Eye of the Beholder

  Great. That meant Strood would be able to limit his pools of suspects to the entire staff of the Dimensions Institute, most of its seminar students, and half the people in Avalon.

  “Guard…” Foster whispered hoarsely. “Guard.”

  Trask heard footsteps in the hall. “It’s a little too late to call security.”

  Foster shook his head fretfully. “Guardian.”

  Trask stilled. Then he leaned closer. “Tell me about him, Radstone. Who is this guardian?”

  Foster opened his mouth, but this time no words emerged. He had stopped twitching, but now he was not moving at all. He still breathed, however. Trask held the shirt firmly in place and listened to the approaching footsteps.

  “In here,” he shouted.

  Two uniformed medics came through the door. They were followed by a couple of anxious-looking men dressed in the blue and white colors of Institute personnel.

  The first medic through the door looked at Radstone and then at Trask. “What happened here?”

  “Gunshot,” Trask said.

  The medic glanced at the blood on Radstone’s polo shirt. “Yeah, I can see that. Okay, out of the way, we’ll take over now.”

  Trask rose and moved aside.

  One of the Dimensions men eyed him warily. “What’s going on?”

  “I was outside Radstone’s door when I heard an argument and a gunshot.” He gave them the rest of the story in short, simple sentences without a lot of details. These were not the people who would handle things, after all. Strood and his small force were the only real cops in Avalon.

  When he was finished, the men exchanged baffled looks. They were obviously out of their depth.

  “I’d better notify the town cops,” one man said. “Tom, go find Bell and tell him what’s happening.”

  “Right.”

  They disappeared into the hall.

  Trask saw that both medics were still very busy with their patient. He took another step back and picked up the computer case that lay on the floor. He wondered if the laptop had survived the impact.

  For the first time he noticed the top of Radstone’s desk. It was littered with files. He looked across the room and saw that one of the drawers in the gray file cabinet stood open.

  He read the labels on the files that were faceup on the desk. All of those that he could see contained the words Dimensions Trust.

  He moved unobtrusively to the open file drawer and looked inside. There were a handful of folders left. One of them was clearly labeled, Chambers, Alexa. Priority One.

  Footsteps sounded again in the hall. Voices called out. He only had seconds.

  Both of the medics had their backs to him now. He reached into the drawer, removed the slender file marked Chambers, Alexa, and stuffed it quietly into the computer case.

  It wasn’t what he had come here to find tonight, but sometimes, in business, you took what you could get.

  31

  “Did you get the feeling that Chief Strood was a little ticked?” Alexa sank deeper into the overstuffed chair. She watched Trask. He had his back to her as he stood in front of his desk on the other side of the hotel suite. “It’s almost as if he’s upset because you saved Foster’s life.”

  “May have saved his life. The hospital says he’s in critical condition. They don’t know if he’ll make it or not.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have any chance at all if you hadn’t arrived on the scene when you did.” Alexa shuddered. “When I think of how close you came to getting shot, yourself…”

  “The guy freaked out when I threw the laptop through the glass window. All he wanted to do was get away,” Trask said absently.

  “I still don’t understand why Strood got so annoyed with you.”

  “Strood’s pissed because he knows he’s finally going to have to open a genuine, honest-to-God investigation.” Trask glanced at her over his shoulder. “I’m going to order some sandwiches from room service. Want anything else?”

  “Tea,” Alexa said at once. “A nice big pot of it. Forget the food, though. I’m not very hungry. My stomach is still tied up in knots.”

  “Personally, I’m starved.” He picked up the phone.

  Alexa surveyed the suite as she listened to Trask’s end of the short conversation with the hotel staff. The room was sleek, sophisticated, boldly defined, and unabashedly exotic. A perfect example of neo-Art Deco. Her chaise longue would fit right in here. She decided that if she were not so keyed up from the events at Dimensions, she would have been suitably impressed. Obviously it paid to own a hotel empire.

  Trask looked at her as he hung up the phone. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking that this is an incredible room.”

  He looked around with a curiously enigmatic expression. “Pure fantasy.”

  She smiled wearily. “Fine by me. But then, I don’t share your bias against fantasy.”

  “I know you don’t.” He touched his jaw in a gingerly fashion.

  She frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Uh-huh. The guy clipped me as he went through the window.”

  “Do you think you should put a cold compress on it?

