Smoke in Mirrors Read online

  Leonora wrinkled her nose. “Even if I did happen to find Thomas Walker interesting, I can promise you that he definitely does not think very highly of me.”

  “Opinions can change.”

  “Something tells me that Thomas Walker doesn’t change his mind very often.”

  She looked out the window at the gardens. The morning exercise class was just starting. Three rows of seniors clad in loose-fitting sweats faced a zesty-looking young woman in tight spandex. The instructor was blond. Just like Meredith.

  “She had such a difficult life and now it’s over too soon,” Leonora said quietly. “Talk about being born under an unlucky star.”

  “She was a thief and a con artist, dear. She made a lot of her own bad luck.”

  “That’s one of the things I love about you, Grandma. You have a way of putting stuff into perspective.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s a talent that only comes with age.”

  Chapter Four

  Leonora sat next to Thomas in Deke Walker’s darkened living room and tried to conceal her dismay.

  Thomas had told her that Deke was suffering from some kind of depression but she had not been prepared for the grooming issues. With his bushy beard, long, uncombed hair and rumpled clothes, Deke looked a little like a troll sitting there in the sickly glow of the computer.

  There was a general air of gloom in the shadowy house. The fact that all of the blinds were pulled shut gave her the creeps.

  Easy to see why local opinion held that Deke had gone off the deep end.

  It was Wrench’s casual acceptance of the situation that reassured her the most. The dog lay sprawled on the floor, nose between his big paws, and radiated a complete lack of concern for his surroundings.

  She glanced at Thomas, seated beside her. He appeared accustomed to the morbid atmosphere, she thought. But unlike Wrench, he was worried. Maybe with very good reason, she thought. Deke Walker did not look like a prime candidate for National Mental Health Month poster boy.

  “I have a good feeling about you being here, Leonora,” Deke said earnestly. “It’s like you’re a catalyst or something. I’m hoping that you might be able to help us stir things up a bit. Get us looking at the problem from a fresh angle.”

  “Show Deke the book and the clippings,” Thomas said.

  “Right.” Leonora rummaged around in her satchel, found the book and the photocopies and put them on Deke’s desk. “Meredith made it clear in her note that she wanted you and Thomas to see these.”

  Deke shoved his glasses higher on his nose and pulled the book and the clippings closer. He studied the envelope with Bethany’s name and address on it for a long moment.

  “Bethany must have made these photocopies and put them in this envelope,” he said. “I don’t think anyone else would have had access to her stationery, let alone used it.”

  “The question is why?” Thomas stretched out his legs and lounged deep in his chair. “She couldn’t have had any reason to be concerned about a murder that took place thirty years ago.”

  “Maybe it aroused her professional curiosity,” Leonora said. “The victim was a mathematician, after all.”

  “But hardly an eminent figure in the field.” Deke shook his shaggy head. “He was just a junior member of the faculty who probably got the job because he was Eubanks’s son and heir.”

  Leonora frowned. “Heir? I hadn’t thought about the financial angle. Was there a lot of money involved? Did someone get rich after Sebastian Eubanks died?”

  “Eubanks left no heirs,” Thomas said. “His money went to the college endowment. That’s a well-known bit of local history. I suppose it’s just barely conceivable that one of the upstanding trustees murdered him in order to hurry things along, but I think that’s a bit of a reach.”

  “And even if that did happen, why would it have interested Bethany?” Deke asked softly. “All she cared about was her work. I can’t see her bothering to investigate the details of that old murder case, even if she had some suspicions.”

  “Say for the sake of argument that she had uncovered some new information on that old case,” Thomas said. He steepled his fingers. “I’m sure she would have mentioned the facts to you, Deke.”

  “Sure.” Deke scowled. “No logical reason why she wouldn’t have said something.”

  Leonora looked at Deke. “I went through that catalog of the antique mirrors in the Mirror House collection but I didn’t see any notes. The only odd thing is someone circled one of the illustrations in blue ink. Whoever did it must have been very old or very young or drunk. The line is quite uneven.”

