Smoke in Mirrors Read online

  “Right,” Deke said. “Cassie’s got classes to teach this afternoon so she can’t go with you either.”

  “That settles it.” Thomas slowed for the turn that would take him to Deke’s house. “You and Cassie stay here. Leonora and I will head for Seattle. We’ll call you as soon as we’ve talked to Grayson.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cassie halted in the short, shadowed hall. Deke closed the door slowly and tried to find words for what she had done.

  “Thanks.” That sounded pretty lame. He tried again. “If you hadn’t come up with Margaret Lewis’s name, we wouldn’t have any of this new information.”

  “I hope it helps.”

  “I don’t know where this is going, but at least we’re no longer completely stalled.”

  She made no move to take off her coat. Instead, she glanced at her watch. “It’s nearly noon. I’d better be on my way. Busy class schedule at the studio this afternoon. I want to get a bite to eat first.”

  She was going to leave. He didn’t want her to go. Not yet. He wanted to talk to her. Discuss what they had learned from Margaret Lewis. Tell her how he planned to pursue his online search. Hell, he didn’t care if they made inane conversation about the weather. He just wanted her to hang around for a while.

  He groped for inspiration. And found it when he saw the half-finished loaf of bread on the counter.

  “I’ve got to get to work, too,” he said. “But we both need some lunch.” He tried to sound casual. “I’m going to make a sandwich. Just as easy to make two.”

  She looked hesitant. Then she shrugged. “All right.”

  Panic assailed him, rendering him briefly speechless. She had accepted the offer of food. He prayed fervently that he had something on hand he could use to make a sandwich, any kind of sandwich. He vaguely recalled some cheese in the refrigerator. The bread was a little old but maybe it would be okay if he toasted it.

  “Great,” he said weakly.

  Intent on heading for the kitchen, he moved past her. He stopped at the entrance to the living room. The day was gray and misty outside, but the living room was as dark as the interior of a cave. Was this how the place looked to her every time she came here to give him a yoga session? It was damned depressing.

  “I’ll open the curtains,” he said. He changed course and headed for the nearest window.

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “Good idea.”

  He went from one window to the next, parting the curtains to let in the gray daylight. When he surveyed his handiwork he concluded that the room was still a little gloomy. He switched on a couple of lights before he went into the kitchen.

  He found the cheese on the middle shelf of the refrigerator and examined it closely. There was no obvious sign of mold. Relieved, he turned his attention to the half-finished loaf of bread. No green stuff on it, either. Definitely his lucky day.

  Cassie made coffee while he constructed the sandwiches. It felt good to have her here in the kitchen with him. He wondered how she felt about it.

  “Not exactly lasagna and apple pie,” he said when he put the plate containing the toasted cheese sandwich in front of her a short time later. “I need to do some grocery shopping.”

  “It looks great.” She sat down across from him and picked up half of her sandwich. “I’m hungry.”

  He watched her eat the food he had prepared, fascinated. Why hadn’t he ever thought to invite her to stay for lunch?

  She paused in mid-chew and gave him an inquiring look. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” Embarrassed, he picked up his own sandwich and bit into it.

  They ate in silence for a while. Rain dripped steadily from the porch roof outside the kitchen window.

  “There’s something I have to ask you, Deke,” she said eventually.

  “Sure.” He swallowed. “What?”

  “When this business is over, do you think you’ll be able to let go of Bethany’s memory? Or is she going to haunt you all of your life?”

  He went very still.

  “I need to know,” she said quietly. “It’s important.”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds while he worked to find order in the chaos of his thoughts.

  When he opened his eyes he found Cassie watching him very steadily.

  “It’s been all jumbled up for a long time,” he said, stringing the words together carefully, trying to get it right, for his own sake as well as hers. “Three days before Bethany was killed, I told her that I wanted a divorce.”

  “I see.” She ate some more of her sandwich.

  “I felt a lot of guilt at the time. I knew she needed me to take care of her. But I needed something from her, too. After three years of marriage, I knew she couldn’t give it to me.”

  “What did you need from her?”

  “I wanted a wife.” He raised his shoulders and lowered them. “Someone who slept with me, not in her office. Someone who occasionally remembered that I was a man, not a butler or a personal secretary. I wanted kids. She said they would interfere with her work.”

  “I get the point. How did she take it when you told her you wanted out of the marriage?”

  “I’m not sure she even heard me that day, to tell you the truth. She had been completely wrapped up in her Mirror Theory for several weeks. Totally focused on her work. She said we would have to talk about it later because she was very, very busy. She didn’t come home for the next two nights. The third night, Ed Stovall showed up at my door to tell me that she had driven her car to Cliff Drive and jumped off the bluff.”

  “I hate to ask, but are you certain there wasn’t another man?”

  He shook his head. “Positive. If you had met her, you would understand. Bethany lived only for her work. She wouldn’t have had any interest in an affair.”

