Closer Than She Thinks

by Meryl Sawyer

  “Level with me, Phoebe. Everyone knows Max has political aspirations. So what? He’s nearly sixty. He may become senator, but that’s as far as he’ll get. Why are you upset?”

  “Let him run for president for all I care. I just think … well, he isn’t our kind.”

  Clay couldn’t really believe that’s what was really bothering his manipulative wife. She’d been acting strange since her return from Paris. She probably had a new lover who wanted a place on the royal court and saw Max as an obstacle.

  “If you don’t like Max, stay away from him.”

  “It’s not that easy!” Phoebe spun toward him, her long blond hair whirling around her cheeks and something akin to fear wavering in her blue eyes. “He’s after me all the time.”

  Clay bit back a laugh. Phoebe Duvall was after any man who would have her. The minute she ensnared a man, she grew bored and stalked fresh prey.

  Max Duvall was after Phoebe? And he, Clay, the loving husband, was supposed to care? Who did she think she was kidding?

  “I want Max out of my life. It’s important to me.”

  Clay didn’t bother to ask why. Phoebe was obsessed by the rituals, the rivalry, and the backstage scheming that was the dark side of Mardi Gras. He didn’t know—or care—what Phoebe had against Max Williams.

  Beep, beep. Clay glanced down at the telephone console. His private line rang discreetly, its red light blinking. It might be his investigator with news about Alyssa.

  “Blackball him, promise?” she asked, in a voice that expected to be obeyed. “You have to do this for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he replied to get rid of her.

  As she left, Clay made a mental note to call several close friends. The last thing he wanted was Max to have time on his hands and start poking around TriTech. With enough money and Clay’s behind-the-scenes support, Max might defy the odds and become king without devoting years of service to the Mayfair Club and the community.

  Jake slammed down the receiver. No one was answering Clay’s private line. Where was the guy? His secretary had said he was in, but he hadn’t answered.

  Jake rushed out the back door and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the floor below, where Clay had insisted on a corner office overlooking the Mississippi. Jake couldn’t imagine why. The river was nothing more that a swath of brackish water—never blue, always brown.

  He barged past the blond secretary, whose only skill seemed to be answering the telephone. “Is Duvall in there?”

  “Y-yes. Let me announce—”

  Jake swung open the door to the office that was so ultramodern it reminded him of a maximum security institution. Duvall’s decorator probably told him it was high-tech. Wonder what happened to all the antiques in his old office?

  “Were you trying to phone me?” Clay asked from across a lake of a desk. The glass was at least two inches thick and supported by a reed-thin tube of stainless steel that became a shining puddle on the floor. A lily pad or something.

  “I got tired of waiting.” He walked around to the side of the desk and hitched his leg up on the glass. Half sitting, half standing, he didn’t waste any time on corporate bonding—chitchat. “Why in hell did you buy Rossi Designs?”

  Clay didn’t appear fazed by the question. “It’s a small acquisition. A drop in the bucket.”

  “Why didn’t you wait until I came back?”

  Clay smiled, the easy, confident smile that won over so many people. “Others were sniffing around. I didn’t want them to cut TriTech out of the deal.”

  Jake didn’t have any indication anyone was interested in Rossi Designs unless they were after Alyssa herself, but he bit back the comment. He wanted to hear what Clay had to say about the knockout blonde.

  “Rossi Designs is showing a profit?” Jake asked even though he knew the answer.

  “Yes, and their sales have more than doubled every year. With this infusion of cash, it’ll go off the charts.”

  “Solid management?”

  “Rossi is top flight. Like Armani or Gucci, it’ll be a winner.”

  Was Clay a piece of work, or what? He’d omitted Alyssa’s name, making Rossi Designs sound like a male enterprise. “Rossi’s a designer then, a creative type, not a businessman.”

  Something registered in Clay’s too blue eyes. Jake knew the man wanted to strangle him, then decided it wouldn’t be his best career move. Instead Clay fell back on his trademark smile, saying, “Alyssa Rossi founded the business. She’s both creative and business oriented.”

