Flash

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Probably. They haven’t had a failure yet.”

  “I know,” Jasper said. “That’s why Sloan & Associates financed their new product line research four years ago.”

  Todd shook his head. “I should have guessed. Have you been upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “If you think this is weird, wait until you see what Olivia did on the floor above.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  The gold rims of Todd’s serious glasses winked in the blue light. “I didn’t know you planned to be here tonight.”

  “I had to see if Olivia could outdo Foil Town.”

  Todd winced. “Whatever you do, don’t call the Silver Galaxy Foods Night event Foil Town in her presence.”

  “What do you think I am?” Jasper munched down on a cracker. “Stupid?”

  Todd did not smile. He appeared to take the question seriously, as if Jasper had asked about a campaign policy issue.

  “No. Whatever else you are, Sloan, you aren’t stupid.”

  Jasper decided to change the subject. “Does the fact that you’re here tonight mean that Eleanor Lancaster is somewhere in the vicinity?”

  Todd studied the crowd with a neutral expression. “Lot of money in this room. It’s an ideal venue for Eleanor.”

  Something cool and distant in his voice caught Jasper’s attention. He wondered if there had been a few ripples on the seas of the perfect political relationship. He downed the rest of his cracker. “Campaign looks like it’s going well. Picking up a lot of momentum.”

  “And money.” Todd took a swallow from the glass in his hand. “Eleanor is going straight to the governor’s office in November. And after that there’s no reason she shouldn’t eventually take a look at running for the White House.”

  Jasper whistled soundlessly. “Big plans.”

  “Very big.”

  “Takes a lot of money to get all the way to Washington, D.C.”

  “She can pull it in.” Todd’s jaw hardened. He took another swallow from his glass. “She’s very, very focused.”

  “Guess that’s what it requires to be president.”

  “Yes. If you’re going to be a winner like Eleanor, everything else in your life has to take a back seat.”

  He wasn’t the most intuitive person on the planet, Jasper told himself, but even he could feel the undercurrents here.

  “Something wrong, Todd?”

  “No.” Todd smiled without a trace of amusement. “Everything’s right on schedule. Including me.”

  Jasper was wondering how far to push, when another man shouldered his way through a nearby knot of guests. It was obvious from the slow, careful way he moved and the hot, glittery look in his eyes that he had started drinking before he had arrived at the party.

  “Hello, Dixon.” Todd glanced quickly at Jasper. “Have you met Dixon Haggard? Eleanor Lancaster’s campaign manager. Dixon, this is Jasper Sloan. The co-owner of Glow, Inc.”

  “Haggard.” Jasper nodded slightly.

  “Sloan.” The single word was slightly slurred. “Didn’t know you’d be here tonight. Quite a production, isn’t it?”

  “It’s definitely got the Light Fantastic stamp all over it,” Jasper agreed. “Where’s the candidate?”

  “Over there.” Dixon waved the glass in his hand in a vague manner to indicate a spot on the other side of the room. “Talking to some VIPs from Camelot Blue. Can’t waste a golden opportunity like this to raise a few bucks.”

  There was no quiet, melancholic resignation in Dixon’s voice as there had been in Todd’s, just a willing, eager acceptance of the facts. Politics was fueled with money. Everyone knew that. But maybe, Jasper reflected, it took idealists such as Todd a little longer to realize exactly what that fact meant in the real world.

  He looked across the heads of the crowd and saw a ring of people gathered around the statuesque figure of Eleanor Lancaster. His first thought surprised him. She looks just like she does on TV.

  Her black hair gleamed a metallic blue in the eerie lights. The air around her seemed to shimmer with energy. It was obvious even from where Jasper stood that everyone in the small group clustered near her was hanging on every word.

  Dixon shoved a hand into the pocket of his evening trousers and slurped blue-tinted champagne. “Been upstairs yet?”

  “No. I hear it’s interesting up there.”

  Dixon made a face. “Light Fantastic turned the entire floor into a neon arcade. Not exactly the height of sophistication.”

  “Olivia has a policy of giving her clients exactly what they want,” Jasper said quietly. “It’s good business. Sort of like a politician getting herself invited to a shindig like this so that she can troll for financial donors.”

  Todd gave him a sharp, slightly startled look but said nothing.

  Dixon’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, I get your point. Business is business. I notice that Sean Dane and his family are not here tonight. I know for a fact that they were invited. Guess it’s no surprise they stayed away, given their history with Olivia.”

  Todd stiffened visibly. He looked at Dixon with illconcealed annoyance. “The Danes owe my sister a hell of a lot.”

  “No shit?” Dixon gave him a mockingly innocent look of inquiry. “Thought they held her responsible for driving Logan Dane to his death.”

  “Dane got drunk and did something stupid. He was responsible for his own death,” Todd said.

  Dixon shrugged as if the matter were supremely unimportant. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to step on any toes.”

  “Bullshit,” Todd said very softly.

  Dixon ignored him. Perhaps he had not heard the succinct comment.

  Jasper looked at Todd. “Why do you say the Danes owe Olivia?”

  Todd’s jaw jerked slightly. “If it hadn’t been for her, they wouldn’t have been able to cash in on Logan Dane’s reputation during the past three years.”

