“Maybe you didn’t know that I was fired from my job six months ago. I haven’t had much luck finding a new position. So I’m on a strict budget these days.”
“Your father is one of the wealthiest men in the state,” he pointed out mildly.
“I don’t consider Archer Glazebrook to be my father in anything but the biological sense.”
“In other words, you’re too proud to take any money from him.” He shook his head, amused. “The two of you sure have a lot in common.”
He pushed open the grimy glass door. Clare went past him into the postage stamp–sized lobby.
The desk clerk stared at Clare, taking in the sight of the bathrobe and towel turban.
“You okay, Miss Lancaster?” he asked uneasily.
“Late-night swim,” Clare said.
“I’m going to see Miss Lancaster to her room,” Jake said.
The clerk sized him up and then shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. Just keep it quiet, will you? There’s a couple from the Midwest in the room next door.”
Clare frowned. “What are you talking about? Why should I care if there are people next door?”
The clerk rolled his eyes.
Jake grabbed her arm and hauled her toward the stairs.
“What’s going on here?” Clare asked, bewildered. “Am I missing something?”
Jake waited until they reached the next floor and started down the dingy hall before answering.
“The guy at the desk thinks you’re a call girl who is using this motel to entertain clients.”
“You being the client?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose the bathrobe gives a poor impression.”
She stopped in front of room 210. Jake took the key from her and inserted it into the lock.
The door to room 208 opened. A middle-aged woman with a helmet of graying curls peered disapprovingly through the crack.
Jake nodded politely. “Evening, ma’am.”
The woman slammed the door shut. Jake heard voices through the walls. The door opened again. This time a balding, overweight man dressed in a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and an aging white T-shirt looked out. He stared hard at Clare through the opening.
Clare inclined her head. “Nice night, isn’t it?”
The man shut the door without speaking. Jake heard the loud snick of the dead bolt sliding into place.
“I don’t think the night clerk is the only one around here who is wondering about your career path,” he said.
“Little do they know that I don’t even have a career at the moment.”
Jake opened the door.
The interior of the small room was as unprepossessing as the exterior. At the far end cheap sliding glass doors opened onto a tiny balcony that overlooked a small pool. Clare switched on the weak overhead light.
Jake glanced at the single, roll-aboard suitcase sitting on the stand.
“Doesn’t look like you packed for an extended stay,” he said.
“I’ll give Archer one day to explain why he dragged me down here. As long as I’m in town, I’ll spend some time with Elizabeth. But after that I have no reason to hang around.”
“Going back home to San Francisco?”
“I’m job hunting. Six months of unemployment has put a major dent in my savings. I don’t want to have to start borrowing from my mother and my aunt. I need to find work.”
He nodded. “Probably for the best.”
He was obviously looking forward to getting rid of her. Why was that depressing?
“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “It has been an interesting evening, to say the least.”
“My dates say that a lot.”
She smiled. “In case you didn’t notice, this wasn’t a date. You were just doing your job. Taking care of problems for Archer Glazebrook.”
She closed the door very gently but very firmly in his face.
Chapter Five
Jake drove back to Stone Canyon and parked in the garage of the house he rented. He opened the trunk of the BMW, took out the computer that was never far from his side and went indoors.
He had intended to spend the night prowling through a couple more homes belonging to members of the Glazebrooks’ circle of acquaintances, searching for some indication of what he had been sent here to find. It was how he had spent most of the other nights in Stone Canyon. Thus far he had managed to rummage through the closets, drawers and wall safes of twelve residences.
But the arrival of Clare Lancaster had changed his plans for the evening. Ever since his first sight of her, his hunting senses had been on high alert. She was important. He could feel it. And not just because he wanted to take her to bed, although that was pretty damn important, too.
In the kitchen he flipped on a light and set the thin laptop on the table. He poured himself a glass of scotch, sat down and powered up the computer.
He did not want any more surprises.
The heavily encrypted files on the Glazebrook family that had been given to him contained only sketchy information on Clare Lancaster. He reviewed it quickly.
Clare came from long lines of registered Society members on both sides of her family. There was an asterisk next to her Jones Scale number. It meant that, although she had been assigned a ten, her particular type of sensitivity was so rare that the researchers did not have enough examples to guarantee that the rating was accurate.
There was a similar asterisk next to the number ten on his para profile, too.
Clare had been raised by her mother, Gwen Lancaster, an accountant, and her great-aunt, May Flood, in the San Francisco Bay area. She had a degree in history from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He knew enough about the reputation of that branch of the UC system to be aware that she had probably emerged with not only a respectable education but a slightly offbeat view of the world, as well.
He paid attention to that small fact because here in Arizona, Glazebrooks were not inclined to be offbeat. They were pillars of the community, active in civic, business and charitable affairs.
He dug a little deeper into the files and found the item he was looking for. There was a small note to the effect that following graduation Clare had applied to work for the West Coast branch of Jones & Jones. Her application was rejected.
