Key Trilogy (26 page)

A museum, then? A gallery? The Gallery, she thought and bolted to her feet.

“Dana!”

She dashed toward the kitchen, pulling up short when she saw Jordan sitting at the scarred table working on a small, sleek laptop.

“Sorry. I thought Dana was in here.”

“She took off hours ago.”

“Hours?” Malory passed a hand over her face as if coming out of a dream. “I lost track of time.”

“Happens to me regularly. Want some coffee?” He glanced toward the empty pot on the counter. “All you have to do is make it.”

“No, I really need to . . . You’re working. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“No problem. I’m having one of those days where I fantasize about having an alternate profession. Like being a lumberjack in the Yukon or a bartender at a tropical resort.”

“Pretty disparate choices.”

“Either of which seems like more fun than what I’m doing.”

She noted the empty coffee cup, the half-full ashtray set beside the jazzy laptop on a secondhand picnic table in a stupendously ugly kitchen.

“Could be the ambience isn’t particularly conducive to creativity.”

“When things are going well, you can be in a sewer with a notebook and a Ticonderoga.”

“I suppose that’s true, but I’m wondering if you’re set up in this . . . unfortunate room because you’re watching out for me.”

“Depends.” He eased back, fiddled with his dwindling pack of cigarettes. “If that’s okay with you, sure. If it’s going to piss you off, then I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She cocked her head. “And if I said I had to leave now, that there’s something I want to check out?”

He gave her an easy smile, one she thought might pass for innocent on a less wicked face. “I’d say, is it okay if I tag along? It might do me good to get out of the house for a while. Where are we going?”

“The Gallery. It occurred to me that the key must be attached to art, to beauty, to the paintings. It’s the most logical place in the area to look.”

“Uh-huh. So, you’re going to walk into a public place of business, during business hours, and nobody’s going to mind if you go on a scavenger hunt through the stock and/or office areas.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” Deflated, she sat across from him. “Do you think this whole thing is just some kind of lunacy?”

Jordan recalled watching several thousand dollars appear and disappear. “Not necessarily.”

“And if I said I might have a way to get into The Gallery
after
business hours?”

“I’d say you wouldn’t have been picked to be a part of this unless you were a creative woman with a flexible mind who’s willing to take some chances.”

“I like that description. I don’t know if it always applied, but it does now. I need to make some phone calls. And, Jordan? I think it shows a strong sense of character
and loyalty for a man to waste his day looking after a stranger because a friend asked him to.”

MALORY
took the keys from Tod and gave him a huge hug in return. “I owe you big.”

“I’ll say, but I’ll settle for any sort of an explanation.”

“As soon as I can. I promise.”

“Honeybun, this is all getting really weird. You get fired, then you hack into Pamela’s files. You turn down the invitation to come back to home and hearth with a substantial raise. And now you’re going to skulk around the place after closing.”

“You know what?” She jingled the keys in her hand. “That’s not the really weird part. All I can tell you is I’m doing something important, and with the best intentions. I’m not going to do The Gallery or James, or most especially you, any harm.”

“I’d never think you would.”

“I’ll have these back to you tonight. First thing in the morning at the latest.”

Tod glanced out the window to see Flynn loitering on the sidewalk. “This doesn’t have anything to do with sexual fetishes or fantasies?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s a shame. I’m walking away. I’m going to have a lovely martini, maybe two, and put all this completely out of my mind.”

“Do just that.”

He started out, then stopped and looked back at her. “Whatever you’re doing, Mal, be careful.”

“I will. Promise.”

She waited, watched Tod stop to speak to Flynn before sauntering off. She opened the door, gestured Flynn in, then locked it, set the security code. “What did Tod say to you?”

“That if I got you into any sort of trouble he’d hang
me up by my balls and then snip off various other body parts with manicure scissors.”

“Ouch. Good one.”

“You bet.” He peered out the window to make sure Tod was gone. “And let me tell you, if I was thinking about getting you into any sort of trouble, that image would be a very strong deterrent.”

“I guess, when it comes down to it, I’m the one who could be getting you in trouble. There’s the legal angle, the criminal angle, and your reputation as publisher and editor in chief of the
Dispatch
on the line here. You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m in. Manicure scissors are those little pointy ones that curve, right?”

“That’s right.”

