Homeport (48 page)

He left his car in the lot and walked, walked until the worst of the burning in his gut had eased. Walked until he no longer had to concentrate to draw and release each breath evenly. He told himself he was thinking clearly now, perfectly clearly.

And when he stopped in front of the liquor store, when he stared at the bottles promising relief, enjoyment, escape, he told himself he could handle a couple of drinks.

Not only could he handle them, he
deserved
them. He'd earned them for surviving that face-to-face contact with the woman he'd promised to love, honor, and cherish. Who'd promised him the same. Until death.

He stepped inside, stared at the walls with bottles dark and light lining the shelves. Fifths and pints and quarts just waiting, just
begging
to be selected.

Try me and you'll feel better. You'll feel fine again. You'll feel fan-fucking-tastic.

Glossy bottles with colorful labels. Smooth bottles with manly names.

Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, Jameson.

He picked up a bottle of Jack Daniel's, running a finger over the familiar black label. And sweat began to pool at the base of his spine.

Good old Jack. Dependable Jack Black.

He could taste it on his tongue, feel the heat slide down his throat and fall welcome to warm his belly.

He took it to the counter and his fingers felt fat and clumsy as he reached for his wallet.

“This be all?” The clerk rang up the bottle.

“Yes,” Andrew said dully. “That's it for me.”

He carried it with him, tucked into its slim paper sack. He felt the weight of it, the shape of it as he walked.

A twist of the top, and your troubles were over. The nasty ball of pain in your gut forgotten.

As the sun set toward twilight and the air cooled, he went into the park.

The yellow trumpets of the daffodils were rioting, a small
ocean of cheer backed by the more elegant red cups of tulips. The first leaves were unfurling on the oaks and maples that would offer shade when the summer heat pounded during its short stay in Maine. The fountain trickled, a musical dance at the center of the park.

Over to the left, swings and slides were deserted. Children were home being washed up for supper, he thought. He'd wanted children, hadn't he? Imagined making a family, a real family where those in it knew how to love, how to touch each other. Laughter, bedtime stories, noisy family meals.

He'd never pulled that off either.

He sat on a bench, staring at the empty swings, listening to the fountain play, and running his hand up and down the shape of the bottle in the thin paper bag.

One drink, he thought. Just one pull from the bottle. Then none of this would matter quite so much.

Two pulls, and you'd wonder why it ever had.

 

Annie drew two drafts while the blender beside her whirled with the fixings for a pitcher of margaritas. Happy hour on Friday nights was a popular sport. It was mostly the business crowd, but she had a couple of tables of college students taking advantage of the discount prices and free nibbles while they trashed their professors.

She arched her back, trying to work out the vague ache at the base of her spine as she scanned the room to be certain her waitresses were keeping the customers happy. She dressed the birdbath glasses with salt and lime.

One of her regulars was into a joke involving a man and a dancing frog. She built him a fresh Vodka Collins and laughed at the punch line.

The TV above the bar was showcasing a night baseball game.

She saw Andrew come in, saw what he had in his hand. Her stomach took a slow nosedive, but she kept working. Replaced crowded ashtrays with fresh empties, mopped damp rings from the bar. Watched him walk to it, take a seat on a vacant stool, set the bottle on the bar.

Their eyes met over the brown paper sack. Hers were carefully blank.

“I didn't open it.”

“Good. That's good.”

“I wanted to. I still want to.”

Annie signaled to her head waitress, then tugged off her bar apron. “Take over for me. Let's take a walk, Andrew.”

He nodded, but he took the bag with him when he followed her out. “I went to a liquor store. It felt good to be in there.”

The streetlights were shining now, little islands of light in the dark. End-of-the-week traffic clogged the streets. Opposing radio stations warred through open car windows.

“I walked to the park and sat on a bench by the fountain.” Andrew shifted the bottle from hand to hand as if to keep it limber. “Nobody much around. I thought I could just take a couple of pulls from the bottle. Just enough to warm me up.”

“But you didn't.”

“No.”

“It's hard. What you're doing is hard. And tonight, you made the right choice. Whatever it is, whatever's wrong, you can't add drinking to it.”

“I saw Elise.”

“Oh.”

“She's here for the exhibit. I knew she was coming. But when I looked up and saw her, it just slammed into me. She was trying to make things better, but I wouldn't let her.”

