Forbidden Dreams (8 page)

J
ASE TOOK THE CLOTH
from her and tossed it over her shoulder to the sink. “Sit down, Shell. Please?” She complied, still scowling, and he gratefully eased himself back onto his chair. “The man who calls himself Sterling Graves was not born with that name,” he said quietly. “Maybe your grandmother knew a boy by that name when she was a girl, but he’s long dead, and she obviously doesn’t know it. I do, because the minute I learned what name he was using, I checked it out. I have the written proof in my Jeep.”

“Convenient,” Shell said, “since your Jeep is facedown in the middle of the creek, and all Ned was able to pull out was your bag and computer.”

Jase’s look of consternation broke on a smile. “Computer, right. I’ve got all the stuff on that too. Just wait one minute, and I’ll show you.” He opened the lid and switched on the computer. After a moment he sighed disgustedly and flipped the switch back and forth several times. “Dead!” He slammed the lid shut. “Dammit, Shell, you have to believe me. He’s merely assumed that persona so he can earn her trust.”

He seemed so sincere, Shell wanted to believe him. Only she knew Sterling, liked him. “Jase, honestly, your theory’s crazy. Nobody would take such a stupid risk. If my grandmother really did attend the same school as Sterling Graves and go to college with his sister, then anybody other than the real Sterling would be off his noodle to pretend to be him. I mean, what if she’d kept in touch with the sister and been told of Sterling’s death?”

“I believe the man does his homework well before he ever approaches his mark.” When her mouth compressed and she sucked in an angry breath, he rushed on before she could object to the term again.

“If, by some chance, she had heard that Sterling was dead, he’d have laughed and quoted Mark Twain. Your grandmother, unlike me, probably wouldn’t have bothered to check it out by calling the sister, or researching back copies of newspapers for obituaries, or requesting a death certificate from the state registry of births, deaths, and marriages. The innocent never do. But my bet is he knew before he went within ten miles of her that she hadn’t kept in touch with Sterling Graves’s family, that in fact she’d know nothing about the man, or even really remember him, except possibly his name.”

“Well, there you have it,” Shell said definitively. “If she hadn’t remembered him, she’d have been coolly polite and extricated herself from him at the earliest possible moment. My grandmother is a very wealthy widow. She’s not stupid, Jase.”

“Would she extricate herself politely? Can you be certain of that? As I said, the man is charming. He makes his living doing what he does. How do you know how your grandmother might respond to that kind of smooth operator? Have you ever seen her under those kinds of circumstances?”

“You mean, such as on a date?” Shell laughed with little humor. “Of course not. Well, not until recently. My grandmother didn’t date after her husband died. She remained true to his memory for years.”

She twisted her hands together. “That’s why we were all so pleased when she struck up a friendship with Sterling. He claims to have loved her from afar when they were kids. He’s a bit younger than she is, but Grandma says, at their age, what does that matter? They plan to go on a cruise together right after New Year’s. In separate cabins,” she added, “in case you’re thinking otherwise.”

“Shell, I’m sure your grandmother’s morals are befitting a lady of her age and background. It’s the morals of the man calling himself Sterling Graves that concern me. Can’t you see? All these years she’s been careful, rebuffed men who tried to get close, and suddenly she’s fallen for someone and is planning on going away with him when she’s known him—what?—two months?”

Shell worried the sleeve of her red sweater between her finger and thumb, staring down at it as if it had a stain she could rub away. “When you put it like that …” She looked up at him, clearly disturbed. “All right. Tell me more.”

A trickle of relief ran through Jase. Maybe he was making some progress here. “I believe his name is—or was when he knew my grandmother—Martin Francis. Of course, it could be almost anything. Martin Francis is as unlikely to be the name he was born with as Sterling Graves.”

“What makes you think the man who bilked your grandmother is Sterling Graves? How did you connect him and Martin Francis?”

“I’ve been tracking him for nearly a year and a half now, and I think he’s rooked at least twelve other ladies in the past ten years and maybe a much longer time. His M.O. varies as to how he approaches his mark, but when he has, he checks her out in painstaking detail.”

