Reaching around him, her front plastered to his back, Fiona snatched the papers from the machine. Looking at them, she said, “Good girl,” then handed them to Ace, and he carried them into the dining room, where they were already set up with tape and scissors.
Minutes later they had half of two maps and a third of four others. “Very good, don’t you think?”
“Yeah sure,” Ace mumbled, looking at the papers. “I was thinking,” he began slowly. “Maybe you’d be safer in—”
She backed away from him. “You aren’t going to say, ‘in jail,’ are you? You stay on the outside and I get put behind bars? You follow a treasure map while I fight off hairy women? You—”
“You stay safe while I risk—” He broke off when he saw her face. “Okay, we’re in this together, right?”
Looking into his dark eyes, she nodded. At that moment she wanted to say that she’d follow him to the ends of the earth.
“Hey, Burke,” he said softly. “You aren’t falling for me, are you? It’s one thing to have a good time together, but love is something altogether different.”
“I …” she began, then stiffened. “Who could fall for you? You’re the last man on the earth who I’d—”
She stopped talking because the doorbell rang, and after a fearful glance upward toward the bedroom, she looked at Ace in fear.
“Stay here and keep quiet.”
Again, Fiona didn’t pay any attention to his order, but glued herself to the back of him as he walked to the door. After giving her a push backward, which had no effect in putting any distance between them, he opened the door. It was Suzie, the jogger, again in tiny shorts, her fabulous legs exposed to the point of indecency.
“Sorry to bother you, but could I borrow a cup of sugar?”
“Sure,” Ace said, holding wide the door so she could enter, and it wasn’t easy to move since Fiona was attached to his back. As he led the way to the kitchen, Fiona didn’t leave him. Once in the kitchen he managed to peel her hands from his arms and put them on the end of the countertop. Then, giving Fiona a stern look, he went to get the sugar from the cannister on the countertop.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Suzie said, looking about the kitchen.
Fiona gave her a weak smile in answer. She was much too aware of what was in the room over their heads to be able to think clearly.
As Ace handed Suzie the sugar in a paper cup, he said, “So how’s Rose this morning?”; then he had to grab Fiona’s elbow to keep her from falling to the floor in shock.
“Fine, I guess,” Suzie said, smiling so wide her perfect ponytail bounced. “You wouldn’t have any coffee, would you?”
“No, but I can make some,” Ace said pleasantly, then turned his back on the two women as he went to the coffeepot.
Suzie gave her megawatt smile to Fiona. “Is that a telephone ringing?”
When Fiona didn’t answer, Ace said, “It’s the fax. Sweetheart, you want to go see what someone has sent us?”
Fiona had no idea who “sweetheart” was, so she just stood there staring at Suzie. What if she found out about the dead body upstairs? But then she and Ace were already accused of having committed two murders, so what was one more going to matter? They couldn’t be hanged more than once, could they?
“I think the fax might be part of the map,” Suzie said softly, “and we wouldn’t want to miss that, would we?”
It was Ace who suddenly remembered that the house was probably wired for listening devices and that they were giving someone an earful. In one swift movement, he grabbed the arms of both women and half shoved, half pulled them outside. Once they were outside by the pool, in a silent gesture, he looked at Suzie and pointed around the pool.
She shook her head no.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Fiona said impatiently. “Or are you two planning to open a mime school?”
“Bugs,” Ace said as though that explained everything.
“Lots of bugs in Florida,” Fiona said; then realization dawned on her. “Oh. That kind of bug.”
Ace gestured to Suzie to take a seat on one of the four green chairs around the glass-topped table, then sat across from her. He left Fiona to stand or sit, her choice. She sat.
“You want to start talking?”
“Is Rose … ?” Suzie asked.
“Yeah, she’s dead,” Ace said. “In our house, in our bed. I’d like to know who knows what.”
“Do you mean whether or not everyone in the Blue Orchid knows who you really are?” She didn’t wait for them to answer. “Of course they do. We’d have to be blind and deaf not to know. And, honey,” she said, looking at Fiona. “No surgeon is good enough to make a woman look as young as you do.”
Right then and there, Fiona decided that she liked the woman.
“Half of us in this place are looking for the lions,” Suzie said.
At that Fiona drew in her breath. So much for great secrecy.
Suzie leaned across the table toward Ace. “And if you find them, there will be a dozen people right behind you with guns.”
“Except for Wallis,” Fiona said quietly. “He only used a knife.”
At that both Suzie and Ace looked at her. “I don’t think either of you realize how much she knows,” Suzie said quietly. “There are some people who want her dead for that knowledge, and some who want her alive because of what she knows. Truth is,” she said, looking directly at Fiona. “You’d be a lot safer in jail.”
“I think so too,” Ace said quickly; then, under the table, he took Fiona’s hand in his and squeezed it, and he didn’t let go when he felt her trembling.
“Who killed Roy Hudson?” Fiona heard herself ask. She was trying to pull herself away from this whole matter and look at it logically. Forget the woman dead upstairs. Forget that the fax was ringing again and it was probably more of a map to a treasure that people had been killing each other for for a couple hundred years.
