Three Fates

by Nora Roberts

  more tomb than house. The air was cool, the rooms soundless, and the street sounds muffled by drape-covered windows.

  Then she heard it, the instant before Jack froze and she bumped into his back. The sound of a door opening, a spill of light from the far end of the first-floor hallway and the shuffle of footsteps.

  She and Jack moved as one into the cover of the first doorway. There were distant voices, almost a tunnel effect. It took her several sweaty seconds to realize the house wasn’t full of people. Television, she decided, then had to swallow a nervous chuckle when she recognized the obnoxious, thrumming music from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  Perfect, she thought. Dead-on perfect.

  When the light went off again, a door closed, she counted to ten until she felt Jack relax beside her. Just as she counted the steps they took down the hall, in case she had to make a dash back to cover.

  They melted like shadows into the library and secured the door at their backs.

  They moved fast now, and without words.

  Penlights guided them to the glass-fronted bookshelves. There was a quiet rattle and creak that sounded like cannon fire in the silence as he opened a case. He cleared a section, passing her volume after volume of a leather-bound collection of Shakespeare. When the safe was exposed, he drew out his portable.

  He tapped his watch. Cleo flashed the twenty-minute sign before she crouched, unzipped his bag and carefully took out the items chosen from Morningside.

  He placed them in the far reaches of the small vault, behind an impressive stack of fifties, leather files and numerous jewelry cases.

  When the safe was closed again, they changed places, with Cleo reshelving the books and Jack stowing all the gear. They both jumped like rabbits when the phone rang.

  He gave her the hurry-up sign, then bolted to the door to unlock it, crack it open. Cleo was breathing down his neck when light flooded the hallway. With one bag clutched at her breast like a baby, Cleo dived behind a hunter-green leather winged-back chair. With another bag slung over his shoulder, Jack angled himself behind the door and tried not to breathe as the footsteps came briskly down the hall.

  “One thing then another,” an irritated female voice uttered. “As if I’ve got nothing better to do this time of night than take messages.”

  She shoved open the door. Jack caught the knob with his hand before it slammed into his crotch and held it there as he pressed himself into the shielding triangle.

  Light poured into the room when the woman hit the switch for the overheads.

  Rebecca spoke into his ear, warning him they were going overtime.

  He heard the housekeeper march to the desk, slap something on the polished wood. “Hope she stays away for a month. Give us some breathing room.”

  Footsteps, shuffling now, headed back to the door. There was a pause, a soft snort that might have been approval or derision, then the lights went out.

  Jack stayed just as he was, willed Cleo to do the same, as the footsteps retreated. He didn’t move an inch until he heard the quick slam of a door from down the hallway.

  Gently, very gently, he nudged the door open. In the shadowy light he saw Cleo, still huddled behind the chair. Her eyes gleamed in the dark as they met his. She rolled them wildly, then eased to her feet.

  They crept out of the library, slipped silently down the hall to the foyer. And walked right out the front door.

  “SO I’M PLAYING rabbit behind this chair, and there’s Jack doing his Claude Rains impression behind the door, and all I can see are her feet. She’s got on fuzzy slippers. Pink ones, and all I can think is I’m gonna get busted by some woman wearing fuzzy pink slippers. It’s mortifying.”

  Because she’d wanted to get horizontal as soon as possible, Cleo had given Rebecca back the shotgun position and was stretched out, as best as possible, on the floor of the van.

  “Man. Man. I need to take some alcohol internally really soon.”

  “You were great.” Jack glanced in the rearview mirror. “Nerves of steel.”

  “Yeah, nerves of jelly for a moment there. Oh hey!” She rolled herself over, eased up to a crouched position. “I got you a present, Tia.”

  “A present?”

  “Yeah.” She dug into her bag and pulled out the balled-up suit. “Great color for you. Sorta eggplant, I think. Good texture. Cashmere.”

  “Is this . . . is this hers?”

  “So what? Have it cleaned, fumigated, whatever.” Cleo shrugged as she dug in the bag again. “It’ll look better on you anyway. Just like these shoes are gonna look better on me.” She set them aside, dug in again. “Snagged you this little evening purse, Rebecca. Judith Leiber. It’s not bad.”

  “How the hell did you get all that stuff?” Jack demanded.

  “Leftover skill from my shoplifting days. I’m not proud of it, but I was sixteen and rebellious. It’s a cry for attention, right, Tia?”

  “Well . . . don’t you think she’ll notice this is missing?”

  “Hell, she’s got half the stock from Bergdorf’s in there.

  What’s one outfit? Besides, she’s going to be too busy to do a wardrobe check once she gets back and our shit hits her fan.”

  “You’ve got such a way with words.” Malachi reached down, patted her head.

  “Tell me.” And she felt the last of the residual tension fade when they drove into the garage and she saw Jack’s SUV. Gideon was back, and all was right with her world. “So, we can order pizza now, right?”

  Twenty-seven

  “THERE they are.” Tia circled the table again. On it, the three silver Fates, linked at their bases, glinted in the late-morning sunlight.

