Night's Landing (28 page)

“Ask your marshal friend. He’s standing at the back door.”

Sarah turned abruptly, even as she thought that Ethan might be trying to distract her, but Nate was there, rigid, alert. She couldn’t manage the slightest smile. “I see you’re done with your shower.”

He put out his hand. “Let’s see the picture.”

“Ethan said he got it from Conroy.”

“I heard.”

He gave it a quick glance and dropped it on the table. He shifted to Ethan. “What’s Mr. Fontaine’s interest in this man?”

“I told Sarah what I know. You heard.”

“Was it everything?”

But Ethan wasn’t the least bit intimidated. “Fontaine’s looking for a connection between the man in the picture and the president. Whether he’s a reporter or a political hack, he’s a total scumbag.” Ethan pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, grabbing an almost full pack of cigarettes and tapping one out. “You recognize the guy in the picture, don’t you?”

Sarah took a breath, then spoke. “I don’t know his name. He stopped to talk to my mother a few months ago at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.”

Nate tensed visibly. “His name’s Nicholas Janssen. He’s a wealthy businessman from northern Virginia who was supposed to stand trial on federal tax evasion charges last year but took off to Switzerland, instead. He’s a fugitive. Failure to appear.”

Ethan didn’t seem surprised.

Sarah’s throat was dry, tight. “My mother said he was someone she knew from college.”

Neither man responded.

“Tax evasion—it’s not a violent crime. It doesn’t mean he’s involved in the sniper attack.” She felt slightly nauseated. “I can’t be sure the man who spoke to me at the museum was with him or even was who I saw in Central Park.”

“Where are your parents now?” Ethan asked seriously.

“On a plane to New York, I hope.”

Nate shifted to him. “Show me some of your songs.”

Ethan tapped the side of his head. “They’re all up here.”

“Recite a few.”

“Can’t. That’d ruin them. It’d be like picking fruit before it’s ripe. But if you wait too long, it rots on the tree. I don’t want that to happen, either.” Ethan stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lifted a book of matches, tore off a single match and struck it. “I know, Sarah. No smoking in the house. Indulge me this one cigarette.” He didn’t wait for her to respond, just lit the cigarette. “Look, Deputy, you can lighten up. I’m just mowing lawns and picking bugs off the rosebushes.”

“What do you know about Conroy Fontaine?”

“Nothing. Scumbag looking for dirt on the president.”

“Stay where I can find you.” Nate turned to Sarah, his blue eyes as no-nonsense and incisive as she’d seen. “Let’s go.”

She started to protest his dictatorial tone, but he was in marshal mode and in no mood. She might as well have been a suspect he was marching off to jail, although she decided his manner was for Ethan’s benefit more than for hers.

When he fell in beside her on the way back to the house, he didn’t relax. He remained tight, rigid. Sarah picked up her pace. “I figured since you’re an official federal law enforcement officer, you’d need a warrant to search Ethan’s cottage. I had a feeling he was going to bolt.”

“You knocked on his door, you realized he was gone, you slipped inside and had a look.” He glanced at her. “You’re impulsive. You said so yourself.”

“You watched me from the bathroom window?”

“I got to the back door just as Brooker got to the front door. If he’d tried anything—”

“You were there. Thanks.” She smiled. “I think.”

“Sarah…”

She looked out at the lush spring grass, the azaleas and roses, the first vegetables poking up in the garden, the river glistening in the morning sun. She thought of her father and Granny sitting out on the front porch when she and Rob were kids. Her mother cutting flowers in the garden. “It’ll never be the same here.”

“Sarah, listen to me—”

But she ran inside, suddenly not wanting to hear what he had to tell her. She wished she could close up the house, shutter the windows, hide—stop time. Stop Nate from telling her anything else that she didn’t want to hear.

Only she’d never been one to run from the truth.

She waited for him in the front hall.

He entered the house slowly, and when she saw his expression, the air went out of her. “What? What’s happened?”

“Collins called while you were in the cottage. Juliet Longstreet was pulled into a car at gunpoint early this morning. She escaped by jumping out into traffic.”

“Is she okay?”

“Scrapes and bruises. She was almost roadkill.” He managed a half smile. “Leave it to Juliet to jump out of a moving vehicle.”

