But first, he had to see her.
Chapter Seven
Mae met him at the door, telling herself she was being polite, not overeager. She'd deliberately dressed in an old white T-shirt and jeans, just to show herself that she didn't care what he thought. He was dressed in an old white T-shirt and jeans, too. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she was so glad to see him that she didn't care.
"Hello, Mabel. Nice T-shirt," he said and she stood back to let him in, enjoying the fact that he was there and kicking herself for enjoying it.
"What did you find out?" she asked, trailing him into the library.
Mitch sat down and looked at her with sympathy, and she knew it was going to be bad. "He sold it all. I can't tell you if I tracked down everything until I get a look at your list, but I found where he offloaded most of the stuff you'd mentioned, like the Lempicka and the chess set."
Mae sank into a chair across from him. "So where's the money?"
Mitch sighed. "I looked. As far as I can tell, he doesn't have a stash. I even went to Stormy's new place—"
"Did you?" Mae said coolly.
"And she didn't know anything either. Which shouldn't have come as a surprise, somehow. Is she naturally dopey or does she have chemical assistance?"
"So how is Stormy?" Mae asked, steel in her voice.
"She's fine." Mitch seemed suddenly wary.
"Really." Mae tightened her lips. "How fine is she?"
Mitch blinked at her. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb." Mae scowled at him. "I've seen your real dumb, and this is not it. How was she in bed?"
"What?"
Mae began to tap her foot. "I said, how was she in bed?"
Mitch tried to look injured and innocent. "I wouldn't know."
"She didn't make a pass at you?"
"Of course not." Mitch swallowed.
"You're lying."
"Everybody lies. Except me. Can we talk about something else?"
"No. I'm paying for this information." Mae took a deep breath. "Did you sleep with her?"
"No." Mitch scowled at her. "Not that it's any of your business, boss, but no, I didn't."
Mae bunked at him. "You know, I believe you."
"Thank you."
She sat back in her chair, irrationally relieved. "So what was the problem? Was it a lousy pass?"
"No." Mitch surrendered. "It was a great pass. She's a very warm woman."
"Hot," Mae corrected.
"Throbbing," Mitch agreed.
"So what went wrong? Was it because she wasn't a librarian?"
Mitch shrugged. "I wasn't."
"Wasn't what? A librarian?"
"Throbbing." Mitch sank down a little into his seat. "Could we talk about something else?"
"No. Why weren't you throbbing?"
"Well, I'm not sure." Mitch's exasperation was apparent. "I think you've made me impotent."
"Oh." Mae smiled complacently. "That's nice."
Mitch shot her a nasty look. "My day rate just doubled."
Mae ignored him. "So she couldn't make you throb, huh?"
"I was concentrating on my work. Nobody makes me throb when I'm working. I'm a pro." Mae smiled at him, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Forget it, cookie. You're not my type. Now can we get back to Armand?"
"Sure." Mae felt cheerful for the first time in days. "What do you want?"
"I want to see that box of Armand's things that Harold brought back from the town house."
Mae shook her head. "Mitch, there's nothing in there. I looked, Harold looked—"
"And now I want to look. Do you want to sit here and explain to me why I don't need to look at the box before we go get it, or do you want to just cut to the chase and go get it?"
Mae sighed. "I'll go get it."
"Good for you, Mabel." Mitch nodded at her approvingly. "You're learning. Slowly, but you're learning."
"There's nothing in here," Mitch said fifteen minutes later when they were both sitting on the floor peering into the big cardboard box.
Mae bit her lip to keep from saying I told you so.
"A thousand condoms, a hundred Chap Sticks, a bottle of heart pills, a bottle of aspirin, a roll of antacids, three pens and a calculator." Mitch stirred the mess with his finger.
"You're exaggerating on the condoms and Chap Sticks." Mae watched his hands move the contents of the box. "But there are a lot of them. Why would Armand want so many?"
"Maybe he was an optimist. Maybe his lips were really dry." He picked up the pill bottle and read the label. "Digoxin." He handed the bottle to Mae. "Do these look right to you?"
