Smoke in Mirrors Read online

  Remodeling houses was his passion, but it was a tough way to make a decent living, especially when you put as much into the craftsmanship and materials end of the business as he liked to do. He had a good eye for the architectural bones of a house and he stuck to the three fundamental laws of real estate—location, location, location—when he bought his fixer-uppers. Nevertheless, he rarely made a killing when he sold. He was lucky to clear expenses and make a few thousand on the plus side of the column.

  When it came to earning real money, he did it the easy way, at least the way that was easy for him: He invested.

  His first major investment had occurred when he had sold one of his remodeled houses and used all of the profits as venture capital to fuel Deke’s fledging little software company. Two years later the firm had been bought out by one of the major players in a bid to acquire Deke’s revolutionary security program.

  Thomas and Deke had both come out of the deal with a whole new perspective on life, the perspective of young men who could afford to retire before they reached thirty.

  Thomas had chosen to study the markets in an effort to ensure their newfound financial security did not dissipate. Deke had gone back to school, gotten some fancy degrees and accepted a position as a professor in the computer science department at Eubanks College.

  Deke said Thomas had a near-paranormal talent for making money in stocks and bonds. He didn’t know about the paranormal part. All he knew was that he was good at seeing trends before they took hold. With the aid of some software that Deke had designed to meet his specifications, he had gotten even better at it. These days he only had to spend a couple of hours a day at the computer to keep the investment portfolio tuned up and humming along.

  The rest of the time he was free to fool around with his tools.

  “I’m glad you’ve decided to cooperate,” he said to Leonora. He was careful to keep all signs of the satisfaction he was feeling out of his voice. “Mind if I ask what made you decide to get in touch?”

  Stretched out on the floor beside the desk, Wrench abruptly raised his head and looked very intently at him. Maybe he hadn’t managed to keep all emotion out of his words, after all.

  “It’s a long story,” Leonora said. “The bottom line is that Meredith says I can trust you.”

  He went cold. “Meredith’s dead.”

  Wrench hauled himself to his feet and put his head on Thomas’s knee. Absently, Thomas reached down to scratch him behind the ears.

  “I got what you might call a time-release last will and testament note in my email this morning,” Leonora said. “She wrote it before she died and arranged to have it sent in the event anything happened to her.”

  That stopped him for the count of two. “Did she imply that she was in danger?”

  “No. I think she was just taking precautions. Taking care of details. Meredith was very good at details.” Silence hummed gently on the line for a few seconds. “But she may have had some qualms.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “In her message, she said that if things turned nasty I’m supposed to call you.”

  “Huh. Wonder why she did that?”

  “Meredith was very intuitive.”

  “Yeah?” He stroked the muscles behind Wrench’s bent ear. “I’ll take your word for it. I didn’t know her very well.”

  “You slept with her.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t know her very well.”

  “Do you sleep with a lot of women you don’t know well?”

  “No.” He let it go at that. Unlike Meredith, apparently, he was not real intuitive. But it was obvious, even to him, that this particular conversational direction would lead to a dead end.

  There was a short, tense silence.

  “I think I know where your one-point-five million is,” Leonora said after a while.

  He was on his feet without being aware of having come up out of the chair. Wrench sat back on his haunches, head cocked attentively.

  “Where is it?” Thomas asked.

  “In an offshore account in the Caribbean.”

  “That figures. She was a very sophisticated scam artist, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.” Leonora hesitated briefly. “I’m sorry. Meredith had a long history of, uh, pilfering funds from other people.”

  “When the amount involved is one and a half million, the term pilfering doesn’t seem adequate.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Can you access that offshore account?”

  “Yes, I think so. She gave me the number of the account.”

  He went to stand at the window that overlooked the cove. “If you’ve got the number, I should be able to transfer the funds back into the endowment account without anyone being the wiser.”

  “Yes, well, that’s something I feel we should discuss in more detail.”

  Damn. He had known it wouldn’t be that easy. Meredith had been a thief. He had to remember that. Thieves hung out with other thieves, or, at the very least, they probably favored friends whose own moral and ethical standards tended toward the low end of the spectrum.

  “If you’re worried about your finder’s fee,” he said, “relax. I’ll make sure that you get the money.”

  Leonora cleared her throat. He got the feeling she was working up her nerve for whatever it was she intended to say next.

  “That’s not quite what I had in mind,” she said.

  He braced one hand around the wooden window frame and prepared to negotiate.

  “How does fifty thousand sound?” he said evenly. “Together with a guarantee that your name will not be brought up in any conversation related to the scam in the event that someone, say a cop or a lawyer, for instance, gets wind of it in the future?”

  “No.”

  Her refusal came swiftly. Too swiftly. There was no hesitation whatsoever in her voice. That worried him. She made her living as an academic librarian and he knew for a fact that there was no serious money in the family. He’d checked her out online. All she had was a grandmother who survived on social security, a tiny pension and the income of some small investments. Fifty grand had to sound like a very nice chunk of change to anyone in Leonora’s position. Of course, it wasn’t exactly one and a half million.