He hissed out a breath. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Where do we start?”

“Upstairs, I think. We can work our way down. Assuming the keys in the painting are in proportion, it’ll be about three inches long.”

“Little key.”

“Yes, a fairly little key. The business end is a single, simple drop,” she continued and handed him a small sketch. “The other end is decorative, this complex pattern. It’s a Celtic design, a triple spiral called a
triskeles.
Zoe found the pattern in one of Dana’s books.”

“You three make a good team.”

“It feels like it. It’s gold, probably solid gold. I can’t imagine we won’t recognize it when we see it.”

He glanced toward the main showroom with its vaulted ceilings and generous space. There were the paintings, of course, and the sculpture and other artworks. Display cases and tables. Drawers and chests and counters with infinite cubbyholes.

“A lot of places a key might hide in here.”

“Wait until we get into the storage and shipping areas.”

They started in the offices. Malory set aside her guilt
at going through drawers, riffling through personal items. This wasn’t any time for delicacy, she told herself. She crawled around James’s desk, searching under it.

“Do you really think people like Rowena and Pitte, or whatever god’s in charge of hiding the keys, would tape the secret key to the bottom of a desk drawer?”

She sent him a sulky look as she slid the drawer back in place. “I don’t think we can afford to overlook any possibility.”

She looked so cute, he thought, sitting on the floor with her hair tied back from her face and her mouth all pouty. He wondered if she’d worn black because she felt it suited the circumstances.

It would be just like her.

“Fair enough, but we’d get through those possibilities faster if we called the whole team in.”

“I can’t have a pack of people running around here. It’s just not right.” And the guilt of what she was doing scraped her conscience like ragged fingernails. “It’s bad enough you’re here. You can’t use anything you see here in a story.”

He crouched down with her, stared into her face with eyes that had gone winter cool. “Is that what you think?”

“It doesn’t seem unreasonable that the thought crossed my mind.” She rose to take a painting off the wall. “You’re a journalist,” she continued as she checked the frame, tested the backing. “I owe something to this place, to James. I’m just saying that I don’t want him involved.”

She rehung the painting, chose another.

“Maybe you should write up a list of what is and isn’t appropriate for me to write about. In your opinion.”

“There’s no need to get testy.”

“Oh, yeah, there is. I’ve invested a lot of my time and energy in this, and I haven’t printed a word. Don’t question my ethics, Malory, just because you’re questioning your own. And don’t ever tell me what I can or can’t write.”

“It’s just a matter of saying this is off the record.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a matter of you trusting and respecting someone you claim to love. I’m going to start in the next room. I think we’ll do better separately.”

Just how, she wondered, had she managed to screw that one up so completely? She took the last painting off the wall, ordered herself to concentrate.

Obviously Flynn was oversensitive. She’d made a perfectly reasonable request, and if he wanted to get huffy about it, it was his problem.

She spent the next twenty minutes going over every inch of the room, and comforting herself with her conviction that he’d overreacted.

They didn’t speak for the next hour, and though they were two people performing the same task in the same space, they managed to avoid contact.

By the time they started on the main level, they’d developed a rhythm, but they still weren’t speaking.

It was tedious, frustrating work. Checking every painting, every sculpture, every pedestal and objet d’art. Going over the stairs tread by tread, crawling along the trim.

Malory took herself off to the storeroom. It was both painful and thrilling to come across newly acquired pieces, or to see others that had been sold since she’d left The Gallery and were waiting to be crated and shipped.

Once she’d been privy to every step and stage, and had been granted the right to acquire items and negotiate a price. In her heart The Gallery had been hers. She couldn’t count the times she’d been inside it after hours like this. No one would have questioned her presence then. There would have been no need to beg the keys from a friend, or to feel guilt.

To question her ethics, she admitted.

She wouldn’t have felt this awful grief, she realized. Grief that this part of her life had been taken away from her. Maybe she was crazy for refusing the offer to take it back. Maybe she was making a huge mistake by deviating
from the sensible, the
tangible
. She could go back and speak to James, tell him she’d changed her mind. She could slide back into routine again, have what she’d always had.

And it would never be the same.

That was the grief. Her life was changed, irrevocably. And she hadn’t taken the time to mourn the loss. She did so now, with every piece she touched, every minute she spent in the space that had once been the most important part of her life.

