Rags to Rubies (25 page)

Today she had her own neck to save, so Jared’s emotional quirks weren’t her problem. After much thought, she’d decided the only option was to flush out her attacker, to go about her normal routine until he sought her out again.

Even if she went to the police, they would wait until he showed himself. Zia Bruna adamantly disagreed with her about leaving Ravenhall, where she was relatively safe, but Grace didn’t feel she had a choice. She needed to take back control of her own destiny. Strangely, doing so had quelled some of the mind-numbing terror she’d been experiencing.

Grace slipped her hand into her pocket and fingered the small firearm. She wouldn’t be caught defenseless. The twenty-five caliber derringer would do little other than buy her some time, but she felt comfortable with it. In spite of the bravado she’d so smugly described to Jared, she realized the need for caution. She would be ready this time.

Ready as she would ever be.

Turning the key in the lock at D. L. Hollister and Co., Grace wondered why the windows in the shop were dark in the gray morning mist. Entering, she called out Leo’s name without receiving an answer. She raised the roller shades in the front windows and turned on the electric lights.

When she’d spoken to Leo after arriving from New York late the night before, he seemed relieved that she’d returned from her trip and would be returning to work in the morning, but it looked like she had reached the shop before he did.

She began the morning routine of opening the old vault to retrieve the shop’s more valuable pieces and put them back in the window display cases. The six-inch-thick portal groaned open; the familiar musty odor assaulted her senses. She pushed in the top button on the light switch.

Squinting in the bright light, she stared blankly into the vault. Every gem, every valuable piece of jewelry was gone! The shelves were completely empty.

We’ve been robbed!
she thought, as her mind reeled, trying to make sense of it. The vault’s lock wasn’t damaged and, to her knowledge, other than herself no one but Leo Hollister and her father had ever known the combination.

Behind her the wooden floor creaked. Grace whirled about to find herself looking down the sleek, shiny barrel of a pistol. Sucking in her breath sharply, she looked from the gun to the face of the man who held it and realized in an instant that, in spite of the long years of association, she had never really known her employer.

Leo Hollister’s thin lips curled in a sinister smile. His grim visage hinted at a controlled rage just below the surface. Grace looked into glazed eyes that held a glimmer of what could only be called madness.

Her breath came in short gasps. “I don’t understand,” she said, looking from the gun to his contorted face, her tightened voice a whisper. “How could it be you?” she asked, wondering if he would have a lucid answer. “Why, Leo?”

“It’s all very simple, my dear,” Leo Hollister began in a voice nightmarishly chilling. “Come with me quietly, and maybe I’ll enlighten you.” He jerked the gun barrel toward a side door and waited while she closed the vault and moved toward the door.

In the narrow alley behind the shop, a nondescript Model-T Ford sat parked with the motor running. Hollister opened the vehicle’s back door, shoved Grace in, and followed to sit beside her.

Securing her hands with rope, he settled into the seat with a satisfied look on his face. “Get down,” he ordered roughly and shoved her to the floor, pushing her head down. “Let’s go,” he said to the driver who turned to look over the seat.

“What you gonna do with her?” the man asked as he revved the motor.

The man in the driver’s seat looked vaguely familiar, although all she had seen of his face above the high seat were his narrow, deep-set eyes.

“She’s none of your concern,” Hollister spat at the man. “Just drive!”

“You never said nothing ’bout doin’ no dame.”

“I’ll take care of the woman. If you want your cut, just do as I say and drive.” The malice in Hollister’s voice unnerved Grace. Her mind raced in a desperate attempt to reason out what was happening to her.

The automobile jerked ahead, the tires spinning on the dewy pavement. As the driver sped along back streets and alleys, Grace forced herself to think logically. She still couldn’t fathom why Leo would harm her. She’d known him all her life, and while he’d never been affectionate toward her, she’d assumed he had a reclusive nature. After all, he had been her mother’s friend, and Papa’s, too. What could this possibly be about? Nothing seemed real, yet the gun he held on her seemed to shine with malevolence.