“How can he do that? As I said, my grandmother doesn’t give out information indiscriminately. She’s a very private person.”

Jase nodded. He’d already learned that himself. “My suspect’s a computer whiz. One of the few geriatric hackers in the world. He’s broken into more data bases than you’d even suspect exist. He uses tax records, vital statistics, bank and credit card data, everything he can access—legally or illegally—from the all-too-massive amount of information that’s been compiled on each one of us, whether we try to keep our lives private or not.

“He ascertains that his victim is a widow. He already knows she’s wealthy, or she wouldn’t be living in such a place. He discovers her maiden name, where she was raised, what schools she attended, and who her friends were. And,” he added after a significant pause, “who her friends were not.”

Shell felt cold. Sterling Graves was, indeed, a “computer whiz.” In only a few hours he had reprogrammed her entire stock-control system for her by modem, making it incredibly easy to use. But did that make him a “geriatric hacker”? Weren’t hackers teenage nerds with fantastic IQs and no conscience?

“So you see,” Jase went on, “if Sterling Graves and his sister were acquaintances of your grandmother’s, but not friends, then he’d be fairly safe in assuming the Graves persona.”

Shell blinked slowly as she assimilated what he’d said. Unwillingly, she had to admit he was making sense. “Yes,” she said finally. “I see how it would be possible for him to wriggle into Grandma’s confidence using a trick—like that, and of course you’re right. She probably wouldn’t think to check him out. Why would she, since she already knew him, even if it was a long time ago?”

She chewed on her lip for a moment. “And you think he’s been doing this for years? Why hasn’t he been caught?”

“Mainly because he’s careful whom he chooses as his mar—his prey. A con-man’s victims seldom complain. They’re ashamed to let anyone, most of all their families, know how stupid they believe they’ve been and how much money they’ve lost. What they don’t understand is that stupidity was not their problem. Love was, and trust, and quite likely a deep need to assuage their loneliness.”

Shell swallowed hard, thinking of how often her grandmother begged her to come and spend more time with her, either in her Vancouver apartment or her Palm Springs condo. “You’re my only granddaughter,” she would say. “You have competent help in your bookstore. Take more time off. I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time buried up there in the woods. After all, your mother has Kathleen.”

Had her insistence on “burying” herself contributed to her grandmother’s loneliness? Had that helped set her up for a man like the one Jase described?

“He’s also careful not to leave any pictures of himself behind,” Jase said. “He dislikes having his photograph taken, managing to turn away at the crucial moment. Before he leaves, he lifts any pictures that might have been taken despite his precautions.”

Shell remembered how Sterling had sneezed when she’d taken a photograph of him and her grandmother beside the pool. He’d whipped out a large white handkerchief that hid most of his face, then accidentally knocked her camera into the water before she could try to take another. He’d apologized, of course, and bought her a new, and much better, digital camera despite her protests that he didn’t need to. But he’d ordered it from an online source and had it delivered to her home address so she wouldn’t have to pay duties, as he’d said with a conspiratorial wink. She’d returned home the next day without photographs of her week in Palm Springs.

“How did you find all this out?” she asked Jase.

“I’d been away while my grandmother was seeing him,” he said, “so I never met him. But when I got back and up to Boston to surprise her with a visit, I was appalled at the way she was living. Patches on the walls where valuable pieces of artwork had hung, missing antiques but even more worrisome, the lack of household help. She’d let them all go, had closed off all but the kitchen and the maid’s room, where she was sleeping herself. She tried to make light of it, saying she had no need for fancy trappings and that the upkeep of a huge old barn of a place was a needless expense. I refused to buy it, and she finally admitted what had happened. She was so ashamed, so heartbroken, and felt so betrayed, she had to talk to someone.” He shrugged and watched his thumb nail track along the edge of the table. “And she knew I’d understand.”

Shell felt a heaviness in her chest. Jase O’Keefe understood betrayal. And heartbreak? And shame? Why? When? Who? Sharba?

Lifting his head he went on. “She’d always kept favorite photographs in a box in her bedroom closet, close by in case of fire, instead of in her albums in the living room. Since Martin never knew about the box, he missed a full-face shot of himself.”

