by Dana Mentink
“Morning,” Tuney said, shuffling into the room. “Lovely day for a treasure hunt, isn’t it?”
Brooke gasped, her stomach instantly in knots. “What are you doing here?”
Tuney offered a smile. “Dean Lock invited me to be your escort.”
They all turned to look at the dean. “Mr. Tuney was hired by the University Board to locate Leo Colda.”
Victor’s eyes swiveled between Tuney and Lock and back to Tuney. “So you’re employed by Bayside? Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
Tuney shrugged. “I’m not in the business of handing out information, just acquiring it. I’ve already been through Colda’s office with a fine-tooth comb, talked to his students, including the one who saw him exiting the tunnels. You’re going to find zippo in his place, trust me.”
“Then why are you coming along?” Stephanie said, eyes flashing. Brooke heard the challenge in her voice and no trace of fear. Brooke wondered what it would feel like to be fearless. Must run in the Gage family, she thought as she watched brother and sister staring at Tuney with similar expressions of irritation.
Tuney fired back a sardonic smile.
“You know about the shooting at my office?” Victor said to Lock. “How Tuney hired someone to follow Brooke?”
“I understand Colda tried to make contact with the Ramsey family before he disappeared. It seems a natural step for someone investigating to follow the trail.” His glance flicked to Brooke and then back to Victor. “The university has heard from the police that there are no leads on the shooting of Tuney’s cohort.”
Brooke thought she heard the slightest note of disdain in Lock’s choice of the word cohort. Could it be that Tuney had been forced on Lock by the administration?
Lock cleared his throat. “My orders are to have Tuney accompany you in your investigations, so that’s what I’m going to do. He won’t get in your way, I’m sure.”
The smug look on Tuney’s face made Brooke quiver inside, but she knew there was no point in resisting.
“I trust you have no problem with Tuney’s assistance in this matter?” Lock said, directing his gaze at Brooke. “You have nothing to hide, do you?”
Do you?
She thought about her father’s secretive behavior. It grated on her that she hadn’t known he’d sent the painting to Colda. Why hadn’t he trusted her with the information? She swallowed the doubts and lifted her chin. “Of course not. The more eyes the better.”
“Great,” Tuney said, fishing a key from his pocket. “Then let’s go over to Colda’s place. It’s a dump, but it should be interesting to see if you can find something I didn’t.”
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Brooke headed out into the chilly morning, following Stephanie and Victor.
Tuney lingered behind to exchange words with the dean.
Victor’s jaw was tight, strides quick and angry. Stephanie and Brooke had to jog to keep up. “I don’t like having someone looking over my shoulder, especially someone I don’t trust. I never should have…” He broke off.
What? Brooke wondered. Hired a man like Tuney all those years before? Did he feel like Brooke did, that putting Tuney on a case was like dripping blood into shark-infested waters? She wanted to be angry at him for hiring such a man, but she wasn’t sure she would have behaved differently if it was her loved one who died at the hands of someone who got away scot-free.
Her thoughts surprised her. Understanding for this man? A man who would be elated to pin a death on her innocent father? She quickened her pace, trying to leave the thoughts behind. They arrived on the front porch of a tidy two-story bungalow, brick sides edged in ivy. It was neat and well tended, charmingly old in appearance but newly renovated, as evidenced by the double-paned windows and smart trim.
Tuney finally joined them and unlocked the door, standing aside with a flourish. “Colda’s is upstairs, the suite at the end of the hallway.” They climbed the stairs, trailed down a darkened corridor, and he unlocked the interior door and stepped back, allowing the others to enter first.
Brooke gasped.
“Has it been tossed?” Stephanie said.
Tuney laughed. “No, the guy’s just a slob of epic proportions.”
Slob was an understatement. Stacks of magazines and books dotted the wood floors. A tangle of ivy cascaded from a pot down the stuffed bookcase, both plant and books coated with a layer of dust. Piles of books filled every available corner, and the windows were plastered with sticky notes and tattered bits of paper taped here and there.
“Hard to believe Colda is a professor, isn’t it?” Tuney said, fingering a stack of comic books. “Lived more like a vagrant. Students said he was flighty. He had no sense of time. One time he was in the library and forgot what time it was. One of his teaching assistants had to go find him so he could teach class.”
Tuney went on, but Brooke wasn’t listening. Her gaze was drawn to the wall next to a battered dining table, covered with stacks of newspapers.
“That’s it,” she said.
Victor and Stephanie continued to prowl around the space and paid her no attention so she said it louder.
“There.” Something in her tone made them both stop.
She pointed to the small, framed picture above the dining-room table. “That’s The Contemplative Lady,” she said with a sigh. “Well, a reproduction anyway.” Even though it wasn’t the real thing, the genius of the work came through. The look on the lady’s face as she gazed wistfully out the window, the chessboard forgotten to the lure of the sunlight playing over the garden. Was she pining for her love? Chafing against the constraints of being a woman of the 1800s? Wishing for a life somewhere outside those walls?
Victor broke her reverie, taking out his iPhone to snap a picture. “Well, at least we’ve got a nice visual on what we’re looking for. Why would he hang a reproduction?”