When he finally spoke again, her fear became palpable.

“You look just like her, you know.” His flat tone was chilling in its apathy.

Grace’s voice stuck in her throat. The possibility that he was deranged became reality. She tried to suck air into her constricted lungs.

“She should have been mine,” he murmured, his blunt fingers brushing lightly at the wisps of hair that framed her forehead.

Grace tightened against the floor. His glazed eyes narrowed. Leo was undiminished with age, broad-shouldered and well muscled. She’d often wondered how he could perform the delicate and precise work of cutting precious stones with his beefy fingers. She would never be able to overpower him. She needed to get to the gun in her pocket.

Her gaze darted to the handle of the door.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, anticipating her course of action. “There is no place to run and no one to help you. If you cooperate, you won’t come to any harm.”

Grace closed her eyes. She’d left behind in New York the only person who could have helped her. She sought desperately not to give in to panic and hysteria. It was essential to stay calm and think clearly. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

He snickered and toyed with the gun. “Why, the money, of course. If I couldn’t have her, I’ll have the money.” And then he looked vacant again, his eyes glinting and narrowing as if in another place, another time. How had she not recognized his shattered, diseased mind?

When the vehicle skidded to a stop, Hollister roughly hauled Grace out of the vehicle. The alley was littered with garbage, deserted except for a few red-eyed vermin among the rusted metal cans. Grace saw a worn wooden door stenciled with the words
The Peacock Club
in faded black lettering.

In spite of the pistol wedged under her ribs, she whirled around, shoving Leo to knock him off balance. She raced down the alley.

Hollister caught up in two steps, slamming her against the brick wall with a powerful, backhanded slap that brought her to her knees. He pulled her up with a tight grip around her neck, banging her head against the wall, and hissed into her face, “You stupid little bitch. Try that again and I’ll slit your throat!”

Then the bruising grasp loosened and became a soft caress as he stroked his knuckles across her stinging cheek. Grace shuddered, turning her face away just as he leaned toward her and kissed her with cold, wet lips. His voice became a lover’s whisper. “Don’t fight me, Angela. Please. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m going to treat you like a queen.” He pulled a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket and ripped off a piece to put over Grace’s mouth.

Pulling keys from his vest pocket, Leo hauled Grace to her feet. One arm encircling her under her breasts, he opened the back door, pulled her into the building, then shoved her up the steep steps to the second floor.

Grace could hear mixed sounds of what seemed to be a speakeasy as she stumbled up the stairs with her abductor. The driver of the car followed them, muttering foul curses in a guttural accent as Hollister yanked Grace back a few steps from the top. “Check the hallway first,” Leo ordered as he pulled Grace tight against his chest.

As the man squeezed past her, Grace recognized him as the courier from the service she employed for her appraisal business.
They would never let her live
, she realized in horror. Whatever Leo wanted from her he would take, and since she could recognize both of them, they would kill her.

But she didn’t have any money to speak of, at least not enough money to be murdered for. None of it made sense. The best she could do was bide her time and wait for an opportunity to escape. She took a deep breath to steady herself and fought the overwhelming despair that threatened her concentration. She needed all her faculties to watch for any opportunity to escape.

Doors lined the dank second floor hallway. A woman’s shrill laughter sounded from behind one of the doors followed by a man’s muffled groan. Leo dragged Grace past the closed doors toward a second set of stairs and directed her to ascend, his gun still at her back.

On the third floor, Hollister shoved Grace into a room unfurnished except for a desk and chair. A grimy window allowed diminished light to filter in and had a view of a brick building across the alley, its fire escape, like the one directly outside the window, rusty with age.

He thrust Grace into the chair and told the driver to make sure they hadn’t been followed. The man scowled but obeyed the directive, closing the door behind him. His heavy footsteps sounded down the hall.

Sitting on the edge of the desk, Hollister rested the gun on his knee. He wrinkled his brow and stared hard at Grace, blinking as if trying to recall something.

