by Cara Summers
But Jase had a hunch that what was bothering Maddie now went a little deeper.
“Have you ever been in Eva’s apartment?” she asked as they left the elevator.
“No.”
“After we find the appointment calendar, I’d like to take a little time to look around.”
When he didn’t immediately reply, she continued, “I know you’d prefer to get in and out, but I won’t take long. I’d just like to get…an idea of how she lived.”
Jase thought of the doorman, a fit enough looking man. But he was in his fifties and a pro could take him out in seconds. He reminded himself that Dino had stationed a man across the street who was a pro also. “Sure.”
She unlocked the door with the key Jordan had given her and hesitated a moment before stepping into the foyer. Then she simply looked around. Jase had noted before that she was good at standing still and absorbing her surroundings. Perhaps every artist had to have that quality.
The foyer opened into a short hallway with high ceilings. The apartment itself was located in one of Manhattan’s oldest buildings, but the wainscoting and the chair railings had been artfully restored. Beneath the rich hues of an oriental carpet lay gleaming dark hardwood floors.
Jase tried to put himself in Maddie’s shoes. She’d been to her mother’s workplace and seen the professional side of Eva Ware. But this was personal. Intimate.
First things first. He opened the double doors of the closet and found the cardboard box on the floor just as Jordan had described.
“So far, so good.” He quickly pushed aside the clothes that Eva had been wearing the night of her accident and found a tote. Inside was a leather-bound appointment calendar. Like Maddie’s, it was stuffed with folded notes and newspaper clippings. Handing it to her, he thought, like mother, like daughter.
She ran her fingers over the cover and then tucked it into her own tote. Linking his fingers with hers, they started down the hallway together. At the end of it, Jase could see the kitchen. The reddish hues of the setting sun poured through louver-covered windows, glinting off stainless-steel appliances and black granite counter tops. An archway to their right opened into a formal dining room, but Maddie drew him through the archway to their left.
Here the light was dimmer, but Jase could make out on the wall facing them a brick fireplace flanked by two bookcases with leaded-glass doors. And there was a desk to their immediate right, its surface stacked high with sketch books. One was open, a pencil lying on its surface.
Maddie was already moving toward the desk as he felt along the wall for a switch. When he flicked it on, his attention was drawn immediately to the oil portrait over the mantel.
His eyes went first to Eva, seated in a delicately carved armchair wearing pale gray slacks, a matching jacket and a pink sweater. Her long blond hair had been twisted into a braid that fell over one shoulder. Next to her a much younger Jordan stood in a pink dress trimmed in ruffles at the neck, sleeves and hem. Her hair had been fastened back from her face with bows and fell in curls to her shoulders.
It was a family portrait, Jase supposed. Mother and daughter. He shifted his gaze to Maddie and saw that she was studying it also. Was she imagining what the portrait might have looked like if she’d been in it too, standing on the other side of Eva?
The surge of anger took him by surprise and had him striding toward her and taking her hand. Why in hell had two sane people who’d obviously loved both their daughters each cut one out of their lives?
“You should be in that portrait. They were stupid to split the two of you up,” he said.
“I’d like to think that they loved us so much that they couldn’t bear to part with both of us.”
Jase turned to study her. “Is that why you think your father kept you?”
“It’s what I’d like to believe.” She moved closer to the portrait, drawing him with her. “It’s odd.”
“What?”
“My father never had a formal portrait done. But on my eleventh birthday, he had a photographer come to the ranch. Dad insisted that the man take the picture outside near the stables. I’d been riding Brutus, the horse he’d just gotten me for my birthday. We didn’t dress up or anything. Dad posed the picture with me on the horse and him standing beside it. Later, he framed the photo and kept it on the dresser in his bedroom. Jordan will see it the moment she walks into the room.”
“Your sister looks to be about eleven in the painting.”
“That’s what I was thinking. It’s an odd coincidence that they’d both decide to have a formal picture taken when we were about the same age.”
Jase turned to her. “Do you think your parents kept in touch over the years?”
With a sigh, she shrugged. “Maybe that’s just what I’d like to believe. There has to be some explanation for what they did. Why they did it.”
Jase traced a finger along her jawline—so strong, so stubborn. “If there is, you’ll find it.” Whatever else he might have said was interrupted by a sound—metal scraping against metal.
“What’s that?” Maddie whispered.
“We’re going to have company,” he whispered back. Motioning her to one side of the archway, he flipped off the light, then flattened himself to the wall on the opposite side of the arch. From his position, he had a partial view of the door to the apartment as it swung open. In the dim light, he saw a shadowy figure move into the hall. He or she turned immediately to the closet door, opened it and pulled out the same box that he had searched earlier. By that time, his eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light and he recognized who it was.
Flipping the light on, he stepped into the hall and said, “Can we help you, Michelle?”
MADDIE FOLLOWED Jase into the hallway in time to see Michelle Tan drop Eva’s tote bag. The contents—wallet, a matchbook and a small sketchpad—clattered out onto the floor.
“I—” Michelle placed a hand to her heart and took a deep breath.
Maddie wasn’t sure who was more surprised—Michelle or herself, but she managed to ask, “What are you doing here?”
