Partners in Crime (Anne Stuart's Bad Boys Book 4)

by Anne Stuart

  Originally Published May 1988

  Electronic Edition Copyright 2015 by Anne Stuart

  http://anne-stuart.com

  E-book and Cover Formatted by Jessica Lewis

  http://authorslifesaver.com

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  About Anne Stuart

  Chapter One

  Alexander Caldicott yanked off his tie and sent it sailing across the room. It was supposed to land on the lumpy double bed but it fell short, ending up on the stained wall-to-wall carpeting. An ignominious fate for Brooks Brothers’ best silk knit tie, and Alexander didn’t give a damn. He rolled up the sleeves on his Egyptian cotton dress shirt and sank down in the one chair the sleazy hotel room had to offer. The chair wobbled beneath him, threatening to collapse under Alexander’s well-muscled one hundred and seventy-five pounds, but then held still.

  Alexander, better known as Sandy, cursed out loud, a solemn, profane curse that was more at home in the Princeton Pike Sleep-a-While Motel than silk ties and Egyptian cotton shirts and a burnt-out lawyer named Alexander Caldicott. It was the worst day in a long line of miserable, depressing days, and even the thought of the Canary Islands wasn’t enough to cheer him. It would be more of the same. More forced camaraderie from his fellow man at play, more casual, careful sex from the determinedly attractive female of the species. His travel agent knew just the sort of thing he liked, and had dutifully provided it year after year, with only the settings changing.

  But Sandy was sick of it. Sick of hearty friendships from people he’d never see or hear from again, sick of instant relationships that never lasted. He was bored with his apartment in New York, wary of his family in New Jersey, dreading autumn, tired of his MGB, frustrated with his law firm, and sick unto death of everything in his life, up to and including the latest professional triumph that had culminated just that afternoon.

  If he hadn’t been so burned-out, Sandy thought, he would have known Jimmy was lying. Anyone known both personally and professionally as Jimmy the Stoolie should have been approached with a little circumspection. But Sandy hadn’t been paying close enough attention. He’d been too busy trying to get Jimmy off the charges of arson and conspiracy to notice whether Jimmy was being straight with him. He’d been too involved with trying to get through the trial and head for the expensive vacation he now found he was dreading. He’d been too damned self-absorbed to do more than pull off a full acquittal of the charges, only to have Jimmy take him out for a celebratory drink and then inform him he’d been lying all the time.

  If you lie down with pigs, Sandy told himself, you were bound to get pig droppings all over you. Maybe he should leave criminal law, head for the nice, clean world of corporate shenanigans. What was the lawyer’s line from The Big Chill— “All my clients rape is the land.”

  Even that sounded deadly right about now. Maybe he’d leave his partnership at MacDougal and Sullivan and never come back. There was nothing keeping him there. No wife any longer, and his family would scarcely miss him. The only people who would mourn his departure would be the mechanic he supported with his temperamental old MGB. Him and maybe a bartender or two.

  If only things weren’t so damned predictable. If only his life hadn’t turned out to be just what was expected of him. Prep school, Princeton, Yale Law School, a partnership in a firm that boasted a social conscience. He’d even had his perfect blond wife, and if Margery hadn’t lasted, well that was to be expected too, given today’s statistics.

  He slid back in the uncomfortable chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. Maybe he should have asked Beverly to come along. She was always good for a laugh, and maybe she would have kept him from his self-absorbed brooding.

  But even Beverly had gotten predictable and tiresome. No doubt she found him just as boring. What he needed, Sandy thought, was something to shake him up. To knock him out of his depression and malaise, something to care about. Anything.

  The traffic from Route One almost drowned out the sound of the knock on his door. He sat there for a long moment, unmoving. Not many people knew he was there. He’d deliberately chosen a small, run-down motel instead of one of the big ones that were rapidly dotting the area just outside of Princeton. He wanted to keep a low profile during the three-week trial, and he was sick to death of anonymous hotels. At least the Princeton Pike Sleep-a-While Motel had character. All of it bad. “

  The knocking came again. Someone was definitely at his door, and the only person who knew where he was staying was Jimmy the Stoolie. The last thing Sandy felt like doing was having another heart-to-heart chat with the little sleaze. Besides, Jimmy should be on his way back to the city by now, an undeservedly free man.

  The damnable thing about all this, Sandy thought absently, was that he wasn’t upset about a professional criminal cheating the system and getting out when he so richly deserved a few years locked away. As a lawyer it was Sandy’s duty to provide the best defense to anyone, guilty or innocent. No, it was the fact that Jimmy had lied, and had pulled Sandy into aiding and abetting those lies, that rankled so badly. It had taken all his willpower not to smash his fist into Jimmy’s smiling mouth. If it was Jimmy at the door right now he might very well let his willpower go out the window.

  He pulled himself out of the chair. Whoever was outside the peeling door of the motel room wasn’t about to go away. The knock was brisk, authoritative, demanding a response. Hell, it sounded just like his mother.

