Partners in Crime (17 page)

He was used to thinking on his feet in court, and his experience had served him well when he’d come face-to-face with Hans the elevator operator who’d known him since adolescence. But Jane was a smart lady—it had been sheer luck that she hadn’t tumbled onto all the amazing coincidences so far.

It was more than luck. He knew from observing human nature in and out of the courtroom that people saw what they expected to see. Once Jane got it into her head that he was Jimmy the Stoolie it would take a great deal to convince her of anything different. If he were reasonably circumspect he’d be safe.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he said as he headed the Audi into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Jane turned slowly to look at him, her eyes unreadable behind the wire-rimmed glasses. “You wouldn’t want to know them,” she said.

“That bad, eh? I’m glad I’m not Stephen Tremaine. I wouldn’t care to have your fury directed at me.”

Her smile was cool. “Oh, I’m very rational and civilized. I’m not one to let my emotions overwhelm me.”

“And if we find that Stephen Tremaine actually did have your brother killed, what then? Won’t your emotions get the better of you? Won’t you want your revenge?”

“First things, first,” she said, continuing before he could ask her to explain that enigmatic statement. “I haven’t been to the Jersey shore in years “

“I don’t think it’s changed much. It was already built up as much as it could be, and the real estate is worth so much that when things start disintegrating new money comes in and buys the old places up. How come your brother owns a place in Bay Head and you don’t? A research scientist, even one at the top of Tremaine’s payroll, wouldn’t make enough to buy one.”

“Especially not one like Richard’s,” she said, her voice losing some of its tight, strained quality. “It was left to him by an eccentric bachelor uncle. One who hated women. He hadn’t been in the place in decades, but he’d had it kept up, and when he died he left it to the one relative who least wanted it. Typical of Uncle Oscar.”

“What did Richard do with it?”

“Not much. I gather he’d come down weekends occasionally, when Princeton got too crowded. In fact he came down here the weekend before he died. I hadn’t thought it made any difference, but if it really wasn’t an accident...” She shuddered, her hands pleating and repleating the khaki shirt Sandy had found in a back closet for her. “I was going to come down here sooner or later, but I knew he’d never cared much for the place so I couldn’t believe he would have had his private laboratory here. Maybe I was wrong.”

“What are you going to do with the place?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You inherited it, didn’t you? Are you going to sell it?”

“Why?” Jane inquired sweetly. “Were you interested in buying it?”

“I don’t make that kind of money with my penny ante schemes.”

“Maybe Alexander Caldicott would buy it for you. He seems to be bankrolling everything as it is.”

She was looking out into the early-afternoon traffic, so he couldn’t see her expression, but her tone of voice had been downright caustic. She couldn’t have found out... No, it was impossible. Jane wasn’t the kind to take that information quietly. If she found out he’d been lying to her she’d be more likely to rant and rave. Wouldn’t she?

“Don’t you like Alexander?” he probed gently.

She turned then, her brown eyes limpid and innocent, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Jane wasn’t that practiced a dissembler. “Of course I do,” she said. “He keeps you out of jail, doesn’t he?”

“Does that matter to you? Whether I’m in jail or not?”

“I wouldn’t get very far in my life of crime without an experienced crook like you, now would I?”

Something was definitely wrong. Maybe it was as simple as a delayed reaction to last night, or distress about her brother, or concern about the time it was taking to get to the bottom of it. One look at her delicious, thoroughly stubborn lower lip and he knew he wouldn’t find out anything more until she was good and ready to tell him.

“I guess not,” he said.

Without another word she flicked on the radio, tuned it to Bruce Springsteen, and turned up the volume loud enough to preclude conversation, as they headed toward the New Jersey Turnpike.

The man beside her was right, the Jersey shore hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen or so years. In this transitional off-season, the streets, while not deserted, were more reasonably populated, and there were no signs of urban decay as there were in the inland cities.