  She was playing hardball.

  “It’s a good offer,” he said. “The best you’re going to get. Meredith told you to trust me, remember? Take my advice, Miss Hutton. You do not want to try to hang on to the money in that numbered account.”

  “I don’t?” She sounded almost amused.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I will hound you to the ends of the earth. I promise I will make life very difficult for you.”

  “I believe you,” she said dryly.

  “Good.”

  “Look, this isn’t about the money, Mr. Walker.”

  “Sure it is. It’s always about the money.”

  “If you actually believe that, you’ve led a very limited and extremely barren life.”

  The lecturing tone annoyed him.

  “Okay,” he said. “If it’s not about the money, what is it about?”

  “You said that your brother believes that his wife, Bethany, was murdered and that he sees some possible links to Meredith’s death.”

  “Let’s leave Deke out of this. His theories about Bethany’s death have nothing to do with our negotiations.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  “In addition to the number and location of the offshore account, I found two other items in Meredith’s safe-deposit box,” Leonora said quietly.

  “Where the hell are you going with this?”

  “One of the items was a book titled Catalog of Antique Looking Glasses in the Mirror House Collection. It’s over forty years old. There are a lot of black-and-white photos of old mirrors inside.”

  He thought about that. “Meredith must have taken it fro
m the library at Mirror House. Wonder why she ripped it off?”

  “I have no idea. She had no interest in antique looking glasses as far as I know. There was something else in the box, too. An envelope. It contains photocopies of some clippings of newspaper accounts of an old murder case.”

  A twinge of icy premonition drifted through him. “How old?”

  “The murder occurred thirty years ago there in Wing Cove.”

  “Thirty years ago? Wait a second—are you talking about the Sebastian Eubanks murder?”

  “Yes. Know anything about it?”

  “Hell, yes. Not exactly a secret here in town. A local legend, as a matter of fact. Sebastian Eubanks was the son of Nathanial Eubanks, the man who established the original endowment for Eubanks College. The story goes that Nathanial was brilliant but very weird. Committed suicide. His son, Sebastian, was also very, very smart. A mathematician and major-league eccentric. He was shot dead one night at Mirror House some thirty years ago. The murder was never solved.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you know?”

  “What else is there to know? It happened three decades ago and, as I said, they never caught the killer. It’s not like there’s anyone around who still cares about what happened. The Eubanks family line ended with Sebastian. You say Meredith had some clippings of the story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hell would she have been concerned about an old murder case?”

  “I have no idea,” Leonora said softly. “But Bethany Walker may have been concerned about it, too.”

  He went very still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The clippings were in an envelope that is imprinted with Bethany Walker’s name and the address of an office in the Department of Mathematics at Eubanks College.”

  For a few seconds he just stared at the fog-bound cove, trying to make sense of that information.

  “Meredith must have gotten hold of some of Bethany’s professional stationery. I don’t know how she managed that. We cleaned out Bethany’s office. Deke burned all of the unused stationery that had her name and address on it.”

  “There was a short note from Meredith in the safe-deposit box. It says that she found the clippings together with the book in Mirror House. She makes it clear that she intended to send them to you and your brother once she was safely out of your reach in the Caribbean.”

  “She found them?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. The note doesn’t say. Just somewhere in Mirror House.”

  “Huh.” He tapped one finger on the window edge, looking for some connections. He didn’t see any right off. “All right, send them to me. I’ll see if they mean anything to Deke. Let’s get back to our other business.”

  “My finder’s fee? Forget it. I’m not interested in your money, Mr. Walker.”

  “What does interest you, Miss Hutton?”

  “Finding out who murdered Meredith.”

  For a split second he thought he hadn’t heard her right.

  “Who murdered her? What the hell is this? She died in a single-car traffic accident down there in L.A., remember?”

  “I don’t believe that anymore,” Leonora said firmly. “Not after the rumors of her using drugs and not after finding these clippings in an envelope with Bethany Walker’s name on it. Not after what you said about your brother concluding that Bethany was murdered and the drug rumors surrounding her death.”

  “Damn it—”

  “Something is going on there in Wing Cove. I intend to find out what that something is.”

  “Fine. You want to play private eye? Be my guest. It’s a free country. All I care about is the number of that offshore account. Tell me what you want in exchange for that information and we can both get on with our lives.”

  “Yes, well, it’s not quite that simple,” she said carefully. “I’m afraid that what I want in exchange for this number is your help.”

  “My help? What do you expect me to do?”

  “I need your cooperation and assistance, Mr. Walker. You know Wing Cove. I don’t.”

  “Listen closely, Miss Hutton. The answer is not just no, it is hell, no. Got it?”

  “I thought the number of this account in the Caribbean was important to you.”