“If it was her only chance—”

“It was. She was unarmed, out for her morning run. The car got away. There were two attackers. One up front, one in back. The one up front had blond hair—that’s all she remembers.” He paused, his gaze connecting with hers. “The one in back was dark haired with a slight foreign accent.”

Sarah tightened her hands into fists and sank against the wall. “It can’t be—Nate, it just can’t be the man I saw in the park, the man I saw in Amsterdam—”

“Tell me what happened at the museum, Sarah. Everything. Start to finish.”

“Nothing ‘happened.’”

“You flew in from Scotland, Rob flew in from New York?”

She stared at an old framed map of Tennessee on the wall opposite her.

“Rob was there first?” Nate prodded her.

She nodded. “He got there a few days ahead of me. I came in for the weekend. I was finishing up my documentary and totally preoccupied, but we don’t get many opportunities to be together as a family. I felt I had to seize the moment. I arrived on Friday. Saturday morning, we did a canal tour like every other Amsterdam tourist. Saturday afternoon, we went to the museum. Rob and Dad don’t linger. My mother and I do. Especially my mother.”

“Where were you and Rob staying? With your parents?”

“Yes. They’ve rented an apartment on one of the canal streets.”

“They went on the canal tour with you?”

“That was the whole idea. We did everything together. It was a great few days. Amsterdam’s a beautiful city, especially in the spring.”

“Then lunch?”

He wasn’t in a mood for distractions. Sarah stood up from the wall. “We had Dutch pancakes at a restaurant near the museum.”

“Recognize anyone there? Did your parents talk to anyone?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. We walked over to the museum from the restaurant. It was fairly crowded—we just did the Dutch collections. We didn’t run into anyone or speak to anyone until we got to
The Night Watch
.”

Nate leaned against the wall, studying her. He bit off a sigh. “Sarah—Christ—”

“As I’ve told you, Rob and my father had already moved ahead to the antique Delftware.” She spoke briskly, stating the facts. “My mother can take forever with a painting. The crowds got to me, and I wandered into an adjoining collection. That’s when the man I thought I recognized in the park spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He just talked about the painting. Something about how he was surprised that the old paintings of Amsterdam didn’t look all that different from the new paintings of Amsterdam. I think he was trying to be funny. Then he left. I moved on to another painting. I was getting a little impatient for my mother to join me so we could go find Rob and my father. I finally went back to
The Night Watch
and found her talking to another man.”

“Nicholas Janssen,” Nate said softly.

“I didn’t know. He was handsome, well dressed, silver haired. I didn’t think much of it.”

“Did he see you?”

Sarah shook her head.

“Your mother—”

“She didn’t mention him. I didn’t mention him. There was no reason.” She looked off, remembering that day. “My mother was a little distracted, but nothing that concerned me. She wasn’t sweaty or upset or put out—or excited and happy. I assumed she’d met an acquaintance.”

“What did you do after you caught up with your brother and father?”

“We finished up at the museum and walked back to my parents’ apartment on one of the canals. It’s a long walk, but it was a beautiful afternoon. We took our time. My father does well, but his stamina isn’t what it used to be.”

“How old is he?”

“Seventy-eight. And my mother’s fifty-six.” With a burst of energy, Sarah moved into the kitchen. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. My mother is not having an affair with Nicholas Janssen or anyone else.”

Nate followed her without comment.

She turned on the water in the sink and filled a teakettle. “The people who make judgments about my parents based on their age difference don’t know them. They’re devoted to each other. It doesn’t mean my mother’s not aware that she’s more than twenty years younger than my father and likely to outlive him.”

“Back to Janssen. Did your mother ever mention him? He was in the news when he skipped out?”

“No. And I didn’t see the news reports on him, or didn’t remember them if I did.” She set the kettle on the stove, her movements tense, jerky. “Given the number of people my parents know, it’s probably to be expected one’s turned out to be a fugitive.”

“Your mother’s attractive?”

His question took Sarah by surprise, but she tried not to be defensive. “Yes, I think so. Other people do, as well. What’s that got to do with anything?”

He eased onto a stool, those blue eyes never leaving her. “Probably nothing.”

