For a moment she studied the old chatelaine in the light of a nearby lamp. The heavily carved medallion in the center glowed with the rich luster of very old gold. The stones that encircled it still shimmered with ancient radiance. The five gold-link chains spilled through her fingers. Small gold keys set with gemstones were attached to four of the chains. No key dangled from the fifth chain.
She had discovered the Nun’s Chatelaine shortly before she had opened the gallery. It had turned up in a heap of costume jewelry in an estate sale she had attended; a masterpiece concealed by a mound of worthless plastic, glass stones and cheap metal. She had known at once that it would become the symbol of her new business venture.
The Gallery Chatelaine logo was based on the design of the antique device. An image of the chatelaine appeared on everything from business cards to the engraved announcements sent out whenever a special collection went up for sale. A large, sculpted reproduction of the beautiful object hung over the front door of the main gallery in San Francisco and also above the door of the small art boutique here in Phantom Point.
She studied the heavy chatelaine, aware of the warmth of the metal against her skin. It was only a key ring, but what a fabulous key ring, she thought. Her fingers tightened around it. She could feel the history trapped inside. She knew the details because she had spent years researching the object’s origins.
In the beginning it had been fashioned for a twelfth-century bride. An extravagant gift from her husband on her wedding day, it had been a symbol of his faith and trust in her. The keys that had dangled at the ends of the chains had been emblems of the power she wielded in her new role as the lady of the castle.
Those first keys had been forged of iron. They had unlocked the chambers that contained the lord’s treasures: expensive spices from the East; precious manuscripts containing magic and mystery that had been carried all the way from Spain; jewelry and fine woolen robes that were donned for special occasions.
Many years and several children later, the lady had been widowed. Following the fashion of the day, she had retired to a convent where her talent for organization had assured her a rapid rise through the ranks of the nuns.
Within a short time she had found herself supervising the convent’s business and financial affairs. Once again the keys that hung from her chatelaine unlocked doors that protected secrets and mysteries: the illuminated manuscripts in the library; the chapel with its rare and expensive wall tiles detailing the lives of the saints; the boxes in which the property charters and account rolls were stored.
The Nun’s Chatelaine had floated down through the centuries, sometimes disappearing for years at a time before reappearing in the hands of a collector or a woman who was simply attracted to its unique beauty. Sometime during the eighteenth century, when decorative chatelaines had been all the fashion rage, the iron keys had been replaced with new ones fashioned of gold and set with gems. But the spectacular medallion had been left untouched. Perhaps the jeweler who had replaced the keys for his client had recognized that such fine craftsmanship should not be altered for the sake of fashion.
With the chatelaine in her hand, she climbed the spiral staircase to the narrow balcony. She went to a display case and took down one of the exquisite boxes, a very fine eighteenth-century creation decorated with beautifully painted enamels and gleaming gilt. A plain metal duplicate of the fifth key, the one that she had removed earlier from the Nun’s Chatelaine, was in the lock.
She braced herself for the torrent of emotions that poured through her whenever she opened the box. When she was ready, she raised the lid and carefully placed the Nun’s Chatelaine inside, beneath the other secrets she kept there. For a moment she stood remembering the past.
After a while she closed and locked the box and pocketed the plain duplicate key. She set the gilded and enameled treasure chest back on the shelf and shut the glass door. Just one more beautiful little chest among hundreds.
She descended the ladder, left the vault where the past was safely confined and locked the heavy door.
The all-too-familiar jittery sensation was plaguing her again tonight. The twinges of anxiety had grown increasingly bothersome during the past few weeks. A glass of whiskey was no longer enough to quell them. She might have to resort to one of the pills the doctor had given her. She dreaded using the tablets. They worked, but they left her with an unpleasant hangover. It would be a full twenty-four hours before she felt in control again. Much better to beat back the panic attack before it took hold, if possible.
She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, changed into a swimsuit and a terry-cloth robe and went back down to the first floor of the hillside villa.
Outside on the terrace she switched off the household lights and stood looking across the night-darkened bay to where the city of San Francisco glittered and sparkled in the distance. She removed her robe, dropped it on a lounger and walked across the tile to the pool steps.
She did not turn on the underwater lights. The dark water greeted her with the quietly exhilarating embrace of an old, familiar lover, one who knew the past and shared the memories.
She swam three laps before she sensed that something was wrong. She paused, treading water, and peered into the shadows of the garden that surrounded the pool.
“Is anyone there?”
No response.
It was the anxiety, she thought. She would not allow it to win tonight. She would do battle with it and defeat the panic attack before it took hold.
With grim determination she struck out for the opposite end of the pool. She would not give in to the nameless fear.
Six
“She’s trying to screw us.” Mack did not take his eyes off the computer screen as he spoke into the phone. “My fault. I’m the one who picked her as a consultant.”
Why was he so surprised? he wondered. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d made a mistake of this magnitude. There was always some risk involved in using a freelancer who was well connected in the business. The temptations were great.