She revisited a thousand memories, so many of them part of the day-to-day routine that had meant nothing at the time. And everything once it had been taken away.

Flynn pulled open the door. “Where do you want to—” He broke off when she turned toward him. Her eyes were dry, but devastated. She held a rough stone sculpture in her arms as she might a child.

“What is it?”

“I miss this place so much. It’s like something’s died.” Very gently, she replaced the sculpture on a shelf. “I acquired this piece, about four months ago. It’s a new artist. He’s young, with all the fire and temperament you’d expect from the feel of his work. He’s from a small town in Maryland, and he’s had a little local luck, but no major gallery showed any interest. It felt good to give him his first real break, and to think of what he might do, what
we
might do in the future.”

She ran a fingertip over the stone. “Someone bought this. I didn’t have anything to do with that part, don’t even recognize the name on the invoice. It’s not mine anymore.”

“It wouldn’t have been here or have been sold if it wasn’t for you.”

“Maybe, but those days are over. I don’t have a place here anymore. I’m sorry for what I said before. Very sorry I hurt your feelings.”

“Forget it.”

“No.” She drew a breath. “I’m not going to say I didn’t have some concerns about how you might handle this whole thing eventually. I can’t claim that I have absolute trust in you. That conflicts with loving you, and I can’t explain it. No more than I can explain how I know the key’s not here. How I knew that the minute I walked in to get the keys from Tod. I still have to look, have to finish what I started. But it’s not here, Flynn. There’s nothing here for me now.”

F
LYNN
closed the door of his office, a signal that he was writing and was not to be disturbed. Not that anybody paid a great deal of attention to the signal, but it was the principle of the thing.

He let the idea for the column simply flow out initially, a kind of serpentine river of thought that he would channel into a more disciplined form on the second pass.

What defined the artist? Were artists only those who created what was perceived as the beautiful or the shocking, those who formed some piece of work that delivered a visceral punch? In painting, in music, in literature or theater?

If so, did that make the rest of the world nothing more than the audience? Passive observers whose only contribution was applause or criticism?

What became of the artist without the audience?

Not his usual sort of column, Flynn mused, but it had been kicking around in his head since the night he and Malory had searched The Gallery. It was time to let it out.

He could still see the way she’d looked in that storeroom. A stone figure in her arms and grief swimming in her eyes. In the three days since, she’d kept him and everyone else at arm’s length. Oh, she paid lip service to being busy, to following different angles on her quest, to putting her life back in order.

Though from his point of view there’d never been any real disorder to it.

Still, she refused to come out. And she wouldn’t let him in.

Maybe the column was a kind of message to her.

He rolled his shoulders, tapped his fingers on the edge of his desk until his mind shifted back and found the words.

Wasn’t the child who first learned to form his own name with letters a kind of artist? One who was exploring intellect, coordination, and ego. When the child held that fat pencil or bright crayon in his fist, then drew those letters on paper, wasn’t he creating a symbol of himself with lines and curves? This is who I am, and no one else is quite the same.

There is art in the statement, and in the accomplishment.

What about the woman who managed to put a hot meal on the table in the evening? To a Cordon Bleu chef, this might be a pedestrian feat, but to those who were baffled by the directions on a can of condensed soup, having that meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and string beans hit the table in unison was a great and mysterious art.

“Flynn?”

“Working,” he snapped without looking up.

“You’re not the only one.” Rhoda shut the door at her back, marched over and sat in a chair. She folded her arms across her chest and stared holes at Flynn through her square-framed glasses.

But without the audience, ready and willing to consume
the art, it becomes congealed leftovers to be dumped . . . “Damn it.”

He shoved back from his keyboard. “What?”

“You cut an inch from my feature.”

His hands itched to pick up his Slinky. And wrap its coils around Rhoda’s skinny throat. “And?”

“You said it was running a full twelve inches.”

“And what you had was eleven solid inches, and an inch of fill. I cut the fill. It was a good piece, Rhoda. Now it’s a better piece.”

“I want to know why you’re always picking on me, why you’re always cutting my pieces. You barely put a mark on John’s or Carla’s, and they’re all over my work.”

“John handles sports. He’s been handling sports for over a decade. He’s got it down to a science.”

