A Rather Charming Invitation (32 page)

Footsteps. Rapidly. Right outside, coming up the secret stairs, therefore evading Honorine’s lookout post on the main staircase. I made the computer sleep once more, and I switched off the light, just as Parker Drake entered the room.

“
S
o. I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” he said, moving purposefully toward me. I thought,
Oh God, I’m going to end up a dead woman, floating around in Lake Geneva tonight
. And, by the time Jeremy figures out what happened, and dredges the lake for me, I’ll already be one of those awful mysterious murders that go unresolved, forever.

“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” Drake said, close to me now.

I sensed that he was going to grab me, even before he reached out and clasped my arms in his aggressive grip. However, what I did not know was that he wasn’t going to toss me out the window, but, instead, plant a big, wet kiss on me that lasted a lot longer than you might guess; or maybe it just felt interminable because of that suddenly awkward, overbearing tongue, which made it the kind of surprisingly bad kiss you’d get from a defensive, insecure date, prompting you to decide to never go out with him again. This guy may have kissed a lot of women in his day, but he’d apparently learned nothing from his experiences, possibly because he’d never had to. Eee-yuck. Not good.

“Mmm . . . you taste good tonight, new lipstick?” he murmured.

“Mmm . . .” I muttered noncommittally, in as low a voice as possible.

“Tina knows you’re here,” he said, running his hands over my bare shoulders. “She went and hired a private dick. He saw your car and plates. Very foolish of you, my sweet. I guess you just couldn’t wait for daddy any longer?”

Now I really wanted to throw up. But of course I said nothing, banking on the dim lighting and my mask to keep up the charade. I managed to put my hand to his chest and push him away, and he assumed I was alarmed about his wife, because he said teasingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from Tina. Even if she does want to strangle you with her bare hands.”

Just then, the Chinese gong downstairs sounded again. It made that sonorous
Bwoong!
that reverberated throughout the whole chalet. As if in echo, a ship’s clock in the corner of the room began to count the hours with small pinging sounds. It was midnight.

“Ah,” Drake said in an inviting tone. “Time for all good guests to unmask . . .”

He reached around to the back of my dress, searching for the zipper. I was still backing away, but not getting very far. And then I heard a voice, which, all things considered, sounded like an angel.

“Parker?” Tina’s annoyed tone drifted from the main staircase and had an unexpected effect on Drake. For all his previous bravado, he suddenly straightened up, changed his relaxed tune and, very roughly, grabbed my arm and pushed me toward the door of the secret staircase, which he opened, shoving me down into it.

“Go!” he barked, as if accustomed to having his orders immediately obeyed. “Outside! Stay away from here tonight.” Then he softened his tone and said insinuatingly, “I’ll come to your place later.”

Well, I didn’t need an engraved invitation at this point. I was already scurrying down those steps as fast as my little feet could patter in those silly shoes with buckles. At the bottom of the staircase was a door that led straight outside, where the wind was whipping up off the lake. The night had become chilly, and as I stumbled across the lawn, my powdered wig kept getting caught on the darned shrubs and topiary, as if their brittle fingers were trying to pull off my disguise and expose me for the imposter I was. Breathlessly, I returned to the front door, went inside and hurried to the main staircase.

Honorine was waiting loyally at the foot of the stairs, peering out hopefully for any sign of me. Other guests were coming out of the ballroom and taking off their masks. Clearly the party was breaking up now. When Honorine spotted me she said, “Psst! Let’s go into the ladies’ room where we can talk!”

We ducked into the large powder room, tucked into an alcove just beyond the stairs. It was empty, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long, with all those other guests milling around. We were still wearing our masks, for fear that Tina would walk in and discover us as not-Amelia and her not-daughter.

“
Mon dieu
, where have you been?” Honorine demanded. “Do you know how many of these masked beasts tried to pick me up all night? I am a sitting—how do you say—
canard
here—”

“Duck,” I said automatically.

“
Oui
,” she said, “and let me tell you, these disguises make the guests think they can do anything. A woman came over and kissed me on the lips . . . and she didn’t even say hello first!”

