The Sayers Swindle (A Book Collector Mystery) (17 page)

The signora said. “You hungry? Yes. Yes.”

Candy said, “No thanks, I—”

“Save it. Resistance is futile and I think you’ll find you are hungry after all.”

She shrugged and we stepped into the house. We ended up in the conservatory, which is not all that cozy on an autumn night, but this was the Van Alst House. Nothing was cozy except my apartment, and I wasn’t about to invite this cop up there, no matter how cute her name was. She’d need a warrant for that.

The signora flitted and swooped about, bringing a vast tray with plum torte and whipped cream, almond cookies, delicious little anise-flavored
pizzelle
and a pot of tea.

“What are those?” Candy pointed.

“
Pizzelle.
They’re little waffle cookies. She makes them with a special press. The others are almond cookies.”

Candy said, “Huh.” We sat staring at each other across the table and munching the delicate waffle cookies. Outside, in the blackness, trees waved and leaves swirled.

“Must be nice,” Candy said, looking around.

“You should see the catacombs.”

She snorted.

The signora crossed herself and said, “No catacombs.
Madonna santa! No!
You eat. Be nice, Jordan. Eat now!” I thought her vocabulary was improving and I grinned at her to show my approval. Her black eyes glittered. “You want fruit salad?”

“No thanks, this mountain of food is just fine.” It occurred to me that all this food at bedtime might be contributing to my weird dreams too, especially when combined with the mayhem in my life.

“That sounds great,” Candy said, smiling.

The little gap between her front teeth was kind of endearing if you liked that sort of look. I found myself wondering if all cops had some kind of tooth identifier. But that reminded me of Tyler Dekker, and my heart sank where no cookie could rescue it.

The signora scurried back to the kitchen. Candy leaned forward. “This is awesome. I want to live here. Can you adopt me?”

“It comes with a job that is not all tea and cookies and fruit salad, let me tell you.”

“Just what is your job?”

“Before we chat too much, how about you tell me what you’re really doing here?”

I really didn’t want to talk about my job, which involved getting books for Vera from many sources, in case Candy got an inkling of what I had been up to at the Adams place.

“So,” she said, “guess what?”

That was all I needed. Games.

“Not good at guessing.”

“It’s about your friends.”

I blinked. “What friends?” Did she mean Tyler? Lance? Or Tiff? But how could she even know about them?

She gave me a skeptical glance. It might have made me nervous if she hadn’t just popped an entire
pizzelle
into her mouth. Food is the great leveler.

I waited until she’d swallowed. “Duh,” she said, scattering a few crumbs. “The Adams family.”

My heart did a little flutter and I stood up. “What about them? Did something happen to Randolph? Did he turn up at the hospital after all?”

Why hadn’t I looked for him when I was checking for Kev and Smiley? I felt desperately stupid.

“Nope. He didn’t turn up.”

“Did they?”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head and reached for a piece of plum cake.

“What, then?”

“Not what. Why.”

It was the end of a long day and I had more than a few worries and I really didn’t need these games. But I seemed to have no choice but to play along.

“Okay. Why?”

She beamed. “The Adams family didn’t turn up because they don’t exist.”

I plunked back in my seat. “What?”

“They do not exist.”

“But they do. I saw them. I met them. They were real.”

“Well, I’m sure they were flesh and blood, Jordan. But there is no record of them anywhere before they moved to Burton. Wow, this cake is amazing. I don’t suppose there’s any more?”

There was the better part of a cake left, so that made me wonder what she had in mind. However, the signora practically levitated with joy at those words. “Yes! You eat. I give you one to take.”

I waited until calm was restored.

“So,” I said, “explain to me how you know this.”

“Not so very hard to find out these things. I am the full force of the law, remember? And there has to be an upside besides getting free cake.”

“No doubt. But again, how?”

“Well, I dug a little and these people—whoever they are—their cover is only skin-deep. If that.”

“Huh. So I was right?”

“About what?”

I tried not to glare at her. “About Delilah and Mason being con artists out to fleece Randolph.”

She grinned again.

“Afraid there’s more to it than that.”

“Can’t you just come right out and tell me? It’s getting to be past my bedtime here.”

“Cute. Well, I suppose I could. But where’s the fun in that?”

“I haven’t actually been having fun. I’ve been worried about Randolph and what’s happened to him.”

“You think something happened to him?”

I fought a frisson of annoyance. “You know I do. He’s not there and now his so-called family is not who they say they are. There was a murder in his backyard. So what else would I think?”

She shrugged. The signora distracted us by arriving with an entire plum cake quadruple-wrapped in plastic wrap and a container of fruit salad, ready to transport back to her cop cave, wherever in Burton that was. “You eat tomorrow!”

“You betcha.”

“So,” I said. “Randolph?”

“That’s the thing. He’s not who he claimed to be either.”

I blinked. “Who is he?”

“You got me. The whole crowd of them didn’t seem to exist before three years ago.”

“Well, they must have existed.”

“Sure, physically those three bodies were living and breathing, but their identities didn’t. And after all that time, any trail leading to them is bound to be cold.”

“The next-door neighbor said they moved in three years ago.”

“Right, and prior to that: nothing.”

“There must have been something. They bought a house. You need money for that. Bank accounts.”

“About three years ago a lot, and I mean a
lot
, of money was deposited into an account in Randolph Adams’s name from a bank in Trenton, New Jersey. Turns out that money was transferred from the Cayman Islands.”

