Dead Certain

by Mariah Stewart

  Amanda opened the first of the boxes she’d brought in from her car just hours earlier and began unwrapping the pottery. While not the most expensive of the potteries she carried, the Weller would bring a good price—maybe even a great price. American art pottery had become increasingly popular over the years, and the pieces she’d managed to get her hands on were far from run-of-the-mill. But there’d still be a long way to go to make up for what Derek’s latest lapse of judgment had cost them.

  Well, she sighed as she carefully sat a tall pale green vase on the counter, she’d deal with Derek later. Right now she was going to do her best to start making up the deficit. One sale at a time.

  “This vase is really spectacular.” She slid her glasses on as she slipped into her best sales mode. “It’s signed by J. Green, one of Weller’s most sought after artists. Now, note the lovely details . . .”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The road wound through the night, following the curve of the river. Headlights illuminated no farther than the next slow twist. Amanda hated this dark stretch of road between her home in Broeder, the town that just skirted St. Mark’s Village, and the local college, where she had given a lecture that night: How a Stalker Changed My Life—and How to Make Certain It Doesn’t Happen to You.

  She could never drive this road without remembering those nights more than a year ago when headlights would appear out of nowhere to blind her in the rearview mirror, making the drive home a nightmarish ride into hell.

  Her eyes flickered from one mirror to the other, checking behind her. Always checking behind her, even though she knew for a fact that the man who had stalked her for those six terrible weeks last year was safely behind bars. She’d been there on the first day of his trial, fully prepared to testify against him in open court, but at the last minute, his attorney had convinced him to accept the deal being offered by the D.A. Eight months in the county prison, three years’ probation, and no contact of any kind with his victim. Ever. After what he’d done to Amanda, a jury would give him way more time behind bars, his attorney had insisted. Her stalker had finally agreed.

  But Archer Lowell had gone to prison still not understanding just what exactly he’d done wrong. Amanda had seen it in his eyes. He had really believed that they’d shared a special relationship. That his infatuation with her was mutual. That they belonged together, would be together. And God help anyone who failed to understand that. Including Amanda herself.

  She turned into her drive, eyes still drifting to the dark road that now lay behind her. Of course she knew she was safe, knew that no one was after her anymore, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself.

  In the months since Lowell’s trial, Amanda had all but reinvented herself. The once-timid woman who had for years made her partner bid for her at auctions now spoke to women’s groups and high school health classes and the local civic association about how to recognize when you’re being stalked and what to do about it. She resumed the martial arts classes she’d taken years ago. She bought herself a gun and learned how to use it. She met monthly with a group of other stalking victims and wrote an occasional column called Warning Signs for a county newspaper. In spite of all she’d done to make herself strong and confident—all she’d done to take charge of her life—she just couldn’t seem to break that one habit. She was constantly looking over her shoulder.

  She parked her car next to the well-lit walk and hurried across the cobblestones to the front steps of her narrow three-story Victorian that had once housed mill workers.

  At her approach, sensors on either side of the porch activated, and beams of light flooded the entire front of the house. No shadows where someone could hide. No dark places that could conceal someone bent on mischief.

  She scooped the mail from the box near the front door, then unlocked the door and stepped into an already brightly lit entrance, glancing at the alarm system that had blown out the fuses in the old house each time she’d attempted to activate it. Timers had turned on lights in the foyer, the living room and the small hall that led back to the kitchen. Her thoughts were still with the group she’d addressed earlier that evening. It was clear to her that at least one—possibly two—of the women in attendance were dealing with unwanted attention. Amanda had made note of their names and would give them a call before the end of the week to see if she could offer some more personal advice.

  The flashing red light on the answering machine caught her eye, and she absently hit the play button while she sorted through the mail. The first call was a hang-up, nothing too out of the ordinary. She glanced at the caller ID window. Unknown number.

  One of those telemarketing thingies that dial your number by computer, most likely. She waited for the second message to begin. More of the same. She really needed to get on the National Do Not Call Registry.

  The third began to play. Not an immediate hang-up—heavy breathing this time.

  Her hands began to shake.

  She placed the mail in a neat stack on the table next to the machine and backed slowly to the stairs, where she sat on the bottom step and forced herself to take a long deep breath.

  Of course it’s a telemarketer. Or a prankster. A kid’s idea of a stupid joke. Not funny. Definitely not funny. But it’s not what it had been before. Archer Lowell is in prison and does not have this number. He knows that if he tries to contact me in any way, additional charges will be brought against him, his sentence extended. He agreed to that. This isn’t him.

  Don’t blow this out of proportion, she cautioned herself. It could be nothing more than a mistake. A misdial. Someone’s probably annoyed as hell that he—or she—has gotten the same wrong number three times in a row.

  Amanda stood and started for the kitchen, nearly jumping out of her skin when the phone began to ring again. She leaned against the doorway, holding her breath, waiting for the machine to pick up the call.

  “Manda, it’s me, Der—”

  She grabbed the phone. “Where are you?” she barked into the receiver.

