by Nora Roberts
herself. She still had Jed’s $80 tucked in her jewelry box like love letters.
“Are you okay?” Lea’s keen eyes scanned Dora’s face. “You look a little flustered.”
“Hmm? No, I’m fine. Just getting back in the swing. Actually, I’m a little scattered. I may have to go to LA for a couple of days.”
“What for?”
“There’s an import business out there that I may want to cultivate. I don’t want to close the shop again.” No reason to, she assured herself. Since Brent was still pulling strings to ensure police protection.
“Don’t worry about it. Terri and I can keep things going.” The phone on the counter rang twice. Lea raised a brow. “Want me to get that?”
“No.” Dora shook off the guilt and lifted the receiver that was an inch away from her hand. “Good afternoon, Dora’s Parlor.”
“I’d like to speak to Miss Isadora Conroy, please.”
“Speaking.”
“Miss Conroy.” From his desk in Los Angeles, Winesap turned to his meticulously rehearsed notes. “This is, ah, Francis Petroy.”
“Yes, Mr. Petroy,” Dora said as Lea turned to greet a customer.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I was given your name and number by a Mrs. Helen Owings of Front Royal, Virginia.”
“Yes.” Dora’s fingers tightened on the receiver. “What can I do for you?”
“I hope it’s what we can do for each other.” Winesap read the words “genial chuckle” in his notes and did his best imitation of one. “It concerns a painting you bought at auction in December. A Billingsly.”
All moisture evaporated in her mouth. “Yes, I know the piece. An abstract.”
“Exactly. As it happens, I’m a collector of abstract work. I specialize in unknown and emerging artists—in a regretfully small way, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“I was unable to attend that particular auction—a family emergency. It gave me some hope when Mrs. Owings informed me that the painting had been sold to a dealer, rather than an art collector.”
“Actually,” Dora said, playing for time. “I’m a little of both.”
“Oh dear.” He shuffled through his papers. Nothing in his copious notes addressed that particular response. “Oh dear.”
“But I’m always interested in a legitimate offer, Mr. Petroy. Perhaps you’d like to come in and see the painting. It would have to be sometime late next week, I’m afraid.” She paused and mimed flipping through an appointment book. “My schedule’s rather hectic until then.”
“That would be excellent. Really excellent.” Relieved, Winesap mopped his sweaty neck with a handkerchief. “What day would be good for you, Miss Conroy?”
“I could fit you in on Thursday, say at two?”
“Perfect.” Hurried, Winesap scribbled down the date. “I hope you’ll hold the painting until then. I’d hate to miss the opportunity.”
“Oh, I’d hate you to miss it, too.” She smiled grimly at the wall. “I promise, it won’t go anywhere until we have the chance to discuss terms. Do you have a number where I can reach you in case something comes up?”
“Certainly.” As his notes instructed, Winesap recited the number for one of Finley’s fronts in New Jersey. “During business hours,” he said. “I’m afraid I keep my private number unlisted.”
“I understand perfectly. Next Thursday then, Mr. Petroy.”
She hung up, almost too furious to enjoy the sense of elation. He thought she was an idiot, Dora fumed. Well, DiCarlo or Finley or Petroy or whoever the hell you are, you’re in for a rude surprise.
“Lea! I have to go out for an hour. If Jed comes in, tell him I have to talk to him.”
“Okay, but where—” Lea broke off, fisting her hands on her hips as she stared at the closing door.
She should have called ahead. Dora turned back into the parking lot after a fruitless trip to the police station. Lieutenant Chapman was in the field. Sounded as though he were out hunting pheasant, she thought grumpily.
How was she supposed to tell anyone she’d made contact if there wasn’t anyone around to tell? Then she spotted Jed’s car and allowed herself a smug smile. He was about to learn that he wasn’t the only one who could think on his feet.
She found him in the storeroom, calmly painting shelves.
“There you are. I hate to use a cliché, but where’s a cop when you need one?”
He continued to paint. “If you’d needed a cop, you should have called nine-one-one.”
“I went to the source instead.” Wanting to prolong the excitement, she peeled off her coat. “But Brent was out. How come they call it a field? I don’t recall passing through any fields in Philadelphia.”
“Just our little way of impressing civilians. Why did you need Brent?”
“Because.” She paused for drama. “I made contact.”
“With what?”
“With whom, Skimmerhorn. Don’t be dense. I got a call from Mr. Petroy—only I don’t think it was Mr. Petroy. It could have been DiCarlo, but the voice didn’t really jibe. Maybe he disguised it, but I’m pretty good with voices. He could have had someone else make the call,” she said, considering. “Or it could have been Finley, but—”
“Sit down, Conroy.” Jed laid the brush across the top of the paint can. “Try a Jack Webb.”
