Billionaires Prefer Blondes

by Suzanne Enoch

  As he thought about it, for a bare second he felt relief. Sam had probably never set off an alarm in her life. Unless she did it on purpose. So much for relief. “Where was the breach?”

  “The upstairs window at the back of the hall.”

  Fuck. “Answer the door,” he ordered, taking the stairs two at a time. Dammit, where was she?

  As his butler greeted the four policemen at the door, Richard threw aside his clothes and shrugged back into his dressing robe. All the while he undressed, he was running calculations through his mind—how much did he know, how much did they need to know, did he report the painting missing, or risk being caught in a lie later. Mainly, what would he say when they asked who else was in residence, and where the hell she might be at three o’clock in the morning?

  At the sound of feet clumping up his stairs, he shoved open the bedroom door. “What the bloody hell is going on?” he asked.

  “Your alarm went off, Mr. Addison,” one of the officers said helpfully as they topped the stairs. “Stand aside and we’ll make sure your residence is clear.”

  Weapons drawn, they made a show of checking behind each door and clearing each room on their way to the window at the back of the hallway. If they didn’t find anything, he supposed he could send them on their way and make the discovery of the missing painting once he’d tracked down Samantha. The damned rub was, if someone else had stolen from him, he didn’t want to lose any time recovering his property.

  “Look at that,” one of them said. “The pane’s pushed out, and there are scratches on the glass.”

  It was the same pane Samantha had removed earlier in the day. She’d also repaired it, though, because he’d seen the results. He sent a glance at Wilder. The butler knew not to volunteer any information, but from the look on his face, he was clearly concerned.

  “You didn’t hear anything?” the officer with the name Spanolli pinned on his shirt asked, hauling a notepad out of his pocket.

  “Not until the sirens,” Richard answered.

  “I’ll need you to make a quick check of valuables, to see if anything’s missing,” Spanolli said, nodding.

  “From the look of this place, that ain’t gonna be easy,” one of the others said, muttered agreement following that comment.

  “Certainly I’ll take a look.” Richard started to his office. The longer he could delay discovering the missing painting, the more time he would have to decide on a strategy.

  “Is anybody else staying here with you?”

  He drew a slow breath. If they watched the entertainment news, they would already know the answer to that. “Yes.”

  “Who might that be?”

  Abruptly he had another problem, though insignificant in comparison to the first. How did he describe Samantha? Girlfriend seemed a very juvenile term for someone in his mid-thirties to use; lover sounded vacuous. My precious was closer, but decidedly odd and too Lord of the Rings. “Samantha Jellicoe,” he said reluctantly, deciding on what was simultaneously the most vague and the most precise description. “She lives with me.”

  The muttering started up again. Either they knew her current business was security, or they knew her father’s had been thievery.

  “Where is she now, Mr. Addison?”

  The more information he gave, the more he would have to substantiate later. “Taking a drive, I would imagine,” he settled for.

  “At three a.m.”

  “She wanted to see Manhattan at night. I have an early meeting.” He shrugged, offering a half smile. “She gets impatient.” Taking a quick visual inventory of his office, he faced Officer Spanolli again. “No valuables missing in here that I can tell.”

  “You were in the bedroom, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s move on to the next room, then. And take your time, Mr. Addison. Your window’s definitely been jimmied. We’ve got some robbery guys on the way.”

  Splendid. More questions that he didn’t want to answer, and more questions that he couldn’t answer. He needed to call Tom Donner, his attorney. At after three a.m. and several states away, though, and given Tom’s reservations about Samantha, he needed something more substantial than “I can’t find her” accompanied by “a painting’s gone missing.” Tom would take less than a second to connect the two; if this had been three or four months ago, Richard might have come to the same conclusion himself.