Mae took the bottle and popped the lid off, dumping a few of the white pills onto her palm. "I guess so. I never really paid much attention to them. The color's right."
Mitch pawed through the box again as she put the lid back on the bottle and tossed it back in. "Ah-ha! What's this?" He held up a small key with a blue plastic head and smiled at it with such delight that Mae was taken aback.
"It's not a safe-deposit key," Mae said. "Harold checked everywhere. Nobody he asked knew what it was."
"It's a storage-shed key." Mitch sat back, smug.
"To the best high-security storage facility in River-bend. It's about two miles from here."
Mae blinked at him. "And how do you know that?''
"I'm a detective. I detected it." He stood up. "Come on. This could be it."
"I don't believe this." Mae sat stubbornly at his feet. "How did you know that?"
"Fine, sit there." Mitch stepped over her. "I'm going to go find Armand's money, but you'd rather sit on the floor."
"All right, all right." Mae scrambled to her feet. "I'm coming. But I still don't believe this. You're keeping something from me."
"I should be so lucky," Mitch said.
Mitch's gas tank was on empty, so they stopped for gas, and when it turned out that Mitch's wallet was on empty, too, Mae forked over her last twenty.
"We'd better find the mother lode in this storage shed," she told him. "That's my lunch money for a week."
"We'll stop at an ATM on the way back. Trust me."
"Right," Mae said.
The storage facility, when they got there, was on a back street of one of Riverbend's better areas, tucked in among condos and apartment houses and hidden by trees and shrubs as if it were some less fortunate architectural relative. Mae saw dozens of sheds as they pulled up to the gate, all lined up in little streetlike rows labeled with white signposts, the sheds painted a refined stone blue and topped with white-gabled roofs. They looked like condos for elves.
"Hey, Mitch, how's it goin'?" the man at the gate said, and Mitch said, "Fine, Albert. What's happening?"
Albert snorted. "Nothing. That's why you pay us a fortune, so nothing happens to your stuff."
"Right," Mitch said, and Albert passed him through like a long-lost brother.
Mae fumed. So Mitch was paying a fortune for an upscale storage shed, was he? All right. That was it Whatever Mitchell Peatwick was, he wasn't a dead broke, deadbeat private eye. He'd lied to her. Well, that's the way it was with men. They always had something they kept from you. Just let them handle it. You didn't need to know.
Everybody lied.
She made her voice steely. "He knows you by name?"
Mitch ignored her and turned down the lane labeled C.
"The key said K10," Mae pointed out, momentarily distracted.
"I know."
"So why—"
"Because this is where Albert expects me to turn. We are breaking and entering, and I'd like Albert not to get wind of that, okay?"
Mae leaned against the car door so she could watch him better while he lied to her. "So you turn down C lane because that's where your shed is."
"Right." Mitch made a right turn at the end of the lane. "Watch for K."
"It'll be right after J." Mae folded her arms. "If you're so broke, why do you have an extremely expensive storage shed?"
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"Mabel, we're not close enough for you to know all my secrets. Will you look for K, please?"
"Mitch, they're alphabetical. K is not going to be a surprise. And I don't know any of your secrets—"
"Good." Mitch swung right on the K lane.
"So this is as good a place to start learning them as any."
"This is it." Mitch cut the engine and got out, and Mae had no choice but to follow him.
A storm was blowing up, and the wind was actually cool. Mitch reached in through the car window and pulled out a blue windbreaker. "Do you want this?"
Mae shook her head and watched him as he put on the jacket, and then she followed him to the door of the shed.
He bent over the lock, trying to see the keyhole in the dim light.
She came up behind him and tried again. "Why do you—"
"Shh." Mitch turned the key and shoved the door open, fumbling for the light switch inside. When he flipped it, the shed leaped into fluorescent brightness.
It was absolutely empty.
"No." Mae's heart sank into her shoes. There was nothing there. No paintings, no furniture, no cash, not even the damn diary. "I don't believe it." She walked to the middle of the shed and turned around slowly. It was good-size, ten by twelve at least, and lined with shelves, and every inch of it was barren.
