Lost Legacy (8 page)

“He must have painted it himself.” Brooke broke into a smile. “At least it proves my father really did contact Colda about the painting, otherwise he wouldn’t have known what it looked like.”

Tuney shook his head. “Doesn’t prove the painting was ever really here. We still don’t have a Tarkenton or any clue about what happened to Colda.”

Brooke sighed. He was right, but in her mind it was another step in the right direction.

Victor turned his attention back to the overflowing file cabinet. “Looks like Colda kept every scrap of paper he ever ran across.”

“Mostly bills, some past due, a few articles about obscure art-related stuff.” Tuney cleared some newspapers off the small sofa and settled in, his feet up on the coffee table. “I’m just going to take a little nap, don’t mind me. Wake me if you find something.”

Stephanie shot him a look.

Brooke tore herself away from the painting and headed for the bedroom, where she and Victor lifted up the mattress and throw rugs, searched the closet and drawers with no success. Brooke found her eyes wandering back to the Tarkenton reproduction just visible through the doorway. Something about it poked at her.

“Got an idea?” Victor asked.

She started, realizing she’d been standing motionless, staring. “No, nothing. Just something about it that I can’t figure out.”

He came closer, face intent. “Might be your instincts trying to tell you something. In my experience, it’s a good idea to listen.”

Her nerves began to tingle but she could not decide if it was something about the painting, or the proximity to this enigmatic man. Stephanie called to them from the kitchen and they joined her there.

She waved a hand at the sink piled with crusted dishes. “Colda could have used a housekeeper.”

“Or a sanitation company,” Victor said with disgust.

“Look at the whiteboard,” Stephanie said.

They squinted at a series of letters and numbers. “5, 7, 2.”

“Telephone number?” Brooke suggested.

“Room numbers,” Tuney called from the living room. “Colda couldn’t remember where he was supposed to be for each class. He wrote it down to help himself but that didn’t work. The admin finally moved all his classes to the same room so he wouldn’t keep missing them.”

Brooke sighed and patted Stephanie’s arm. “It was a good idea anyway.”

Stephanie shook her head. “Not good enough.”

The three exchanged glances and Brooke understood.

Be careful what you say.

Tuney is monitoring every word.

Brooke returned to the living room, feeling more discouraged with each passing minute. Her gaze returned again to the lady in the painting.

If only you could talk,
she thought.

If only.

SEVEN

V
ictor’s back was aching and his stomach growling by late afternoon. They’d stopped just long enough to eat the sandwiches Stephanie had gone to get. Going through files, boxes and bags looking for some indication of where Colda had stashed the painting or where he had disappeared to had yielded nothing but clouds of dust. Victor did not mind the searching—he’d spent hundreds of hours as a med student and surgeon winnowing out the tiniest references to surgical procedures that might inform his own treatment of his patients. He had to admit that he didn’t like floundering around in the vague hope of finding a treasure with only the flimsiest of clues to guide them. And above all, he didn’t like having someone watching.

But hadn’t he paid the man four years before to do exactly that? And truth be told, he hadn’t cared about the methodology. But now, when it was Tuney determined to bring down Brooke’s father, he felt uncomfortable.

Maybe because Ramsey’s red-haired daughter intrigued him? Made him begin to question his own need for vengeance?

Victor chalked up his uncharacteristic emotionalism to fatigue. A whole day wasted.

They continued to plow through the mess for another few hours until some silent understanding passed between them and they convened in the front room. Discouragement was written on Brooke’s face. Stephanie wore her usual expression of calm, but Victor knew she was as frustrated as he was.

Tuney lifted an eyebrow. “Leaving so soon? It took me three days to get through the mess.”

Victor held back his rising temper. “What did you learn from the witness? The one who saw Colda leaving the tunnel?”

“Nothing much. She said she was down in the basement, moving a box of sorority stuff and she saw Colda coming out of the same area you went into yesterday.”

“The tunnel goes nowhere. It’s impassable.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t credit the story that he’s hidden anything down there. The police took a dog down to sniff around, more to appease the administration than anything else. They found nothing but a dead rat carcass.”

