Never Trust A Lady

by Kathleen Creighton

  A vision came to him then, a vision of Jane’s face, her eyes lifting to his with that sudden, miraculous leap of light and joy that always made him think of dolphins. Then he saw her eyes go dull and flat, the light in them forever quenched, and with it all the joy and light there was in the world. His world.

  Carlysle…you idiot…why couldn’t you have trusted me? After last night…after everything…was that too much to ask?

  “O…kay…suspect has arrived.” Agent Campbell was trying without success to bury his excitement in a monotone drawl. “She’s pulling into the parking lot at the rear of the shop. Mrs. Carlysle has exited her vehicle. So has the suspect…she’s waving at Mrs. Carlysle…suspect now appears to be unlocking the door of the shop. Okay, both Carlysle and the suspect are inside… we have them on the monitors. Hawk?”

  “Yeah?” Becoming aware that his chest was hurting, he grabbed for a breath.

  “What’s your ETA now?”

  “I dunno.” Hawk glanced down at the speedometer needle, which was hovering around seventy-five. How far could it be to the damn town, anyway? “Five minutes?”

  “Take your time. Doesn’t look like Mrs. Carlysle’s in any immediate danger.”

  “How the hell you figure that?” Hawk growled.

  Campbell exhaled audibly. “They’re having tea.”

  “There you are…honey…and lemon.”

  Jane watched while Connie, who preferred milk in her tea, poured herself a generous dollop and returned the carton to the camp-size refrigerator that shared the limited space in her cluttered workroom with a working, 1930s-vintage gas stove. An equally old-fashioned teakettle sat on one of the stove’s burners beneath its tea cozy, comfortably steeping.

  “Would you like a biscuit, dear?”

  “Oh, no…thanks.” Jane stirred and sipped her tea. tasting nothing. Her mind, from the moment she’d entered Connie’s shop, had seemed capable of only one coherent thought: It can’t be true. It can’t be. This is Connie…my friend.

  Thank goodness Connie had done most of the talking, as usual, telling her in great detail, as the kettle was coming to a boil, all about her newest customer, something about a fantastically wealthy businessman who apparently wanted her to decorate his villa in Miami Beach.

  “He’s Iranian, I behove-seems to have pots of money and no taste whatsoever.” Connie’s eyes sparkled with avarice as she bit daintily into a cookie. “I do believe I may have already found a home for some of those dreadful paintings I bought at Arlington. Oh-and that reminds me, dear-” her eyes came to rest on Jane, causing her heart to give a painful bump “-what did you find out about that nice little one you bought? Was my friend in Georgetown able to have a look at it? What did he say?”

  Jane took a sip of tea, which did nothing to dispel the feeling that she’d somehow gotten Connie’s cookie crumbs stuck in her throat. Finally, she coughed and said, “I never got around to it, actually. I told you-I had to cut the whole trip short, and anyway, by the next day getting it appraised began to seem, well, just sort of silly. I’m sure it’s not valuable, and I like it anyway, so why bother? It does look very nice over the piano, though, just like I thought it would.” She set down her teacup carefully, praying Connie wouldn’t notice the slight clatter as it met the saucer.

  “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I was, um, wondering, I still need something for that space between the windows in the breakfast nook, and now that I have the one painting in the living room, the wall above the TV looks awfully bare, so I was thinking I might like to take another look at those paintings-the ones you bought. I know you said you were thinking of taking them to Miami, but…maybe I could have first crack?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Hawk barked, as the ominous syllables came through the open cellular phone connection in Campbell’s deep-throated cop’s mutter.

  His anxiety level shot off the scale when the FBI agent next produced a vehement rendition of his own favorite swearword, followed by an outraged, “What the hell is she doing?”

  “You mind letting me in on whatever the hell it is she’s doing?” Hawk almost bellowed, ignoring a blast from a trucker’s horn as he ran the stop sign and made a hard right at the junction with the main road into Cooper’s Mill.

  The FBI agent’s reply was lost in the squeal of tires.

