Jennifer Crusie Bundle (56 page)

“Well, that depends on the year….” Mitch settled down for a long financial discussion, but Claud cut him off.

“Twenty-five.”

“Claud.” Mitch shook his head. “You're not in a bargaining position here. A hundred thou or I go back to work for Mabel. Take or leave it. But act fast. She's waiting on the other side of that door, and while I admire her both physically and spiritually, she does have a temper.”

Claud's face changed then, filled with such loathing that Mitch was taken aback for a moment. Then Claud picked up his pen and began to write.

“That's five zeros,” Mitch said, and sure enough, when Claud pushed the check across to him, it had five zeros.

“Get out.” Claud's nostrils flared, but otherwise his face was as impassive and cold as before.

“Pleasure doing business.” Mitch stood and tucked the check in his coat pocket.

When he opened the door, Prescott was waiting in the hall.

“Seen Mabel lately?” he asked him, and the man replied, “Miss Mae is waiting in the car, sir,” but the tone added, “you worthless creep.”

“Hell of a lot of undercurrent in this place,” Mitch said to no one in particular and strolled down the steps to the car where Mae sat in rigid fury in the driver's seat.

“Drive,” he said as he got in, but she was scattering gravel across the sidewalk before he got the door shut.

“You know, some men find a temper really sexy, but I'm not one of them,” Mitch said mildly. “So if this is for me…”

“Shut up.” Mae peeled out onto the boulevard, stopping only when she came to a funeral home parking lot. She pulled in and parked, her abrupt stop bouncing Mitch off the dashboard, and only then did she turn to glare at him.

“Nice place.” Mitch squinted through the window at the Victorian facade. “This one of Gio's parlors?”

“He bought you off, didn't he?” Mae demanded.

“Yeah.” Mitch fished the check out of his breast pocket. “He did.” He handed it over to her. “Generous guy, your Uncle Claud.”

Mae took the check from him, scowling, but when she read the amount, she blinked. “Well, at least you didn't come cheap. Dalton got five hundred thousand, but he had to divorce me. All you have to do is walk away.”

Mitch gaped at her. “You're kidding.”

Mae met Mitch's eyes coolly, but he could see the misery there. “No, I'm not kidding.”

“Claud bought off your husband?”

“We were pretty much not married by the time Uncle Claud paid him to leave.” Mae swallowed as she looked at the check with Mitch's name on it.

“Well, I'm not like him.” Mitch took the check back and pocketed it. “I think marriage is sacred, which is why I never do it.”

Mae seemed to be having trouble breathing. “You're scum.”

“Now here's a question for you,” Mitch said as if she hadn't spoken. “Why would your Uncle Claud give me one hundred thousand dollars to dump you and your problems?”

Mae looked at him with naked contempt. “Because he knew you were corrupt and without honor.”

“No.” Mitch slid down into his seat and stared out the window in deep thought. “If that were the only motivation he needed, he'd be in Washington greasing senators. There's got to be a beauty of a reason behind this. I mean, I know he's protecting you, but a hundred grand is a lot to pay to protect a woman's virtue, especially since I have grave suspicions that you don't have any.”

“I do where you're concerned.” Mae put her forehead on the steering wheel. “Could you at least recommend another private eye?”

“You're not listening.” Mitch rolled his head on the back of the seat until he could see her. “Stop pouting and think. Would your Uncle Claud, who looks like he has the first dime he ever made, pay one hundred thousand dollars to keep me out of your bed?”

“Dream on.” Mae raised her head from the wheel and glared at him. “You're never getting into…” She stopped. “Oh.” Her glare faded. “No. He wouldn't. If that's what he was worried about, he'd probably give Uncle Gio a call and just have your legs broken. Or something.”

“That's not funny.” Mitch winced. “Don't even kid about that.”

“What did he say you had to do for the money?”

“Drop the case and stay away from you. But the part about you was an afterthought. I was really obnoxious about you, and it annoyed him, but that wasn't what was bothering him.”

Mae perked up. “How obnoxious?”

“I mentioned your butt. He shuddered, but Gio would have had my liver.”

“Uncle Claud wouldn't want your liver,” Mae pointed out. “Your credit may be in jeopardy, however.”

“My credit is comatose, anyway.” Mitch frowned. “So why is Uncle Claud willing to pay a broken-down, incompetent private investigator a small fortune to stop him from investigating a murder that never happened?”

“Of course it happened.”

“Not according to Claud. Would he pay that much to keep you out of jail?” Mitch watched her as she turned to him, incredulous. “If he thought you'd bumped off the old guy?”

“Are you accusing me of murdering my uncle and then hiring you to catch me?” Mae laughed at him. “Isn't there some kind of test you have to take to be a P.I.? Some kind of minimum IQ?”

“I'm saying that Claud doesn't want this investigated.” Mitch frowned as he thought about it. “And he doesn't want it investigated a lot. And I think that's interesting.”

“But not interesting enough to keep on investigating.” Mae's glare was back in place. “You sold me out.”

“Well, not yet I haven't. I'm pretty sure it's not contractual until I cash the check.”

“Not a gentleman's agreement?” Mae's sarcasm was thick and acid.

“You need at least one gentleman for that. The butler was in the hall. It was just me and Claud, underestimating each other. We're both probably going to regret that.”

Mae was so quiet that Mitch finally glanced over at her. “What?”

“Tear up the check.”

“Are you nuts?” Mitch put his hand over his coat pocket in case she tried to lunge for it. “A hundred thousand may be spare change to you, but this is a fortune to me.”

