He took a deep breath and attempted to calm himself. Maybe the young man had just popped out for something—he’d done it before, even though he’d been warned never to leave the premises unattended during working hours.
Pushing the bell again, he rapped sharply on the glass with a quarter.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Frazer?”
Jonathan whirled, startled. “Detective Haaren!”
“Is there a problem?” she repeated, her face hard and expressionless. She hated to be taken for a fool and so far as she could see, this man had done nothing but.
“I don’t know…” He turned to look back into the store, hoping to see Beaumont appear. “I’ve just come back from lunch and I’ve discovered that the store is locked.” He rattled the handle for emphasis.
She continued to stare at him, saying nothing.
“Well, Beaumont should be there.” He lowered his voice. “I was wondering if there’d been a robbery, or something.”
Margaret Haaren looked back over his shoulder, and Detective Pérez immediately stepped out of the unmarked car.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mr. Frazer’s store appears to be locked, and he’s concerned there may have been a robbery. Anything on the radio?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you have a key, Mr. Frazer?”
He handed it over without a word.
Detective Pérez turned the key in the lock and stepped inside, followed by Haaren and Frazer. Pérez walked swiftly around the store, his gun drawn, moving surprisingly quietly for so large a man. He returned moments later, placing the gun back in its holster, shaking his head. “There’s no one here. But I did find this on the desk in his office.” He handed Frazer the single sheet of paper with his name scrawled across the top. Jonathan read it aloud, and then glanced at Haaren. “This man thinks I’m a fucking idiot,” he said angrily.
“It’s not a nice feeling is it, Mr. Frazer?”
The tone of her voice caught his attention. “Is there something the matter, Detective Haaren?” he demanded, transferring his anger onto her.
“I think it’s you who has been taking me for a fool, Mr. Frazer. You told me you purchased the mirror—the cause of all your recent problems—at auction in London. That does not appear to be the case. Neither the auction house nor the shipping company have any record of ever having dealt with you.”
“That’s nonsense, absolute crap!” he snapped.
“You will, of course, have all receipts and invoices from both sources then?” she demanded.
“Of course! And I must say I find your attitude and your suggestions offensive.”
“Just show me the proof, Mr. Frazer, and I will apologize,” Margaret Haaren said, suddenly turning away.
“I’ll get them now,” he snapped.
“Is there another way out?” Margaret asked quietly, as Frazer disappeared behind the swinging bookshelves.
“Not that I could see. Anyway, where’s he going to go?”
They wandered around the main showroom, not talking. The detective had warned Pérez about the security monitors and they were both aware that Frazer could see them, although they weren’t sure if he had an audio pick-up. Five minutes later, Margaret Haaren looked at her small-faced wristwatch and glanced at Detective Pérez. “How long does it take to find an invoice?”
They had both started towards the office, when the section of shelving swung back and Jonathan Frazer, wide-eyed and white-faced, stepped out.
“Let me guess, Mr. Frazer.” Detective Haaren smiled. “You can’t find them at the moment. They’ve been misfiled, misplaced.”
“No, no.” He shook his head violently. “They were in the front section of the filing cabinet. But they’re gone,” he said wonderingly. “They must have been stolen!”
“How very convenient,” Detective Pérez said. He glanced at Haaren. “We often have people stealing invoices from filing cabinets, there’s a big market in stolen invoices.” He took Frazer by the elbow and steered him towards the door. “I think it’s time for a trip down to the precinct for a somewhat more serious conversation.”
“Do I need to call my lawyer?”
“Well,” Margaret Haaren said, “what do you think?”
26
IT HAD been easy, pathetically easy.
Robert Beaumont parked on a side street and walked past the Frazer house twice just to make sure that neither Jonathan nor Celia Frazer’s cars were in the drive. Finally, he boldly walked right up to the front door and rang the bell long and insistently. Then, with his hands folded together in front of him, he turned his back on the door and looked out over the expanse of manicured garden. Like everything else about Jonathan Frazer, it was unspectacular, conservative.
