Social Graces

by Dixie Browning

  And now he found himself picturing a half-grown boy with dark hair and eyes the color of damp Spanish moss diving beside him, while just offstage a little girl in a white tutu and red ballerina shoes tried out a few classic moves.

  Shutting off the water, he stepped out of the shower and toweled off, still picturing those long legs. She had a slight tendency to knock knees that probably bothered her, but it sure as hell didn’t bother him. Her hips flared nicely—that much he’d noticed in those jeans she wore under all the layers on top. Her breasts were barely a palmful, the nipples dark and proud, as if begging for his attention.

  Jeez, at this rate he’d need another cold shower, Mac told himself, reaching for the boxers he slept in.

  There was an alarm clock in the kitchen. It was set for seven. He left it that way and headed back upstairs. She was feigning sleep when he let himself into her bedroom, Baby Ben in hand. He let her get away with it. Morning would come soon enough, and by then he needed his mind to be completely clear.

  Or at least marginally functional.

  Downstairs again, he glanced at his watch. It was barely ten o’clock. He had plenty of time to tackle a few more of those frustrating files, knowing she wouldn’t come downstairs again before morning.

  But that would be cheating, and suddenly, he couldn’t do that any longer. “Hell of a position you put yourself in, MacBride.”

  He swore softly, checked the front door and then headed toward the back of the house. If you can sleep, lady, then so can I, he thought grimly. But the first time he heard her bed so much as squeak overhead, he’d be out of there and up those stairs so fast his feet would strike sparks on the worn old treads.

  In other words, fellow, you’re down for the count.

  Val opened her eyes moments before the clock went off and lay awake, thinking of those enigmatic scribbles she’d found on so many of the papers in her father’s files. Initials, single numbers, sums—random, seemingly meaningless words. If it was a code of some kind, he should have given her the key.

  She showered, thinking of Mac’s enclosed stall downstairs. She pictured him standing there, his naked body with its generous dusting of dark hair gleaming wetly.

  “Stop it. Just stop that!” she muttered, roughly toweling her hair before snatching up her blow-dryer.

  She had two more cottages to clean before she could get started on the files again. One had to be done this morning, the other could wait, as it wasn’t booked, but she might as well do it anyway. She needed the money, and besides, she hated having anything hanging over her head. Anything more than she already had.

  Over breakfast, which Mac had waiting for her some twenty minutes later, he announced his intention of helping her clean.

  “Last night we agreed to tackle the files together,” he reminded her. “Same thing applies to the cleaning. We’ll get it done faster and then we can come back here and concentrate on those files.”

  Last night she would have agreed to jump through a ring of fire. Today she was back in control. “I can do it and be back here in two hours. In the meanwhile, you might want to—to—” She couldn’t think of another chore that needed doing at the moment. At least none he was capable of that she could afford. She said, “My showerhead. It drizzles. I prefer a needle spray.”

  “Hard-water deposits. I’ll soak it out while we’re cleaning your cottages.”

  She slanted him a skeptical look. “You’re not going to give up, are you?” She’d counted on spending a few hours away in hopes that she might be able to restore a few of her defenses.

  “A handyman does what a handyman has to do.” He had the nerve to grin at her.

  “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll pay you half of what I get paid.”

  But nothing was fine, she thought. Her whole orderly life had been turned into a gigantic roller coaster. All she could do was hang on and hope it would eventually come to rest.

  He insisted on driving, so she got out the map Marian had given her and directed him to the road that ended in two soundside cottages. Traffic was light. They’d passed a car and two trucks, one of them towing a boat bigger than it was before Mac said, “Look, about last night. I want you to know—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. It happened, it’s finished, just forget it. That one with the white trim—that’s one of them.”

  They finished well under the allotted time. Mac insisted on doing the vacuuming and mopping floors while she cleaned the bathrooms. Four of them, with only three bedrooms. If she’d learned one thing in the brief time she’d been living in her great-grandmother’s house it was that the quality of life had little to do with the standard of living.