“But if you're working for me, you're not going to cash it, anyway.” Mae leaned toward him, her eyes huge and plaintive. As she leaned closer, the neckline of her dress gaped open, and Mitch saw lush curves and creamy flesh and temporarily lost his train of thought. “Tear it up, and I'll believe in you again.” Her voice flowed over him, low and warm, and Mitch reluctantly tore his eyes away from her cleavage and scowled at her.

“Don't believe in me, dummy. I'm a guy. Now, could we get moving? I've got to go home and call somebody I know to look into that missing stuff you just dropped on me in there.” He gazed at her sternly. “You were supposed to tell me everything, Mabel. Keeping secrets from me is bad.”

“It wasn't relevant,” Mae began, and Mitch overrode her.

“Of course it's relevant. Tell me about it. You said a coin collection, furniture, and a lem-something.”

He watched her face as she thought in rapid succession about killing him, bullying him, and then, finally, telling him what he wanted, and he grinned. She was stubborn, but she wasn't dumb. It was going to be easier to tell him the story than to argue with him, and she knew it.

Fast learner, his Mabel.

Mae sighed. “The Lempicka is a painting of this horrible nude blond woman. She's sort of mechanical and shiny-looking. Actually, she looks a lot like Barbara Ross.”

“Is that why Armand bought it?”

“No, he bought it a long time ago. I was just a kid. He brought it home and showed it to me, and I said I thought it was really ugly, and he said that was because I had no taste. He told me it was a Tamara Lempicka, and he'd paid twenty thousand dollars for it.” Mae shook her head. “I was disgusted. That much money for an ugly painting.”

“So now twenty thousand dollars' worth of painting is missing?”

“No. Lempickas are hot right now. Barbra Streisand sold one last year for 1.8 million.”

Mitch's eyes widened. “Dollars?”

“Yep. Of course, part of that was probably because it was Streisand's Lempicka, but we are definitely talking high six figures as a minimum. We're missing a small fortune. And that's just one of the things that's gone. We're missing his coin collection, Revere silver, two Whistler drawings, an Early American sideboard—”

“And you didn't ask Armand where this stuff was going?”

“He moved it out so quietly that it didn't register at first.” Mae frowned at the traffic. “And then when we did notice, there wasn't much we could do. It was his stuff.”

“And you don't have any idea what he did with it?” Mitch persisted, watching her face.

She turned and looked at him with weighty patience. “It was all in the last two or three months, which means that all the answers will be in the diary. Now can we talk about the diary?”

Mitch grinned at her. “You are something else, Mabel.”

She smiled back at him, and he forgot his place in the conversation. “Don't you forget it,” she said. “What are you going to do next?”

“Next?” Mitch blinked and came back to earth. “Oh. You're going to drop me off at my garage so I can tell the people there to put a hurry-up on my new wheels. You drive like a woman, and it scares me.”

“Wimp.”

“Then, tomorrow, we'll do the memorial, and then we'll start looking for the diary.”

Mae watched him, suspicion blatant in her eyes. “So you're still investigating?”

“Until you do something to annoy me.” Mitch sat up in his seat again. “Then I'm cashing Claud's check. So, from now on, I want some respect from you. Could we get going now?”

“You want my respect, earn it.” Mae put the car in gear and when they were out on the road again, she asked him casually, “So what did you say about my butt?”

“To Claud?” Mitch shrugged, trying not to let his thoughts dwell on her rear end. “I told him it was adequate.”

“You lied,” Mae said. “It's magnificent and you know it.”

“Everybody lies,” Mitch said.

M
ITCH CALLED
N
EWTON
as soon as Mae dropped him off at the garage. “I need you to check on a few things for me.”

“I'm still checking on the other few things.” Newton sounded harried. “I'm still a stockbroker, you know. I'm still covering all your clients for you. I'm—”

“There's a beautiful woman involved here,” Mitch said soothingly.

“I know, you told me. Mabel.”

“Not Mabel. Mabel is not beautiful.” Mitch tried not to think about Mae's big dark eyes and curving mouth. “Not technically. This woman is technically beautiful. Perfect. You should see her, Newton.”

“Why?” Newton's suspicion was palpable, even over the phone.

“Because every man should see her. It'll restore your faith in humanity. Her name is Stormy Klosterman, and she was Armand's mistress. Supposedly he bought her a condo. Find out if he did.”

Newton's sigh was part exasperation, part resignation. “How?”

“Seduce her.”

“Me?”

“She's a redhead, Newton.”

There was a long silence. “Just like Brigid.”

“Better than Brigid.”

“All right,” Newton said finally. “In the meantime, what are you going to be doing? Seducing Mabel?”

Mitch swallowed. “No. Seducing Mabel would be hazardous to my health. And my sanity.”

“You're seeing a lot of her.”

Mitch remembered Mae leaning toward him and the lush curves he'd seen when she had, and his breath started to go.
Don't even think about it,
he told himself. “You don't understand. She's surrounded by homicidal men who watch her like hawks. Plus, this woman is so stubborn, she makes mules look indecisive. If her relatives didn't get me, she'd drive me crazy in a week.”

Of course, it would be one hell of a week. His mind went back to those curves, and his hands sliding up to cup those curves and then down to…no. He loosened his tie and shoved Mae out of his mind to return to the problem of Armand, making his voice brisk as an antidote to the thoughts that were making him choke. “I'm reading the most recent diary again tonight. Armand Lewis was evidently offloading some of his capital in the form of paintings and furniture and stock, and I want to see if I missed any mention of him having a garage sale. Oh, and here's something else interesting—a woman named Barbara Ross says she's married to Armand Lewis.”

“She inherits half, then. Wives get half automatically.”