I was standing up to put the carton back when my heart missed a beat. The front door knob was rattling. I had no time to think and, suddenly, my reason for being in the apartment sounded too flimsy to convince a preschooler. I heard a key scrape in the lock. There was no time to do anything but step into the closet, pull the door shut behind me and quietly move the hangers to form an inadequate curtain of coats and jackets in front of me. The box of papers sat in center of the closet floor, with my size ten feet squished behind it.
“I saw her come in,” someone said in a tense whisper near where I stood pretending to be a raincoat. “She” could only mean me, which meant someone who knew who I was had been following me or had happened to see me and be bothered enough to tell someone else.
I heard shower curtain rings rattling open a few seconds later. Then, whoever it was moved back toward the living room. “Not here, bro,” said the same voice, and since I didn’t hear another person answer, I guessed he must be talking on his cell phone. “She must have left by the back door to the alleyway.”
A series of grunts, then, “You told me she was at the hospital last night. She knows the husband’s been arrested.”
The voice had been drifting closer to the closet while my heart made such thudding noises that I was certain the man in the apartment could hear me. Suddenly, the closet door swung open and my heart nearly stopped. Someone spoke practically in my ear. “Maybe we should just forget about her...”
A booted toe reached in and kicked the box of papers lightly. It bumped against my foot. It was a lousy time to realize it, but the lack of food in my stomach was not the best preparation for hiding in a closet while a bad guy looks for you. The smell of tweed and wool coats was making me dizzy, and I was afraid I would faint and fall forward. My ears were buzzing so loudly I could hardly hear what he saying. Hang on, my inner voice counseled. It’s not like there are options, I pointed out to myself.
He must have moved to the kitchen. I heard what sounded like someone kicking the trashcan. Something rolled across the floor. Between my pounding pulse and being half buried in the folds of dense fabric, I couldn’t hear everything. But then he walked back in my direction. “…but if anyone saw the car, they might remember it.”
Who was talking, and who was he talking to? If I could see him for an instant, I’d know who hit my car at the intersection. Do not look, my inner voice admonished.
“Okay.” He had stopped near the closet and his voice dropped to a hissed whisper. “You made sure his prints are all over the gun, right, and they can’t connect you to it? We get her to stop looking, Brennan and Anderson sign off fast, and then we’re out of here.”
And, with that, my would-be killer pushed the closet door closed and the footsteps retreated. A few seconds later, the apartment door clicked firmly shut. I heard footsteps taking the stairs down at a jog. Only then did I slide down the wall to the floor on legs that had turned to soft noodles.
My breathing was so ragged that I worried I was hyperventilating. As much as I wanted more air than the closet provided, I was too terrified to open the door. What if he came back? The guy in the apartment, and whoever he was talking to, had a deal with Coe Anderson and the president of Lynthorpe College, and they knew who I was, a bad sign.
CHAPTER 26
I sat in the dark, hot closet for as long as I could stand it. Then, my ears quivering to catch the slightest sound, I eased the door open and stood up, holding onto a woolly coat for balance. The only plan I had was to get out of here as fast as possible. Or, was it? What if they were still outside?
I should call for help. I couldn’t call the police because they wouldn’t be happy that I’d been in the apartment, especially if I told them their chief suspect gave me the keys and asked me to clean up. Also because, for whatever reason, Dermott didn’t trust them. Part of me itched to call Dickie, but not the smart part. First, he was mad at me, and explaining my hiding in the closet while someone who had tried to kill me stood a few feet away wasn’t going to improve his temper. Second, he had Isabella to take care of, and I didn’t relish the idea of him telling her how I’d gotten into this mess. I had the feeling she and her dimples didn’t get cornered in closets. By now, Charlie was out of reach and would be until he arrived in San Francisco.
Maybe I should wait until dark and sneak out, but I was too stressed to stay here much longer, even though the bad guy was unlikely to come back if he believed the place was empty. My heart was returning to normal operations and my head was clearing. As long as I was in the apartment, I’d take five more minutes to look around. What I’d overheard proved Dermott not only didn’t stage his own injury, but that he was being framed for Gabby’s death. Charlie had been told it appeared the same gun was used for both shootings. Okay, connect the dots. Easier said than done.
Could the driver who rammed my car be someone hired to scare me off, someone who wasn’t otherwise involved and, therefore, someone I wouldn’t be able to connect with Lynthorpe? Based on his side of the phone conversation, it didn’t sound as if he was the shooter. His voice didn’t sound like a criminal’s, though. Whatever that means.
What about his mention of Rory Brennan and Coe Anderson? The president of Lynthorpe was tough under his smooth surface, but I was blanking on what payoff could possibly tempt him. Maybe he and the dean knew the pieces weren’t legitimately Margoletti’s to give away, but they were such prizes that they were willing to help cover up some evidence of that. Could it be that Margoletti was being tricked into signing off on List A while someone else intended to substitute List B in the final document? But you don’t earn the reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s top lawyers if you can be fooled that easily.
Was the man in the apartment sent by Vince Margoletti? What if the college leaders were all in the dark about something and Margoletti was using Lynthorpe to hide a theft, or cover up a money laundering scheme that went wrong, or foist off some high quality fakes?
