To the Rescue

by Jean Barrett

  Leo hadn’t paid much attention to the surroundings before this. He had to admit that the time-worn, dark paneling made the room a somber place. But then the whole castle was like something out of a vampire movie. Count What’s-his-name would have felt right at home here.

  “Roger told me that in centuries past this used to be the solar ium where the family gathered after meals,” Sybil informed them, “which is why it has a good fireplace. I suppose one must be grateful for that, although that chimneypiece is a horror.”

  This was something else that Leo hadn’t noticed until now. Carvings on the stone chimney breast depicted strange beasts and leering monsters, all of them crowded together and tumbling over one another. Not exactly what you’d expect to find in a monastery. Nor was the grotesque mask fitted into the paneling of the wall adjacent to the fireplace.

  Jennifer, noticing him gazing at the hollow eyes of that stone face, spoke up for the first time. “It’s a squint,” she said.

  Leo turned to her. “A what?”

  “If this used to be the solar in the medieval days,” she explained, “then the great hall must be on the other side of that wall. A squint permitted the lord of the castle to look through those eyes down into the great hall.”

  “A spy hole? Why?”

  “It was a method for checking on the activity of his household to be sure they weren’t getting too boisterous in his absence.”

  Leo had forgotten that Jennifer would know about this stuff. His brother’s wife had told him that, like Guy, Jennifer was connected somehow with the antiques trade.

  “Aren’t you clever to know that?” Sybil cooed, then abruptly dismissed Jennifer with a casual “I’m not interested in solariums, but I do care about loos. And the scarcity of them in this place, along with the state of the plumbing, is not my definition of comfort.”

  “Sybil, please—” her husband murmured pleadingly.

  “Dear heart, it’s true. I don’t know how all of us will manage.”

  If any of the rest of them had any feelings on the subject, none of them bothered to contribute them. There was a long, awkward silence while they concentrated on their plates.

  Sybil Harding, looking around the table, ended the silence after a few moments with an exuberant “I do hope some of you play bridge.”

  Leo could sympathize with her husband. The woman was an embarrassment.

  “Sybil, perhaps—”

  “Roger, hush. If we’re to be stuck here, we must pass the time somehow.” She leaned provocatively toward Leo. “Roger refuses to play, which always leaves me looking for a partner.”

  “I don’t play bridge. Poker is my game.” Leo had had enough. He wanted out of here. Scraping his chair back, his hands on the table to support himself, he got slowly to his feet. “But right now,” he muttered, “I think I need to go back to my room.”

  “You feeling off again, old man?” Just Harry asked him.

  “Yeah, maybe a bit.”

  “Bloody shame.”

  Jennifer looked up at him, this time with concern. “Would you like me to find Brother Timothy?”

  “Not necessary. But if you’d go with me…”

  He left the rest unsaid, knowing she would be convinced that someone should be with him in case he started to black out on the way back to his room.

  She came immediately to her feet. “Of course. Excuse us, everyone.”

  Jennifer waited until they were out of the room before she started to fuss at him. “You pushed yourself too far too soon.”

  “I’m not having a relapse,” he assured her.

  “Well, you need to rest.”

  Leo didn’t argue with her. She waited until they gained the corridor at the top of the stairway before asking him, “Are you feeling light-headed? That climb—”

  “No,” he growled, feeling guilty for worrying her.

  She was silent again until they passed the window embrasure.

  “You’re going too fast,” she complained.

  But Leo was in too much of a hurry to slow his long-legged stride. Nor did he offer an explanation for his urgency until they were back inside his room with the door closed behind them. Then, a grimness in his voice, he swung around to challenge her.

  “All right, we’ve wasted enough time with that bunch downstairs. I want the truth, Jenny, and I don’t want to wait any longer for it. So go ahead and convince me that you didn’t murder my brother before you helped yourself to the Warley Madonna.”

  Chapter Four

  In the slow, measured voice Jennifer used whenever she was very angry and trying not to show it, she confronted Leo with his deceit. “You tricked me. You’re not feeling ill at all.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “I’ll have to remember that about you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That purr in your voice just before you go and blast someone. I noticed it earlier. Dangerous.”

  He didn’t miss much, Jennifer thought. And she didn’t want him to be so observant about her, reading her moods and then analyzing them. It meant she would have to be on guard with him every minute. She had enough to worry about with the idiotic way he affected her whenever he got anywhere near her. Like now.

  “Come on, Jenny,” he coaxed, moving in close, “you know you’re going to have to tell me your story sooner or later. Might as well be now, huh?”

  The way he said it, his voice low and husky, he could have been urging something far more intimate than that.

  “I can’t figure you out, McKenzie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether you’re playing good cop here or bad cop.”

  “Whatever gets me answers.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of a small table that was identical to the one in her room. “Suppose we get comfortable over there while you give them to me.”

  Jennifer eyed the table and the two chairs on either side of it. “Now why do I get this feeling of an interrogation room in a police lockup?”

