Veiled Threats (21 page)

“Well, tell me everything, from the beginning.” He shifted on the bed, and his hands moved restlessly, as if groping for a cigarette. Or a pencil.

“First you have to promise me to keep it secret until Nickie is safe. If you don't, I'll call your editors and tell them you're lying. I'll—”

“Whoa!” He leaned forward and captured one of my hands in both of his. “I promise. Swear to God. One lousy little quote out of context doesn't make me a monster, OK? Of course I'll keep it a secret, if the girl is in danger. Just tell me exactly what's going on.”

I told him everything I knew or guessed, from the scent of cloves in the woods, five weeks back, to the sound of Holt's voice in my houseboat just hours before. And everything in between, from Nickie's pearls to the three business cards to Eddie's house key to that frightful package.

“When you think about it, the business cards sound like somebody from out of town, learning his way around,” he pointed out. “I mean, do you carry cards for your favorite places in Seattle?”

“No, of course not. I didn't think of it that way.” All that snooping around and suspecting Boris, when it was really Andreas, the man from out of town, who had tampered with Nickie's car. The man Holt imported to help with the dirty work.

Gold interrupted this dismal thought. “How much is the ransom?”

“Two million dollars, and the promise that Douglas won't testify about King County Savings. So you see, Keith Guthridge must be behind the whole thing, and Holt is working for him. Guthridge threatened Douglas. I heard it myself.”

“That argument they had at the fund-raiser?”

“That's right. It seems so long ago. Guthridge must have decided to get back at Douglas in the most hurtful way he could imagine. You know that he's Nickie's godfather?”

Gold shrugged. “People do ugly things when they're cornered. And don't forget, Guthridge isn't his own man anymore. You don't do business with organized crime and then walk away. Somebody up the line probably thought this up, and used Guthridge and Walker and whoever else they needed to get it done. Including this guy Theo. Who's he again?”

“The Parry's chauffeur. He said he saw me fall, there in the woods. But I didn't, I was hit from behind by Andreas. So Theo was lying. Holt had me convinced that it was all my imagination, and that Theo would never do anything for Keith Guthridge. But Holt was lying, all along.” I blushed as the unwelcome memories reeled through my mind like a movie, a steamy sex farce with a diabolical leading man and a comically naive ingénue.

Gold stared at the floor, perhaps out of courtesy or perhaps just lost in thought. My affair with Holt was apparently just another piece of the puzzle to him. I wished I could see it that way myself. I finished my tale, and Gold frowned and rubbed a hand across his eyes. My own eyelids were
drooping, and my head kept rolling heavily back against the pillows.

“You realize that some of these connections are pretty tenuous?” Gold began. “Theo must be a criminal because you smelled clove cigarettes in the woods. Walker must be a kidnapper because he's rummaging around in your study with a man with an accent. Eddie must be an accomplice because he's the only one with your house key—”

“I didn't say that!”

“You implied it, Carnegie. I'm not saying you're wrong, but let's review the facts for a minute. Just the hard facts, not what you guess or suspect. Number one, Keith Guthridge threatened Douglas Parry about his testimony. Number two, Parry's daughter was kidnapped by persons unknown. Number three, Holt Walker was on your houseboat tonight, for reasons unknown. Number four …”

Maybe it was the Scotch, or the drone of Gold's voice, or just being warm and safe after being cold and terrified. Whatever it was, somewhere between numbers four and five, in the midst of puzzling out the most extraordinary and harrowing events of my entire life, I fell asleep.

I
WOKE
TO
THE
SOUND
OF
SNORING
,
DISTANT
BUT
UNMISTAK able, like a tractor idling in the next field. I sat up and groaned, head in hands. Judging by the state of my body, the tractor had run over it with both wheels on the way to harvest the haystack that used to be my hair. My body was one big charley horse, and my hair felt like I'd soaked it in molasses instead of Lake Union.

The lake … Aaron Gold … Holt. Reality flooded in, far harsher than the sunlight filtering through the beige drapes across the room. It was Saturday morning. I was in Aaron Gold's apartment, and Holt Walker was due on my doorstep at one P.M. for our romantic trip to Mount Rainier and Anita Reid's wedding. A scenic drive to the mountain, a gala evening, and a night of sensual delights with the man who had put his best friend through hell and threatened to mutilate an innocent girl. I levered myself stiffly out of bed and scanned the room for a clock. A wristwatch with a scuffed leather band lay curled on the dresser.

I picked it up. Eleven-thirty.

“No. Oh,
no!
” I hobbled down the hallway to the living room, wailing as I went. “How could you let me sleep this late?”

Aaron—somehow in the night he'd become Aaron instead
of Gold—Aaron coughed in mid-snore and jerked upright on the couch. His bathrobe, laid over him as a blanket, slid to the floor. He was still wearing his jeans. “Huh? What?”