“What’s your theory, then?” Stephanie asked, finger-combing some bits of plaster out of her short, tousled hair.

“If there really is such a painting, I think Colda made off with it, tried to skip town and Donald killed him.” He stared at Brooke. “I think the painting is stashed somewhere off campus, or maybe your father already has it back.”

Brooke shook her head. “Then why would I be here looking for it?”

“Because your father didn’t clue you in, did he?”

She looked away. “There wasn’t anything to tell me. He doesn’t have the painting.”

“But you can’t explain the phone call to your house from Colda, the ticket he bought to San Diego but never got on the flight?”

“I don’t have to explain it,” she said, hands on hips. “I’ve never met Colda, but judging from his place here, he’s eccentric, to say the least.”

Tuney seemed to weigh something in his mind. “Your father took a trip a few weeks back. Stopped right across the bay.”

She started. “Yes. He went to the library to study some archived letters.”

“Where?”

“U.C. Berkeley.”

“True, but he made one other stop. Here at Bayside, to visit his old pal. Only, Colda wasn’t around, so they left without meeting.”

“Okay, sounds innocent enough,” Victor put in. “Donald wanted an update on the appraisal of his painting. Natural that he’d look Colda up while he was in town.”

Tuney shrugged. “Sounds normal on the surface, but I talked to the cafeteria manager. She knew Colda well because he’d order the same thing every day, grilled cheese and tomato sandwich with black coffee. She says Colda was indeed on campus the day and time Donald came to visit. She remembers because Colda asked for his meal to go, something he’d never done in the ten years she’d known him.”

Brooke crossed her arms. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“He’s trying to figure out why, if Colda was on campus, he didn’t want to meet with your father,” Victor said.

Brooke gaped. “I have no idea.”

“It’s suspicious,” Victor said. “You’ve got to admit that.”

“I don’t have to admit anything. My father is a good man and you can spin all the conspiracy theories you want.” Brooke walked to the door. “I need some fresh air.”

Victor sighed. “I wasn’t spinning theories,” he said to no one. “We’ve got to look at all the facts.”

“I don’t think Brooke sees it that way,” Stephanie said. “And frankly, if it was our dad, I think I’d be feeling the same. I’ll see you outside.”

Victor felt Tuney’s eyes on him. “She’s not going to see things clearly where her father is concerned. We’re going to have to ferret out the truth whether she likes it or not,” Tuney said.

We?
Victor saw Brooke out the window, sitting in a meager beam of late-afternoon sunlight, slight shoulders hunched as if from bearing a heavy weight.

If her father was unmasked, then the person who planned the robbery would finally be punished.

And Brooke Ramsey would be destroyed.

* * *

Brooke wanted to be alone, to hide herself away from everyone and think, but there was no time as she and Stephanie made their way into the empty women’s dormitory. She sensed that Stephanie wanted to say something, but Brooke avoided eye contact. One kind word from the woman, and she knew she would dissolve into tears.

At the heart of her anguish was the knowledge that Tuney was right. Her father hadn’t “clued her in.” She hadn’t known that he’d visited Bayside. He hadn’t mentioned it and neither had Denise. The omission burned inside her. As soon as she could get a moment alone, she intended to call them and find out why.

They located a suitable empty room, a long rectangular space with nothing more than three twin beds, a tiny sink area, a battered desk with an equally battered chair and a bulletin board still sporting a picture of a handsome man who Brooke assumed was a movie actor. A dried flower was pinned to the wall. The remnant of a boyfriend’s offering? The space was painted in a shade of yellow that had probably once been cheerful.

Stephanie set her duffel bag on one of the beds.

“Cozy,” she said, plopping down her sleeping bag and an extra she’d brought for Brooke. “Bathroom is down the hall. Let’s go find that brother of mine and get some food. I’m starving.”

Brooke sank down on the bed and pulled out her cell phone. “You go. I wanted to call home and check in.”

