Nightwork, page 25
“So he was an actor?”
“The way he tells it, he was and always will be a wannabe. But he sure helps the kids shine. He’s single, you know, in case you were wondering.”
“No.” Miranda made sure to laugh. “I’m really not here for that, which is another reason the house works so well for me. Plenty of quiet to write in. But I’ll make sure to see the spring musical. Now I’m going to stop by and see Cesca before I dive right into that quiet.”
She drove the few blocks to Cesca’s, pulled in behind her godmother’s sturdy sedan.
Maybe she felt guilty planning to secretly pump the woman who’d stood as her mom for most of her life, but it had to be done.
Cesca, ash-blond hair bundled up, the sweatpants and scent of orange peel indicating she’d done some cleaning, fisted a hand on her hip.
“Didn’t I give you a key and say you never had to knock on my door?”
“You did, but I wasn’t sure you’d be up.”
“It’s eleven! Middle of the day. I’ve got the afternoon shift at the library, but that doesn’t mean I lay around in bed all day.”
She pulled Miranda in, hugged her, swayed with it.
“You don’t know what it means to me to have you around awhile, to know you can pop in that door anytime like you used to back home.”
Miranda hugged back. “Is it still home?”
Cesca sighed. “I’m working on that. I like my little house, and it’s starting to feel like my little house. And Lorna, she’s been a brick for me.”
“I’m happy to have the chance to get to know her. I really enjoyed the party last night. I’m glad you talked me into it.”
“You were a big hit. Now come on back and let’s sit, have some coffee and coffee cake I baked hoping it would bring you by, and gossip.”
“Your coffee cake could lure me in from Timbuktu.”
They sat in the kitchen, as they had since Miranda had been a child. That kitchen had been big, sophisticated in its neutrals and shining stainless steel. This, though tiny in comparison, had soft yellow walls, sage-green cabinets, and a butcher-block table big enough for two.
She knew the divorce had shaken Cesca to the core, and couldn’t understand how a man married for over thirty years could suddenly decide he didn’t want to be married anymore.
They’d had no children, so the end of her marriage had left Cesca adrift. The move, Miranda thought as Cesca cut cake, poured coffee, had given her stability again.
“You’re happy here. I needed to see it to be sure, but I can and do see it.”
“I am. You know, I went straight from college into marriage. Never once lived on my own. I’m enjoying the independence more than I ever imagined. Now I miss you, your dad, and my friends from back—not going to keep saying ‘home.’ Back in Chapel Hill, but Lorna’s making damn sure I make friends here. How’s your dad liking Oxford?”
“He’s a kid who wakes up to Christmas morning every day.”
“And how do you feel about Deborah going with him?”
Miranda rested her chin on her fist. “I like her. I really do. I don’t think either of us—Dad or I—ever thought he’d have another relationship, a serious one. But she’s brought a kind of lightness to his life the last couple of years, and a sense of adventure. He would’ve wanted to take that offer from Oxford, but I’m not sure he would have if she hadn’t encouraged it. Taking a sabbatical from Carolina.”
That word again, she thought.
“And leaving you. She was very kind to me after Marty left, and I won’t forget it. You’ve spread your wings, Miranda, and we’re all so proud of you. But I don’t think you’d have spread them far enough to come here this way if he hadn’t gone there.”
“You’re probably right.” Comfort zones, she thought again. She’d burrowed into hers. “Emersons tend to root deep. I did take a short but interesting walking tour of Main Street this morning. I stopped in the bookstore.”
“That made Carolyn and Andy’s day.”
“I’ll be doing a signing there in March. I think they’d have booked me for tomorrow if I’d agreed.” She shook her head.
“Now you’ve made their year. I can’t wait!”
“I really liked their shop, the feel of it. I was seriously impressed with the idea of student recs. Carolyn told me that was the high school lit teacher’s idea. Sebastian Booth?”
“Yes, apparently he talked the library into the same sort of thing, and it’s a nice touch. I don’t really know him—our paths haven’t crossed since I moved here—but Lorna praises him to the moon and back.”
“Does she?”
“She does, and she’s no easy mark. I did meet him last night.” Cesca let her eyebrows wing up. “Handsome, and single, I’m told.”
“Stop.”
“Just saying. Claudette, my supervisor at the library, said we have more Shakespeare checked out by students in the handful of years he’s been here than we did in the ten years before. You’d appreciate that.”
“I do.”
“He started a Shakespeare Club.”
“Did he?” she murmured.
“I doubt it’s as, well, robust as your dad’s, but for a small high school? It’s an achievement. I’m going to warn you, Lorna’s going to hit you up to come in, talk about writing to some of the students.”
“Oh, well…”
Cesca patted Miranda’s hand. “Fair warning, and another to warn you Lorna tends to get what she wants.”
Miranda blamed the fourth cup of coffee before noon on the outsize burst of energy.
After she’d hugged Cesca goodbye, she drove around the town, out the other side, and back along the river, even stopped to take pictures with her phone.
To paint on this canvas, she had to know the canvas.
