To the Rescue

by Jean Barrett

  The gaunt figure of Father Stephen rose from behind his desk at their entrance. Jennifer remembered his visit to her room last night and how she’d noticed the cheerful blue eyes in that narrow, holy face. The eyes suited these surroundings. Except they weren’t cheerful this morning. They were very grave.

  “I regret that I kept you waiting,” he apologized, “but I’m sure you understand that in the circumstances…”

  He didn’t finish. It wasn’t necessary. She knew this had to be a very difficult time for him.

  He indicated a pair of comfortable-looking chairs. Jennifer was careful not to look at Leo as they seated themselves. She didn’t want to be reminded of those reckless moments in the chapel. How he had devoured her mouth with his own, his hardness strained against her while she had clutched at him in a mindless daze.

  His kiss had left her deeply confused, and right now she needed a clear head.

  Father Stephen brought his own chair from behind his desk and settled in it, facing them. This was not to be a formal meeting then. Exactly what it would be she refused to guess. Maybe because she feared the outcome.

  “Mr. McKenzie has given me the essentials,” the abbot began. “How he followed you into the courtyard and how the two of you found Brother Anthony dead. What I have yet to learn, Miss Rowan, is why you went to the courtyard.”

  He fixed his gaze on Jennifer, his eyes reproachful.

  He knows already, she thought. He’s too intelligent not to have realized why I was there. He just wants to hear me admit it.

  She could no longer avoid the truth. She would have to tell him everything.

  “I know you asked me not to try to approach Brother Anthony while he was under his vow of silence. I’m sorry I disobeyed you, Father, but it was urgent that I speak to him. I’m in a lot of trouble, and I need—needed his help.”

  Hands steepled in her lap, she gave him the whole story from the beginning, the same one she had shared with Leo back in his room. Leo didn’t contribute to her tale. Neither man said anything until she was finished. Then the abbot looked perceptively at Leo.

  “And you, Mr. McKenzie? It wasn’t just by chance that you were on the road last night, was it?”

  “Afraid not, Father. Brother Anthony’s friend, the man who was murdered in London, was my half brother. Guess you can figure out why I was tailing Ms. Rowan.”

  The abbot was silent, but Jennifer could tell by the severity of his expression how displeased he was that they’d misrepresented themselves.

  “Do I have the whole truth now?” he finally asked them.

  “As much as we know of it,” Leo said.

  From the glance Leo slid in her direction, Jennifer wondered if what he really wanted to say was: “As much as I know of it. I’m not sure about her yet.”

  She made no issue of it, though. There was something else she wanted to pursue. “The Madonna, Father,” she asked him, leaning earnestly forward in her chair. “Did you know it was missing before I told you that part of my story?” She thought he must have heard about it because he hadn’t expressed any alarm when she’d mentioned the theft.

  “I did, yes,” he said. “Brother Anthony learned of it when the call came from London informing him of his friend’s death. It was a great blow to us.”

  “A big loss, huh?” Leo said.

  The abbot nodded solemnly. “So serious that—” He hesitated, looking uncertain. Then he must have decided there was no reason why they shouldn’t know. “I was meeting with my prior to discuss what we should do about it when you arrived yesterday evening.”

  And that, Jennifer realized, was what he must have meant about being occupied with “other matters” when he brought the supper tray to her room last night. His delay in welcoming her had had nothing to do with the other guests.

  “Not,” Father Stephen went on, “that there is anything we can do. We’re a poor order, I’m afraid. Our only wealth is the castle and the Madonna. Now half of that wealth is gone and at a very critical time.”

  “Critical in what way, Father?” Jennifer wanted to know.

  “We need repairs. The roofs alone are in a bad way and want replacing. Much as we hated parting with the Madonna, its sale would have provided essential funds.”

  “Wasn’t the Madonna insured?”

  The abbot shook his head. “Nothing like its value. Insurance at that level is very costly.”

  “So,” Leo said, “the recovery of the Madonna would be pretty important to you, wouldn’t it?”

  His tone was too casual, Jennifer thought. Deceptively casual. Father Stephen must have thought the same thing, because he regarded Leo suspiciously.

  “It would mean everything. What are you trying to tell me, Mr. McKenzie?”

  “That it’s possible, just possible, a solution to Brother Anthony’s death could mean a recovery of the Madonna.”

  The abbot waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “How is that possible when it was stolen in London?”

  “Because there’s a connection with what happened in London to what happened here. Too much of a coincidence otherwise.”

  Leo went on to explain how he believed that Guy’s killer may have murdered Brother Anthony because he feared the monk’s knowledge.

  “If that’s true, Mr. McKenzie, it would mean your brother’s killer is here at Warley.”

  “Looks like it. I want my brother’s killer, Father, and you want the Madonna. And since that killer must have taken the Madonna from Guy’s office…” Leo sat back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them negligently at the ankles. “Let me try to solve Brother Anthony’s death, and maybe we’ll both get what we want.”

  “This is the business of the police, Mr. McKenzie.”

  “When? Maybe days from now? Losing time in a case can cost you the answers.”