Annie hunched her shoulders, jammed her hands into her pockets, and told herself she was insane even pretending she and Andrew stood a chance. That she stood a chance. “You have to do what feels right to you there.”

“I don't know what's right. I only know what's wrong.”

He walked back to the same park, sat on the same bench and set the bottle beside him.

“I can't tell you what to do, Andrew, but I think if you don't resolve this and let it go, it's going to keep hurting you.”

“I know it.”

“She's only going to be here a few days. If you could make your peace with it, and with her, while she's here, you'd be better for it. I never made peace with Buster. The son of a bitch.”

She smiled, hoping he would, but he only continued to watch her with those steady, serious eyes. “Oh, Andrew.” She sighed, looked away. “What I mean is, I never made the effort so we could be civil, and it still eats at me some. He wasn't worth it, God knows, but it eats at me. He hurt me, in a lot of ways, so all I wanted to do in the end was hurt him right back. But worse. Of course, I never did because he never gave a shit.”

“Why'd you stay with him, Annie?”

She pushed a hand through her hair. “Because I told him I would. Taking vows at the courthouse on your lunch hour's just the same as doing it in a big church in a fancy white dress.”

“Yeah.” He gave the hand that now held his a squeeze. “I know it. Believe it or not, I wanted to keep mine. I wanted to prove that I could. Failing at it was like proving I wasn't any different from my father, his father, any of them.”

“You're yourself, Andrew.”

“That's a scary thought.”

Because he needed it, and so did she, she leaned forward, laid her lips on his, let them part when he reached for her. Took him in.

God help her.

She could feel the edge of desperation, but he was careful with her. She'd known too many men who weren't careful. The hand on his face stroked, felt the prickle of a day-old beard, then the smooth skin of his throat.

The needs that kindled inside her were outrageous, and she was afraid they wouldn't help either of them.

“You're not like them.” She pressed her cheek to his before the kiss could weaken her too much.

“Well, not tonight anyway.” He picked up the bottle,
handed it to her. “There, that's a hundred percent profit for you.”

There was a relief in it, he realized. The kind a man feels when he whips the wheel of his car just before plunging off a cliff. “I'm going to go to a meeting before I go home.” He puffed out a breath. “Annie, about tomorrow night. It would mean a lot to me if you'd change your mind and come.”

“Andrew, you know I don't fit in with all those fancy art people.”

“You fit with me. Always have.”

“Saturday nights are busy.” Excuses, she thought. Coward. “I'll think about it. I've got to go.”

“I'll walk you back.” He rose, took her hand again. “Annie, come tomorrow.”

“I'll think about it,” she repeated without any intention of doing so. The last thing she wanted to do was go up against Elise on the woman's turf.

twenty-seven

“Y
ou need to
get out of here.”

Miranda glanced up from her desk, where she was buried in a sea of papers, saw Ryan watching her from the doorway. “At this moment, I basically live here.”

“Why do you feel you have to do all of this yourself?”

She ran her pencil between her fingers. “Is there something wrong with the way it's being done?”

“That's not what I said.” He walked over, laid his palms on the desk and leaned toward her. “You don't have to prove anything to her.”

“This isn't about my mother. This is about making certain that tomorrow night is a success. Now I have several more details to see to.”

He reached over, plucked the pencil out of her hand and snapped it in two.

She blinked, stunned by the ripe and ready temper in his eyes. “Well, that was mature.”

“It's more mature than doing the same to that stiff neck of yours.”

If she'd held a silver shield and lowered it between them,
it would have been no less tangible a block than the way her face closed up.

“Don't you shut me out. Don't you sit there and play with one of your ubiquitous lists as if there's nothing more important to you than the next item to be crossed off. I'm not a fucking item, and I know just what's going on inside you.”

“Don't swear at me.”

He turned on his heel and started for the door. She expected him to go straight through, to keep going, as others had. Instead he slammed the door, locked it. She got shakily to her feet.

“I have no idea why you're so angry.”

“Don't you? You think I didn't see your face when I told you where that e-mail had come from? Do you really believe you're so in control, Dr. Jones, that the devastation doesn't show?”

It was killing him. Her complexities and complications were killing him. He didn't want them, he thought furiously. He didn't want to find himself constantly compelled to fight his way through to her.

“I don't believe I in any way attempted to kill the messenger,” she began.

“Don't take that private-school tone with me either, it doesn't work. I saw your face when your mother walked in. How everything inside you went on hold. Cold storage.”

