Blood Debt (29 page)

He almost failed to note the one significant detail of the car pulling out onto the road, realizing only at the last moment that it pulled out of
his
driveway. There seemed to be three people in it although he only got a good look at the driver as it sped past. “Dangerous,” he told himself, although he didn't know why, and he wondered if perhaps his house had been robbed while he was away. Shaking his head as he turned in between the cypress, he told himself not to be ridiculous. Thieves seldom drove BMWs.

Still, in a neighborhood where Bentlys were the car of choice, it wasn't that farfetched a theory.

The house seemed undisturbed. He parked outside the garage and sat studying it in the brilliant quartz halogen glare of the security lights. He didn't want any surprises. He didn't like surprises. After a careful inspection, he left the car where it was and walked over to the front door.

The security system hadn't been tampered with, but that meant only that they might have used another entrance. There were four—
No, five
, he amended remembering the french doors Rebecca had insisted on having in the dining room. He hadn't used them since she'd died.

Lights switched off and on automatically as he inspected the first floor. The lights had been Rebecca's idea as well and only her memory kept him from dismantling them. They always made him feel as though he were being followed around by ghosts.

Upstairs, Rebecca's jewel case lay where she'd left it on that last day. Swanson knew the order of the contents the way he knew the order of his desk, and they hadn't been touched.

Not thieves, then.

Who?

He turned to face the window that looked out over the lawns, the gardens, and, ultimately, the two guest cottages tucked a discreet distance down the wooded slope. Although their locations had been chosen so that they were as private as possible, there seemed to be rather a lot of illumination filtering up through the trees surrounding the farther building.

Dr. Mui had a donor in one of the cottages.

Perhaps the three in the car were colleagues of hers.

His fingers closed around the curtain edge, crushing the fabric. He hadn't wanted the donor here. Dr. Mui had no business turning Rebecca's home into an extension of the clinic; she'd had enough of hospitals and clinics during that last horrible year before she died. Whether it had been a good business decision or not, he should never have agreed to the use of the cottage. It was one thing to allow the buyer to convalesce in peace and quiet for a few days and quite another thing to open his home to the sort of people who provided the merchandise.

“I'm going down there to find out exactly what is going on. If the doctor thinks it a good idea I maintain my distance from the donors, then she shouldn't have left one on my doorstep.”

As he turned from the window, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and wondered if maybe he shouldn't take a moment to change his clothes before he went to the cottage. Twitching a jacket sleeve down over a heavy gold cufflink, he decided not to bother. “If anyone complains,” he told his reflection, “I'll explain that I'm making a formal investigation.”

Had Rebecca still been alive, she'd have laughed and maybe thrown something at him. He'd loved making her laugh. But Rebecca was dead. His shoulders slumped and after caressing the cameo he'd had made for her in Florence, he left the bedroom.

At the back door, it suddenly occurred to him that the car could be connected with Patricia Chou. The reporter had accosted him as he arrived at the fundraiser, demanding to know how a room full of rich people sitting down to an expensive meal was going to help anyone but the caterers. So far, she'd been careful to confront him only on public property, but he had no doubt she'd consider a trespassing charge a small price to pay to get a story. She was becoming a distinct irritant, and sometime soon he'd have to do something about her.

He checked the perimeters of the security lights for a camera crew and only when he was certain he was unobserved did he step out the door.

As he drew closer to the lit cottage, he began to feel more and more uneasy. When he rounded a corner and saw the open door, he knew something was wrong. “Every light in the place is on,” he muttered, stepping over the threshold. “Don't these people realize hydro costs money?”

The cottage was empty. Both the donor and the orderly that Dr. Mui had promised to leave in attendance were gone. Swanson frowned down at the restraints on the bed and tried to work out what had happened. Perhaps the people in the BMW were the donor's colleagues, not Dr. Mui's. Perhaps this donor hadn't come off the street but was one of the young turks who'd crashed and burned in the recent recession and now needed money from any source to maintain his lifestyle.

It explained why Dr. Mui had felt he couldn't be kept at the clinic.

Perhaps at the last moment he'd changed his mind and his friends had come for him.

But where was the orderly?

And more importantly, what was he supposed to tell the client coming into Vancouver on the 2:17 from Dallas?

Lips pressed into a thin, angry line, Swanson started back to the house after having carefully turned off all the lights and closed and locked the door. He'd missed the mess in the rhododendrons on the way down to the cottage, but a broken branch nearly tripped him up on the way back and brought it to his attention.

Although wisps of cloud blew continually over the moon, there was light enough to see that a large animal had gone crashing through his expensive underbrush. There'd been a recurring problem in the neighborhood with mountain lions eating household pets, but Swanson had always assumed the big cats were less obtrusive travelers. In his experience, only people caused that kind of destruction to private property.

Had the orderly not been missing, he'd have gone back to the house to call the police. As it was, he stepped off the path.

It wasn't a difficult trail to follow, even in the dark. Small plants had been crushed, large ones bent or broken. Then the moon went down.

Picking his way carefully down the slope and into the clearing above the retaining wall, Swanson swore softly to himself as his dress shoes slid on the damp grass and he went down on one knee. He put his hand on what he thought was a fallen log and felt cloth.

The moon came out.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“So, now what do we do?”

Celluci sucked air through his teeth as he lowered himself down onto the bed. He'd walked up from the car to the elevator and the elevator to the condo under his own power. Mostly. “Now we figure out a way to bring in the police without involving the two of you.”

“We tried that,” Vicki snarled, reaching behind her for the first aid kit that Henry carried, “and it didn't work.”

“So we try it again. There's a body in Ronald Swanson's backyard . . .”
Which we are not going to discuss
, his tone added. “. . . we might as well make use of it.”