I pulled out my cell phone, noting with another lurch of my heart that the ringer had been on the whole time I was in the closet. Thank you, Dickie, I thought, for not picking that precise moment to call and bug me about something really significant like whether or not I’d like to take another test ride in your new car.
Quentin, my lawyer, was the logical person to talk to. I dialed his office but the call went immediately to voice mail. I tried again. Same thing, damn. This was hardly the kind of message I could leave on a recording device.
I had to tell someone and Charlie was it for now, even if he couldn’t help right away. My finger hovered over his number. I had promised him I would avoid doing anything rash, and what was going to Dermott’s apartment if not rash? Maybe I could kind of skip over how I got here, and give him the basics. I hit the call icon.
Of course it went directly to voicemail, but that was all right since I didn’t want to answer any awkward questions about how I wound up in this situation. I told him that I’d come in, that all I’d seen was Macho Cop’s toothpick, and that I’d heard some scary talk that made it clear someone was looking for me, someone who had maybe tried to kill me already and who was trying to frame Dermott for his wife’s death. I finished by saying I was going back to the hotel and calling the detective, then tossed the phone back in my bag, already unsure I should have confided in him. I would call Kirby but not from inside an apartment where I had no business being.
By now, a half hour had passed since the mysterious man had left, and I tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor. Going out the front door still felt too exposed, so I explored the rest of the first floor hall. Sure enough, there was a door at the opposite end, a single one with no window. I opened it partway and peered out. A large Dumpster occupied part of a wide driveway that merged with a paved alley. A couple of cars were parked along the alley, but no one was in either one. A flicker of something tickled my memory. What? I couldn’t bring it into focus and I couldn’t stand around much longer. I could see the tree-lined main street at
one end of the alley only five hundred feet away, with car traffic moving normally. I walked as briskly down the alley as my shaky legs would allow toward the stretch of small stores. Nothing seemed out of place.
I had almost reached the end of the alley when a hand came from somewhere behind me and slammed over my mouth and nose. I was so shocked I couldn’t think, plus my nose hurt where the hand had banged against it. Tears stung my eyes as my brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening.
A man’s voice said, from behind and far too close to my ear, “I have an idea. Why don’t you come for a ride with me?” The last time I heard that voice, I was standing behind a rack of clothes in a stuffy closet. I tried to turn to see what he looked like, but his other hand was on my arm, holding me tight to his body, turning us both around and away from the street.
I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed for his hand, desperate to pull it away from my face, but he was strong and I couldn’t do more than move his fingers slightly so my nose was clear. My legs were buckling under me. I dropped my bag, which was getting in the way of my attempts to pull him off me.
“Hey, we can’t leave that lying here,” he said, yanking me to one side as he leaned down to scoop it up. I lost my balance and would have fallen, but he pushed me up against a car. I was looking at a shiny black roof. It flashed on me then. This must be the new car I saw out in front of Dermott’s apartment. Hadn’t I seen it somewhere else before that? It couldn’t be the college president’s car, could it?
No time to think. “Yell and I’ll use this,” he muttered in my ear at the same time I felt something hard poke into my ribcage. He let go of my face as he reached for the car’s door handle and I sucked in a ragged breath of air and yelled, “Help” as loudly as I could. It sounded like a soprano frog croaking. I hoped someone in the apartment building might hear. I took another breath to try again, and then something went crack against the side of my head. The world went black.
CHAPTER 27
My first thought was that I had the world’s worst hangover. What else could it be? A painfully dry mouth, hammers pounding my temples, dizziness and, when I tried to raise myself on one elbow, instant nausea.
I was on a bed, a mattress with no sheets or blankets. Through half-closed eyes, I noticed the walls were bare of decoration and needed a fresh coat of paint. The door across from the bed was closed and the only window was high on the wall next to the bed. I tried to sit up, but the stomach wasn’t having it and I fell back on the pillow and closed my eyes against the shifting room. Only then did what had happened sink in. I had been kidnapped, hit with something hard, and brought to this room.
There was a plastic water bottle next to the bed. I reached for it without raising my head and inspected it close up. It’s easy to be paranoid when you’ve been kidnapped, but I tried to be logical. Sealed cap, brand name. My body was begging me to risk it and I did, forcing myself to sip slowly, the way people in movies were always admonished to do when they were rescued from terrorists or deserts. Even so, I gagged and had to settle for letting some dribble down my throat as I looked for a way out.
When I could, I struggled to a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed, telling my stomach to behave. Maybe I was in a motel. If so, there would be other people around who could help me, unless they were all Norman Bates clones. Involuntarily, I glanced around for a bathroom. No other doors. It would be hard to rent motel rooms that didn’t have bathrooms. So, not a motel? An apartment?
No one who went to the trouble my kidnapper did to get me here in the first place was going to leave the door of the prison open, but I had to try. I could see Charlie’s face later if I had to explain I’d been unlocked up and couldn’t get out. Sudden tears blurred my vision even more than the crack on the head. Would I ever see Charlie’s green eyes again?