That got through, and stung. Brutally. “You asked me to accept the strong possibility that my mother used me, betrayed me, had me terrorized. That she's involved in a major art theft that's already resulted in three deaths. You asked me to do that, then you criticize the way I choose to deal with it.”

“I'd rather have seen you shove her on her ass and demand an explanation.”

“That might work in your family. We're not quite so volatile in mine.”

“Yeah, yours prefers the carefully iced blade that slices bloodlessly. I can tell you, Miranda, heat's cleaner in the end and a hell of a lot more human.”

“What did you expect me to do? Goddamn it, what? Scream at her, shout and rage and accuse?” She swept an arm over the desk, sending neatly arranged papers and carefully sharpened pencils flying. “Was I supposed to demand she tell me the truth? Confess or deny? If she hates me enough to have done this, she hates me enough to lie to my face.”

She shoved her desk chair, sent it crashing into the wall. “She never loved me. Never gave me one free gesture of affection. Neither of them, not to me, to Andrew, or to each other. In my whole life neither of them ever said they loved me, never even bothered to lie so I could have the illusion. You don't know what it's like never to be held, never to be told, and to ache for it.”

She pressed her hands to her stomach as if the pain centered there was unbearable. “To
ache
so hard and long that you have to stop wanting it or just die.”

“No, I don't know what it's like,” he said quietly. “Tell me.”

“It was like growing up in a fucking laboratory, everything sterile and perfectly in place, documented, calculated, but without any of the joy of discovery. Rules, that's all. Rules of language, conduct, education. Do this and do it this way and no other, because no other is acceptable. No other is correct. How many of those rules has she broken if she's done this?”

Her breath was heaving, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched. He'd watched, he'd listened, and hadn't moved or raised his voice. The only sound in the room now was her own ragged breathing as she looked around her office at the destruction she'd caused.

Stunned, she shoved at her hair, rubbed her hand over her hard-pumping heart. For the first time she became aware there were tears streaming down her cheeks, so hot they should have burned her skin.

“Is that what you wanted me to do?”

“I wanted you to get it out.”

“I guess I did.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Tantrums give me a headache.”

“That wasn't a tantrum.”

She let out a weak laugh. “What would you call it?”

“Honesty.” He smiled a little. “Even in my line of work I'm vaguely acquainted with the concept. You're not cold, Miranda,” he said gently. “You're just scared. You're not unlovable, just unappreciated.”

She felt the tears, stood helplessly as they overflowed. “I don't want it to be my mother who did this, Ryan.”

He went to her, nudged her fingers away and replaced them with his own. “We have a good chance of having the answers within the next couple of days. This will be over.”

“But I'll have to live with those answers.”

 

He took her home and persuaded her to take a sleeping pill and go to bed early. The fact that he barely had to bully her into it only proved to him that she was running on fumes now.

When he was certain she was asleep, when Andrew was closed off in his own wing, Ryan changed into the dark sweater and jeans he preferred for nighttime breaking and entering.

He slipped his tools into his pocket, chose a soft-sided black briefcase with shoulder strap, in the event he found something he needed to transport back with him.

He found Miranda's keys efficiently zipped in the side pocket of her purse. He walked quietly outside, got behind the wheel of her car, and adjusted the seat to suit him before putting it in neutral and releasing the brake. The car coasted downhill with its headlights shut off.

He could have claimed to have been restless, to have borrowed the car to take a drive, had either she or Andrew heard the engine. But why lie when it wasn't necessary? He waited until he was a quarter of a mile down the drive, then turned on the ignition, switched on the lights.

Puccini was on the radio, and though he shared Miranda's fondness for opera, it didn't quite suit his mood. He noted the frequency, then hit scan. When he heard George Thorogood belting out “Bad to the Bone,” he grinned to himself and let it rip.

Traffic thickened a little on the edge of town. People heading to parties, he thought, to weekend dates, or home from either because they weren't quite interesting enough. It was barely midnight.

A long way, he thought, from the city that never sleeps.

Early to bed, early to rise, these Yankees, he decided. Such an admirable people. He pulled into the hotel parking lot well away from the entrance. He was fairly certain the same admirable trait would hold true for the visitors from Florence. The seven-hour time difference could be a killer the first couple of days.

He'd stayed in the same hotel on his first trip, and knew the layout perfectly. He'd also taken the precaution of getting the room numbers for all the parties he intended to visit that night.