Robert Beaumont had no appreciation of gardens, but he appreciated land and property prices and Frazer’s property was certainly in the big leagues. The man was obviously doing very well for himself. And he did it by paying his assistants a lousy five hundred a week. If Beaumont needed an excuse for extracting a few things—which he didn’t—he had it now. Frazer wouldn’t even miss them, fuck him. And he deserved everything coming to him.
The door clicked open behind him and he turned, smiling automatically, until he discovered that it was Emmanuelle, and the smile turned genuine.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he murmured, bowing elegantly. When they had first met in Paris, she had mocked his too-elegant old world manners.
“Robert,” Manny said, blinking sleepily. She had been out until the early hours of the morning, and she’d drunk far too much and smoked a little more than she should. She’d been dead to the world until the persistent jangling of the bell had awoken her. Idly wondering where the housekeeper was, she pulled on a long candy-striped T-shirt that came down past her knees and padded down the stairs. She peered out through the fish-eye spy hole, but the caller had his back to her. She glanced at the clock—two in the afternoon—and debated ignoring the caller. Of course … it might be the police. She looked out through the spy hole again and noted the caller’s short haircut and neat suit. Probably a Jehovah’s Witness she decided, as she turned the lock and swung back the door. She discovered then that the suit was far too smart and far too expensive for a Witness. It took her a second to recognize the smiling young man. “Robert,” she said, digging the heel of her hand into her eyes, and smothering a yawn. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled ruefully and ran his fingers back through his slick coal-black hair. “Business I’m afraid.” He showed Manny the key ring he had taken from Robert’s desk drawer. “You father asked me to come out and collect a few things from the guesthouse.”
“Sure. Come on in.”
She stood back and allowed him to walk past her into the hallway. He caught a hint of her perfume—now heavy and musky with sleep—and the sour, sharper odor of stale alcohol.
“You were partying I take it,” he murmured, glancing surreptitiously around the hall.
“I did have a late night, or an early morning,” she admitted, and then added philosophically, “and now I’m paying for it, I’m afraid. And I’ll pay for it tonight when Dad gets home.”
“He doesn’t know what you got up to in Paris then?” His dark eyes caught and held hers.
A touch of color appeared on her cheeks and then she threw back her head and laughed aloud. “No, thank God, and don’t you even think of telling him. It’s our secret remember?”
“Mademoiselle!” he said in mock outrage. He pressed his hand to the flat of his chest over his heart. “It is—as the saying goes—more than my job’s worth.”
“Have you got time for a coffee?” she asked, moving past him.
“Not really, but maybe I’ll have a small one.” He watched her move down the hall, the realization that she was completely naked beneath the T-shirt exciting him. He had seen her naked many times when they had been lovers, but that had been a long time ago, and he wondered if he had time … Shaking his head from side to side, grinni
ng at the very idea, he followed her down the hallway into the kitchen.
“How are you enjoying working for my dad?” she asked, as she pulled open cupboard doors looking for coffee. Where was the housekeeper? “I can’t find a thing in this place,” she admitted. “I’m sure the housekeeper rearranges things every week to make herself indispensable.”
Robert went to stand by the back door looking out over the back garden, across the paved patio and down through the trees to where the edge of the guesthouse was just visible. “Your father is … well, he’s fine really. I don’t see him often enough to form any opinion. The store isn’t really his main business as you know, and despite the economy, we’re ticking over nicely I think. There aren’t many walk-in customers. Most of the business is down to our list of special clients.”
“You always had the trick of not answering my questions.” Manny glanced over her shoulder and grinned. “Come on, be honest: what’s he like to work for?” She suddenly pulled out the coffee. “Success!”
“He’s a bit of a—how do you say?”
“Robert, your English is better than mine, so don’t give me any of that French ‘how do you say’ shit.”