  Aside from the basic fact that he trusted her, if Samantha had finally decided to take him for all he was worth and make a run for it, she wouldn’t have taken the Hogarth. In Palm Beach he had a Picasso, two Rembrandts, and a Gainsborough, among more than two dozen others. And the bulk of the collection was in his house in Devonshire, England. The Hogarth was a new find, of course, but it wasn’t the most valuable thing in his collection. Besides, he would have given it to her.

  “Mr. Addison?”

  He started. “The sitting room is next.”

  It wasn’t often that he didn’t know how to proceed. Purposely stalling wasn’t his style, either, and yet at the moment he was faced with both. When they got downstairs, he would have to notice that the painting was missing.

  Another man, this one in a dark, surprisingly tasteful suit and tie, topped the stairs. With fashionably cut dark hair and nice shoes, he could have been a cop from one of those Law and Order shows. “You Addison?” he asked, from around a well-chewed toothpick.

  “I am. And you are?”

  “Detective Gorstein. Robbery. You were asleep when this happened?” The detective gave Richard’s dressing robe an appraising look.

  “Until I heard the sirens,” Richard lied smoothly.

  Gorstein nodded. “Anything missing so far?”

  Spanolli stepped forward. “Not so far. We’ve cleared the office and one of the dens.”

  Dens. Americans.

  “They came in that way,” the officer continued, pointing his pen toward the back window. “One of the panes is missing, and it’s jimmied.”

  With a nod, Gorstein moved past them and stuck his head into the bedroom. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

  Richard stifled his annoyed frown. He was still in charge, but he would have to lead from the rear. And cautiously. This Gorstein apparently read the rag sheets. “Out. Sightseeing.”

  “Okay.” The detective leaned sideways to mutter something to one of the officers, who then trotted back downstairs. “My forensics guys are downstairs. Spanolli, get Gina and tell her to dust the sill for prints. Send Taylor to the fire escape to dust out there. Whoever broke in wasn’t Spider-Man.”

  “Yes, sir.” With everything but a click of his heels, Spanolli vanished downstairs.

  “You have an entire forensics team?” Richard asked. “This isn’t a murder.”

  “No, it’s a robbery. Maybe. But you’re Rick Addison, and you pay a lot of taxes.” Gorstein shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You were at the Sotheby’s auction tonight, weren’t you?”

  “How did you know that?” Not asking would probably have been more prudent, but he needed to know who this fellow was, and how much trouble he could cause for Samantha—and for himself.

  “You were a news bit, right after sports. You bought a couple of paintings and a big statue.”

  Fuck. “Yes, I did.”

  “They here?”

  “The paintings are downstairs, in the front room.”

  “Did you check them after we got here?”

  “No. We started our search up here.”

  “That was kind of stupid, wasn’t it?” Gorstein pursued, heading back for the stairs. “I mean, if I’d just spent a couple of million, I’d want to know it was safe.”

  Richard narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t call someone who pays a lot of taxes ‘stupid,’ detective,” he returned deliberately. Gorstein needed to remember where he was, and with whom he was dealing. And equally importantly, who was actually in charge.

  “Right. Sorry.” The detective paused on the landing to glance
up at him. “Let’s go check your paintings, then, shall we, Mr. Addison?”

  “Certainly.”

  Obviously Gorstein was of a different caliber than the officers who’d been respectfully following Richard about. And the detective was already suspicious. To what degree, Rick didn’t know yet. He needed to find out. Fast.

  Richard took a slow breath as he descended the stairs behind Gorstein. Back in Florida, Samantha had managed to earn the respect and even the trust of at least one member of the Palm Beach Police Department. Here in Manhattan, all the police had was her father’s name and reputation.

  And perhaps some unsolved high-class cat burglaries. Martin Jellicoe, however, was the one who’d been caught and found guilty of stealing a myriad of expensive pieces of art and history, and he was the one who’d died in prison. They could speculate about Samantha, but she’d never left a clue that he’d ever heard of. And he’d spent untold hours checking, just to be certain no one could ambush her with an arrest warrant. She’d exposed herself in a high-profile public life because of him, and he wasn’t about to forget that.