  “It almost seemed like a dream,” she said quietly. “Like a dream, last night and everything that led up to it. Or a play I somehow stumbled into. But there they are.”

  “You never stumbled, Tia.” Standing behind her, Malachi laid his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve been rock-steady, through and through.”

  “That’s a dream in itself. They haven’t been together for a century. Perhaps two. We united them. That means something. Eternal and secure. That’s what’s said about them in mythology. We have to see that these symbols of them are just that. Secure.”

  “They won’t be divided again.”

  “Spin, measure, cut.” She touched each, lightly, in turn. “What’s in a life and what it touches. These are more than art, Malachi, and more than the dollars anyone would pay to own them. They’re a responsibility.”

  She shifted the base, lifted Clotho, and thought of Henry W. Wyley. He’d held it the same way, had sought the others. And died in the seeking. “My blood and yours are twined in this. I wonder if they understood, even a little, what a long thread she wove for them. It wasn’t cut off at their deaths. It’s spun out to you and me, and the rest of us. Even Anita.”

  Still holding the Fate, she turned to him. “Threads spinning out. Two men from opposite arcs of life, starting a circle with this between them. The circle widens with Cleo and Jack, Rebecca and Gideon. And the threads spin on. If we take what these three images represent, if we allow ourselves to believe it, Anita’s part in it was meant to be.”

  “So we give her no responsibility for what she’s done?” he demanded. “For the blood she spilled, for nothing more than greed.”

  “No. The good and bad, the flaws and virtues are woven into the threads. The choices, the responsibilities are hers. And Fate always demands payment.” Carefully, Tia set Clotho with her sisters. “And eventually, always collects. I suppose I’m saying she may not be the only one to pay a price.”

  “You shouldn’t be sad today of all days.” He drew her into his arms, stroked his fingers through her sunny cap of hair. “We’ve done most of what we set out to do. And we’ll finish it.”

  “I’m not sad. But I am wondering what happens when we do finish it.”

  “When we do, the pattern changes again,” he said. He rubbed his cheek over the top of her head. �
�There’s something I should have told you before. Something I should’ve made clear.”

  She braced, shut her eyes. And the elevator doors opened.

  “Okay, break it up. We’ve got supplies.” Cleo, arms loaded with marketing bags, strode into the loft just ahead of Gideon. “Jack and Rebecca are on their way up. He’s got word on Anita.”

  “SHE ARRIVED ON schedule,” Jack relayed, “and was driven to the home of Stefan Nikos. Stefan was a friend and client of Paul Morningside, and both he and his wife are known for their art and antique collection, their charitable works. And their hospitality.”

  “It’s olive oil, isn’t it?” Rebecca plucked one of the olives from her plate and studied it. “I’ve read of him in Money magazine and Time and so on. He’s swimming in olive oil. Odd that such a homely little thing could make anyone so rich.”

  “Olive groves,” Jack agreed. “And vineyards, and the various by-products from both. He has homes on Athens, on Corfu, a pied-à-terre in Paris and a château in the Swiss Alps.” He plucked one of the olives from Rebecca’s plate, popped it into his mouth. “And security by Burdett in each location.”

  “You’ve a long reach, Jack,” Malachi commented.

  “Long enough. I spoke to Stefan last week after Tia planted the Athens seed.”

  “You might have told the rest of us,” Rebecca retorted.

  “Didn’t know if the seed would sprout. Like I said, he was a friend of Morningside. He’s not so fond of the widow. Me,” he added with a slow grin, “he likes just fine. Fine enough to do me a favor. He’s amused at the idea of stringing Anita along. He’ll keep her busy for a couple days with rumors of Lachesis and the tall, sexy brunette who’s hunting for the statue.”

  “Yeah? How am I liking Greece?”

  “You’re getting around,” Jack told Cleo. “Not much time for sight-seeing.”

  “There’s always next time.”

  “We’ll have a week at the outside,” Malachi calculated. “For the wheels to turn, to put everything else into play.” He paused, scanned the faces around him. “It has to be said, though, and may as well be said now. We could stop where we are. We have the Fates.”

  Cleo surged up from her slouch. “She hasn’t paid.”

  “Wait now, hear me out. We have what she wants. What she stole, what she’s killed for. And we hurt no one. Added to that, we’ve complicated her life considerably with the insurance claim and in moving those pieces from Morningside into her personal safe.”

  “She’d already committed insurance fraud,” Gideon commented. “We just upped the stakes. There’s no guarantee that she won’t slither out of it.” He laid a hand on Cleo’s thigh, felt the muscles vibrating.

  “There’s no guarantee of anything,” Malachi returned. “But we can be sure she won’t slither easily, not with those pieces tucked away in her library safe. And Jack’s put a bug in the ear of his police friend about her. There’s a good chance if we sit back, the system will work.”

