Then she had realized that it wasn’t a subliminal awareness of the energy in the walls that was affecting him. What she had seen in Ethan was the anticipation of the hunter on the trail.
She came to a halt in the center of the gleaming copper-and-granite kitchen and thought about that. A tiny chill flickered through her. Ethan Truax could be dangerous under certain circumstances.
That realization would not have bothered her quite so much were it not for the extremely unsettling knowledge that she was attracted to him. She had finally faced that fact today. She did not understand the little tingles of excitement she experienced in his presence, but there was no point denying them.
The really weird part was that she had not given any man so much as a second glance for two years, and now, here she was, fantasizing about a low-rent private investigator who had admitted to three marriages and as many divorces.
Ethan Truax was very definitely not her type. Preston, with his love of art and history and his gentle ways, had been her type. Whatever it was she was feeling for Truax, it probably only involved a lot of hormones that had been dormant for a long time.
She left the kitchen with its large adjoining pantry and walked past the handsome, polished steel door of the new walk-in, climate-controlled wine cellar. In addition to their extensive entertaining needs, the Taylors collected rare and exotic vintages. The cellar was empty and unlocked at the moment because the valuable collection of wines had not yet been moved. Edward Taylor had made it clear that he wished to supervise that delicate process personally when he returned from the cruise.
She continued along the spacious central hall, admiring the artful patterns worked into the floor tiles. When she reached the fully equipped exercise and sauna room, she paused to check that all of the high-tech machines were properly positioned.
She was on her way to the guest wing when she heard the faint whisper of sound from the back of the house.
She froze; her palms felt as though she had just plunged her hands into ice water.
It had been only a tiny, hushed creak that could easily be written off as a figment of her imagination. It was just the sort of thin little noise that you could expect to hear in a large empty space where small sounds tended to echo. But it seemed to her that the flow of air down the hall had altered a little. One of the French doors that separated the kitchen area from the pool terrace had just been opened.
She was no longer alone in the big house.
“Hurry up, okay, man?” The storage locker attendant worked the code to open the door on the second floor of lockers. He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Someone might come along, y’know? If the boss finds out I let you in, he’ll fire my ass.”
“This will only take a couple of minutes.” Ethan shoved a few crisp bills into the man’s hand. “Go back to your desk. I’ll give you the rest on my way out.”
“Just make it fast, okay.”
“Sure.”
The attendant pocketed the money and hastened off toward the stairwell.
Ethan went down the long hall of locked doors until he came to number 203. According to the attendant, this was the one that had been rented to a man matching Davis Mason’s description. Mason had used another name and paid in cash, but the attendant had remembered the bed. A really big one. Said his wife had left him and he didn’t want it. He gave me twenty bucks to help him unload it and get it into the locker.
Ethan opened the small box of tools he had brought along and selected the pick he thought would do the job.
He got the standard issue padlock open in less than fifteen seconds and rolled the garage door–style closure up into the ceiling.
He saw the headboard first. It was propped in the shadows against the left wall, a massive, ornate chunk of furniture.
The cold glow of the fluorescent fixture in the hall did little to illuminate the interior, but he could see the ends of the supersized box spring and mattress.
The mattress was wrapped in several yards of opaque plastic.
He took out the small flashlight he had brought, switched it on, and played the beam around the room. In addition to the bed, there were a number of packing cartons stacked inside the locker.
He took a knife out of the tool kit and slit open the nearest carton. He was not surprised to find a tangled heap of feminine clothing inside.
A good start, he thought. His new client might even be impressed. But it would be nice to have a little more to take to the cops.
He found what he needed when he went to work cutting away the layers of plastic that shrouded the mattress.
The massive bed was badly stained with a liquid that had dried to an unmistakable shade of brown.
Blood.
Panic hit hard and fast. Had the bastards from Xanadu managed to track her down? Or had she had the extremely bad luck to time her lonely walk-through on the same afternoon that a burglar had decided to enter the vacant residence? She had deactivated the sophisticated alarm system when she had entered a few minutes ago, making it all too easy for him.
Whatever the answer, she was trapped. Her tote, with the phone inside, was a million miles away in the front hall. Even if she had it in her hand, she could not risk using it because the intruder would hear every word she said in the echoing silence of the empty house.
The phone was not the only thing that was a long way away. Her car keys were also in the tote.
The only advantage she possessed was an intimate knowledge of the interior spaces of the large residence.
Pulse thudding heavily, she slipped out of her sandals and began to work her way back along the guest wing hallway toward the kitchen.
“I’m going to have to punish you, Zoe.” Davis Mason spoke from somewhere in the great room area. “Just as I did Jennifer. You’re like her in some ways. I couldn’t trust her, either. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she forced me to punish her frequently. And then she started talking about getting a divorce. Well, I couldn’t allow her to do that, could I? I had to kill her, you see.”
