Liar's Key

by Carla Neggers

  Emma watched Claudia as she stared out at the water. “And you haven’t spoken to Gordy since Thursday at the Newbury Street gallery?” Emma asked.

  Claudia shook her head, grabbing more stray strands. “I stood him up. I told him I’d meet him at my friends’ apartment and I never did. I could see he was in a mood and I was already in enough of one myself. I picked up Isabel at the train station and we came straight here. I didn’t call, text or email him. I’m not proud of it. I thought he’d stay the night in Boston, but he didn’t.” She turned and motioned vaguely with one hand toward the street. “I saw him out here Thursday night. We didn’t talk, if that’s your next question. I don’t know that he saw me.”

  Emma was silent a moment. “How close were you two?” she asked finally.

  “I know what you’re asking and I’m not going to comment.” Claudia brushed bits of mud off her hands from her stones. “I knew Gordy would be in touch with you and you’d have questions. I know my father invited you all up to the house. I hope you’ll join us.” She shifted her gaze to Emma. “I should go.”

  “Why don’t you come in and see the new offices?”

  “Another time, maybe. Is it weird for you, Emma, seeing the changes in the house your grandparents called home for so long?”

  “I saw the plans and the work being done over the fall and winter.”

  “It wasn’t a shock, then. That must help. And, of course, your grandfather is still with us.”

  “Very much so,” Emma said.

  Claudia smiled, looking slightly more relaxed as she headed up the riverbank and out to the parking lot and past the inn. Emma waited a few moments, then flung her stone into the river. She waved to the lobsterman, a guy she knew from Rock Point, and started back to the house.

  “Gordy, Gordy,” she said softly. “It’s time we had a real talk, my friend.”

  * * *

  The upstairs offices bore no resemblance to the bedrooms they’d once been. Colin had only been up there once before the carpenters had started ripping the place apart. The transformation from old house to modern offices was a testament to Lucas Sharpe’s vision and tenacity. Wendell Sharpe obviously approved. He insisted on giving Colin and Oliver a grand tour. Other guests came upstairs for a look and greeted the renowned art detective with a kind of reverence that obviously made him uncomfortable.

  “You look as if you could throw things, Agent Donovan,” Oliver said as he, Colin and Wendell entered Lucas’s office, which overlooked the tidal river.

  Wendell grunted. “Don’t give him any ideas.”

  “Excellent point. Combine boredom, jet lag and frustration, and out the window we go. Hell of an end to a good party.” Oliver pointed to a tray a server had left behind on a desk, with an array of bite-size cookies. “These will improve your mood.”

  “My mood’s fine,” Colin said.

  Wendell’s eyebrows went up slightly but he said nothing.

  Colin glanced out a window in Lucas’s office. He could see Emma down on the lawn. He turned back to her grandfather and the thief. “You two can tell me about London last week.”

  “Oops, Wendell,” Oliver said, “looks as if the FBI knows about our devious plotting.”

  “I wish you were as funny as you think you are,” Colin said.

  Oliver sniffed. “Who’s trying to be funny?”

  “Don’t let him get under your skin, Colin,” Wendell said. “Oliver knows you’ll put him on a plane back to London before you’ll arrest him. We weren’t talking about anything interesting. I wish we had been. All anyone wants from me is my take on the changes I’ve seen in the world of art and antiquities since I started this business sixty years ago. I feel like a damn dinosaur.”

  “Henry Deverell and his son were here with Isabel Greene,” Colin said. “Did you see them when you were in London last week for Alessandro Pearson’s funeral?”

  Wendell Sharpe didn’t skip a beat. “They didn’t attend Alessandro’s funeral if that’s what you’re asking. Claudia did. I was aware they were in town. Isabel Greene lives in London part of the year. They both were at the party at Claridge’s but Henry and Adrian had gone home by then. Me, too, as it turns out.”

  Oliver peered at the cookies. “I want more of those lobster tacos but they’re not making their way up here. Shall we go downstairs?”