“Anyway, you’ve seen pictures of her. There are some on the mantel and there’s one in your room.”

“Three. As far as I can see, she’s downright beautiful. Collins will get a sketch together of the men who attacked Juliet. They must be close to completing something on the guy you saw in the park. We’ll see what happens.”

“Do you have
any
idea what’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Any of those fried pies left?”

“One.”

“We can split it.”

“Damn right, Deputy. I don’t get fried apricot pies that often.”

He got to his feet and came around to her at the stove, caught her by the elbow. “Your parents will be all right. So will Rob. So will you.”

“You can’t know that.”

He smiled, the incisive eyes not so hard now. “Why the hell not?” He kissed her softly, reminded her of their lovemaking yesterday before dinner. “Good thing I’m off duty.”

“There’s no such thing as an off-duty fed. Rob says that all the time.”

“Think he already knows about us? The twin thing.”

She liked the way he said “us,” as if yesterday, the night before, had meant something to him. She got two mugs out of the cupboard. “If he knows, he’d have checked himself out of the hospital bed by now. He’d drag his IV down here with him if he had to. He’s never wanted to introduce me to his marshal buddies.”

“Now you can understand why.”

“Nate—” She broke off, setting the mugs on the counter. “I’ve learned to take things one step at a time with my parents. They’ve always got a pot boiling. Nicholas Janssen could be a red herring.”

“Joe Collins will want to know what he and your mother talked about.”

“They talked for two seconds at a public museum. It’s not as if she can be accused of harboring a fugitive.” Sarah lifted the lid off a canister and dug out a couple of tea bags. “Conroy probably discovered the connection between Janssen and my mother and figures he can tie it back to the president.” She stopped still, sighing. “That
weasel
. That has to be what he’s up to.”

“Didn’t President Poe go to Vanderbilt with your mother?”

“They were in the came class.”

“Does your mother have a college yearbook around here?”

Sarah hesitated, then nodded. She abandoned the tea bags and retreated to the living room, pulling all four of her mother’s college yearbooks off a high, dusty shelf in the living room. She dumped them onto the coffee table and sat on the couch, Nate beside her, and flipped through the pages of the one from her mother’s freshman year.

About halfway through, she found one small candid shot from a philosophy class with all of them together: Betsy Quinlan, John Wesley Poe and Nicholas Janssen.

Sarah scanned each of the other three yearbooks, but there were no pictures of Janssen in any of them, including the one from what should have been his senior year.

“He must have dropped out,” Sarah said.

But Nate was already dialing Joe Collins’s number in New York.

Juliet hurt all over when she coughed, but she managed to extricate herself from the E.R. and bypass any medical types on her way to Rob’s room. She still had on her running clothes, the hem of her shorts bloodied from her short skid across the road. The guys guarding Rob eyed her but didn’t say a word. Smart. She felt like punching someone. Not that she could muster up the strength to really nail anyone. But she was in the mood.

Rob was on his feet, off all his IVs and looking like he wanted to escape out the nearest window.

“Watch out,” Juliet told him. “Collins is getting cranky about deputy marshals who get out of line.”

He gave her a ragged look. “I need to get out of here.”

“Not without an armed guard. You’re still not fit to protect yourself, and, damn, you need protecting. I’m thinking you’ve got a big-assed target painted on your back.”

His gray eyes seemed to focus on her for the first time since she’d entered his room. “What the hell happened to you? Juliet—”

“I got shoved into a car at gunpoint by a couple of thugs. One got in a few smacks before I jumped out into oncoming traffic. They wanted to know about the investigation into the shooting.” She grinned and limped to his bed. “I think they picked me because I’m blond.”

He swept a narrowed gaze over her, presumably taking in her swollen lip, the visible portion of her bloodied upper thigh and the obvious pain she was in. “They picked you because you’re a creature of habit and run at the same time every morning.” He sat on his vinyl-covered hospital chair. “And you’re my former girlfriend.”

“There. I’ve always said you’d make a great investigator.” It was weird talking with a swollen lip. The doctor had sent her off with an ice pack, which she’d used on the way up to Rob’s room but wouldn’t use in front of him and his guards. “I swear, I’d rather get shot than have to jump out of a moving vehicle. You should see the rest of this road rash.”