  “Can you think of a single reason why someone would go off and leave a vegetable drawer full of cosmetics and a kitchen garbage can half full of dead oysters?” she asked as they pulled up before her house less a few hours later. “Should I get the address from Marian and mail the woman her cosmetics?”

  “Toss the cosmetics and mail her the oysters.”

  She bit back a snort of laughter and opened the door.

  “Go sit,” Mac ordered once they were inside. The house smelled slightly of vinegar. “I’ll rinse out your showerhead and reinstall it, then I’ll fix us something to eat.”

  “Don’t spoil me,” she said, dropping wearily onto a chair.

  “Don’t tempt me.” He flashed her a quick grin as he poured the bowl of white vinegar down the drain and ran fresh water through the showerhead.

  A few minutes later he made them both sandwiches. She sat and watched him layer on cheese and pastrami while he told her about the concretions he’d left in Will’s garage, some soaked free and carefully pried apart, others still in their natural state.

  She followed him into the living room feeling spoiled and just a wee bit decadent, being waited on by a man like MacBride. He carried the tray. She carried the paper napkins.

  “Got an idea,” he said after consuming half his sandwich in three bites.

  “What, more mustard? You used half a jar.”

  “About your dad’s hieroglyphics. I don’t think it’s stock symbols, I think it’s someone’s initials. Who do you know whose initials are M.L.?”

  “Nobody. I’ve thought and thought about it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I didn’t know half the people who worked at BFC.”

  Mac had watched her eat. For a lady who probably knew her way around a six-fork table setting, she had a healthy appetite. In more respects than one, he thought, feeling his heart kick into a higher gear. She left the pickle till last. When she started nibbling on the tip, he stood and snatched up her plate. “I’ll just, uh—go put the food away. You want to wash up before we get started?”

  She avoided his eyes, and it occurred to Mac that she might even be thinking about the same thing he was remembering in intricate detail. To get them both back on track, he repeated his suspicions as soon as he rejoined her in the living room with coffee for him, hot tea for her. “M stands for Mitty?”

  “M. L., not M. S. Miss Mitty’s name is Matilda, but her last name is Stoddard. And anyway, she couldn’t possibly be involved because we knew her forever. At least since the middle eighties when BFC was incorporated.”

  “Everybody knows somebody.” For a woman he knew to be highly intelligent, she was incredibly naive. “This accountant who left, what are his initials?”

  “Hers. P. T. I thought about her, too, but I don’t remember seeing those initials.”

  They went through the names of everyone on the executive floor and a few of the lower echelon, only three of whom had been there since the beginning. Of the three, Mitty Stoddard, was gone. Frank Bonnard was dead, and that left—

  “You’re sure about Hutchinson? I know he was questioned and finally cleared, but someone ripped off all those people, and it wasn’t Will Jordan, I’d stake my life on it.”

  “It wasn’t my father, either. I’ve known him all my life.” She shook her head, muttered, “D
uh,” and then said, “Look, integrity is something a person either has or he doesn’t. It’s not a—a situational thing. If my father picked up a dime on the sidewalk, he’d look around to see if he could find who might have dropped it.”

  A dime, maybe, but several million dollars?

  Mac sighed. “Back to square one. M. L. shows up more than any other set of initials, right? So let’s see what else we can find, and this time check out the context. Remember, it doesn’t have to be someone who’s been there from the beginning, it could easily be a new hire…only not too new.”

  “Like your brother.”

  Ignoring the comment, he lifted three files from the box and placed them on the coffee table. “By the way, where did you say this friend of yours moved to when she left Greenwich?”

  “Miss Mitty? Monroe, Georgia. She has a niece there.” Val’s eyes held a warning glint, but she didn’t argue.

  “You happen to know the niece’s name?”

  “It’s Brown—Rebecca Brown. I have the phone number.”