She almost stopped breathing. Davis Mason. Not someone from Xanadu or a passing burglar. Talk about your good news, bad news days.
“You’re probably wondering how I figured it out.” Davis sounded as though he was addressing the weekly meeting of his business club. “I’m not stupid, you know. That first day when you came to look at my house, I realized that you must have seen something in the bedroom. Until that moment, everything had been fine. But then you suddenly tensed up. I could tell that you were nervous. You couldn’t wait to get away. And you asked about the bed.”
She could hear his footsteps on the tiles of the grand central hall. He was not making any effort to conceal himself. He sounded so arrogant, so confident that she knew he must have a gun.
“I followed you back to your office,” Davis said. “I saw you meet your friend at that café. I thought maybe I’d been wrong about you. Maybe it was all okay, after all. But just as I was about to drive away, you got up from the table and walked several blocks to the office of that private investigator on Cobalt Street.”
Her bare feet made no sound on the cool tile. She took another step toward her goal.
“I told myself that you might have some personal reason for meeting with a PI. A reason that had nothing to do with me. After all, if you suspected I’d killed Jennifer, you’d have gone straight to the police, right? But then you called me yesterday morning and asked to bring a contractor to the house. After telling me that you didn’t have any time for me until Friday. I knew then that you were lying, just like Jennifer used to do.”
He was getting closer.
“When that damned contractor started talking about beds, I knew that he was probably that PI from Cobalt Street and that you must have asked him to find Jennifer. I knew then that the reason you didn’t go to the cops was because you had no proof.”
She took another step.
“You know what, Zoe? Your investigator never will find any proof. I put t
hat bed into storage. Got any idea how many hundreds, maybe thousands of rental storage locker companies there are in this state?” Davis chuckled. “Neither do I. Talk about a needle in a haystack. Even if it occurs to Truax to check out the storage locker angle, he wouldn’t know where to start.”
Her hand brushed against a cool, steel surface.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be the victim of a burglar you surprised when you walked into this house alone today, Zoe. You know, it’s really too bad things had to end this way. I could have used some good feng shui.”
Ethan stood in Zoe’s office and listened to the ringing of her cell phone. Eventually he fell into voice mail.
“This is Zoe Luce. Please leave a message.”
“This is Truax. Call me as soon as you get this message.” He rattled off the number and dropped the phone into his jacket pocket.
The edgy tension vibrated through him like electricity through a wire. Everything felt wrong.
He looked at Zoe’s calendar again, but nothing had materialized in the space reserved for that afternoon since he had last checked it a few seconds ago.
Where the hell was she? He hated it when clients disappeared like this. It always meant trouble.
He flipped through her telephone card file, found Mason’s office number, and dialed it. A woman with a pleasant voice answered.
“Mason Investments.”
“Davis Mason, please.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Mason is out of the office this afternoon. May I take a message?”
“No, I’ll be in touch.”
He checked the speed-dial function on the phone and found only one number had been entered. There wasn’t even a name, just the letter A.
He called it.
“Gallery Euphoria,” a woman said in a voice that belonged to a nightclub singer.
“I’m looking for Zoe.”
“Who is this?”
“Ethan Truax. I’m working for her. It’s important that I locate her immediately. Any idea where she is?”
“Truax Investigations?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a close friend of Zoe’s. Is something wrong?”
“She’s not here. Her calendar is blank for the afternoon.”
“Is this about Davis Mason?”
“Yes,” he said trying to hang on to his patience, “Just tell me where you think she might be right now.”
“I saw her at lunch. She told me that she was going to do a final walk-through at the home of a client today.”
“Give me a name.”
“The Taylors. There should be a number and an address in Zoe’s files. What’s this all about? Did you turn up something important, Mr. Truax?”
“The bed.”
Zoe’s car was parked in the drive. There was no indication that Mason or anyone else was in the vicinity.
Ethan told himself that was a good sign, but his gut wasn’t buying it.
He removed his pistol from the center console and got out of the car. There was no need to worry about alarming the neighbors. The lots were large in this neighborhood. The nearest house was almost a quarter mile away.
He went to the front door. The knob turned easily in his hand.
He let himself into an elegant front hall. The first thing he noticed was a red tote. The second thing was a slight draft. There was another door or a window open in the house.
“Zoe?”
There was no response.
There was an intercom panel on the wall. At the top was a button labeled SEND ALL. He pressed it.
“Zoe, this is Truax. Talk to me.”
The words echoed through every room in the house.
“Ethan, get out,” Zoe shouted through the intercom. She had also hit send all. Her warning blared from every speaker in the place. “Mason’s here. He’s got a gun.”
“Big deal. I’ve got one, too. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m inside the wine cellar.” She sounded breathless, but coherent. “The door is locked. He can’t get to me. A few seconds ago he was in the kitchen, but I don’t know where he is now. For God’s sake, get out of here. Call the cops.”