  Dixon looked briefly interested in the conversation again. Money, Jasper noticed, had a way of grabbing his attention.

  “What do you mean?” Dixon demanded.

  “One of the little details that Crawford Lee Wilder conveniently left out of his piece on Olivia,” Todd said, “is the fact that right after Dane’s funeral she gave every single one of his paintings in her possession to the Dane family. Sean and the others have been selling off Logan’s pictures very quietly ever since. They’ve made a fortune.”

  Dixon scowled. “That’s not the way I heard it.”

  “Like everyone else, you bought the Crawford Lee Wilder version of the Logan Dane legend.” Todd looked Dixon up and down with unmistakable disgust. “Wilder was right on one point. Dane did have a will. He left everything to Olivia, including his unsold paintings. At the time of his death, his work had just begun to escalate in value. Nobody knew better than Olivia did how much his stuff would be worth in a few years.”

  Dixon’s features twisted in disbelief. “You’re telling me she gave every damn one of those pictures to Dane’s relatives?”

  “Yes. Olivia likes money as much as anyone else, but unlike some people, there are a lot of things she won’t do to get it.” Todd turned on his heel and walked away into the crowd.

  “Sonofabitch.” Dixon sounded genuinely awed. “We must be talking about a couple of million bucks worth of art.”

  “That might have been the value of the pictures at the time of Dane’s death.” Jasper watched Todd’s rigidly set shoulders. “But they would be worth four or five times that amount now. Even more in the future.”

  “Nobody gives away that kind of cash.” Dixon shook his head. “Nobody. I can’t believe Olivia would have been fool enough to do it.”

  “Olivia is no fool.” Jasper felt anger coil deep inside. “But she does make her decisions on the basis of values rather than money.”

  Dixon’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Forget it. The subject of values is probably a little too high-concept for yo
u, Haggard. Especially after a few drinks.”

  In his inebriated state, Dixon was having difficulty following the thread of the conversation. Jasper waited patiently until a belligerent expression belatedly dawned in the other man’s eyes.

  “Are you insulting me, you bastard?” Dixon finally managed.

  “If you can’t figure that out, you’ve definitely had one too many, Dixon.”

  Jasper turned and made his way out into the hall to hunt for Olivia. He did not look back.

  At the foot of the wide blue-lit staircase he paused to contemplate the murky azure glow that emanated from the next level. A steady stream of animated guests moved between the two floors. He wondered which room housed Merlin’s Cave.

  He had a special attachment to that cave, he thought. He would never forget his first sight of Olivia floating toward him through eerily lit vapor.

  He went down the hall behind the staircase, glancing into various rooms. Some glowed blue and were in use as smaller, quieter spaces for guests to gather. Others were closed to the public.

  The door of one of the closed rooms opened just as Jasper walked past. Olivia, dressed in a long, Camelot Blue, off-the-shoulder gown, stepped out of a pantry closet. She had what looked to be a stack of blue tunics in one hand. She did not see him until she collided with him.

  “Jasper.”

  He caught her arm and gently steadied her. “Congratulations on another big success.”

  She ignored that to glare at him as she pushed her glasses more firmly back on her nose. “It’s about time you got here. I tried to call you every time I had a free second this afternoon. Aunt Rose always said you were either out of the office or couldn’t be disturbed.”

  “I was a little busy today.”

  She gave him a knowing look. “Because of Melwood’s death?”

  “Among other things. I spent most of the morning going through Gill’s desk and his computer files.”

  Her eyes widened eagerly. “Find anything?”

  “No. But I’m not what anyone could call an expert hacker. If Gill hid something deep in his computer files, I probably wouldn’t be able to find it.”

  “We can’t exactly call in a real hacker, can we?”

  “No. We’d have to tell him what we’re looking for, and that means one more person would know what was going on.”

  “This is so complicated,” she muttered.

  “It gets worse. I also talked to the police.”

  She searched his face. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “I pulled the concerned employer routine. One of the detectives bought it. I was told that the car that killed Gill had been found. An old Cadillac.”

  “What a break.” Olivia brightened. “I don’t suppose they told you who owns it?”

  “An elderly couple in Ballard.”

  “An elderly couple?” Olivia’s face fell. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would—”

  “The car was stolen,” Jasper explained. “And abandoned after the crime. Everything inside had been wiped clean. No prints. No evidence.”

  “That must have aroused the cops’ suspicions.”

  “At the moment they’re working on the theory that whoever stole the Cadillac was probably drunk or high on drugs. When the driver realized he had accidentally hit someone, he ditched the car and ran. Unless he sobers up and turns himself in, odds of finding him are not real good.”

  She groaned. “And probably even worse if he deliberately set out to kill Melwood.”

  “Which we don’t know for certain yet,” Jasper said carefully.

  Her hand clenched tightly around the blue tunics. “We must locate Uncle Rollie’s missing files. Whoever killed Melwood is obviously looking for them, too. We can’t let him find them first.”

  “We’ll find them,” Jasper said quietly. “Between the two of us we’ve got more information on both Gill and Rollie than the blackmailer could possibly have. That gives us an edge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jasper shrugged. “In the end the guy with the most information usually wins. Provided he uses it properly.”