In the intervening years she had applied several more times. And been rejected several more times.
Following her failure to obtain a position at J&J, Clare had gone to work for a small nonprofit foundation. She stayed there three years before accepting a managerial position in the larger, more prestigious Draper Trust.
The Draper Trust was a private foundation that specialized in making grants to organizations that worked with battered women and homeless families, and in the fields of early childhood health and education. She had evidently been very successful at the trust. At least, that had been true until six months ago. That was when she was questioned in connection with the murder of Brad McAllister.
When she had returned home to San Francisco she was fired from her position at the Draper Trust. Her engagement to another executive at the trust, Greg Washburn, ended at the same time. She had spent the intervening months searching for a new position in the charitable-foundation world without any luck. She had also sent another application to the West Coast branch of J&J.
Rejected again.
Jake did a quick search on Greg Washburn in the Arcane Society records. There were a few Washburns listed, but not the Gregory R. Washburn who had been Clare’s fiancé. She tried to fake it with a nonsensitive, he thought, just as he tried to do with Sylvia.
That gave them something in common. They both knew that very few members of the Arcane Society were interested in marrying a level-ten exotic of any kind, let alone a hunter or a human lie detector. They had each gone outside the community to find mates. The results had been spectacular failures for both of them.
He sat back in his chair and sipped the scotch, thinking.
After a while he p
ulled up the data on Brad McAllister’s murder.
There was a good deal of information available because McAllister’s death had been big news among the country club set in Stone Canyon. Most of the material was unhelpful, however, and superficial at best. The investigation had gone nowhere.
Clare had given a statement to the police but was never an official suspect. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out why she was cleared so quickly, he thought. She was, after all, Archer Glazebrook’s daughter. No one affiliated with the Stone Canyon Police Department would have been eager to press an investigation without solid evidence. It would have been a career-breaking move.
He sipped more scotch and thought about what Clare had told him. She had called Brad evil and claimed he was responsible for Elizabeth’s nervous breakdown. That was pretty heavy stuff. It was also the first hint of negative gossip he’d picked up concerning Elizabeth’s sainted husband. As far as the rest of Stone Canyon was concerned, Brad had been a damn near perfect husband.
But what if Archer Glazebrook had suspected that Elizabeth had been abused? Jake didn’t doubt for a moment that Archer was capable of gunning down a son-in-law if he thought said son-in-law had done something terrible to one of his children. Archer grew up on a ranch and spent time in the military. He knew guns.
The problem was that Archer, Myra and Elizabeth had all been seen at the Arts Academy reception that evening. There was no shortage of witnesses.
Then again, how hard would it be to slip away from a crowded reception long enough to kill someone who was only a couple miles away?
Jake pulled up the Bradley B. McAllister file. There wasn’t much of interest in it.
McAllister and his mother, Valerie, were both members of the Society, but neither had tested high on the Jones Scale. Valerie was a two and Brad a four. Both had been rated as possessing “generalized parasensitivity” with no special aspects.
As a four Brad had probably been a very good card player. The talent also explained his success as an investor. McAllister had been a very wealthy man.
The Arcane Society members were statistically more inclined to possess varying degrees of paranormal talents because of the group’s long history of encouraging marriage between psychically talented people. Like every other human trait, genetics played a role.
He went swiftly through the rest of the information Jones & Jones had on McAllister. Brad appeared for the first time in the local area a few months after his mother married Owen Shipley. Brad had no previous marriages, according to the file. He was well educated, had a flair for the financial world and had worked for a medium-sized brokerage house before going out on his own as a private investor. By the time he arrived in Stone Canyon, he had amassed a sizable fortune.
Didn’t mean he hadn’t married Elizabeth for her money, Jake reminded himself. Some people never had enough.
After a while he opened his cell phone and punched out a familiar number. Fallon Jones answered on the first ring.
“I hope this call is to tell me that you’ve finally made some progress in Stone Canyon,” Fallon said.
The low, dark voice suited the man, Jake thought. Fallon was a brooding loner. He was probably at his desk. Fallon was nearly always at his desk, hunched over his computer. He resembled some mad scientist. The analogy was apt. Fallon Jones could trace his lineage straight back to the founder of the Arcane Society, Sylvester Jones the alchemist.
Like most of the men in the founder’s long line, Fallon Jones was a strong sensitive. He was also uniquely qualified to head up a psychic investigation agency because his exotic paranormal abilities allowed him to discern patterns where others saw only randomness; conspiracy where others saw coincidence. He was invariably right.
When Fallon sent his agents out to hunt, you could count on the fact that there was prey out there somewhere.
“There’s been a new complication,” Jake said. “Her name is Clare Lancaster.”
“Glazebrook’s other daughter?” Fallon paused. “Hell. The probability guys told me she wasn’t likely to show up.”