  “Are you seriously trying to blackmail me?”

  She cleared her throat again. “Well, yes, I suppose you could look at it that way. Now, shall we discuss the details?”

  “What details?”

  “Well, I’ll need a cover story.”

  “A cover story. Right. Got any brilliant ideas, Mata Hari?”

  “I believe you mentioned a library at Mirror House,” Leonora said slowly.

  “Forget it. Mirror House doesn’t need a librarian. No one uses the old library. The only books in it are the ones Nathanial Eubanks collected years ago. They’re all concerned with antique mirrors and looking glasses.”

  “Are the books cataloged?”

  He summoned up a mental image of the musty library on the second floor of the mansion. He had only seen the place once when Deke had given him a quick tour. There was a small office on one side. Inside the office was an old-fashioned wooden card catalog with a lot of little drawers.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Cards or computer?”

  “Cards. I told you, no one has touched that library in years.”

  “I think it’s time the catalog was updated and put online, don’t you?”

  In spite of his irritation, he was starting to see some possibilities. Mirror House was one of the few real connections that existed between Bethany and Meredith. Meredith had found the book and the clippings somewhere in the mansion and for some reason she had been convinced that he and Deke would want to see them. They had to be important, although he could not envision how that was possible.

  As much as he hated to admit it, Deke and Leonora might both have a point. One thing was certain, this situation wasn’t going to go away quietly. He knew that now.

  “I might be able to work something out,” he said slowly.

  “Excellent.”

  The not-so-subtle triumph in her voice made him set his teeth. She thought she had won.

  “Before we take this any further,” he said, “there’s something you should—”

  “I’ll need a place to stay,” she said.

  He gave that two seconds’ worth of thought. More possibilities.

  “I recently picked up a fixer-upper with a view of the cove,” he said. “It’s solid and tight. It could work.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Before we call this a done deal,” he said deliberately, “there’s one stipulation.”

  “What is it?” she asked. Careless in victory.

  “If you decide to come up here to play girl detective, you’re going to have to do things my way.”

  “Good heavens, Mr. Walker. Why on earth would I agree to a clause that puts you in charge?”

  “Because if you don’t agree to it, I will come down there to Melba Creek and get the number of that offshore account out of you the hard way.”

  “You handed in your resignation?” Gloria put aside the yellow pad she had been using to make notes for her hotel exposé and looked at her over the tops of her reading glasses. “Oh, my. Do you think that was wise?”

  “No, but I didn’t have much option.”

  Leonora picked up the two cups of toasty Hojicha green tea that she had just brewed in the tiny efficiency kitchen of Gloria’s apartment. She carried the cups to the small table near the window and sat down across from her grandmother. There was a plate with four shortbread cookies in the center of the table. Gloria had made the cookies.

  “Bristol wouldn’t go for an extended personal leave unless I could give him a very good reason,” Leonora said.

  “Such as?”

  “Giving birth.”

  “I see. Well, that would have been a bit difficult to mana
ge on such short notice, I suppose.”

  “I didn’t think he’d buy the concept of me playing Sherlock Holmes, either.” Leonora helped herself to one of the rich, buttery cookies. “The good news is that he made it clear that I was welcome to reapply for my position when I’m finished with my personal affairs.”

  “That was very generous of him.” Gloria sipped her tea. “You say Thomas Walker has agreed to help you?”

  “He’s not exactly enthusiastic about the deal, but he went for it.”

  “Hmm.”

  Leonora paused, the shortbread halfway to her mouth. “Hmm, what?”

  “From what you’ve told me about your Mr. Walker, I have the feeling that he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be blackmailed unless it suited his own agenda.”

  “He’s not my Mr. Walker.” She crunched down very hard on the flaky cookie and chewed grimly. “He was Meredith’s Mr. Walker.”

  “Only for a very short period of time from the sound of it.”

  “None of Meredith’s men lasted long.”

  “True. Nevertheless, the fact that he was willing to assist you with your cover story makes me wonder about his own motives.”

  Leonora shrugged. “I told you, his brother, Deke, apparently has a lot of questions about his wife’s death last year. Thinks there’s some connection to Meredith’s accident. I have a hunch that Thomas sees my plan as an opportunity to get some answers for Deke.”

  “In other words, since you insist on getting involved, Thomas Walker has decided to make use of you.”

  “I think that about sums up the situation, yes.”

  Gloria smiled.

  “Don’t go there, Grandma.”

  “Do you know, dear, you get a certain gleam in your eye when you talk about your Mr. Walker.”

  “For the last time, he’s not my Mr. Walker, and that look in my eye is extreme caution, not lust.”

  “With you, dear, I’m afraid those two things go together. One of these days you’re going to have to take some chances. That’s how it works, unfortunately.”

  “I took a chance, remember?”

  “With Professor Delling? Nonsense. You didn’t take any real risks with him. You just sort of dabbled your toe in the water. You never really took the plunge.”