Eye of the Beholder (35 page)

She did not look up. She could hear the satisfied amusement in his voice. The sight of the sexy gleam in
his eyes would be too much. She concentrated on reading swiftly through the remainder of the document.

Alexa turned the last page and read Foster's final notes silently. “Hmm.”

“What does that mean?” Trask asked with grave interest.

“This last entry is dated the day after you and I had dinner at the country club,” she said. “Guess the little twerp was starting to get worried.”

“About what?”

She cleared her throat. “About you.”

“Let me see that.” Trask took the dossier from her and read the final paragraph aloud.

Trask abruptly stopped reading. He closed the file and carried it back across the room to the desk. He tossed the dossier down onto the polished surface with a short, brutal motion of his hand.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” he said very softly.

Alexa steepled her fingers. “Well, I guess that gives us a pretty clear idea of where Foster fits into this thing. He was focused solely on the bottom line.”

There was a short, charged silence. Trask looked at her. Belatedly she recalled that he prided himself on his own ability to focus on the bottom line.

“I mean,” she said quickly, “that all he cared about was getting his hands on my money.”

“I told you so.”

“You're biased. You think everyone involved in the metaphysics business is a con artist. However, even if we grant that Foster really is a bad guy, that doesn't explain why someone tried to murder him tonight. Strood will have his hands full trying to figure that one out.”

Trask folded his arms and leaned back against the desk. He looked at her with a darkly thoughtful expression. “Not if Foster Radstone has been true to his professional calling as a con man.”

“Explain.”

“What do you want to bet that Radstone was siphoning money out of the Dimensions Trust?” he said.

She pondered that briefly. “You think he might have been fleecing Webster Bell and the Institute?”

“Someone, presumably the shooter, scattered a whole bunch of files involving the Trust on Radstone's desk tonight. I think he did it while he waited for Radstone.”

“You believe
that he wanted those files to be found together with the body?”

“That's what it looked like to me.” Trask crossed the room to the yellow lacquered cocktail cabinet and opened the door. “If I'm right, if someone tried to kill Radstone tonight because he was skimming from the trust, then it fits with the pattern.”

“I see what you mean,” Alexa said slowly. “Radstone may qualify as someone else who was a financial threat to the Institute.”

Trask took two miniature bottles out of the cabinet, broke the seals, and emptied the contents into two snifters. “Like I said, it fits.”

“Did you tell Strood that Radstone tried to say something about a guardian?”

“I told him.” He handed her one of the snifters. “He didn't pay too much attention. Thinks Radstone was trying to say
guard
, not guardian.”

Alexa inhaled the brandy fumes in her glass. “Theoretically, all we have to do now is wait for Foster to recover and hope that he'll be able to tell us the identity of the person who tried to kill him.”

Trask stopped and looked at her. “He may not know who he is. The guy was masked. Even if Radstone can identify him, he may have no interest in doing so.”

“Why not?”

“Because in the process he'd probably have to admit that he was trying to bilk the Dimensions Trust. Radstone is guilty of something. I got the impression that his first assumption was that the jester would be open to a payoff. He acted like a man who had been threatened with blackmail.”

Alexa winced. “It does sound like you're right about his being a con man.”

“Something
tells me that when Foster recovers, he'll fade away into the sunset. He'll figure that if he decamps, he'll be safe. Hell, he may be right. After all, if he takes himself out of the picture, he'll no longer be a financial threat to the Institute.”

“And threats to the Institute seem to be the main focus of whoever is behind all this.” Alexa paused. “That still leaves Joanna. Maybe she'll tell us something when she recovers.”

Trask swallowed brandy and looked grim. “I'm not too sure that we can depend on her to help us get to the bottom of this. She's gone out of her way to try to keep the past buried.”

“If her close call with the gas was not an accident, she may be at risk again when she gets out of the hospital.” Alexa sighed. “How are we going to convince her that she may be in danger?”

“If she's trying to protect someone, there may not be anything we can do,” Trask said quietly.

Alexa sat up very straight in the chair and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “The only person she would go that far out of her way to protect is her brother, and I still can't see Webster as a murderer.”

“We all have our little biases,” Trask said dryly. “But there's something else we need to consider. If Radstone survives, and if Joanna's accident wasn't an accident, it will mean that between us, we screwed up the shooter's plans at least twice in the past few days.”

Alexa shuddered. “Yes.”

Trask carried his glass to the open French doors and looked out over the darkened desert. “Whoever he is, he's probably not a real happy camper right now. In fact, I have a hunch he'll be getting desperate. Which means he's more dangerous than ever.”

“We don't even know if the killer is a he. Could be a she.”

Trask hesitated, thinking about the frantic grappling at the window of Radstone's office. Reluctantly he nodded. “Could be a she, but I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

“This is going to sound a little primitive, but the fact is, he didn't smell like a woman.”

“You mean no perfume? I don't think you can depend on something that vague…”

Trask shook his head. “It's a little more basic than that. Women smell different than men. At least, they do to a man. This guy was sweating and he smelled like a guy. For all the good it does. Still not much to go on.”

