An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide (31 page)

Jake must have thought it was time to intervene on behalf of my ailing wallet. “Have you heard of a piece called the Cross of Rouen?”

Eve considered. “I don't believe so. What is it?”

“A cross,” Jake said too patiently.

“You mean an actual cross? Such as a crucifix?
Not
a painting?”

“Right.”

“Are you in the market for such a piece?”

“Yeah.” He didn't look like a guy in the market for a crucifix.

“Is it an original?”

Jake looked at me. I said, “I'm sure it is.”

“Really?”

I said, “To be honest, it's a fifteenth-century religious artifact plundered by the Nazis during World War Two. It's made of carved gold and studded with rubies and agates and pearls.”

“Oh? We only handle eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works.”

Jake and I exchanged another look. She was too blasé to be anything but serious.

“The legend is that the cross belonged to Joan of Arc. She was supposed to have carried it into battle.”

“That doesn't sound very practical.”

“It's only a legend, but the cross itself existed,” I assured her. “I've seen photographs of it in art-history books and on the Web. It was kept at Notre Dame Cathedral in Rouen. It disappeared during the Nazi occupation.”

She made a moue with her mouth—not a bit like New England Kate Hepburn. “A lot of things did. They turn up now and again. I could put feelers out.”

Since she seemed to have no qualms about such details like returning or making restitution for stolen cultural assets, I said, “Had you really never heard of the Cross of Rouen? Because we'd heard from a fairly reliable source that your father might have had possession of it for a period of time.”

“Oh my God,” Eve exclaimed. “Daddy was a Nazi war criminal, blah, blah, blah.”

The three of us gaped at her. She gazed back as placid as a cow in a field of buttercups.

“Then you have heard the rumors?”

She raised her slim shoulders in a distinctly Gallic gesture. “But of course. In fact, one reason my mama closed the original Truffaut Gallery was there were too many questionable pieces among the inventory.”

“Questionable pieces? You mean…items were correctly identified as those stolen or forcibly sold during the occupation of France?” Lisa inquired.

I looked at her in surprise. Meeting my gaze, she said, “I saw a wonderful program on Lifetime, darling. It was all about a book called
Nazi Looted Art
. It was fascinating.”

“It is fascinating,” Eve said in that polite, slightly bored voice. “However, it was very embarrassing for my mama. So she closed the gallery and sold off most of the inventory posthaste.”

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“You're saying your mother believed your father was an escaped Nazi?” That was Jake going straight for the legal jugular.

Eve scrutinized him reflectively. “Among other things. The family joke is that my father murdered his first wife so he could marry my mother.”

That was some familial sense of humor. Whom was she related to? The Borgias?

“What does your mother think?”

“Mama passed away nine years ago, but I don't think she would have been utterly confounded to learn it was true. My father was…an original.”

I couldn't help remarking, “So were Vlad the Impaler and Adolf Hitler.”

“Don't be bourgeois, darling.” Lisa gave me a chiding look. To Eve, she said, “So if your father had this priceless religious artifact in his possession, and someone nicked it, would it be reasonable to assume your father would be willing to kill to get it back?”

Most people would be shocked by such a forthright question. Eve didn't bat an eyelash.

“From what I know of my father…let me simply say that nothing would surprise me.” I could believe that, since not that much
did
surprise her.

She moved past us to straighten the Grimshaw painting on the wall. When she stepped back to examine it, she planted her Gucci loafer on Jake's instep. “Sorry.” She smiled charmingly. “I suppose you're hoping I have a certain special recollection of my father? That I can tell you I remember seeing him acting suspiciously one dark and stormy night? But I was only seven years old when he died. I thought he was wonderful.”

“Naturally,” my mother returned.

