“Yes. But after Zane realized that the money was gone, why didn’t he go after Hannah and Abigail?”
“Best guess is that he probably didn’t think they knew about the plot or, if they did, he assumed they hadn’t been entrusted with the information needed to access the money. Neither of them had any experience in the financial world. Abigail and Hannah were just the cult’s housekeepers and cooks.”
Virginia did not say anything; she couldn’t speak. Without a word, Cabot got to his feet and pulled her up into his arms. She did not feel trapped. Maybe that was because she was holding him as tightly as he held her.
After a while, she raised her head. “I wonder what happened to the original diary. And why did Rose have only photocopies of those pages?”
“No way to know where the diary ended up, but I have a hunch Rose only bothered to photocopy the pages that described the plot to hide the money and use it as a ransom payment to free the kids.”
“Because all she cared about was the money. What are we going to do with the diary pages and the photograph?”
“I was planning to give them to the authorities, but I’ve changed my mind,” Cabot said.
“Why?”
“There’s no information in those pages that will give the investigators a lead on the guy who set off that fire today. But the main reason I don’t want to mention them to the authorities is because I don’t want whoever is chasing the key to know that we found part of Abigail Watkins’s diary. You’d be in even more danger than you are already.”
She got a little misty-eyed again. “You’re bending the rules. For me.”
He shook his head. “There are only two rules on this job: keep you safe and find out if Quinton Zane is still alive.”
She smiled. “In other words, you make your own rules.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“You’re an artist. A very good artist knows when to follow the rules and when to break them. It’s how creativity works.”
“I am not an artist but I’ll take that as a yes,” Cabot said. He glanced at her phone, which was lying on the table next to her handbag. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“From now on we don’t discuss this on our cell phones. No texts. No e-mail.”
The heat was on in the room but Virginia suddenly felt very cold. She looked at her phone.
“Oh, crap,” she said. “Do you really think that someone is tracking us?”
“Given what happened yesterday, we have to assume a worst-case scenario.”
“Do we ditch the phones?”
“No. If someone is following us around, that would be an immediate red flag. We’re just going to be very, very careful about using our phones. I doubt if someone has been able to hack my phone. Max asked some of his connections in the cybersecurity business to assist us with the encryption. But it’s possible that yours has been compromised.”
She looked at her phone and shuddered. “Lately, from time to time, I’ve had the creepy sense that I’m being watched. I just chalked it up to the fact that my anxiety attacks have been getting worse.”
“Sounds like your intuition was trying to tell you something.”
“Do private investigators believe in women’s intuition?”
“This PI believes in intuition, period.”
CHAPTER 43
Kate left the door of her office open and kept an eye on the hallway for nearly an hour. Eventually Laurel went past. Unlike some of the other employees, she did not pause in the doorway to make friendly conversation. No surprise, Kate thought.
She and Laurel had had a prickly relationship for months. Except for the occasions when they were obliged to work together, Laurel mostly ignored her. But lately Laurel’s disinterest had undergone a subtle change. Kate was pretty sure it was animosity that she saw in the other woman’s eyes these days.
She knows that I know, Kate thought, or that I’m suspicious. Maybe it was time to get the issue out into the open.
She waited a few seconds and then got up and went out into the hall. She was in time to see Laurel disappear into the women’s restroom.
Kate followed her into the stainless-steel-and-tile room. Only one stall was occupied. She and Laurel were alone.
Kate fussed with her hair and watched the closed stall door in the long mirror above the row of sinks. Laurel finally emerged. When she saw Kate, an expression of wariness flashed across her face but she recovered quickly. She went to the nearest sink and turned on the faucet.
“Hi,” she said. Her tone was barely civil.
“Hi,” Kate said. She tried to inject some warmth into her own voice. “Did you hear the latest on Sandra Porter? They’re saying she may have been involved in a drug deal that went bad.”
“I heard,” Laurel said.
She rinsed her hands very quickly and reached for a paper towel.
“I never suspected that Sandra had a serious drug problem,” Kate said. “Did you?”
“I barely knew her. She was in IT.” Laurel dropped the crumpled towel into the wastebasket and went toward the door. “I only talked to her when I had a computer glitch.”
“Same here,” Kate said.
Laurel paused at the door. “If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut. Spreading gossip and rumors is a dangerous business, especially for someone in your position.”
Kate sighed. “This isn’t about poor Sandra, is it? You’re the one who’s afraid of gossip. You know that I have a pretty good idea that you’re sleeping with the boss. Talk about a dangerous business.”
Laurel flushed a furious shade of red. “I swear, if you start a rumor like that, I’ll make sure you pay.”
“Are you saying it’s not true?”
“I’m telling you that my personal life is none of your damned business.”
“Sure. But you might want to remember the first rule of workplace affairs: when they’re over—and sooner or later they always end—it’s always the lower-ranking employee who gets fired. In this case, that would be you.”