“And that photo led you to Sterling?”

“Not directly and not immediately. She didn’t show me the picture so that I could find the man, but to help me understand why she’d fallen so hard. He is a good-looking fellow. Thick silver hair, always impeccably groomed, a charming smile, and a body many men forty years younger would envy.”

Worry rose within Shell. That described Sterling to a T. Except he had a thick, bushy mustache that twitched beguilingly when he smiled. His blue eyes always twinkled merrily, as if he were about to burst into a rollicking, possibly bawdy song.

“Gran refused to go to the local police even when I begged her to, to keep the man from harming other people. It wasn’t until after she died, less than six months after Martin Francis left her, that I decided to get the guy myself.”

“How?” She stared at him, her heart racing. “How can you expect to do it alone?”

He drew a deep breath, looking at her speculatively, as if wondering how far to go with his explanation. His mouth tightened to a hard line as he apparently made up his mind.

“I’m not doing it alone, Shell. I have the backing, unofficial but there nonetheless, of my superiors in the FBI. And the resources.”

Her breath left her in a whoosh. “FBI … ?” Did his work for that agency account for his scars, the physical, visible ones and those that gave him nightmares?

“My superiors said there wasn’t enough evidence to go on. So I tendered my resignation and took up the search myself.” When she said nothing, he added, “They didn’t accept my resignation. I’m on indefinite leave of absence.”

Shell struggled to accept all that he’d said, to accept Jase and what he had become—a scarred, determined lawman, so different from the boy out of the past, a boy who had wanted adventure.

It seemed he had found it. And then some.

“Is there more evidence?” she asked. She wanted so badly for him to say yes. “Won’t the FBI take over your investigation now that you think you’ve got a line of the con-man?” Let someone else shatter her grandmother’s heart, if that was what had to be done!

“No. I still don’t have enough. After all, the only witness I knew to his crimes is … gone.”

She reached across the table and touched his hand. He still grieved for his grandmother.

“I understand. So you’re looking—have been looking—for another witness.”

“Witnesses,” he corrected her. “The minute Gran told me the whole story, I knew she couldn’t have been his only victim. His method was too pat, too practiced, for him to have been an opportunist acting for the first time.

“As I said, she lived in Boston. Many, if not most, of her old friends had died. She was lonely. She met him on a Mediterranean Cruise. She loved cruising.” He pulled a wry face. “And gourmet dining. That was how she met him—at the captain’s table and they began to discuss the best restaurants and chefs. One thing led to another and they were fast friends before the cruise was over. He invited her to spend a few weeks in one of the exclusive resorts he just happened to own so she could dine in all the restaurants there and advise him on how to improve them. He claimed he had to travel incognito, of course, because no one at his resorts knew he was actually the owner. That way he could come and go and see, from a guest’s point of view, that things were running as smoothly as possible. She loved the intrigue and was delighted when he trusted her enough to ask her to become his partner in opening three new resorts. He flattered her, sought her opinion on everything from napery to how to steal the best chefs from different places. She was ecstatic when he suggested they make the partnership more than just a business affair, that they marry. He was her fiancé, so naturally she was willing to put the financial planning for this wonderful, exciting new lease on her life into his capable hands. After all, she’d seen his other successful operations and had no doubt their joint venture would flourish as well.”

“Then, he failed to return from a business trip she’d been too unwell to go on. He never came back. Neither did her investment, a large—very large—portion of her capital.”

“I took that photo of him, went to many of the places he’d claimed to own, and discovered he’d left each one leaving large, unpaid balances and that, no, of course he wasn’t the owner. I met many of the owners who were justifiably indignant over his claims. I also checked passenger manifests of several cruise lines going back a number of years, and finally found the daughter of one woman who’d met him on such a trip, come home with her and met her family, charming them all. Then, when the woman’s mother died unexpectedly, she discovered her mother’s opulent condo in an exclusive property, was no longer in her mother’s name, most of her mother’s funds had been turned over to the charming suitor, who was nowhere to be found.”