  “Try not to touch anything, Mr. Addison,” the detective cautioned, as they entered the downstairs sitting room.

  “I live here,” Richard returned flatly. “I would expect to find my fingerprints, and Samantha’s and Wilder’s and the two maids’, everywhere in here.”

  “I just don’t want you smudging over somebody’s else’s prints. Okay, where are the paintings?”

  “Over there.”

  The two of them made their way to the back of the couch, where one crated, cushioned, and brown-paper-wrapped painting leaned. The sight surprised him for a second time, though he wasn’t certain why. Perhaps he’d thought Sam would have reappeared and replaced the painting.

  “How many paintings did you bring home?” Gorstein asked, as he motioned at one of the officers in the doorway.

  “Two.”

  “I see one.”

  Richard glanced at him. “I can see why you made detective.”

  “Yeah. I’m real observant. How much was it worth?”

  “That depends on which one was taken. Between five and twelve million dollars.”

  “American dollars.”

  “Yes, American dollars.”

  Gorstein cleared his throat. “Okay. I want some photos of the room, and I want everything dusted for prints. Then we’ll take a look and see which painting they got.” He motioned Richard to leave the room ahead of him. “And I need another couple of words with you.”

  “I’d like to keep this low-profile,” Richard said, leading the way down the hall and into the quiet kitchen. “The last thing I want is the press reporting that I’ve been robbed.”

  The detective leaned on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Excuse me, but you didn’t seem all that surprised, Mr. Addison.”

  “Should I have fainted?” Richard asked coolly. “My house was broken into, and a dozen policemen are wandering the halls. Something was stolen. No, I’m not surprised. And I doubt you were the only one to learn on the news tonight that I made several purchases from Sotheby’s.”

  “Mm-hm. So all of Manhattan’s a suspect. What about your girlfriend?”

  That hadn’t taken long. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “She’s not here, your painting’s not here, and she’s a Jellicoe.”

  “She’ll be back, she had nothing to do with who her father was, and I would have given her the painting if she wanted it.”

  Gorstein took out the toothpick, looked at the ragged end, and then stuck it back between his teeth again. “I’m glad you’re satisfied, but your opinion doesn’t help me fill out my paperwork. And we have this contest at the station where we get points for finding perps.”

  “I appreciate sarcasm,” Richard said, “but I’d rather you find the actual ‘perp,’ as you call it, than waste time looking at someone whom I know to be innocent.”

  “Look at it from my point of view,” the detective countered. “I see on the news that you just spent almost thirty million bucks. Then I get a call that you’ve had a break-in. Then I find out your girlfriend, the daughter of a notorious cat burglar, is missing. I think, ‘Uh-oh, she vanishes on the night that those Hobart paintings c—’”

  “Hogarth,” Richard corrected, clenching his jaw.

  “‘—Hogarth paintings come home. That can’t be good.’ But you, not an idiot, haven’t even bothered to check the whereabouts of the paintings until I practically force you to do it. It doesn’t look good, Mr. Addison. Like maybe you knew it was missing, and you knew why. And I bet it was insured.”

  “I see. Then let’s stop this conversation right now, and I’ll call my attorney. I’d hate for you to have to go through your scenario more than twice.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” Gorstein pushed upright. “Use the phone in here. And don’t go anywhere else in the house until we finish with it.”

  Richard watched the detective out the kitchen door. Before he could summon relief at having a moment alone to think, another officer came in and took a seat at the table. Obviously he was there to observe and to listen. If not for Samantha, Richard would have flicked him away like a bug.

  That was the bloody crux of the problem. Until he knew where Samantha was and what her involvement might be, his hands were tied. And if he wasn’t very careful, they might very well end up handcuffed. Fuck.

