She looked at him with fathomless eyes. “They say I’m crazy.”
There was a beat of silence. The jazz swirled heavily in the darkness.
“You want to run that by me again?” Ethan said softly.
Zoe clenched and unclenched the hand resting in her lap. “My husband’s dear cousin managed to get me committed.”
“Committed.” He repeated the word very precisely and very evenly.
“Yes.”
“I’ll admit I’m not up on the laws concerning this kind of thing,” he said carefully, “but I was under the impression that it was pretty tricky to get someone committed against her will these days.”
Zoe’s jaw tightened. He could see that she had clenched her teeth. Probably wondering if he was buying any of this. It was a legitimate concern. He was wondering the same thing.
“Forrest had some help with the paperwork and the legalities,” she said.
“From?”
“Dr. Ian Harper, the director of a private psychiatric hospital in California called Candle Lake Manor. I have no idea how much Forrest paid him to keep me doped up, locked up, and incapacitated. But I’m sure it was a substantial sum.”
Okay, he’d had a feeling this was going to get weird, he reminded himself.
“I can’t help but notice that you are not in this Candle Lake Manor hospital at the moment,” he said. “You are sitting in a jazz club in Whispering Springs instead.”
“Under another name,” Zoe said. She fixed him with a determined expression that did not quite hide a hint of desperation. “You are looking at a genuine escapee from an old-fashioned lunatic asylum.”
“That’s funny, you don’t look crazy.”
She flattened one hand on the table. “Let me explain how it happened.”
“An explanation would be nice.”
“The day I found Preston’s body at the cabin, I was a basket case. I knew he had been murdered, and I told the cops that I suspected Forrest. They thought I was hysterical. And I can’t argue that point.”
“Lot of people would get hysterical in that situation,” Ethan said.
“True. But I was also sure that I was right. I gave the authorities my statement and then I went home, expecting the wheels of justice to grind. Unfortunately there was no evidence linking Forrest to the crime. No one was arrested. The cabin prowler was eventually picked up, but he refused to confess to murder. After three months I realized that Preston’s killer would go unpunished.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I started to wonder if maybe I was wrong and the cops were right, after all. Meanwhile, I was struggling with grief and all of the emotional trauma involved. Then there was the business side of things to worry about. What with one thing and another, it was another three months before I felt I could think clearly again.”
“What was your next step?”
“I went back to the cabin,” she said.
“To pack up your husband’s things?”
“Yes.” Her gaze slid away. She looked at the musicians. “To pack up his things. It was the first time I had been there since the day I found him. I sat on the sofa for a long time, remembering how the vases had been shattered and the flowers strewn around the room. And I thought about the broken camera. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that the pattern of destruction just did not feel like the work of a frustrated murderer who couldn’t find enough cash on his victim.”
“What do you think that kind of destruction would have looked like?” he asked. He realized that he was genuinely curious about her reasoning.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It just seemed to me that an angry killer who was furious because he hadn’t found enough money would have been more likely to break windows or tear up the furniture.”
She was choosing her words very carefully now. Not lying exactly but not telling him the full truth, either. He’d been here before. Clients did this a lot.
He looked down at his notes.
“This is like the thing with the fancy sheets at Davis Mason’s house, isn’t it?” he asked. “Something doesn’t quite fit so you leap to a conclusion that supports your theory.”
“I guess you could say that.” She looked a him with fierce eyes. “But I do believe that Preston knew his killer. I think he opened the door to him. There must have been a fight. Maybe they argued and came to blows. That would explain all the smashed vases and the camera getting crushed underfoot. I suspect that after the fight, Forrest left and came back later to shoot Preston from ambush.”
He contemplated that for a while. It was possible. He had learned long ago that when it came to murder, almost anything was possible.
“I take it you confronted Forrest with your accusations after that last visit to the cabin?” he asked.
“Yes. But I’m afraid that I didn’t handle it very adroitly. I made . . . scenes. A number of them. The two most memorable ones occurred when I went to Forrest’s home and shouted my accusations at him in front of his wife. The second big one took place when I stormed into a meeting of the Cleland board.”
“You accused Forrest of murder in front of his board of directors?”
She sighed. “As I said, I did not handle things in what you’d call a diplomatic fashion.”
“No, I can see that. What happened?”
“I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish. Maybe I thought I’d get some support from a few of the board members. Instead everyone just looked at me like I’d gone . . .”
“Crazy.”
“In a word, yes.” She shrugged. “There were a few more incidents in a similar vein. The police were not interested. Forrest convinced everyone that he had an iron-clad alibi for the day of Preston’s murder. Everyone else in the Cleland family was content with the cops’ theory that the prowler had been the killer. They wanted me to sit down and shut up. I had never been a popular addition to the clan.”
“Why not?”
“No money. No background. No social connections.”
“Presumably you got increasingly frustrated,” he said.
