by Kylie Logan
Giselle Montot was the woman who was rich and famous now, thanks to Yesterday’s Passion.
Aurore Brisson.
• • •
“SHE’S IN CLEVELAND.”
I told Sophie this at the same time I grabbed what I needed for the trip. “She leaves for the West Coast tomorrow. I’ve got to catch her today, Sophie.”
“So you can come right out and ask if she killed Rocky because Rocky knew Yesterday’s Passion was stolen?”
“She did know.” I stopped zipping around the Terminal office long enough to look Sophie in the eye. “That’s the whole point. Rocky wasn’t drunk that night at the Book Nook. And she sure wasn’t crazy. She remembered what Marie had told her about the book she was writing, and when Rocky started reading Yesterday’s Passion, she realized it was the same story, the same characters. Of course Rocky didn’t keep quiet about it. Why would she? How could she? From everything I’ve heard about her involvement with the peace movement, she wasn’t the kind of woman who kept her mouth shut when she thought she could right a wrong.”
My impassioned speech was intended to put Sophie at ease. Or at least to convince her that I wasn’t going off half-cocked on a desperate mission.
It didn’t work.
Sophie’s brow creased. Her lips puckered. “You can’t just go up to Cleveland and accuse the woman. If she . . . If she’s the one who . . .” She gulped. “She could be dangerous!”
I had everything together: my jacket, copies of the letters from Marie detailing the plot of Yesterday’s Passion, and a copy of the photograph of Marie with Giselle (I wasn’t dumb, I left the originals with Sophie for safekeeping), along with a map I’d printed from the Internet that would get me to the library in a suburb of Cleveland where that afternoon, Aurore Brisson would be the guest of honor at a readers’ luncheon.
“I’m just going to talk to her.”
“And I’m just coming with you.”
This wasn’t Sophie, but Declan, who would have breezed into the Terminal office if the office weren’t so small that breezing was out of the question. Instead, he stationed himself inside the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted just far enough apart to make it clear that if I was going to leave, I had to get through him first.
“Sophie’s right,” Declan said. “If this Brisson lady is dangerous—”
“I’m just going to talk to her,” I said again, because maybe neither Sophie nor Declan heard me the first time. “No muss, no fuss. We’ll see what she says, then we’ll let Tony know. It’s a perfect plan.”
“Perfect because I’m coming with you.”
I gave in, but only because I knew that Declan wouldn’t move an inch until I did.
• • •
NOT TO WORRY, I had no intention of causing a scene anything like Rocky had at the Book Nook. Declan and I went to the library for Aurore Brisson’s presentation, all right, but we walked in after lunch was over and sat in the back, quiet and unnoticed by the guest of honor, and we didn’t go anywhere near her while she signed dozens and dozens of copies of Yesterday’s Passion and talked to dozens and dozens of simpering, adoring fans.
We waited while she donned what looked to be a genuine sable coat, and we stepped back and out of the way when a frazzled-looking media escort opened the door and allowed Aurore to walk outside ahead of her. We followed them into the parking lot at a safe enough distance not to be noticed, watched them get into a sleek, black Lincoln. Then we tailed them all the way to Aurore’s hotel.
That’s when we made our move.
I gave her five minutes to get settled into her suite at the Ritz before I knocked and was rewarded by a grumble from the other side of the door.
“Yes, yes, what is it you want now? More interviews? More autograph seekers?” Aurore yanked open the door, obviously expecting to see the media escort. Before she recovered from her surprise, I darted around her and walked into the room. Declan was right behind me.
“What is this? Who are you? What you are doing?” She made a move toward the phone by the table next to the couch, but Declan stepped in front of her. “Do you know who I am?” she demanded.
It was just the kind of opening I was waiting for. “I know you’re Giselle Montot.”
She was dressed in an ivory silk suit, and her face turned so pale, I could barely tell where skin ended and fabric began. It took her a moment to collect herself and stick out her chin. “I do not know what you are talking about. I do not know who you are talking about.”
Just what I expected.
Which was why I had that photograph of Giselle and Marie right where I could pluck it out of my purse.
I waved it in Aurore’s face, but I guess I held it too close because trying to see it, her eyes crossed. I stopped waving and pulled it a little farther away. “That’s you with Marie Daigneau,” I said. “Back when you were her caregiver and using your real name. Back when things started disappearing from Marie’s home.”
“You are saying that I did such a thing?” Aurore pretty much knew she was wasting her time batting her eyelashes and puckering her lips at me so she turned her charms in Declan’s direction. “This woman, she is surely fou . . . crazy! I would never—”
He stopped her, both his hands out, his palms facing her, and gave her the song and dance we came up with on the hour-and-a-half ride from Hubbard. “Hey, don’t look at me! Laurel’s got this bee in her bonnet and I’ll tell you what, once she’s got hold of an idea, there’s no stopping her. It’s one of the reasons I’m crazy about her.”
That last bit was not something we’d planned in the car and I would have given him the sour smile he deserved if I weren’t so busy enjoying the thread of warmth that rushed through me.
Heat or no heat, though, I had to stay on track.