Brooke took a picture with her phone, as well.
Stephanie scanned the walls. “It’s the only artwork he’s got in the place.”
“I wondered that, too,” Tuney said. “I’ll admit, I was taken in at first. I’m no art guy, so it took me a minute to realize it was a fake.”
“He must have painted it himself.” Brooke broke into a smile. “At least it proves my father really did contact Colda about the painting, otherwise he wouldn’t have known what it looked like.”
Tuney shook his head. “Doesn’t prove the painting was ever really here. We still don’t have a Tarkenton or any clue about what happened to Colda.”
Brooke sighed. He was right, but in her mind it was another step in the right direction.
Victor turned his attention back to the overflowing file cabinet. “Looks like Colda kept every scrap of paper he ever ran across.”
“Mostly bills, some past due, a few articles about obscure art-related stuff.” Tuney cleared some newspapers off the small sofa and settled in, his feet up on the coffee table. “I’m just going to take a little nap, don’t mind me. Wake me if you find something.”
Stephanie shot him a look.
Brooke tore herself away from the painting and headed for the bedroom, where she and Victor lifted up the mattress and throw rugs, searched the closet and drawers with no success. Brooke found her eyes wandering back to the Tarkenton reproduction just visible through the doorway. Something about it poked at her.
“Got an idea?” Victor asked.
She started, realizing she’d been standing motionless, staring. “No, nothing. Just something about it that I can’t figure out.”
He came closer, face intent. “Might be your instincts trying to tell you something. In my experience, it’s a good idea to listen.”
Her nerves began to tingle but she could not decide if it was something about the painting, or the proximity to this enigmatic man. Stephanie called to them from the kitchen and they joined her there.
She waved a hand at the sink piled with crusted dishes. “Colda could have used a housekeeper.”
; “Or a sanitation company,” Victor said with disgust.
“Look at the whiteboard,” Stephanie said.
They squinted at a series of letters and numbers. “5, 7, 2.”
“Telephone number?” Brooke suggested.
“Room numbers,” Tuney called from the living room. “Colda couldn’t remember where he was supposed to be for each class. He wrote it down to help himself but that didn’t work. The admin finally moved all his classes to the same room so he wouldn’t keep missing them.”
Brooke sighed and patted Stephanie’s arm. “It was a good idea anyway.”
Stephanie shook her head. “Not good enough.”
The three exchanged glances and Brooke understood.
Be careful what you say.
Tuney is monitoring every word.
Brooke returned to the living room, feeling more discouraged with each passing minute. Her gaze returned again to the lady in the painting.
If only you could talk, she thought.
If only.
SEVEN
Victor’s back was aching and his stomach growling by late afternoon. They’d stopped just long enough to eat the sandwiches Stephanie had gone to get. Going through files, boxes and bags looking for some indication of where Colda had stashed the painting or where he had disappeared to had yielded nothing but clouds of dust. Victor did not mind the searching—he’d spent hundreds of hours as a med student and surgeon winnowing out the tiniest references to surgical procedures that might inform his own treatment of his patients. He had to admit that he didn’t like floundering around in the vague hope of finding a treasure with only the flimsiest of clues to guide them. And above all, he didn’t like having someone watching.
But hadn’t he paid the man four years before to do exactly that? And truth be told, he hadn’t cared about the methodology. But now, when it was Tuney determined to bring down Brooke’s father, he felt uncomfortable.
Maybe because Ramsey’s red-haired daughter intrigued him? Made him begin to question his own need for vengeance?
Victor chalked up his uncharacteristic emotionalism to fatigue. A whole day wasted.
They continued to plow through the mess for another few hours until some silent understanding passed between them and they convened in the front room. Discouragement was written on Brooke’s face. Stephanie wore her usual expression of calm, but Victor knew she was as frustrated as he was.
Tuney lifted an eyebrow. “Leaving so soon? It took me three days to get through the mess.”
Victor held back his rising temper. “What did you learn from the witness? The one who saw Colda leaving the tunnel?”
“Nothing much. She said she was down in the basement, moving a box of sorority stuff and she saw Colda coming out of the same area you went into yesterday.”
“The tunnel goes nowhere. It’s impassable.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t credit the story that he’s hidden anything down there. The police took a dog down to sniff around, more to appease the administration than anything else. They found nothing but a dead rat carcass.”
“What’s your theory, then?” Stephanie asked, finger-combing some bits of plaster out of her short, tousled hair.
“If there really is such a painting, I think Colda made off with it, tried to skip town and Donald killed him.” He stared at Brooke. “I think the painting is stashed somewhere off campus, or maybe your father already has it back.”
Brooke shook her head. “Then why would I be here looking for it?”
“Because your father didn’t clue you in, did he?”
She looked away. “There wasn’t anything to tell me. He doesn’t have the painting.”
“But you can’t explain the phone call to your house from Colda, the ticket he bought to San Diego but never got on the flight?”
“I don’t have to explain it,” she said, hands on hips. “I’ve never met Colda, but judging from his place here, he’s eccentric, to say the least.”
Tuney seemed to weigh something in his mind. “Your father took a trip a few weeks back. Stopped right across the bay.”