“Well, she’s here. I think it’s safe to say that she knows there’s something not quite right about my story.”
“Damn. You can’t let her screw this thing up. There’s too much riding on the project.”
“She doesn’t seem inclined to blow my cover,” Jake said. “Says she’s used to the fact that everyone lies. In any event, she’s scheduled to fly back to San Francisco day after tomorrow.”
“Think you can control her until then?”
“I don’t think anyone can control Clare Lancaster,” Jake said. “At least not for long. But with luck she won’t wreck the project. I called because I’ve got a question about her.”
“What?”
“I came across a file that says she has applied for a position at Jones & Jones on several occasions.”
“Every six months, regular as clockwork. She’s been persistent, I’ll give her credit for that.”
“Why does she get rejected?”
“Why the hell do you think?” Fallon said patiently. “Because she’s a level-ten lie detector. Make that a level ten with an asterisk.”
“Seems to me like someone with her talent might be very useful to a business like yours.”
“Maybe. But not a ten. They’re way too unstable. When her first application came in I had one of the analysts do some background research on other members with her kind of talent. Turns out there have only been a half-dozen or fewer in the entire history of the Society. Most of ’em were either extremely neurotic or downright crazy. Four committed suicide. It’s a tough talent to handle.”
“You rejected her because you thought she’d be unable to do the job?”
“This is an investigation agency, Jake,” Fallon pointed out drily. “You know as well as I do that in our business everybody lies—the clients, the suspects and the J&J agents. No level-ten-with-an-asterisk lie detector could last long under that kind of pressure. She would have been a risk to herself and others in the field.”
“You may have underestimated her.”
“It’s possible, but I have to go with the probabilities,” Fallon said philosophically. “Whatever you do, don’t let her mess up your assignment.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter Six
Fallon Jones got up from behind the battered mahogany desk and went to stand at the window. He was always aware of the weight of the Jones family history when he was in his office.
The desk, like the distinctive glass-fronted bookcases and the Egyptian motif wall sconces, was in the Art Deco style. They had been among the original furnishings in the West Coast branch of Jones & Jones when it opened for business in Los Angeles back in 1927.
Eventually Cedric Jones, one in a series of Joneses to head the branch, had made the decision to move the office to the secluded beachside town of Scargill Cove on the northern California coast in the late 1960s. Cedric had brought most of the L.A. furniture with him. When Fallon inherited the job, he kept everything, right down to the wall sconces.
Back in the 1960s, Scargill Cove had been a remote village populated by an eclectic group of hippies, New Age types, artists, craftspeople and others seeking refuge from the relentless forces of the modern world. A psychic detective agency fit right in with the rest of the neighborhood.
Not much had changed in Scargill Cove over the years. It sometimes seemed to Fallon that the town was trapped in a time warp. That was one of the things he liked about it. He worked here alone, supervising his far-flung team of part-time investigators, analysts and lab techs via the Internet and his cell phone. Once in a while he considered hiring an assistant but had yet to act on the notion.
He knew what Jake and the others thought about his decision to run his empire from this hidden place on the coast. But he needed his privacy in ways the others could never understand. Virtually all the members of the Jones family were strong sensitives of one kind or another,
but his particular talent was unique in the Jones line. No one else understood it. He didn’t understand it himself most of the time. All he knew was that to do his best work, he needed the solitude and tranquillity of Scargill Cove.
It was late. The fog-shrouded moon illuminated the looming outlines of the natural foods grocery, the craft galleries and a handful of other shops that composed the town’s tiny commercial district.
This was July but the windswept cove, with its slice of rocky beach and looming cliffs, attracted few tourists. Those who found their way into town never stayed long, primarily because there was very little in the way of lodging. The Scargill Cove Inn had only six rooms. Visitors hung around just long enough to browse the arts and crafts galleries. They left before sunset in search of accommodations and restaurants farther down the coast.
Cedric Jones, with his level-ten intuition, had sensed that Scargill Cove would stay undiscovered for a long, long time. He had been right.
Jones & Jones was a family business with branches in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was founded in the aftermath of the First Cabal in the late 1800s. All the branches were headed by members of the Jones family who had descended from the alchemist founder, Sylvester Jones.
Most of the time the firm’s various offices were kept busy handling a wide range of security and investigative work for members of the Society and others in the general population who chose to seek the assistance of psychic detectives. But those in the Society who were aware of J&J’s history understood that its primary client was the governing Council of the Arcane Society.
As far as the Council was concerned, J&J’s chief job was to protect the Society’s most extraordinarily dangerous secret: the founder’s formula.
The original formula was created by Sylvester Jones. In his private journals he claimed it could greatly enhance psychic abilities in those who possessed at least some traces of paranormal talent. Over the years the formula had become just one more Arcane Society legend as far as most members were concerned. But the Jones family and the Council knew the truth. The formula had existed and it had worked.