Without answering, Michelle dropped to her knees and began to stuff things back into the tote.
“Yes, what are you doing here?” Jase repeated.
“I came to see if I could find Ms. Ware’s appointment calendar,” Michelle mumbled.
Maddie noted that the young woman’s hands were trembling. She put a hand on Jase’s arm as she moved past him, caught his eye and mouthed, “Good cop.” Then she dropped to her knees in front of Michelle and stilled her hands. “Why did you think the calendar would be here? And how did you get a key?”
Michelle’s head popped up at that, and her voice was suddenly stronger. “Ms. Ware gave me a key. Sometimes she would get to work and remember that she’d left a sketch of a design at home. She’d ask me to come here and pick it up.”
Okay, Maddie thought. That jelled with Jordan’s description of Eva as a bit disorganized. Plus, she’d seen the sketches littering Eva’s desk. “She trusted you then?”
“Yes. Yes, she did.”
“Why did you think the journal was here?”
Avoiding Maddie’s eyes, Michelle sat back on her heels and folded her hands together. “I knew you were interested in finding it. I was on my way home from work when I remembered Jordan saying that she’d brought everything that the police had returned to her to this apartment because she couldn’t bear to go through it yet. It’s right on my way home, so I decided to stop in and see if it was here.”
Liar, Maddie thought.
“I don’t think so.” Jase’s voice had turned so clipped and cold that it nearly sent a shiver down Maddie’s spine. “I think you eavesdropped on Maddie and me when we were talking on the speakerphone with Jordan.”
Michelle shook her head. “No.”
“Yes. Then when I told you that we were going to be tied up for some time at the police station, you saw an opportunity to get hold of it before we did.”
Michelle shook he
r head again.
“Jase,” Maddie said. “Can’t you see she’s upset?”
“She should be upset. What’s so important about that appointment calendar that you had to sneak in here to steal it, Michelle?”
Michelle looked at him then. “Nothing. I wasn’t going to steal it. I was just trying to help.”
“Help yourself, maybe,” Jase said. “You were worried about something that it might contain.”
“No. Why should I be? I have nothing to hide.”
“Jase.” Maddie injected a note of warning into her tone. Then she took Michelle’s hands in hers. “We know that you deposited one hundred thousand dollars into your checking account three days after Eva Ware Designs was robbed of over a hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels.”
Michelle’s eyes went wide with shock, then flooded with tears. “You think—no. You can’t. I didn’t.”
The young woman’s emotional reaction could be fake, Maddie told herself. “Then where did you get the money?”
Michelle opened her mouth, shut it, then shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”
When Jase didn’t say anything, Maddie pushed forward. “You’re going to have to. We already know that Cho Li is your grandfather.”
Michelle dropped her head into her hands and began to cry.
A HALF HOUR later, Jase stood next to Maddie beneath the awning of Eva Ware’s apartment building watching as two uniformed policemen helped Michelle into the backseat of a patrol car.
She hadn’t said one more word while he’d called Dave Stanton and they’d waited for the police. Neither had Maddie.
Stanton had sent someone to pick up Cho Li and he was going to question Michelle personally as soon as she reached the precinct. He and Maddie had been invited to come down and watch.
“I don’t like it,” Maddie murmured as the patrol car pulled away.
There were quite a few things that Jase wasn’t liking, the top one being that they’d stayed a lot longer than he’d intended at Eva’s apartment, plenty of time for someone watching the place to put a plan into operation. And he had a bad feeling about that.
He’d insisted that she put on the scarf and sunglasses again, but the disguise was a thin one. He scanned the street, spotted a taxi blocking the entrance to an alley across the way, and recognized the driver as the one he’d tipped heavily to wait for them.
“C’mon. Our ride’s over there.” He took Maddie’s elbow and urged her toward the curb. The street in front of Eva’s apartment was narrow. Vehicles took up every parking space and two were double-parked. Since it wasn’t a Manhattan thoroughfare, traffic was minimal at this time of night. Still, Jase paused to look both ways. His bad feeling hadn’t eased.
A car was moving slowly toward them from the left. Jase eased Maddie to his other side, using his body to block hers. Once the vehicle had passed by, he said, “Let’s go.”
“I can’t believe that she robbed Eva Ware Designs, can you?”
“A good investigator keeps an open—” The roar of an engine cut him off, and he caught the sudden blur of movement to his right. He had just enough time to register that the cream-colored sedan matched the description of the car that had run Eva down.
Maddie turned her head and he felt her freeze. The headlights flashed on, blinding them both.
There was no time to think. No time even to panic. He just let his reflexes take over. Whipping his arm around Maddie’s waist, he lifted her.
The roar of the motor grew louder, the lights closer. Jase leapt into the air and twisted his body to take the brunt of the impact as they landed on the taxi’s hood. Holding Maddie tightly, he rolled and brought her with him to the sidewalk on the other side of the cab. This time it was his shoulder that took the hit and his breath whooshed out. For a second, he just held on tightly. Then he said, “You all right?”
“Yes. You?”