  “I’m home. I told you I’d be home on—”

  “We need to talk, Derek.”

  “I know, I know. How about breakfast in the morning? We could meet at that little B and B you love out on the river road, and we could—”

  “Now, Derek.”

  “Manda, it’s almost eleven, I just got in from an ungodly flight, and—”

  “I don’t care if you swam home. We have a serious problem. I’ve had it with this crap, Derek. It’s no way to run a respectable business. It’s irresponsible, it’s—”

  His sigh whispered against her ear. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s get it over with tonight so that we can move on tomorrow.” Derek’s voice was cheerless and held more than a trace of resignation. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” Her nerves already on edge from the hang-up calls, Amanda resisted the urge to slam the receiver onto its base.

  She went into the kitchen and turned on the light, eyes darting around the room. Nothing amiss.

  Tea would soothe, she told herself, and went about the process of filling the teakettle and hunting for the box of Morning Thunder that Derek preferred. Setting out two cups. Slicing lemon. Anything to avoid thinking about what she was going to say to Derek and how she was going to say it.

  She still wasn’t certain that she wasn’t going to tell him it was time to dissolve the partnership. That maybe they both needed to move on. A last resort, to be sure, but exactly what she’d threatened the last time he’d done something stupid that had cost them a lot of money and cast a shadow on their reputation.

  The kettle whistled and she turned it off, then looked out the window on the driveway side of the house, expecting Derek’s Lexus to pull in at any minute. She glanced at the clock.

  11:27. He’d called at 10:42.

  She went back to the foyer and separated the junk mail from the bills, read through two department store circulars, and thumbed through a magazine.
Gathering the junk pile, she returned to the kitchen and looked up at the clock.

  11:43. It had been an hour since Derek called. For Derek, a mere hour late was early.

  Regardless of how good his intentions might be, Derek never seemed to manage to get anywhere on time. He was distracted so easily. On the way to his front door, he would pause to rearrange the flowers in a vase on the sideboard as he passed through the dining room. He would turn on a light in the living room and straighten the pillows on the sofa. He might check the mantel for dust, then call up the steps to his longtime companion, Clark Lehmann, to announce that the mantel needed dusting and engage in a discussion over whether the cleaning woman should come two days a week instead of one. He would check the messages on the answering machine and fuss with a pile of magazines.

  It drove Amanda insane.

  “He could have walked here by now,” Amanda grumbled as she reached for the phone on the wall and dialed his cell phone. When there was no answer, she called his home number.

  “Clark? Would you please put Derek on the phone?”

  Clark paused briefly before asking, “Isn’t he there with you?”

  “No. Look, I understand why he would rather deal with this in the morning, and at this point we might as well. So just tell him never mind. We’ll meet for breakfast, as he’d suggested.”

  “Amanda, Derek left here right after he spoke with you. Not more than five minutes after he hung up.” Clark’s voice clouded with uncertainty. “He should have been there a long time ago.”

  “Well, he’s not here. Where could he have stopped between there and here?”

  “At this hour on a Monday night? I can’t think of any place that’s even open around here past ten.”

  “There’s that bar out near Denton Road.”

  “We haven’t gone there in months. He would never go into a place like that alone, and he wouldn’t have gone there tonight. He’s exhausted from the trip and he wants to get this over.”

  “Well, maybe he stopped at someone’s house.”

  Clark fell silent, then said, “I guess there’s a chance that he could have stopped at David and Robbie’s. That’s on the way to your place. Though it’s unlikely. I mean, it’s a weeknight, for crying out loud. You just don’t pop in to see someone at eleven-thirty on a weeknight. Of course, there’s always the chance that he stopped in the center of town to watch the fountain.”

  “The fountain?” Amanda frowned.

  “Oh, haven’t you seen the new fountain in the park? We drove past it today. It’s lovely. And Derek did so love the fountains in Italy. . . .” Clark sighed. “I know, I know. He’s so damned flighty sometimes. I know it makes you as crazy as it makes me, but he just doesn’t seem able to help himself.”

  “This was important, Clark.”

  “I know, sweetie. And I know that you just want to kill him sometimes.” Clark’s voice softened. “Amanda, he’s really, really upset over this pottery business.”

  “As upset as he was last year when he bought that samurai sword?”

  “Oh, worse. Much worse. He knows he blew it.”

  “Big-time. He wiped us out and then some.”

  “He can make up the cash. You know I’ll cover it.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Clark, but you just can’t keep bailing him out.”

  “Of course I can. And I will. Besides, I feel responsible. I’m the one who told Ahmed—”

  “Ahmed? Ahmed who?”

  “I didn’t get his last name.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. How stupid do you have to be to buy something in Italy—where so much black-market activity takes place—from a guy who identifies himself only as Ahmed?

  “Anyway,” Clark continued, “Ahmed had this goblet to sell. I told him Derek was an antiques dealer. I mean, Ahmed was telling me about his business, how he had so many high-end pieces, so of course, I told him about Derek. And, well, one thing just led to another . . .”