  You betcha’. Jewelry stringing nuns. Off-beat shops. Used beads.

  “Alyssa’s a unique person,” Clay added when Jake didn’t respond.

  Jake drew his line in tighter, waiting to hear how Clay was going to explain his relationship with Alyssa. “You know her?”

  “I had her checked out thoroughly,” Clay hedged. “I was too busy here with Christmas to go to Florence. And then we were in the midst of Mardi Gras. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I went to Patagonia and let Max have all the fun he could have at the carnival.”

  “Now, it’s over and the krewe’s planning next year’s float.” Clay responded just a little too quickly. “You ought to think about joining the Mayfair Club. The money we raise goes to local charities.”

  Get real. Much of what they raised lined the pockets of local politicians or went into political coffers. Only a small portion went to fund the Mardi Gras floats. “I leave the club stuff to Max.”

  Clay nodded as if he understood but didn’t quite agree. “Anytime you change your mind …”

  Jake wasn’t letting him off the hook. “So, you’ve never met Alyssa Rossi.”

  As Jake had bet, Clay wasn’t going to out-and-out lie about something that would eventually come to light. “We met years ago.”

  What a guy! Clay made it sound as if they’d been introduced at some damn cotillion ball that led up to Mardi Gras. The parties were part of the ritual to decide which of those white-gowned debutantes would reign as Queen of Mardi Gras. Just another deb waltzing through his charmed life. Tough to remember them all.

  Jake vaulted to his feet. “Cut the bullshit! Met her doesn’t quite cover it, right?”

  The color beneath Clay’s golf course tan faded slightly, but he kept his gaze level. “What do you mean?”

  “I talked with Alyssa when I was in Florence last week.”

  Clay shifted in his chair, a slight, almost imperceptible movement. Like a bomb set to explode, silence hung between them. Clay finally asked, “Did you tell Alyssa about me?”

  What in hell was going on here? Was he saying Alyssa Rossi didn’t know Clay was part of TriTech?

  “I acquired the company on its merits, I swear. My previous relationship with Alyssa didn’t have anything to do with it. I kept my name out of the transaction.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to overbid us.”

  “For Rossi Designs? No one’s ever heard of the company.”

  “It happens every day in the fashion business.”

  “Don’t give me that crap! TriTech has lots of diverse companies, but we’re not in the fashion sector.”

  “We should be.” For the first time, Clay raised his voice. “As long as there are women on this planet, designers will rake in money.”

  “Okay, we agree on something.” The beeper at Jake’s hip vibrated, and he glanced down. Priority 17. Troy wanted to speak to him ASAP. “I need to use your phone,” he told Clay.

  Troy came on the line immediately. “Sanchez is up here. He wants to see you immediately. It’s about Alyssa Rossi.”

  “I’ll be right there.” His eyes shifted to Clay, who was rearranging papers on the enormous desk.

  Jake hung up, conscious of Clay watching him.

  “Problems?” Clay asked.

  “Not really. Heading TriTech means putting out fires half the time.” Jake resisted the urged to tell Clay about th
e deal he’d concluded with the Swiss. His gut instinct told him to keep Clay at a distance. He asked, “Of all the fashion enterprises you could have acquired, why did you wait until I was out of the country to purchase a business from the woman accused of abducting your son?”

  Clay stood up, coming to his feet with an effortless grace that emphasized his well-toned body and designer clothes. It was an unconscious movement, but one that never failed to remind Jake that Clay possessed what Max would have called “real class.” Jake’s mother—God rest her soul—would have called it breeding.

  Jake called it money. Clayton Duvall had been born with the proverbial silver spoon. He’d always gotten what he wanted—before—he even knew what he wanted. Add to that good looks and intelligence, and Clay went through life getting anything his heart desired.

  Expecting it.

  “I never for one moment believed Alyssa was capable of stealing little Patrick,” Clay told Jake. “She was framed, then driven out of town. Alyssa deserves another chance.”