  “Hold on,” Colin said. “Wendell, what did you and Gordy Wheelock discuss the other night?”

  “The past, parties, Oliver and the British intelligence services.”

  “There,” Oliver said, nodding out the window. “It is an eagle. I’m off before I miss it.”

  Colin didn’t stop him. Neither did Wendell. “Come on,” Colin said. “You can tell me about your conversation with Gordy on the way downstairs.”

  But Wendell’s recap didn’t explain what Gordy Wheelock was up to, where he was or why he hadn’t responded to Emma’s messages. Colin walked back to the kitchen with the old man, passing several newly arrived guests. “Wendell, if you have anything that can help us understand what’s going on, you need to tell me.”

  “I’m not the one you need to talk to.”

  “You know who and what Oliver is. You’d be wise to steer clear of him, but you know that. You don’t need me to tell you. What have you two cooked up?”

  “I’ll admit I helped Oliver with his tea at Claridge’s. Hardly a capital offense. He thought the tea would be a good way to gather information and get an idea of what people were talking about after Alessandro’s death.”

  “Do you believe his death was due to natural causes?”

  “He might not have thought so as he plunged down those steps, but the medical examiner said it was a heart attack. He didn’t die instantly and he got banged up in the fall, yet it wasn’t what killed him.”

  “I hear a but in your voice.”

  “But the rumors of stolen mosaics and his death are quite the coincidence, aren’t they?”

  Colin couldn’t deny it. “Go on.”

  “I’m sorry he died before we could have a pint together last week. Perhaps he was agitated about these stolen mosaics and that prompted his heart attack. I don’t know. I’m speculating. Oliver wasn’t in contact with him if that’s your next question, and as far as I’m aware Gordy Wheelock didn’t arrive in London until after Alessandro’s death.”

  “What about the Deverells?”

  “You’ll have to ask them. I was in London a short time. I’d lost a friend, if not a close friend at least one I will miss. I visited my son and my daughter-in-law and I came on here, back to Maine.”

  Not home to Maine, Colin noted. An elderly couple greeted Wendell, and Colin left them and went out to the back porch. Emma smiled as she came up the steps. “I just felt a surge of pure, simple happiness seeing you here,” she said. “Home safe and sound again.”

  He pointed to a corner of the porch. “Did your easel get tossed during renovations?”

  “It’s tucked in a closet. Lucas says I can paint here anytime, but I’m ready to move on. My last lobster boat almost looked like a lobster boat, and painting here won’t be the same with all this new stuff in the house.”

  “Proper electrical sockets, efficient heat, toilets that flush the first time...”

  She grinned. “I was thinking in terms of new kitchen cabinets.”

  “The fun stuff.”

  She eased in close to him. “Maybe I’ll set up an easel on the porch at Rock Point Harbor Inn and get into painting shore birds. Sister Cecilia is convinced I can do it.”

  “My folks like Sister Cecilia. Lots of things to paint at the inn. You could try your hand at a still life and paint my father’s wild blueberry muffins.”

  “That would be something.”

  He gazed down at the docks. “What’s on your mind, Emma?
” he asked.

  “I don’t like it that Gordy hasn’t shown up today.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “I don’t see him turning around and going home without stopping here first. It’s possible, but I don’t see it. If nothing else, he knows I’m asking questions. He’d at least text me that he’s back in North Carolina.”

  Colin nodded. “If Gordy’s hiding something, he’d do a better job of reassuring you and getting you off his back. If he’s not hiding anything, he wouldn’t waste your time.”

  Emma was silent a moment. She ran her fingertips across the freshly painted porch rail. Colin noticed the ring he’d placed on her finger in November. Some days, he still couldn’t believe she’d said yes to marrying him. But it felt right. No question.

  “I’d like to take a look at the cottage where Gordy’s staying,” she said. “I think I know where it is. It’s one of three or four cottages about three quarters of a mile from here.”