Laurel looked as if she was about to explode in fury. But in the next instant stunned comprehension lit her eyes. She smiled an ice-cold smile.
“You’re jealous,” she said. “That’s what this is all about. You want Josh Preston. You think that if I’m out of the way, he’ll notice you again.”
“That’s not true.”
“Bullshit. I get it now. Trust me, you were nothing but a weekend fling. And speaking of workplace rules, here’s one you might want to keep in mind—you can be replaced. Anyone can write content.”
She spun around, yanked open the door and went out into the hall. The staccato tap of her footsteps faded quickly.
Kate stared at her reflection in the mirror. There was no escaping the reality of the situation.
Confronting Laurel had been a very big mistake.
CHAPTER 44
“No way the local cops could go with the theory that you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Anson growled.
“Keep in mind that there aren’t any local cops on Lost Island,” Cabot said. “The investigator who showed up to look into the fire and the death of Rose Gilbert was from one of the neighboring islands. He said it looked like a gang hit. He reminded me that the area has been notorious for drug running since the days of Prohibition.”
Anson grunted.
“It used to be liquor that was shipped from Canada to the West Coast of the U.S.,” Cabot continued. “These days it’s meth, cocaine, heroin and, lately, exotics from the other side of the world. There’s also some human trafficking going on as well. The smuggling business flows both ways, and the islands offer ideal places to dump a hot cargo or pick up a shipment.”
“Cabot and I talked to the couple who operate the B and B where we stayed last night,” Virginia said. “T
hey had no problem believing that Rose might have been in the drug business and that she might have made some dangerous enemies.”
It was late afternoon. They were gathered in the offices of Cutler, Sutter & Salinas. She was sitting in one of the client chairs. Anson was behind his desk. Cabot was standing at the window.
Xavier was hovering in the doorway of one of the darkened offices, trying to be inconspicuous. But Virginia could tell that he was following the conversation very intently, clearly fascinated.
Neither she nor Cabot had gotten much sleep, and they had spent a long morning talking to the investigator who had showed up to take charge of the crime scene. She had napped a little during the ferry crossings but she was starting to become aware of the heavy weight of stress and exhaustion. It occurred to her that she and Cabot were seriously sleep-deprived.
Not that all of the factors that had contributed to her current state of exhaustion were negative, she reminded herself. Every time she thought about the passionate lovemaking in the chair, she got a little thrill. Yes. You can do normal, woman.
Cabot had called ahead to tell Anson that they were on the way home, but he had saved the harrowing details and the news about the discovery of the diary pages until they were all in the same room. It was clear he had meant what he said when he told her that they would no longer trust the security of their phones.
“Did you remind the investigator that this was the second major fire on the island in the past few weeks?” Anson demanded.
“Sure,” Cabot said. “He said to let him know if any new evidence came to light, but until then, he’s sticking with the rival-smugglers theory.”
“Cops like the easy answer because it’s usually the right one,” Anson said.
“Occam’s razor,” Cabot said grimly.
Xavier stared at him. “What’s that?”
“Never mind,” Cabot said. “I’ll explain later.”
“Point is, in this case, the simple answer is bullshit,” Anson growled. He winced and glanced apologetically at Virginia. “Apologies for the language.”
His old-fashioned manners made her smile a little.
“I may have mumbled something just as bad or worse when Cabot was in the process of lowering me down that laundry chute,” she said.
Anson blew out a small sigh. “You two had one hell of a close call. Good thing you remembered the laundry chute.”
Xavier stirred a little, clearing his throat. “What’s a laundry chute?”
They all looked at him.
“Just what it sounds like,” Virginia said gently. “A long chute that runs from the basement straight up through a house. You chuck dirty laundry into it on the upper floors. It falls into a cart at the bottom. In the old days, most multistory houses had one. The bigger the house, the bigger the laundry chute. The Lost Island B and B had a large one.”
Xavier regarded Cabot with something close to awe.
“Excellent,” Xavier said.
Cabot did not seem to notice the little flash of hero worship. He was focused on the view outside the window.
“The trip was not a complete loss,” he said. “Virginia discovered some photocopied pages of a journal that Abigail Watkins kept. They date from the days of the California compound and they confirm that we’re on the right track. Among other things, there are references to a secret bank account that Virginia’s mother and mine used to hide at least some of the money that Zane’s operation raked in. Evidently four women in the compound knew where the key was hidden: Kimberly Troy, my mother, Hannah Brewster and Abigail Watkins.”
Anson whistled softly. “And now all four are dead.”
“Which leaves Virginia,” Cabot said. “I am convinced now that someone thinks she can lead him to the key.”
“Well, well, well,” Anson said. He sounded very satisfied. He turned to Xavier. “Tell ’em what you found.”
Cabot turned around at that and pinned Xavier with a piercing look.
“You came up with something?” he said.