  Samantha checked her watch as the taxi dropped her off around the corner from the townhouse. Three-twenty. Great. Rick was early-riser guy, so he’d be up in an hour or two. She didn’t mind losing sleep, but she preferred that it be because of sex or a good burglary. All she had was an hour in Central Park shrubbery.

  Not that she’d be able to close her eyes if she did get the chance. She knew she hadn’t just imagined Martin. He’d been there, and even though he knew she’d seen him, he’d declined a meeting. She needed to call Stoney. And she needed to figure out how much—if anything—she wanted to tell Rick.

  It would help if she knew something, herself. An unexplainable sighting and a bad feeling hardly made for anything a sane person would believe. Still, if—

  “Stop right there!”

  For a bare second she froze. One man did a half trot toward her on the sidewalk. She could handle one guy, even if the dark thing he held in one hand was a gun. What the fuck had she been doing, though, letting herself get so distracted that she hadn’t noticed anything until he was practically on top of her?

  Her heart began to pound, much-missed adrenaline flooding into her system. Samantha gave a half shrug, letting her purse slide off her shoulder and down to her wrist, where she clutched the strap. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he probably wouldn’t expect her to be proactive.

  “Why don’t you slow down there, honey?” she drawled in a soft Southern accent. “You’ll scare a girl half to death, charging up like that.”

  “Get down on your knees, hands behind your head.”

  She’d heard that lingo on every episode of COPS she’d ever watched. Her heart bottomed out and began thumping harder as she spied the glint of his badge.

  “I live right around the corner,” she said, edging toward the street and Central Park beyond. “At number twelve. With Rick Addison.”

  “Down on your knees!”

  Shit. Every muscle, every instinct, screamed at her to run. Swallowing it back, Samantha knelt. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. Spending an hour hiding in Central Park in the middle of the night might be crazy, but it wasn’t illegal. Probably.

  “Hands on your head. Interlace your fingers,” he repeated.

  “Okay. Just calm down. It’s late, and I’m tired.”

  The cop tapped the mike attached to one shoulder and said something that sounded like, “I’ve got her,” before he moved behind her and grabbed her hands.

  Whoever was receiving that call obviously knew who “her” was, which meant they were looking for her specifically.
This was very, very bad.

  A cuff clicked shut around her left wrist, cold, hard, and way too confining. “Jeez,” she muttered, fighting back panic at the thought that she’d actually been caught, “will you at least tell me what’s going on? Is Rick okay?”

  The cop pulled her right arm around behind her back, yanking the left one down by hauling on the handcuffs. In a second, both wrists were caught.

  “On your feet, miss.”

  At least he was still being relatively polite. Samantha rocked back onto her toes and then straightened her legs, standing. One hand holding the joint of the cuffs, the cop ran the other up and down her legs and arms, neck, and around her waist. He missed the paperclip in her front left pants pocket, which put her considerably closer to being at ease. With the ’clip she could be out of the cuffs faster than the cop could say “MacGyver.”

  More troubling at the moment was the fact that the cop hadn’t answered her question. “Please tell me what’s happened,” she pleaded, moving forward as he gave her a light push between the shoulder blades. “Is Rick all right?”

  “You can talk to Detective Gorstein about that.”

  “Homicide?” she asked, willing this Gorstein not to be.

  “Robbery.”

  Thank God. Rick wasn’t dead. Nobody was dead, which was an improvement over the way surprises usually went where she was concerned. The cop nudged her forward again. Obviously the guy was used to arresting thugs and drunks; if she’d wanted to, she could have knocked a heel into his groin and been gone into the night by now.

  The flash of red and blue lights reflecting on the trees and buildings greeted her as they neared the corner. That figured. Another few feet and she would have realized that something was wrong and either made herself scarce or gone in through the alley.

  She counted five police cars, a van, and an unmarked car with a light in the rear window. No ambulances and no fire trucks, but something had definitely happened—and it had happened in her—Rick’s—house.