No one took notice of him as he crossed the lobby and walked directly to the elevators like a man in a hurry to get to his bed.

Elizabeth and Elise were sharing a two-bedroom suite on the top club level. The level required a key to release the elevator. And being a farsighted man—and because it was an old habit—he'd kept the access key when he checked out of the hotel himself.

He saw no lights under any of the three doors of the suite, heard no murmur of voices or television from inside.

He was inside the parlor himself in just under two minutes. He stood still, in the dark, listening, judging, letting his eyes adjust. As a precaution, he unlocked the terrace doors, giving himself an alternate route of escape should it become necessary.

Then he got to work. He searched the parlor first, though he doubted either woman would have left anything vital or incriminating in that area.

In the first bedroom he was forced to use the penlight, keeping it away from the bed, where he could hear the soft, steady sound of a woman breathing. He took a briefcase and a purse back into the parlor with him to search.

It was Elizabeth in the bed, he noted as he flipped through the wallet. He took everything out, going through
every receipt, every scrap of paper, reading the notations in her datebook. He found a key just where her daughter kept hers—inside zipper pocket. A safe-deposit box key, he noted, and pocketed it.

He checked her passport, noting the stamps coincided with the dates his cousin had given him. It was Elizabeth's first trip back to the States in more than a year, but she'd taken two quick trips into France in the last six months.

He put everything but the key back where he'd found it, repeated the same process on her luggage; then while she slept he searched her closet, the dresser, the cosmetic case in the bathroom.

It took him an hour before he was satisfied and moved on to the second bedroom.

He knew Andrew's ex-wife very well by the time he was done. She liked silk underwear and Opium perfume. Though her clothes were on the conservative side, she favored the top designers. Expensive taste required money to indulge it. He made a note to check her income.

She'd brought work with her if the laptop on her desk was any indication. Which made her, in his mind, either dedicated or obsessive. The contents of her purse and briefcase were orderly, with no stray wrappers or scraps of papers. The small leather jewelry case he found contained a few good pieces of Italian gold, some well-chosen colored stones, and an antique silver locket containing a picture of a man facing a picture of a woman. They were faded black-and-white, and from the style he judged them to have been taken around World War II.

Her grandparents, he imagined, and decided Elise had a quietly sentimental streak.

He left the two women sleeping and moved down the hallway to Richard Hawthorne's room. He too was fast asleep.

It took Ryan ten minutes to find the receipt for a storage facility in Florence—which he pocketed.

It took him thirteen to find the .38. That, he left alone.

In twenty, he'd located the small notebook hidden inside a black dress sock. Scanning the cramped handwriting with
his light, Ryan read quickly and at random. His lips tightened on a grim smile.

He tucked the notebook in his pocket and let Richard sleep. He was, Ryan thought as he slipped out, in for a rude awakening.

 

“Excuse me, did you just say you broke into my mother's bedroom last night?”

“Nothing was broken,” Ryan assured her. He felt as though he'd been chasing after Miranda for hours, trying to steal a half hour alone with her.

“Her bedroom?”

“I went in through the parlor, if it makes you feel any better. There was hardly any point in getting them all here, in one spot, if I wasn't going to do something once they were. I got a safe-deposit key out of her purse. I found it odd she'd have one with her on a trip like this. But it's an American bank. A Maine bank—with a branch in Jones Point.”

Miranda sat behind her desk, the first time she'd been off her feet since six that morning. It was now noon, and Ryan had finally buttonholed her during her meeting with the florist and given her the choice of walking to her office or being carried there.

“I don't understand, Ryan. Why would a key to a bank box be important?”

“People generally keep things there that are important or valuable to them—and that they don't want other people to get their hands on. In any case, I'll check it out.”

He waited until Miranda opened her mouth, shut it again without saying a word. “I didn't find anything in Elise's room except for her laptop. Seemed strange to cart it all this way for a four-day trip when she'd be spending most of her time here. If I have time I'll go back in and see if I can open it up while she's out of the room.”

“Oh, that would be best,” she said with a breezy wave of her hand.

“Exactly. I found enough jewelry to break the back of an elephant in the Morelli suite. That woman has a serious
glitter addiction—and if I can access Vincente's bank account, we'll see just how deep in debt he's gone to pay for it. Now your father—”

“My father? He didn't even get in until after midnight.”

“You're telling me. I nearly bumped into him in the hall on my way out of your mother's suite. Handy of the hotel to put everyone on the same floor.”