“A Jack Webb? Oh.” Her eyes brightened. “Just the facts. I get it.”
“You’re a real whip. Sit.”
“Okay.” She settled and imagined herself filing a report. As a result, she related the entire phone conversation precisely, thoroughly and without embellishments. “How’s that?” she asked when she was done.
“What the hell were you thinking of, making an appointment to meet him without checking with me?”
She’d expected him to be impressed, not irritated. “I had to do something, didn’t I? Wouldn’t he have been suspicious if a dealer had seemed reluctant to meet with him?” Her back stiffened defensively. “But it’s definitely fishy. An art collector inquiring about a painting from an artist who probably doesn’t even exist. I checked on Billingsly. There isn’t any Billingsly, so why should anyone go to the trouble to track down a Billingsly painting? Because,” she said, and lifted a finger for emphasis, “he wants a Monet.”
“That’s brilliant, Conroy. Just Goddamn brilliant. And it’s not the point.”
“Of course it is.” She blew out a breath, stirring her bangs. “He thought I was stupid. He thought I was some money-grubbing junk dealer who doesn’t know her butt from a delft vase, but he’s going to find out differently.”
“That’s also beside the point. You should have put him off until I got back.”
“I did very well on my own, thank you. I’m not an idiot.”
“Do you have star sixty-nine on your phone system?”
Her face went blank. “Excuse me?”
“Return call. You press a couple of buttons and your phone rings back whoever called you last.”
“Oh.” As the wind leaked out of her sails, she examined her nails. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
He studied her bowed head. “I don’t suppose you thought to try it?”
“I can’t think of everything,” she mumbled. Hopefully, she looked up. “We can try it now.”
“The phone’s rung three times since I got back.”
“Oh.” She pushed up from the chair. “Go ahead, tell me I blew it.”
“I don’t have to, you just did.” He gave her hair a tug. “Don’t take it too hard, Nancy Drew, even amateur sleuths screw up now and again.”
She knocked his hand away. “Take a leap, Skimmerhorn.”
“Brent and I will work out how to handle Petroy on Thursday. We’ll be back by then.”
“Back? Are you and Brent going somewhere?”
“No, you and I are.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets. He still wasn’t happy about it, but she’d made an odd sort of sense. “We’re leaving for LA tomorrow.�
��
“I’m going to do it?” She pressed a hand to her heart, then tossed her arms wide and vaulted into his. “I’m actually going to do it.” Thrilled with the prospect, she raced kisses over his face. “I knew you’d see it my way.”
“I didn’t. I was outvoted.” He wasn’t going to admit he’d seen the simple beauty of her idea and had recommended it to Brent.
“Whatever.” She kissed him again, hard. “Tomorrow?” she said, rearing back. “God, that’s so quick. I have to decide what I’m going to wear.”
“That’s the least of your worries.”
“No, no, no, the proper presentation is essential to character. My navy pinstripe,” she considered. “It’s very polite and businesslike. Or maybe the red double-breasted—more power and sex. I could distract him with my legs.”
“Go for the businesslike.”
Because she enjoyed the faint trace of annoyance in the tone, she smiled. “Definitely the red.”
“For all you know, he won’t even see you.”
“Of course he’ll see me.” She stopped, frowned. “How are we going to make him want to see me?”
“Because you’re going to call him, and you’re going to say exactly what I tell you to say.”
“I see.” She tilted her head, lifted a brow. “Have you written me a script, Skimmerhorn? I’m a quick study. I can be off book in no time.”
“Just do what you’re told.”
* * *
In Los Angeles, Winesap entered Finley’s office with a worried frown creasing his face. “Mr. Finley, sir. Miss Conroy, she’s on line two. She’s waiting to speak with you.”
“Is that so?” Finley closed the file he’d been studying, folded his hands on top of it. “An interesting development.”
Winesap’s hands twisted together like nervous cats. “Mr. Finley, when I spoke with her earlier today, she was quite cooperative. And I certainly never mentioned my connection with you. I don’t know what this might mean.”
“Then we’ll find out, won’t we? Sit, Abel.” He lifted the receiver and, smiling, leaned back in his chair. “Miss Conroy? Edmund Finley here.”