  Clay had to be a few bricks shy of a full load. There was much more emotion in his voice when he said Alyssa’s name than when he said his son’s.

  “Don’t you care what happened to your baby?”

  “Of course, I care,” Clay shot back, his voice unexpectedly loud. “We spent a fortune on private detectives.”

  “What did they find out?” As if he didn’t know.

  “Not much more than the police. Their theory was that someone on the inside helped abduct Patrick.”

  “Alyssa Rossi wasn’t involved?”

  “They couldn’t prove or disprove her involvement. Little Patrick simply”—Clay shrugged his shoulders—“vanished. The private detectives believed a ring of black marketers paid a fortune for a white baby with good genes.”

  Good genes? Who thought of his son in those terms?

  CHAPTER 5

  Jake left Clay’s office and took the stairs to the top floor, where he had his office. His aversion to elevators kept him fit, he told himself, replaying the conversation with Clay Duvall in his mind.

  “Does he take me for a dumb shit?” Jake muttered to himself. No friggin’ way did Clay buy Rossi Designs because it was a good investment.

  Jake entered his suite of offices and walked by Spencer, the male secretary Troy had hired on Jake’s instructions. Why have a pretty woman around to distract everyone?

  “Is Mr. Sanchez in my office?” Jake asked Spencer.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Chevalier’s in there with him.”

  The door to his private office was closed, a sure sign Troy thought this was important enough not to have anyone overhear them. Jake opened the door and greeted Rueben Sanchez. The former FBI agent stood up to shake hands, his grip as firm as the rest of his body despite being over fifty.

  “What’s going on?” Jake pulled up a wing chair beside Sanchez and Troy. The massive oak desk that had been his father’s put too much distance between himself and visitors.

  “Gracie Harper was murdered last night,” Sanchez told him.

  It took a moment for the name to register. “The nurse who was on duty the night the Duvall baby was abducted?”

  Sanchez’s dark eyes narrowed. “Yes. I believe my asking so many questions about the case made somebody nervous.”

  “Come on. Nervous enough to kill?”

  Jake had met Rueben Sanchez the last year he’d been living in Mobile. He’d recently retired from the FBI and had opened a private investigation firm in New Orleans. He’d been working for one of the rich guys who had the bucks to purchase a million-dollar sports fishing boat but knew nothing about fishing or sailing it. Sanchez and Jake had hit it off immediately.

  When Max had appeared out of nowhere over eight years ago and persuaded Jake to join TriTech, Jake had moved to New Orleans. He’d seen a lot more of Rueben Sanchez, who preferred to be called by his last name, and began to use his firm. Sanchez vetted prospective employees as well as businesses TriTech considered purchasing.

  Like Jake and Troy, the investigator had been against buying Duvall Imports without hiring a forensic accountant to inspect the books. Jake had agreed but Max had insisted on going ahead with the deal. It would solidify TriTech’s connections, Max had explained, meaning it would further his political ambitions by being linked to one of the city’s elite families.

  Sanchez ran one hand through thick dark hair that had yet to show a trace of gray. “I think I caused her death by asking too many questions about the case.”

  “You didn’t keep your investigation secret?” Troy asked.

  “No. I didn’t broadcast what I was doing, but I did call on an old buddy in the police department to check their files. Then I interviewed hospital employees who were on duty the night the baby disappeared. Gracie seemed upset when I questioned her.”

  “What did she say about the night the baby vanished?” asked Jake.

  “It was after midnight when she showed Alyssa Rossi into the nursery. She assumed Alyssa was Phoebe’s sister since they looked so much alike. Gracie left Alyssa on the visitor’s side of the glass partition and went to answer a call button from one of the patients. When she returned, Alyssa was gone.”

  “How much later was it before she missed the baby?”

  Sanchez shrugged. “Gracie couldn’t be sure. Her first statement to the police said a few minutes. She later changed it to ten minutes, saying she’d responded to a patient’s call, then had gone into the lunchroom to smoke a cigarette.”

  “Leaving the infants alone?” asked Troy.

