Eye of the Beholder (41 page)

“I don't know,” Dylan said harshly. “But that idiot, Liz, contacted her after she went into hiding. She was warned not to talk to anyone, but when I called her, she admitted that she was so scared the day she left Avalon that she called her closest friend.”

“Joanna.”

“Yes.”

“And now you're afraid that Joanna might have written something in her journal that implicates you.”

“Looking back,” Dylan muttered, “I think she'd had her suspicions all along.”

“But she kept quiet,” Webster said in a great rolling
voice that filled the little stock room to the brim, “because deep down she was afraid that I was the killer.”

Everyone's head snapped around to stare at Webster, who stood in the alley doorway.

Dylan jerked as though one of the energy vortices had delivered a high-voltage shock.
“Webster.
No. You're not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be involved in this.”

“Put the gun down,” Webster said in a commanding voice. “It's all over.”

“Don't come any closer or I'll kill her.” Dylan edged closer to Alexa as he spoke. “I swear I will.”

“Give me the gun,” Webster said quietly.

“But, Webster, I'm your Guardian Knight. Don't you see? I live to serve the Dimensions Way. You must trust me to handle this.”

“Put down the gun, Dylan.”

Harriet shot to her feet with a high, keening shriek. “My heart. My heart.” She clawed wildly at her throat and toppled sideways into a tower of cartons. The boxes cascaded around her.

Dylan's face worked in fury. “You stupid old woman.” He aimed the gun at Harriet.

“Don't hurt her.” Alexa seized the first thing at hand, a box of medieval maps. She raised it high over her head and flung it at Dylan.

Dylan sidestepped the box. He swung the gun back toward Alexa, hand tightening on the grip. “You've ruined everything. It wasn't supposed to end like this—”

A sickening thud cut off his shrill words.

He collapsed to the floor with such suddenness that Alexa did not even realize what had happened until she saw that his gun had fallen to the floor.

Dylan lay unmoving. He was neatly pinned between a carton emblazoned with a picture of Stonehenge and the words
Some Assembly Required,
and a three-foot-tall sculpture of Sir Lancelot.

“Alexa.” Trask vaulted over a recumbent dragon and seized her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She leaned into his big, strong body. She was definitely not the clinging type, she thought. But right now Trask felt awfully good. “Yes, I'm all right.”

“You scared the hell out of me. When I realized that Dylan…”

“What did you do to him, anyway?” She raised her head from his chest and saw the small, fist-sized stone gargoyle lying on the floor beside Dylan's head. “Good grief. No wonder he went down. Nice shot.”

“I told you that I used to play a little ball.” He moved his right shoulder in an absent way, as if remembering an old ache.

Alexa gave him a tremulous smile. “I remember. Your father dreamed that you might turn pro someday.”

Trask nodded. He said nothing.

“I think that your father's crazy dream just helped save my life,” Alexa whispered.

Trask refocused on her face. “Dad always was a little ahead of his time.” He pulled her hard against him, crushing her. “Christ, Alexa. You scared the living daylights out of me.”

“I was a little nervous, myself,” she mumbled into his shirt. “Maybe I've
pushed the envelope on this wild woman stuff far enough.”

“You can say that again,” he muttered into her hair.

She turned her head against his chest to watch as Webster gallantly assisted Harriet to her feet.

“Are you sure you're all right, ma'am?” Webster studied her with grave concern. “Maybe I should call 911.”

Harriet smiled beatifically. “No need for that. I'm as fit as a fiddle.” She looked expectantly at Alexa. “Aren't you going to introduce me, dear?”

Alexa sighed. “Webster Bell, Trask, allow me to introduce Harriet McClelland, my former employer. The woman who taught me everything I know about early-twentieth-century art and then some.”

“A pleasure,” Webster said politely.

Trask contemplated Harriet in silence for a long moment. Then his mouth curved slightly at the corners. “Well, I'll be damned.”

Harriet's blue eyes sparkled approvingly. She winked at Alexa. “I must say, dear, your taste in men has definitely improved since we last met.”

36
 

“The little sociopath had us all fooled.” Webster sank wearily into one of the suite's red tapestry chairs. “I still can't believe it. So Harry Trask really was murdered. You were right all along.”

“I was right, but for the wrong reasons.” Trask lounged against the back of the red tapestry sofa. “Fenn admitted to Strood that he got rid of my father because Joanna was set on marrying him. He didn't even know that the partnership between Dad, Guthrie, and Kenyon had gone bad. Fenn wanted to make certain that Joanna's inheritance remained linked to Dimensions.”

“I'm so bloody sorry.” Webster massaged his silver temples. “For everything.”

“No one in this room is to blame,” Trask said very steadily. “Fenn was the killer. He bears full responsibility.”

Alexa, seated on the sofa below him, looked up. Her eyes were shadowed with concern. He put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. He had been finding excuses to touch her all evening, he realized.
He did not want to let her out of his sight. He had a feeling that some of his old nightmares were soon going to be replaced with a new batch.

He took a swallow from the glass of very expensive single malt scotch he had retrieved from a locked case behind the resort's bar. Alexa, Webster, and Harriet followed suit. A short silence descended on the small gathering.

