BRONZED BETRAYALS

by Ritter Ames

  Cass returned with his beer.

  “Since we can’t leave London,” Jack said, “I’m meeting Williams in the morning to scan street views. Want to come with?” He twisted off the bottle top and dropped it onto the coffee table.

  “You can leave London,” I said. “I’m the only one who can’t.”

  “Be sensible. You know I’m not going anywhere.”

  I ignored the thoughtful jab and scribbled on my pad. “We need to cancel both our seats on the morning flight, Jack needs to connect with the retired detective from my mother’s case and explain why we aren’t coming, and Cass has to call Max and get me off the hook for not appearing in the office for multiple command performances.”

  “Cassie has to?” Jack grinned and took another sip.

  “Yes. She can tame the Max Monster much better than I.”

  Cassie had a pad by this time and was making her own list. “I’ll take care of the foundation call to the boss, and I’ll contact the airlines too. I can also connect with the detective if you’ll give me his number since it’s just regarding timeframes and explanations rather than case info. The two of you might be awfully busy by tomorrow afternoon when you’ll need to reach him.”

  Those five-hour time differences really did impact plans.

  “You’re right.” Jack pulled out his phone. “I’m texting you his number.”

  “Good.”

  I pulled one of my curls straight. “To jump ahead to hypotheses, was Melanie tied to the other thief at the Russian’s house? Or was she simply some kind of potential frame to get me into trouble? I mean, come on. I go to a party to fake an alibi for a recovery job, then I find a dead woman in the lounge of my hotel suite. We have history. She was at the party earlier. Yes, the events appear completely separate and coincidental, but can we afford to look at them from that angle? Do we look for a connection or leave this as two separate events?”

  “If Melanie left because she saw that you were gone, maybe she thought you returned to your hotel alone?” Cassie suggested.

  “Worth considering.”

  “I did learn one thing of interest from Williams,” Jack said. “Apparently, the cameras on your floor and throughout the stairwell went on the blink for a short time tonight—exactly the same timeframe when Melanie and her killer would have entered your suite. A time that came soon after you and I reentered the club.”

  “Timms told me the ones on my floor had been disabled,” I said. “Who could have pulled that off? And why just one floor?”

  “The working theory is in-house cooperation. My personal hypothesis is having just one floor go dark made the sabotage look like a system glitch.”

  “Sounds like I need to move again,” I said, frowning.

  “Brilliant observation.”

  “I was really starting to feel at home.” I got up to pour more coffee, and Jack raised his empty bottle and his eyebrows. I held out my hand. “Yes, I’ll put it in the recycle bin.”

  “And fetch me another?”

  “I’ll bring you coffee. You want high octane or decaf?”

  “Tea?”

  “Okay, but don’t get used to this kind of service. It isn’t a regular talent I cultivate.”

  I heard him chuckling as I walked away. When I returned from brewing his cup of tea, I found him and Cassie on their phones. She was clicking on the airline’s site and Jack was speaking to someone, talking in a very loud voice. After a couple of seconds, I realized he was speaking to the detective in New York. The man was hard of hearing, and Jack always spoke louder and slower when they conversed.

  “Yes, that sounds workable for us too. Yes, absolutely.” Jack listened a minute or so and said, “Give your computer man my number and we’ll get it sorted out. Brilliant. Cheers.”

  Yet despite how agreeable his words sounded, his face looked uneasy.

  “I thought Cass was going to call him in the morning,” I said.

  “I was, but he called Jack,” she replied, finishing up her phone clicking and tossing the cell onto the tabletop. “There. Neither of you has a seat on the flight to New York tomorrow and you each have a credit. I’ll work to get the tickets reassigned when the trip is rescheduled.”

  “That may not happen anytime soon,” Jack said. “I wasn’t thinking about it still being early evening there. He called because his doctor wants him to come in for some tests this week, and he wanted to be sure he wasn’t tied up when we were available. He implied they could take several weeks.”