  Cassie slowly lowered the last portion of her sandwich. “That made your sense of guilt a whole lot worse, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He groped for a few more words. “It would have been easier for me if I thought she was involved with someone else. I would have felt justified in filing for a divorce. As it was, I just felt bad because I knew she depended on me to take care of everything.”

  “Now you feel that you have to do this one last thing for her, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s okay, you know,” Cassie said gently. “If anything terrible and mysterious ever happened to me, I’d like to know that someone cared enough to go after the truth.”

  He took a deep breath, released it slowly. “I would care.”

  That didn’t sound right.

  “A lot,” he added.

  That didn’t sound right, either.

  “Hell, I can’t even stand to think about something bad happening to you, Cassie.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because I can’t stand to think about anything terrible happening to you, either.”

  It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love, he decided. But it would do. For now.

  Thomas brought the SUV to a halt in the driveway of Andrew Grayson’s home. Leonora examined it through the window.

  The large house occupied a pricey stretch of waterfront property. Lush, green gardens framed an airy, modern structure that was oriented toward the view of the lake and the office towers of downtown Seattle on the other side. Two very expensive-looking vehicles of European extraction were parked outside the garage at the edge of the broad drive.

  “Deke was right,” she said. “Whatever happened after the murder of Sebastian Eubanks, Andrew Grayson doesn’t seem to have suffered too much financially.”

  “Judging from his attitude on the phone when I called him a while ago, he isn’t shy about discussing it, either.”

  They got out of the SUV and walked toward the entrance. The double front doors were lacquered in a rich, gleaming red. They opened just as Thomas reached out to ring the bell.

  A silver-haired man with patrician features stood in the opening. He wore a cream-colored shirt and hand-tailor
ed trousers. Intelligent curiosity lit his eyes. There was also a measure of caution in his gaze.

  “Miss Hutton and Mr. Walker? I’m Andrew Grayson. Please come in.”

  “Thank you,” Leonora said.

  Thomas held out his hand. “Call me Thomas.”

  Andrew took the hand Thomas offered. His grip was firm and confident. He studied Thomas’s black eye.

  “Mind if I ask?” he said.

  “No, but it will be easier to explain in context.”

  Andrew nodded. “This way, please.”

  Thomas followed behind Leonora as Andrew led the way through a wide, two-story-atrium center hall.

  The hall opened onto an expansive great room. The floor-to-ceiling windows captured the sweeping, panoramic view of the lake. A green lawn rolled down a gentle incline to the water’s edge. A sleek yacht was tied up at the private dock.

  A man who looked to be about the same age as Andrew, but with more weight and far less hair, was working on the dock. Thomas watched him hoist a coil of rope and disappear inside the large craft.

  “My partner, Ben Matthis,” Andrew said. He motioned toward a pair of black lacquered chairs upholstered in tan leather. “Please sit down.”

  Leonora turned away from the window and sat down beside Thomas.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see us on such short notice,” Thomas said.

  Andrew lowered himself to the cushions of a black leather sofa and leaned back into the corner with negligent ease. “I must admit, you said just enough on the phone to make me curious. I went online while I waited for you and I found nothing in the reports of the deaths of the two women you mentioned to connect them to the murder of Sebastian Eubanks.”

  Thomas glanced at Leonora and then clasped his hands loosely between his knees.

  “We’re not sure there is a connection,” he said. “But we do know that, shortly before she died, Bethany Walker was interested in the details of the Eubanks murder. The second woman, Meredith Spooner, found some clippings of the murder that Bethany had apparently tried to hide. A short time later, she, too, was dead. Both women spent a lot of time at Mirror House before their deaths and both women were rumored to have been using drugs.”

  “We don’t believe that last part,” Leonora said. “We’re very sure that neither Bethany nor Meredith was into the drug scene.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?” Andrew asked.

  “There’s more.” Thomas gestured toward his shiner. “Some guy in a ski mask tried to throw me off the footbridge last night. He was high on drugs at the time. The chief of police says the kid probably won’t remember much about the assault.”

  “But you don’t think it was a random act of violence, is that it?”

  “No,” Thomas said. “I think a con man named Alex Rhodes is involved in this thing. He doesn’t want us digging any deeper.”

  Andrew looked thoughtful. “The fact that you found me means you’ve already dug very deep. The college trustees went to great lengths to keep my connection to Eubanks a dark secret after I was asked to resign.”

  “We had a little help from Margaret Lewis,” Leonora said.

  Andrew’s expression first showed surprise and then quiet amusement. “Ah, yes. The department secretary. That explains everything. I’m delighted to hear that she’s still alive. An amazingly competent individual, Mrs. Lewis.”

  “What can you tell us about the murder?” Thomas asked.

  “About the murder? Nothing.” Andrew moved one hand, palm up. “Except to say that I didn’t do it. And I don’t know anything about this Alex Rhodes person you mentioned. But I can tell you a few things about Sebastian Eubanks, if you like.”

  “Margaret said that Eubanks had turned very eccentric towards the end,” Leonora said.

  Andrew snorted softly. “He was a math geek. He was born eccentric. You had to remind him to change his underwear on a regular basis. But it’s true that, in those last months of his life, he got very strange. He was more than just consumed with his work. He became obsessed.”