  “I know them. Walk or drive?”

  “Drive. It’s quicker.”

  19

  Emma rolled down the passenger window when Colin turned onto a shaded dirt road lined with white pines and spruce trees. She breathed in the evergreen-scented spring air. She wasn’t surprised Colin knew the way to the cottages where Gordy had said he was staying. This was his turf as much as hers, and probably more so given his and his family’s Maine law enforcement experience.

  She’d tried Gordy again. Cell phone, home phone, email, text.

  Nothing.

  She stared out her window at the woods. “A friend of mine’s parents owned these cottages when I was a kid. They sold them and moved to Jacksonville when we graduated high school.”

  “Where’s your friend now?”

  “In Florida, too, at least last I heard. She’s a physical therapist. We didn’t stay in touch, but I heard from her last year after Sister Joan died. She’d seen the news in the papers and got in touch with Lucas, and he let me know. We emailed back and forth a few times. It was good but we don’t have much in common.” Emma paused, noticing a gray squirrel zipping out to the end of a pine branch. The truck rattled on, bouncing over ruts and rocks, and she didn’t see where the squirrel went. She turned to Colin. “I don’t have a lot of close friends from my childhood.”

  “Neither do I. I arrested half of them when I was with the marine patrol.”

  She had no idea if he was serious. “I won’t have a big bridal party.”

  He frowned at her. “Emma, did my mother get you thinking about this?”

  “I was thinking about it before we had our lunch yesterday. Being a Sharpe, being with the sisters—it affected my formation of friendships, especially in my teens and early twenties.”

  “It was my mother,” he said, downshifting. “Want me to tell her to back off?”

  That was Colin, she thought. Cutting to the chase. “She doesn’t need to back off. We had a lovely lunch.”

  “You told her you have friends, they just don’t all live within ten miles of you like hers?”

  “I phrased it differently.”

  “Have to be direct with her. No pussyfooting. If you give her an opening, she’ll ram right through it. She’s tough but fair. I wasn’t kidding. I learned some great interrogation techniques from her.” He grinned. “She told me you wore a skirt to lunch.”

  “I’ll be her first daughter-in-law.”

  “But not the last at the rate things are going with Mike and Naomi and Andy and Julianne.” Colin slowed the truck, his expression turning serious as he nodded up ahead. “Is that Gordy’s car?”

  Emma nodded. “The one he rented.”

  The black sedan, the sole vehicle in the cul-de-sac, was parked in front of the middle cottage. Colin pulled in behind it, threw the truck into Reverse, shut off the engine and reached for his weapon in quick, smooth motions. “Emma,” he said.

  “I see.”

  A body lay across the threshold of the front door of the cottage. A man, unmoving. Emma could make out an outstretched arm, a hand, a shoulder. Thinning gray hair.

  “It’s Gordy,” she said, drawing her own pistol.

  She and Colin got out of the truck simultaneously, met at the hood and approached the cottage. He went to the left of the door and she to the right. Any hope Gordy was unconscious was eliminated when they got close to him. His face was tucked in the crook of his outstretched arm, as if he might have lain down on the threshold for a nap—except nothing about his features said he was sleeping. He was dead, and he’d been dead awhile.

  Emma ignored the twist of pain in her gut and focused on Colin. They needed to clear the cottage for assailants, anyone else injured, dead or hiding. They went in, moving quickly through the small structure, checking the living area, bedroom, bathroom and closet. There was no one. The bed was still made but a small suitcase had been unpacked, clothes neatly stacked on top of the dresser. The shower had been used, a towel hanging to dry on a rack.

  The back door was locked, no windows were open or broken.

  Colin holstered his pistol and returned to the body. Emma did the same, standing back from him. He had more experience with death investigations than she did. “Can you tell what killed him?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was no immediate, obvious indication of how he’d died—no visible blood, trauma, bullet or knife wound or other injuries. Emma didn’t see any signs of a struggle. “Do you think he could have been hurt worse when he fell at his hotel on Wednesday?” she asked. “Some kind of slow bleed and he just collapsed?”