Xavier reddened under the close scrutiny and he stammered a little at first.
“You were r-right,” he said. His voice firmed quickly. “The little children’s book turned out to be a simple code, but it’s got nothing to do with computers, at least, I don’t think so. Mr. Salinas and I did the math problems and put the answers together. Mr. Salinas said the result could be a numbered account in a bank—maybe one of those places the mob guys and drug runners use to hide their money.”
Virginia looked at Anson. “An offshore account?”
“I believe so,” Anson said. “Once we decided we might be looking at a bank account, we went back through the picture book and started looking for some clues that would give us the location of the bank. We came up with a possibility. There’s an island in the Caribbean with the same name as that of the magical kingdom in the math book. For several decades it’s been doing a very brisk business with folks who like to conceal their money offshore, no questions asked.”
Cabot’s eyes heated a little. “That fits. Did you try to access the account?”
“No,” Anson said. “Figured we’d hold off until we could talk to you and Virginia. Technically the account probably belongs to her now. She is her mother’s heir.”
Xavier looked at Cabot. “Also, I was afraid that if I started poking around online and screwed up, I might alert the bank’s security department. Mr. Salinas said that would not be a good idea, not at this point in the investigation.”
Cabot smiled a wolfish smile. “That was very good thinking. Nice work, Xavier.”
Xavier grinned. “Thanks. In that case, I guess it’s okay to tell you my other good news.”
“You made reservations to go home?” Cabot said.
“No,” Xavier said. “I asked my mom if I could stay here in Seattle for a couple more days. Told her I had a job. She said it was okay with her if it’s okay with you.”
Cabot shot a wary glance at Anson and then turned back to Xavier.
“What’s the job?” he asked.
“I’m an intern here at your agency,” Xavier said. He was practically bubbling over with excitement.
“We don’t have a position for an intern,” Cabot said.
“We do now,” Anson announced. “Turns out the kid’s good with computers and we just happen to need an in-house IT department.”
Cabot gave Xavier a considering look. “How good are you?”
“Pretty good,” Xavier said. His eyes lit with hope. “Why?”
“Do you think you could tell if someone had planted some kind of tracking device on Virginia’s phone?”
Xavier switched his attention to Virginia. “Maybe.”
She took her phone out of her handbag and gave it to him.
“Go for it,” she said.
“I’ll need some password info,” Xavier warned.
“Not a problem.” She smiled. “I trust you.”
Xavier was almost glowing now. “Thanks. I’ll get right on it.”
Virginia took out the photo of Abigail Watkins and Quinton Zane standing with their arms around each other on the ferry. She put it down on Anson’s desk.
“We also found this in Rose Gilbert’s room,” she said. “I’m sure that the girl is Abigail Watkins and the man—”
“Quinton Zane,” Anson said, his voice very grim. “I’d recognize him anywhere. That poor kid. Looks like she was in love with him.”
“Yes,” Virginia said. “She was very young and very naïve. Zane would have found it easy to seduce her and manipulate her.”
CHAPTER 45
“I shouldn’t have come here this evening,” Josh said. “I need to be alone. I’ve got some work-related problems I need to think about. I can’t concentrate on them when I’m with you.” He managed a ghost of a sexy smile. “You’re a major distract
ion.”
Laurel watched him from the kitchen doorway. Josh was sitting on the couch, leaning forward, forearms braced on his widespread thighs. He looked weary, beat.
He wasn’t drunk but she could tell he’d had a drink somewhere between the office and her place. That was not like him. Their affair had started a couple of months ago. She knew him well enough by now to know that work was Josh’s drug of choice. He was driven by one passion: the desire to make Night Watch a dazzling success.
He was desperate to repeat the brilliant performance he’d given back at the start of his career when he’d been one of the young guns of the tech world, a real wunderkind. But that kind of a comeback almost never happened in their industry, a world in which even the smartest guys in the room had a use-by date stamp. Josh was in his midthirties. That made him an old man in the eyes of his much younger competitors.
“You’re here now,” Laurel said gently. “Let me get you a beer. We can talk. You always say I make a good sounding board.”
“No, I don’t want anything else to drink. Like I said, I need to think.”
“About what?”
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he surged to his feet and started pacing the room.
“How well did you know Sandra Porter?” he asked.
“Not well at all. Why?”
“Do you think she was doing drugs?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Josh, why are you suddenly so concerned about Sandra Porter? Did the police come up with some new evidence?”
“No.” Josh stopped in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out at the view of the Seattle cityscape on the far side of Lake Washington. “But I talked to a private investigator named Cabot Sutter a couple of days ago. His client was there, too. Virginia Troy.”
“Troy? The owner of the gallery where Sandra was killed?”
“Yes. Sutter told me that he was investigating the death of an artist named Hannah Brewster. She lived on one of the islands up in the San Juans. Sutter’s client thinks Brewster was murdered.”