Ready & Willing (29 page)

“I have an idea,” Nathaniel said, “but I want to hear about what you learned at your end first, from . . . your husband’s . . . ex-partner.”

It didn’t escape her notice that he’d stumbled over Sean’s name to the point where he couldn’t say it. Not that she didn’t sympathize. She often had trouble saying Sean’s name, too. But that was because she loved and missed him so much. Why would Nathaniel have trouble saying Sean’s name?

“So did you hear from . . . Leo is it?”

She nodded. “Actually, he got back to me a lot faster than I thought he would. I didn’t expect to hear from him ’till tomorrow.”

“What did Leo find out?”

“Nothing like your guy did,” she said. “He’s still looking, but called today to tell me there weren’t any outstanding warrants for the guy. So there must not have been charges pressed in that triple murder.”

“No,” Nathaniel agreed. “There weren’t. And a lot of what my guy found out was doubtless rumor and innuendo. But it would be well-founded rumor and innuendo for him to pass it along,” he added before she had a chance to object. “What did Leo find out about Edward?”

“He said Edward Dryden is as squeaky clean as they come,” she told him. “That there isn’t a whiff of scandal about the guy. In fact,” she continued, “Leo told me today he’s beginning to think Edward is a little
too
clean. A little
too
scandal-free.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that everybody has
something
in their background that should show up on a thorough check. Parking violation. Workplace complaint. Something. Especially a guy who works as a developer. Even the best ones who are totally legit have complaints lodged against them about something, even if they’re by some perfectionist malcontent client who has nothing better to do with his time than lodge charges against people. But Edward has none.”

“Interesting,” Nathaniel said. “But what I find even more interesting is that Edward set up his development business in Louisville about four and a half years ago. Before that . . .” His voice trailed off, but he smiled a secretive little smile.

“What?” Audrey asked.

He mimicked her position, bracing his elbows on the table and leaning forward, something that brought his face to within inches of her own. Wow, had she thought his scent surrounded her before? Now she was fairly swimming in it. Not that she was complaining. It was a very nice scent.

“Before that,” he said, “this man who now makes his living as a
very
successful developer was working as a middle school English teacher in Vermont.”

Audrey found the, ah, development, curious. “That’s some career change to make, virtually overnight.”

Nathaniel shrugged. “I really didn’t give it much thought when I did Edward’s initial background check. People, especially of a certain age, sometimes make drastic career changes. For all I knew, the guy paid his way through his English degree working construction and wanted to go back to his roots.” He eyed her intently. “Now, though, looking at Edward in a different light . . .”

He left the statement unfinished. So Audrey finished it for him. “Looking at Edward in a different light, it looks like maybe Edward Dryden started off as something . . . and maybe even someone . . . else.”

Nathaniel nodded slowly.

“So six months after Nicholas Pearson drops off the face of the earth,” Audrey said, “Edward Dryden shows up in Louisville with an entirely new career.”

“And then a ghost who’s haunting your house,” Nathaniel added, “and who has access to things you and I can only imagine, connects the two names in a way that, although hazy, is still connected.”

“So how do we prove Nicholas and Edward are the same guy?” she asked. “Other than the fact that they’ve never been photographed together, I mean. For that matter, how do we even know they
are
the same guy? We’re making a lot of assumptions here and jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

“Maybe,” he concurred. “Which is why . . .” He reached behind himself for the jacket he’d slung over the back of the chair, reached into the inside breast pocket, and withdrew a key. Then he finished the statement, “. . . we’re going to need to do a little sleuthing on our own.”

“What’s that?” Audrey asked.

“A key to the offices of Dryden Properties.”

Her mouth fell open at that. “And just how did you find yourself in possession of said key?”

“It’s a copy,” he told her. He smiled and lifted a finger to his lips in an I’ve-got-a-secret way. “But I can’t reveal my sources.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “You paid your detective to get that.”

His response to that was an almost imperceptible lift to one corner of his mouth that made something in Audrey’s midsection do a funny little flip-flop. “I’m not saying.”