Beaumont laughed. “It was your sense of humor that first attracted me to you, you know that, don’t you? Anyway, your father is too picky. He is old-fashioned, slow, unimaginative, and uninventive. How he has survived in this business so long eludes me.” He was watching Manny’s reflection in the window and saw the smile fade from her lips, and realized that he had gone too far. “And yet,” he added brightly, “just remember, I am working for him, so if there is a last laugh going around, he has it.” He suddenly changed the conversation. “Is that the guesthouse down there?”
Manny glanced over at him and nodded. “That’s it. Mom hates it, she wanted it as her personal gym,” she added. “She hates the very idea that Dad turned it into a workroom and storage area. She had a landscape architect come in and gave them specific instructions to hide it. They planted the trees and bushes. Eventually they’ll screen even the small corner of the guesthouse you can see.”
Robert glanced at his watch. “I’ll tell you what. While you’re preparing the coffee, I’ll go on down and see if I can find the few things you father asked me to get for him.”
“Sure. I’ll give you a call when it’s ready.”
Robert opened the back door and stepped out onto the patio. There was a rich scent of flowers and herbs in the still air. Fall in Los Angeles: eighty degrees in the sun and flowers were still in bloom.
First the guesthouse, and then a quick cup of coffee. The thought of it appealed to his sense of irony. It was another way of thumbing his nose at Frazer. Then he’d drive straight to his mother’s, pick up some clothes and head to the Burbank airport, grab a last minute ticket to somewhere, anywhere—Colorado, Arizona—just somewhere, out of state. All nice and neat and effective. It was a pity that he didn’t have a little more time: he would have enjoyed taking Manny Frazer to bed again, to make love to her. No, not that. They had never made love. It had always been a far baser emotion. It was lust, pure and simple and they had fucked. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate insult: take Frazer’s goods, drink his coffee, and fuck his daughter on the same day? It was a nice idea; however, discretion being the better part of stupidity, perhaps not now …
His first shock came when he realized that the guesthouse was bigger than he’d first thought. There was no way he was going to be able to conduct anything like a proper search in the twenty or thirty minutes he’d allotted himself. He’d just have to count on striking it lucky.
He got his second shock when the key he’d taken wouldn’t fit the lock fixed to the surprisingly crude-looking door. He stood, looking stupidly at the hasp padlock, and then turned the keys in his hand to read the names on their sides. None of them matched. Well, he hadn’t come this far for nothing …
* * *
MANNY WAS SURPRISED to find Robert back so quickly. “Get what you came for?”
He spread his hands in a typically French expression, his head tilted to one side. “I can’t get in.” He held up the key ring. “None of the keys fit the lock.”
“Oh, he’s given you the wrong key ring,” she laughed. “The locks were changed after … after the accident,” she added, the smile fading from her lips. “He’s been so addled lately he’s probably forgotten.” She plucked a key ring from its hook behind the door and handed it to him. “It’s one of the new keys on that ring, but I’m not sure which, you may have to jiggle it a bit.”
“You are an angel,” he smiled, clutching the key ring and heading out the door, moving quickly now, eager to make up for the time he’d lost. Ten minutes; he’d give himself ten minutes and not a second longer. He was looking for small, highly portable items of worth. And, of course, the mirror. That was the prize.
27
THE THIRD key on the ring opened the lock, and he stepped into the dim, musty interior of the guesthouse and pulled the door closed behind him.
Afternoon sunlight shafted in through the windows and the dusty skylights, catching the silently whirling dust motes, glinting off the wood and metal, glass and leather piled high around the room. There was a long workbench running along the length of one wall. Beaumont moved his way swiftly along it, figuring that this was where Tony Farren would have been working on pieces destined for the store in the immediate future. Valuable pieces. He was surprised at the disarray. He found nothing immediately. He looked around the room, large items of furniture placed at very odd angles. Where were the objets d’art, the pocketable expensive accessories?