He did not respond. He was out of his shoes, moving silently down a long, airy central hall with arched openings. He could see the living room and kitchen area.
Footsteps erupted suddenly from the vicinity of the kitchen. Mason burst into view, fleeing toward French doors that opened onto a walled patio and pool.
“Stop. It’s over, Mason.”
Mason spun around, gun coming up.
Ethan dove behind the nearest solid object, an ornate wooden chest.
Mason fired wildly.
A glass case containing a collection of antique silver and turquoise jewelry exploded nearby. A cold rain of shards fell around Ethan.
“You can’t touch me,” Mason shouted. “You’ll never prove anything. You hear me? You’ll never prove it.”
The gun roared again. Shots thudded into the heavy chest.
The guy had gone over the edge, Ethan thought.
He made his way to the far end of his wooden barricade, leaned around the corner, and squeezed off a single shot.
Mason yelped, jerked, flailed wildly, and then crashed headlong onto the tile floor. He dropped the gun to clutch his right leg.
Ethan counted to five before getting to his feet. Pieces of glass fell from his shirt and hair and skittered on the tile.
“Ethan, wait.” Zoe was flying toward him down the hall, sandals in her hand. “There’s glass everywhere and you’re already bleeding.”
He did not take his eyes off Mason. “You shouldn’t have come out here alone today.”
She ignored that and slid her feet into her sandals.
“Hang on,” she said with startling gentleness. “I’ll get a rug to cover the glass.”
She was talking to him as if she thought he was in shock, he realized. Maybe she didn’t know he was just furious.
“Get Mason’s gun first,” he said.
“Right.” She scooped up the weapon and brought it back to him. Then she seized a long carpet runner and tossed it down across the worst of the glass.
When she straightened, he got a good look at her face. She appeared too pale, but she was obviously in control.
She gave him a quick, frowning survey, and then she untied the little red and orange silk scarf she wore at her throat and handed it to him. “That cut doesn’t look too bad, but it’s getting messy.”
He felt something warm and wet and realized that a trickle of blood was running down his jaw. Absently he dabbed at it with the silk scarf as he crossed the living room to where Mason lay, moaning.
Zoe followed.
Mason clenched his thigh with both hands, gritting his teeth. A pool of blood had formed on the tiles.
“You can’t prove anything.” Mason looked up, his face twisted with pain and rage. “You can’t prove a damned thing.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Ethan brushed a couple of slivers of glass off his shirt, reached into his pocket, and took out his phone. “I found the bed.”
Chapter Eight
“Okay,” Zoe said, “How did you find that bed?”
Ethan took a swallow of the champagne Arcadia had insisted on ordering for the table and put down the glass. Champagne was not his beverage of choice, but Zoe seemed to like it and he was trying to go along with the client. He consoled himself with the thought that he could always pour himself a stiff shot of whiskey later when he got back to Nightwinds.
It was late, and the trendy little Fountain Square restaurant was starting to empty out. A few couples lingered, and there was one large group on the far side of the room. He recognized a familiar face and figured it for a business dinner.
It had been Zoe’s idea that they go out to eat after the long session with the police. They were both exhausted, and she said she was concerned about their stress levels. They needed to unwind.
“Dinner is on me,” she said. “It’s
the least I can do after what happened today.”
The offer had sounded too good to be true, and, as was often the case with such offers, it proved to be exactly that. Zoe invited Arcadia Ames to join them. The result was that instead of an intimate dinner for two during which he could have told her in great detail why she’d had no business taking off alone that afternoon, he was stuck with this not-so-cozy threesome.
He was acutely aware that he had no real grounds for complaint. If it had not been for Arcadia, he might still be looking for Zoe.
Every time he thought about Zoe locking herself inside the high-tech, steel-doored wine cellar to escape a crazy wife killer, he felt the inchoate anger and got the freezing sensation in his gut all over again. It had been so damned close.
So here the three of them sat, squeezed into a snug corner booth, sipping champagne. Maybe it was better this way, he thought. His relationship with Zoe was supposed to be all business, and the truth was he probably would have tried something really stupid if he’d found himself alone with her tonight.
The problem was that even though he was well and truly pissed, he also wanted very badly to take her to bed. The resulting tension had made him a little surly, and it was hard work trying to conceal his bad temper.
“The bed,” he said, focusing on the neutral topic. “Right. In the end that proved to be Mason’s biggest problem. It was easy enough to wrap his dead wife in the shower curtains and bury her in the back garden. But he couldn’t quite see digging a hole big enough to bury a king-sized box spring and mattress.”
“That might have gotten the attention of some of his neighbors,” Zoe said dryly.
“But he couldn’t just haul them off to a landfill, either. People prowl through landfills looking for things to salvage and the bed was in pretty good shape.”
“Except for the stains, of course.” Arcadia turned her champagne flute slowly between her fingertips. “He knew that if the blood-soaked mattress ever turned up it could be used as evidence of foul play.”