“Now what?” Winnie said.
“Shit,” Rupert said quietly. “I told you throwing heavy things around in that house was a bad idea, and not only because you could have missed Hill and hit me. Look at what you did. Might as well have left the body there.”
Winnie did look—for a long time before he retreated to a chair and dropped into it like a large bag filled with uncooked dough. “It’ll never be noticed. We wouldn’t see it if we weren’t familiar with the piece.”
“The owners are familiar. They’ll report the damage, you twit. Thank God almost all the bleeding was internal. If there’d been a mass of blood spread around, too, we’d be goners for sure. You mangled the backside of that glass sculpture.”
Kitty looked again, too. The photo Winnie and Rupert concentrated on was of a glass-and-mirror sculpture displayed at the end of a corridor. The thing resembled an ugly modern building. She’d had a set of negatives made from the photos. If things went her way. Winnie and Rupert were going to make sure the rest of her life was very, very cushy.
Winston collected himself enough to say, “Well, we didn’t leave any blood. And we got rid of him.”
Rupert got to his feet, wincing at the pain in his back. “You got rid of him, and so I should think.”
“I dragged him into that room and told you to keep watch outside. Then you got him into the empty dumpster so all the rubbish would cover him up when it came down the shoot and he’d be hauled away with it. I told you if I didn’t come back in five minutes, you were to get on with it.”
“Winnie!” Rupert could hardly breathe. “Winnie, I waited five minutes, then I left. You told me how it would be with the dumpster. Then you said you’d be back in five minutes and I was to get on with it. So I did. I went home.”
“We left him there.” Rupert cringed at the bellow of their two voices.
Aiden and Olivia stood with Vanni in Aiden’s apartment. They’d sneaked into the building without incident, and Vanni had made a call to Ryan Hill’s place to find out if they’d had any more “electrical problems.” Rupert had answered, and the sound of Winston saying something in the background confirmed both men were there.
Olivia looked around the living room and dining room and through the open pass-through to the kitchen. “It’s nice,” she said. “Big and comfortable.”
“It needs time and money spent on it,” he told her. “But it’s a great place and so close to everything. New furniture—”
“Not all new furniture,” Olivia interrupted. “I really like the old pieces. And the wooden floors are splendid.”
“Can we save the interior design chat for later?” Vanni said. “When we don’t have a pair of crazies upstairs, huh?”
Vanni had behaved strangely since Aiden and Olivia arrived at JFK. His stiff features, the way his nostrils flared, gave away a badly disguised anger and he wasn’t sharing his reasons.
Olivia said, “Sorry, Vanni. You’re strung out, right?”
He frowned at her. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I’m not sending you up there. In fact, I’m sure it was a mistake having you come back here until we make more headway with the case.”
“We couldn’t stay in England,” Aiden said. “You understood that before. What changed?”
“I don’t like any of this. Maybe it would be better to forget the whole thing. Go to ground somewhere until everything blows over.”
Aiden had difficulty believing his partner would make such suggestions. “In ten years or whatever? And then only coming back with assumed identities?”
“There are worse things.”
“Olivia and I don’t have any intention of living like fugitives.”
“Look,” Vanni said, and for the first time today, Aiden noted how exhausted the man looked. “Fats’s murder is being investigated, and your name is at the top of the list of suspects, with Olivia as a probable accomplice. You’re ‘wanted and dangerous.’ It’s getting to be a miracle you’ve dodged a bullet this long.”
Aiden refused to be intimidated. “Anything from Ryan?”
“No. But you know that piece of slime. He’ll already have popped up like one of those wobbly men, those toys with sand in their bottom. He’ll be stirring the pot soon enough.”
“Olivia, I’m going up there. The shock value has to be good for something.” He decided not to check his weapon in front of her. “Vanni, if I’m gone too long—in your opinion— follow me in.”
“Follow us in,” Olivia said and, as if to underscore her determination, darted from the apartment ahead of Aiden.
He raised a brow at Vanni, said, “Back me up, partner,” and followed Olivia.
By the time he caught up with her, she was turning the handle to Ryan’s place. She had guts. He’d always admire that about her.