  “We could use the bed.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Since there was no other safe place to sit, and nothing to be gained by delaying the inevitable, she crossed the room and seated herself at the table. Leo took a moment to fuel the fire and then joined her, slinging the chair around on his side of the table and straddling it. They were face to face now, with only a few feet between them. He lessened the gap by leaning toward her expectantly.

  “Praying?” he asked, looking down at her hands folded together on the table, fingers steepled.

  He had caught another of her habits, one she unconsciously used when she found the need to steady herself in a strained situation. This was definitely one of those times.

  “It’s called collecting my thoughts.”

  And, damn it, she was not going to have him think she was nervous by hastily hiding her hands in her lap. Whatever he thought about their position, she kept them right there in front of him on the surface of the table.

  “Those thoughts collected yet, Jenny?”

  “Enough to tell you,” she informed him emphatically, “that whatever Guy told his wife, we were not having an affair.”

  “What were you having?”

  “A friendship. I thought. And stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you think I’m either lying or was incredibly naive about Guy’s feelings for me.”

  “I don’t see you as being naive, Jenny. I see you as being a pretty smart woman. Which leaves me wondering why you didn’t guess at some point in this friendship that he was falling for you.”

  “How could I? I barely knew him.”

  One of those dark eyebrows of his—and, yes, she thought, even his eyebrows were disturbingly sexy—lifted, expressing his disbelief.

  “It’s true,” she insisted. “We were together only a few times in the three weeks after I met him. Not enough for me to realize that he—”

  “Wait a minute. You saying the fri
endship was a new one? That you were in the same trade, antiques, and that your paths never crossed until three weeks ago?”

  “They had no reason to. Guy specialized in the more formal things. My specialty is pretty much English country pieces. He had a shop. I don’t. He lived in London. I live there only part of the year and the rest back home in Boston.”

  “Then how do you sell the stuff?”

  “I don’t. I’m an overseas agent for American antique dealers. My clients tell me what they want. I try to acquire it for them and then arrange to have it shipped back to the States.”

  “Nothing to do with the retail end of the business, huh? And you didn’t know Guy.”

  “I knew a little about him, his reputation for handling the best, that kind of thing. But nothing personal until he introduced himself to me at an estate auction.”

  “And after that?”

  “He phoned me, asked me out to dinner. I went. It was a pleasant evening. And so were the handful of others we spent together. Nothing heavy. Oh, I’m not saying it couldn’t have developed into something more. It might have, if I hadn’t learned what Guy hadn’t bothered to tell me.”

  “Being?”

  “That he was married.”

  There went that incredible eyebrow of his again, registering his skepticism.

  This time Jennifer did remove her hands from the table, clenching them in her lap where he couldn’t see the evidence of her emotional agitation. “Why am I bothering? You’re not going to believe me, whatever I tell you.”

  “I’m trying, Jenny. But you gotta admit—”

  “All right, I should have made sure he was unattached before I went out with him. And that probably makes me nowhere near as smart as you think I am. But I just didn’t make sure. Okay?”

  “What comes next in this tale? After you heard he had a wife.”

  “Something I didn’t like. Guy was waiting in his office for me behind his shop after closing. This was the evening before his death. We were supposed to go to a play.”

  “You didn’t go to a play,” Leo guessed.

  “We didn’t have to. We had one of our own. I told Guy I wouldn’t be seeing him socially again and why. He said he was in love with me. I told him he was crazy. He said his marriage was finished, that he and his wife were separated. I asked him if his wife knew that.”

  “Sounds like a good play. You use that soft, calm voice of yours when you played this scene?”

  “I wish I had. Then maybe there wouldn’t have been a witness to my anger.”

  “Who?”

  “Guy’s charwoman. I didn’t realize she was there cleaning the shop until I came away from his office. Judging by the look I got from her on my way out, I knew she must have overheard our quarrel. And probably misunderstood my anger with Guy, because that look wasn’t a sympathetic one.”

  “Misunderstood how?” Leo pressed her.

  He wasn’t going to be satisfied with the essentials, was he? He wanted all the details. Wouldn’t let up on her until he had them.

  “I think she may have thought I was furious with Guy because I wanted him and couldn’t have him, when all I was really angry about was how he’d deceived me.”

  “This the same char who’s in a coma in a London hospital?”

  He would have learned about the coma from the police, Jennifer thought. Learned the woman had been found unconscious at the scene of Guy’s murder.

  “Yes, the same.”

  Those whiskey-colored eyes that could caress a woman with their unsettling gaze until they had her yearning for something more, or else have her squirming under the heat of their accusation, looked at her for a long, silent moment. Jennifer wasn’t sure what she read in them, seduction or accusation. Maybe both, if that was possible.

  When he spoke, it was in a slow, raspy voice that had her quivering inside. “And that’s got you worried, hasn’t it, Jenny? Why is that, I wonder?”