  “You have a point, but you’re hardly qualified to—”

  “Investigate a murder? That would be true if I were an amateur. I’m not. Turns out, Father, that what I am is an experienced professional. Don’t believe me?”

  Leo reached around behind him, pulling a small folder out of one of the back pockets of his jeans. Flipping it open, he handed it to Father Stephen. The abbot gazed down at it in silent bemusement.

  Jennifer knew it must be Leo’s private investigator license, something Brother Timothy seemed to have overlooked when he’d undressed his patient last night. Leo’s passport and driver’s license had apparently been enough to satisfy the monk. But not Jennifer, which is why she had discovered the business cards when she’d searched Leo’s wallet this morning. She hadn’t found the ID folder, however.

  “Of course,” Leo said, taking the folder the abbot returned to him and tucking it back into his pocket, “I’m not authorized to operate here in the United Kingdom, but under the circumstances…”

  Father Stephen shook his head, undecided. “I don’t know. That this should be happening, any of it, all of it, is…” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Jennifer felt sorry for him. She knew he had to be struggling to come to terms with something that was totally alien in his isolated world. In the end, though, the chance to recover the precious Madonna, together with bringing Brother Anthony’s killer to justice, was a temptation he plainly couldn’t resist.

  “Very well, Mr. McKenzie, in lieu of the police, I accept your offer. You may take charge of the investigation.”

  “Beginning where, how?” Jennifer wondered.

  “By eliminating suspects. Let’s start with the brothers.”

  The abbot shook his head emphatically. “Impossible.”

  “Men of God have killed before, Father,” Leo said bluntly.

  “I’m not so unworldly, Mr. McKenzie, that I fail to realize that. I say impossible because all of the brothers except Anthony were in the workshops at the time of the murder. I can guarantee this because I was there with them. Only Brother Michael left the scene in order to fetch something fo
r Brother Timothy from the infirmary. Indigestion pills, I believe. He was on his way to the infirmary when you met him in the gallery.”

  “Yeah, well, the brothers weren’t very likely candidates anyway, especially if it does turn out that whoever killed Guy also killed Brother Anthony. All, Father? You sure that all of the order was there in the workshops?”

  “Yes, everyone.” The abbot paused, frowning in considera tion before adding, “With the exception of Gregory and Patrick. I’m not absolutely certain where they were.”

  Gregory was the novice, Jennifer remembered. And Patrick was? Yes, the other young man who wanted to join the order.

  “Looks like that leaves us with either one of them or one of the guests,” Leo said. “Gonna be fun trying to learn where they all were at the time of the murder. But there’s something else…”

  Whatever it was, Jennifer’s attention was diverted from it. She’d been seized by a sudden recollection. A fleeting image she’d forgotten about in all the horror that had followed. A thing that had seemed at the time in no way important. But now…

  She must have vocalized her realization, made some kind of startled sound, because she became aware that the two men had stopped talking and were looking at her.

  “What is it?” Leo asked.

  “Something I forgot about until just now. I think I may have seen Brother Anthony’s killer.”

  “You what?”

  Jennifer explained how, on her way to the ground floor, she had stopped at the window overlooking the courtyard to get her bearings. “There was someone down there. I had only a fast glimpse of him crossing the yard before he moved back under the arcade out of sight. Or it could have been her. The snow was too thick for me to tell.”

  “But surely,” Father Stephen said, “it was Brother Anthony himself you saw.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t think it could have been Brother Anthony.”

  “Why?” Leo asked.

  “I’m not sure. It was just… I don’t know, an impression I had. Sort of like the thing I get when an antique isn’t right.”

  “Think, Jenny. Was it size, shape? Maybe clothing?”

  Tapping her finger against her lips, she made an effort to bring the elusive image into focus. Nothing. “It’s no use. I can’t say who it was.”

  “Some little detail,” Leo pressed her. “Anything.”

  “I just don’t know. It was all too quick, and there was the snow.”

  Frustrating. She could have actually seen the murderer. Chilling thought. But it was of no value. Whoever it was, he remained a phantom figure.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” Leo said, “maybe something more will come back to you. Maybe it won’t. But for now…”

  “Something else,” Jennifer reminded him. “You were starting to tell us about something else when I interrupted.”

  “That I want to do, yeah.”

  “And that would be?” the abbot wanted to know.

  “I want to search the rooms of the other guests. All right, Father, I can see how much you don’t like that idea, but I think it’s necessary. Never know what could turn up.” Leo swung unexpectedly in her direction. “You agree this is something you and I have to do?”

  For a moment Jennifer was too surprised to respond. Then, with disbelief, she asked him softly, “You want me to work with you?”

  “We both have an investment in this whole thing, Jenny.”

  The intense way he said it, the way he looked at her…had her remembering again the searing kiss they had shared in the chapel. She also remembered his earlier distrust. Why? Why did he want to keep her close to him? To protect her? Or to watch her?

  What did it matter? He was right. She still had a need to prove her innocence. And if that meant being thrown together to achieve it, making a bargain with a man capable of both firing her senses and destroying her…

  “All right,” she said, recklessly accepting his challenge, “I’ll help you search those rooms. Just one little thing. How do we manage to go through them without the occupants finding us there?”