Eve tilted her head, eyeing the painting critically from the other angle. She said absently,

“To say that my father would be willing to kill is not to say that he
did
kill. I think many people would want to kill in those particular circumstances. Would they kill? I don't know. I can tell you, my father had a very strong sense of self-preservation—I imagine that could have been a determining factor either way. For what it's worth, my mother didn't believe my father was a Nazi. She believed he did what he had to do to survive, but that there was no malice intended, no philosophical or political agenda. He simply wished to live and prosper. You can hardly blame a man for that.”

I thought you probably could. I thought if anything, it made it worse to go along with atrocities if you didn't believe in the cause that motivated them. But she was not asking our opinion. Life was different on her planet.

* * * * *

While Jake and I waited in the car for Lisa, who had remained inside to complete some suspicious transaction, we talked it over.

“Aside from the fact that she's living in Cloud Cuckooland—”

“Oh yeah,” Jake agreed. “She's telling the truth. As far as she knows it.”

“If Truffaut did kill Stevens—and I can totally believe that he did—what happened to the cross?”

Jake said, “Mama Truffaut sold it off when she closed the gallery.”

158

Josh Lanyon

I leaned forward against the front seat. “That makes sense. I don't believe Eve was prevaricating—even when she should have been prevaricating. I don't think she'd ever heard of the Cross of Rouen. And she probably forgot about it five minutes after we walked out the door.”

“It confirms Stevens's story as far as where he found the cross—which seems to confirm Newman's story. I don't know how he'd have found out about the cross otherwise.”

“So he
was
hired by Louise Reynard, regardless of whether she admitted it to Nick Argyle.

Why do you think she denied it?” I asked. I couldn't seem to tear my gaze from the crisp, precise line of the hair against the back of his neck. It was a strong neck, but somehow there was something boyish and almost vulnerable about his nape. I had the strange desire to lean forward and kiss it.

I resisted.

“He didn't say she denied it, just that she never confirmed it. She might have been afraid of getting Stevens in worse trouble.”

“She did go to the police, though, once he went missing.”

“Yes. Argyle told me she made a nuisance of herself once Stevens disappeared.”

I said, “I didn't get the feeling Newman was lying.”

“Neither did I.”

We fell silent as Lisa returned to the car with a small, rectangular, brown-wrapped parcel.

“What's that?” I asked uneasily.

She was busy with seat belt. At last, she looked over her shoulder. “It's either a housewarming gift or a Christmas present.”

“You haven't decided?”

“
You
haven't decided,” she said. “Or you don't realize you've decided.”

* * * * *

“Did you want to stay for dinner?” We were back at Cloak and Dagger. Jake had parked the Forester, let Lisa and me out, and was climbing back into his S2000.

He said awkwardly, “I can't. I'd like to. Rain check?”

“Sure.”

“I'll call you.” His eyes met mine. “We need to talk.”

My heart sank. “Oh.”

I knew what he was going to say. The case was closed. As closed as we were likely to get it. We both knew it. The most likely scenario by far was that Guilliam Truffaut had come looking for his missing property at the Huntsman's Lodge—and had decided to leave no witnesses. How he'd known to look for Jay Stevens was something we would probably never know.

And if the case was closed, there was really no reason for Jake to be calling me all the time or staying for dinner—or anything else.

“Anyway, you've got your writing group tonight, right?”

I'd totally forgotten. The weird thing about convalescence was my internal clock seemed to be off. I couldn't keep the days of the week straight.

“Right.”

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“I've give you a call Thursday.”

“
Thursday
?” I reddened at the giveaway tone of voice. Jake didn't seem to hear it.

“Thursday,” I reaffirmed stalwartly.

He caught my arm as I started to turn away. I glanced back. “Behave yourself.”

“It shall be so.” I walked away to open the side entrance for Lisa, raising my hand in farewell as the Honda rolled away with a purr of its well-tuned engine.

* * * * *

I flexed my culinary muscles that evening and made chicken salad with walnuts and black olives, which I ate on whole-wheat toast and washed down with a glass of low-fat milk. It seemed to me that I was getting the hang of this healthy-living stuff, and if everyone would stop giving me a hard time over working too hard and having too much stress in my life, I'd be back to normal in no time.