“Marie’s earrings, her grandmother’s string of pearls. I don’t suppose there’s any way we can ever prove any of that,” I admitted, and I gave Aurora a moment to let relief wash through her before I added, “But Yesterday’s Passion, that’s another thing altogether.”
Aurore’s mouth opened and closed. There was a pack of cigarettes on the table nearby and even though the sign on the door clearly said hers was a nonsmoking room, she tapped a cigarette out of the pack. It took her three flicks to fire up her lighter. But then, her hands were shaking pretty hard.
She sucked in a lungful of poison, then blew a stream of smoke in my direction. “I tell you, I do not know what you are talking about.”
Of course this was exactly what Declan and I anticipated she’d say when we came up with our strategy.
He insisted I take the lead.
Which was fine by me since that what I was planning anyway.
Hey, I hadn’t worked in Hollywood for six years and not learned anything. I plunked my purse on the table next to her cigarettes, opened it, and with a flourish, pulled out the translations of the letters that Amanda had been kind enough to jot out for me.
“‘My dearest Raquel,’” I read. “‘I am concerned and do not know who to share my worries with. Have I lost my mind? I do not think so, my friend. You know of my novel. I have told you all about Yesterday’s Passion. You know that for the last years, I have worked hard, writing each day when I have the strength, planning the story, dreaming of the characters and their lives and their passions. Oh, my friend!’” Unintentionally, I had added a dramatic and very Gallic twist to that last sentence and I swallowed my chagrin and pretended not to notice Declan grinning at me.
“‘Today I went to work on the book, to read over the last of the pages I wrote and—mon Dieu!—the manuscript is nowhere to be seen. Believe me, Raquel, this is not something I would easily misplace. It is my heart. It is my soul. Is it possible for anyone to be so wicked as to hide it? I do not think so, not just for the sake of being mean. But Giselle, she has asked about my book in the
past. She has begged me to tell her the story, and though I told her it was not ready for anyone to read it, she asked so prettily a week ago—the last time I saw the book—that I could not refuse her. Now it is missing. And I am . . .’” Even in the secondhand translation, it was almost too painful to read. I cleared my throat. “‘I am devastated, mon amie. My heart is broken in two.’”
I let the words settle in the rarefied air of the Ritz before I raised my head and stared at Aurore.
One corner of her mouth pulled tight and her top lip curled. “You cannot suppose—”
“But I do. And I have the proof back in Hubbard. Marie was no dummy, and something tells me you were counting on that. She sent Rocky entire passages of the book in letters dated five, six, seven years ago. I bet that’s long before you sent your manuscript in to your publisher. How much do you want to bet that when we compare those passages to ones in your copies of Yesterday’s Passion, they’re exactly the same?”
Her top lip was still as stiff as a board, but her bottom lip trembled. She pulled in a breath that was just as shaky. “You want money? How much?”
Of all the scenarios we’d concocted on our way from Hubbard, this was not one of them.
Declan and I exchanged looks.
He stepped forward. “You should know that I’m Ms. Inwood’s attorney,” he said, and though I didn’t know where he was going with this, I let him run with it. “Any agreement we come up with in regards to this matter is binding.”
“Yes, yes.” Aurore hung her head. “I understand.”
“And you’re willing to cooperate?”
At his question, her head came up and she looked at him. “I asked you, did I not? I asked how much money you want.”
“For us to keep silent about the fact that you stole Marie’s book.”
She shot a look at me. “Is that not what we’re talking about?”
“Well, actually . . .” One finger trailing over the shining mahogany table, I walked to the other side of it, more to stall for a little time and draw out the drama than because I needed to go anywhere. “What we’re really talking about, Ms. Brisson, is murder.”
“Murder!” Aurore slapped one hand to her heart and somehow made it to the couch on rubbery knees. She flopped down, her head back, her cheeks pink, her breaths coming in gasps that shivered through her. “You don’t think . . . you can’t possibly think . . .”
Declan walked over to stand beside her, and don’t think I didn’t miss the subtle message. He was a big guy, and he loomed over her. There was nothing at all threatening about his stance, but there was no denying that he was there, a firm, unmovable presence.
“What we think is that you’ve made a great deal of money thanks to Yesterday’s Passion,” I told her, coming up to stand on her other side. “You must have, otherwise, you wouldn’t have been so quick to offer us a bribe. Your book is a megahit. And the cable TV series that’s being made from it is sure to send your sales through the roof. I’ve seen you on the cover of People magazine and you’ve been on all the talk shows, though come to think of it, you’ve never had very much to say. I guess now that we know the truth, that’s to be expected. How can you talk about the process of writing a book when you’ve never written one?”
There was an easy chair nearby and I sat down. “So what do you think, Declan?” I asked as casually as can be. “I’m thinking that kind of fame and that kind of fortune is pretty hard to come by.”
“And I’m thinking,” he said, “that when Rocky stepped forward at the bookstore and told everyone that the book was stolen from Marie, it threatened Ms. Brisson here. It threatened her reputation and it threatened her fortune and if the truth finally came out, it could threaten her liberty, too, because, I’ll tell you what, the kind of money we’re talking”—he whistled low under his breath—“that’s got to make stealing a book like this a major felony.”