Suddenly Jane was transported back to her teenage years, when a bunch of kids would pile into someone’s old Beetle and drive to the shore for a day of sunburns and junk food and very little sea water. It had been a wonderful time, spent hidden behind prescription sunglasses, stuffed into a bikini she blushed to remember, playing WNEW-FM too loud and irritating everyone else on the beach. She had very few memories of such innocence—those times had been few and far between during her ordained quest for academic excellence. It wasn’t until she flatly announced to her parents that she was refusing Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton in favor of a small liberal arts college in the Midwest that she once more experienced that heady feeling of youthful joy and power.

The old house on the ocean hadn’t changed much. Unlike its neighbors, it hadn’t been freshened with a new coat of paint, the shingles were streaked and weathered, and weeds were poking out of the cracked walkways. She’d been there once since Richard inherited it, and with him had made the tour of rusty pipes, outdated wiring, cheap furniture and rattan rugs. The house had smelled of boiled cabbage and dead fish, and four years later it smelled the same. There was no apparent sign that Richard had been back in the past few years.

The first thing Jane did was open all the windows. The second was to check that the power and phone were working. The former was, the latter wasn’t, but that wouldn’t matter for one night. Not unless she murdered the man with her and then wanted to turn herself in.

She couldn’t think of him in terms of anything but a pronoun or a four-letter word. It didn’t matter that she’d been calling him Sandy, clearly an often-used nickname for Alexander. It didn’t matter that she knew him as Caldicott—she still thought of that little weasel as his lawyer, not as his client.

“We’re spending the night here?” the creep inquired as he came back down the stairs.

Jane turned off the rusty tap water and turned to face him. “You can go back to your lawyer’s apartment if you want,” she said sweetly. “I’m staying here.”

“I’ll stay. Though what you think we’ll find is beyond me. It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been here in years.”

“Richard wasn’t the type to settle in. He probably just brought a suitcase and ate out. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t leave some sort of sign. He left directly for Vermont from here. Chances are we’ll find a reason.”

“I don’t see any sign of a laboratory. Not unless it’s hidden behind fake walls or something.” He shoved the sleeves of his rugby shirt up to his elbows and peered into the empty refrigerator.

“The wiring hasn’t been upgraded. He couldn’t have had a lab here. His work requires some sophisticated instruments and a decent power source.”

He shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it, staring out the grimy kitchen window at the ramshackle garage. “So we’ve come to a dead end.”

“Not necessarily. That’s what comes from being on the other side of the law, Jimmy,” she said with just a touch of malice. “You don’t have to put your energies into discovering things, you have to put them into keeping from being discovered. It’s different when you’re the one who’s looking. There’s trash in the wastepaper baskets, there are papers and envelopes less than two months old in his desk. He left his McDonald’s wrappers here—we’ll be able to look at it and see whether he was alone or whether there is enough trash for two.”

“You do have a devious mind,” he said admiringly.

“I’m probably better suited to a life of crime than you are, Jimmy.”

“Call me Sandy,” he said with a trace of irritation.

“Sandy’s too bland and innocuous a name,” she replied sweetly. “I prefer to think of you as Jimmy the Stoolie. After last night’s encounter I have no doubt at all that beneath that wishy-washy exterior lurks the soul of a completely sleazy liar, but it’s easy to forget and think you’re a decent, upstanding citizen.”

He just stared at her, at a complete loss for words, and she watched him with limpid delight. He couldn’t very well insist that he wasn’t a rotten liar—after all, he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to convince her that was exactly what he was. He couldn’t very well insist what she termed his wishy-washy exterior was the real thing, that bland and innocuous Sandy was his real name. All he could do was glare at her from across the large, old-fashioned kitchen.

“It’s always nice to know what my partner in crime thinks of me,” he said finally, pushing away from the refrigerator and moving toward her.

Jane eyed him warily. No matter how furious, how outraged and murderous she felt, she couldn’t rid herself of the irrational, utterly degrading attraction she still felt for him. “Why don’t you go out and find us something to eat,” she said, forestalling his steady approach, “and I’ll make a start on the trash?”

“That sounds like an offer I can’t refuse.” He stopped his headlong advance. “Wouldn’t you rather go out for dinner?”

