The Lazarus Trap (40 page)

The thug in the pleated shorts decided not to hang about. He burst out the back door, leapt the side fence, and started for the hill.

“We've got a runner!”

“You there! Police! Halt!”

Val's view of the proceedings was cut off by the third cop hustling him back to the car. He was planted on the side, legs spread, hands in plain view. All the neighbors were outside by now, gaping at the proceedings. Dillon arrived then, his head turned to the sunlight and smiling broadly. Val grinned in reply. It felt as though his face was trying to recall something from the very distant past.

“Something funny, sir?”

“Just glad you're here, officer.”

“We'll see about that.”

Then there was a shout from the house, echoed on the policeman's radio. The cop thumbed his radio and barked, “Say again?”

Val caught enough of the repeated words to know they had found someone. He set his forehead down on the roof and shut his eyes tight. Just giving thanks. Just getting ready. Because here she came, clearly the worse for wear but walking out on her own two legs. Dillon and the officer helped her clamber through the opening, like Val had carved the way just for her. Which, in a sense, he had.

“Oh, Val.” She rushed up to him and gave him a fierce embrace. “What on earth have you done?”

“Remain as you are, sir.”

Val kept his hands in plain view as she hugged him. “Are you all right?”

“I am now.”

“Madam, I must ask you to step away.”

“Adams,” Val told her softly as the policeman pried her arms from his neck. “The ID in my pocket says I am Jeffrey Adams.”

“Please, madam, you are only making matters worse.”

Val could not stop grinning. Not even as the policeman wheeled him about and ringed his wrists with cold steel.

“Stop that! What on earth do you think you're doing?”

“We have to follow procedure, madam.”

“But this man just saved my life!” When the policeman continued undeterred, she demanded, “Where are you taking him?”

“Eastbourne, ma'am. He'll be booked and processed there.”

As Val was guided into the police car's backseat, he heard other sirens whooping in the background. Val told her, “Dillon's going to stay with you—”

The door was slammed in his face. Audrey shouted her protest and tried to reopen the door. But the policeman remained adamant and gently but firmly moved her away.

Val smiled out at Audrey. As the car pulled away, he cast a final glance at his handiwork.

Shame about the car.

AS FAR AS ELLEN LAINEYWAS CONCERNED, THESE DAYS INSIGNIA'S head office held all the warmth and congeniality of an open coffin.

The only reason she stuck around at all was, she had inherited Val Haines's position. The suits upstairs called it a promotion. But Ellen had made it this far by staring facts and figures straight in the eye and calling them as they stood. Her predecessor had been toasted in a bomb blast that had the investigators crawling around the office like roaches in Gucci. The office to her left was home now to a half-dozen pinheads with badges and bad attitudes. The future looked decidedly grim.

Rumors continued to fly. New ones popped up every morning. This morning the coffee cluster had it on best authority that Don Winslow was missing. Which meant nothing, really. At seven the previous evening she had heard the same group talking about alien abduction.

A young accountant knocked on Ellen's open door. The guy had been on the job for six weeks. Ellen knew what he thought of her. A hard-timer, just punching her ticket and working the corporate treadmill, hiking her way toward an Ocala retirement community with a pink poodle for company. He assumed her flat-panned expression was the product of a thousand fifty-five-hour weeks. What he did not know, what Ellen was keeping all to herself, was how the SEC goons had locked up the pension funds tight as a Wall Street safe. All her fund-related systems were shut down. She could not access anything. Her questions had been answered with blowtorch glares and silence. Ellen was not asleep at the wheel. She knew something was seriously wrong. She also knew her job description included an unwritten order not to fuel the rumor fire. She could play the poker-faced lady and keep what she suspected locked up tight. For the moment.

The new accountant was named Jerry. He was both very smart and very shy. He also had a tendency to stutter slightly when he was nervous. Which he almost always was when he was in the presence of his boss. Any conversation with him could stretch over eons.

Ellen greeted him with, “I do
not
have time for you today.”

Normally this would have been enough to send Jerry scurrying for his cubicle. But not this morning.

He stepped further inside her office. “We have to talk.”

Ellen started to scream at him. She had not slept at all the previous three nights. When she lay down, she tended to watch the corporate figures dance across her darkened ceiling. What they added up to made for a waking nightmare she could not banish with thoughts of her new title.

But were Ellen to vent the worry-steam in Jerry's direction, the guy would probably do an implosion right there in her doorway. Which would mean getting buried by more paperwork. Ellen sighed, went back to her file shuffling, and said, “So talk already.”

“I've been doing my weekly check of all the office petty cash accounts, like you ordered.”