I pulled the door toward me inch by inch until a voice—the same voice—said, “I wouldn’t do that,” and an arm with a gun appeared in the doorframe. I jumped and let go of the door handle as if it were on fire.
“Let me go, please,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I don’t know who you are or what this is about, so you can let me go and I won’t say anything.”
“Back on the bed.” The gun barrel waggled up and down. I swallowed hard, retreated to the bed and pulled the pillow up against the backboard. The door slammed shut.
Think, think, I urged myself, useless advice because I was already thinking, just not clearly. Okay, I could yell and beat on the door, although that only made sense if Bruce Willis was nearby and itching to come to my aid. I could get on something high and look out the window, maybe even open it and climb out, but there was no chair. There was no anything except the bed and the table next to it. Thinking the table might work as well as a chair, I rolled to one side to check it out. My feeble spark of energy leaked away when I realized it wasn’t a table, but part of the headboard that extended out a foot on either side of the bed frame. I yanked on it to be sure. Damn.
He’d taken my bag, of course, and my phone. It would have been too easy to have a lipstick to write, “Help” on the window, and other handy Nancy Drew tricks. It must be almost dark. Charlie might be off the plane by now. If so, he’d call the detective and alert him to my latest folly.
The door opened. A man stepped through it quickly and closed it behind him. The first thing I noticed was that he had a gun, after which it was hard to focus on much else. I had to know, however, so I looked up from the barrel and saw Vince Margoletti’s son glaring at me.
“I know you. You’re J.P., the polo player, Vince’s son.”
“That answers one question,” he said and marched over to the bed, grabbing my arm with one strong hand, and yanking me upright. “Does your head hurt? You aren’t seeing double or anything? That’s all I need.”
“Yes, of course it hurts like hell. Thanks for asking.” I couldn’t be too badly injured if my snark was still operational, I realized, and in fact my head was clearing.
“I need to know what you found out.” He dropped my arm and stepped back.
I squinted at J.P. It was hard to see him as a desperate criminal. He looked and sounded preppy, expensive haircut, tanned, wearing a fitted, black leather jacket that must have cost the moon. It was as if he was trying to act a part in a student film. “Found out about what?”
“Tell me what you learned about my father.”
I swallowed. “Are you doing this for him?”
He looked at me as if I were an idiot, which pretty much matched how I felt. “Don’t play games with me. You’re telling them whether or not to accept my father’s proposal.”
“I’m verifying the gift contract he’s setting up with his college. What’s so bad about that?”
“You talked to his accountant.”
“No. Look, there’s some kind of mistake here. “You have to let me go. Everyone will be looking for me.”
“Like who?” he snorted. “The maid who cleans your hotel room? Let’s face it. You’re a long way from home.”
“I have to call my assistant. She’ll be expecting it.”
“It’s Sunday. I don’t think so.”
“My boyfriend. He’ll try to call me.”
“The Ferrari? He’s not staying with you. I checked.”
“No, but—”
“We have some things to talk about and there’s not much time.”
Weird, but his preppy accent took the evil force out of the words. I half expected him to start laughing at any moment, and tell me it was all a prank. People don’t smash other people in the head with real guns for fun. I opened my mouth and he raised the gun. I closed my mouth.
“First, what do you know about the paintings?”
“There are a lot of them. Which do you mean?”
“Don’t mess with me.” He lurched toward the bed.
I scooted down and away. There’s something about seeing the firing end of a gun aimed at you that paralyzes the brain. “I was hired to review you
r father’s gift contract and to make sure the artwork was properly accounted for. I swear, that’s all.”
“What about the ones his clients gave him? Did you see the papers for them?”
“Papers?” I repeated numbly. “There’s no special documentation for gifts he received in what we have. Wait, is that what the auction papers were?”
The ones that were on the copier? So it was something about the handful of expensive paintings for which the paperwork was incomplete or unusual that was wrong. Was whatever we couldn’t see in them enough to make Bart Corliss jump under a moving train? Larry Saylor must have figured it out or gotten close. “J.P., I’m in the dark. Is your father selling those pieces because he can’t make good on his pledge?”
“My father has more money than God.” He laughed suddenly, that same whinnying sound he had made when he was talking to me at the polo match. “But I don’t.”
“I thought—” I stopped but not in time.
“What?” he said, leaning over me, the gun close to my cheek. “That daddy would make sure his only son had a decent income?” He pulled himself upright with a jerk and started to pace. “You know how much it costs to keep a stable? Ten ponies, two grooms, trailers, saddles, everything? And to stay with the team in Argentina, never mind keeping the loan sharks at bay?”
Argentina. The international phone number I found in Saylor’s notes. “Did Lynthorpe’s vice president call you? Is that why you surprised him at the golf course?”
“Surprise? No way. He agreed to meet me there so I could explain my problem, the sleazeballs who want a hundred thousand like yesterday, and why I had to have the rest of the money.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if he were struggling to focus. “When I met him that night on the course, I thought he’d see that it was a matter of life or death and, since there was so much else the college was getting, he’d look the other way.”
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