Mitch came in and closed the door behind him. "Don't give up yet," he said, and she ignored him. It was obviously past time for giving up. Still, when he insisted, she helped him search, looking for a slip of paper, any tiny clue that might have been left behind.
There wasn't anything.
"This makes no sense." Mae sat down where she stood at the back of the shed, her legs crossed in front of her on the concrete floor, and buried her face in her hands. "Where did it all go?"
"You mean the diary?" Mitch sat down across the shed from her, his back against the door. "That's what this is all about, right?"
Mae raised her head from her hands at the gently patronizing tone in his voice. "You haven't believed in that diary from the beginning. You're like all the rest. You say, 'Whatever you want, Mae Belle' and then you go off and do what you want. Men."
"Hey, wait a minute. I—"
"You what?" She glared at him. "You want to tell me how you're different? Well, you're not. You take checks from my Uncle Claud, and you get all macho with my Uncle Gio, and you go to mush around June and you gape at Stormy, and you lie to me and—"
"I have never lied to you." Mitch's voice was firm with conviction, but Mae had been there before.
"Oh, right. You're just a broken-down private eye, but Nick Jamieson knows you Like a brother, and you rent a very expensive storage shed, and you—"
"I never said I was a broken-down private eye," Mitch observed mildly. "You just—"
"Well, what are you then?" Mae dropped her eyes from his face, knowing he was going to lie to her and hating it. Not that she expected anything else. Mitch was funny and sexy and smart and made her crazy, but he was still—
"I'm a stockbroker," Mitch said.
Mae blinked at him across the expanse of empty shed. "You're a what?"
"My name isn't Mitchell Peatwick. It's Mitchell Kincaid, and I'm a stockbroker." Mitch sighed. "I wouldn't tell you this, but you're going to nag me until you get it out of me, anyway."
"This is true." Mae frowned, trying to stomp down the little spark of hope the word stockbroker had irrationally aroused in her. Stockbrokers could easily be scum, it wasn't as if he'd said he was a social worker, but she listened to him, anyway. "How did you get from stockbroker to private detective?"
"Well, I had this fantasy." Mitch made himself comfortable on the floor. "I was a good stockbroker, but after a while, it was just the same old routine. I had a couple of clients like Nick who'd give me money to risk on way-out stuff, but mostly I just made sure rich people stayed rich." He met Mae's eyes. "Rich people pay well for that sort of thing."
"I imagine so." Mae had no idea where he was going, but she didn't want to discourage him by asking.
"So a couple of years ago, I was out drinking with a friend of mine named Newton —you'd like Newton— and we were talking about what we'd always wanted to be, and I said a private detective. Like Sam Spade. A lone knight on mean streets. Saving the poor and downtrodden, especially if they had great legs. Like yours, for instance."
Mae nodded, still totally lost as to the point of the story.
"Anyway, Newton liked the idea. A lot. Then we sobered up and forgot about it, but I kept thinking about it at odd hours, and I went out about a year ago and got a P.I. license just for the hell of it. And I showed it to Newton." Mitch winced. "My first mistake. About a week later, we were at a dinner, at a tableful of associates and my boss, and we'd all been tossing back the juice, and Newton brought up my license. So I passed it around, and one of the associates, this clown named Montgomery, said something to the effect that it was typical of midlife-crisis guys to buy Porsches and daydream about dumb new careers. Anyway, one thing led to another, and I said I could get a private investigation bureau into the black in a year." He stopped and frowned at Mae. "That's a big promise. It takes most new businesses five years to get out of the red."
"Okay," Mae said, finally seeing where this was leading. "And he bet you that you couldn't."
"Right. The rules were that I had twenty thousand as start-up capital, I couldn't use my real name to get financial business or credit and I couldn't touch any other money except what I made as a P.I. Newton volunteered to keep the books." Mitch sighed. "My boss asked who would take care of my clients, and Newton volunteered for that, too, so my boss gave me a leave of absence. I think he may have had midlife fantasies himself. And the next morning, I woke up, realized what I'd done and swore off alcohol for life. I haven't had a drink since."