  “They were asleep. None of them was in the incubator. She wasn’t violating any rules. But she did admit to me that she might have taken longer than she’d originally told the police.”

  “How much time do you think the nursery was left unstaffed?”

  “The police report says less than five minutes. From what Gracie confessed to me, it could have been as long as half an hour.”

  “Plenty of time for Alyssa to have left and someone else to have slipped in and taken the child.” Jake had that hinky feeling again. “How was the nurse killed?”

  “She was shot in the back of the head. It looked like a robbery, but nothing was taken.”

  “It could be a coincidence,” Troy commented.

  “That’s what I’d say except she’d called my office that morning and said she wanted to see me. Gracie insisted on meeting at Starbucks near Jackson Square where no one would notice us. When she didn’t show up, I drove by her house. The police were already there. A neighbor had heard a gunshot.”

  “Did the neighbor see anyone?”

  “No, and the police don’t have much to go on.”

  “Go home, it’s late,” Alyssa told her assistant. “Get some rest and we’ll tackle this again tomorrow.”

  “Tackle?” Olivia’s exhausted expression perked a bit at the unfamiliar word. The younger woman had readily agreed to transfer to Rossi Designs’ new headquarters in New Orleans. Although Olivia’s English was excellent, she was always interested in picking up American slang.

  “Tackle. That’s an American football term. It means to knock down. Take it out of the way.”

  Olivia nodded slowly as she pulled her purse out of the drawer in her desk. “Tackling” the boxes they’d shipped from Italy seemed endless. They’d been at it all day, but as soon as they cleared space, more boxes were brought up from TriTech’s basement mailroom.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Olivia slipped out the door.

  “Ciao,” Alyssa responded, pulling files out of yet another box and turning her back to the door to put them in the cabinet drawer marked Resources.

  She thumbed through musty files. Some of them dated back to the first year she’d begun designing jewelry. This was her wish list of sources she’d like to use—if she ever had the money. Now she had the money, but time was tight. She had to keep Rossi Designs from being too disrupted by the move.

  Still, she couldn’t help mentally designing with an
tique the emerald beads she’d discovered in a flea market in Tuscany last summer. They dated back to the late nineteenth century. She’d been saving them until she could afford to string them with etched platinum beads. Platinum was more expensive than gold, and much more rare.

  Platinum had been the metal most jewelers used when the antique beads had been new. It was the standard of excellence up until World War II when the U.S. government declared it a precious metal and limited its use to military applications. By the time the ban was lifted, many jewelers had switched to gold, but platinum remained the metal of choice for important firms like Tiffany and Cartier.

  It was only fitting, she thought, staring at the boxes on her desk, to use hand-etched platinum beads with the string of antique emerald beads she’d discovered in a bargain bin at the flea market. Now she could afford platinum, but she needed to come up with a unique design worthy of platinum and emeralds.

  “The great thing about computer disks is how few are needed to keep track of information.”

  The deep voice came from behind her, but she didn’t have to turn around to know it was Jake Williams. What was he doing here so late? It was well past nine o’clock. Today was her first day at TriTech’s headquarters. After their unpleasant conversation in Florence, she’d hoped to avoid Jake.

  Common sense told her to keep her mouth shut, but she couldn’t very well stand there with her back toward him. She turned, mustering what she hoped was a pleasant look. “The accounts receivable and payable as well as the current data are all on computer. This is just stuff I may need one day.”

  He was standing in the door, one strong shoulder braced against the jamb, his tie pulled down and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. The jacket to his suit was tossed over one shoulder. His pose was casual, as if he welcomed the end of a long tiring day, but the intense gaze in his eyes told her otherwise.

  “It’s late. Let’s go grab a bite around the corner at Zubie’s.”

  Alyssa realized it wasn’t a social invitation; it was a command. Without moving, he waited, watching her while she retrieved her bag from the heap of things on her desk. Her first impulse was to mutter some excuse. What good would it do? Sooner or later she was going to have to learn to deal with this man.