She threw the door open and marched inside. “Hello all,” she said brightly. “Olivia FitzDurham. I think it’s time we all had a chat.”
By this point, Aiden’s Sauer was in his hand. “What the lady wants, she gets,” he said. “Hands up. All of you.”
He heard Olivia make a choking noise and said, “What’s the matter?”
“What are you doing here, Penny?” she said. “I’ve tried to reach you for weeks, but you were always in France.”
Aiden saw the woman she spoke to. A mousy person who wore a navy-blue belted raincoat over her clothes.
“Well, I wasn’t really, was I?” this Penny said. “That’s just what you needed to think.”
“Don’t say anything else, PJ,” Kitty ordered.
“What a hateful thing to do,” Olivia said. “You set me up. Why, Penny? What did I do to you? You sought me out to work with you. We hardly knew each other before.”
Penny’s mouth pushed out in a stubborn pout. “As long as you were there, I never had a chance with Mark Donnely. He only looked at you—even though you humiliated him.”
Olivia felt she’d walked through the looking glass. “Mark and I were friends for years. There was never anything romantic between us. I’m sorry if—”
“Don’t be. You’re going to get yours. I couldn’t believe my luck when Kitty came to me and asked if I could find a photographer who would do a job without asking awkward questions.”
“I say,” Rupert said, standing as tall as his diminutive frame allowed. “What’s all this about you finding a photographer, Kitty?”
“Just listen,” Penny said. “It doesn’t matter if you know.”
“It does,” Kitty said, approaching Penny. “Not another word in front of them.”
“You don’t tell anyone what to do anymore,” Penny said. “Kitty found out Rupert and Winnie were planning to knock off some stuff in Notting Hill. So she asked me to pretend to be the interior designer for the renovation there—I’m better than that monstrosity they created, I can tell you—but I was to pretend and get someone to take photographs at just the right time—when Winnie and Rupert were stealing paintings. I went to London Style and said I was going to have a piece on this house, and they were interested. I told them there’d be photos. They weren’t sure they’d want them because they use staff photographers, but I said it didn’t matter as long as Olivia got the experience. It was a good cover for getting her in there.
“Afterward, Kitty was supposed to use the photos to blackmail Winnie and Rupert and we’d be in clover. It was a nuisance, but she got the wrong day, so I had to get Olivia to go back again.”
“What were the photos supposed to show?” Aiden asked quietly.
Penny turned up her hands. “I don’t know. Kitty just told me what she needed, and I told Olivia. After the second shoot, I did leave for France to be out of the way. Kitty was in charge then. But Rupert and Winnie heard Olivia taking those shots and they were afraid of what she might have caught on film. Rupert got to her before Kitty did. Kitty needed money to pay her off, and that wasn’t easy to get. Everything got messed up and we’ve been running around ever since. And that’s not all.”
; Ignoring Kitty’s shouting and loud threats from Fish and Moody, Penny went on to repeat an outlandish story she said she’d heard just before Olivia and Aiden arrived. Outlandish but probably true.
“Damn you, Penny,” Kitty said when Penny finished. “Why did you tell them anything?”
“Because I think the best way for us all to win is to go after the people who wanted the paintings stolen. They’re all filthy rich, and they should be happy to pay us to look after their reputations.”
“That’s original,” Kitty said. “Blackmail. I think everyone’s suggested the same thing.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Winston Moody muttered.
“I just don’t believe all this,” Olivia whispered. She looked at Ryan Hill’s desk, at the fancy computer setup. “Is that where you saw my e-mails?” she asked Aiden.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank God.”
She couldn’t smile at him through the tears in her eyes. Aiden made sure he didn’t look at the door, but he wondered where the hell Vanni was.
“Put the gun away, old chap,” Moody said to Aiden. “Makes a fella nervous. And you don’t need it here since we all appear to be on the same side. All in trouble.”
Aiden didn’t want anything in common with these people, but they had a point. He lowered the gun to his thigh.
The door smashed open this time—and bounced off the wall inside. Beretta cocked, Ryan Hill stood in Terminator pose in the doorway. His grin was more mad than evil.