She began to wrap the elastic bandage around his wrist, the gentle rhythm of the motion a direct contrast to the brittle anger in her voice. “Swanson's rich and respected. The police find a body in his backyard, and they're not going to immediately connect it with him, especially when he wasn't home and no doubt has a rich and respected alibi. And second, it's not just Swanson that we want, and there's nothing to connect Sullivan's body to Dr. Mui except that he worked at the clinic. Which Swanson pays for. I'll bet long odds that the two of them could come up with an acceptable reason for that son of a bitch to be spending a few days in the cottage.”

“Then perhaps I should go talk to Dr. Mui.”

Celluci opened bloodshot eyes and stared past Vicki at Henry. “Talk to her?”

Henry nodded. “She has a condo in the next building.”

“So you said in the car.”

“So I should go see if she's home. We can make a decision when we have more information.”

“You're only going to talk to her?” When Henry nodded again, Celluci exhaled noisily and added, “So why not tell her to go to the police and confess all?”

“You go on,” Vicki announced quickly before Henry could answer. “I'll explain to Mike why that wouldn't work.” It had been easy to deal with his presence when all her attention was on Celluci, but now the skin between her shoulder blades kept protesting
another
standing behind her. They needed to give frayed emotions a little more distance if they didn't want to return to the old animosity.

Henry read the subtext off her face, noted how she kept in physical contact with Celluci at all times, and left the room without comment. It made no sense for him to envy their intimacy, especially not in light of what had happened in the warehouse. It made no sense and was dangerous besides. He kept telling himself that as he walked away.

Celluci waited until he heard the outside door close, then he caught Vicki's hand in his—trying to prevent her from pouring rubbing alcohol into the scratches on his arms. “All right. Explain.”

“It's simple, really.” Twisting free of his grip, she swabbed the worst abrasions clean, ignoring his complaints. “We can't force anyone to act contrary to their own survival.”

“Pull the other one, Vicki. People expose their throats to you.”

“Most of them enjoy it.”

Eleven dead in a Richmond warehouse. “Some don't.”

She heard the memory of death in his voice and sighed. “If Henry told Dr. Mui to turn herself in, she'd walk out of her apartment, maybe even make it to the car, but then, unless she had no strength of will at all—and considering what she's been doing in her spare time, strength of will doesn't seem to be something she lacks—then she'd suddenly ask herself just what the hell she was doing. Henry'd have to stay with her all the way and that would kind of defeat the purpose; wouldn't it?”

“But as long as he's with her, she'll talk? He can control her?”

“Probably.” She remembered the crime boss who'd gone for his gun even though she hadn't released him. Of course, Henry'd been doing that sort of thing a lot longer.

Henry'd forgotten the full video security until halfway across the visitor's parking lot. Speed had kept his image from registering as he'd entered the building and raced up the stairs, but he was going to have to stop out in front of Dr. Mui's door, and he could figure out no way to prevent himself from being taped. As he left the stairwell on the eleventh floor, he could only hope she'd answer quickly. This was one of those times when he wished that Stoker had been right about certain laws of physics not applying to his kind. An ability to become mist would come in handy tonight.

He spared barely a thought for the couple in the hall until he noticed they were leaving the condo next to Dr. Mui's. Dressed all in black, they were laughing and talking nervously—although they had no idea of why they were nervous—their door half open. Henry slipped through before they pulled it closed.

Once inside, he stopped to catch his breath. The speed his kind used to escape detection was not meant to cover long distances. He'd need to feed soon.

Although there were video hookups inside the actual condominium units, they only activated if the electronic locks were forced. He should have no trouble leaving, but since he considered his presence here a solution, albeit an impulsive one, to the problem of standing in the hall, he had no intention of leaving too soon.

Electronics aside, the layout of the units seemed identical to the mirror-image layout in his building next door. He moved silently down the hall, wondering where on earth the owners had found the four-foot gargoyle in the entry.

Sifting through the stack of mail balanced incongruously on the stone guardian's head, he discovered that Carole and Ron Pettit had a number of
esoteric
interests. Amused, he set the correspondence back on its perch and murmuring, “They'll be sorry they missed me,” went on into the master bedroom. The red silk sheets and truly astounding variety of candles perched on every available surface came as no surprise. Black, he discovered pushing through two neat rows of clothing in the walk-in closet, came in more shades than he'd previously imagined.

Resting his forehead on the wall adjoining Dr. Mui's condo, he could feel a life in the next room.

Sleeping.

Not having bothered to read the contractor's specifications provided when he bought his own unit, he had no idea how the walls were made but even if he could get through them, he couldn't do it without waking not only the doctor but the tenants above and below.

Then he smiled. While not in the habit of climbing headfirst down castle walls, he should have little trouble going from balcony to balcony, even with the doctor's solarium in the way. They couldn't possibly have video coverage on the balconies; too many people in Vancouver preferred to avoid tan lines.

As he turned away, he heard a phone ring next door.

The sleeping heartbeat quickened. Henry leaned back against the closet wall.

She hated being woken up in the middle of the night. Shift work was one of the reasons she'd left the hospital. A minor reason granted, but a reason. Still, old training died hard, and she came instantly awake. “Dr. Mui.”

“I found your orderly dead on my property. The cottage is empty.”

Switching on the bedside lamp, she stared at the clock. Three
A.M.

“Did you hear me, Doctor?”

She pulled the phone a little away from her ear before he deafened her. “I heard you, Mr. Swanson. What about the donor?”

“There was no one else here! Just a dead body!”

“Please, calm down. Hysteria will do no one any good.”
How
could
that idiot have gotten killed?
she wondered.
He's going to ruin everything!
“Have you called the police?”