Elementary, My Dear Watkins (37 page)

Her husband, Fernando, took her in his arms and tried to comfort her. Eleanor, on the other hand, looked furious, and she began to berate Consuela for her carelessness in front of everyone.

“Gran, wait,” Jo said, stopping her. “Listen, this was actually
my
fault. I’m the one who told Consuela how to clean the chandelier. I said that the crystals in the outer rim needed to come down so they could be hand washed.”

Jo climbed halfway up the stairs so that she could get a closer look.

“I see what happened,” she said, pointing toward the frame. “They’re not clicked all the way into place. Everybody watch out, because if we don’t fix these, another one might fall too.”

Though the incident had been disturbing, Jo had no doubt it was an accident. There was no way someone could have purposely planned that. After all, it could have fallen at anytime on anyone. It was just bad timing that it had nearly fallen on her.

Or so she hoped.

Alexa realized that she still needed to pack. Her mom and Rick had finished going through the school papers and now were checking out her artwork—not the art therapy stuff she did with Nicole, but from her regular lesson during the week. Alexa didn’t think her paintings were all that good, but it was fun to hear their reactions. They seemed genuinely impressed.

“Okay, while you guys look at that stuff, I guess I’ll run over to the house and pack my suitcase. It’s getting so warm outside, I might even throw in my bathing suit. Maybe they’ve opened the pool at the hotel!”

Alexa went outside, but before she was halfway up the walk, she heard her mother calling her name. Alexa turned around to see her mom coming toward her, shielding her eyes from the sun despite the fact that she was wearing sunglasses. She kept glancing nervously toward Chewie, who was across the lawn, standing at the fence and eagerly wagging his tail. She didn’t like dogs.

“Listen, honey,” her mom said, “I wanted to talk to you. We’re going to have a good time and all, but…”

Alexa stared at her own reflection in her mother’s sunglasses as her voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“But you probably don’t need to bring a suitcase.”

It took Alexa a minute, and then she understood.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything,” her mother added quickly, “but it’s just a small hotel room and there’s already two of us. We can all go have some fun, show Rick the town, eat dinner. But maybe we’ll bring you back here tonight and then pick you up again tomorrow.”

Alexa was
not
going to cry, no way, no how.

Her mom wasn’t concerned about Alexa or her privacy. She just wanted to have some time alone in a nice hotel with her boyfriend. Considering that they could have all the alone time they wanted the other three weekends out of the month, it just wasn’t fair.

Alexa crossed her arms and fixed her mother with a cold stare, her face showing disdain but her heart feeling something much more painful.

“Whatever,” Alexa said finally. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Everyone scattered: Fernando retrieved the ladder and climbed up to fix the chandelier, Consuela and Eleanor moved into the kitchen so Eleanor could berate her some more, and Jo and Neil moved into the study, where they could sit and talk. Jo hobbled to the couch, propping up her bad ankle on an ottoman. She realized her uncle had sat on a chair across from her and was using the ottoman to put his leg up too. He rolled back a stained and torn pants leg until it revealed a bleeding gash in his shin.

Jo gasped.

“Looks like one of the shards got me,” he said, sucking in air between clenched teeth. “I thought so.”

The bodyguard alerted Eleanor, who called her private physician for a housecall. From what Jo could see, it looked as though her uncle would be needing stitches.

“Well, I came out here today to check on you,” he said, “and ended up almost killing you instead. I’m so sorry.”

“How was that your fault?”

“I was standing right under the thing when you came in the house. If we had moved in here right away, you wouldn’t have been in danger.”

“And you wouldn’t be bleeding all over those nice slacks, either. Don’t worry about it. It was an accident. I’m certain.”

Feeling not quite as sure as she sounded, Jo looked up at the bodyguard, who nodded.

“I don’t know how anyone could’ve done that on purpose,” he agreed, “with the placement and timing and everything. I’d say accident, and I’m trained to know the difference.”

Jo nodded, reassured, as the muscular man took a less conspicuous position near the wall.

Jo decided to seize the moment of relative quiet to ask Neil if he had any idea what was going on or who he thought might want her dead. They discussed the situation for a while with apparently no need for holding back any information or theories since it sounded as though Jo’s dad had already told Neil everything.

“If Bradford said you were a target because of ‘something big’ going on at the company, then I’d have to agree that it has to do with the pharmaceutical branch. That’s by far the biggest thing we’ve got going on right now in both the main company or in any of the subsidiaries.”

They tossed around the names of some of the executives who would profit most from the upcoming announcement about Fibrin-X, but every time a new name came up, Neil would have some good reason why that person simply wasn’t capable of doing something so diabolical.

“Your father’s convinced the motivation has to do with financial gain, but I’m not so sure. Somewhere, there is someone who will gain more than just financially from this. Otherwise, why construct such an insane and far-removed plot? You realize, if this person, whoever it is, ends up killing you, then they’ll have to kill your grandmother next or your death will have been in vain.”

Jo’s grandmother entered the room at just that moment.

“What’s this? Who’s killing me off?”

Neil repeated his statement to his mother-in-law.

“Kent’s theory requires a huge sequence of events,” Neil explained, “each of which has to take place in a certain order: Jo would die, then you would die, then we would all inherit, then Ian would combine his stocks with mine, and we would force the majority decision of proceeding with the Fibrin-X announcement as planned. Sounds like a lot of a-b-c-d-type stuff, any step of which could get messed up along the way.”