“It's eleven-thirty!”

He yawned, screwing his eyes shut and scratching his bare chest with both hands. “So what?”

“So Holt Walker is going to show up at my place in ninety minutes! He doesn't know that I know. Only I'm not sure what I do know. Why did you let me sleep? What am I going to—”

“Stop.”

“But—”

“Stop!” He held out one hand like a traffic cop. “Stop yowling. Wait here.”

I stopped. Aaron stood up and shook his head slowly, then vigorously, like a horse with a horsefly. We were both barefoot, but he seemed even shorter than usual, and certainly more befuddled. His left ear and cheek were waffle-patterned from the sofa cushion, and on the other side his hair stood out in horizontal cowlicks. Some ally. He shambled past me into the bathroom and shut the door. I started the coffeemaker while I waited, and when he returned I headed for the bathroom myself. My hair was past remedy and so were my clothes, still lying in a damp, smelly heap on the tiled floor. I kept his sweatpants and sweatshirt on, and contented myself with splashing cold water on my face and forcing my feet into my cold, misshapen sneakers.

When I emerged Aaron was in the kitchen, wearing a baggy red T-shirt with a Boston Red Sox logo. He looked me over without enthusiasm. “You've got a date with Walker today?”

I nodded anxiously. “At one o'clock. I'm doing a wedding
at Mount Rainier tonight, and he's supposed to come with me.”

“Then you'd better go home and change. You look like hell.”

“What are you talking about?” I sputtered. “I can't go anywhere with Holt. He's a kidnapper. He's dangerous!”

“Not if he goes on believing that he's got you fooled. Look, I was thinking about this after you conked out. If Walker is in on the kidnapping—”

“What do you mean, if?”

“Just listen. If he's in on it, then it's important not to let him know that you suspect him. Right?”

“Right.”

“And I take it you don't want to call the cops and have him followed?”

“Absolutely not.” If Nickie was still alive—how dismal it was, to admit the existence of that “if”—then I didn't dare endanger her by overruling her father and involving the police.

Aaron handed me a coffee cup, sans Scotch, and half a bagel. “They wouldn't believe you, anyway, is my guess. What about telling Douglas Parry himself?”

I chewed on the question for a moment, and then on the bagel. It was stale, so I dunked it in the coffee. “I don't think so. He doesn't trust me anymore, and he does trust Holt. Holt could just say that he suspected
me
of being one of the kidnappers, and he was searching my place for evidence.”

“Good point. So where does that leave us?”

I sat down on a stool, defeated. “It leaves us trying to find out what Holt really was searching for last night, without tipping him off.”

“And the only way to do that is—?”

“Is for me to take him to Mount Rainier, and keep an eye on him.”

“Exactly.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“Nothing.” I was silent then, watching Aaron's dark, stubbly jaw crunching up and down on his bagel and thinking, quite irrelevantly, that he must have to shave twice a day. His plan made sense, but why did I feel so aggrieved, so abandoned? Perhaps an ally wasn't really what I had wanted. Perhaps I'd stumbled through the rain last night looking for a champion, a knight in shining armor to slay my dragons for me. Or just John Wayne. “I cain't let you face that varmint, little lady. You just stay here in the bunkhouse and I'll gun him down for yuh.” Instead I had this unshaven Boston-ian bum, calmly advising me to change my clothes and walk right back into danger because it made sense.

“What are you going to do, meanwhile?” I asked peevishly.

“Snoop around, ask questions, check records. If Walker really is hooked up with Guthridge, there must be some trace of it somewhere. The more we find out now, the more we'll have to tell the police after they let Nickie go. And if you find out anything, you can call my pager and I'll go to Douglas or the cops or whatever.”

I looked up sharply. “You think they'll let her go, then?”

Aaron turned aside to pour more coffee. When he spoke, he didn't look at me. “I covered a kidnapping once, back east. Spent a lot of time talking to a security consultant. This guy makes a fortune advising high-risk executives. According
to him, the longer a hostage is held, the worse the odds are for a safe release.”

“How did it end? The case that you covered?”

He unplugged the coffeemaker. “We'd better get going.”

It was five to twelve when we reached the houseboat. Fortunately for my reputation as a snappy dresser, the dock was deserted. That was unusual for a Saturday, but I figured everyone was out enjoying the weather. The rainstorm had exhausted itself during the night, and now the last shreds of clouds were disappearing eastward, leaving behind a rinsed blue sky and a balmy breeze. The houseboat barely rocked as we stepped onto its deck, and the sun-spangled water all around us hardly looked like the nightmarish abyss I'd been floundering in just a few hours before. I unlocked the door and hesitated, but Aaron strolled right in.

“Nice place,” he said, loud and overcasual. “OK if I look around?”

I realized that he thought Holt or his foreign crony might still be inside. I shook my head in a wild negative, but Aaron ignored me and set off through the living room for the bedroom and study. He returned in a moment and shrugged. “No bears around, Goldilocks. Can you tell if anything's missing?”

