Dangerous Ladies

by Christina Dodd

  She needed to get away from Devlin—before he lay further siege to her wary self, and ruined all of her well-made larcenous plans.

  6

  Meadow dove for the corded hotel wall phone.

  She dialed frantically, then slammed down the receiver. Would Mr. I’ve Got Security Everywhere know she was using the phone?

  Probably.

  But she felt pretty sure it was illegal to bug the phone lines in a hotel room, so her conversation should be private.

  Besides . . . did she have a choice?

  No.

  Really, he probably hadn’t had time to bug this phone.

  And she had fallen over the edge into the pit of paranoia.

  She dialed again, calling the one person who had listened to her rage and disappointment, encouraged her to look for a solution, helped her make her plans, and promised to be the contact in Blythe while Meadow was away.

  Judith Smith had arrived on their doorstep when Meadow was fourteen, hungry to learn everything she could about art and painting. Before she was done with her apprenticeship, Judith had settled in as part of their family. She’d stayed for months, creating mediocre paintings, but the first time her art was rejected she had quit.

  Privately, Sharon told her daughter that the only person who could declare an artist a failure was the artist herself, that Judith’s demand for immediate success had put a stranglehold on her talent, a talent Judith refused to allow to mature.

  So she’d quit and gone on to other careers—she didn’t say what they were, but apparently she had money, for she came and went as she pleased. She’d helped Meadow get into the art program at Stanford and suggested she study abroad. Her mother, her father, and her grandmother had built Meadow’s spirit and mentored her art, but when Meadow had left their mountain home and gone out into the world, Judith had been her real-life mentor.

  Now Meadow held her breath, waiting for the first ring.

  Judith answered before it was completed, her nasal voice tipped over the edge into panic. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.” Meadow hunched over the phone, keeping her voice low.

  “Thank God. I’ve been so worried.” Judith took a long breath. “Why aren’t you answering your cell phone? What happened? Where are you?”

  Meadow answered the questions in order. “Cell phone doesn’t work out here. Got caught breaking in. At Waldemar.”

  “Oh, my God. Are you all right? Did you find the painting? Did you get hurt?”

  “I got hurt a little. Nothing important. But the painting wasn’t on the wall.”

  “I did try to tell you that was possible. People do rearrange their houses.”

  Judith sounded so calm, Meadow wanted to shriek at her. “Grandmother promised me it would be here.”

  Judith’s voice sharpened. “Do you think she lied to you?”

  “She didn’t!”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. There’s simply so much riding on this.” Judith sounded contrite and embarrassed. “But you did say that sometimes there toward the end, she was a little confused.”

  “Yes. But the painting probably was there—once. The trouble is, people sell their houses.” Meadow listened as Judith breathed hard.

  “Waldemar is sold?” Sometimes, in moments of stress, Judith’s voice sounded like pure New York. This was one of those moments.

  “To a man named Devlin Fitzwilliam.”

  “Devlin Fitzwilliam,” Judith said slowly. “Devlin . . . Oh, my God. Devlin Fitzwilliam caught you breaking in?”

  “Yes, and he—Wait a minute.” Judith’s panic caught Meadow’s attention. “Do you know him?”

  “Everybody knows Fitzwilliam. He was the quarterback for Florida State.”

  “Quarterback. That’s football, right?” The way he was built, that made sense.

  “Yes, dear. That’s football. The man’s been profiled in the Harvard Business Review. Forbes. Entrepreneur. He’s one of the Fitzwilliams of Charleston, the son of Grace Fitzwilliam.” Meadow could almost see Judith wringing her hands. “Do you recognize that name?”

  “No. Not really.” Meadow put her back against the wall and slid down, sitting on the floor, knees up, eyes fixed on the door.

  “You ought to watch TV every once in a while. Grace Fitzwilliam is a home decorator with a nationally syndicated show. She demonstrates how to turn your house into a traditional Southern paradise.”