  “How thoughtful.” I set the teacup on the table. I hoped the detective wasn’t looking at cancer. “If I was anticipating medical tests, I’m not sure I would be thinking about scheduling time with someone on an old accident case.”

  “I’ve had the feeling from our conversations his medical problems have become a bit of his daily fare,” Jack said, leaning forward to get his tea. “Couple that with the fact there’s new interest in a frustrating case he still views as open and untried after his superiors shelved it as ‘closed’ and ‘an accident,’ and the old boy is naturally excited about helping us.”

  “You mentioned his computer guy. Are we Skyping instead?” I slid next to him on the sofa.

  “He wanted that as a backup since our trip is postponed.” Jack blew out a breath and shook his head. “Just when I think we’re getting somewhere on something, we have the rug pulled out from under us again.”

  “It’s not like we don’t have enough to keep us busy.” I turned to Cassie. “Okay, to-do list is done except for Max. Cassie, you can choose when you want to call him.”

  “Tomorrow. He’s at the ballet tonight.”

  “Max attends the ballet?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’d know that if you ever spent any time with him talking non-business things. He speaks about ballet like a religion.”

  “Wow.” I shook my head. Better her than me. “I guess I always pictured Max in a suit, focusing on whatever missing art piece has his attention. Or complaining—loudly—because I spend too much money.”

  “He talks about your spending too,” she said, grinning. “Endlessly.”

  “I’m ignoring that, and if you keep it up there won’t be a gift on Personal Assistants’ Day.” I scooped up my pad and pen. “As crazy as this sounds, which crime do we start with first?”

  “I vote for being framed for murder,” Cassie replied. “That sounds personal and could lead to future problems since this attempt didn’t pan out. Second tries, third…”

  “At least we have to hope not.”

  Jack shook his head. “From what I picked up from Timms when he interviewed me in the hotel bar, and later from Williams’s input regarding the fact they know the hotel’s cameras were tampered with, I don’t expect the police to consider you a suspect for long. But they can make it uncomfortable for you in the short term, and they will have to keep tabs on you until they get a better suspect. You did find the body, after all. Also, when you mentioned we’d attended a party that broke up because of a home burglary, Timms used the time between when he spoke with you and when I arrived at the hotel to get details about the break-in and briefed on when the police arrived at the club. Your instincts were well founded about us speaking to the inspector in charge before we left. So, Timms knows we reentered the club about half-past nine, and he said he was getting the incident report sent to him from Markham, the DI we met at the party. If they interviewed anyone at the party who knew Melanie, it will likely be widely reported she slapped a certain blonde. And when they check the digital files, which they will, Timms is likely to spot you’re the blonde who was slapped. It’s also going to look suspicious that she left almost immediately after she slapped you. All of this is conjecture on my part since Timms seemed to just want information from me and didn’t offer much in the line of quid pro quo. He didn’t ask a lot of questions about you, as if he was focused
on you for the murder and wanted confirming details from me, but he is obviously following up on the information you gave when he interviewed you.”

  “Lucky me.” I chewed my lower lip, thinking. “Which means we’re back to trying to decide if this murder was carried out by Rollie, Moran, or Colle. There are only three reasons for her to be left in my room. It was either to frame me, shake me up, or show me I can be reached at any time. None of the reasons thrill me.”

  Cassie leaned over and took my hand. Her fingers were cold. “What does instinct tell you?”

  “My gut says Rollie, simply because of the similarity to him leaving Miguel for me to discover dead in Barcelona,” I said and rubbed her fingers with my thumb. “Plus, the fact a baton was left behind.”

  “Scotland Yard is still investigating internally how Rollie escaped from custody in early February,” Jack said.

  Rollie had disappeared in Barcelona after Jack and the Spanish police captured the guns Moran’s grandson had been attempting to appropriate. A day later, after we returned to London, he somehow slipped into the country and orchestrated a move to kidnap me at gunpoint. I’d been shot before we left Spain, so I was hurt and on crutches. Jack arrived in time to take down Rollie and turn him over to Scotland Yard. Within twelve hours, however, Rollie was again nowhere to be found, and I later received confirmation from his grandfather, Moran, that one of their confederates was responsible for the successful escape from police custody.