  Deke opened the book. “What page?”

  “Eighty-one.”

  He flipped pages to a point near the end of the catalog and paused. He stared at the picture for a long time, as though trying to read runes.

  “The ink hasn’t faded,” he finally said. “The catalog was put together some forty years ago, but this picture must have been circled at some point in the recent past.”

  “Do you recognize the mirror?” Leonora asked.

  She knew exactly what it looked like in the illustration. She had studied it a dozen times, trying to see whatever it was that might make it important.

  The antique looking glass was an eight-sided, convex mirror, typical of a style that her research showed had been popular in the early 1800s. The frame was fashioned of heavy silver worked in a design that featured a variety of mythical creatures. Griffins, dragons and sphinxes cavorted around the edges of the dark reflective surface. A phoenix was perched on top, wings raised.

  Deke shook his head. “No. But I never paid much attention to those old mirrors in the mansion. I’m not into antiques.”

  “Neither was Bethany,” Thomas said. “I can’t see her marking one of those illustrations.”

  “I suppose it’s possible that Meredith drew the circle around the picture,” Leonora said hesitantly. “But why?”

  Thomas’s jaw hardened. “A lot of those old mirrors are very valuable. Maybe she planned to steal one or two on her way out the door.”

  Leonora shot him a disgusted glare. “That’s ridiculous. Meredith wasn’t into the antiques market.” She paused and then exhaled slowly. “Besides, her attention was focused on that endowment fund money. She wasn’t the type to let herself be distracted.”

  “I haven’t heard that any of the mirrors are missing,” Deke said absently.

  “How would we know if Meredith or anyone else had ripped off a couple of looking glasses?” Thomas asked bluntly. “Every room and corridor in that old house is covered with antique mirrors. I doubt if anyone would notice if a half dozen disappeared. Especially if they were removed from some of the unused chambers upstairs on the third floor or the attic.”

  “True.” Deke adjusted his glasses a little and slowly paged through the book. “We’d have to conduct a complete inventory to see if one of the mirrors has been stolen. That wouldn’t be easy.”

  “It would also be a waste of time,” Thomas said. “It would take days, maybe weeks to organize and carry out a thorough inventory, always assuming we could talk the Alumni Council into it. And what would it prove if a couple of old mirrors did turn up missing? It’s been forty years since that catalog was put together. The theft could have occurred at any time since it was published.”

  “Motive.” Deke yanked his glasses off his nose and jabbed at the book with his forefinger. “As you just pointed out, some of those mirrors are very valuable.”

  “Take it easy,” Thomas said. “We’re talking about murder here. People don’t get killed over old looking glasses.”

  “People get killed for all kinds of stupid reasons,” Deke growled.

  Leonora waited a beat.

  “Like drugs,” she said quietly.

  Both men looked at her.

  She spread her fingertips on the desk. “That’s one of the connections between Meredith and Bethany, remember? Rumors of drug use.”

  “Bullshit,” Deke
said. “Bethany would never have used crap.”

  “Meredith didn’t use it, either. I’d swear to that.” She looked at Thomas and Deke in turn. “Do you have a source for those rumors you said circulated after Bethany and Meredith died?”

  Thomas sank deeper into his chair. “Ed Stovall mentioned them. When I pinned him down about Bethany, demanding details, he said he’d heard the story from a kid he picked up for possession of pot. Stovall said the kid knew nothing solid. Just mentioned some gossip that was going around the local scene about a designer drug, a new hallucinogen that had appeared from time to time in the past couple of years.”

  “Hallucinogen?” Leonora repeated.

  “Something the drug crowd has labeled S and M, apparently,” Thomas said.

  She frowned. “As in sadomasochism?”

  “No. As in Smoke and Mirrors. Ed said that’s what the kid called it. There was no way to confirm the talk.”

  “Because Bethany never used drugs,” Deke said fiercely.