“Oh, yes. Yes, I got very frustrated. So I got louder. A few weeks later Forrest called in Dr. Harper. I don’t know how he found out about him and his hospital. But he told Harper that I had become irrational and was making wild threats. He said that he did not want to turn me over to the cops because, after all, I was family. Harper promised him that he would take very good care of me. And he did.”
“What did Harper do?”
“He declared me to be a threat to myself and others.” Zoe’s mouth twisted. “And then he proceeded to medicate me.”
“He used drugs on you?”
“Oh, yes, he used drugs.”
She closed her eyes. Fighting back tears or memories or both? he wondered.
When her lashes lifted, he could see the cold anger that blazed within her. But her voice was unnaturally steady. “The first time I was literally overpowered by orderlies who held me down while I was given a shot of something very strong. I woke up in a little white room in Xanadu.”
“Xanadu?”
Zoe exchanged a glance with Arcadia. “Our nickname for the Manor.”
Ethan raised his brows at Arcadia. “You were a patient there, too?”
“For a while.” Arcadia did not elaborate.
“Another escapee?”
“Mmm.”
“Living under a fake ID?”
Arcadia said nothing.
Zoe cleared her throat. “For the record, my ID is not exactly fake. More like concealed.”
“You want to explain that?” he said politely.
It was Arcadia who responded.
“I have a connection,” she said quietly. “Before I went to Candle Lake Manor, I made some arrangements. Someone I trusted and who is now dead gave me an introduction to an online identity broker called the Merchant. He’s very secretive. You have to have a special code just to contact him and he only a
ccepts certain clients. If you make his Alist, however, he offers a variety of services. He’ll sell you a complete new life if you want to go that route. But Zoe only needed to stay hidden for a while.”
“In fact,” Zoe put in, “I have to keep my old identity in order to be certain that I retain control of the Cleland shares. I’m not sure what would happen, legally speaking, to my status as owner of the shares if I assume a whole new ID.”
“Zoe Luce is your real name?” Ethan asked.
“Sort of. Zoe is actually my middle name. Luce was my last name before I was married. There’s no law that says you can’t go back to using it.”
“Names don’t matter a whole heck of a lot when you’re tracing someone,” Ethan said said. “There are hundreds, even thousands of people with the same first and last names. Numbers are the only things that count. I’m assuming that you’re not using your old credit cards or bank accounts. But what did you do about your social security and driver’s license numbers?”
“The Merchant offered to provide what he called a spiderweb veil online,” she said. “I don’t understand all the technical details, but what it means is that he arranged for any inquiries concerning my basic ID numbers to be routed through him. He promised that he would make certain that anyone who searched for me would get the appropriate answers.”
“Legitimate inquiries from government or law enforcement agencies get the truth, I take it.”
“Yes, but there haven’t been any from those sources.” She moved one hand in a crisp arc. “I certainly never gave the government or the law any reason to do a background check on me. As for other online searchers, the Merchant claimed that he would muddy the waters. It seemed to work. Shortly after we escaped, he notified us that an investigator hired by someone at Candle Lake Manor had attempted to find Arcadia and me. He assured us that he had planted a phony story from a Mexican newspaper to the effect that we had evidently died in a hotel fire.”
“The Merchant hasn’t notified us of any more inquiries,” Arcadia concluded. “But someone has obviously found Zoe.”
So much for moving to a smaller town where the cases would be simpler and he could have a normal social life, Ethan thought. Business was getting complicated fast here in Whispering Springs, and he was sleeping with a woman who had escaped from a mental hospital.
“I spent six months in Candle Lake Manor,” Zoe said. “For all intents and purposes, I might as well have been in prison.” She smiled humorlessly. “Except, of course, that I got therapy.”
“How did you get out?” Ethan asked.
Zoe put a fingertip in the center of the cocktail napkin and used a second finger to spin the small paper square. She appeared to be giving the question extremely close consideration.
“It’s another long story,” she said. She stopped spinning the napkin. “Do you really want to hear it right now?”
“It can wait,” he said. But not for long, he thought. “All right, let’s get to the part that involves me.”
“The blackmail threat,” Zoe said.
“I assume that whoever has located you is threatening to tell someone else.”
“That’s the implication.” She reached into her large black tote and withdrew a sheet of business stationery. Without a word she handed it to him. “I found this in my bed tonight.”
“He got inside your apartment?” He tried to keep the question businesslike, not wanting to alarm her.
“Yes. He knows exactly where I live, and he knew how to get past all my locks.”
That was not good news, Ethan thought.
He studied the little etching of the mansion on the lake. “Candle Lake Manor. That’s all. No address or phone number.”
“Of course not.” Arcadia picked up her espresso cup and sipped languidly. “Dr. Harper relies on referrals. He does not believe in advertising. Discretion and privacy are the twin pillars of his business.”
“Candle Lake Manor is the kind of place where you can stick your crazy uncle and rest assured that your friends down at the yacht club will never find out you’ve got some embarrassing genes in the family,” Zoe said.
“It is a very, very private institution,” Arcadia added.