“Never mind,” I said hastily. “We’ve got to find Jeremy and get out of here, because everyone’s taking off their masks.”

“In those back rooms they’re taking off plenty of other things, too,” she informed me. I couldn’t help smiling at her, recalling my student days when an alumna warned me that, after you graduate and join the wider world in your first job, the immediate, disillusioned question that occurs to you is,
Is this how grown-ups behave? Then what were all my studies and hard work and exams for?
Honorine had just that look of disillusioned disbelief on her face right now.

Since the ladies’ room wasn’t far from the stairs, we could hear the thundering herd of card-playing men as they came pounding down the steps. We tiptoed out cautiously. Jeremy spotted us immediately, and had already sized up that it was time to go. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but carrying it, very calmly. When he saw us he warned, “You look more conspicuous with it on. The card game broke up before midnight, so Drake wasn’t even in the room when the masks came off.”

“No foolin’,” I retorted. “I know exactly where he was at midnight. Let’s get out of here before he figures out that I know what I know.”

Jeremy shot me a quick look of comprehension, and shepherded us down a side corridor.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s mingle through that crowd.”

We slipped past a throng of people who’d collected in the big front hall, and were now all kissing one another as if it were New Year’s Eve. We weren’t the only ones leaving; already, the valets were bringing the fancy cars around to the front, and people were piling into them, gaily going off to the next fun-seeking hot spot.

Now that this ball was winding down, I noticed that the estate was like an armed camp, with ominous- looking bodyguards, security men, and even toothy guard dogs accompanying them. A not too subtle signal that all good guests mustn’t even think of skulking around, or staying overnight uninvited. The P.R. man was walking about with his walkie-talkie, and some other thuggy-looking guys doing the same. I wondered if they were looking for Drake’s mistress . . . or me.

As soon as I saw our car being brought round, and the valets opening the doors for us, I scuttled gratefully into the passenger seat, and breathed a sigh of relief when we headed out to the main road.

“So how’d the game go?” I asked Jeremy immediately. “Did you lose your shirt?”

“Not quite,” Jeremy admitted. “But being a loser was a better disguise than winning and drawing attention to myself. I was concentrating more on acting like Giles, while taking Drake’s measure. We played poker, until it came down to a big pot with only two players. One of them was Drake, and they switched to piquet for the final round, just as Rollo said. I learned a lot—and not just about the game.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, fascinated.

“Drake’s a proposition-better,” Jeremy replied. “I’ve met guys like him before.”

“A compulsive gambler?” I said.

“No, it’s different from regular gamblers. Guys like Drake don’t do it for the money. They can afford to lose big sums. They just bet all the time, on everything and anything. I’ve had lunch with clients like that, and they bet on which waiter will get to the kitchen first; or how many cherries the bartender has in his jar behind the counter. Drake’s like that. Once he gets going, he pushes it as far as he can. Plus, the guy is fiercely competitive anyway. He tries to act the good sport, but he loses his cool if the cards are against him. Still, he won pretty big tonight. He went out strutting like a rooster.”

“You got that right,” I said involuntarily, under my breath.

Jeremy gave me a suspicious look. “What do you mean?”

So, I told him the whole story. Yes, the whole one, although, initially, I wasn’t sure how much detail to go into, what with Honorine in the back seat listening, wide-eyed, to every word. I told them about the computer and the coin collection. When I reached the part where Drake caught me in the room and mistook me for his mistress, I paused, but Jeremy said sharply, “What did he do to you?”

“Just kissed me,” I assured him. “But believe me, that was bad enough.”

“That bastard,” Jeremy said darkly, and for a moment he looked as if he was ready to turn the car around, stomp into the chalet and slug the guy.

“He never knew it was me,” I said helpfully, explaining how I got away.

We had reached the main gate, waiting for our turn to be waved through by men with lighted sticks. Jeremy stared straight ahead at the dark road through his windshield. Then he glanced at me accusingly and said, “Do you have any idea what kind of real trouble you could have gotten into?”