  Bright autumn sunlight flooded the dingy room when he threw open the door. For a moment his eyes narrowed against the glare, and then he realized the woman standing there was unlike anyone he could have imagined.

  She was short, and he liked tall women. She had mousy brown hair, and he was partial to blondes. Her eyes were brown, too, and partially obscured by wire-rimmed glasses that gave her a faintly startled look. Her mouth was too generous, and so was her nose, and her clothes were drab, boring, the sort of things worn by a Midwestern librarian. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty, or much younger, either. He stood in the doorway, looking down at her, trying to summon up at least an ounce of polite interest.

  “I suppose you’ll think this pretty rude of me,” she said abruptly, and there was a rasp of nervousness in an otherwise melodious voice, “but I’d like you to help me commit arson.”

  For a long moment Sandy didn’t move. And then he slowly stepped back, gesturing her into the room, and shut the door behind her.

  *

  He wasn’t at all what Jane Dexter expected, but then, a confidence man would have to be attractive, wouldn’t he? It would certainly help him in his schemes. And she’d seen the photograph, the elegant, austere blond man with his sleazy-looking
lawyer. The evening paper had given the details of the three-week trial, and Jane, too depressed and fractious to concentrate on anything more intellectually strenuous than “Different Strokes ” reruns on the motel’s black-and-white TV, had resorted to reading every single word in the article, drawn by a face she’d recognized.

  She’d been staying at the Princeton Pike Sleep-a-While Motel for almost ten days, and she could hardly have missed the beautiful man three doors down. When she hadn’t been so involved in her own problems she’d wondered about him, why someone who was clearly so prosperous would hole up in such a down-and-out motel. The royal-blue MGB parked outside his room could either be considered a wreck or a classic, depending on your attitude, but there was no question that the man was used to better things.

  Jane had found herself making up stories about him to help distract her when things got to be too much. He could fit any number of roles she fashioned for him. He was tall, a bit over six feet, and beautifully coordinated. His shoulders were just broad enough, his legs long, his hands, from what she could see from a distance, were well shaped. His hair was blond, probably lightened from hours on the deck of a yacht or racing around a tennis court, and his remaining tan set off features that were just this side of perfection. She hadn’t gotten close enough to see his eyes, but she knew they had to be perfect Aryan blue. His mouth was thin but sexy, his teeth very white, his cheekbones and jaw chiseled. He even had a perfect nose, damn him.

  Jane’s favorite fantasy was that he was a deposed Balkan prince, trying to reclaim his family’s estates. Failing that, he was the long-lost heir to one of the big industrial families around. He could be a famous football player, but that didn’t really fit his regal grace. Or he could be a soap opera star hiding out from voracious fans. The last thing she expected he’d be was a professional criminal, with an arrest record longer than the Brooklyn Bridge. Arson, extortion, and a host of lesser crimes had been thrown against him, and nothing had stuck. He’d gotten off this time, thanks, according to the reporter, to the brilliance of his attorney rather than his own innocence. Jane had looked at Alexander Caldicott’s weasely little face in the paper and searched for signs of brilliance in the shifty-looking eyes. It would have been much easier to believe he was the hardened criminal, not Golden Boy.

  But the picture’s caption identified them quite clearly. Besides, what would a hot-shot lawyer be doing at the Princeton Pike Sleep-a-While Motel? No one in their right mind would stay there if they had any other option, she thought, ignoring the fact that she was doing just that. There was an empty apartment less than ten minutes away just waiting for her, and she’d chosen this decrepit motel, rather than surround herself with depressing memories.

  But the man three doors down wouldn’t have her reasons. There was no question about it, the astonishingly handsome man she’d been covertly studying for days was nothing more than a professional criminal, ready to sell out to the highest bidder. And he was exactly what she needed.

  He was looking at her with an odd, slightly bemused expression in his eyes. On closer inspection they weren’t blue at all, they were a deep, unfathomable, smoky gray. And that thin mouth of his was even sexier close up, though he clearly couldn’t have thought she was much of a temptation. Jane had no illusions about her charms. If she’d had any, they’d been wiped out two years ago in her ruthlessly amicable divorce. Squaring her shoulders, she looked up into Jimmy (the Stoolie) Calvin’s enigmatic eyes, and repeated her opening gambit.

  “I’d like you to help me commit arson.”

  “Would you really?” His voice was deep, unaccented. “Let me fix you a drink and you can tell me why you chose me for such a proposition. Scotch all right?”

  “Do you have any coffee?” She looked around the room uneasily. It looked just as bare, just as tattered as her own room. At least she’d managed to brighten her own cubicle with fresh flowers, but Jimmy the Stoolie had added nothing more than a bottle of Scotch to the depressing confines.

  “Just Scotch. Besides, this sounds like a Scotch-and-water discussion, not a coffee discussion. Take a seat. I wouldn’t trust the chair if I were you. Better sit on the bed.”

  “Uh... where are you going to sit?”

