Eye of the Beholder (24 page)

“Why in hell didn't you tell me what you were going to do?” Trask paced back and forth across Alexa's living room. It took everything he had to hold back the storm of unfamiliar emotion that threatened to swamp his control. “Of all the damn fool stunts. Do you have any idea what could have happened?”

“You don't need to spell it out for me.” Alexa sat on the edge of the sleek chaise longue, huddled over a mug of hot tea. “I was there, remember?”

The first thing she had done after walking through the front door was take a long shower. Trask had seethed quietly while she bathed and changed into a pair of jeans and a white cotton shirt.

After an eternity she had emerged from the bedroom. Her damp hair was combed straight back from her forehead and anchored behind her ears with a faux tortoiseshell headband. The strict line emphasized the shadows in her eyes and the tautness around her mouth.

He had wanted to take her into his arms and
crush her close just to reassure himself that she was safe. Unsure of how such a gesture would be received, he had opted to chew her out instead. Every successful CEO lived by some very simple rules. One of them was, when in doubt, start yelling.

He paused in front of the window. “You should have called me before you went off on your own.”

“Please stop shouting at me. It was bad enough that Strood and his officer thought I was hallucinating.”

“They didn't think you were seeing things.” Trask glanced over his shoulder. She gave him an ironic look. He forced himself to unclench his jaw. “Not exactly. They just thought you might have been a little shaken up because of Guthrie's accident and overreacted to a shadow.”

“Bull. They think I'm flaky.”

He decided not to argue the point further. She was right. Strood and Officer Clarke had been polite and professional, but the bottom line was that they had discovered no evidence to support her tale of being pursued up the side of Shadow Canyon by a knife-wielding figure in a hooded robe.

The only indications that anything out of the ordinary had occurred that morning were the dirt stains on Alexa's linen trousers and her scraped knees and torn nails.

No one doubted that she had made a mad dash through some underbrush, Trask reflected. It was the reason for her wild run that was in question, at least so far as Strood was concerned. The menacing shadow behind a shoji screen had not stood up well to investigation.

The officer who had responded to Alexa's frantic 911 call had found no sign of an intruder inside Liz Guthrie's home. According to the official report, there had been no evidence of forced entry or foul play. Nothing of value appeared to be missing from the house. An expensive audio system sat untouched in the living room.

After Alexa had given her statement, the chief had taken Trask quietly aside.

“She may be having some problems because of Guthrie's accident,” Strood had said, not unkindly. “That kind of thing can shake someone up. Cause bad dreams and so on.”

Trask had decided not to mention his own nightmare following Guthrie's accident. “She's not the type to invent bizarre stories out of thin air. Something scared her.”

Strood's heavy features softened. “Look, I've been in this business a long time. I can tell you from experience that people react to a severe shock in unpredictable ways.”

“I know that.”

“Take her home. Make sure she gets some rest. If things get worse, you might want to advise her to get some counseling.”

Trask shoved the memories of the less than satisfying interview with Strood aside. The chief was right. There was no evidence of a crime.

He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to unknot muscles that had been rigid since he had gotten Alexa's phone call two hours earlier. “Why in hell did you go out to Shadow Canyon?”

“I told you, I wanted to talk to Liz Guthrie in person.”

“What did
you expect to learn from her? She's not involved in any of this.”

Alexa hesitated. “From all accounts, she and Dean were still lovers.”

That news made him go very still. He swung around to face her. “Are you sure?”

“That's the rumor.” Alexa gripped the mug tightly in both hands. “I thought she might be able to give me some indication of Guthrie's state of mind the night of the accident.”

“Strood says there's every indication that Guthrie's state of mind was seriously stoned, as usual. You heard him. He's not pursuing any other line of inquiry because there's absolutely no reason to believe that the crash was anything other than an accident.”

“But we are pursuing another line of inquiry,” Alexa said deliberately. “Aren't we?”

The prospect of being hoist on his own petard was not pleasant. “Let's get something clear here. I'm the one pursuing it. Not you.”

“We're supposed to be partners in this thing, Trask.”

“I said I'd keep you informed. That is not the same thing as being a team.”

“I'm involved in this just as much as you are, and I've got just as much right to pursue a line of inquiry as you do. If you don't want to work as partners, fine. I'll go my way and you can go yours.”

“The hell you will.” He started toward her with no clear objective in mind other than to make her see reason. He stopped halfway across the room as the full impact of what she had just said finally hit him. “Damn. Are you telling me that you think there's
something to my conspiracy theory after all?”

She watched him with intense, shadowed eyes. “I did not invent that intruder in Liz Guthrie's house. I did not imagine being chased up a mountainside by some thug with a big knife. It's possible that what happened to me this morning had nothing whatsoever to do with your conspiracy theory. Maybe I interrupted a burglary in progress.”

He did not move. “Possible.”

“But like you said, coincidences in a situation such as this are a little hard to swallow. Liz Guthrie was home earlier this morning. I told you, I talked to her on the phone. She agreed to see me. I was supposed to wait for an hour because she wanted to do her meditation exercises first. She said her—” Alexa broke off.

Trask lowered himself into a chair. He did not take his eyes off her face. “What is it?”

“In all the excitement I almost forgot. Liz told me that she was going to meditate with her Dimensions guide this morning. When we spoke on the phone she said he had just arrived.”

“He?”