  “Oh.” Meadow liked television. So did her father. But her mother wouldn’t allow a set in her house, and Meadow had been living with her parents for the last—difficult—year and a half. She was out of touch and knew it—and, much to her surprise, she was happier than when she had been at college and very much in touch.

  Sharon was a smart cookie.

  “Is it a reality show?”

  “More like Martha Stewart. You do know who Martha Stewart is, don’t you?” Judith was half laughing, half sarcastic.

  “Yes. Judith, I can’t talk for long.” Meadow needed to get off this phone before she was caught, but she couldn’t resist hearing about Devlin. “Tell me what I need to know to manage him.”

  “Fitzwilliam is a genius at developing profitable properties.”

  “He’s turning this into a hotel.”

  “I’ll bet. He’s got a reputation as a ruthless son of a bitch out to make his fortune bigger.”

  “Ruthless.”

  “He’s nobody’s fool, and everybody knows it—or finds out to their peril. He runs over anyone who stands in his way. He’s the son of that billionaire, Nathan Manly, the one who bankrupted his company, stole all the money, and fled to South America about ten or fifteen years ago. Bet you never heard that story, either?”

  “No.” Nor did she care, except as it related to Devlin’s personality—and remembering his comment last night about Bradley Benjamin calling him a bastard, it obviously did. “So Fitzwilliam wants to prove he’s not like his father?”

  “That, and Grace’s family didn’t take it well when she popped up pregnant. She wasn’t married to Manly—in fact, he was married to someone else.”

  “Every child born is a new thought of God.”

  “The Fitzwilliams are against new thought.”

  Realization dawned. “They’re one of the families he was talking about. The ones who still control everything.”

  “That’s right. So he carries chips on his shoulder as big as epaulets, and rumor says he’s a real asshole when someone tries to screw him over.”

  “Oh.” And Meadow had sort of liked him. Found him enticing.

  But maybe that was the hormones talking.

  “So you have to be careful. Very careful.” Meadow could hear the worry in Judith’s voice. “Now, what’s your next move?”

  Meadow couldn’t bring herself to confess her ridiculous amnesia lie or his absurd marriage lie. The whole thing sounded like a Shake-spearean farce, and it played like one, too, except for those kisses . . . which played like porn. “I talked him into letting me stay.”

  Judith hesitated, and Meadow could almost hear her brain whirling. Judith was probably more intelligent than any person Meadow had ever known. Not more talented, but more intelligent, and although she tried to hide it, hungrier for fame. Mom had once quietly confessed to Meadow that she felt there were teeth in that hunger, but Judith had never shown them to Meadow. “Do you think it’s wise to stay? Maybe there’s another way.”

  “I think there’s no choice. He’s got guards and security all over the place. I won’t get in again. And I have to have that painting.” Unbidden, the picture of her mother with a handkerchief tied over her bald head rose in Meadow’s mind. She swallowed sudden tears. “We haven’t heard it’s been discovered, and we would be the first to know. Gossip in the art community spreads like wildfire. So it’s got to be here in the house somewhere. I only have to find it.”

  “Yes. You’re right. But if he’s got all that security . . . how?”

  “I’m a smart girl. I can
turn off the security for a while, then turn it back on again.”

  “Oh, my dear, I’m so worried about you!” Judith burst out.

  “I know.” Meadow took a breath. “How’s it going at home? Do they really believe I’m in Atlanta at a retreat?” She felt awful lying to her parents, but if her mom knew Meadow was here and what she planned to do, she’d be disappointed, and her mother’s disappointment was a crushing weight to bear.

  So it was better for them both if Meadow lied. Any guilt her mom would have made Meadow feel about stealing a lousy picture was nothing compared to the guilt Meadow would feel if she could take action and didn’t.

  Not to mention the fact that Grandmother would come back and haunt her.

  River was a gifted artist and a great father, but he was a disaster at making sure they had food in the fridge, talking to their agent, and paying the bills, so Meadow had made Judith promise to stay with her parents and handle the day-to-day stuff that her mother usually handled. Now Meadow tried hard to feel relief and instead suffered a clawing anxiety.