Art and science, Flynn thought and made a quick shorthand note to remind himself to work it into the column. And sports . . . If anyone watched the way a pitcher sculpted the dirt on the mound with his feet until it was exactly the shape, the texture, the slope he—

“Flynn!”

“What? What?” He snapped back, rewound the tape in his mind. “And I do edit Carla when and if she needs it. Rhoda, I’m on a deadline myself here. If you want to get into this, let’s schedule some time tomorrow.”

Her mouth pruned. “If we don’t resolve this now, I won’t be coming in tomorrow.”

Instead of reaching for his action figure of Luke Skywalker and imagining the Jedi knight drawing his light saber and blasting the superior smirk off Rhoda’s face, Flynn sat back.

The time had come, he decided, to do the blasting himself.

“Okay. First, I’m going to tell you I’m tired of you threatening to walk. If you’re not happy here, not happy with the way I run the paper, then go.”

She flushed scarlet. “Your mother never—”

“I’m not my mother. Deal. I run the
Dispatch
. I’ve been running it for nearly four years now, and I intend to run it for a long time. Get used to it.”

Now her eyes filled, and since Flynn considered tears fighting dirty, he struggled to ignore them. “Anything else?” he asked coolly.

“I’ve been working here since before you could read the damn paper.”

“Which may be our problem. It suited you better when my mother was in charge. Now it suits you better to continue to think of me as a temporary annoyance, and an incompetent one at that.”

Rhoda’s mouth dropped open in what appeared to be sincere shock. “I don’t think you’re incompetent. I just think—”

“That I should stay out of your work.” The genial tone was back in his voice, but his expression remained frigid. “That I should do what you tell me instead of the other way around. That’s not going to happen.”

“If you don’t think I do good work, then—”

“Sit down,” he ordered as she started to rise. He knew the drill. She would storm out, slam things around, glare at him through the glass, then make sure her next piece slid in only minutes before deadline.

“It so happens I think you do good work. Not that it matters a hell of a lot coming from me because you don’t have any confidence in or respect for my skill or my authority. I guess that makes it tough for you because you’re a journalist, we’re the only game in town, and I’m in charge. I don’t see any of those factors changing. Next time I ask for twelve inches, give me a solid twelve and we won’t have a problem.” He tapped the tip of his pencil against the desk while she gaped at him.

Perry White, he mused, might’ve handled it better, but he figured he was in the ballpark. “Anything else?”

“I’m going to take the rest of the day off.”

“No, you’re not.” He swiveled back to his keyboard. “Have that piece on the elementary school expansion on my desk by two. Close the door on your way out.”

Flynn went back to typing, pleased when he heard the door click closed instead of slam. He waited thirty seconds, then shifted in his chair enough to look through the glass wall. Rhoda was sitting at her desk as if paralyzed.

He hated confrontations like that. The woman used to sneak him gumdrops when he would come into the offices after school. It was hell, he decided, rubbing his temple and pretending to concentrate on his work. Just hell being a grown-up.

HE
escaped for an hour in the afternoon to meet Brad and Jordan at the Main Street Diner. It hadn’t changed much since the three of them had gathered there regularly after football games or for late-night bullshit sessions that had revolved around girls and life plans.

The air was still ripe with the smell of the diner’s signature chicken-fried steak, and the counter still held a four-tiered display rack of that day’s pies. As Flynn looked down at the burger he’d ordered out of habit, he wondered if it was the diner that had gotten stuck in the past, or himself.

He frowned at Brad’s club sandwich. “Trade me.”

“You want my sandwich?”

“I want your sandwich. Trade me.” To solve the matter, Flynn switched the plates himself.

“If you didn’t want a burger, why’d you order one?”

“Because. I’m a victim of habit and tradition.”

“And eating my sandwich is going to solve that?”

“It’s a start. I also started breaking habit by reaming Rhoda out at the paper this morning. Once she comes out of shock, I’m pretty sure she’ll start planning my demise.”

“How come you wanted his sandwich instead of mine?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t like Reubens.”

Jordan considered, then switched his plate with Brad’s.

“Jesus, are we finished playing musical plates now?” Brad scowled at the Reuben, then decided it actually looked pretty good.

Though he was already wishing he had his burger back, Flynn picked at the club sandwich. “Do you think staying in your hometown all your life keeps you too attached to the past, too resistant to change and growth, and thereby inhibits your ability to function as a mature adult?”