I searched for the right words. How much could a fairly new police officer in a small town in upstate New York find out about the Adamses in such a short time?

She must have read my mind. “I have friends. Connections in bigger places. I called around.”

“But unauthorized searches of personal information are illegal, aren’t they?”

“Absolutely. But you gave me a good reason when you were so worried about your friend Randolph. The word on the street is that a mob accountant named Randall Abrams was skimming from some high-level mobsters and the wise guys got wise. About three years ago he disappeared along with his wife, Dawna, and the young guy who was his assistant. The money went with Randall. These mob guys are not the kind of people who let things go. They want their money back and they want Randall Abrams and everyone with him dead. Doesn’t matter if he’s a sick old man. They can’t be reasoned with. Hey, you don’t seem all that happy about it.”

“Of course I’m not happy to learn that he was a fraud too. I’m not surprised about Delilah and especially Mason. But I really believed Randolph was in danger.”

She picked up her latest piece of cake. “Cheer up. Maybe he is.”

I shot her a dirty look. “Not funny.”

“Sorry.” She couldn’t resist a grin.

“It isn’t a game.”

“Somehow it feels a bit like a game.” I swear she twinkled at me. “I feel there’s something about you and those Adamses that I’m not getting.”

“Tell you what I’m getting: a headache. Maybe that’s what you’re hoping for?”

She laughed out loud. She sure was a good laugher. “I’m just hoping for something interesting to happen in Burton.”

“I guess you got it, what with a couple of murders and all.”

“Yes. But they don’t let the new kid do anything but the most boring footwork on those cases. The detectives are little kings. Tyrannical too. But the question remains, what does this thing with the disappearing Adams family mean?”

I shrugged, feeling suddenly deflated. “You got me.”

Nothing could deflate Officer Candy. “This is the most fun I’ve had since I got here.”

I said, “What brought you here in the first place?”

“I wanted to get some good experience. I thought with a small force I’d get closer to the action. When I grow up, I want to be one of those little kings.”

“And is that working?”

“Not even a little bit. I’ll have to make my own opportunities.”

“Good luck with that.”

I didn’t like the idea of being part of Candy’s opportunities, but anyway, I turned the discussion back to the missing Adams family and added some of my own speculations. “Could that money have come from Randolph himself? Could he have been convinced to leave his former life and go underground in Burton? Maybe he liquefied all his assets and faked his death or something. Could Delilah have tricked him? Or coerced him?”

“Anything is possible for people who don’t exist. But you do have to ask yourself, if you had enough money to buy that house and to live for years without anyone apparently working and to collect books and art and nice wines, would you pick Burton? Wouldn’t you go somewhere glamorous?”

I shrugged. “I really like it around here, but I take your point. Burton is hardly Paris or Rio.”

Candy said, “And now that they’ve vanished and we don’t know where or how, it will be almost impossible to find where they’ve gone. Especially if they get themselves new names and melt into another small town where they have no connections.”

“We don’t even know if Randolph is still alive,” I said. “Sorry to introduce a serious element into the funfest.”

She managed to look a bit chastened, although I wasn’t entirely convinced it was sincere. She said, “Oh, right. This is serious and we already have a body, don’t we?”

“Yes. We do. Do you know who that is?”

“No.”

“Not an idea?”

“So far none.”

“Fingerprints?”

She smiled again. “Now that’s interesting too.”

I waited.

She kept smiling.

“Come on,” I said. “You’re dying to tell me.”

“I am actually.”

“And . . .”

“He didn’t have any.”

“No fingerprints?”

Her grin was back. So much for being chastened. “Who would imagine such a thing?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know that was possible.” Not entirely true, because I did remember my uncles speaking about people with no prints in hushed voices tinged with respect and envy.

Candy tilted her head and dusted the crumbs off her sweater. “Leave the fingerprint issue aside for the moment and tell me, what do you do for fun around here?”

What was this about? The missing fingerprints were the only thing that mattered to me at that second. Fun? What did that have to do with anything?

“For fun? I read classic mysteries. I spend time with my friend Lance who’s a local librarian. I go to flea markets and bazaars and garage sales, and I hang out with my family and the family dog.” Okay, not entirely true, but that was my Kelly side coming out.

“Wow. You have got to get a life.”

“I like my life. In fact, I love it.” The strangest part of that statement was that it was true. A year ago, I wouldn’t have imagined saying it. A lot had happened in that year.

“Yeah right you do.”

“I do. I’m saving to get back to grad school. I can’t swing it just yet, but I’m sure hoping for next year.”

“I’ll watch for you on TMZ.”

“Maybe you’ll make it first.”

“I’m not nearly as interesting as you are.”

I felt a flutter of nerves. I had just explained how totally devoid of interest my life was, leaving aside recent encounters with theft and murder. As they say, that was a story for another time. I did not want this police officer to find anything about me or my life interesting.

She continued, “That’s why I followed up. I thought you might be a possible friend.”

A possible friend? Was she kidding? Did she routinely interview for friends? “But you’re a cop. Are you permitted to socialize with witnesses?”

Now I had all her attention. “Witnesses. Are you a witness? Witness to what?”

Oops. Think fast. “To Randolph’s situation.”

I reminded myself to remember to think first, speak second.

“Right. I thought you meant the murder.”