A thud distracted Aiden’s attention to the couch, where Winston Moody had collapsed in a jerking heap. Sweat flowed freely down his ashen face. He kneaded the seat with the fingers of both hands, and his chest rose and fell unnaturally rapidly. “Winnie, he’s…”
“Keep your mouth shut, Rupert,” Moody said in a trembling voice. “We both thought the same thing. Evidently we were wrong.”
Olivia moved quietly to Aiden’s side and slid an arm around his waist. Even when the world seemed about to swallow them, Aiden found comfort in being near her.
“Listen to you,” Ryan said. “Thought I was dead, didn’t you? Thought I’d bought it in that house in Notting Hill. You fools. You couldn’t even get your stories straight when your lives depended on it, you fools. You missed me with the fucking bronze horse, Moody. The only thing you smashed was a lump of glass.
“And why did you try it anyway? The contact at The Dakota was mine. You’d never have known he wanted something you could supposedly get if I hadn’t dealt you in. But after all I did for you, you didn’t want to share the profits afterwards.”
“You wanted a third of everything,” Winnie said. “That was preposterous when I was taking all the risks.”
“Winnie,” Rupert said. “You said you had to get three-quarters because you had extra expenses. I was to have a quarter and maybe more the next time. How could you give him—”
“I never intended to give him a third, did I?” Winston was recovering some of his composure. “I never intended to give him anything. That’s why we got rid of him.”
Aiden squeezed his eyes shut, but Ryan was still there when he opened them again.
“But you didn’t,” Rupert wailed. “He’s not dead, is he?” The two of them looked at Ryan and said in unison, “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Kitty murmured, “Too bad I didn’t know that. I knew where he was and could have saved you a lot of trouble.”
“I never knew anything about him, period,” Penny said. Rupert scowled. He pulled a packet of crackers from inside his jacket, opened them and crammed several into his mouth. One cracker he crushed in a palm and shoved into his pocket.
Olivia watched scrabbling movements inside the tweed cloth and heard faint squealing—and she backed away. But it was a small gun that Rupert tugged from his coat pocket. “I know I’ve always said I don’t believe in these, but I found this in a drawer in the bedroom. It’s loaded. You never know when we might need it.”
“Shut up!” Ryan yelled. “It’s all over now. Drop the Sauer, Flynn. You’re finished, too.”
“Give up and let you shoot me, you mean?” Aiden said. “So you can say it was in the line of duty and cry, ‘hero?’ I don’t think so.”
“You’d have to kill me, too,” Olivia announced.
Aiden rolled his eyes but didn’t comment.
“No more,” Winston said, visibly trembling.
“We can work this out,” Rupert said.
Ryan got off a shot so suddenly, everyone in the room exclaimed.
Rupert grabbed a shin and leaped about, crying out, “He shot me in the foot. Why did you do that? He shot me in the foot.”
In the confusion, Ryan made a diving plunge into Aiden’s legs, and brought him crashing to the floor. Aiden grabbed for the other man’s wrist and tried to wrestle the gun loose. A shoe, connecting with his own temple, caught him off-guard. He felt the immediate trickle of blood toward his eye. Another kick slammed into his windpipe, and he looked up at Kitty Fish’s wild eyes and giggling mouth.
But that was all for Kitty.
Aiden hung on, willed away the pain the woman had inflicted, and managed to turn Ryan on his back—just in time to see Kitty thump, face-down, on the mauve carpet. A familiar oversized tennis shoe landed between Kitty’s shoulder blades, but Olivia needn’t have worried that her opponent would continue the battle. Kitty appeared unconscious.
Vanni’s voice rang out. “Don’t move, any of you. Sorry, Aiden, got hung up on the phone with the narcs. You heard me, creeps. Don’t move a muscle.”
“Blooming parade,” Winston muttered.
Relief was a weak word for what Aiden felt.
“Touch me and he’s a dead man,” Ryan panted. The muzzle of his Beretta was jammed into Aiden’s belly.