“I think… No, wait.” Alexa tapped one finger on the side of the mug. “She didn't specify. She just said that her guide was there.”

“Okay, so he or she could have left with Liz before you got there.”

“But, why?”

“A million reasons, just like Strood said.”

Alexa wrinkled her nose. “You're starting to sound a little too reasonable. This is not the Trask I know and—”
She stopped very quickly and smiled coolly. “The Trask I know and whom I consider a world-class conspiracy theorist.”

Trask studied the flags of pink in her cheeks. He wondered why she was so embarrassed about having almost said, “the Trask I know and love.” It would have passed easily enough as a flippant, off-the-cuff crack. No one would have taken her seriously, least of all him.

“I'm trying to be reasonable,” he said, “because I'm not so sure it's a good idea for both of us to go off the deep end. At least, not simultaneously.”

“You're probably right. Obviously this conspiracy thinking stuff is contagious.” Alexa took another sip of tea. “I'd sure like to know where Liz went and how long she intends to stay gone.”

Trask settled deeper into his chair and eyed the toes of his shoes. “Assuming she stays gone, we can probably get the answers to those questions.”

“Think so?”

“I told you, I've had a private investigator on this project for months. Finding people is bread-and-butter work for him. I'll give Phil a call this afternoon and add Liz Guthrie to his to-do list.”

“Could be a little embarrassing, not to say expensive for you, if it turns out she just went to the library or the grocery store.”

“Embarrassing, yes. Financially speaking, it'll only be a drop in the bucket compared to what I've already spent on this thing.”

“I see.”

Absently he contemplated the set of orangy-green plastic bookends that framed a set of volumes on a nearby shelf. The sweeping, molded curves
told him he was looking at more Deco. He remembered Edward Vale telling him that old Bakelite plastic was very collectible.

“Something wrong?” Alexa prompted.

“Maybe.” He looked away from the book ends. “There's one other angle we should probably consider.”

“What's that?”

“Someone tried to terrorize you today. Could have been an angry burglar. Could have been person or persons unknown. Hell, it could have been Liz Guthrie herself, dressed in a robe.”

Alexa frowned. “That's a weird thought.”

“But there is one other remote possibility. And I stress remote.”

“Which is?”

Trask paused. “There could be a link between those late night phone calls you've been receiving and the creep who chased you today.”

She stared at him. “Why would someone go to all the effort to scare me?”

“I don't know. But it occurs to me that whoever he is, he might not like the idea of the two of us forming a…” He groped for another word; could not find it. “A partnership.”

She watched him with brooding eyes. “This is getting murkier by the minute.”

“Better get used to it. We conspiracy theory buffs thrive on murk.”

23
 

Trask was out on the balcony of his suite when he heard the fax machine hum to life again shortly before five that afternoon. This time he did not rush back through the open French doors to check out the data that was being sent to him.

He'd had enough of hovering over the fax as if it were some pagan oracle that could give him answers to his questions. He'd spent most of the day standing in front of the machine's receiving tray, snatching up each new page as it appeared. When he hadn't been obsessed with the fax, he'd been on the phone.

He had a mountain of information on the investments of Guthrie Enterprises, past and present, piled high on his desk. Thus far, however, none of it looked useful.

Unless, of course, you wanted to prove that there was no conspiracy.

He lounged in his chair, heels propped on the railing, and gazed out at the rust-colored monoliths.

After a while he opened the door in his mind
and looked at the ghost in the closet. He had known all along that his belief that his father had been murdered might be a fantasy, a dark vision he had conjured so that he would not have to think too much about that last phone call between the two of them.

He had avoided looking into the closet during the past twelve years. Now he forced himself to examine the specter of his own guilt. If he was wrong, he would have to expose it to the light of day and deal with it.

But he could not do that until he knew for certain whether or not the ghost was real.

He closed the door again and switched his thoughts back to Alexa. He recalled her torn clothes and scraped hands. His insides went cold all over again. He remembered the shadows he had seen in her eyes. Someone had scared the hell out of her this morning.

Regardless of the outcome of his own quest, he would not leave Avalon until he found out who was terrorizing Alexa.

It occurred to him that he was in no rush to leave Avalon at all. Leaving town meant leaving Alexa. The thought of doing that filled him with a disturbing sense of incompleteness.

Whatever existed between himself and Alexa needed to be finished before he could return to Seattle.

Behind him the fax sang its siren song to itself and then fell silent. He waited a while longer. Eventually he took his feet down off the railing, stood, and went through the French doors.

He crossed the room to the desk and picked up
the pages that were stacked neatly in the tray. More financial data.

He poured himself another cup of coffee. Then he took the pages out onto the balcony, sat down, and put his feet back up on the railing. Methodically he began to read the information Phil Okuda had transmitted: More info on the status of Dean Guthrie's recent financial affairs and the projects he had been involved with at the time of his death.

A single word leaped out from the second paragraph of the first page.

Trask took his feet off the railing.

“Guthrie, you son-of-a-bitch. I knew there had to be a connection.”

He reached for the phone.

Alexa eyed the stack of plastic containers in Trask's hands and tried not to salivate.

“I thought when you said you'd bring dinner you meant pizza.” She opened the door wider. “This looks like room service with all the stops pulled out.”

“I own a hotel, remember?” Trask carried the fragrant packages toward the kitchen. “My new chef is trying to impress me.”