Since cooking didn’t rank high—or much at all—on her list of accomplishments, she stopped to get a takeaway serving of soup to heat up later.
To double-check, she drove by Booth’s house again—still there—before she went home.
What did he do in there, she wondered, on a school break?
Plan his next heist, contact his fence?
Did he have a fence? Is that how it worked?
Did he still cook? Because that hadn’t been a lie. The man could cook. Or the boy could, anyway.
Maybe he baked bread and made soup while he planned his next heist.
She pulled into her drive, then sat as it struck her.
“That wasn’t the idea,” she reminded herself as she retrieved the take-out bag and started into the house. “It’s a story about town secrets, and the killer hiding among them.”
But being a thief rated as a damn secret, didn’t it? A thief who cooks … maybe for a restaurant. She couldn’t make him an English teacher. Far too close to the bone.
She put the soup in the fridge for dinner, then made a sandwich with the ham Lorna had loaded her up with the night before.
She carried it and a bottle of water into the second bedroom she’d barely set up much less used as her office.
She stared at her laptop, at the notebook already containing her obsessively careful and organized notes. She thought of the pages of the first draft already written, one that started with the bang of the murder of an unfaithful wife.
She could change that. She could adjust that.
What if the unfaithful wife lived, for now, but found the diamond—no, the ruby and diamond necklace, a family heirloom—missing.
No, no, not a necklace, she thought as she sat and booted up. An objet d’art, a priceless objet d’art, again, a family heirloom. A crystal bird, perched on the branch of a gold tree, by its nest. A nest that held a diamond egg.
The faithless wife, so easily seduced by the handsome thief/chef. The woman who made it so easy for him to take the bird. And its loss would cost her her life.
“Okay, okay, this could work. Let’s find out.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She wrote through the rest of the day, editing the draft as needed. The character of the wife still worked as written—except for being dead by the end of chapter one.
But the man she’d originally cast as her killer was now a thief, and not the killer. In a very real way, as she saw it, he became a victim, too.
Not, she thought, because she’d base him, very loosely, on Booth, but because having him as cause and effect, murder-wise, didn’t work for her.
By the middle of the next day, she had her first two chapters redrafted.
She set them aside to let them simmer while she crossed another item off the list.
The first article she found on the Chameleon came from the French press—tabloid style.
She could read it, but it took a great deal of time and effort. So much she tried again, and found one from a London tabloid.
She read the article on the theft of an emerald and diamond pendant—valued at over eight hundred thousand pounds—from the vault of a Lady Stanwyke’s country estate in the Lake District.
They believed the theft took place during a house party, sometime before Lady Stanwyke personally opened the vault, as she intended to wear the pendant for the ball she’d host that evening.
Authorities contacted, blah blah, all guests and staff interviewed, a thorough search. No signs of a break-in, no damage to the vault, no other item or items missing—though the lady was known for her impressive and valuable collection of jewelry and—ha—objets d’art.
“Some speculate,” Miranda muttered out loud, “the clever and profitable theft as the work of the Chameleon, so termed as sources claim he uses disguise to mask his identity. Or hers! The Chameleon’s modus operandi, these same sources state, is leaving no trace, and taking only one or possibly two valuable items.”
She read on, though the bulk of the article leaned heavily on the sensational and lurid.
She backtracked to that single paragraph.
“One or two items, just like he told me.”
She printed out what she wanted, moved on to LaPorte.
She didn’t have a first name, but he popped when she googled the last name and Lake Charles.
She read half a dozen articles on him, all proving out the little Booth had told her.
A man of wealth and power—and maybe the story he’d told her put it there, but she saw cruelty in his eyes.
An avid collector of art—and a generous benefactor to the arts. A man who’d never married, but who often had a stunning woman on his arm.
She printed several articles, and decided he’d be the template for her killer. The look of him anyway, she thought, and some of the pieces, as the articles had, invariably, used terms like charming, charismatic, powerful.
“You cost me, asshole. So you can pay me back, my way.”
She spent that evening, New Year’s Eve, with Cesca, and stayed over, as the small celebration involved a lot of champagne.
But bright and early the next morning, she knocked on Booth’s door.
He answered—after her knocking turned to banging. And he answered in what looked like an ancient Tulane University sweatshirt, flannel pants, and bare feet. He had enough stubble on his face to tell her he hadn’t shaved in several days, and had the tousled hair and heavy eyes of a man who’d just rolled out of bed.
“Jesus, Miranda. It’s, what, barely eight in the morning.”
“Nearly eight-thirty.” She added a heavy dose of sugar to her voice. “Sleeping in?”
“That was the plan. There was a party—New Year’s Eve. Hell.”
He turned away, gestured a come-ahead, and kept walking.
“Some of us plan to start the New Year working.”
“I don’t have to work until the day after tomorrow.”
She followed him back to the kitchen—spotless, of course—and the jaw-dropping view behind it.
He got a Coke out of the fridge, made another vague gesture at a sleek coffee maker. “I’m not making coffee. Make it yourself if you want it.”
“How gracious of you. I’ll have one of those.” She opened the fridge—again spotless, with the sort of supplies that told her yes, he still cooked—and got a Coke.