Easing her next to the side of the taxi, he got to his feet. But all he could see were the taillights of the car just before it careened around the corner.
MADDIE LAY flat on the sidewalk, her mind still spinning while she tried desperately to process what had just happened. Her body was cold and numb. And all she could hear was a sort of soft buzzing sound like white noise.
Someone had tried to run her and Jase down.
When she’d heard the racing motor and turned her head, those blinding lights had been so close. She’d even been able to see the hood ornament.
Voices began to penetrate. She recognized Jase’s. Someone else was speaking with an accent.
“I saw part of the plate number. You blocked my view when you landed on the hood of my car.”
“What kind of car?”
Jase’s voice again.
“A light-colored sedan, a Mercedes,” replied the voice with the accent.
“Did you see the driver?”
“He was wearing a jacket with a hood.”
It had really happened then. Someone had almost succeeded in running them down. If it hadn’t been for Jase’s quick reflexes, they would both be lying out in the street. Bleeding. Dead.
And the driver of the car would have gotten away with it. Again.
The bastard.
Fury gave her the energy to scramble to her feet.
Jase turned to her and joined her on the curb. He ran his hands up and down her arms as he studied her. “You’re all right.”
“You too.” She wrapped both arms around him and simply held on. Something else moved through her then, something that had the fear and anger fading. And another kind of fear building. She realized that she didn’t want to let Jase go. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
13
MADDIE STOOD with Jase and Detective Stanton in a small anteroom. In the adjacent room, beyond the one-way glass, Michelle sat with her hands folded on a table, her face drawn, her knuckles white. Although the detective had questioned her for over an hour, Michelle hadn’t varied from the story she’d told Jase and Maddie.
“I’ll keep after her for a while,” Stanton said, “but she’s pretty stubborn. She denies ever having the security code to the Madison Avenue building or having anything to do with the robbery.”
“Cho could have had the security code,” Jase pointed out.
“True. She refuses to talk about the hundred thousand in her account.”
“It didn’t stay in her bank account very long,” Jase said. “According to my partner, the money appeared via a bank check, but was withdrawn in cash two days later.”
“It’s the amount and the timing that are so incriminating,” Maddie said.
“I agree. It looks as though she needed some cash fast and she knew just how to get it,” Stanton replied.
“My partner is tracking down where it came from,” Jase said. “And I’m expecting to hear back from an informant who knows a lot of fences in the area.”
The detective turned to Maddie. “You look better than you did when you came in.”
She managed a smile. “Thanks. I want to know who was driving that car.”
“Working on it. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to go door to door. The bastard had to be waiting for you. Same way he waited for your mother. We’re running the partial plate number. Your description of the hood ornament matches well with the taxi driver’s certainty that it was a light-colored late-model Mercedes, so that should narrow the search.”
Jase slipped his hand into hers. “Maddie, the car that ran down your mother was also described as a light-colored sedan.”
She turned to him. “You think it might be the same driver?”
“Could be,” Stanton said. “Killers are unbelievably cocky. The bastard got away clean the first time. Probably figures he can do it again.”
“The one thing we know for sure is that Michelle wasn’t behind the wheel,” Maddie pointed out.
“Right. But she could have an accomplice,” Stanton said. “We haven’t been able to locate Cho yet.”
Maddie sh
ook her head vehemently. She’d already had this discussion with Jase on the ride to the station. “I can’t see Cho running anyone down. I’ll bet he doesn’t even drive.”
Stanton glanced at Jase and then back at Maddie. “I’m checking all possibilities. I’ll be at Eva Ware Designs with a search warrant when it opens tomorrow morning, and I’ll be questioning everyone again about the robbery. Nothing like a couple of suspects to jog everyone’s memory.”
Turning, Maddie studied Michelle through the one-way glass. “My guess would be that she’s gone silent because of her loyalty to her grandfather. I never should have mentioned Cho’s name.”
Stanton’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t like him for the hit-and-run, but you suspect him for the robbery?”
“I don’t want to,” Maddie said. “They make a pair of unlikely jewel thieves.”
He snorted. “They didn’t have to be pros if they had the security codes. And Eva Ware trusted Michelle enough to give her the key to her apartment.”
“She may open up when you get Cho in here,” Jase said. “Or he may open up once he sees that she’s under suspicion.”
Stanton glanced at his watch. “I’ve had men stationed outside his apartment ever since you called. There’s no sign of him. The apartment is dark, he’s not answering his phone or his door.”
“Maybe he skipped,” Jase said.
Maddie turned from the window to face Stanton and Jase. “Even if Cho or the two of them robbed Eva Ware Designs, I still can’t see either of them running Eva down.”
“Money does strange things to people,” Stanton said.
“Maybe Eva was onto them and confronted them. With her gone, their jobs are secure, Cho’s reputation is golden.” Jase frowned. “The thing is, neither of them has a motive to hire a hit woman to kill Maddie.”
“The two things don’t have to be connected,” Stanton said.
“No,” Jase mused. “But something tells me they are.”
Once again Stanton sighed. “Me too.”
There was a knock at the door, and a young uniformed officer poked his head in. “I’ve got something on the plate that you might be interested in, sir.”