“But if he’s right, I do see some solutions,” Jo told them. “For one thing, why don’t you have the announcement made sooner, like today or tomorrow? Then the cat’s out of the bag.”

“I talked to Dr. Stebbins about that this morning,” Neil said. “Even if Kent would okay it, which he wouldn’t, Stebbins isn’t ready. The data simply isn’t finalized.”

“Okay, then why doesn’t my father simply change his position to vote with you, so that I don’t have to die in order for either side to win?”

“Kent and I talked about that,” Eleanor said, taking a seat in her chair, looking even more tired and pale than usual. “He refuses.”

Jo looked at her grandmother, her eyes wide.

“He refuses? My own father refuses to do the one thing that might save my life?”

Eleanor shrugged, saying that in a matter such as this, where the lives and livelihood of so very, very many people would be affected, he simply had to consider the greater good and make the noble decision.

“Like a soldier, going to war,” Neil added sarcastically. “Go ahead, Jo. Die on that battlefield so that the rest of us may be saved.”

W
hat about you, Grandmother?” Jo asked, ignoring her uncle’s sarcasm for the moment. “You’re the one who holds the majority. Why don’t you throw your weight Neil’s way, and then neither you nor I will be in danger?”

Gran was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke her eyes were distant and sad.

“In the history of this company,” she said, “I have never intervened, never interfered with the choices of the CEO. I have cast my vote in stockholders’ meetings, but otherwise I have kept myself far removed from the decision-making process. I cannot change that policy now.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too hard to explain, Jo,” she said, focusing in on her granddaughter. “But I simply have to stand firm on this. In any event, I believe I have found another solution, one which will become clear tonight.”

“Hey, Granny!” a loud voice said suddenly from the doorway. “Somebody forgot to take out the trash!”

Jo’s cousin, Ian, stepped into the room with a laugh, making a flamboyant entrance, as usual. Dressed in black slacks, magenta sportscoat, and a wildly patterned shirt, he looked like an object lesson in which of this season’s designer fashions
not
to wear.

“Don’t call me Granny. You know I hate that.”

“But you love
me!
” he cackled, walking over to his grandmother and throwing his arms around her in an exaggerated hug. “You gorgeous babe, you.”

Eleanor clucked her tongue at him but smiled indulgently and gave into his hug. Somehow, Ian could always get away with things no one else ever could.

Ian stood up straight and fixed his eyes on Jo.

“Hey, cuz! Somebody call Sherlock Holmes and give him a magnifying glass. We’ve got ourselves a bona fide mystery on our hands! How are you, train bait?”

He came and kissed Jo wetly on the cheek before plopping down next to her, squeezing tightly between her and the arm of the couch.

“I’ve been better,” she replied, feeling the energy radiating from him like a pulse.

“Hey, what happened to you, Pop?” he asked, suddenly growing serious as he gestured toward Neil’s bleeding shin.

“We had an incident with the chandelier,” Eleanor answered for him. “Neil, my doctor is going to swing by on his way to the tennis courts in just a bit.”

“That must hurt,” Ian said.

“And, Ian, no one forgot ‘to take out the trash,’ as you put it,” Eleanor continued tiredly. “Consuela simply has to sweep up the broken glass.”

“No, not that trash,” he said. Then he pointed to the window, which looked out of the front of the house. Alexa’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend were standing there, obviously waiting for Alexa. “
That
trash!”

Ian laughed at his own joke, not even noticing that everyone else in the room was silent. Jo was angry on Alexa’s behalf, embarrassed for her family, and ashamed that Ian was a blood relative. She wasn’t sure where Alexa had gone or why they were waiting, but she could only hope that the girl hadn’t heard him.

“Hey, where’s Mom?” Ian asked, oblivious to the chill that had settled in the room. “I miss seeing the old bag rattling around the penthouse in Manhattan.”

“Your mother is probably out in the greenhouse,” Eleanor said coldly. “You are more than welcome to go and find her.”

“In a minute,” he replied. “First I want to know what we’re talking about here. Personally, I think it’s time to hire a private investigator to get to the bottom of this. Obviously, the cops involved are a bunch of goons who don’t know a crime scene from a Krispy Kreme.”

“Are we to assume that your own interview with the police went poorly?”

“Heck, no. The guy was a Vette-head. Asked me a couple questions about where was I on Wednesday at six
PM
and what was I doing. When I said I was in Hackensack buying a sixty-three split window, he went nuts. We talked cars the rest of the time.”

“A Vette-head?” his grandmother asked.

“Yeah, a Corvette aficionado. I spent all week trying to decide between the split window and a sixty-seven big block, but I went with the sixty-three in the end. It’s a beauty.”

“I’m glad to know you had a successful car-buying venture while I was busy nearly getting myself killed,” Jo said, knowing she sounded cranky and tired. Ian usually had that effect on her.

Suddenly, he stood and began pacing as he spoke.

“Right, right. Okay, so let’s think about that. What is it the cops are always looking for on TV? Motive, means, and opportunity? Well, a lot of us have motive, if your dad is to be believed, and I suppose we’ve got means, considering that all it took was the push of a hand. That leaves opportunity. I was in Hackensack. Dad was at a business dinner. Now, if we can just eliminate ten or twenty other people in the company, we’ll be doing great.”