“Merde,” he whispered.
He had been stupid, why had he thought that the guesthouse would have been laid out like the store, with everything on display? He should have taken the goods from there and now it was too late. Moving swiftly, he made his way down through the center aisle, but everything here was too big, chairs, tables, ugly ornaments, clear bags containing throws and cushions piled high on either side. There was obviously a fortune stored here, but none of it interested him. Where was the mirror he had heard Frazer talk about? At one point the center aisle had been blocked and he had to retrace his steps around by the walls back to the door. Standing with his back to the door he looked around the room for a last time, cursing at his own stupidity.
He had missed it the first time round, because he had turned right at the door to follow the bench, but there, directly in front of him was an opening into the center aisle. He could see a chaise … and the mirror.
Robert Beaumont wove his way through the piled up artifacts, realizing that this was what had blocked up the center aisle. A clearing had been created in the center of the room, a leather chaise placed facing the huge mirror. Beaumont walked right up to it and grinned, and his reflection, shabby, twisted, and distorted by the dirty glass, leered back at him. “Merde,” he whispered again. This was not his lucky day; there was no way he was sticking this mirror in his pocket. When Frazer and the detective had been talking about it, he had formed the impression that it was a small object, probably jeweled or something like that, but he’d never imagined this monster. Craning his head, he looked up, trying to gauge its height: no wonder it had killed Tony Farren when it had fallen on him, it must weigh a ton.
When he looked down again, Emmanuelle Frazer was standing behind him.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised a finger to her lips, shaking her head. He was about to turn when she pointed her index finger at the dirty glass.
With a smug grin, he folded his hands across his chest, not thinking of his fine suit now, and he turned back to the glass, concentrating on the image in the mirror.
Without saying a word, Emmanuelle lifted the long T-shirt over her head, holding it in front of her body, barely covering her breasts and groin for a few tantalizing moments, before allowing it to fall to the floor.
Beaumont felt his breath catch in his throat.
She was even more beautiful tha
n he remembered, and he felt himself becoming immediately aroused. He reached out and brushed his hand across the mirror, attempting to wipe it clean at face level—although her body was clearly reflected in the glass, her face was smudged and in shadow. Through the dirty glass, it looked as if Manny had a thick head of hair. His hand came away filthy, and he fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief, his eyes still locked on the glass, roving over the reflected woman’s body. It had filled out a little since he had seen it last; her breasts were fuller, heavier, though her nipples seemed smaller than he remembered. Her stomach was slightly rounded too, and her groin was now covered in a thick mat of hair, whereas formerly she completely depilated her entire body, leaving her skin soft, silky, and smooth.
With his breath stuck somewhere at the back of his throat he watched Manny run her hands down her body, slowly caressing herself, catching and cupping her breasts, fingers pulling and tugging gently at her nipples. She brought her right arm across her body, her hand pressing itself flat to her left breast, her forearm across the nipple of her right breast. Her left hand moved down across her rounded belly, fingers splayed, fingers probing deep into the thick hair.
With his right hand, he reached for his belt, fingers fumbling with the buckle. His left hand went to the mirror again, rubbing at the grimy, greasy surface with the handkerchief.…
The shock that lanced through his system was like an intense orgasm. His heart was pounding, his breathing ragged as he rubbed at the glass, almost feeling the touch of her skin beneath his fingers, moving down to brush the silk handkerchief across her reflected breasts.
It was a game now. An intensely erotic game, voyeurism taken to another degree. She was behind him, he could almost feel the heat radiating off her body, could smell the heavy musk of sex in the dry air. And yet he wouldn’t touch—not yet anyway. That was part of the game.
He was stroking himself now, a faintly ridiculous figure with his pants down around his ankles, his eyes fixed on the mirror.
Manny’s head was thrown back, the smooth column of her throat taut, nostrils flaring, lips wet and parted as her fingers worked deep inside her.
Mirror Image Page 11