“Gosh, no, it never occurred to me,” I replied dryly. Honorine giggled. Jeremy drove on.

 

 

When we got back the hotel, Honorine trotted off to her room, looking as if she was going to fall asleep as soon as she crawled into bed. So Jeremy and I continued to discuss the case in our room.

“If you ask me,” I said, “Parker Drake, a.k.a. Mr. Genius Businessman, All-Round Adventurer and Charming Philanthropist, is also our Tapestry Thief!”

“Hang on,” Jeremy cautioned. “Just because he seems interested in that ‘J.L.’ crest, does not prove that he’s actually got the tapestry. At least, not in a court of law.”

I snorted. “Obviously, we don’t need a court to tell us he’s got it,” I said.

I was thinking of all the strange, inexplicable things that had happened to us lately. At the time, they’d seemed like isolated events. But now I reminded Jeremy about the night we’d gone to Margery’s cocktail party. New connections occurred to me, as I spoke.

“Remember when we were parking outside your grand-mum’s house?” I said. “You were annoyed because some guy was tailgating us. I wonder if we were being watched much earlier than we realized. Because, next thing you know, out of the blue, you got a phone call from Parker’s P.R. guy, right there at the cocktail party.”

I was retracing that whole evening now. “That was
also
the same night that Honorine chased a guy off our doorstep, right? We just thought it was another kook. But what if it was all connected to this?”

Jeremy gave this due consideration. “Even if what you say is true—that Drake was behind this from the get-go—what made him think we had any information about the tapestry in the first place?”

I was momentarily stumped. But Jeremy was gesturing as he spoke, and a gleam of gold caught my eye. “Oh,
no
!” I cried, aghast. “Is it possible that this whole thing got kicked into gear just because I went to the jeweler to have that signet ring made for you? I showed him the ‘J.L.’ insignia. And, the jeweler asked me about the source material. I said it came from a family heirloom!” I wailed in regret.

“Steady on,” Jeremy counseled, reviewing this calmly. “True, there are plenty of unscrupulous dealers who, under cover of a legitimate business, scour the world for treasures that they know their illustrious clients would buy, no matter how it was obtained,” he admitted. “I can certainly believe that Drake is one of those passionate collectors who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. If the jeweler is connected to Drake, and he alerted Drake when he saw the design—” He broke off, pondering this. “That would make our jeweler the missing link. No pun intended,” he said, trying to lighten my gloom.

Then he continued more soberly, “But maybe it’s
you
they’re interested in. Miss Penny Nichols comes into the store with sketches of a rare antique design. They have your address, so they send a guy to our doorstep to snoop around. He sees our sign out in front, and learns that you work at a firm called Nichols & Laidley. Perhaps he even intended to break in, if Honorine hadn’t startled him. Anyway, he reports back to Drake; and further investigation confirms that you’re the well- known American heiress, famous for tracking down lost treasures.”

This made me feel even worse. I don’t quite see myself as others do these days—an heiress born under a lucky star. Frankly, I still feel like the same little unknown person I used to be, toddling around with her research and her bright ideas. But perhaps harboring an old image of myself was dangerous, or at least, careless. Now my French relatives were paying the price, with the loss of a beautiful tapestry.

Almost unwillingly, I found myself making sense of more odd occurrences. “This may explain Honorine’s nose,” I said glumly, telling him the story of the perfumed lady who came to our office.

“Maybe, when the guy on the doorstep failed to get in, Drake sent his wife to snoop around. It sounds as if they do have a connection to the jeweler, so she makes the delivery for him, just to get inside.”

Jeremy weighed this possibility. “Hmm. And what does Tina Drake find? A ton of photos of a tapestry. If Penny Nichols is scrutinizing it so closely, it must be something worth having.”

“And, you know what? Some of my photos of the tapestry disappeared from my office right after Miss Perfume showed up,” I added. “Can that be mere coincidence? I think not!”

So, it was down to me again. One little innocent move on my part had apparently set off a whole landslide. Now I was utterly convinced that I had to recover that tapestry.