“Why aren’t you paying him to use it?” she asked further. “You can’t possibly be thinking you’re going to break into his offices yourself.”

“Technically, it’s not breaking in,” he said. “Since we have a key, we won’t have to break anything.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

But he ignored her question, continuing, “Technically, it will just be illegal entry.”

“
Just
illegal entry?” she echoed. “So that means what? The judge will only give us five to ten instead of seven to twelve?”

He shook his head. “It means we can get in and out without Edward ever knowing we were there.”

“And just what would
we
be looking for?” Audrey asked, hoping he noted that her emphasis on the
we
was sarcastic and not meant to indicate that she had any intention of joining him in something like this.

“Anything out of the ordinary,” he told her.

She shook her head. “Again, I ask you. Why not pay your shady PI to do this?”

“Because my shady PI won’t know what’s out of the ordinary. He doesn’t have enough knowledge of my or Edward’s business to know what to look for. I do.”

“And why should I go along with this?” Audrey wanted to know.

Nathaniel smiled again. “Because it will be a great adventure?”

“It won’t be that great.”

“All right. How about so that you can report back to Silas Summerfield after the fact?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you can be his eyes and ears. You told me that night at Buck’s that he’s able to get into your thoughts, right?”

She nodded. She had told him that. Just before she’d gone to the women’s room and he’d snaked the check out from under her and paid it. “Yeah . . .” she said.

“So if you go with me and scope the place out, then when you come back here, you can give Silas . . . I don’t know, a virtual tour or something. And maybe he’ll ‘see’ something, for lack of a better word, that triggers something for him.”

“It might be worth attempting, Audrey.”

Those last words came not from Nathaniel, but Silas. When she turned toward the direction from which they’d come, she saw him leaning against the counter, his arms crossed over his midsection, studying her and Nathaniel with much interest.

“Silas is here,” she told Nathaniel, still looking at the ghost. “He thinks it might be a good idea for me to do exactly what you’re suggesting.”

“Great minds and all that,” Nathaniel said. “Must run in the Summerfield blood.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea?” she asked Silas.

“Well, I’m not sure I’d say it’s
good
,” he told her. “But it isn’t terrible, either.” He pushed away from the counter and covered the short distance that lay between them. “The thing is, Audrey, I don’t have any ideas that are better. And time is running out,” he added.

Something in her chest knotted hard at that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s been no progress whatever in winning back Nathaniel’s soul. It’s been gradually drifting away for two weeks now. It won’t stay anchored where it is much longer.”

“But you said before that as long as there was still time to undo the deal, Nathaniel’s soul was safe. That his soul wouldn’t be lost until the buildings were up.”

“Yes, well, either I was wrong about that, or something has happened to make the development more permanent. Because the boy’s soul is losing ground.”

Now something heavy and cold settled in the pit of Audrey’s stomach. “How can that be?”

“I don’t know. I only know that we . . . you,” he corrected himself, “don’t have as much time as we once thought. We . . . you . . . need to find a way for Nathaniel to sever his ties to Edward Dryden and scuttle that development as soon as you possibly can. If that means breaking into the man’s office . . .”

“It won’t be breaking in,” she said. “It will be illegal entry.”

“Then you need to illegally enter and find whatever you can to help Nathaniel. And you need to do it now.”

She turned to look at Nathaniel, and judging by the expression on his face, even though he’d only heard one side of her conversation, he’d gotten the gist—and then some—of what was going on.

“When do we do this?” she asked.

“Are you busy Saturday night?”

Fourteen

FOR ALL THE DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS
Dryden Properties had under way, the offices for the company were actually located in the ’burbs. In eastern Jefferson County, to be exact, in an area noted for being untainted by things like widespread break-ins and petty theft.

Or even illegal entry.