  “Maybe but I doubt it.”

  “If he was attacked and had a chance to fight back, he would have. He said he was rusty, but he had decades of training and experience. He’d have put up a fight.”

  Colin stood next to her and touched her shoulder. “Let’s go outside. I’ll call it in.”

  She nodded. She glanced at the kitchen area but didn’t see groceries. A metal spatula and saucepan were in the drainer next to the sink, as if they’d been recently washed and set to dry—by Gordy? The cottage’s housekeeper?

  Emma followed Colin out of the cottage, skirting Gordy’s body. The afternoon sun beating on Gordy’s rented car and the driveway struck her as incongruous, wrong, even, with a fellow agent—a friend—lying dead. She barely heard Colin as he stood by his truck and reported the death to the local police. Heron’s Cove didn’t have a big police department. The Maine state police would lead the investigation.

  Colin disconnected and turned to Emma. “They told us to sit tight,” he said. “I would have, too.”

  Emma squinted at him against the bright sun. “Claudia Deverell said she saw Gordy crossing Ocean Avenue Thursday night after he talked to my grandfather. Unless she’s lying or was mistaken, Gordy was alive then.”

  “The text last night,” Colin said. “It sounded like him?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll look for a phone when the locals get here.” He glanced back at the body. “It’s off season. I’m not surprised he wasn’t found sooner. Unoccupied cottages in a relatively isolated location can attract people looking for trouble.”

  “Gordy could have surprised someone going through the place. He was out of shape. He’d put up a fight but a close call wouldn’t necessarily go well for him.” Emma held up a hand, as if stopping herself. “I know we can’t jump to conclusions.”

  “I’ll let Yank know what’s going on.”

  As much as he and Gordy hadn’t got along, Emma had no doubts that Matt Yankowski would be saddened to learn about Gordy’s death. And frustrated. “He should have trusted us,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Emma. I know you worked with the guy.”

  While he called Yank, she walked down the dirt driveway a few yards, taking a moment to stand
in the sun and breathe. She glanced up at the sky, noticed the green of a tall spruce tree against the blue sky. Another deep breath, and she got out her phone. She needed to give Sam Padgett the news.

  “Damn, Emma,” he said after she’d updated him. “That’s not what I was expecting to hear. I was actually about to call you. If you want me to wait—”

  “No, go ahead, Sam.”

  “I just finished meeting with the bellman I mentioned. Turns out he took a picture of a golden retriever puppy in front of the hotel and also caught in the background someone putting an envelope through the open window of a cab. He says it’s the envelope that the cab driver found and gave to him. You can’t see much in the photo, but I had him text it to me and I’m texting it to you.”

  “You mean you can’t see the person with the envelope?”

  “That’s right. The main event is the puppy. I assume you’ll look for it in Wheelock’s things.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “No problem.” He paused. “No way any of us could have predicted this, Emma.”

  He disconnected without waiting for her to respond. A few seconds later, the photo arrived, and she checked it on her screen. An adorable puppy, a cab and part of a figure, mostly hidden by the cab. If not for the bellman’s description, there’d have been no way to guess what was happening from the photo.

  The local police arrived first, followed quickly by the state detectives. Colin knew a few of them. “We’re on this, too,” he told the lead detective, who didn’t argue.

  20

  From the moment she crossed the threshold into the foyer of the Deverell house, Mary fell in love with the sturdy, faded grande dame of a place with its magnificent views of the Atlantic and the stunning Maine coast. She’d have loved a tour of the entire house but settled for the first floor. Every room had a unique charm. She smiled to herself as she went out to the large, curved front porch. She inhaled the sea air. This place, the open house and handsome Lucas Sharpe and Adrian Deverell and mysterious, sexy Oliver York—how could she go wrong?