Unbelievable. Here she was, imagining a corporate meltdown the papers would call Florida's very own Enron, and the guy wants to point the finger at somebody overspending on stamps. Ellen did a solid drumbeat on her desk with the stack of folders. “Jerry, this can definitely wait.”

Jerry slipped fully inside her office. And shut the door.

This was enough to halt her next outburst.

Jerry flitted up close to her desk. “I've found it.”

“Found
what?
”

“The money. All of it.”

Something inside the guy's expression had her heart pounding. Which of course made no sense at all. “
What
money?”

“At least, I think it's all. I never saw any figures. Did you?”

Ellen worked at making words. But nothing actually fit the moment. So she shut her face and waited.

“All I'm going on are the rumors.” He cleared his throat. “But I think it's all there. It's got to be. As much as it is, it's the only thing I can figure out.”

She was not aware that she had risen to her feet. “Just how much are we talking about here?”

Jerry revealed a true accountant's heart in how he reverentially said the numbers. “Four hundred and eighteen million dollars.”

“You're telling me you found four hundred million dollars
in our
petty cash account?”

“I called the bank. They confirmed that the transfer came in last night.” His eyes had gone round from the revelation. “It's just sitting there. Waiting for us.”

THE ISLAND OFFERED THEM A GLORIOUS WELCOME THE DAY THEY laid Arthur d'Arcy to rest. Val stood by the entrance to the stone church on the outskirts of St. Helier and hoped his remaining strength did not let him down. He was drawn as finely as he had ever been, stretched by days and nights of planning and work and worry. Audrey had done little since their arrival save sit the death watch with her father. Bert and Dillon and Gerald had done what they could. But most of the critical issues not related to Arthur's passage had rested on Val's shoulders alone.

A comforting breeze drifted down the little lane, flavored by wildflowers and the sea. The village was lost beyond two sharp bends and a hillside blanketed in spring finery. Overhead the sun played games with scuttling clouds. Undulating meadows shivered and sheened with the paintings of light and shadow. In the distance the waves wrote their own frothy script of farewell.

Val heard voices before the crowd rounded the corner and came into view. Bert and Dillon had volunteered to go down and meet those arriving with the afternoon ferry. Val pushed off the ancient stone and went to greet them. There were perhaps four dozen mourners, a motley assortment of polished gentry and rough trade, united now in grey cloth and grief.

Dillon pulled him to one side and said, “Gerald says you're needed back at the cottage.”

“Terrance?”

“The bloke's just sitting and staring at all the yesterdays he's wasted. Needs a swift kick, if you ask me.”

“Not today.”

“No, suppose not. How is it you're the only one who knows how to wind his motor?”

Val started down the lane without replying.

A copse of trees separated the hamlet from the parish church. Val arrived at the cottage's front walk just as Gerald came out with Audrey, and resented the sight of another man standing where he wished to be.

Audrey made even grief look alluring. “Terrance says he won't come.”

“He'll be there.”

“He wouldn't even look at me. I begged and he wouldn't even meet my gaze.”

“Leave your brother to me. You've got enough to worry about already today.”

“He's right, you know,” Gerald said. A truce had settled between Val and Gerald. Whatever else, they had been through enough to know the other's measure. Their unspoken agreement was loud and clear. Audrey would have to decide between them. “If Terrance will mind anybody, it's the lad here.”

Audrey's hair caught the sunlight in a brilliant weave. “Perhaps I should just let him be.”

Val started for the door. “We'll meet you at the church.”

The stone cottage was so old the lichen decorating the slate roof grew in layers. They had rented the place because it was within walking distance of the St. Helier hospice. The three downstairs rooms were more charm than comfort. The four upstairs bedrooms were closets with windows. Val found Terrance just as Dillon had said, seated on his bed and staring at an empty side wall. Val had accepted Audrey's request to try and reform her brother, rather than send him to jail. Val had even suggested the method. And he did his best to do away with his burden of hate. Even when Terrance had confessed to doctoring the lab reports and stealing the child Val had always known was his. Even then.

During Arthur's steady decline, Val had done what he could to ensure their future safety and Terrance's ongoing obedience. Nights already turned sleepless by tending to Arthur had been extended even further. He had carefully quizzed Terrance and then prepared a script. In the backroom of a local photographic studio, Terrance had sat beside Val and read the script in the buzzing drone of a crypt dweller.

They had express mailed a copy of the DVD to an attorney in London, who had hand-delivered the package to the address the same attorney had located for Loupe. They had included no message. No warning. Nothing.

The fact that they were all still alive was the only evidence Val needed that the message had been received, loud and clear.

Arthur had held to his considerate nature right to the end, slipping away quietly six days after their arrival. Audrey was asleep by her father's bed at the time, awakening to a glorious spring dawn and birdsong and a man who looked so very pleased to journey home.