  Moving on to my next questions, I read from my abbreviated list, “Can we link Melanie’s appearance at the party tonight through a connection to the second thief who came in behind me and took the fake bust? Or was Malicious Melanie at the party because we were on the guest list? And was the fact she slapped me the reason her killer decided to leave her in my room—so was an attendee at the party too? Or was she at the party because the killer wanted her to interact with me, and she went overboard?”

  “Or was her appearance at the party a coincidence?” Jack asked.

  “You don’t really believe that, right?”

  “No, only talking out loud. Money and power and art were like aphrodisiacs to Melanie. Her being on the Russian’s guest list makes total sense, except she isn’t supposed to be in the U.K.”

  “Thank goodness we did our twin trick,” Cassie said. “We thought we were covering your tracks in case Moran learned about the Rodin theft, and now you’re covered for the time of the murder as well.”

  “Hopefully.”

  Jack took my pad and pointed as he spoke, “I get what you’re saying about Rollie and why he could have set up the frame. And we know through video evidence from The Browning event he was at least acquainted with Melanie, but Ermo Colle could have easily tried to frame you as well. And the evidence more strongly supports Colle doing the forgeries. The mark on the Rodin points to a probable connection there, based on the evidence we have to support our theories.”

  “Yes.” I took back my list. “But if Colle is responsible for the forgeries, why would he send in a thief to steal a fake he commissioned?”

  “He wouldn’t. I was just covering bases. Unless Rollie or Moran commissioned both crimes, we can assume Colle killed Melanie and Team Moran hired the second thief,” he said.

  “You thought Melanie had thrown in with Colle,” Cassie said.

  I nodded. “Yes, when I left the Baden-Baden casino after recognizing Ermo Colle as my long-dead father, Melanie showed up soon after. But killing her would mean Colle is murdering his own side. Why would he kill Melanie?”

  “Maybe she found someone else with more money and traded sides like Simon did when he moved from being Moran’s spy to Colle’s?” Cassie suggested.

  “Possible. She was always one for cozying up to bigger money.” I’d originally had her pegged as being a Tony B collaborator, so it wasn’t a stretch when I found I could tie her to Colle. But while Jack was right about her loving power, I hadn’t known Melanie going for the older sugar-daddy-aged crowd—money or otherwise—so Colle had surprised me. Though art circle gossip told us she’d had longtime ties to Tony B, another thug who tried to kidnap me last fall, their decade difference in age kept him close enough to his prime to not surprise us that Melanie threw in with him. Especially when he probably held a rank somewhere around second lieutenant in Colle’s entourage. Until Tony B was killed in Rome two months prior, which might have left a door open for Rollie, since he was younger than her and had new potential from Moran’s enterprises. Except for the bigger question, which ultimately was who had the most money and power. That award tied back to Colle, since Moran still kept the keys to his own kingdom. Shaking my head, I held up a hand. “There are too many what-ifs here. We need to wait until Jack and Danny can go over the street videos and see who can be recognized around the party, the house, and my hotel.”

  “Right,” Jack agreed. “Since the Amazon is Rollie’s hired gun, we’ll know it was him if I see the redhead on any of the CCTV views leading to the hotel prior to the time we think Melanie was killed. We know some of the men employed by both Moran and Colle, so if it was anyone other than the Amazon, hopefully I’ll get a good enough look at the killer or killers to recognize them and know who employed them.”

  He put his arm around me. “I have to tell you, though, the frame attempt concerns me for an entirely different reason. We know Moran and Rollie have confederates in the London police system, and there’s no evidence to assume Colle doesn’t as well. I have to wonder what kind of small welcoming party you might have encountered if you had been hauled to jail.”

