The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) (31 page)

Footsteps descended the stairs from the cabin. Despite the lack of light, whoever it was moved quickly, if unevenly. The stranger paused at the bottom of the stairs, and a thin beam of light passed under the edge of the bathroom door. The steps moved forward and paused again. A man's voice said, “What?” and the lid to the bench creaked as it lifted.

Then came the sharp sound of the door to the storage area under the cabin as it was thrust open. He knew someone was on the boat and was looking for her. Paul reached over to hold the door handle just as the stranger tried the door. She closed her eyes.

As suddenly as it started, the pressure on the door handle stopped and the boat rocked side to side. Could someone else, again, have come on the boat?
 

“Who's there?” the man in the hull with them called out. The uneven steps she'd heard made sense now. It was Ray. He clearly hadn't expected this last visitor.

Quick, sure footsteps descended the stairs. “Hello Ray. It's been a long time, hey?”
 

With a start, she recognized the congressman's voice. She looked up at Paul but couldn't see his face in the dark.
 

“What do you want?” Ray asked.

“Something Franklin left for me. Something I was supposed to have a long time ago. Well, well. This, right here.” Paper rustled.
 
“I see you were looking for the same thing. I suppose you think you’re going to save the tribe.”

Remmick's voice was closer now. He must be standing in front of the stairs going up to the cabin. Ray would be toward the bed. Did Remmick have a gun?
 

“Did you kill my brother?”
 

The question hung in the air for a few seconds.
 

“He fell. Didn't you read the papers? It's dangerous to be walking around a half-finished building at night. Too easy to slip on something and take a tumble. But, if I did, I would have had reason to. He was blackmailing me.”

She was convinced Ray knew she was on the boat. He couldn't know Paul was there. Would Ray give her away? Paul’s neck muffled her gasp. Her purse. She had left the Cordé wrist clutch on the floor next to the bench. It was dark in the boat. It's possible that no one would see it. Paul turned his head down to her and she mouthed the word “purse” into his shirt.

“I know what happened that day,” Ray said. His voice was calm. “When you and Franklin came home to take the tribal rolls. Franklin wrote it all in his tribal history. He left it to me when he died. He said Auntie came in and found you on your way out. She tried to get the rolls away from you.”

Feet shifted and wood creaked as someone sat on the padded bench.
 

“So she fell,” Remmick said. “She'd been drinking—nothing new there. She was old. When I wouldn't hand the papers over to her she hit me with a lamp. I bled like a son of a bitch. Did your brother put that in his book? Of course I was going to push her away. You'd have thought that damned coat would have softened the fall. We laid her out on the coat and tried to revive her. It's not my fault she didn't make it.”

The congressman's voice had been as calm as Ray's. Now it leapt in pitch. “I don't see why you would complain. How many members of the tribe are left, anyway? A couple dozen? It's not like Franklin didn't get his cut.”

“But you broke your promise. Franklin said the land would stay untouched, that the tribe could still use it. And now you're letting them turn it into some kind of golf resort.”

Remmick's voice took on an actor's quality, like he was giving a speech. “What you don't understand is that sometimes the good of a few people has to be sacrificed for the good of others. It's my job to make sure people in this country have work and that the economy continues to grow, not to see that a few Indians get their hands on land that they haven't properly owned in years.”
 

The bench creaked again. “Franklin didn't appreciate that, and I see that you don't either,” Remmick continued. “He was supposed to have destroyed the papers. That was our deal. He gets the documents from your aunt showing continual tribal governance, he gets rid of them, and we get a little compensation from Bowman Timber to make things easier for everyone. I didn't think he'd keep them and try to blackmail me later. For the good of everyone, these papers need to be destroyed. I think you understand that, Ray.”

Remmick must have the envelope now. Would he leave?
 

“What about Marnie? What did she have to do with all this?” Ray asked.