  “Right. I can see how this happened.” This was a lie, and Clark recognized it as such. Amanda would never purchase something without the proper paperwork.

  “Just be gentle with him,” Clark pleaded. “He knows he’s a screwup.”

  “I’m not making any promises this time. Didn’t it occur to him that something like this—buying an unknown piece with no provenance from an unknown source in a foreign country—could land his ass in prison?”

  “Oh, God, don’t say that.”

  “Don’t either of you realize that dealing in stolen antiquities is a crime?” She ran her fingers through her closely cropped dark hair. “This isn’t a matter of Derek simply being flighty. It’s about buying and selling something that was stolen. It’s about—”

  “We didn’t know it was stolen, Manda.”

  “The authorities may find that very difficult to believe. The piece has absolutely no documentation. No chain of ownership, no record of its excavation.”

  There was a long silence. Finally, Clark asked in a shaky voice, “Do you really think he—we—could get arrested?”

  “I’m doing everything I can to avoid having that happen. I did manage to make contact with someone who is going to do her best to help us. I’m having the piece picked up tomorrow afternoon by courier and delivered to a friend who is in the Middle East right now. She’ll return it to the museum she believes it was stolen from.”

  “Who is this friend? Someone you can trust?”

  Swell time to start thinking about who you can trust, she was tempted to say. Biting her tongue, she replied, “Iona McGowan’s sister.”

  “The archaeologist. Yes. Excellent move, Amanda.” Clark’s mood brightened. “There. See? It’s all going to work out.”

  “With any luck. But there’s still the potential damage to our reputation if this ever gets out—after all, this wouldn’t be the first black mark on our business—and we’re still out sixty-five grand.”

  “No one is going to know, and I told you, I’ll make up the loss. I made a killing in gold futures during last year’s boom. It’s going to be fine.” Clark paused, then added softly, “Just don’t hurt him, Manda.”

  “I’m not making any promises.”

  “Wait! I have a call waiting coming in. I’ll bet it’s Derek. Hold on, Amanda.”

  Amanda paced the length of the small kitchen until Clark came back on the line.

  “Was it Derek?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” He sounded confused. “The number came up as Derek’s cell, but there was no one on the line. I could hear something, like . . . some sound. Rustling. Weird. I couldn’t place it. I said his name over and over, but he didn’t answer.”

  “Look, let’s hang up. Maybe he’s trying to call you. Maybe his phone battery is low. Maybe he’s had a flat or some kind of car trouble, and he’s trying to call home. You know how unmechanical Derek is.”

  “Wouldn’t know a chain saw from a jigsaw,” Clark agreed. “I’ll tell him to come home, that you said tomorrow is soon enough. And thanks, Manda. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Clark. I love you both.” Amanda added softly, “Welcome home.”

  An uneasy feeling swept over Amanda as she walked to the front door and peered out. Nothing but darkness all around. The lights on the neighbors’ homes had long gone out. Not unusual. Broeder pretty much closed down by ten every night. She opened the front door, stepped onto the small porch, looked out into the pitch-black midnight sky, and thought about what she’d say to Derek over breakfast the next day.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “Manda? You have to come. . . . Oh, my God. Please,” Clark sobbed into the phone at eight the next morning.

  “Clark, what is it? What’s happened?” A chill ran up Amanda’s spine. “Have you heard from Derek?”

  His reply was unintelligible.

  “Clark? What’s happened?”

  “He’s dead, Manda. Someone shot him,” Clark whispered hoarsely. “Oh, God, someone’s killed De
rek.”

  “What?!” She dropped into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Derek is dead. He’s been shot. The police found him in his car—”

  “Dear God.”

  “He’s dead. Just like that. He’s gone.”

  “Clark, is anyone with you?”

  “The police . . . the police . . .” He hiccupped. “Please come. Please.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this. It can’t be real. . . .

  This can’t be happening. How could Derek be dead?

  She tried to stand on shaking legs, but finding she could not, sat back down and began to weep great wracking sobs of disbelief. Then, without realizing she was doing so, she gathered her keys and walked out the door, got into her car, and drove. A half-hour later, she was almost startled to find herself parked outside of the house Derek and Clark had shared for several years. She had no recollection of driving.

  Still crying, she got out of the car and ran to the front door, barely noticing the police cars that were parked nearby.

  “Clark,” she called as she let herself in.

  “Manda, thank God you’re here!” Clark fairly flew from the living room to embrace her, then dissolved into tears all over again. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do . . . ?”

  “You’re the business partner?” A tall, dark-haired police officer stood as she entered the living room, her shaking arm draped over Clark’s shoulder.

  “Yes.” She sat on the edge of the sofa and guided Clark onto the cushion beside her. “Amanda Crosby.”

  “Chief Mercer. Broeder Police.”

  “Of course.” She nodded. She’d thought he looked familiar. She’d seen him around town, but she’d had no dealings with him. He’d only been in the job for several months. “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “Mr. Lehmann called early this morning to report that Mr. England had gone out last night around eleven. He was on his way to your home, is that correct?”