I made a quick survey with one eye on the clock. If I'd come back from Ellensburg this morning as planned, I would never have guessed at the invasion of my little domain. There was no scent of burning cloves, this time. And, just like that other night, there was nothing out of place.

“What on earth were they looking for?” I said, more to myself than to Aaron. I flopped down on the couch and looked helplessly around at my normal, pedestrian possessions.
My eyelids began to lower like a theater curtain, soft and heavy. The hours I'd spent in Aaron's bed had been fitful, and too few. With the slightest of nudges I could have keeled over and gone back to sleep. Aaron prowled in and out of the room, full of restless energy.

“It must be something they didn't find the first time Andreas was here,” he said, drumming his fingers on table-tops and chair arms. “Something of Nickie's, maybe? No, that doesn't fit; they've already convinced Parry that they have her. You don't suppose Walker really was searching for evidence that you're the guilty party?”

“Which would make him innocent?” I tried to keep my voice level, and conceal just how urgently I wished that were true. “But the first search was well before the kidnapping. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

I closed my eyes to concentrate. “What if Andreas is a private detective, and Douglas hired him to investigate the embezzlement? Then, after Nickie was taken, he came here again, with Holt this time, to try to link me to the kidnapping? How does that sound?”

“Pretty flimsy. Why search your apartment for evidence of embezzlement, when all your records would be in your office? And why wait till last night if they thought you were the kidnapper? For that matter, why investigate you at all, if Douglas Parry just wants to pay the ransom and get his daughter back, no questions asked?”

“Maybe Douglas doesn't know about the investigation,” I said. I was grasping at straws and I knew it. “Maybe Holt is trying to track down the kidnappers himself, and rescue Nickie before the ransom is paid?”

Aaron snorted at this fairy tale. “And he just happens to suspect his own girlfriend?”

“I wish you'd quit talking about boyfriends and girlfriends,” I said hotly. “We're not teenagers.”

“So what's a better word?” he shot back. “Lovers?”

“None of your business!” I was close to tears again. “Look, it's twelve-twenty. If I'm going to go through with this stupid charade, I have to get ready.”

I stalked off to the bedroom and went to pull out my overnight case. Which, of course, was still in the van. Which was still, presumably, at Lily's place. I slammed the closet door in vexation, then took a few deep breaths before picking up the phone. This was no way to begin my debut as an actress.

Lily wasn't home, and her answering machine wasn't answering. Wonderful. I took the world's fastest shower, just to get my hair into manageable shape, and laid on enough makeup to get me a job at a cosmetics counter. I still looked a little ragged, but nothing like the scarecrow I'd seen in the mirror last night. I was certainly better dressed, in white slacks and a dressy blouse under a navy jacket. I slipped my jade silk into a soft suitcase along with some lingerie, and strapped on a trendy watch with an oversized, easy-to-read face. My flats would work with both outfits, and their rubber soles were essential for looking elegant while running up and down stairs. How bizarre, to be thinking about clothes for my date with a kidnapper. I called Lily every two minutes. No answer.

I carried the suitcase and my second-best purse into the living room. My first-best was on the bottom of the lake, along with my wallet and my credit cards. At least Lily had my van key, and I always kept an emergency stash of twentydollar
bills tucked away in my jewelry box. Aaron was gazing out at the lake with his hands in his pockets.

“I'm ready,” I announced, “but Lily still has the van, so I'll have to ask Holt to drive me to her place. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“No, I'll come by tonight,” he said. “We'll compare notes and decide what to do next.”

“I won't be here tonight. I thought I told you: It's a sunrise ceremony. I'm spending the night at the Glacier View.”

Aaron frowned. “With him?”

“No, with the Queen Mother. Of course, with him. We have separate rooms, though.”

“Will he expect you to … I mean, are you—?”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “Yes, we were lovers, yes, he'll expect me to. I'll put him off.” Then I added, quite maliciously, “If I can.”

We glared at each other, the length of the room between us, with the tension rising in waves like a heat mirage on a desert highway.

Aaron looked away. “This is crazy. Call him and cancel.”

“It's too late for that. Besides, what about not tipping him off and keeping an eye on him and so forth?”

“All right, I'll follow you down. Yo u stall him, and drive slowly, and then—”

“You don't even own a car! And he's seen you before; he knows you're a reporter. Fat lot of good that'll do Nickie, if he sees you following him and he panics!” I was suddenly furious. “Anyway, how come it was all right for me to spend the
day
with a dangerous criminal but it's crazy for me to spend the
night
with him?”

“So I was wrong!” he shouted. “So sue me! But I'm not going to let you—”

“
Let
me? You're not letting me do anything, buster. Who do you think you are?”

At that high point in our civilized discourse, the doorbell rang.