  “Yes, don’t worry! Just concentrate on your job. And don’t call them—I told them your retreat won’t allow cell phones.”

  “Oh, but . . . ” She talked to her mother almost every day, touching base, needing to hear that familiar, warm voice and know her mom was still in the world.

  “You’re a lousy liar,” Judith said with brutal frankness, “and if you call your mother, she’s going to know you’re up to something. You don’t want to worry her.”

  “No. You’re right.”

  But that brought Meadow right back to the problem of Devlin Fitzwilliam.

  If she was such a lousy liar, why was he keeping her here?

  Judith hung up the phone and looked around the piece-of-shit room she’d rented at the Amelia Shores Bide-a-Wee Motel.

  She’d worked years to get to this moment—she shouldn’t pull back now just because the big cockroaches kept pet cockroaches. Besides, she’d been here once before, eighteen years ago this September, and yes, it was seedier than it had been then, but she was so close to her goal, she could almost taste it.

  In some ways she felt bad lying to that kid. She’d known her for years, and Meadow was as genuine and open as her parents.

  On the other hand, Meadow was as talented as her parents, too, and that made Judith’s gut burn. It wasn’t fair—why some people were geniuses and others . . . others were just good. In the art world, genius won you international appreciation. Good won you a place in the traveling Starving Artists’ Shows and a painting on a restaurant wall with a two-hundred-dollar price tag stapled on the frame.

  That wasn’t what Judith had wanted. All her life she had needed to be someone. She wanted people—critics—to notice her, praise her, recognize her. And twenty years ago, five years after getting out of college, she’d had to face harsh reality. She didn’t have genius—so she went about getting her fame a different way.

  She was going to find a lost masterpiece.

  It wasn’t hard. It could be done. It merely took a little research and the willingness to track down rumors to their source. Not all the rumors had panned out, of course, and she’d spent a lot of time viewing really lousy art masquerading as masterpieces.

  After about a year she heard a rumor about famed artist Isabelle and the masterpiece she’d left behind. She’d heard another rumor, and another, and finally she’d bought enough drinks for the bitter old nursemaid, Mrs. Graham, to get confirmation. The masterpiece was real, and it was in the grand old mansion of Waldemar.

  But Mrs. Graham was so deaf she shouted every word, and such a lush she’d give up her information to anybody with enough cash for a mimosa and some pretzels. Judith hadn’t had a choice, and really, it wasn’t hard to spike her twelfth glass of the evening with a little rat poison. When the police found her the next day in the alley outside the bar, they’d carted her away and listed her death as “natural causes.”

  Southerners had a real way with covering up the ugly side of life.

  Judith’s break-in at Waldemar had yielded no painting that fit the description. It had, however, yielded some dog-teeth marks on her ass and a perfect description of the thief by one furious Bradley Benjamin. For those reasons, she hadn’t dared try again.

  So she had gone about matters a different way. She’d gone looking for the papers of the famous—and infamous—artist Isabelle . . . and instead found Isabelle’s supposedly dead daughter.

  The whole setup was too perfect. The grand old artist Isabelle had announced her daughter had been killed in a car wreck in Ireland at the age of four. She’d “adopted” Sharon, then kept her out of the limelight, and ever since, Sharon had been hiding in plain sight, not avoiding the press, but not courting them, either.

  After Sharon married River Szarvas, they’d used the money Isabelle had made from her art to establish an artists’ colony, one dedicated to fostering talent and training the next generation of geniuses. They funded scholarships. They trained their successors, for shit’s sake. They always had ragtag kids who imagined themselves artists hanging around, sleeping on their floors, eating their food, talking about their art with burning eyes. . . . It hadn’t been hard to show up at the household in Blythe and move in as Judith, a woman seeking her muse.

  And for a while, she’d thought she’d found it. She created the best paintings of her life while living there and breathing that rarified air. For a while, she’d forgotten the stupid lost masterpiece and painted at a fever pitch, sure she’d at last tapped her inner genius.