  “Perhaps…” the abbot started to say, then hesitated before overcoming what had to be reluctance to participate in their intention. “Perhaps,” he continued, “I can provide a solution to that risk.”

  Leo looked at him expectantly. “Father?”

  “I’m conducting a memorial service for Brother Anthony in the chapel this afternoon. The entire order will attend. I’m sure that if I urge it, all of our guests will join us there.”

  “Leaving Jenny and me free to search their belongings. It’s a plan, Father.”

  “Uh, there’s a little problem here,” Jennifer said dryly. “You and I are also guests. The others are going to think it funny if we’re not in the chapel with them.”

  “I think,” Leo said after briefly considering the problem, “that I’m about to have another relapse like the one I had at breakfast. Say, just after lunch?”

  “And, naturally—”

  “You’ll volunteer again to stay with me.”

  “Because you can’t be left alone in that state.”

  “Not when I could take a turn for the worse.”

  The man was devious, Jennifer thought. Willing to do whatever it took to get results. She had further evidence of that when, everything settled, the three of them got to their feet. Leo had one last request for the abbot before they left the office.

  “For now, Father, I’m going to ask that we keep my P.I. identity to ourselves. I want to be on the inside, able to freely observe these people. But if they learn I’m an investigator…” He shrugged. “Well, they could close ranks, leaving me outside. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  The abbot agreed.

  Devious. Jennifer was still thinking that about Leo on the way back to their rooms. It was why, when they got to her door, she turned on him decisively. “Let’s get something straight.”

  “Yeah?”

  He leaned toward her, arms stretched out on either side of her, hands planted on the stone surround so that she was trapped against the closed door. Daunting, but she didn’t let it stop her.

  “You don’t fool me. We both know that, even if I didn’t kill Brother Anthony, you’re still not certain I didn’t kill Guy.”

  “And?”

  “We don’t trust each other.”

  “Then why are you working with me?”

  Why? Because she had no other choice. Trying to operate on her own made no sense when she could benefit from Leo’s experience as a private investigator. But she knew theirs was an uneasy alliance made more difficult by the sexual tension that thrummed between them like a high-voltage wire. As dangerous as the intoxicating nearness of his hard body that had her pinned against the door. And that kiss in the chapel…

  “You’re the smart detective. You figure it out. I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Abruptly swinging around, she went into her room, closing the door in his face.

  DAMN!

  Leo went on standing there in the corridor, staring at the door she had so firmly closed, shutting him out. Only he wasn’t seeing the door. He was seeing Jennifer in that pair of dark woolen slacks that hugged her hips so provocatively and the burgundy-colored sweater stretched over the swell of her breasts. Seeing, too, the silky, mahogany-colored hair she’d brushed impatiently back from her cheeks, along with the fire in those jade-green eyes when she’d laid into him.

  Nor could he shake the memory of that wanton kiss in the chapel and how he’d wanted it to be much more than a kiss.

  What the hell was he doing? He should be grieving for his brother, not lusting after the woman Guy had been in love with. And whose innocence, just as she’d said, he had yet to totally accept.

  She resented him, of course. That was what her anger just now had been all about. She resented him because she needed him, and she didn’t want to need him. And he didn’t want to lose his head over her, but he was beginning to fear it might already b
e too late for that.

  “THAT QUESTION YOU HAD for Brother Timothy this morning,” Leo probed. “About Warley being haunted. Care to explain that?”

  He would go and remember that, Jennifer thought. Maybe because they were on their way to lunch in the dining parlor, and it was along about here that she’d mentioned the subject to Brother Timothy. This could have reminded Leo of her interest in a ghost. Or maybe it was just because the man had a mind like a trap and forgot nothing.

  Either way, Jennifer regretted that she’d ever asked the question. Her encounter with a possible ghost late last night seemed absolutely silly now. An unreal experience she didn’t want to discuss.

  “There’s nothing to explain. I’m into old things, remember. Castles are old things, and in England that usually means legends about ghosts.”

  “And that’s all it was?”

  “That’s all.”

  She was grateful he didn’t pursue it, although the way he turned his head and gazed at her made her wonder if he was dissatisfied with her response. Maybe even suspicious.

  In any case, they both had something else that claimed their attention. They were starting down the spiral stairway when they heard what sounded like a quarrel in progress on the landing below them.

  “We have a right to know!” A woman’s voice, high with emotion.

  Leo put his hand on Jennifer’s arm, checking her descent. She knew what he intended, only it seemed wrong to her to hang back like this in order to eavesdrop on what was obviously a private conversation. But if this was in any way connected with what was happening here at Warley Castle…

  “Why won’t you tell us? Why do you insist on keeping it from us?” A man’s voice this time, intense, insistent.

  Jennifer didn’t know enough about the other guests to recognize these voices. She strained to hear the reply from whomever they were addressing, but it was too low, no more than an indistinguishable murmur drifting up to them.

  “This is bloody unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it!” The man’s voice again.

  Leo must have been as eager as Jennifer was to identify the speakers, because he motioned for her to continue their descent. If they could creep down just far enough to glimpse the trio without being caught…