The confrontation in Elegant Relic showed every indication of turning into a major bonding experience, Trask thought. He had brought them all back to the suite for a late dinner and an informal debriefing after Strood had finished taking down their statements.

It was nearly midnight now. The French doors were open to allow the desert night into the room. He took a deep breath of the clean air.

“I must say, that young man, Fenn, is clearly bonkers.” Harriet gave a delicate shudder.

Trask watched in amused awe as she tossed back a healthy gulp of the potent scotch. Other than a slight brightening of her blue eyes, she appeared unfazed.

“He said he wanted to sacrifice Alexa to some things he called vortices,” she continued. “Can you imagine?”

“I'll tell you what I find hard to believe,” Alexa said. “It's that Fenn was a hot shot corporate financial officer before he quit to follow the Dimensions Way.”

Harriet made a tut-tutting sound. “We all take odd turns in our lives from time to time. Who would have believed that a woman with an unerring instinct for early-twentieth-century art and antiques would have opened a shop that specialized
in tacky museum reproductions, for example.”

Alexa turned on her. “Of all the unmitigated gall. How dare you call my shop tacky? It's your fault that I had to open Elegant Relic in the first place…”

“Now, now, ladies,” Trask said soothingly. “We're straying from the subject.”

Webster walked to the open doors. “From what I can gather, Stewart was so zealous about the Dimensions Way that he was an easy target for Fenn to manipulate. In addition, because of his past, violence was not foreign to him.”

Trask thought about what he had learned during the talk with Strood. “Dylan appointed himself Stewart's personal meditation guide and swore him to secrecy, just as he did with Liz. They both went along with it because they believed he really could teach them how to ascend to a higher plane of consciousness.”

Alexa looked at Webster. “How is Joanna doing?”

“Much better.” Webster gave her a wan smile. “I talked to her for a few minutes after Strood finished with me. She said that, deep down, she had always wondered about the circumstances surrounding the death of Harry Trask.”

Alexa glanced at Trask and then turned back to Webster. “But she never said anything because of you.”

Webster hesitated. “In some distant corner of her mind she was secretly afraid that I might have killed Harry to keep him from getting his hands on her money. I can see where she got the idea. She and I had some almighty quarrels over the subject of her marriage.”

“This
Joanna was obviously caught between a rock and a hard place,” Harriet observed.

“Bad enough to lose the man she loved,” Alexa said quietly. “She could not endure finding out that her only living relative, her beloved brother, might have been the killer. No wonder she wanted the past to stay buried.”

Harriet looked at her with a fond expression. “I had no idea you'd been living such an exciting life since we dissolved our partnership, dear.”

“We didn't exactly dissolve our partnership,” Alexa said through her teeth. “You disappeared in the middle of the night and left me to face the music.”

“It amounted to the same thing,” Harriet said cheerfully. She looked at Trask. “I understand that you're the proud new owner of Icarus Ives's
Dancing Satyr.”

“I own a statue called
Dancing Satyr.”
Trask glanced at Alexa. “I'm told it's a fake.”

“It is,” Harriet said. “One of my best pieces.”

Trask nearly choked on his scotch. “It's a McClelland?”

“Yes, dear.” Harriet smiled. “I wonder if I might ask a small favor of you…”

“Whatever you do,” Alexa warned. “Don't listen to her.”

Several hours later Alexa awoke to find herself alone in the black lacquered bed. She turned and saw the solid, dark shape of Trask outlined against the window.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“Yeah.”

She sat up and folded her arms on her knees. “You've got
the answers you came here to find.”

“Most of them,” he agreed.

She braced herself to ask a question of her own. “How long will you be staying in Avalon?”

“That depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On the answer to my last question.”

A lightheaded sensation passed through her. “What is your last question?”

He watched her from the shadows. “Before you abandon your wild and reckless lifestyle entirely, will you take one more risk?”

“What kind of risk?”

“On me?”

A glorious rush of warmth rose within her. The sense of weightless happiness was so great she wondered that she did not levitate off the bed. She pushed aside the covers, got to her feet, and walked across the room to join him.

She put her arms around his neck and raised her mouth to his.

“I kept telling Dr. Ormiston that I wouldn't have a problem with commitment when I met the right man,” she said.

A long time later Trask rolled onto his back and put one arm behind his head. He had never been more satisfied, more content, more at peace, he thought. And the sex was terrific, too.

“What are you thinking?” Alexa asked in a sleepy voice.

He smiled to himself and gathered her close. “Wild woman lives.”

37
 

Three weeks later…

“You were certainly busy while your mom and I were out of town.” Lloyd stretched out on Alexa's patio lounger and reached for his beer. “Scared the bejeezus out of us when we found out what had happened.”

“What can I say?” Alexa smiled. “I went through a wild period. Probably just a phase.”

“Let's hope so. Don't think I could take too much of that kind of excitement.” Lloyd eyed her. “Trask, I assume, is not just a phase?”

“No. Trask is permanent.” She watched the setting sun paint the desert with the uncanny light of other dimensions. “I'm going to marry him.”