“One of them,” Suzie said with a shrug. “I wasn’t there and I don’t know much about it. And now I try to stay out of it; I don’t like to know things that could get me killed.”
“Neither do I!” Fiona said with passion, then felt Ace’s hand tighten on hers.
“But you were Smokey’s daughter, so you were told things. Who would have thought that entertaining a kid with a broken leg could—”
“How do you know about her leg?” Ace snapped.
“I was there,” Suzie said, contradicting herself. “I mean I wasn’t part of the expedition that was searching for the lions, but I—”
“You were one of the women who researched the story,” Fiona said, eyes wide. “You were the girlfriend of … of …”
“Edward King,” she said slowly, looking into Fiona’s eyes. “In the story he’s called Wallis. And that’s with an i-s on the end, not W-a-l-l-a-c-e, as the papers call him in the reviews.”
For a moment Fiona blinked. “Of course, as in Wallis Simpson.” She looked at Ace. “You know, the man who gave up being king was Edward and the woman was …” She broke off because Suzie and Ace were exchanging looks.
“Now what have I missed?” Fiona said with great sarcasm, but she knew that, once again, she’d revealed that she knew more than she thought she did.
“Who was the other researcher? If you were ‘one’ of them, who was the other one?” Ace asked softly.
“Lavender,” Suzie whispered.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Fiona said as she stood up so suddenly she knocked the chair over. “There was no one in the story named Lavender. Not now, not ever.” With that she started back toward the house.
Standing quickly, Ace reached out for her, but Fiona sidestepped him, moved past his grasp, and went into the house. Once he and Suzie were alone, Ace turned to her. “What was that all about? I haven’t heard anything about anyone named Lavender.”
Suzie took a deep breath. “From her reaction, I guess that Smokey told his daughter that one of the researchers was a prostitute, but
he doesn’t seem to have mentioned her name.”
Ace was still puzzled.
“There wasn’t much about her in the story, but what was there was pretty awful. You know, drugs, men, a lifetime of involvement in some very nasty dealings.”
Ace just looked at Suzie, still not understanding.
“She hadn’t always been such a loser. I was told that a few years before she’d been a tall, dark beauty. I was told that she even had a kid and the father named the kid after its mother.”
When Suzie didn’t say any more, Ace stood there looking at her. It took him a moment to remember that he’d seen the initials FLB on Fiona’s backpack. Fiona Lavender Burkenhalter.
“Her mother was …”
“Yes,” Suzie said just before Ace turned on his heel and went into the house to find Fiona.
Seventeen
It took Ace a few moments to find Fiona. She was in her bedroom, the borrowed cell phone to her ear. “You’ll do it for me?” she was saying. “WordPerfect, yes, that’s right. And, Jean … I … Okay, so I won’t say anything, but you must know how much this means to me.” With that she put down the phone; then, without a look at Ace, she went to the closet and began pulling out clothes—jeans and T-shirts, thick cotton socks—then started stuffing them into her backpack.
“Would it be too much to ask that you tell me what you’re planning?” he asked. “Or maybe I should ask where you’re going.”
“Hunting,” she said quickly. “This isn’t going to stop until those—” She meant to say, “those damned lions are found,” but the warning look on his face stopped her. “I’m going to look for what’s lost,” she finished.
“With or without me?” he asked. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded across his chest.
“Your choice,” she said.
“I see. You’re going to go to my park, tramping through the swamp by yourself.”
“Maybe I can hire a guide. I’ll cut him in for the profit. No, better yet, I’ll make him a present of the … the lost goods once we find them.”
“Ever hear of ‘trespassing’?” Moving away from the door, he started to take her arm, but she pulled away from him. “Since when did I become the enemy?”
“Since I became a prostitute’s daughter,” she snapped, then looked at him in horror. She hadn’t meant to say that; she hadn’t meant to even think that.
At that, Ace put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to face him. She tried to jerk away from him, but he held her firmly.
“We don’t have time for this right now. Do you understand me? It doesn’t matter who your father was, or your mother. Right now all that matters is that we find out who is killing these people and clear our names.”
“Your name maybe,” she said, jerking away from him, “but my name will never be cleared. It will be all over the papers about my … my ancestry.” She stopped shoving clothes into the backpack and took a deep breath. “You could never understand,” she said softly.
“I couldn’t understand that you have lived your whole life believing you knew who and what you were and in a few days you’ve found out that everything in your life is a lie?”
“Yes,” she said, deflated; then she sat down hard on the bed.
Ace sat beside her and put his arm around her, drawing her head down to his shoulder. “I know what it’s like not to belong. I grew up in a family that thinks they’re alone if there aren’t a dozen people around them. All I wanted was to live with my uncle in a shack with no plumbing and look at birds. There would be days at a time when he and I never said a word to each other, and when we did talk, it was …”
“Birdcalls?” Fiona heard herself say, then looked at Ace in surprise. How could she make a joke at a time like this?
Ace laughed. “That’s better,” he said; then, as naturally as a bird flies, he bent his head to kiss her.
“Is she all right?” Suzie said from the doorway.