  She could have refused to cooperate. By now she had to know that someone was going to get roughed up before they were finished. He said, “Look, if you’re determined to clear your father’s name, it’s a case of no holds barred.”

  “Holes?”

  “Holds. Don’t you ever watch wrestling?”

  She rolled her eyes, and it served as well as anything could to break the tension. She picked up a folder, spread the papers on the table and pointed to the distinctive turquoise-colored ink. “M. L. again. And there’s a date.”

  For the next few hours they went over page after page, noting context as much as what had been written across the face of the various documents. By the time Val had yawned half a dozen times, Mac was pretty sure he knew where the trail was going to end. Now all he had to do was figure out the best way to follow it, because suspicions alone weren’t enough.

  “Come on, let’s call it a night.”

  Eleven

  Neither of them bothered to pretend they weren’t going to end up in bed together. In matters concerning BFC they might be skating on thin ice over moving water, but when it came to personal matters, Val couldn’t even pretend to hold back. What had happened before—spontaneous combustion described it best—might have been ill-conceived, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want it to happen again…and again.

  “Shower’s all ready to go,” Mac told her. “If you need any help, just yell.” He stopped at the bathroom door, leaned back against the wall and drew her into his arms. It was a long time before she reluctantly stepped away.

  “You might smooth the bed. I don’t think I ever got around to making it today.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Anything else, Miss B.?” The devil lurked in his clear brown eyes. She loved it when he teased her this way.

  “Wait for me on the left side of the bed. I always sleep on the right.”

  “Who said anything about sleeping?” He leaned in for one last kiss, then opened the bathroom door.

  Laughing, she said, “Five minutes. Oh, and Mac…be naked.”

  It took her four. One minute to splash off, one to dry, one to smooth on a layer of body lotion, and one to hurry across the cool bare floors to the bedroom. By the time she opened the door she was scarcely breathing. Am I stark, raving mad? she wondered, staring at the dim pink-lit room. He had found her peach-and-black Hermés scarf and draped it over the lamp on the dresser. Lying on his back in the center of the bed, arms crossed under his head, he was grinning like a drunken satyr.

  “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” he jeered softly. She dropped the towel, darted across the floor and dived onto the bed. He caught her, laughing, and pulled her on top of him.

  Not until much later, when she collapsed in a damp heap, every nerve ending in her body still tingling, did she manage to speak. “Mine’s the superior position, you’ll notice.”

  “I noticed.” The sleepy look he sent her could easily be described as a leer. “Just try it without me and see how superior you feel.”

  “Mmm, now that you mention it, I believe further research might be called for.”

  Between sessions of serious research they managed to sleep for a few hours. Eventually Mac got up and turned off the light, saying something about a fire hazard.

  Any fire hazard, Val remembered thinking, was here in bed, not across the room on the dresser. She awoke sometime in the middle of the night with her head on Mac’s shoulder, one knee curled up over his thigh and her hand dangerously near ground zero.

  Carefully, she eased it away. She needed to go to the bathroom, and if she’d learned anything at all last night it was that Mac had a low threshold of arousal. Almost as low as her own.

  Another thing she’d learned, with decidedly mixed emotions, was that she was deeply, irredeemably in love, and it felt nothing at all like the few other times she’d thought she was in love.

  Not that love was going to prevent her from doing what she’d come down here to do. Today they were going to go over those damned files with a magnifying glass, if necessary. Mac was determined to find something he could interpret as proof of his stepbrother’s innocence, never mind that it might seal her father’s guilt for all time. That done, he would leave. Mission accomplished. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead as an Annapolis cadet she’d once dated used to quote whenever he downed one drink too many.

  Okay, he was a lover and leaver. She could handle it. “What the dickens does a marine archeologist know about criminology, anyway? Or accounting, for that matter?”

  The belligerent face in the bathroom mirror issued a reply. “About as much as an art history major with a minor in English lit.”