Still, he had been so sure of Cady Briggs. She really had caught him off guard with this maneuver. Hell, off guard didn’t cover it. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
It occurred to him that for some reason he was taking this bit of treachery a little too personally. This is business, he thought. Act like a businessman. Cady Briggs was just another consultant gone bad. It happened. No point sitting here staring at the evidence. Get over it and do something businesslike about the situation.
“You okay, Mack?” Dewey asked uneasily on the other end of the line. “You sound like you just ate something that don’t agree with you.”
“What’s wrong?” Notch demanded from the extension he was using in the office of Military World. “We got a problem?”
Mack roused himself from his morose contemplation of the data on the glowing computer screen.
“Yeah, we’ve got a problem. Cady Briggs just bought a ticket to San Jose.” He studied the data arrayed before him. “She’s made arrangements to pick up a car there. When I talked to her assistant a few minutes ago, I was told that Miss Briggs would be out of town for a couple of days. She’s on her way to see a client who lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.”
“Who?” Notch sounded bewildered.
“Ambrose Vandyke. Retired computer mogul. Made his fortune designing software that sends robotic programs out onto the internet to retrieve data.”
“Well, shit,” Dewey muttered. “You mean she’s workin’ on another job when she’s supposed to be tryin’ to find our helmet?”
“I don’t think this is an unrelated job,” Mack said. “I believe the lady has located your missing armor.”
“Hey,” Dewey said, sounding far more cheerful. “You really think so?”
Mack stared at the screen. “Almost positive.”
“All right,” Notch chortled. “You hear that, Dew? She found the damned thing. We’re gonna be rich.”
“In tha
t case,” Dewey said, “why the hell does Mack sound like he’s getting ready to attend a funeral?”
“If I sound somewhat less than enthusiastic,” Mack said, “it’s because I think Miss Briggs has plans of her own for your helmet. Plans that don’t include either of you.”
“Huh?” Notch asked. “What’s he talkin’ about, Dew?”
“Don’t know yet but it don’t sound good,” Dewey growled. “Fill us in here, Mack. This ain’t no time to get secretive on us. We’re your clients, remember?”
“The problem,” Mack said, “is that, contrary to standard Lost and Found procedure, Cady Briggs did not notify me that she had a lead on the helmet.”
“So what? Maybe she just wants to check out her information first,” Dewey offered. “You know, make sure of things before she tells you she’s onto somethin’.”
“There was no need to go this far out of her way just to verify some piece of information. She could have done that on the phone. That’s what I pay her to do. I made it clear to her that if she picked up anything solid in the way of a lead, she was to notify me immediately. I handle all recovery work.”
A heavy silence greeted that information. Dewey and Notch breathed for a while.
Notch finally cleared his throat. “You think maybe she’s found the helmet and she’s goin’ after it herself?”
“That’s the logical conclusion here,” Mack said.
“But why would she do that?” Dewey asked. “Why wouldn’t she call you first?”
“One good reason is that she has come up with something far more profitable to do with your helmet than return it to you. She told us that old armor was very, very hot in the antiques market, remember? Prices for the good pieces are going through the roof.”
“Uh-oh,” Notch said. “I think I’m beginning to get the picture here.”
“You sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?” Dewey asked uneasily.
“She grew up in the art business,” Mack said. “She knows the players. If she has located your helmet, she could just as easily have located a new buyer for it, too. I have a hunch that she’s on her way to see the current owner to try to broker her own deal on the underground market.”
“You mean she’s gonna sell our helmet to someone else instead of returning it to us?” Notch’s voice rose. “Like she’s supposed to?”
“I think that is a very real possibility,” Mack said.
“Got to hand it to her,” Dewey’s voice was laced with resignation and a tinge of reluctant admiration. “If she gets her hands on our helmet and sets up a deal that doesn’t include us or you, Mack, she could make herself a bundle. A lot more than you were gonna pay her, I bet.”
“Yes.” Mack tapped a key to bring up a new flight schedule. “A lot more. And she won’t have to deal with any middlemen or pay any auction house commissions and fees.”
“Guess I knew right from the start it was all too good to be true,” Notch said. “Dewey, you and me weren’t born to get rich quick, and that’s a fact.”
“It was sort of nice thinkin’ about what we could have done with the money, though,” Dewey said wistfully. “We had us some great plans for Military World.”
“Easy come, easy go,” Notch said philosophically.
“It hasn’t gone yet.” Mack took off his glasses and set them down on the table beside the keyboard. “Cady Briggs seems to have overlooked the fact that she’s still under contract with me.”
There was a short beat of startled silence on the other end.
“What are you gonna do, Mack?” Dewey asked.
“What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going after her.” Mack got to his feet. “I plan to remind her that she’s working for me and that Lost and Found is really big on the concept of employee loyalty.”