  “Take it easy, Deke,” Thomas said quietly. “No one’s arguing that point. Not even Stovall.”

  “Ed Stovall is an idiot.”

  “I don’t think so,” Thomas said. “He’s definitely anal-retentive, but that’s probably a good thing in a cop.”

  “How, exactly,” Leonora asked, “did Bethany kill herself?”

  “She jumped off a bluff on Cliff Drive,” Thomas said quietly.

  Leonora studied her hands. “People have been known to think they can fly while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. A person might jump off a cliff or crash her car while under the influence.”

  “But we’re all certain that neither Bethany or Meredith would have used heavy drugs, remember?” Thomas said. “And in this case, we’ve got the authorities on our side. They’re not saying the deaths were drug-related.”

  Deke looked up from the catalog. “Doesn’t mean some bastard couldn’t have slipped some unique kind of poison into their food or a glass of orange juice. The routine tests done at the time of death wouldn’t catch something as new and exotic as this S and M stuff, anyhow. It takes a lot of expensive, time-consuming testing to pick up that kind of crap.”

  “But why?” Thomas asked patiently. “Where’s the motive?”

  They all looked at the book again.

  “We don’t have a lot to work with here, do we?” Leonora asked finally.

  “We know one thing for sure,” Deke said. “We know that things don’t add up. We’ve also got these clippings and this book. That’s more than we had before you arrived in town, Leonora.”

  “But where do we go now?” she asked.

  Thomas unsteepled his fingers.

  Leonora and Deke both looked at him.

  “What?” Leonora prompted. “Got an idea?”

  “If you want to start somewhere, Deke,” Thomas said deliberately, “I guess you could check out the murder of Sebastian Eubanks.”

  Leonora frowned. “Why?”

  “What good would that do?” Deke demanded. “Eubanks was killed thirty years ago.”

  “I’m not saying it will get us anywhere,” Thomas said. “But as Leonora just pointed out, we haven’t got a lot to work with. One of the few facts we do have is that, for some reason, the Eubanks murder apparently interested Bethany enough to cause her to make copies of the newspaper stories concerning the case and later Meredith put them into a safe-deposit box for us. That’s something. Not much, I agree, but something.”

  “You’re right.” Deke flattened his palm possessively on the photocopies. “I’ll get on it right away. Doubt if there will be anything out there on the Net because the story is so old but the library has microfilm of the Wing Cove Star that goes back to the founding of the paper.”

  There had been a distinct change in Deke since she had first met him an hour ago, Leonora thought. There was a new crispness in the way he folded his spectacles and dropped them into his pocket. His facial expression was more alert, more alive. The moody, gloomy quality was gone. In its place was renewed determination. Deke was now a man with a mission.

  She glanced at Thomas. Something in his face told her that he had mixed feelings about the transformation. She understood. Deke might very well take a turn for the worse, psychologically speaking, if their investigation went nowhere. False hope could be worse than no hope because it fed fantasies and nurtured delusions.

  So be it, she thought. She was on Deke’s side in this thing. She had come here to Wing Cove to find answers and the only way to get them was to follow every possible lead even if it led to a dead end.

  “I told you that we needed a new point of reference if we were to have any chance of finding something that the investigator missed last year,” Deke said to Thomas. “This book and the clippings may give it to us.”

  Leonora sat forward. “You hired a private investigator to look into Bethany’s death?”

  “Sure,” Deke said. “But he got nowhere. All he came back with were the same rumors about drugs that Stovall gave us. I fired him after a month.”

  Wrench’s bent ear twitched. He lifted his nose and aimed it at the front door. A second later, someone knocked forcefully, interrupting Leonora before she could ask any more questions.

  “That will be Cassie.” Deke shut the catalog of looking glasses and got to his feet with unexpected alacrity. “My yoga instructor. I’ll let her in. Open those curtains, will you, Thomas? She’s always complaining about how dark it is in here.”

