The Novels of Nora Roberts Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  “I wouldn’t try kicking me on the way out,” he said softly. “Lock your door, Conroy.”

  He walked out, across the hall, and locked his own.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  “What are you so cranky about?” Lea demanded. She’d popped back into the storeroom to announce a $500 sale, and had been greeted, for the third time that morning, by a short snarl.

  “I’m not cranky,” Dora snapped. “I’m busy.” She was currently boxing up a four-piece place setting of Fire-King Dinnerware, honeysuckle pattern. “People ought to be shot for trying to cram their shopping into the last two days before Christmas. Do you realize I have to take Terri off the floor and have her deliver this across town this afternoon?”

  “You could have told the customer to come back in for it.”

  “And I might have lost the sale,” Dora tossed back. “I’ve had these damn dishes for three years. I’m lucky to have palmed them off on anyone.”

  “Now I know something’s wrong.” Lea crossed her arms. “Spill it.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Except that she hadn’t been able to sleep. And there was no way, absolutely no way she was going to admit that she’d let one quick kiss tie her up into knots. “I’ve just got too much to do and not enough time to do it.”

  “But you like that, Dora,” Lea pointed out.

  “I’ve changed.” Dora wrapped the last cup in newspaper. “Where’s that stupid packing tape?” She turned, then stumbled back against the desk when she spotted Jed at the base of the stairs.

  “Sorry.” But he didn’t look it. “I came down to see if you still wanted me to fix that banister.”

  “Banister? Oh . . . oh, well.” She hated being flustered. The only thing she hated more was being wrong. “You have to get wood or something?”

  “Or something.” He looked over when Lea firmly cleared her throat.

  “Oh, Lea, this is Jed Skimmerhorn, the new tenant. Jed, my sister, Lea.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Lea extended a hand. “I hope you’re settling in all right.”

  “Not much to settle. Do you want the banister fixed or not?”

  “Yes, I suppose. If you’re not too busy.” Dora found the packing tape and kept herself occupied by sealing the carton. When the idea dawned, she went with it. “Actually, you could help me out. You’ve got a car, right? The Thunderbird?”

  “So?”

  “I have a delivery—in fact, I have three of them. I really can’t spare my assistant.”

  Jed hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “You want me to make deliveries?”

  “If it wouldn’t be a problem. You’d keep track of your gas and mileage.” She offered him a sunny smile. “You might even cop a couple of tips.”

  He could have told her to go to hell. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. “How can I resist?” He eyed, with vague dislike, the box she was sealing. “Where to?”

  “It’s all written down. Those are the other two right there.” She nodded toward the corner of the room. “You can carry them out through the side door to your car.”

  Saying nothing, Jed hefted the first box and disappeared outside.

  “That’s the new tenant?” Lea whispered. Possibilities were already racing through her mind as she hurried to the door to peek through. “Who is he? What does he do?”

  “I just told you who he is. His name’s Skimmerhorn.”

  “You know what I mean.” She watched Jed muscle the box into the backseat of the T-Bird, then quickly stepped back across the room. “He’s coming back.”

  “I hope so,” Dora said dryly. “He’s only got one of the boxes.” She lifted the second one herself and passed it to Jed when he came to the door. “They’re fragile,” she told him, and got a grunt in response.

  “Did you see his shoulders?” Lea hissed. “John doesn’t have shoulders like that in my wildest fantasies.”

  “Ophelia Conroy Bradshaw, shame on you. John’s a wonderful guy.”

  “I know that. I’m nuts about him, but he doesn’t have any shoulders. I mean, he’s got them, of course, but they’re just kind of bone and . . . God!” After studying the way Jed’s Levis stretched when he leaned over the trunk of his car, she patted her heart and grinned. “It’s always reassuring to know the attraction cells still operate. So what’s he do?”

  “About what?”

  “About . . . the invoices,” she said quickly. “Don’t forget to give Mr. Skimmerhorn the invoices, Dora.” She picked them up herself and handed them over to Jed as he stepped in to pick up the last box.