Stephanie hesitated. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

Stephanie studied her for a moment, dark eyes intense like Victor’s, before she nodded and left.

When she was alone, Brooke dialed. It rang and rang with no answer. She prowled the room with restless steps, stopping to look out the window into the darkening sky like the contemplative lady in Tarkenton’s painting. She pulled up the picture on her cell phone again, staring at the small image. Something preyed on her mind, nibbling at the corners. Something wrong. Something out of place.

Her thoughts would not cooperate, and the quiet of the deserted dormitory enveloped her with smothering silence. A walk might clear her thoughts. She’d be safe if she ventured no farther than the courtyard. Before the walls closed in around her she found her way outside, cool air bathing her face. In the distance, the hills were still visible against a clouded sky. It was such a melancholy sight she wished she could put it to dance right at that very moment, to let her inner turmoil find expression in the glorious high release or a twisting spiral.

A low brick wall encircled the place and her heart skipped to see a man sitting there, facing away from her in the pool of light from a single lamppost.

Tuney.

She turned to go when he saw her.

“Settled in?”

She nodded, intending to leave without further comment, when she detected something different in his face, a soft expression she didn’t understand. A trick of the moonlight? He was holding a newspaper, open to the sports section.

He noticed her eyeing it. “Reading about spring training. Fran was a real baseball nut.”

Brooke was startled. The gentle look. The wistful expression. “She was a good friend?”

He folded the newspaper with a snap. “Fran was an all-right gal. Never complained, and she had plenty in her life to gripe about. Always said she was happy to be standing on her own two feet even wearing cheap shoes.” He laughed.

“I’m sorry about her death,” Brooke said.

“Me, too. It’s always grated on me that good people get the short end of the stick. Plenty of scumbags and users out there in the world, but Fran wasn’t like that. So why does she have to take a bullet?” He shook his head. “No justice in the world.”

“I didn’t know, it didn’t seem from the way you talked about her that you two were close.”

Tuney got to his feet. “What difference does that make? She didn’t deserve to take a bullet just because she was following you around.”

“No, she didn’t.”

He kicked at a broken chunk of brick. “Anyone that could put up with an old coot like me was some kind of special.”

“Did she have family?”

He shook his head. “Said she was better off without anyone.” He made a great show of folding the newspaper into a small bundle and tucking it under his arm before he fired a look at her. “Maybe she was right. Family can get you into all kinds of trouble.”

She knew he was talking about her father. “I don’t want to argue.” She turned to go. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

He stopped her. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. My old man wasn’t what I thought he was either. Didn’t see that until he walked out of my life when I was nine. “

Brooke felt as though she’d been slapped. “You’ll find it interesting that it was my mother that left us, Mr. Tuney. My father has been both parents to me.”

Tuney considered for a moment. “Doesn’t matter. My dad used me and my mom, just like your old man is using you.”

Blood rushed to her cheeks. “I’ve got to go.”

“You’re just a pawn, honey, and the sooner you realize that the better.”

“Good night, Mr. Tuney.”

“’Night.”

She felt his gaze following her as she entered the dorm again. She did not want to think of her mother, who was the real betrayer of their family. Shadows hugged the walls, and she hastened her pace. Her room was gloomy, so she snapped on the small lamps and sank down on the bed, dialing her home phone once more.

Still no answer.

As she lay down on the bed, Tuney’s words circled in her mind.

Just a pawn.

It wasn’t true. Her father would never use her. He was a stubborn man, wrapped up in a love of art that sometimes felt stronger than his love for her. Maybe her mother felt the same, and the feeling caused her to leave.

No. Mom left because she couldn’t handle Tad, a kid the rest of the world labeled “mentally deficient.”

Her fingers tapped in the number before she had time to think it out. The director of the group home answered and put her through to her brother.

“Hi, Taddy. How are you today?”

“Hi, Brooke.”

Tad told her about the new pad and pen set Aunt Denise brought him and the upcoming outing to a community play. She listened to him babble on, her heart swelling up inside her.

“It’s gonna be bedtime soon. You sing it?” he asked.