
She moved forward, her steps quick and confident as the boat swayed in its slip, and continued her checklist on the bridge.
She sure as hell wasn’t Malachi Sullivan, Jack surmised, but she had
to be a link to him.
“Ahoy, The Maid,” he called out and waited on the dock while she turned, head cocked, and spotted him.
“Ahoy, the dock. Can I help you with something?”
“I’m going out.” He took the voucher out of his pocket, held it up where the frisky wind whipped at it. “Is it okay to come aboard now?”
“You can, sure if you like. We won’t be leaving for about twenty minutes.”
She tucked the clipboard under her arm and walked over, prepared to offer him a hand on the long step from dock to deck. She realized he wouldn’t need it. He moved well, and was fit enough, she concluded. Quite fit enough, she thought as she admired the strong build.
She admired the leather bomber jacket he wore as well, the fact that it was soft and battered. She had a weakness for good texture.
“Do I give this to you?” he asked.
“You do indeed.” She accepted the voucher, then turned over her clipboard, flipping a page to the passenger list. “Mr. Burdett, is it?”
“It is. And you’re . . .”
She glanced up, then shifted the clipboard again to take the hand he offered. “I’m Rebecca. I’ll be your captain and tour guide today. I’ve yet to start the tea, but I’ll have it going shortly. Just make yourself comfortable. It’s a fine day for a sail, and I’ll see you have a good ride.”
I’ll bet you will, he thought. Rebecca, Becca for short, Sullivan. She’d had a tough little hand and a good firm grip. And a voice like a siren.
After she tucked the clipboard in a bracket, she headed back to stern, turned into a tiny galley. When he followed, she sent him a friendly smile over her shoulder.
“Would this be your first visit to Cobh, then?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful.”
“It is, yes.” She set a kettle on the single burner, then got out the makings for tea. “One of the jewels of Ireland, we like to think. You’ll get some of the history during the tour. There’s but twelve passengers on this trip, so I’ll have plenty of time to answer any questions you might have. You’re from America, then?”