“I’d rather get started. The longer we take the greater the chance that Uncle Stephen will find the missing part of the formula first. We’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

He didn’t reply to the indirect criticism. “Do you want to make a list?”

“See if you can find a place with take-out fried clams. We’ll also need some instant coffee and maybe something for breakfast.”

“No instant coffee. We get ground coffee or we go without. I think I’ll see if I can find a bottle of Scotch, too. Something tells me it’s going to be a cold night.”

“It’s Indian summer,” she pointed out.

“I wasn’t talking about the temperature. Anything else?”

Enough rope for you to hang yourself,
she thought sweetly. “Anything that strikes your fancy, Jimmy.”

“Let’s leave it at wishy-washy old Sandy, okay?” he said, his voice just short of a bark. “I’m used to it by now.” The door slammed behind him, the Audi screeched out of the driveway, and Jane stood at the kitchen door, trying to fight the burning feeling of anger and tears that had lodged in her chest since early that morning.

“Damn you, Alexander Caldicott,” she whispered, trying the name on for size. It suited him, all right. How could she have been so blind and stupid?

She hadn’t bothered to mention to him that the house already contained a bottle of Scotch. Her brother’s one human weakness in his entire austere life had been a fondness for the best Scotch he could buy, and he could buy the best. There was bound to be a bottle of Cutty Sark or Pinch somewhere around in the dusty old cupboards. And that was exactly what she needed, right then and there.

She found it under the sink, next to the rusty can of Drano. The ice cubes in the freezer were dry and shrunken, the rusty water unappealing, so she poured herself a goodly portion, neat, and stepped out onto the screened-in back porch.

Most of the screens were ripped and shredded, but thankfully the mosquito season was well past. The house sat smack on the beach, and while its stretch of white sand leading down to the churning gray water was ostensibly private property, no one had abided by that edict. Jane noticed the charred remnants of a campfire, several cans and bottles, but nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up in a few minutes.

She sank down gingerly on an aging lounge chair, propped her feet up, and took a deep sip of the warm Scotch. Despite the unseasonable warmth of the day a fresh breeze had picked up, and the strong salt scent of high tide teased her senses. The sun was setting, the purples and reds of a brilliant sunset reflecting over the ocean. It never failed to work out that she was on the wrong coast at the wrong time. The only time she’d spent on the Pacific she’d been involved in a seminar that included rising at dawn and being locked away in meetings during sunset. Here she was on the East Coast, finally able to watch nature, and the sun was setting out of sight. And she had no intention whatsoever of being up early enough to see the sun rise.

She had more than enough time to drink her whiskey, watch the tide ebb, and think about the future. She’d have to find Richard’s lab on her own, without any help from her so-called partner in crime. Though she was beginning to lose interest in the chase. Richard made his life a monument to high principles, but that didn’t mean she had to waste months and months trying to follow in his footsteps. She’d always felt like such a cop-out compared to Richard’s high-flown standards, but maybe she’d been too harsh on herself. Maybe it wasn’t such a crime to be able to see the other person’s point of view, no matter how distasteful it might appear.

She toyed with the notion, as she toyed with the glass of rapidly disappearing whiskey, considering various occasions when she might have been too understanding. While she was an old-fashioned liberal, she understood the fears that drove conservatives. While she enjoyed an occasional whiskey or a glass of wine, she realized the dangers certain people ran in indulging even marginally in such social drugs.

And what about Frank? He’d made a mistake, divorcing his first wife and then marrying Jane on the rebound. He hadn’t excused it, or tried to blame anyone else, he’d been terribly sorry about it. Had she been wrong to forgive him? To understand?

Jane drained her whiskey, setting it down on the smeared glass-topped table with a snap. Yes, she’d been wrong. Because she hadn’t really forgiven him. She’d kept her hurt and anger and sheer outrage locked inside, tamped down beneath her well-nurtured civility, and it had done nothing but eat away at her.

Damn Frank, damn Richard and damn Alexander Caldicott. Damn all men everywhere. Revenge, sweet revenge was the answer. When she got back to Baraboo she’d see if she could find one of those companies that delivered a cream pie in the face of specified victims. It was the least she could do for the happy couple.