  It wasn’t an unpleasant laugh, but Jane flushed anyway. “I’ll risk the chair. Don’t worry, I’m not about to jump on you.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” Jane lied, sitting gingerly on the sagging bed.

  He had his back to her, and a very nice back it was. He was wearing a white cotton dress shirt that clung to his shoulders and back. The linen trousers fit quite nicely too, and Jane had to control an absent, completely irrational sigh of regret.

  “Not that you should walk into strange motel rooms,” he added, handing her a glass of whiskey that was far too dark.

  “It’s not a strange motel room,” she said. “I’ve been sitting in one exactly like it for the last ten days.”

  “You’re staying here, too? I hadn’t noticed you.”

  “No.” Jane took a sip of whiskey and shivered delicately. “I’m not exactly noticeable.”

  He didn’t make the usual protests, and for that Jane was grateful. He lowered his body into the chair opposite her, and she watched it creak ominously. His own glass of whiskey was even darker than hers, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she’d made a very grave mistake in coming here. She hadn’t allowed herself time to think. She’d been so mad, so desperate at the events of the last few days that she’d thrown down the newspaper, slipped on her shoes, and marched down the walkway before she could have second thoughts. She was having far too many of them right now.

  “So tell me,” the man said, “who are you, and why have you chosen me to commit arson for you?”

  “I’d... I’d rather not give you my name right now.” She took another sip of the whiskey, wishing it were coffee. “Not until we see if we can come to an agreement.”

  He really smiled then, not the small wry upturning of his mobile mouth but a full-fledged grin. “We’ll call you Madame X then,” he said solemnly. “Shouldn’t you be dressed in black, maybe with a veil covering your face? You look more like a Midwestern librarian.”

  “I am a Midwestern librarian,” Jane said, coming close to hating him for a moment.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a smart aleck sometimes. Why me?”

  “I read the newspaper tonight. About your trial.”

  “Did you? I didn’t bother.”

  “It was very interesting.”

  “It must have been, if it sent you to me.”

  Jane took a deep breath. “It made it clear you were really guilty.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The article made it clear that you were a professional crook, and that only your lawyer’s brilliance got you off.”

  A strange, half-pleased, half-disturbed expression crossed his face. “My lawyer?”

  “His name is Calderwood?”

  “Caldicott,” he corrected absently. “Alexander Caldicott.”

  “Anyway, he managed to get you off. Though I must say he didn’t look that brilliant in the picture.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at his handsome, patrician face, “they can. So anyway, I have need of an arsonist. That is, if you’re looking for work. I would think you’d be at loose ends. After all, you didn’t know till this afternoon whether you’d be going to jail or not, so you probably haven’t made too many long-range plans.”

  “No, I hadn’t. Caldicott is a very great lawyer,” he said with a small grin, “but even he isn’t infallible. I thought he’d probably get me off but I couldn’t count on it. There’s one thing you haven’t taken into account, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Suppose I’ve decided to mend my ways? Go straight, live a life beyond reproach.”

  She tried to keep the stricken expression from her face. “That would be wonderful,” she managed.

&nbs
p; “Liar,” his voice was teasing, soft, dangerously beguiling. “Don’t worry, Madame X. I have the suspicion that my criminal career is just beginning.”

  *

  When Ms. Jane Dexter left his room forty-five minutes later she was weaving slightly. Sandy had plied her with Scotch, watching with fascination as she began to relax and expand under the influence of Cutty Sark. She’d given him her name within ten minutes, though he had to admit he preferred Madame X. Not that Jane didn’t suit her. Plain Jane, the librarian from Baraboo, Wisconsin, back in her hometown of Princeton, New Jersey, looking for an arsonist.

  Sandy shook his head in disbelief and poured his half-filled glass down the stained bathroom sink. He’d have to get a copy of that paper. The caption must have gotten their names reversed. It was the first time in his life he’d ever been mistaken for someone of Jimmy the Stoolie’s ilk, and the experience was novel enough to be entertaining.

  He should have told her, of course. He’d meant to, but she’d looked at him with such wonderful awe and distrust that he couldn’t resist stringing her along. For the first time in months the deadly lassitude had left him. That odd little encounter might be enough to make his trip to the Canary Islands entertaining after all. Anytime he got bored he could think back to little Ms. Jane Dexter and laugh.

  She would wonder about him when he didn’t show up for dinner tonight. They were supposed to meet at the steak house in the mall, the most anonymous place he could think of, and there she’d outline her plan. He almost wished he could make it. His flight was at ten o’clock tonight—if he missed it he’d have to go back to New York and that was the last thing he wanted. If they’d picked a decent restaurant he could have sent her flowers and a graceful note of regret. He couldn’t see managing that in the cafeteria-style steak house he’d assiduously avoided in the past.

  No, she was going to have to wonder about Jimmy the Stoolie. She’d probably figure he went back to his life of crime in the bowels of New York. He wondered if the paper would correct its error. He wasn’t about to bring it to their attention, and he doubted Jimmy would. So Ms. Jane Dexter would have to make other arrangements, always wondering what happened to her first-choice felon.