He listened, his smile growing wider and more feral. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Miss Conroy. You’re inquiring about one of my employees—Anthony DiCarlo? I see. I see.” He picked up a letter opener from his desk and tested the honed point with the pad of his thumb. “Of course, I understand if you feel a personal meeting is important. I don’t know if I’ll be able to help. We’ve told the police all we know about Mr. DiCarlo’s unexplained disappearance, which is, unfortunately, nothing. Very well,” he added after a moment. “If you feel you can’t discuss it over the telephone, I’d be happy to see you. Tomorrow?” His brows raised. Gently he scraped the point of the letter opener over the Conroy file. “That is rather short notice. Life and death?” He barely suppressed a chuckle. “I’ll see if it can be arranged. Will you hold? I’ll give you to my assistant. He’ll check my calendar. I’ll look forward to meeting you.”
With a flourish of wrist, Finley punched the Hold button. “Give her four o’clock.”
“You have a meeting at three-thirty, sir.”
“Give her four o’clock,” Finley repeated, and held out the phone.
“Yes, sir.” Winesap took the receiver in his damp hand, engaged the line. “Miss Conroy? This is Abel Winesap, Mr. Finley’s assistant. You’d like an appointment for tomorrow? I’m afraid the only time Mr. Finley has open is at four. Yes? You have the address? Excellent. We’ll be expecting you.”
“Delightful.” Finley nodded approval when Winesap replaced the receiver. “Simply delightful. ‘Fools walk in,’ Abel.” He opened Dora’s file again and smiled genially at her dossier. “I’m certainly looking forward to this. Clear my calendar for tomorrow afternoon. I want no distractions when I see Miss Isadora Conroy. She will have all my attention.”
“Tomorrow, four o’clock,” Dora said, and turned to Jed. “He sounded puzzled but cooperative, pleasant but reserved.”
“And you sounded on the verge of hysteria but controlled.” Impressed despite himself, he tipped her face up with his finger and kissed her. “Not bad, Conroy. Not bad at all.”
“There’s something else.” Though she wanted to, she didn’t take his hand. If she had, he’d have seen that hers was chilled. “I think I just spoke with Mr. Petroy.”
“Finley?”
“No.” She forced a thin smile. “His assistant, Winesap.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Dora was pleased, and impressed, when the cab pulled up in front of the pink stucco villa that was the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Well, well, Skimmerhorn, you surprise me. This makes up for not springing for a night at the Plaza in New York.”
“The room’s booked in your name.” Jed watched Dora gracefully offer her hand to the doorman. The gesture was one of a woman who’d been sliding out of limos all her life. “You have to put it on your credit card.”
She cast a withering look at him over her shoulder. “Thanks a bunch, big spender.”
“You want to advertise the fact that you’re traveling out here with a companion?” he asked when she sailed through the doors and into the lobby. “A cop?”
“You left out the ‘ex.’ ”
“So I did,” he murmured, and waited while Dora checked in. The tony lobby of the BHH didn’t seem exactly the right setting to tell her that the “ex” wouldn’t apply much longer.
Dora covertly scanned the lobby for passing movie stars when she handed the desk clerk her card for imprint. “I’m going to bill you for this, Skimmerhorn.”
“It was your idea to come.”
True enough. “Then I’ll only bill you for half.” She accepted her card, and two keys, passed one to the waiting bellman. “Some of us are not independently wealthy.”
“Some of us,” he said as he slipped an arm around her waist, “paid for the airfare.”
She was touched by the easy way he’d linked them together as they trailed the luggage to the elevator and up to the room.
Dora quickly slipped out of her shoes and padded over to the window to check out the view. There was nothing quite so Californian, she mused, as lush lawns, regal palms and cozy stucco cottages.
“I haven’t been in LA since I was fifteen. We stayed in an incredibly bad hotel in Burbank while my father did a part in a small, forgettable film with Jon Voight. It did not distinguish either of their careers.”
She stretched her back, rolled her shoulders. “I guess I’m a snob. An east coast snob, because LA doesn’t do it for me. It makes me think of unnecessary eye tucks and designer yogurt. Or maybe it’s designer eye tucks and unnecessary yogurt. After all, who really needs yogurt in their lives?”
She turned back, her smile becoming puzzled when he only continued to stare at her. “What is it?”
“I just like looking at you sometimes, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
When he saw that the statement had both pleased and flustered her, he smiled back. “You’re okay, Conroy. Even with the pointy chin.”
“It’s not pointy.” She rubbed it defensively. “It’s delicately sculptured. You know, maybe we should have booked a suite. This room’s hardly bigger than a closet. Or maybe we can just go out for a while, get something to eat, soak up some smog.”
“You’re nervous.”
“Of course I’m not nervous.” She tossed her bag onto the bed and undid the straps.