He got a bottle of Motrin from a cabinet, shook out three to down with the Coke.
“Hungover?” she said, piling on the sugar.
He just stared, stonily, and glugged down more Coke.
“I wouldn’t be if I’d slept another couple hours. If you’re here to tell me I’ve got twenty-four, take the Coke on the road so I can get started.”
Instead she sat on one of his counter stools, then shrugged off her coat, unwound her scarf.
Maybe it was small of her, but she rejoiced a little that she’d taken time with her hair, her makeup, and her wardrobe.
She looked damn good, and he didn’t.
“I’m here to strike a deal.”
He shoved at his hair, and rather than sit, leaned back against the counter, the deep, dark blue eyes shadowed and heavy.
“What kind of deal?”
“First, I’ve done some discreet inquiries around Westbend about Sebastian Booth. Bye Bye Birdie?”
“That’s right. I haven’t decided whether to update it some or go full retro.”
“Retro, adds the charm. Anyway, it shouldn’t surprise me you’re well liked. You were well liked at Carolina, too. But I’ll concede you appear to take your job, your duty to your students seriously. But then you took your own studies seriously.”
“It was my life then. This is my life now. What’s the deal?”
“I also read up on Carter LaPorte. I don’t like him.”
“Get in line.”
“And the Chameleon. The tabloids in Europe love him—or her. What did you do with Lady Stanwyke’s pendant?”
“Broke it down for the stones and the platinum, sold it. I got … right around three hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. English pounds.”
“The article said it was worth over twice that.”
He rubbed at his temple and, she imagined, the headache inside it.
“And if I’d tried to sell it as a whole piece, I’d have netted about half what I got. Loose stones? About half’s a solid take.”
Fascinating, she thought. And a strange kind of business. “That’s how it works—around half?”
“Usually a little less, depending on where and how you sell it. Why?”
“What do you do with the money?” she asked as she got out a notebook, began to write.
“Bank it—numbered or offshore, invest it. Depends. Why?” he repeated. “You writing a book?”
When she smiled and kept writing, he pushed off the counter. “No. Just no.”
She set the notebook down, picked up the Coke. Yes, however small and petty, she enjoyed every second of this.
“Here’s the deal, Booth—I’m never calling you stupid Sebastian, so you’re lucky you used that last name. The deal. You want my cooperation so you can stay here, at least for now. I’ll give that cooperation on the following terms. First, you’re an educator only while you have that cooperation. No cat burgling.”
“How would you know if I did?”
“Because you’re going to make the deal, and if you break it and I do find out, no twenty-four hours.” She paused a moment. “And I didn’t like LaPorte—that’s in your favor. Second, you’ll tell me everything I need and want to know about this … profession of yours, because I am writing a book.”
She held up a finger before he could object. “The character I’m crafting may be loosely based, but he won’t look like you, sound like you. He’s a chef, owns a restaurant in a town like Westbend. I can see you still cook, so I need you to help me out there, because I still don’t.”
“You stir and chop,” he murmured.
“That’s right. If I’m going to write about a thief, I’m going to write about a successful one. His motivations aren’t yours, and I can alter his … style, I guess it is. You can help me there, too.”
She lifted the Coke in toast. “You’re my new research assistant, Booth, and that gives you at least six months. We’ll negotiate again when I leave.”
“Don’t use my mother.”
Her cheerful smile died. How could she hate him when his first demand sought to protect his mother? And how cynical did he believe her to be that he’d think she’d use his mother and her death to sell a book?
“No, I won’t. I promise you I won’t. I’ll tell you this, even though you don’t deserve it. You had a point the other night. I’ve never known that kind of loss, I’ve never had to worry about where or how I’d live. Other than my mother shrugging us off, and I know both of us were better off that way, my childhood was pretty much perfect. Other than you? The rest of it’s cruised along, too. I won’t use that loss.”
He paced to the glass doors, stood and stared out.
She wondered why he didn’t jump at the offer. She undoubtedly had the upper hand, but couldn’t see a downside for him.
“You have to respect my schedule. It gets crowded when I go back.”
“I’m the daughter of a college professor,” she reminded him. “I know what goes into teaching. We’ll work out a schedule that suits us both. We could do this by email or—”
“Jesus, you think I’m writing this down? No recordings either. Notes fine, but no recordings, no email, no texts, no phone conversations on the subject.”
“Okay, I can see all that. In person only.”
He kept looking out the doors, watched the river’s lazy run, because that was the problem for him. The very big problem.
But to buy six months, he’d handle it.
He walked back to her. “Deal.”
“Great. You must pick locks. Can you show me how?”
“You have to be kidding. I need a shower. I haven’t even brushed my teeth. And now I’m hungry.”
“All right then, pull it together. I’ll come back in two hours.”
She grabbed her coat, slid off the stool.
“I forgot how pushy you are.”
“I don’t believe that. You don’t forget anything.”
She took the Coke with her. He looked down at his own as she sailed out.
No, he didn’t forget things. And now he’d have weeks or months of memories of her stuck in his head.