“I killed him, you know,” he said finally, dispassionately.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Grace moaned into the tape and lowered her head to her chest. When she raised her head, she met Leo’s eyes steadily over the trembling of her body.

Hollister removed the tape from her mouth and turned the gun on her. In spite of the gun aimed at her face, she exploded, her voice choked with fury. “My father never hurt anyone, ever! He trusted you! He considered you his friend!”

“Friend?” Hollister roared, the rabid anger hanging in the air. “What did he know of friendship? He stole her from me! He took everything from me. But now I will take it all back. I took his life, his business, and now I will take his daughter in place of the wife who should have been mine. You will join him in his watery grave, my dear. And I will live in luxury with the money you so conveniently secured for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Leo smiled and turned her toward a door he opened to reveal a small hallway. He motioned with the gun for Grace to go ahead of him. “It won’t do any good to scream. I keep this whole floor empty, and those on the second floor are too busy with their own pleasures to worry about a little rough play from another couple.”

He shoved her into the hallway between the rooms and lifted a cheaply drawn oil painting from the wall to reveal the small door of a wall safe. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, Hollister quickly dialed the combination and yanked the door open. He retrieved a zippered leather bank envelope and closed the safe.

Once back in the room, he poured part of the contents of the pouch onto the desk. Brilliant stones of green and white and blue glistened in the light that streaked across the scarred desk. Hollister raked his fingers through them.

Exquisite emeralds, diamonds, black pearls, sapphires—and the one stone that gave all the others away. A magnificent cabochon-cut ruby of almost fifty carats.

No, not fifty. She knew for sure—the ruby weighed fifty-two carats. Part of the Betrothal Gem Collection.

“Where did you get these?” Grace gasped, her pulse pounding in her ears with a controlled rage, and then fear as the realization of what Leo had methodically accomplished over the last two years.

Hollister laughed. A snicker at first, then a full, hawking laugh. He gathered up the stones, pausing to hold the brilliant ruby to the sunlight, creating a flickering rainbow on the opposite wall. He zippered the bag and put it into the deep pocket of his coat.

“It’s quite simple, you see. I always had a window of two or three days to have Quigley take a picture of your sketches and ready paste copies of the real gems while you made your reports. Our mutual bourgeois friend, the courier, would then pick up the package from you and bring it to me. Within a few hours, I would replace the gems with excellent quality paste stones, fabricated according to your detailed sketches, and send the package on its way again. You are such a creature of habit, my dear. You made everything so easy.”

“How did you ever expect to get away with this?” she asked incredulously. Knowing for sure he would kill her, knowing now she had little chance of surviving, she fought back the panic.

Hollister’s mouth tightened, and his smile faded as he strode into the hallway searching for his accomplice. “I figured I had a couple of years before anyone would figure out what I had done. After all, they had certified documentation of the value of the pieces from the most respected source in the business, and only a sale of the piece would invite another appraisal. Even in that event they would come looking for you, not me. I could then slip off to some very comfortable corner of the planet and live out my years in exceptional luxury, which I was planning to do in a few months anyway.”

He took her chin and jerked it up to engage her eyes. “But you had to ruin everything. You and your friend, de Warre, with your meddling. Now you must die, my dear. Not that I’ll regret it in the least. I only regret it will be too soon to enjoy you like I should have been able to enjoy your mother’s talents.”

“Murderer!” Grace cried. And then everything went black as she collapsed to the floor from the vicious slap Hollister dealt her.

****

At seven-thirty in the morning, Jared shifted uneasily in his seat and gazed unseeingly out the small window. Thank goodness Will’s friend, Ed Hubbard, had been persuaded to fly his B‑1 aircraft to Chicago. Hubbard and his partner, Bill Boeing, owed Will a favor. The B‑1 was to be the first commercial aircraft in the country, and the duo needed financing from Will’s bank and connections to get the project off the ground.

Jared had been one of the largest investors, so Ed flew the airplane personally. They had taken off as soon as possible but were still a half hour away from Chicago.