  “I mentioned to Timms he could get our prints from Superintendent Whatley,” I said. “Perhaps I need to connect with Whatley myself to make sure he’s apprised of the situation. I know we can’t use him as our personal watchdog, but he’s probably the one person in Scotland Yard who has the best idea about what’s going on with our project. Even if a lot of what he knows has to be conjecture.”

  “Agreed,” Jack said. “I need to talk to him on a connected matter anyway, so I’ll mention our concerns. I’ll also do a little double checking and see if I can give Whatley a bit more of the picture. We’ve kept everyone outside of our group on a need to know basis, but since we’ve seen no attributable leaks come from Whatley’s direction after he learns something from us, I think it’s worth taking a chance.”

  I put my head on his shoulder. “Well, after that scary supplemental hypothesis, and all the good news you had about how the police probably won’t think I’m a suspect but certainly could once they see the videos, I hope Melanie wasn’t killed during the timeframe when I was breaking into the Russian’s safe. Or if she was, that everyone truly believes Cassie was me in the club. It’s not the best kind of alibi when you can only say ‘no, I wasn’t killing the nasty bitch in my hotel room—because at that exact moment I was trying to decide whether or not to steal a fake Rodin bust from the safe of the couple throwing the party.’”

  Seven

  We traded ideas until Cassie was ready to pass out on the sofa. She rose and walked to the keypad by the front door, set the alarm, said the guest room was ready, and padded off to bed. Jack decided to stay. My watch read 3:23 a.m.

  Almost exactly three hours later I woke to my phone nearly vibrating off the nightstand. My eyes had difficulty focusing, but when they opened enough to see “Lincoln Ferguson,” my brain shot into the rage zone. I turned off the phone and threw it across the room.

  “Who was that?” Jack pulled me close.

  I snuggled to regain the warmth. “No one. Go back to sleep.”

  His phone began a clanging ringtone. “It’s your pet reporter,” he said.

  “What? He’s calling you because I hung up on him?”

  “Guess so.” Jack grabbed his phone and answered in speaker mode. “This is Hawkes, Lincoln. You better have a damn good reason for waking us up.”

  “Laurel’s with you?
” Lincoln Ferguson was an up and coming investigative reporter who had gotten on my trail in January and never really slowed down. He knew there was a story to be gained, and despite all of Hawkes’s and my dissuading tactics, he had only stopped stalking me after I broke his nose and promised him an interview if he stopped following me all the time. Except he didn’t really think of what he did as stalking, and I couldn’t tell him what he really wanted to know anyway, plus he had probably saved my life last month because he wouldn’t leave me alone. So, he kept my number memorized, and I pretended to ignore him. This, however, was borderline unforgivable. Sleep was precious.

  “Yes, I’m here, Lincoln. I turned off my phone because I didn’t want to talk to you.” I covered my eyes with my arm.

  “There’s a report that ties you to a death overnight,” he said.

  “And you want a confirmation? Okay, I’m not dead.”

  “I can get all the information I need from the police. I’m just checking that you’re okay.”

  Ah, now I felt about three inches tall. But I was still irritated. “I’m fine Linc. Or I died. Take your pick but let me go back to sleep.”

  “Sorry. Should have thought. Called without thinking. Sorry.”

  That’ll be the day, I thought.

  “And I wanted to see if I could get you on record about finding the body.”

  There. The response I actually expected.

  “No, Linc, no comment. Detective Inspector Timms would be the best person to contact for a statement.”

  “The public would love to hear—” His voice disappeared. I moved my arm and saw Jack putting the phone back on the nightstand.

  “Did you turn it off?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  We staggered into the kitchen a couple of hours later, and our first argument of the day started before I’d downed my coffee. Never a good idea. He naturally wanted me to stay in the flat until he could bodyguard me everywhere. Cassie and I finished off the pot, then I set the small coffeemaker brewing another round and headed for the shower. In the privacy of the bathroom, I took the opportunity to text Inspector Timms and set an early appointment for going over my hotel room. When I came out I found Cassie had left her dark red wool dress on the bed for me to wear. She knew it was one of my favorites.