She started. “Yes. He went to the library to study some archived letters.”
“Where?”
“U.C. Berkeley.”
“True, but he made one other stop. Here at Bayside, to visit his old pal. Only, Colda wasn’t around, so they left without meeting.”
“Okay, sounds innocent enough,” Victor put in. “Donald wanted an update on the appraisal of his painting. Natural that he’d look Colda up while he was in town.”
Tuney shrugged. “Sounds normal on the surface, but I talked to the cafeteria manager. She knew Colda well because he’d order the same thing every day, grilled cheese and tomato sandwich with black coffee. She says Colda was indeed on campus the day and time Donald came to visit. She remembers because Colda asked for his meal to go, something he’d never done in the ten years she’d known him.”
Brooke crossed her arms. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“He’s trying to figure out why, if Colda was on campus, he didn’t want to meet with your father,” Victor said.
Brooke gaped. “I have no idea.”
“It’s suspicious,” Victor said. “You’ve got to admit that.”
“I don’t have to admit anything. My father is a good man and you can spin all the conspiracy theories you want.” Brooke walked to the door. “I need some fresh air.”
Victor sighed. “I wasn’t spinning theories,” he said to no one. “We’ve got to look at all the facts.”
“I don’t think Brooke sees it that way,” Stephanie said. “And frankly, if it was our dad, I think I’d be feeling the same. I’ll see you outside.”
Victor felt Tuney’s eyes on him. “She’s not going to see things clearly where her father is concerned. We’re going to have to ferret out the truth whether she likes it or not,” Tuney said.
We? Victor saw Brooke out the window, sitting in a meager beam of late-afternoon sunlight, slight shoulders hunched as if from bearing a heavy weight.
If her father was unmasked, then the person who planned the robbery would finally be punished.
And Brooke Ramsey would be destroyed.
* * *
Brooke wanted to be alone, to hide herself away from everyone and think, but there was no time as she and Stephanie made their way into the empty women’s dormitory. She sensed that Stephanie wanted to say something, but Brooke avoided eye contact. One kind word from the woman, and she knew she would dissolve into tears.
At the heart of her anguish was the knowledge that Tuney was right. Her father hadn’t “clued her in.” She hadn’t known that he’d visited Bayside. He hadn’t mentioned it and neither had Denise. The omission burned inside her. As soon as she could get a moment alone, she intended to call them and find out why.
They located a suitable empty room, a long rectangular space with nothing more than three twin beds, a tiny sink area, a battered desk with an equally battered chair and a bulletin board still sporting a picture of a handsome man who Brooke assumed was a movie actor. A dried flower was pinned to the wall. The remnant of a boyfriend’s offering? The space was painted in a shade of yellow that had probably once been cheerful.
Stephanie set her duffel bag on one of the beds.
“Cozy,” she said, plopping down her sleeping bag and an extra she’d brought for Brooke. “Bathroom is down the hall. Let’s go find that brother of mine and get some food. I’m starving.”
Brooke sank down on the bed and pulled out her cell phone. “You go. I wanted to call home and check in.”
Stephanie hesitated. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
Stephanie studied her for a moment, dark eyes intense like Victor’s, before she nodded and left.
When she was alone, Brooke dialed. It rang and rang with no answer. She prowled the room with restless steps, stopping to look out the window into the darkening sky like the contemplative lady in Tarkenton’s p
ainting. She pulled up the picture on her cell phone again, staring at the small image. Something preyed on her mind, nibbling at the corners. Something wrong. Something out of place.
Her thoughts would not cooperate, and the quiet of the deserted dormitory enveloped her with smothering silence. A walk might clear her thoughts. She’d be safe if she ventured no farther than the courtyard. Before the walls closed in around her she found her way outside, cool air bathing her face. In the distance, the hills were still visible against a clouded sky. It was such a melancholy sight she wished she could put it to dance right at that very moment, to let her inner turmoil find expression in the glorious high release or a twisting spiral.
A low brick wall encircled the place and her heart skipped to see a man sitting there, facing away from her in the pool of light from a single lamppost.
Tuney.
She turned to go when he saw her.
“Settled in?”
She nodded, intending to leave without further comment, when she detected something different in his face, a soft expression she didn’t understand. A trick of the moonlight? He was holding a newspaper, open to the sports section.
He noticed her eyeing it. “Reading about spring training. Fran was a real baseball nut.”
Brooke was startled. The gentle look. The wistful expression. “She was a good friend?”
He folded the newspaper with a snap. “Fran was an all-right gal. Never complained, and she had plenty in her life to gripe about. Always said she was happy to be standing on her own two feet even wearing cheap shoes.” He laughed.
“I’m sorry about her death,” Brooke said.
“Me, too. It’s always grated on me that good people get the short end of the stick. Plenty of scumbags and users out there in the world, but Fran wasn’t like that. So why does she have to take a bullet?” He shook his head. “No justice in the world.”
“I didn’t know, it didn’t seem from the way you talked about her that you two were close.”
Tuney got to his feet. “What difference does that make? She didn’t deserve to take a bullet just because she was following you around.”
“No, she didn’t.”