High Tide (20 page)

Turning away from the window, he looked at the couch. It was plenty big enough to sleep on, and he'd better get his sleep because tomorrow they had to start searching. Searching for what, he didn't know. Nor did he know how they were to start looking.

All he was sure of was that if he was going to succeed, he was going to have to keep Fiona furious at him. As he settled down on the couch, he closed his eyes, and the image of Fiona in the tub, raising one of her long, long legs came to him. Furious, he thought. Yes, indeed. Furious.

Thirteen
 

“Good morning,” Fiona said brightly when Ace opened the bedroom door. She was up and dressed and sitting at the little desk across from the bed, and when Ace returned from the bathroom, she smiled at him.

“All right,” he said warily. “I'll bite. What's happened?”

“Nothing,” she said, still smiling.

Ace gave her a narrowed-eyed look. “What are you up to?” He walked to the desk and saw that she had written on every piece of paper from the drawer. Besides using all the stationery, she'd scribbled all over the room-service menu and on the inside of the binder that held the directory of hotel services.

“I've decided you're right,” she said.

At that Ace groaned. “When a woman says that, I know I'm in for it.”

Fiona's face changed as her eyes brightened with anger. “I've been up most of the night, and I've been telling myself that you couldn't possibly be as horrible as you say you are, but here you are proving me wrong.”

“I like to please,” he said, then sat down on the foot of the bed. “Make any decisions yet?”

“I don't like the way you did it, but you're right: we can't turn ourselves in or we'll never get out. Is that your opinion too?”

“Pretty much. So what have you been writing?”

“Trying to figure out what we know and what we need to find out.”

“And?”

Before she could speak, there was a knock at the door in the living room. In a movement faster than Fiona could breathe, Ace leaped up, grabbed her arm, and shoved her out onto the tiny balcony. “Say nothing no matter what happens,” he said, then shut the door on her.

Fiona stood outside on the balcony, seesawing between rage and terror as she heard voices inside the room. Would she hear shooting at any minute? Should she be inspecting the drainpipes for possible escape routes?

“It's all right,” Ace said, sliding the door open. “It's my cousin.”

Fiona kept her head turned so only Ace could see the look she gave him. She was going to have a talk with him. He could
not
be allowed to thrust her in and out of rooms whenever he felt like it.

“How do you do?” Fiona said, stretching out her hand to shake the man's hand as he rose from the living room sofa.
A heavy-looking briefcase was on the floor beside his feet. “So good to meet a relative of … Paul's.” The man was very good looking, shorter than Ace and heavier built. Fiona thought he looked like a longshoreman next to Ace. Even their hands were—

She stopped that thought. “What have you found?” she asked, sitting down across from him.

The man was looking from one to the other as Ace sat down by Fiona. “I'm Michael Taggert, by the way,” he said. As he spoke, he put a thick stack of papers on the coffee table. “I've had a thorough search done on Roy Hudson, at least as thorough as can be done in so short a time.” Michael looked at Fiona. “Hudson and your father, John, went on a fishing trip together some years ago.”

“To Alaska,” Fiona said under her breath. “Yes, he wrote me about it. A dreadful trip as it rained the whole time and they got to do no fishing.”

“Right,” Michael said. “Our guess is that during the time the men spent together, your father told him about you. Maybe Hudson felt sorry for Smo … er, ah, John's daughter.”

“Go ahead, call him Smokey. It seems that everyone else did.”

Michael reached into his briefcase. “Just to make sure that we're talking about the same man, is this your father?”

Even before she touched the photo he held out to her, Fiona's hand was trembling. It was a picture she'd never seen before, but then she'd seen few photos of her father. She owned only four, and they were back in her apartment in New York. This was a picture of her father standing in front of a tent with Roy Hudson, and they were holding up empty fishing poles and laughing.

As she looked at the picture, Fiona realized that what she'd not wanted to believe was true: there was another side to her father than the one she knew. She'd never met this man in the picture. This laughing man with a week's growth of beard was not the elegant gentleman who took her and her friends to French restaurants.

“Yes, that's my father,” Fiona said quietly, then handed the picture back to Michael. “But all that proves is that he knew Roy Hudson. I can't imagine that my father painted such a sad picture of his little orphaned daughter that Hudson would feel he needed to leave me all his worldly goods.”

“Especially not one as old as you,” Ace said thoughtfully.

“We can't all be eighteen-year-old cheerleaders,” Fiona snapped at him.

When Michael blinked at her odd statement, Ace said, “Lisa.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Michael said, then looked away for a moment. “Basically, I came to say that we can find nothing except this trip to link your father with Hudson. And we can't find anything at all to link you and Ace, or Ace to Hudson, or even Ace to Smokey.”

Michael took a breath. “Therefore, I came to say that it's the opinion of all of us that you two must turn yourselves in.”

“Someone must have known my father,” Fiona said, acting as though she hadn't heard Michael's last sentence. “Someone must have an idea what my father did for that awful man.”

“She means Hudson,” Ace said, looking at his cousin. “Is everyone still saying that Hudson was a dear, sweet man?”