  She eyed him narrowly. “Is that a bit of Sloan management theory?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Do you obsessive-compulsive filers go to special schools? Is there a degree in information hoarding?”

  He stopped smiling and flattened his hand against the wall behind her head. “Olivia, I did a lot of thinking today while I went through Gill’s desk. There is one tiny scrap of information that we’ve been ignoring.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Silas at Pri-Con told us that he rented the last empty locker on the fourth floor about a month ago, remember?”

  She nodded. “So?”

  “Rollie died about a month ago.”

  She stared at him. “Oh, my God, you don’t think—?”

  “What if,” Jasper said slowly, “whoever took those files rented that last locker? What if those files were never removed from the building? What if the blackmailer transferred them into another locker?”

  “It would certainly explain why Silas never saw anyone empty out an entire locker.” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Jasper, it’s a brilliant thought. But there are a lot of what ifs involved.”

  “Yes. But they can be checked out fairly easily.”

  “Am I interrupting anything here?” Todd asked dryly.

  Olivia looked around Jasper’s shoulder. “Hi, Todd.”

  Jasper turned to look at Todd. “Your sister and I were just having a short business meeting about what to do in the accounting department now that Melwood Gill is gone.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.” Todd took a swallow from his glass. “Too bad about poor old Gill. Quincy and Percy said he hadn’t been himself for several months.”

  “That’s true.” Olivia frowned. “Todd, how much have you had to drink tonight?”

  “Don’t worry about it, big sister.” Todd smiled grimly. “I’m not driving.”

  Olivia’s eyes filled with growing concern. “You never have more than a couple of glasses of anything. What’s wrong?”

  “Special occasion.” Todd hoisted his glass in a mocking salute. “You may as well be the first to know. There won’t be an engagement announcement after the election, after all.”

  “Oh, Todd.” Olivia sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hate to admit it, but you were right all along.” Todd grimaced. “The only thing Eleanor and I have in common is a mutual interest in getting her elected.”

  “Oh, Todd.”

  Todd glared at her. “You think maybe you could skip the Oh, Todds?”

  Jasper saw Olivia open her mouth. He could tell that she was about to say Oh, Todd again.

  “Your sister has a lot to do this evening,” Jasper said smoothly. “What do you say we leave her to it? Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Todd frowned at the glass in his hand. “The drinks are free.”

  “Hell of a deal.” Jasper clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Todd shrugged and fell into step beside him. Jasper glanced back once and saw Olivia watching them with a worried expression.

  “I don’t really want another drink,” Todd confided. “But thanks for giving me an excuse to avoid any more explanations.”

  “No problem.”

  “It isn’t always easy having an older sister who thinks she’s right most of the time.”

  “I understand.” Jasper reached the elegant staircase and started up the steps. “Let’s take a look at Merlin’s Cave. I want to see what Bolivar did with a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of Glow equipment.”

  Todd smiled briefly. “Cousin Bolivar missed his calling. He should be studying to go work for a firm that designs carnival attractions. Of course, some folks would say that working for Light Fantastic was not far off the mark.”

  “I won’t tell Olivia you said that.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”r />
  At the second-floor landing, they went down a hazy blue hall. Flashing lights pulsed in quick, strobelike intervals. Miniature lightning bolts arced overhead.

  The entrance to Merlin’s Cave was easy to find. The crowd waiting to get inside wound out the door of the upstairs ballroom and halfway down the corridor.

  Jasper came to a halt. “Guess it’s a big hit.”

  “Yeah.” Todd grimaced. “Forget trying to get inside for another hour.”

  “What do you say we go out onto the veranda for some fresh air, instead? I’ve had enough blue fog for a while.”

  Todd shrugged again. He accompanied Jasper out onto the second-floor balcony.

  The cool evening and a measure of quiet greeted them.

  Jasper made no move to force a conversation. He gripped the railing and watched a handful of guests mill about below in the blue floodlit gardens.

  Todd leaned against the nearest pillar. “She was right, you know. Should have listened to her in the first place.”

  “Olivia?”

  “Yeah. She warned me not to make the same mistake she made when she married Logan Dane.”

  “What mistake was that?”

  “Olivia always refers to her marriage as a marriage of convenience. A business arrangement based on everything but love. She figured it was solid because they had so much in common, you see. But she was wrong. I got suckered by the same logic.”

  “What made you decide that you and Eleanor Lancaster didn’t have so much in common, after all?”

  “The problems have been building for a while.” Todd grimaced. “But tonight they came to a head. Eleanor and I quarreled about some of her fund-raising techniques.”

  “You didn’t go along with her plans?”

  “She made some promises to some people in exchange for contributions. Promises I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep if she stuck to our agenda after the election.”

  “What did she say when you confronted her?” Jasper asked.

  “Can’t you guess? She called me naïve. Reminded me that there won’t be any agenda to fulfill unless she gets elected, and to do that, she needs money. She told me I’d better get used to politics as usual if I want the two of us to go all the way to the White House.”

  Jasper glanced at him. “What did you say?”