  “Because when she wakes up from that coma, as she’s expected to, and when the police who are waiting for that to happen question her, they’ll learn—”

  “What? What will they learn?”

  This was it. Either she backed away now from the rest of her story, or she told him all of it. Everything that in the end had brought her racing to Yorkshire. And if she told him the rest, then she was sure he would no longer question her guilt. He would be convinced of it.

  The truth. Remember, you’ve committed yourself to it.

  “That,” Jennifer went on with more resolve in her voice than she felt, “I wasn’t just in Guy’s office the evening before he was murdered. I was there again the next night standing over his body.”

  Leo’s reaction wasn’t what she expected. He laughed. There was no mirth in that laughter, though.

  “You’ve got guts telling me that. But I’m guessing this isn’t a confession you killed my brother. What is it exactly?”

  “An explanation. And, no, I didn’t go to Guy’s shop to kill him. I went there by request.”

  “Guy’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Feeling as you claim you did by then, why would you do something like that?”

  “Because he promised it was strictly business and not some excuse to try to win me back. All right, I was willing to be convinced. Probably because I couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

  “For what?”

  “Before I tell you that, there’s something you need to know about me.”

  “Which is?”

  “I have this…well, kind of gift, I guess you’d call it. I can sense things about antiques, sometimes by just touching them. It doesn’t always work, but a lot of the time it does. It’s one more tool that helps to make me good at what I do.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. What kind of things?”

  “Mostly whether there’s something not right about a piece.”

  “A fake, you mean?”

  “Any antique expert can tell that, usually after a careful examination. This is more. This is a feeling for the honesty of a piece, not just whether it’s genuine but whether it’s everything it’s supposed to be. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I get the idea.” Leo shifted restlessly on the chair he continued to straddle. “Let’s get to the good part. I’ve heard the why. Now suppose you tell me the what.”

  “What do you know about the Warley Madonna?”

  His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Just what the cops and Barbara were able to tell me. That it came from here, it’s worth a fortune and it’s missing. Theory is it was taken from Guy’s office by his killer. I think that’s a solid theory. What do you think?”

  “That I didn’t murder Guy or steal the Madonna, even if I was drooling over the chance to see and actually touch it. What antique lover wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah? What’s so special about it?”

  “What isn’t? Legend says it was carved from a section of the true cross sometime in the first or second century after the crucifixion. The earliest known depiction of the Madonna and Child.”

  “Holy sh—” Leo caught himself. “Sorry. Bad choice. So, how did the monastery come to have it?”

  “It was a prize of war. A crusading Warley baron carried it back from the Holy Land in the twelfth century. The brothers eventually received the Madonna along with the castle. They kept it safe all these ages.”

  “Until it ended up with Guy.”

  “Did your sister-in-law tell you how Guy came to have it?”

  Leo shook his head. “Barbara might have told the cops when they questioned her separately, providing she knew. All I got was it’s gone. But I bet you know, don’t you?”

  She hated that cynical sting in his voice, the way he pushed her for a truth he probably wouldn’t accept. It left her wanting to push him right back. But all she said was a quiet, “It was because of Brother Anthony.”

  “The monk Brother Tim identified for you down in the courtyard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh-
huh. And you’re interested in this Brother Anthony. Why is that?”

  “Because he brought the Warley Madonna to Guy the day before his death. Guy told me all about it on the phone when he called and asked me to come by the shop the night he was murdered. How he and Brother Anthony were old friends and that the monastery was badly in need of funds and had to sacrifice the precious relic.”

  “That mean Guy was going to buy it from the monastery? Or maybe he did buy it.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “It wasn’t the kind of thing he carried. But Guy had the connections to find a buyer for it. Brother Anthony trusted him to do that when he left the Madonna with him before turning around and going back to Yorkshire.”

  Leo was silent for a moment. She could see he was thinking about what she’d just told him. She could also see the way the pulse was beating in the hollow of his strongly corded throat. Mesmerizing. And far too alluring.

  “Two and two make four,” he muttered.

  “Is that supposed to make sense?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering, Jenny. Guy had the Warley Madonna. That’s a two. You tell me you have this gift for sensing when an antique isn’t all it should be. That’s another two. Now if they do add up to four, it’s gotta mean Guy asked you to come by his shop because there was something about the Madonna that bothered him and he wanted this gift of yours to go to work on it.”

  “He was a little mysterious about it on the phone, but I did get the impression he wasn’t altogether satisfied,” Jennifer admitted. “Of course, with a piece like that, he would have sent it out to be authenticated, probably had it submitted to tests, that sort of thing, but in the meantime—”

  “He wanted your opinion. So, if we have a four, why do I keep getting a five?”

  Because you’re suspicious of everything I’m telling you. Probably not willing to believe any of it.

  Maybe the expression on her face gave her away. Or maybe he was just reading her again when he said, “Suspicion comes with the P.I. territory. Want to try to rid me of that by telling me just what happened that night? Your version of it, anyway.”