“Marnie's death was damned inconvenient, but it wasn't my fault. Franklin told me the rolls were in a safe deposit box and that he'd hidden the key somewhere I'd never find it. It didn't take too much persuading for the sentimental bastard to tell me where it was, once he thought I was on board with him. A few days later, I paid Marnie a visit. She didn't have the key. Didn't even know what I was talking about. She told me she sold the coat to some old clothing store, and we were on our way there when she had a heart attack.”

Clever Franklin, Joanna thought. He had moved the papers by then. And he left the whole story in his tribal history for Ray to discover.

“You could have just left her, then called 911.”

“Couldn't do that. Couldn't be found with an ex-stripper. Anyway, it was easy enough to wait until I could get to the store myself and kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.”
 

With disgust, Joanna wondered how long he sat with Marnie's body in the car next to him. She tried to twist her head to ease the strain on her neck, but there wasn't room. Paul, at least four inches taller and much broader shouldered, had to feel it worse.

“And now you're here,” Ray said.

“It didn't take me too long to figure out—as you did—he'd taken the papers somewhere else. Thanks to a chance encounter and the loyalty of one of my staff, I figured out they were here. Which reminds me, I don't have time to stand around forever.”

Too many seconds seemed to pass. If Andrew had told Remmick she was on the island, he might have guessed her story about visiting a friend was a lie. She prayed Ray wouldn't even cast a glance at the bathroom door. She clung to Paul with a crazy hope a squad of police would arrive or Ray would break out some jujitsu moves.

The congressman's voice cut the silence. “You haven't started carrying a purse, have you?”
 

The door to the latrine abruptly flung open from the outside. She looked up to see Remmick's face contorted in fury. He slammed the door shut just as Paul was reaching out. The door clicked with a chilling finality. Of course the boat would have doors that locked from the outside to keep them closed on choppy water.

“Goodbye, Ray.” A gunshot exploded the silence, and Joanna's whole body jumped. Footsteps flew up the stairs behind her to the cabin, paused, then came partly down the stairs, then back up to the deck again. She smelled diesel. They were trapped.

Without speaking, Paul felt in her hair and extracted two bobby pins. In the cramped space of the latrine he bent forward, crushing her head against the wall. She felt his hands doing something with the bobby pins in the scant space behind her thighs. The keys in his front pocket pressed into her hip. He stood slightly, and the doorknob rattled as he used the bent bobby pins on the lock.
 

The door popped open. Thank God. The smell of smoke and boat fuel filled the room, and Joanna struggled to breathe.

“The boat's on fire—get out. I'll take care of this guy,” Paul said.

“I’ll help.”
 

Ray lay unconscious against the bench. Her foot touched her purse, and she slid it over her wrist, then grabbed his feet. Paul took his shoulders. They pulled him to the fuel-slicked stairs to the cabin. She coughed and pushed open the door to the sight of fire snaking across the deck.

“Come on.” Paul dragged Ray up the stairs to the cabin. The fire caught the cabin’s wood trim and raced around it, igniting the door frame. “Hurry!”

She coughed and pushed Ray through the door, catching her shoulder on the door jamb and searing her upper arm. The biting smoke burned her eyes, but on the dock at last she gulped fresh air.
 

Paul knelt over Ray. “He's breathing.” He took off his tee shirt and pressed it against the wound on Ray's chest. “The bastard was going to leave us to die.”

She felt the heat as orange flames tipped with black smoke enveloped the boat, leaping higher by the second. People from the surrounding houseboats surged onto the dock. One was on his phone. There was no sign of Remmick, and thanks to the Corolla's demise, no way to go after him.
 

She paced anxiously. “He's going to destroy those papers. I have to go find him.” The roar of the fire nearly obscured her words.

“No. You're crazy. You're staying here.” Paul's voice was firm. He bent over Ray's body, one hand on the blood-soaked tee shirt, and another on the wooden pier.
 

Joanna stood behind him. She looked up toward the parking lot through the black smoke of the burning boat, then again at Paul. “Give me your keys.”

“No way.”
 

It was her only chance. She kicked the back of his calf, and when he straightened to grab it, she plunged her hand into his front pocket, looped her fingers through his key ring, and pulled. A siren sounded in the distance.
 