  Then, when she had shown them to an art critic, he gave her the name of a restaurant willing to hang and sell paintings for a commission.

  She wanted to put poison in his coffee.

  Instead, she’d crawled back to the Szarvases’, listened without interest to Sharon’s pep talk, and volunteered to transcribe Isabelle’s diaries into the computer. Sharon felt sorry enough for her to let Judith do it, and while Judith discovered eye-popping gossip and fascinating insights into the female artist’s life, she’d found nothing about the masterpiece.

  She had tactfully probed Sharon’s memory, trying desperately to become the kind of confidante Sharon would trust in all things.

  But Sharon had held back; her acute eyes had made Judith think that . . . well, they had made Judith think Sharon saw through her.

  At last Judith took an interest in Isabelle’s granddaughter, and hit gold.

  Isabelle had told the child everything. Everything.

  A quick trip to Amelia Shores had revealed that the painting was no longer hanging above the fireplace.

  Of course not.

  That would be too easy.

  And she couldn’t figure out how to stay there and search. Old man Benjamin was still alive. The police still had the description of her. She got in and out of town in a hurry.

  Right about then, her money had run out. She put her father, the meanest son of a bitch who had ever lived, in an asylum, sold his home, and cashed in his assets. That gave her another two years.

  Then she needed funding.

  Mr. Hopkins made his offer so promptly, it was as if he had been observing her. Of course, knowing what she knew now, he had been.

  She could have the fame.

  He wanted the painting.

  She’d never seen him. He’d been a voice on the phone, counseling her to be patient. She’d thought she’d been patient all the long years, but he defined staying power, and in the end . . . he was right. With his help, her moment had come.

  The painting—and the glory—was within her grip. She would allow nothing to stand in her way.

  Nothing—and nobody.

  7

  Gabriel Prescott stepped into Devlin’s office.

  “Hey, Gabe.” Devlin didn’t glance up. He didn’t have to. He sat before the banks of video screens set into the handsome, old-fashioned bookshelves. He’d been watching, so he’d seen Gabriel come through the front door. He’d seen eve
ry step Gabriel made all the way to the office.

  But he was still viewing the screens, a slight smile on his face.

  “What are we doing?” Gabriel shut the door behind him.

  “We’re watching her.”

  Always interested in a her that put that tone in Devlin’s voice, Gabriel came to stand behind his shoulder. The monitor showed a woman wandering down one of the corridors—and she was gorgeous. Her red hair glowed like a candle flame about her pale skin. She had long legs and curvy hips and small, high breasts, all lovingly arranged by a master hand. She wore a pair of white shorts, a yellow tube top, some silly-ass flip-flops decorated with rhinestones, and over it all, a man’s large white starched shirt with a knot tied in each front corner. She wore a yellow Band-Aid on her forehead—from here it looked as if it was decorated with happy faces—and she moseyed down the corridor, stopping at every other painting and staring.

  Gabriel pulled up a chair and seated himself so he could see the screen, too. “Anytime you need help looking at her, I’m your man. Who is she?”

  Devlin shot him an enigmatic look. “My wife.”

  “Your wife?” Misstep!

  “Meadow.”

  It took Gabriel a moment to realize Devlin meant that was her name. “Really.” He’d known Fitzwilliam for a long time, ever since his firm had first started installing the security on Devlin’s projects, and never had Devlin mentioned a wife.

  But then, they weren’t friends. Devlin was a grim, secretive son of a bitch with no sense of humor and an adversarial way of making conversation. He was also damned possessive about his properties, and watching him watch Meadow made Gabriel feel sorry for the girl. She was in for a bumpy ride.

  “What’s she doing?” Gabriel asked.

  “She’s searching for something.”

  “A painting?”

  “She could very well be.” Devlin sounded satisfied.

  Okay, fine. Devlin was feeling enigmatic today. Might as well get to business. “I hear there was a break-in last night.”