Alexa shivered in the warm night air. “You said he wore a Dimensions bracelet. Could be some crazy out at the Institute.”

“Half the town wears those bracelets.”

A knock on the door interrupted Alexa's bleak thoughts.

“That'll be room service,” Trask said. “I'll get it.”

He turned and went back into the suite to open the door.

Alexa watched a young man in Avalon hotel livery roll a cart into the suite. China and silver clinked gently.

When the server finished setting up the tray, he looked expectantly at Trask. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No,” Trask said. “That's it.”

“Shall I pour the tea, sir?”

Alexa stared at the teapot. A vision of the empty mug and the nearly full package of loose tea in Joanna's kitchen flashed in her mind.

“Good grief,” she whispered.

The server looked as if he had just glimpsed his own doom. “Something wrong, ma'am?”

“No.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “No, nothing's wrong. Just hungry, that's all.”

The server left hurriedly.

Trask waited until the door closed. Then he looked at Alexa. “What's the matter?”

Alexa could not take her eyes off the gleaming teapot on the cart. “There was an empty mug and a package of loose tea sitting on Joanna's kitchen counter yesterday when I pulled her out of the house.”

Trask watched her intently. “What of it? Half of Avalon drinks tea. Just like half the town wears those Dimensions bracelets.”

“Yes, I know.” She wrapped her arms around herself while she allowed her intuition to leap recklessly to the wild conclusion. “But when I spoke to Joanna earlier on the phone that morning, she told me she wished she had some of her tea. She said she was out of it. I told her I'd bring her some after work.”

“Maybe she found an extra supply in her cupboard after she talked to you.”

“Maybe.” Alexa dragged her eyes away from the teapot and looked at him. “That's what I
assumed at the time. But what if that's not what happened?”

“I'm listening.”

“Shortly before lunch that day I went to Café Solstice to get some sandwiches for myself and Kerry. Stewart Lutton, the owner, wasn't there. One of his employees said he'd had to leave for a while, even though it was one of the busiest days of the year.”

“Go on.”

“This is a terrible thing to suggest without any proof, but what if Stewart took some tea out to Joanna?” She trailed off.

“And hung around to make sure she took a couple of tranquilizers, waited until she went to sleep, and then sabotaged the gas coupling inside the house?”

“Stewart lives in an old RV. He uses propane. He'd probably know how to rig the line. Of course, a lot of people know how to do stuff like that, don't they?”

“Some
people know how to do stuff like that,” Trask corrected softly. “But if you're right about the tea and the fact that Stewart was gone from his café for a while earlier in the day, it doesn't look good.”

“Stewart is very committed to Dimensions. He wears a bracelet.”

“From what I've seen, a lot of people wear them.”

“Yes, but they're not all the same. People who are deeply involved with the work of the Institute usually have very expensive, unique designs. Stewart's is like that. Unique. And expensive.”

Trask looked intrigued. “Meaning he couldn't replace it in a hurry?”

“Not unless he had a duplicate, which seems unlikely.”

“So, all we have to do is get a close look at your friendly local purveyor of fine teas tomorrow and see if he's wearing a Dimensions bracelet.”

Alexa looked at him very steadily. “You're going on the assumption that he'll stick around after what happened tonight.”

“Damn. You may be even better at this conspiracy theory stuff than me.” Trask reached for the phone.

32
 

“What the hell do you mean Strood isn't available?” Trask could feel the renewed sense of urgency clawing at his insides. Alexa's theories were starting to sound much too plausible. “I was with him in his office not more than an hour ago. He told me he was going home as soon as he closed out the paperwork on the Radstone shooting.”

“The chief never made it home.” The woman on the other end of the line sounded weary and impatient. “He was called out again. Vehicular incident.”

Even in a town the size of Avalon it had to be rare that a chief of police was summoned to the scene of a routine car accident. Trask hung on to his patience with an effort.

“Look, I know Strood isn't real fond of me. He probably told you to keep me out of his hair for a while. But this is serious. I've got to get through to him.”

“I'll give Chief Strood your message, sir.”

He was wasting his time. “You do that. Tell him it's
important and that it involves the Radstone case.”

“I'll tell him.”

Trask slammed down the phone and looked at Alexa. “Strood's unavailable. All we can do is wait until he returns my call.”

Alexa flopped down into one of the red tapestry chairs. “I sure hope we're right about this. It could be extremely awkward if we're wrong. Not to mention stressful and embarrassing.”

He looked briefly amused. “What's this ‘we' stuff? Lutton is your candidate for suspect of the year, not mine. I've got my own.”

She winced. “I admit the link is a weak one. It's just that your candidate for suspect poster boy feels even more wrong. I just can't see Webster Bell deliberately endangering Joanna's life.”

“I agree that it's worth mentioning Lutton to Strood.” He walked back to the open French doors and braced one hand on the edge of the frame. “Alexa?”

“Yes?”

“Do you happen to know when Lutton moved to Avalon?”

He felt her sudden stillness behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw from the expression in her eyes that she understood.