  “Say again?”

  “I said, she’s asking about the paintings. How much did you tell her, Hawkins? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she out of her mind?”

  “No, she’s just got one of her own,” he said grimly, slowing reluctantly for the traffic light opposite a Burger King. “Where are you? I’m coming into town now.”

  “Uh, white van, city engineer’s markings, on the square across from the courthouse. There’s a loading zone next to it, you can park there. And Hawkins-for God’s sake, keep a low profile,. The last thing we want to do-”

  But the light had just turned green, and Hawk was already hanging up on him.

  “I don’t know…I just can’t make up my mind.” Jane propped the two paintings-one a rather dark landscape of horses grazing in a meadow, the other a vase full of overblown roses, complete with fallen petals-side by side against Connie’s big leather-topped desk and stood back to study them. They weren’t noticeably improved by distance. “The floral would do for the living room-it could do with some brightening, I think-but for the kitchen nook…you know, what I was really looking for was…” What? What am I looking for, exactly? And will I know it when I see it? “Something…”

  And then she saw it, half-hidden behind the desk, the painting of a sailing ship foundering in a sickly green sea. And it was as if someone had flicked a switch in her mind, illuminating a video screen. A memory. “Something with boats,” she cried, swooping upon the painting, snatching it up and whirling away with it in triumph. “Yes-like this one.”

  Connie, who had been leaning against a dining-room table set with an enormous set of Franciscan dinnerware, idly clicking her little jeweled pen and watching Jane’s search over the tops of her half glasses, straightened suddenly. “That ugly thing? In a kitchen? No, Jane, realty-that’s not for you, dear.”

  “Not for you, dear.” Connie had been holding this painting, Jane remembered, when she’d said those words at the auction. But-funny, she hadn’t thought anything about it at the time-she’d been holding it so that Jane could see it, facing out, as if it had been the back of the painting she’d been looking at. Staring at it, studying it intently, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  “Oh, but…don’t you see?” Jane said with almost desperate brightness. “Those windows in the breakfast nook look right out over the lake. Something with boats… water…” She was babbling again, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “This really isn’t that bad, you know that? The colors would go, kind of…I mean, my kitchen is blue and yellow, and blue and yellow do make green. And with all the plants…”

  The words ceased as if she’d suddenly run out of air. She’d never seen Connie look like that before-eyes cold and hard as stone. She felt cold herself, just from their touch, as if something evil had brushed against her.

  This is it, she thought. And then, Oh, God…it’s true.

  Outside on the square, in a panel truck with city engineer’s markings, Hawk stared at the bluish gray images on the video monitor screen and felt himself go cold.

  “My God,” he whispered, “that’s it.”

  Campbell turned from the monitor long enough to throw him a glance over his shoulder. “That’s what?”

  “That’s the one-Jarek Singh’s painting.” He broke off, swearing softly. “If only I hadn’t been late to that damn auction… if I’d seen it, I’d have known.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? How could you? None of us had ever seen the damn thing.”

  “Seascapes-damn.” He turned angrily, looking for pacing room in the confined space and finding none. “I should have known that’s what it
would be. They were all over Singh’s place in Cairo. You live in the middle of a desert, you put pictures of water on your walls, right?” He jerked back to the monitor. “What’s she doing now?”

  Campbell handed him a set of headphones. “Here-listen for yourself.”

  Hawk grabbed them and pressed one side against his ear, never taking his eyes from the tiny, blue-gray figures on the screen…

  “I’m so sorry, dear, I’m afraid I already have a buyer for that one.” Connie’s voice was as polite and impersonal as a shop clerk’s.

  “A b-buyer?” Jane’s mind seemed to have short-cimuited; she couldn’t think what to do next, could only stand there with the painting clutched in her hands, foolishly stammering.

  The air in the antiques shop seemed to have thickened, become a tangible substance that clogged her breathing and wrapped itself around her like spider’s silk. It seemed to shimmer as she watched Connie move through it, slowly, like someone wading through waist-deep water…to the front of the shop…watched her take a leisurely look through the front window.