Fiona laughed when Ace said a bad word. “Padlocks,” he added under his breath before turning to look at Suzie. “Fine!” he snapped. “She’s just fine.”
“Oh. Right,” Suzie said as she started backing out the door. “I was just wondering what you planned to do with, uh, with Rose.”
“Take her with us,” Ace said loudly, then put his finger to his lips and pointed around the room. Had both women forgotten about the listening devices planted in the house?
“Yes,” Fiona said, standing. “She’ll go with us. You know Rose, the most natural person on earth. It would be natural to take her with us, since we’re ‘going back to nature’ so to speak. Right, darling?” she said to Ace. “You are going to take me on that daylong picnic, aren’t you?”
“Right,” Ace said a little bit less loud. “A picnic tomorrow. I think it’s a bit late to go today, though, don’t you, dear?”
“And I’m so glad that you’ve invited me to go with you,” Suzie said. “I’d be happy to go with you.”
Both Fiona and Ace vigorously shook their heads no, but Suzie tightened her lips and nodded yes, that she was going whether they liked it or not.
“In fact,” Suzie said, “I think I’d better spend the night here with you, so I’ll be ready to leave bright and early in the morning.”
“But first, how about a swim?” Ace said. “It might do us all good to get outside for a while.”
With that the three of them ran for the doorway and tried to get through it all at the same time. After some shoving, Ace stepped back and let the women go first; then he followed them down the stairs. Once they were outside, he turned on them.
“I think I can handle this better by myself,” he began. The women were sitting while he stood, his hands behind his back. “I’m the only one who knows the park, so I should go alone.”
“How will you know which map is the right one?” Fiona asked, a small smile curving her lips. “Suzie, would you like some iced tea?”
“Love it.”
“Sit!” Ace ordered when Fiona started to get up.
She sat. In fact, both women sat still, their hands clasped on the tabletop, looking up at him as though awaiting his orders.
After a moment of looking down at them with his most stern face, Ace sat down hard on a chair. “All right, go on. Make the tea, then get out here fast,” he said to Fiona.
“And leave you two here alone to plot my future,” she said sweetly. “Not on your life.”
With a sigh from Ace, the three of them silently trooped into the kitchen and made a huge pitcher of iced tea, added salsa and chips, then carried the tray out to the table by the pool.
“Okay, so which of you goes first?” Ace asked. When neither woman answered, Ace narrowed his eyes at them. He would, perhaps, have been more threatening if he hadn’t had a mouthful of corn chips. The crunching seemed to take away his edge.
“If you two don’t tell me what you know, I’ll take you into the swamp and leave you there. With the snakes.”
“He’s bluffing,” Fiona said. She had the strangest feeling that nothing horrible could ever happen to her again. It was as though the worst had happened and now nothing could top what she’d seen and felt. Her father wasn’t what she’d thought. Only once in her life had she asked her father about her mother, and he’d told her a beautiful story she now realized was worthy of a Pulitzer.
In between having her personal life shattered, Fiona was finding dead bodies with regular frequency. Right now there was a dead woman just inside the house, yet here she sat munching chips and drinking tea. And all she could think was that she should have dumped some vodka into the tea.
“All I know is what we—” Breaking off, Suzie looked at Fiona. “What Lavender and I found.” With that she reached out to clutch Fiona’s hand but the younger woman moved away and Suzie stiffened. “Actually, I don’t really remember too much about anything. It was a long time ago.”
“You think Lavender might remember something?” Ace said softly.
It was on
e thing to learn that your mother wasn’t the fairy princess that your father told you she was but quite another to think that she was alive. Fiona wasn’t ready for that.
“I don’t think the story of where the lions came from will be of any use to us but, if it helps, we should get the information tonight,” Fiona said loudly and quickly.
Both Ace and Suzie looked at her sharply. It took Ace only seconds to start scowling, as it seemed that, once again, she had concealed information from him.
“Don’t start on me,” Fiona snapped. “You never asked if Raffles was the only story my father ever wrote me. It was just the best one. There were others.”
“Let me guess,” Ace said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “There was a story that came with the Nail Map.”
“Aren’t you clever?” Fiona said, smiling at him.
“I thought the papers said you two weren’t married,” Suzie said. “You sound as though you’re married.”
“Actually, we’re both engaged,” Ace said.
“But not to each other.”
“No, she likes some lawyer who calls her ‘darling.’”
“You were eavesdropping,” Fiona snapped. “You were listening in on my private conversation.”
“I hate to interrupt you two, but could we stick to the subject?” Suzie said, looking from one to the other. “Did Smokey send you the story of the lions?”
“Yes. And the map. But I didn’t realize they were real until …” She took a breath. “Until today. And the truth is that I still don’t see the significance of the story.”
“Maybe if we knew the story, we could judge for ourselves,” Ace said. “Oh, but then both of you know it, don’t you? I’m the only one who’s left out in this.”
At his whining, petulant tone, both women laughed.
“I called my friend—” Fiona began.
“One of The Five?” Ace asked, interrupting.
“Exactly. After my father’s letters from when I was eleven were stolen, I spent a few evenings typing the rest of his letters into my computer. I had an idea of someday publishing his stories in a book for children, and—”