“It’s the perfect motive,” I added. “The perfect motive for murder.”
“No, no, no!” Aurore flapped her hands as if she were trying desperately to take flight. “I was angry, there at the bookstore, yes. I could not believe that woman had the nerve to say such things in front of so many people when I knew she could not have the proof. But to kill her? No, no. I did not do this.”
“It’s a great story.” Declan took his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll bet the cops back in Cortland will be anxious to hear it.”
“No!” She jumped to her feet. “You do not need to involve them. No one needs to know. I can . . .” Her gaze darted around the room and finally landed on a briefcase on a table near the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the center of downtown Cleveland. She darted around Declan and over that way. “I can prove it,” she said. “I can prove that I did not kill this woman.” She shuffled through the briefcase and came out holding a single sheet of paper.
“See. Here.” She shoved the paper at me. “I know from what I heard on the television that this woman, she was killed on Saturday evening. But see this. See here. After the parade, I left. I left immediately. I was not even in that horrible little town on Saturday evening.”
Needless to say, Declan took all this talk of horrible and little personally. Before I had a chance to study it, he took the paper out of my hand.
“It’s a time sheet from the media escort service,” he told me. “It says the escort took Ms. Brisson from the parade to her hotel in Hubbard. That was at two. It says they immediately drove to Cincinnati.”
“Oui.” Aurore went back to the briefcase and this time, she came back with a hotel bill. “See this? It is from my hotel in Cincinnati. It shows that I checked in—”
“At six forty-five,” I said, looking at the bill, then at Declan. “There’s no way she could have gotten to Cincinnati that quickly if she made a stop in Cortland.”
“You see!” Aurore’s eyes shone. “This is what I told you. This Raquel woman, I did not kill her!”
We’d been so close that my heart sank, and I guess the look I gave Declan told him that because he tipped his head toward the door and we started to leave together.
“But wait!”
Aurore’s voice brought us both spinning around.
“I have been honest and I have told you the truth. You know I did not kill this woman. Now you . . . you are not going to tell the police, are you?” The green cast of her face didn’t go well with her silk suit. “You are not going to . . . you will not . . . you will not say anything to them about Yesterday’s Passion, will you?”
Honest to goodness, I didn’t know what I was going to say until the words came out of my mouth.
“Of course we’re not going to tell the police,” I said, in spite of the look of amazement Declan shot my way.
I counted to ten, giving Aurore a chance to catch her breath before I added, “What you don’t know is that I have a few connections up my sleeve. I don’t need to tell the police. I’m going to get on the phone right now and give Meghan Cohan a call. Wait until she finds out that the movie option she paid a million bucks for went to the wrong person!”
Chapter 14
The bad news?
Well, that was pretty obvious.
The good news?
The Ritz has a snazzy bar. Yeah, we had a long way to drive to get back to Hubbard. That’s why both Declan and I opted for iced tea.
“So . . .” He added two packs of sugar to his glass and stirred. “What do we do now?”
“You mean about Aurore? Like I told her, I don’t need to call the police, I’m going to call Meghan. You can be sure she’ll take care of the rest. This is exactly the kind of scandal Meghan loves to sink her teeth into. The publicity alone will be worth a bundle to her, and Aurore will get what she deserves. So will Marie, come to think of it. I mean, if she’s really the author of Yesterday’s Passion, she’ll finally get recognition as an author. Meghan might
be a nasty and vindictive—” I swallowed down the rest of what I had to say because let’s face it, what was past was past, and Meghan was never going to change anyway. I smiled around my gritted teeth. “Meghan will make sure everything gets taken care of.”
“Not what I was talking about,” Declan said.
I cupped my hand around the slice of lemon that had been delivered along with my tea and gave it a squeeze. “You mean about the case. Well, there’s always the safe deposit box angle.”
“There is, but that’s not what I’m talking about, either. What I’m talking about is us.”
Though I told myself it wasn’t smart and it would get me nowhere but in trouble, I couldn’t help but remember what he’d said back in Aurore Brisson’s suite about how he was crazy about me. After that, it wasn’t hard to also remember the cadence of excitement that started up in my chest when he said it, because just thinking about it . . . well, that beat started up all over again.
Just like it did every time I thought about the way Declan had kissed me.
I wasn’t caving. I wasn’t surrendering. What I was doing—at least what I told myself I was doing—was giving in to a delicious sensation that made a crappy day feel a little better.
“I guess we could consider this a date,” I told him. “Not the part about confronting Aurore, since that was a complete bust. But this . . .” I glanced around the room with its plush carpeting, its heavy draperies, and the easy chairs arranged around small, round tables. I looked at the crystal chandelier overhead. “We’re here. We’re together. Heck, we’re drinking iced tea. Yes, it’s officially a date.”
“Then here’s to being official.” He lifted his glass and clinked it against mine. “And when we get back to Hubbard, will we still be dating?”
“Your family won’t approve.”
“My mother’s already nuts about you.”
“Your father isn’t.”
“He’ll come around.”
“People will talk.”
“Let them!” He barked out a laugh. “Small towns are great for gossip.”