As if in slow motion, Aiden saw a wooden chair rise and realized it was in Olivia’s hands. He wanted to warn her to back off, but feared Ryan would turn on her instead.
Vanni, moving quietly, pressed his gun to Ryan’s head and said, “It might be a good idea for you to let Aiden get up.”
The expression in Ryan’s eyes turned ever colder, but he didn’t remove the painful force he pressed upward into Aiden’s diaphragm.
“We’re all going to die,” Winston Moody moaned. “I can’t look, I tell you. Stop them, Rupert.”
Rupert sat on the table among the photographs, cradling his profusely bleeding foot. He didn’t show any sign of having heard Winston’s plea.
Kitty stirred.
Olivia brought down the chair intended for Ryan, and broke it over Kitty instead. She was instantly still again.
Music blared. Trumpet. Winton Marsallis as only he could play the trumpet, but Aiden flinched, and when he strained to locate the source of the noise, he saw Penny fiddling with an amplifier. The woman puzzled him.
Ryan gave a demoniacal grin, and burst into laughter. “Party, party,” he yelled. “God. Party, party,” and Aiden received a blow to his nose. Blood gushed this time, and he didn’t need a doctor to tell him he had a broken bone. “Interfere, Zanetto, and you can blame yourself when your buddy’s brain decorates the wall.”
“You’re disgusting, Mr. Hill,” Olivia cried. “Sick. You are an evil man, sir. Evil men must not be allowed to visit their ill tempers on the innocent. Take that!” A chair leg made a thwacking sound against the right side of Ryan’s head. “And that!” The left side got the same treatment. His eyes took on the old deer-in-the-headlights lack of focus, and Aiden didn’t waste a second of his advantage. He brought both arms smashing upward beneath Ryan’s wrists. This didn’t mean the man let go of his gun. And he still managed to stop Aiden from taking aim.
Olivia tried to hold on. Panic swelled, overtaking her control. Most of these people were insane. How did one deal with insane people, insane people armed with deadly weapons? Aiden lay bleeding on the rug with Ryan Hill’s stocky body on top of him. She longed to fall on Hill and try to drag him off. She also wanted to yell at Aiden to
fight his way from beneath the man.
And what was holding Vanni back? “Vanni,” she shouted. “I’ll hang on to Hill, you knock him out.”
Vanni moved as ordered. Winnie snatched Rupert’s little weapon, hid his eyes, and fired in Vanni’s direction. Olivia screamed a warning too late. Vanni went down like a big fish thrown on a market stall. Olivia didn’t know where he was hit, but he didn’t move.
“Aiden,” she said in a small voice. “Vanni’s been hit. We’re all on our own.”
He did love this woman, but if they got out of this alive, he was going to have to teach her a few lessons about caution.
“We’ve got to pull together,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”
“I’m going to help.” From the floor, Kitty amazed Aiden by announcing her intention and rising up with yet another gun, to fire a salvo at Ryan. Actually, at Ryan’s rear end.
Screaming, Ryan leaped away from Aiden. He seemed to remember the Beretta and started to shoot, sending everyone else diving for cover. The shots he got off flew wild, embedded in the ceiling and walls before he clapped his hands over his rear and rolled to and fro, helpless in his pain.
Kitty repeated her favorite form of martial art—she kicked Ryan in his bullet-riddled derriere. “You messed everything up, sucker,” she said, and burst into tears, which was useful because she was already bawling when a bullet winged her right shoulder.
“I’m on the side of right,” Penny said in a wobbly voice. “She’s a wicked woman and needs to be stopped. I’ve stopped her. Did you see that?”
“We sure did,” Aiden said, making calming motions with his spare hand as he stood up. He took advantage of Ryan’s dull-eyed slump to relieve him of the Beretta. “Thank you, Penny. We can use all the help we can get. I’ll have to give you a reference at the police station.”
Penny wrung her hands and murmured, “Thank you,” over and over again.
Aiden would have liked to smile if his nose weren’t burning and throbbing.
“Medic One,” Vanni mumbled. He scooted up to lean against the wall. “Get me to an emergency room, for God’s sake.”
Glass Houses Page 39