  “Obsessed is a heavy word,” Thomas said.

  “It’s appropriate in this case,” Andrew said. “To be honest, at the time I thought he had lost his grip on reality. He was a genius, you know. Few realized it because he didn’t live long enough to prove himself. But I was close to him for several months and I was able to observe his incredible mind at work. Astonishing, really. Absolutely astonishing.”

  “He wouldn’t have been the first genius to get lost in his own brilliance,” Leonora said quietly.

  “True. It was the paranoia that drove us apart, though, not his brilliance. But after he was killed I decided that maybe he’d been right to be paranoid.”

  “You don’t buy the interrupted burglary story?” Thomas asked.

  “I did at the time.” Andrew propped his left ankle on his right knee. “I knew I wasn’t the one who had killed him and there didn’t seem to be any other logical suspects. But I’ve done a lot of thinking over the years. I’ve arrived at some private conclusions. Pure conjecture and wild speculation, of course. I have not one shred of proof.”

  “We’re here to listen to pure conjecture and wild speculation,” Leonora said. “We’re used to it. That’s about all we’ve had to go on so far.”

  “I can see that,” Andrew said. “But I warn you that you won’t get anywhere trying to prove my theory.”

  “Why do you think Eubanks was murdered?” Thomas asked.

  “For the oldest reason in the academic world.”

  Thomas frowned. “Someone caught him in bed with the wrong person?”

  “No.” Andrew said. “Someone wanted to steal Sebastian’s work and publish it as his own.”

  “Good heavens,” Leonora whispered. “Publish or perish? Literally?”

  “The academic world is very Darwinian,” Andrew said. “But, then, you know that, don’t you? According to the online check I did before you arrived, you work in an academic library. Piercy College, I believe?”

  “Yes.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “And I’ll be the first to admit that things can get a little rough in the academy. But I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anyone murdering someone else in order to publish a paper.”

  “Any cop will tell you that some people will commit murder for virtually any reason,” Andrew said. “But in this case there was far more than the publication of one minor paper in some obscure academic journal that only a couple of dozen people would have read at the time and which would have long since been forgotten.”

  He stopped talking for a moment. Thomas kept quiet. So did Leonora.

  “I was one of two people on campus at the time who had some knowledge of the nature of Sebastian’s work,” Andrew continued. “In the course of our relationship, he talked to me a bit about his theories. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to discuss them with someone and I was there.” He moved his hand again, this time in a dismissing gesture. “Also, to be blunt, he knew full well that I wouldn’t have been capable of stealing his concepts and publishing them as my own.”

  “Why not?” Thomas asked.

  “I was in the computer science department. Exactly where I belonged. I’m more of an engineer than a mathematician. My mind doesn’t work the same way that Sebastian’s did. I freely admit that I wouldn’t have been able to fake my way through a peer review article in his branch of mathematics even if I’d had unlimited access to his notes and papers. Which I did not.”

  “But someone else did?” Leonora asked softly.

  Andrew looked past her, through the windows, toward the sleek yacht berthed at the dock below the garden.

  “As I said, there was far more than the publication of a minor paper in mathematics at stake. There was fame and fortune to be had. Not to mention a reputation that would survive for generations in academic circles.”

  “Go on,” Thomas said.

  “There was an extremely ambitious assistant professor in the department of mathematic
s at Eubanks who was capable of comprehending the full implications of Sebastian’s work. They had been friends and colleagues for a time, but they quarreled. Sebastian never trusted him after that.”

  Thomas watched him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’ve done a lot of soul-searching over the years,” Andrew said. “I’ve often wondered what might have happened if I had taken Sebastian’s fears more seriously. Perhaps I might have been able to do something. But to this day, I honestly don’t know what that something would have been.”

  “I don’t see how you could have done anything,” Leonora said. “You couldn’t possibly have guessed that someone might murder him in order to steal his work.”

  “No.” Andrew sighed. “It simply never occurred to me at the time that Osmond Kern would kill for the privilege of getting his name in the textbooks.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Andrew stood in the doorway to say good-bye. “Sebastian’s murder was a real turning point in my life. I took a long, hard look at my future and decided that I wasn’t cut out for higher ed, even assuming I could get another teaching position. So I took a job with a local software startup instead. Ben worked there, too. We did okay when the company went public.”

  Thomas gave the big house an amused glance. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “What are you going to do with the information I gave you?” Andrew asked.

  Leonora exchanged glances with Thomas, who shrugged.

  “We don’t know yet,” Thomas said. “We’re still trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together.”

  “If anything comes of your investigation, I’d like to know about it.”

  “We’ll keep you in the loop,” Thomas promised.

  Andrew nodded. “I’d appreciate that. Sebastian was a very difficult man. Exasperating. Brilliant. Eccentric. No social skills to speak of. But for a time he and I were more than friends. He deserved to have his name attached to that damned algorithm. I’d like to see him get his rightful place in the textbooks.”