"Well, that explains why you live in a tenement." Mae tilted her head at him. "How much was the bet for?"
"Ten thousand. Newton got Montgomery into another twenty thou as a side bet." Mitch shook his head. "I still can't believe he did that. Newton never takes chances with money."
"So are you going to make it?"
"Yeah, thanks to you. Your check put me over the top." Mitch smiled at her, and Mae forgot that the shed was empty and that he wasn't to be trusted and let herself fall into his smile until she had to remind herself to breathe.
She tried to pull her scrambled thoughts together. "How much time did you have left? On the bet, I mean."
"The year was up Friday."
"Oh." Mae swallowed. "Close call. No wonder you took my case."
"That wasn't the only reason."
Mitch made it sound offhand, but the warmth in his voice made her swallow again. Mae tried to find her own voice, but it seemed to be quivering behind her tonsils. "What other reason?"
"I told you, I had this fantasy." Mitch tipped back his head to rest it against the door. "I dreamed that this beautiful woman came into my office and asked for my help, and she was intelligent and funny and sexy and warm and she never ever lied to me." He brought his eyes back to hers. "And then you walked in. It seemed like fate."
"Oh, no." Mae closed her eyes in guilt. "Mitch, I lied to you."
"I know," Mitch said.
Mae jerked her head up. "How do you know?"
"I guessed. Want to tell me about it?"
"Yes." Mae exhaled in relief, surprised at how much she really did want to tell him everything. She wasn't quite sure why things were different now that he'd confessed to being a stockbroker, but they were. "Armand wasn't murdered. I made that up. He died in Stormy's bed, like she said." She stopped, trying to sort out the best way to explain. "I don't have any money. My parents left me the trust fund, but that evaporated. And of course, Harold and June don't have anything, either. We were all dependent on Uncle Armand. Well, actually, I could have moved out, but they—"
"I know this part," Mitch said.
"Oh, right." Mae started again. "We lived with my Uncle Arm
and for twenty-eight years and nothing ever changed, nothing ever left that house. And then a couple of months ago, the stuff I told you about started disappearing. That was strange enough, but then, that last Monday night, I heard him on the hall phone. He'd been on his way out the door, and the phone rang. I was in the hall upstairs, and I couldn't hear what he was saying but I could tell he was mad, so I sort of snuck up to the head of the stairs, and I heard him say, 'They can't get the money without the diary, and I've always got the diary with me.' And then he listened for a minute, and then he said, 'Look, I did everything you told me to. I've found a way out of this. You're not getting any more of my money.' And then he listened for another second or two and slammed down the receiver and stomped out, absolutely furious."
Mitch was leaning forward by this point. "Where was he going?"
Mae blinked at his obtuseness. "To the town house and Stormy, of course. Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, just like clockwork."
"He never missed?"
"Never. Uncle Armand liked routine."
"So anyone who knew him knew that's where he'd be."
"I guess so." Mae leaned forward, too. "Look, Mitch, he wasn't murdered. I just made up that part so it would look like whoever had the diary was guilty. That way, he couldn't use it to get whatever was left of the money."
"That would only work if someone really believed Armand was murdered," Mitch told her.
"That was your job." Mae tried a small smile as an apology. "You were supposed to be stupid and go out and stir up trouble and make people believe he'd been killed. Problem was, you weren't stupid."
Mitch sighed and sat back. "The problem may be bigger than that. There's a lot of money missing here. Even if Armand died naturally in his bed, with that much money in the picture, I'd bet there's a crime somewhere. It would explain why someone's so annoyed with my work." He thought for a moment and then stood up and walked across the shed to her. "Come on, let's get out of here. Whatever was here is gone."
He held out his hand to her and she took it, letting herself enjoy its warmth and solid strength while he pulled her to her feet. She followed him to the door, relieved that she'd finally come clean, and saddened, too. She wasn't sure why she was sad, but she was fairly sure it was watching his back move away from her.