  “Thanks.” He gave Lea an odd look, wary of the gleam in her eye. “You want me to pick up that lumber, or what?”

  “Lumber? Oh, the banister,” Dora remembered. “Sure, go ahead. You can slip the bill under my door if I’m not around.”

  He couldn’t resist. He knew he should, but he couldn’t. “Another hot date?”

  She smiled sweetly and yanked open the door. “Kiss my ass, Skimmerhorn.”

  “I’ve thought of it,” he murmured. “I have thought of it.” With that, he sauntered out.

  “Tell,” Lea demanded. “Tell all. Don’t leave out any detail, however small or insignificant.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I went out with Andrew last night, and Jed met him when I was kicking him out.”

  “You kicked Jed out?”

  “Andrew—he made a pass,” Dora said with the last of her patience. “And I kicked him out. Now, if we’ve finished our little gossip session—”

  “Almost. What does he do? Jed, I mean. He must lift weights or something to have shoulders like that.”

  “I never knew you had such a shoulder fixation.”

  “I do when they’re attached to a body like that one. Let’s see, he’s a longshoreman.”

  “Nope.”

  “A construction worker.”

  “You lose the trip for two to Maui. Would you like to try for the Samsonite luggage?”

  “Just tell me.”

  Dora had spent part of her sleepless night digging up Jed’s application. One of his references had been Commissioner James L. Riker of the Philadelphia Police Department. Which made sense, she mused, since Jed’s last place of employment had been the Philadelphia PD.

  “He’s an ex-cop.”

  “Ex?” Lea’s eyes went wide. “Christ, he was fired from the force for taking bribes? Dealing drugs? For killing someone?”

  “Put your imagination on hold, sweetie.” Dora patted her sister’s shoulder. “I swear, you should have been the one to take after Mom and Dad on the stage. He resigned,” she said. “A few months back. According to the copious notes Dad took when he called the commissioner of police, Jed’s got a pot full of commendations, and they’re keeping his service revolver warm for him in hopes that he’ll come back.”

  “Well, then why did he quit?”

  “That didn’t seem to be anyone’s business,” she said primly, but she was just as curious, and just as annoyed as Lea that their father hadn’t asked. “Game over.” She held up her hand to ward off another spate of questions. “If we don’t get back inside to help Terri, she’ll make my life a living hell.”

  “All right, but I feel good knowing you’ve got a cop right across the hall. That should keep you out of trouble.” She stopped dead, goggle-eyed. “Oh God, Dory, do you think he was carrying a gun?”

  “I don’t think he’ll need one to deliver dinnerware.” With this, Dora shoved her sister through the door.

  Under any other circumstances, DiCarlo would have felt foolish sitting in an elegant reception area holding a cheap statue in his lap. In this particular reception area, decorated with muted Impressionist prints and Erté sculptures, he didn’t feel foolish at all. He felt scared, bone scared.

  He hadn’t really minded the murder. Not that he enjoyed killing like his cousin Guido, but he hadn’t minded it. DiCarlo looked at putting a small-caliber bullet between Porter’s eyes as self-defense.

&nb
sp; But he’d had a lot to worry about on the long flight from east to west coast. Considering his string of bad luck, he wondered whether by some twisted hook of fate he had the wrong statue warming in his lap. It certainly looked like the one he’d seen packed into the crate at Premium. In a just world, there couldn’t be two such ugly porcelain creations in the same small town.

  “Mr. DiCarlo?” The receptionist said. “Mr. Finley will see you now.”

  “Ah, right. Sure.” DiCarlo rose, hooking the statue under his arm and straightening the knot of his tie with his free hand. He followed the blonde to the double mahogany doors and worked on fixing a pleasant smile on his face.

  Finley didn’t rise from behind his desk. He enjoyed watching DiCarlo nervously cross the ocean of white carpet. He smiled, coldly, noting the faint beading of sweat over DiCarlo’s upper lip.

  “Mr. DiCarlo, you have tidied up in the great state of Virginia?”

  “Everything there is taken care of.”

  “Excellent.” He gestured to his desk so that DiCarlo set the statue down. “And this is all you’ve brought me?”