Audrey and Nathaniel would have had a much easier time masking their activities—or, at least, having them explained away as random—had Edward located his place of business in one of the areas where he actually did business. Not that he was developing any seedy, dangerous neighborhoods—more was the pity—but had his office been located in a more urban environment, it would have been closer to pockets of restless youth who were prone to things like . . .

Well, illegal entry, for example.

But since there were no restless youth to be had this evening, Nathaniel and Audrey would just have to rely on their restless selves. He’d promised her, after all, that they could be in and out without Edward ever knowing they had been there. Provided they went in and out as quickly as possible and did it at a time of night when no one in their right minds would be at the office, even a workaholic like Edward Dryden who spent more time at work than at home. That last was something Nathaniel had assured Audrey he knew a thing or two about—not that he’d had to do much to assure her of that—and he was positive, absolutely, completely, utterly positive, that no one would be around at three A.M on a Sunday morning.

Which was how the two of them came to be sitting in his car—his
other
car, not the more conspicuous Porsche, though as far as Audrey was concerned, a Jaguar sedan was still plenty conspicuous—in the parking lot of the building where Edward kept his offices. Fortunately, the parking lot was in the back of the building instead of the front, which abutted a shopping center that would have been wildly busy any other time. In fact, the first time they had driven through to case the joint—and, really, she had to stop watching film noir if she was starting to use phrases like “case the joint” in her everyday jargon—there had still been a few cars in the parking lot belonging to employees of a couple of nearby restaurants. As of their last pass, however, the shopping center had been nearly vacant. This was as close to deserted as the area was ever going to be.

“It’s after three,” Nathaniel said from the driver’s seat beside her.

He was dressed completely in black, from his trousers to his turtleneck to his leather driving gloves. Audrey was similarly attired, in black jeans and sweater, her own gloves a leopard print velvet, since she only owned mittens otherwise, and she’d never seen anyone with mittens breaking and entering—oh, pardon her, she meant
entering illegally
, of course—on TV.

“It’s now or never,” he said.

She inhaled a deep, slow breath at the announcement and released it slowly, hoping to steady the rapid-fire beating of her heart. Audrey Fine Magill had never committed a crime in her life. She hadn’t earned so much as a parking ticket, ever. Certainly she realized why they had to do what they were doing, and she told herself they did have a key that Nathaniel had acquired, albeit without the owner’s knowledge. If they were caught here, in the middle of the night, on a weekend, dressed completely in black, it was going to look a tad suspicious. If a security guard stumbled upon them, they’d have some ’splainin’ to do. And if Dryden or one of his stooges—really needed to lay off the film noir—caught them . . .

Well. If Edward was who or what Audrey and Nathaniel suspected him of being, that didn’t bear thinking about.

But they weren’t going to get caught, she promised herself. It was three A.M. on a Sunday morning, the parking lot was deserted, and they were wearing black. It was everything a private dick and his swell girl Friday needed for success.

Gee, maybe they could stop at the all night rental place and pick up
The Big Sleep
on the way home . . .

Then Nathaniel was opening the driver’s side door, and both the overhead light and open-door chime came on, looking and sounding like Big Ben in the dark, silent surroundings.

Some private dick and swell girl Friday they were turning out to be.

Hurriedly, they both exited the black Jag and closed the doors as quietly as possible. With one expressive glance over the hood at each other, Nathaniel nodded once, and they made their way to the building. It was new, brick, made to look like something tourists saw in Williamsburg, and, since the neighborhood was partly residential, partly white collar, and all upscale, not overly secured against pesky plebeian things like crime.

She hoped.

The soft scrape of their feet on the asphalt sounded like a hopped up crowd at a Linkin Park concert to Audrey’s ears, and the scratch of the key in the exterior door sounded like a stampede of wildebeests. Her heart rate quadrupled as she waited for Nathaniel to get the door open, and just as the knob turned, a car with a major muffler problem drove past on the other side of the building, quickening her pulse even more. The door, of course, had a squeaky spring that sounded like giant fingernails on a massive blackboard, and when the door finally pushed open, it was with a
whoosh
that sounded like a tsunami.