  “My, what a lot of people there are in town this morning,” Connie commented as she swam slowly back toward Jane. “Have you noticed, dear? Court must be in session.”

  Dazedly, she shook her head, then nodded. She couldn’t seem to hear properly; there was a ringing in her ears, like the keen of a high-tension power line.

  Hawk wondered why the tension wasn’t blowing the top of his head off. “Why the hell didn’t your people take her?” he yelled. “Someone must have had a clear shot.”

  Campbell turned on him like a desert dervish. “We can’t take her out until we know what she’s done with the disk, dammit! What if she’s already gotten rid of it? What if she’s stashed it? We kill her, and we’re never gonna find out where it is, or who’s got it. It’s like a freakin’ time bomb, is that what you want?”

  For a long moment Hawk stared at the FBI agent, while helpless fury darkened his vision and the pounding of his blood drowned sound and thought. “She’s going to kill her,” he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. “You know that, don’t you?”

  And it could happen at any minute…any second. Right before his eyes. He would see it playing out like a television show on the monitor screen…see the gun in the woman’s hand, see the neat black hole appear in Jane’s forehead…the third eye, robbing the others of all light and joy and life…and there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing…

  As he’d watched that lovely April afternoon, watched through the eye of his camera lens… watched his wife and son whirl past on the merry-go-round, laughing and waving…watched it all disappear in an instant. a single instant of fire and thunder and blood that would live in his memory forever…

  “I don’t see any sign of a gun,” Campbell said. He was back at the monitor, staring intently at the screen. “Don’t think she’s got one on her. In the desk, maybe?”

  “Maybe…” Hawk leaned over the agent’s shoulder so he could see better. “What’s that she’s got in her hand? She keeps playing with it.”

  “That?” The FBI man pointed. “Looks like a pen.”

  “A pen?” Hawk frowned. Campbell turned around to look at him. He was absently rubbing his thigh…

  “Now then, Jane,” Connie said almost gaily, “give us the painting…there’s a good girl.” She advanced, hands outstretched.

  Jane took an involuntary step backward. And instantly saw something flare, something smoky and dark, like a guttering candle flame, behind Connie’s eyes.

  “She’s not helpless,” Campbell muttered, watching the monitor as if hypnotized. “She could probably take her. Jeez, you saw what she did to me.”

  Hawk growled, “That was different. She was prepared for you.” He could feel the FBI man turn to look at him, but didn’t take his eyes from the monitor screen as he grimly added, “She’s never met evil before…”

  Like a bird mesmerized by a cobra. Jane watched Connie’s hand reach toward her, moving slowly through that strangely viscous, thrumming space. And all the while, screened from the other woman’s view by the painting she held in her left hand, clutched against her chest, her right hand was moving too, reaching behind her, under her jacket, to grasp something hard that nestled there, tucked in the waistband of her slacks, snug against the small of her back…

  With a final lunge, Connie grabbed the painting and wrested it from her grasp. But not before Jane had managed to slip her fingers under the loosened edge of the brown-paper backing. It tore away with barely a sound. Connie glanced down at it, then back at Jane, her lips curving in a regretful little smile.

  “Dear Jane,” she said with a sigh, “I really do wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “There,” Hawk said, straightening on an explosive breath. “What’d I tell you? There’s the damn disk. What are you waiting for? Get in there-now.”

  Campbell’s breath gusted angrily as he straightened, staring down at the screen. “We go in there now, we put Carlysle at risk. She won’t hesitate to use her as a hostage-you know that as well as I do.” Campbell was rubbing unconsciously at the back of his neck. Hawk could see his own tension in the rigid set of the FBI man’s shoulders, his own frustration reflected in the angry black eyes.