  “I also have a list of the other merchandise. And all the locations.” At the wave of Finley’s fingers, DiCarlo dived into his pocket for the list. “As you see, there were only four other buyers, and two of them are also dealers. I think it should be simple enough to go right into those shops and buy back that merchandise.”

  “You think?” Finley said softly. “If you could think, Mr. DiCarlo, my merchandise would already be in my possession. However,” he continued when DiCarlo remained silent, “I’m willing to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself.”

  He rose then and ran a fingertip over the overly sweet female face of the statue. “An unfortunate piece of work. Quite hideous, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And this man, this Ashworth, paid in good coin for it. Amazing, isn’t it, what people will find appealing. One has only to look to see the lines are awkward, the color poor, the material inferior. Ah well. ‘Beauty’s but skin deep.’ ” He picked up an unused marble white ashtray from his desk and decapitated the woman.

  DiCarlo, who had only hours before cold-bloodedly murdered two men, jolted when the ashtray smashed the second head away. He watched, his nerves jumping, as Finley systematically broke away limbs.

  “An ugly cocoon,” Finley murmured, “to protect sheer beauty.” From inside the torso of the figurine he pulled a small object wrapped in layers of heavy bubble plastic. Delicately, he unwrapped it, and the sound he made was like that of a man undressing a lover.

  What DiCarlo saw looked like a gold cigarette lighter, heavily ornate and studded with some sort of stones. To him it was hardly more attractive than the statue that had hidden it.

  “Do you know what this is, Mr. DiCarlo?”

  “Ah, no, sir.”

  “It is an etui.” Finley laughed then, caressing the gold. For that moment, he was supremely happy—a child with a new toy, a man with a new lover. “Which tells you nothing, of course. This small, ornamental case was used to hold manicure sets, or sewing implements, perhaps a buttonhook or a snuff spoon. A pretty little fancy that went out of fashion toward the end of the nineteenth century. This one is more intricate than most, as it’s gold, and these stones, Mr. DiCarlo, are rubies. There are initials etched into the base.” Smiling dreamily he turned it over. “It was a gift from Napoleon to his Josephine. And now it belongs to me.”

  “That’s great, Mr. Finley.” DiCarlo was relieved that he’d brought the right figurine, and that his employer seemed so pleased.

  “You think so?” Finley’s emerald eyes glittered. “This bauble is only a portion of what is mine, Mr. DiCarlo. Oh, I’m pleased to have it, but it reminds me that my shipment is incomplete. A shipment, I might add, that has taken me more than eight months to accumulate, another two months to have transported. That’s nearly a year of my time, which is quite valuable to me, not to mention the expense.” He hefted the ashtray again and swung it through the delicate folds of milady’s gown. Thin shards of porcelain shot like tiny missiles through the air. “You can understand my distress, can you not?”

  “Yes, sir.” Cool sweat slipped clammily down DiCarlo’s back. “Naturally.”

  “Then we’ll have to see about getting it back. Sit down, Mr. DiCarlo.”

  With an unsteady hand, DiCarlo brushed porcelain splinters off the buttery leather of a chair. He sat cautiously on the edge of his seat.

  “The holidays make me magnanimous, Mr. DiCarlo.” Finley took his own seat and continued to caress the etui in intimate little circles. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. You have plans, I imagine.”

  “Well, actually, yes. My family, you see . . .”

  “Families.” Finley’s face lit up with a smile. “There is nothing like family around the holidays. I have none myself, but that is unimportant. Since you’ve managed to bring me one small portion of my property, so quickly, I hate to take you away from your family at Christmas.” Keeping the etui trapped between his palms, he folded his hands. “I’ll give you until the first of the year. Generous, I know, but as I said, the holidays. They make me sentimental. I’ll want everything that is mine by January one—no, no, make it the second.” His smile spread and widened. “I trust you won’t disappoint me.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Naturally, I’ll expect progress reports, holiday or no. You can reach me here, or on my private number. Do stay in touch, Mr. DiCarlo. If I don’t hear from you at regular intervals, I’d have to come looking for you myself. We wouldn’t want that.”