“The teddy bear,” Michael said. “He'd led a boring life, and until he came up with the idea of the show
Raphael,
no
one ever noticed him. But once he wrote that show and put that little local TV station on the map, everyone loved him.”

“I didn't!” Fiona snapped, then saw the way the two men looked at each other. She stood. “Oh, no you don't. Don't you two start thinking that I disliked him so much that I killed him.” She looked at Michael. “I dislike your cousin much, much more than I ever disliked poor old Roy Hudson yet I haven't killed
him.”

When Michael looked at his cousin, Ace was leaning back on the sofa and smiling.

“Women often dislike Ace,” Michael said solemnly. “Tell me, was it his obsession with birds or just his lack of dazzle that did it for you?”

At that Fiona sat down by Ace on the couch and leaned toward Michael. “Both,” she said. “He twists my head around to make me do what he wants me to do.”

“Sounds like him. My wife says—”

“Before you two start sharing recipes and quilting squares,” Ace said, “I think Fiona and I need to talk. We have to decide where to go from here.”

“There isn't anywhere to go,” Michael said. “There're no clues about anything. That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“You mean that our only alternative is to give ourselves up to the police?” Fiona said quietly.

“I'm sorry, but it looks that way. We've done everything that the Montgomery mon—” Michael broke off at a sharp look from Ace. “Anyway, we've done what we can. Look, here are the reports, and you can read them if you want. Maybe there'll be something in them that rings a bell.” He said this last to Fiona. “Oh, and I nearly forgot. I got videotapes
of some of the
Raphael
episodes that were shown locally in Texas. I haven't seen them, but I heard that the show was awful.”

“Bad? Then what's all the hoopla about?” Ace asked.

“Beats me. But Frank saw the tapes and he said they were disgusting, nothing but a bunch of wastrels. A sort of Three Stooges become pirates, is what he said.”

“That would be ironic if the show is shown nationally and it's a flop,” Ace said.

“Then the estate he left us wouldn't matter because there wouldn't be any money,” Fiona added.

“Exactly,” Ace said, looking at her.

Michael cleared his throat to bring their attention back to him. “Why don't you two spend the morning here and this afternoon—”

“We'll let you know,” Ace said, cutting him off; then he stood. “You hear anything else, let us know.” He was dismissing his cousin.

“Sure,” Michael said, looking in his briefcase to see if he'd missed anything. “I'll call you in a couple of hours.”

“Right,” Ace said, then walked Michael to the door, and when he returned, Fiona was already reading the bio of Roy Hudson.

“Nothing!” Ace said as he threw about fifty pages onto the coffee table, then kicked them when they went spilling.

Fiona knew it was her turn to be the calm, sane one. “We're not going to figure out anything if you keep destroying the evidence.” She reached down to pick up the papers,
but then leaned back against the couch. How could such a beautiful room feel like a prison?

The thought of prison made her look back at the papers. They had been reading for hours but they had found out nothing, for there was nothing to find out. Roy Hudson's life had been without excitement—unless you thought that having three wives was exciting. Each of his former wives had cited his attraction to other women as the cause of the separation.

“But this is the teddy bear everyone loved,” Fiona said bitterly. “I bet they didn't love him before he was a national dead man.”

Ace smiled. “As opposed to a national celebrity?”

“Exactly. You find out anything at all?”

“Nothing.” His papers dealt with Smokey, and there was very little information in them. He'd wanted to read them before Fiona in case they needed to be censored. But Smokey was a man who kept to himself and what dealings he'd had with people weren't put on paper.

At one o'clock, Fiona yawned and said she was going to take a shower.

“Another one?”

“I think some of the mold in that cabin took root in my hair.”

“When you get back, let's talk about what you wrote during the night. Maybe you had some ideas.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said as she headed for the bathroom.

“I'll put that video in and get started on that,” Ace called after her.

“Sure,” she mumbled as she closed the bathroom door. Truth was, she wanted privacy so she could give way to the tears she was holding back. She'd spent most of the night
trying to find some connection between her and Ace. She'd tried to remember anything her father might have said about his own life, but she'd always been filled with so much that she wanted to tell him, and John Burkenhalter had been an excellent listener.

She got into the shower and let the tears flow. She was a doer, and this inactivity was maddening to her. If they could just find a clue, some connection in all this, then they could
do
something.

It was quite some time before she got out of the shower and went into the bedroom to dress. She put on a scrumptious Italian silk blouse, man-tailored but feminine at the same time. As she fastened the silver belt buckle over gabardine trousers, she thought, I won't get to wear silk in prison.

As soon as she opened the door to the living room, Ace muted the TV. “Frank is right,” he said in disgust. “This is the most horrible show I've ever seen. I can't even figure out why it's called
Raphael.”

She kept her face averted so he couldn't see her eyes. She'd tried to cover the redness with makeup, but her tears were still obvious. “How's it bad?” she asked.

“Mike included copies of reviews printed in Texas and a couple from New York, where the show has already been shown. They can say it better than I can. Listen to this.
‘Raphael
is a cross between
Home Alone
and
Treasure Island,
and it is deceptively complicated. Six of the most degenerate men imaginable are looking for treasure—and they will do anything to anyone to get it. Is this what we want to teach our children?'”