  Mac waited until he heard the shower running before collecting his clothes and heading downstairs. He had a feeling he was in deeper water than he was rated for. Decompression was going to be a problem, if it was even possible. One place to start was with a phone call to his hacker friend Shirley, and another one was to an old diving buddy who was currently working with the Atlanta PD Special Crimes Unit.

  He showered, dressed, placed both calls and was frying bacon when Val made the scene. The first thing he noticed was that she was wearing makeup and one of those fancy outfits that was probably supposed to look casual. White chamois pants, several loose layers of cashmere and silk, with shirttails dangling. Her hair was twisted up in a knot and she’d taken time to put on makeup.

  He could have commented, but he chose not to in case she happened to be feeling as vulnerable as he was. He could afford to allow her whatever armor she thought she needed. Hell, he might even have joined in the masquerade, only he’d left his formal wear back in Mystic. Three ties, a navy blazer and a pair of khakis that still held a crease.

  “Scrambled or fried?”

  She shuddered. “Tea and toast,” she said, and as soon as he set the food on the table, proceeded to filch bacon off his plate until he got up and handed her a plate and a fork. “Help me out here, I scrambled enough eggs for a platoon.”

  They finished breakfast, mostly in silence, and then he said, “Leave the dishes. Come on in the living room, I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  Three-quarters of an hour and half a pot of coffee later, the second of the corroborating phone calls came through. Mac had also talked to Will while Val had been showering. Now, surrounded by open files, the documents sorted in chronological order, he took the second call, allowing Val to hear his sparse responses. Her lipstick had been chewed off, and the blush on her cheeks stood out against her pallor.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Gotcha.”

  Damn, he hated this. If there was any way he could have spared her, he’d have done it, even at Will’s expense. That was a sign of just how deep these particular waters were.

  But the evidence was damning. The trail had been carefully followed and just as carefully concealed by a man who’d been clever, but far too softhearted until it was too late. Bonnard would’ve soon turne
d over the evidence, Mac was certain of it, only there hadn’t been time.

  There was no way to make this any easier for her. It never even occurred to him that she might not believe him without proof. As unlikely as it was, especially under the circumstances, a deep level of trust had grown between them. She was as aware of it as he was, even when they bickered over details.

  He pressed the off button, laid his phone aside and stared out the window, stroking his chin between thumb and forefinger. She had to know what he’d been leading up to. The only thing that had been lacking was the identity of M. L., the initials that had turned up on more than half her father’s papers.

  Finally, she said, “What?”

  “Honey, you’re not going to like this.”

  “Mac, you’re scaring me.”

  He eased her over on the sofa and sat down beside her. “Matilda Lyford. Did your friend ever tell you she’d been married?”

  She stopped breathing, shaking her head slowly. “Miss Mitty, you mean,” she whispered.

  “In eighty-seven, Matilda Stoddard married Vernon Lyford. The marriage took place in Morganton, West Virginia, and lasted approximately three weeks. Lyford was jailed on a check-kiting scam. Meanwhile, the bride moved gradually northeast, spending eighteen months working with a mortgage bank in Cumberland, Maryland, and another few months as a receptionist with a medical insurance firm in Philadelphia. Both times she left under—I guess you might say under a cloud. By the time she arrived in Greenwich, she’d reverted to her maiden name, although there’s no record of her ever having it legally changed. For that matter, there’s no record of a divorce.”

  “Mitty Stoddard,” Val whispered.

  Mac nodded. “Honey, I’m afraid your Miss Mitty wasn’t all she pretended to be. She’d be how old when she married, late fifties?”

  Val nodded, her eyes suspiciously bright. “You never met her, but Mac, she was everyone’s idea of the perfect grandmother. Gray hair, lace-up shoes, plastic-rimmed bifocals. Back when everyone else was wearing granny glasses, I remember hearing her say that they were fine for the young, but not for any woman past middle age. She went to church. She—she—” Swallowing hard, she shook her head and whispered, “I can’t believe it.”