Seven
Her hands were shaking. Cady stood in the night-darkened shadows of the dripping redwoods and tried to breathe from the bottom of her stomach. She could not take the pill she kept in the little case on the end of her key chain. It would dull her senses, and she needed all of them badly. The tendrils of fog that swirled around her were already doing a great job of blurring the situation.
It was the fog that had saved her a few minutes ago. The mist and the night had shielded her when the two men had walked past her hiding place.
So close. It had been so horrifyingly close. If she hadn’t heard them coming toward her, hadn’t followed her instincts and moved into the trees…
Don’t go there. You can dwell on the near miss later when you have your panic attack. Right now you have to think.
She studied the illuminated windows of the small A-frame cabin. The two men had walked out of the front door a few minutes ago carrying bulky objects swathed in waterproof tarps. The lights inside the small structure had revealed the ski masks that covered their faces. They had moved swiftly, depositing their burdens in the nondescript van parked in the drive. She had overheard their conversation when they returned to the house because they had passed within a few feet of where she stood.
They had been discussing the timing of the burglary.
“…It’s taking too long to load this stuff. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Take it easy. Another couple of trips and it’s over.”
“I don’t like this. I’ve got a bad feeling about this job.”
“You like the money, don’t you?”
Cady had called Ambrose Vandyke from the airport in San Jose. He had given her precise directions to the cabin. He had been cheerful and eager. There had been no hint of fear in his voice. The two men must have arrived sometime after he had hung up the phone, she thought.
She had walked into the middle of a burglary in progress. The only reason she had not driven into it was because she had found the gate at the foot of the narrow, twisted drive locked. She had tried calling Vandyke’s number on her cell phone, but there had been no answer. Unwilling to turn back after having come so far, she had pulled on her raincoat, gotten out of the car and made her way around the gate. She had noticed the van when she had emerged from the trees. The shrouded shapes in the back of the vehicle and the open door of the cabin had sent a chill of warning through her.
The logical thing to do was to retreat to a place where she could safely put in a call to 911 without risk of being overheard. But heaven only knew how long it would take for help to arrive in this remote location. Meanwhile, Ambrose Vandyke was in grave danger. She could not stand here and do nothing.
She wondered if creating a distraction would serve a useful purpose. Eyeing the van, she tried to think through the suffocating tide of fear.
The vehicle was parked at the top of the very steep drive. If she could get to it without being seen, release the parking brake and put the van in neutral…
She sensed the presence of someone coming up behind her a beat before he moved, but by then it was too late. One large hand closed around her mouth, silencing the scream before she could utter a sound. An arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her hard against a large, masculine body.
“Quiet.” Mack spoke directly into her ear as he hauled her deeper into the fog-bound redwoods. “Not a sound.”
She nodded frantically to show that she understood. Relief crashed through her, coming so swiftly on the heels of the heart-stopping fear that it was almost too much to bear.
Mack took his hand away from her mouth. She clutched his arm to maintain her balance, turned and stood on tiptoe to whisper her warning.
“Burglary. Two men, I think.”
“I saw them,” he said, just as softly.
“How did you—?”
“Never mind. Got to get you out of here.”
She shook her head quickly. “We can’t leave Vandyke alone with them. Who knows what they’ll do to him?”
“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, go back to the car. Call 911 and get the hell away from here. Understood?”
“I was about to release the brake in the van so t
hat it would roll down the hill with all of the stolen things. I thought that would bring them out of the house long enough for me to get inside, bolt the door and call the cops.”
“You’re assuming there’s a bolt on the door.”
“Everyone has a bolt. Mack, we’ve got to do something. They could be getting ready to murder Mr. Vandyke, even as we—”
“Okay, okay. Let me think.”
Mack studied the front door of the cabin and then switched his gaze to the van. She could almost see him mentally calculating distances and odds.
“Well?” she prodded.
“I think we’ll go with your idea to release the parking brake. But I’ll handle it. You stay here. Whatever you do, don’t show yourself. Got it?”
“Sure. Got it.”
“If anything goes wrong, run for it. Don’t think twice, just do it.”
She said nothing.
“Understood?” he asked with an edge.
“Right. Sure. Understood.”
The decision made, Mack did not hesitate any longer. He left her in the dripping darkness, gliding swiftly out into the open. She watched, her heart in her throat, as he circled around the van, keeping the vehicle between himself and the front door of the cabin. She prayed the fog would thicken to give him more cover.
When he disappeared on the far side of the van, she almost stopped breathing altogether. A few seconds later the vehicle started to move.
In eerie silence it lumbered slowly backward. A fresh wave of fear engulfed her. This wasn’t going to work if the two men didn’t realize that something had gone wrong outside the cabin.
The vehicle continued its strangely silent retreat down the incline into the fog. She looked for Mack in the empty space near the front of the cabin. There was no sign of him.
In desperation, she reached down to find a rock she could hurl through a window to get the burglars’ attention. Before she could toss it, however, one of the men appeared in the doorway. He stopped abruptly.