“A tranquil setting designed to soothe and reassure,” Zoe murmured. “A positive environment in which sensitive individuals who cannot cope with the rigors of normal daily life may flourish and thrive in a serene, orderly setting.”
“You’re quoting, I assume?” Ethan did not look up from the blackmail note.
“I overheard Dr. Harper showing new clients around a couple of times,” Zoe said.
Ethan held up the blackmail note. “Mind if I keep this?”
To his surprise, Zoe hesitated. “I don’t know. That’s the only piece of evidence I’ve got.”
It annoyed him that she did not fully trust him with the note. Then it occurred to him that a woman who was accustomed to having her sanity questioned had a right to be cautious about anything that verified her story.
“I understand this is your evidence,” he said patiently. “That’s why I need it.”
She bit her lip, exchanged a glance with Arcadia, and then nodded. “Okay.”
He folded the sheet of stationery and tucked it into the pocket of his shirt. “It looks like you’ll be hearing from whoever left this fairly soon. Any idea who might have found you and how?”
Zoe and Arcadia did some more nonverbal communication. Then Zoe put her hand back into her tote and drew out another sheet of paper.
“We think it almost has to be someone from Candle Lake Manor,” she said. “We made a list.”
“That’s a start.”
“Something else you should know,” she said carefully. “I only need to stay hidden for six more weeks.”
“What happens in six weeks?”
“I take my revenge for my husband’s murder.” Her eyes were fierce. “It isn’t nearly enough, but it is something.”
He chilled. “What are you going to do?”
“Destroy the only thing in this world that Forrest Cleland really cares about. Cleland Cage, Inc.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ethan walked through the door of the bookshop shortly after eight the next morning. Singleton loomed in the gloom.
“You’re here bright and early,” Singleton said.
“Got a new case and I need some consulting work.”
“Business is picking up, huh?”
“A repeat customer.”
“That would be the interior decorator?” Singleton leaned on his counter. “She got another suspicious client? You know, I see a pattern developing here. Play your cards right and this could turn out to be a full-time gig for Truax Investigations.”
“She’s being blackmailed.”
Singleton sat down on a stool. “Not good.”
“No.” Ethan put the extortion note on the glass top of the counter. “I’m trying to get whatever I can on this private psychiatric hospital. The director’s name is Dr. Ian Harper. I did some preliminary searching online last night and this morning, and I came up with zip. I don’t have time to go at it again. Can you do some fishing for me?”
“Sure.” Singleton leaned over to study the note. “Not real original. Clipped the letters out of a newspaper.”
“The bastard left it in Zoe’s bed.”
One of Singleton’s brows rose. “Which means he’s right here in town. Or, at least he was last night.”
“It also means he knows his way around locks,” Ethan said. “Zoe’s got some good ones on her front door.”
Singleton looked up. “Could have bribed the manager.”
Ethan shook his head. “Zoe told me that she had them changed quietly after she moved in. She did not give the manager the key.”
“Okay, so you’re looking for someone who can pick a lock and who is probably staying in the vicinity.”
“Best guess is that he is associated with this Candle Lake Manor place. Zoe gave me a list of names of som
e of the people who work there. I’m going to start calling their offices this morning, see if any of them are out of town on business. If he was here in Whispering Springs late last night, there’s no way he could be back in his office in Candle Lake yet. I checked the flight schedules.”
“Got it. If anyone isn’t where he or she is supposed to be, you can start looking for him or her here in Whispering Springs.”
“That’s the plan.”
Singleton got up from the stool. “I’ll see what I can find out about this Candle Lake Manor. A private psychiatric hospital, you said? Mind if I ask what Zoe’s connection is to it?”
“My client prefers to keep that information confidential.”
“Got it.” Singleton nodded. “She was a patient there. Don’t worry, as your part-time consultant, I consider myself bound by the client confidentiality policies of Truax Investigations, whatever they are.”
“Figured you’d see things that way.”
“Just out of curiosity, did Zoe get discharged from this Candle Lake Manor because she got better?”
“No, she busted out.”
“An escapee from the funny farm. Gotta hand it to you, Truax, when it comes to clients and girlfriends, you sure can pick ’em.”
“When you’re starting up a new business and a new social life, you can’t be real choosy. Oh, yeah, there’s another thing.” He took out his notepad. “Zoe bought some identity camouflage from an online ID broker who calls himself the Merchant. The guy is supposed to have great security. But someone got the information about Zoe. I’d like to know exactly how that was accomplished.”
Singleton was clearly intrigued. “No such thing as perfect security online. You know how to contact this guy?”
“Arcadia gave me a special code.” Ethan removed his notebook from his pocket, flipped it open, and read the information to Singleton.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Singleton studied the code. “Should be interesting.”
Ethan went out into the hall and took the stairs two at a time. He let himself into his office, sat down at the desk, and got a notepad out of the drawer.
He picked up the phone and went to work.
“. . . I’ve been referred to Dr. Harper . . .”