“I didn’t know this was going to be a philosophical discussion.” But willing to play, Jordan considered the question as he squeezed ketchup on the burger. “It could be said that staying in your hometown means you’re comfortable there and have created strong roots and ties. Or that you’re just too lazy and complacent to get your ass out.”

“I like it here. Took me a while to come to that. Up until recently I’d been pretty complacent about how things were going. Complacency’s taken a backseat since around the first of the month.”

“Because of the keys?” Brad asked. “Or Malory?”

“One goes with the other. The keys, that’s an adventure, right? Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark.”

“Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny,” Jordan put in.

“Right, same deal.” You could always count on Jordan to get your drift, Flynn thought. “None of our lives are going to suffer if we don’t find them. Not really.”

“One year,” Brad said. “That’s a pretty stiff penalty clause to my way of thinking.”

“Okay, yeah.” Flynn plucked a potato chip from the little mound beside his sandwich. “But I’m having a hard time seeing either Rowena or Pitte punishing these women.”

“They may not be the ones who do the messing,” Jordan commented. “They may simply be the conduit, so to
speak, to reward or punishment. Why do we assume they have a choice either?”

“Trying to think positive here,” Flynn replied. “And the idea that we will find the keys, and what happens then, is compelling.”

“Besides the fact that it’s a puzzle, and it’s damn hard to walk away from a puzzle.”

Flynn nodded at Brad, shifted in his seat. “Then there’s the magic. The acceptance that magic, some kinds of magic, are real. Not an illusion, but an actual kick in the ass of the natural order. I mean, how cool is that? That’s the kind of thing we give up when we become adults. The casual belief in magic. This has given it back.”

“You want to look at it as a gift or a burden?” Jordan wondered. “Could go either way.”

“Thanks again, Mr. Bright Side. But yes, I know that too. We’re coming up on deadline here. A little more than a week. If we don’t find it, maybe we’ll pay, maybe we won’t. But we’ll never
know
.”

“You can’t dismiss the potential consequences of failure,” Brad pointed out.

“I’m trying to believe that nobody’s going to screw up the lives of three innocent women because they tried and failed.”

“You go back to the beginning of this, and the lives of three innocent women—demigoddesses or not—were screwed up simply because they existed.” Jordan dashed salt on what had been Flynn’s fries. “Sorry, pal.”

“Add in that the women in the portrait look like the women we know.” Brad drummed his fingers on the table. “There’s a reason for that, and the reason puts them at the core of it all.”

“I’m not letting anything happen to Malory. Or any of them,” Flynn responded.

Jordan picked up his glass of iced tea. “Just how stuck on her are you?”

“That’s another question. I haven’t figured it out.”

“Well, we’ll help you there.” Jordan winked at Brad. “What’re friends for? How’s the sex?”

“Why’s that always first with you?” Flynn demanded. “That’s a lifelong pattern.”

“Because I’m a guy. And if you don’t think women rate sex high on the list, you’re a sad and pitiful fool.”

“It’s great.” Flynn met Jordan sneer for sneer. “You only wish you were having this level of sex with a beautiful woman. But it’s not like that’s the only thing going on between us. We have actual conversations, with and without clothes on.”

“Including phone conversations?” Brad asked. “That last over five minutes?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Just making the list. Have you cooked her anything? Not just nuking something, but using an actual stove.”

“I just made her some soup when—”

“That counts. Take her to any chick flicks?”

Frowning, Flynn picked up a triangle of sandwich. “I don’t know that it qualified as a chick flick.” He set it down again. “Okay, yes. Once, but it was—”

“No explanations, this part of the quiz is true or false. We can move on to our essay section,” Jordan assured him. “Picture your life in, let’s say five years. That work?” he asked Brad.

“Some require ten, but I think we can be more lenient. Five works for me.”

“Okay, picture your life in five years. Can you structure the visual without her being in it?”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to picture five years from now when I’m not sure what I’ll be doing in five days.”

But he could, he could see his house, with some of the long-term plans he had for it in place. He could see himself at the paper, walking Moe, hanging out with Dana. And he could see Malory at every angle. Walking down
the stairs in the house, coming by the paper to meet him, chasing Moe out of the kitchen.