  “Lew will bulldog it.” Jack forked up some pasta salad. “Security tapes will show the pieces on her claim form were still in place after the break-in. Her life won’t be a picnic while he’s on her. The insurance investigator’s going to take a really dim view of a claim in excess of two million when the client still has the merchandise.”

  “Maybe she pays a fine, does some community service. I—”

  Jack held up his fork to interrupt Cleo’s rant. “Just getting a visual of Anita in a soup kitchen. It’s not bad. Doesn’t play either, not for seven-figure fraud. Still, if we want her going all the way down, Bob has to tie her to Dubrowsky. If he can’t connect her, he can’t tie her to the murder, or to Cleo’s friend.”

  “And she’d skate,” Cleo said bitterly.

  “Yeah, but she could skate anyway. That’s where Mal’s coming from. With what we did, she gets hit with insurance fraud, does a little time, and her glossy society-widow image ends up smeared.”

  “Sometimes,” Tia said as everyone looked at her, “that sort of notoriety adds a sheen of its own.”

  “Good point,” Jack agreed. “If we follow through with the rest, we skin her financially, and maybe,” Jack said again, “we push her into making a mistake that locks it all down. There’s a lot of ifs in there. Moving forward puts it all back in the mix.”

  “Um.” Tia lifted a hand, then let it fall. “The Moerae, the Fates, prophesied when Meleager was only a week old that he would die when a brand on his mother’s hearth burned out. They sang his fate—Clotho, that he would be noble, Lachesis, that he’d be brave. And Atropus, looking at the infant, that he would live only as long as that brand was not consumed.”

  “I don’t get this,” Cleo began.

  “Let her finish,” Gideon told her.

  “Well, you see, Meleager’s mother, desperate to protect her baby, hid the brand away in a chest. If it didn’t burn out, he’d be safe. So her son grew up, and as a man, Meleager killed his mother’s brothers. In anger and grief at the slaughter, she took the brand out of the chest and burned it. So Meleager died. Avenging her brothers, she lost her son.”

  “Fine. Mikey stands for my brother, but that bitch sure as hell doesn’t stand for my kid. So what?”

  “The point is,” Tia said gently, “revenge is never free. And it never brings back what was lost. If we move forward only for revenge, the price may be too high.”

  Cleo got up. As Tia had done earlier, she walked over, circled the tables where the Fates stood. “Mikey was my friend. Gideon barely knew him, the rest of you didn’t know him at all.”

  “We know you, Cleo,” Rebecca said quietly.

  “Yeah, well. I’m not going to stand here and pretend I don’t want revenge, and I’m willing to pay the freight for it. But what I said before, the first time we all got together at Tia’s, that still holds. I want justice more. So, we’ve got these, and we’re rich. Big fucking deal.”

  She turned her back on them. “If people just step back from what’s right, don’t stand up for a friend when it gets tough, what’s the damn point? Any one of you doesn’t want to get dragged into this, that’s cool. No harm, no foul, especially after all this. But I’m not done. I’m not done till she’s sitting in a cell cursing my name.”

  Malachi looked at his brother, nodded. Then he laid a hand over Tia’s. “The story you told, darling. There’s another meaning to it.”

  “Yes. Choice determines destiny.” She rose, walked to Cleo. “Lives circle around, intersect. Touch and bounce off each other. All we can do is our best, and follow the thread to the end. I don’t suppose justice is free either. We’ll just have to make it worth the price.”

  “Okay.” Cleo’s vision blurred with tears. “I’ve gotta . . .” She gave a helpless shrug, then walked quickly out of the room.

  “No, let me,” Tia said as Gideon started to rise. “I could use a little crying jag myself.”

  As Tia hurried after Cleo, Malachi reached for his beer. “Now that that’s settled, and we’re all on the same page more or less, I’m going to bring up other business. Of a more personal sort.” He took a deep drink to wet his throat. “The second part of a conversation we had before,” he said to Jack. “Well then. As head of the family—”

  “Head of the family?” Rebecca gave a shout of laughter. “My arse. Ma’s head of the family.”

  “She’s not here, is she?” Malachi said evenly and bristled at having his rhythm broken. “And I’m the oldest, so it falls to me to address the matter of this engagement.”

  “It’s my engagement, and none of your concern.”

  “Shut your mouth for five flaming minutes.”

  “I’m getting another beer,” Gideon decided. “This should be entertaining.”

  “Don’t you tell me to shut my mouth, you puffed-up, pea-brained monkey.”

  “I could’ve done this out of your presence,” Malachi reminded her, and the cool tone warned of rising temper. “And saved myself the insults and abuse. And now,
I’m talking to Jack.”

  “Oh, talking to Jack, are you. And I’m to sit here with my hands folded and my head demurely bowed?” She threw a pillow at him.

  “You wouldn’t know demure if it crawled down your throat and tickled your tonsils.” He threw the pillow back, bouncing it off her head. “And after I say my piece, you can say your own. But by God, I’m saying it.”

  “Rebecca.” Jack spoke as she bared her teeth. “Why don’t you wait until he’s finished before you get pissed off?”