I was restless and dissatisfied after the writing group had departed. I put a DVD into the player. Tomkins made himself at home on my lap while I watched
The Dark Corner
. It was a 1946 film-noir gem directed by Henry Hathaway and starring a feisty Lucille Ball and painfully bland Mark Stevens. The film has art thefts, troubled PIs, and sinister Germans. The last time I'd seen it was several years ago with Mel, but the memory brought no pain. It was distantly pleasant, as though it had happened to someone else.

The cat purred as I stroked his soft, soft fur.

I wondered how Jake planned to tell me what we both already knew. Probably as carefully as possible. I couldn't help my instinctive dread at hearing the words
we need to talk
. The last time he'd said it—but no. Those weren't the words.

“
I need to talk to you
.”

That was it. How could I forget? And he'd told me Kate Keegan was pregnant, and he was going to marry her. That he wanted the marriage to work, wanted it to be a real marriage. That it was over between us.

It had been Christmastime, and I could still remember the scent of cinnamon and pine whenever I thought of that afternoon. Christmas carols had been playing, and outside, the window-shoppers had walked past talking and laughing, cars had flashed by carrying evergreens, and life had gone on in a blur…

160

Josh Lanyon

Chapter Seventeen

Jinx—Jane—Powers was not happy to hear from me; however, she did take my call.

“I didn't realize you were Lisa English's son,” she said in that smoky, smooth contralto.

She sounded peevish, as though I'd deliberately played a trick on her.

“I didn't know you were Chris Powers's mom,” I returned.

She had an expressive voice. I could hear the unease. “Do you know Chris?”

“Not exactly. He called threatening to bash my face in if I didn't stop picking on you.”

In the silence between us, I could hear Natalie and Angus bickering on the book floor. I listened. It didn't sound serious. I took a sip of Tab.

Jinx Stevens's exasperation carried all the way from Santa Barbara. “Chris shouldn't have done that. He's overprotective.”

“He's something, that's for sure. Why? That's the question. It's not like I was pestering you for another interview. What's he so worried about?”

“Clearly you know exactly what he's worried about.” She was no-nonsense now. “My son has political ambitions, and there are things in my past that might prove embarrassing to him.”

“He doesn't think having Cat Woman for a mom is a selling point with the neocons?”

Natalie carried in a box of battered paperbacks and shoved them on the already-crowded shelf. There was a Dell Mapback on top.
The Blackbirder
by Dorothy B. Hughes. Now
that
was a very collectible book.

“What do you want?” There was no anger in Jinx's voice, only a vast weariness.

It occurred to me that she had lived with the threat of blackmail and exposure for half a century. A long time to bear that burden. No surprise she was tired. I wondered if she ever secretly hoped it would all come out and she could stop worrying. Or maybe she'd been worrying about it so long, it was second nature, a part of her.

“Look, if you didn't kill Jay, I have no—”

“
Kill Jay
?” If she was acting, she'd gone into the wrong segment of the entertainment industry. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

“If I'm off base here, I apologize, but it occurred to me that you and Jay might not have been brother and sister.”

I had to hold the phone away from my ear. One thing for sure, she could still hit those high notes. Her vocal range was as clear and strong as ever. When she had wound down at last, I said,

“I apologize. I'm very sorry. That was way out of line.”

“Where on earth would you get such a crackbrained idea?”

“I write mysteries. I get crackbrained ideas.”

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161

“I loved my brother. I adored him. He was my hero.”

“Please don't scream at me anymore. I have a theory. Another theory. Would you like to hear it?”

“No.” But she didn't hang up.

“My theory is that you thought you knew who killed your brother—and that's why you left Dan Hale.”

Silence.

“I think you loved Dan Hale nearly as much as you loved your brother, but Jay's murder was something you couldn't forgive. Or forget.”