  “No, sir.” DiCarlo had an uncomfortable image of being hunted by a rabid wolf. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Excellent. Oh, and have Barbara make a copy of this list for me before you go, will you?”

  Jed couldn’t say why he was doing it. He’d had no business going down to the shop that morning in the first place. He was perfectly content to spend his days working out in the gym, lifting weights in his own apartment, catching up on his reading. God knew what crazy impulse had had him wandering downstairs and somehow volunteering to make Dora’s deliveries.

  Of course, he remembered with what was almost a smile, he had gotten tipped pretty well at that. A few bucks, and in one memorable case a brightly colored tin filled with homemade Christmas cookies.

  It hadn’t been such a big deal, and it had been interesting to see how much more enthusiastically you were greeted when you knocked on someone’s door carrying a box rather than a badge.

  He could have crossed the whole experience off as a kind of experiment, but now he was standing out in the cold replacing a banister. The fact that he was enjoying it on some deep, elemental level made him feel like an idiot.

  He was forced to work outside because Dora didn’t have ten feet of unoccupied space anywhere in her building. Since her idea of tools had run to a single screwdriver and a ball peen hammer with a taped handle, he’d had to drop by Brent’s to borrow some. Of course, Mary Pat had grilled him on everything from his eating habits to his love life while plying him with Snickerdoodles. It had taken him nearly an hour to escape with his sanity and a power saw.

  The events of the day had taught Jed one important lesson: He would keep to himself from this point on, just as he had planned. When a man didn’t like people to begin with, there was no rational reason to mix with them.

  At least there was no one to bother him in the rear of the building, and he enjoyed working with his hands, liked the feel of wood under them. Once, he’d considered adding a small workshop onto the back of the house in Chestnut Hill. A place where he could have tinkered and built when the job gave him time. But that had been before Donny Speck. Before the investigation that had become an obsession.

  And, of course, it had been before Elaine had paid the price.

  Before Jed could switch off his mind, he saw it again. The silver Mercedes sedan sitting sedately under the carport. He saw the dull gleam of pearls arou
nd Elaine’s neck and remembered inanely that they had been a birthday gift from the first of her three husbands. He saw her eyes, the same brilliant blue as his own—perhaps the only family trait they had shared—lift and look curiously in his direction. He saw the faint annoyance in those eyes and saw himself racing across the manicured lawn, between the well-tended rosebushes that had smelled almost violently of summer.

  The sun had glinted off the chrome, speared into his eyes. A bird high up in one of the trio of apple trees had trilled insanely.

  Then the explosion had ripped through the air with a hot fist that had punched Jed back, sent him flying away toward the roses, where the petals were sheared off by the force of the blast.

  The silver Mercedes was a ball of flame with a belch of black smoke stinking upward into the summer sky. He thought he heard her scream. It could have been the screech of rending metal. He hoped it had been. He hoped she’d felt nothing after her fingers had twisted the key in the ignition and triggered the bomb.

  Swearing, Jed attacked the new banister with Brent’s power sander. It was over. Elaine was dead and couldn’t be brought back. Donny Speck was dead, thank Christ. And however much Jed might have wished it, he couldn’t kill the man again.

  And he was exactly where he wanted to be. Alone.

  “Ho, ho, ho.”

  Distracted by the hearty voice behind him, Jed switched off the sander. He turned, his eyes narrowed behind his tinted aviator glasses as he studied, with equal parts annoyance and curiosity, the pink-cheeked Santa.

  “You’re a couple days early, aren’t you?”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Santa said again, and patted his comfortable belly. “Looks like you could use a little Christmas cheer, son.”

  Resigned to the interruption, Jed took out a cigarette. “Mr. Conroy, right?” He watched Santa’s face fall. “It’s the eyes,” Jed told him, and struck a match. They were Dora’s eyes, Jed thought. Big and brown and full of secret jokes.

  “Oh.” Quentin considered, then brightened. “I suppose a policeman is trained to see past disguises, the same way an actor is trained to assume them. I have, of course, played many upholders of law and order in my career.”