  “No problem.” Thomas rose from the big chair and yanked the curtains away from the nearest window with unmistakable zeal. “Can’t say that I’m real fond of the décor, myself,” he added in a low voice meant only for Leonora’s ears.

  Deke raked his fingers through his unkempt hair and beard and opened the front door.

  Leonora turned and saw an amazon with short, curly red hair and a figure that could have been used as a model for the Statue of Liberty. Except that Lady Liberty was not dressed in sweats.

  “Cassie, this is Leonora Hutton,” Deke said. “She’s a friend of Thomas’s. Leonora, Cassie Murray.”

  “How do you do?” Leonora said.

  “A pleasure.” Cassie crossed the room with long, ground-swallowing strides. Her right hand was extended.

  Leonora scrambled up out of her chair and braced herself.

  Wrench hauled himself to his feet and wagged his tail. Cassie patted him on the head and then grasped Leonora’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically a few times.

  “Nice to see a new face around here.” Cassie gave Leonora a brilliant smile. “I’ve been telling Deke for months that he needs to widen his circle of acquaintances and make some new friends. He spends his days in this cave, looking into the totally artificial light of a computer screen, and then wonders why his energy lines are obstructed.”

  Cassie had to be at least six feet tall, Leonora mused. She towered a good two inches over Deke and she wasn’t wearing heels. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with her energy lines. She practically vibrated with vitality.

  “Hello, Cassie.” Thomas opened another set of curtains. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, just fine. Here, let me give you a hand with those.” Cassie went to the nearest window and snapped open the heavy drapes. “Can’t do good yoga without some natural light. What do you think of Deke’s beard, Leonora? I’ve been trying to convince him to shave.”

  Leonora glanced quickly at Deke. She could have sworn that he was blushing. But there was something else going on. He watched Cassie as if she were a gift he dared not open.

  “Each to his own,” Leonora said gently. She didn’t think the beard did much for Deke, but she had no wish to add to his obvious embarrassment.

  Cassie snapped the last set of drapes apart and then stood back to survey the results.

  “Much better,” she announced. “In yoga one must reach for the sun, not the darkness.”

  “It’s foggy outside, Cassie,” Deke said. “You can
’t see the sun.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Natural light is the key. Fog is natural.”

  “Whatever you say.” Deke shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

  Thomas touched Leonora’s arm, silently urging her toward the door.

  “We were just about to leave,” he said. He helped Leonora into her coat. “Right, Leonora?”

  “Yes.” Leonora hastily seized her satchel. “We’ll let you two get on with your yoga lesson.”

  Wrench was already at the door. Thomas attached his leash. The three of them went outside into the fog-shrouded morning.

  Thomas pulled the collar of his jacket up around his ears. He said nothing as they walked down the road toward the footpath.

  It was cold. Leonora slipped on her gloves and tugged the hood of her coat up over her head.

  “Think he’s sleeping with Cassie?” Thomas asked abruptly.

  The question startled her out of thoughts of old murder and old mirrors.

  “Are you talking about your brother?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Deke. Think he and Cassie are having an affair?”

  She felt herself turn red. “Why on earth are you asking me? He’s your brother, not mine. You know him better than I do.”

  “I’m worried. Deke has changed a lot in the past year. He’s been a different man since Bethany died. Depressed. Morbid. Spending too much time on the Net.”

  “You think maybe an affair with his yoga instructor would help cheer him up, is that it?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.” He warmed to his theme. “You saw Cassie. I think she’d be a good antidote for his obsession with Bethany’s death and all those damned conspiracy theories he’s been weaving for the past few months.”

  Leonora halted on the path and rounded on him. “Why do men always think that getting laid will fix everything?”

  Thomas stopped. “I didn’t say that getting laid would fix everything,” he muttered. “I just thought it might, you know, lift his spirits. Take him out of himself for a while. He seems to like Cassie. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. Those yoga lessons are the one thing he actually looks forward to every week. I was amazed when he signed up for a whole year’s worth in advance.”