“I have to go.” She stumbled backwards, then righted herself and ran up the dock.
 

“Joanna, wait,” Paul yelled, but she kept running.

Paul's truck was parked next to her Corolla. Joanna fumbled with the keys in the door, then hoisted herself onto the truck's solid bench seat. The seat was pushed back to accommodate Paul's height, and she had to stretch her legs to reach the pedals. The truck lurched forward and kicked up gravel as she accelerated out of the parking lot.
 

The congressman would almost certainly have returned to the Yoga Heart fundraiser. Andrew said the mansion was beyond the marina. She peered up darkened driveways she passed looking for a mass of cars. A few miles up was a side road marked by a large yin-yang sign. She slowed the truck—its clutch was stiff—and turned. The house appeared around a bend. Fully lit windows illuminated the night, and sitar music wafted across the parking area. A security guard in a black uniform stopped her as she pulled up.

“Are you on the guest list, ma'am?” He looked doubtful. She realized her hair was falling down and she smelled of smoke. The raw pink burn on her shoulder was starting to swell.

“It's an emergency. Will you call Andrew, the congressman's chief of staff?”
 

While the guard radioed the house, Joanna descended from the truck and checked her face in her compact. Not pretty. She fished in her purse for a tissue to wipe her forehead. Reflected in the mirror she saw Andrew stroll toward her from the house past the congressman's black Lincoln.
 

“What are you doing here? You have a black mark on your face. A couple of them, actually. Where's your friend? The one you were visiting?”

The security guard, satisfied Joanna was legit, walked away. “I'll tell you later. Right now there's someone I need to see.” She strode to the house with Andrew following.

A six-foot statue of Buddha faced her as she entered the front hall. A mixture of sandalwood incense and fruity alcohol permeated the room.
 

“Lotus Martini?” a waiter asked.

“No, thank you.” To the right a hall led to what she suspected were bedrooms. Straight ahead, beyond the Buddha, was the entrance to the kitchen—at least, that's where the waiter came from. To her left spread a spacious, high-ceilinged room where guests gathered. Hundreds of votive candles lit the room—they flickered from tables, shelves, and even the floor. Large cushions covered in pink and orange raw silk were strewn next to low tables holding vases of orchids and the dead ends of cocktails. A woman in a lurex leotard demonstrated the warrior pose on a platform in the room's center. The room opened onto a patio with a fire pit, its flames through the plate glass windows reminding her of the fire she just left. Inky forest spread beyond the patio.

Andrew came up behind her. “Joanna, what are you doing here?”

She ignored his question. “Where's Remmick?”

“He has business in Washington he's had to deal with off and on all evening. I think he's in the library.” Andrew nodded toward a door across the main room. “Why?” He moved in front of her. “Look, Jo, don't go in there.”

She pushed him aside and started across the room.

Hand on the doorknob, she took a calming breath. She twisted the handle and pushed. The library could have been pulled straight from a Manhattan high rise. Instead of the bright Indian colors of the main room, this room was all polished steel and black leather. A plasma screen television stretched along one wall across from a leather sectional. An image of Gandhi floated, twisted, and dispersed across the screen of a computer on another wall. Despite being called a library, only a few books rested on the glass coffee table in front of the couch. A closed French door connected to the patio. Muffled sitar music and voices drifted in from outside.

Remmick sat in a high-backed chair at the desk with the tribal papers scattered in front of him and an open scotch bottle and half-empty tumbler at his side. His reading glasses perched on his nose. When he heard the door open he swiveled to face Joanna. He looked at her for a full five seconds, surprise turning to fury. God, how the burn on her shoulder throbbed. She pressed her palm against it.
 

Remmick said, “Get out.”

“No. I came to get the papers.”

“I don't have anything that belongs to you. Leave. Now.”

If she didn’t get those papers, where would she be? It would be her word against Remmick’s—a trusted congressman—that he killed anyone. And Ray might never regain consciousness.
 

The library door opened and the security guard she had talked to outside entered. “Is everything all right in here, congressman?”