  “What about your snipers? Hasn’t anybody got a clear shot?” He watched the screen as if he were drowning and it held his only hope of survival. Through the headphone pressed against his ear he could hear Connie-Gatina. Emma-telling Jane in that cultured, upper-crust British voice of hers how sorry she was…

  Campbell, meanwhile, was holding a low-voiced conversation with one of the other agents monitoring field communications. The agent spoke into a radio mike, listened, spoke again, then looked at Campbell and shook his head. Campbell swore under his breath.

  “Can’t get a clear shot-they’re too far back. The damn place is so full of stuff…” Like Hawk, he didn’t say “stuff.” He exhaled bleakly. “I’m afraid that, for the moment, at least, Mrs. Carlysle is on her own.”

  “Like hell she is.” Hawk snapped. Before anyone could stop him, he threw down the earphones, dived out of the van and hit the brick pavement running.

  “I don’t understand,” Jane mumbled. Her lips felt numb. So did all the rest of her.

  “It won’t do, you know,” Connie cocked her head, reminding Jane of nothing so much as a little gray hen as she turned the doomed ship in its garish green sea toward the floor and peered at the torn paper backing, and at the flat square of black plastic that was taped to the canvas beneath it. “I had hoped you’d just gotten a rather peculiar bee in your bonnet, and were being silly and stubborn about it. But I can see that wasn’t it at all, was it? You do know what this is all about, don’t you? Well…” Her sigh overrode Jane’s futile denial.

  “One of the others got to you, I suppose. Who was it, that Middle Eastem-looking fellow from the auction? No doubt it was a mistake not to kill him, but you know, there would have been such a fuss…

  “Or was it someone etse-the FBI, perhaps? Now that I think about it, that circus outside does seem to have their stamp on it. They have an unfortunate tendency toward overkill. The CIA would have been much more discreet.”

  Connie’s eyes were bright with that combative gleam Jane had seen before. She’s enjoying this, she thought. And for some reason, she suddenly felt very calm. Not angry, not even frightened, just a strange sort of quietness inside.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

  Connie’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh my-well, I shouldn’t like to, you know. You are a dear girl, and you’ve been quite a good friend, haven’t you? We shall have to see.”

  As she talked, she was ripping the disk from the back of the painting, setting the painting aside, tucking the disk into a manila envelope and then into a large handbag that had been lying on the desktop. That completed, she looked once more at Jane. Jane wondered why she’d never noticed before that Connie’s eyes were as hard and flat
as polished stones.

  “I have an idea you are going to be of some use to me yet, dear. For example, right now you are going to tell me who it is you’ve brought with you, exactly where they are out there and how many.” She picked up her little jewel-encrusted pen and studied it thoughtfully. “Then we shall see how helpful you can be in getting us out of here.”

  Jane gave her head a confused shake. “What are you talking about? Who is out where?”

  And suddenly she thought of Tom, and what he’d said about waiting until Connie’s shop opened so he could look at the paintings she’d bought. She remembered, too, that she’d thought he must be lying. And that he must be up to something.

  All those cars parked in the square… Was Connie right? Were the police, or the FBI, or-good heavens, the CIA-out there even now? Was help so near, just outside these old brick walls, visible, even through the dusty front window? And yet, so far away…

  Tom. Her heart gave a great leap of hope. Might he be out there, too, she wondered, right this minute? She’d left him sleeping, but then, she knew how good he was at pretending.

  Oh, Tom. She’d been wrong to lie to him. That note she’d left him-he thought she’d gone to work. He wouldn’t even know she was in here until it was too late. She’d probably messed up everything for him. Oh, God, what if she, with her foolhardiness, was the one who made it possible for Connie to get away, and with that all-important disk besides? Tom would never forgive her. Never.

  I’m sorry, Tom…I should have trusted you.

  She’d been wrong to try to do this alone. But wasn’t that what she’d always done, what she’d always had to do? She had a whole lifetime’s habit of handling things on her own, fending for herself, dealing with every task and crisis without help from anyone. She’d never worked with a partner before. She didn’t even know how.

  Out of a deep, inexpressible sadness, she said before she thought, “I came alone, Connie. No one else even knows I’m here.”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew how stupid she’d been.