  “Nah. It’s not that bad.” Trask lowered his hand. “That reminds me, I brought you a little souvenir.”

  He walked to the laptop case, unzipped it, and reached inside. Alexa watched him withdraw a folder.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “I didn’t have a chance to take a good look, but at first glance it appeared to be a dossier.” Trask put the folder into her hand. “On you.”

  “Me? What on earth…?” She opened the folder and glanced at the contents. A shock went through her when she saw her own name at the top of a neatly printed page.

  Chambers, Alexa

  Potential: Level One Candidate for Circle of Enlightenment

  She read quickly through the pages of notes Foster had made on her. With every sentence her outrage increased.

  Note: This candidate is to be handled by me personally.

  Financial Analysis: Sole beneficiary of a large inheritance from grandmother. In addition, target appears to be the primary beneficiary of Lloyd and Vivien Kenyon.… She is unmarried, no offspring…

  Alexa looked up and saw Trask watching her intently. “This is amazing. He knows all about my financial status.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  She glared at him and went back to the dossier. “He notes that I’m an ideal target. The creep actually calls me a target. Of all the unmitigated nerve.”

  “Target for what?”

  She scanned the next page quickly. “Apparently to become a major donor to the Dimensions Trust. He says that with proper handling—” She looked up again, furious now. “Handling. Can you believe it?”

  “Go on.”

  Alexa read the next section aloud.

  We have her established as a tenant at Avalon Plaza, which will ensure her continued association with Institute activities and influences.…

  She gritted her teeth. “So that’s how I lucked out with the lease at Avalon Plaza. Wait until Lloyd hears about this.”

  “Anything else?”

  Her fingers tightened on the page. “Here’s another entry. It’s dated shortly after I stopped going out with him.”

  Target is obviously sexually repressed. She is strongly resistant to a physical relationship with a man. I don’t believe she’s interested in women, either. Will urge her to attend Sexual Enlightenment seminar.…

  She broke off once more, cheeks burning. “Just because he didn’t turn me on, he calls me repressed.”

  “Shows how much he knows,” Trask murmured.

  She did not look up. She could hear the satisfied amusement in his voice. The sight of the sexy gleam in his eyes would be too much. She concentrated on reading swiftly through the remainder of the document.

  … Refused Sexual Enlightenment seminar.

  Attempts to keep target invol
ved in Dimensions activities continue.… Target accepted position on festival committee. I feel certain that she can eventually be persuaded to join the Circle of Enlightenment.…

  Alexa turned the last page and read Foster’s final notes silently. “Hmm.”

  “What does that mean?” Trask asked with grave interest.

  “This last entry is dated the day after you and I had dinner at the country club,” she said. “Guess the little twerp was starting to get worried.”

  “About what?”

  She cleared her throat. “About you.”

  “Let me see that.” Trask took the dossier from her and read the final paragraph aloud.

  Critical to get target away from Trask’s sexual influence. Don’t know why she has responded to him, but his agenda is obvious. He intends to use her somehow against Kenyon. Best guess is that Trask has come up with a scheme to hurt Kenyon financially. Gaining control of target’s inheritance would be one way to do it as Kenyon frequently combines her trust income with his own resources in his deals. Losing access to her funds would probably cut his leverage options in half.…

  Trask abruptly stopped reading. He closed the file and carried it back across the room to the desk. He tossed the dossier down onto the polished surface with a short, brutal motion of his hand.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said very softly.

  Alexa steepled her fingers. “Well, I guess that gives us a pretty clear idea of where Foster fits into this thing. He was focused solely on the bottom line.”

  There was a short, charged silence. Trask looked at her. Belatedly she recalled that he prided himself on his own ability to focus on the bottom line.

  “I mean,” she said quickly, “that all he cared about was getting his hands on my money.”

  “I told you so.”

  “You’re biased. You think everyone involved in the metaphysics business is a con artist. However, even if we grant that Foster really is a bad guy, that doesn’t explain why someone tried to murder him tonight. Strood will have his hands full trying to figure that one out.”

  Trask folded his arms and leaned back against the desk. He looked at her with a darkly thoughtful expression. “Not if Foster Radstone has been true to his professional calling as a con man.”

  “Explain.”

  “What do you want to bet that Radstone was siphoning money out of the Dimensions Trust?” he said.

  She pondered that briefly. “You think he might have been fleecing Webster Bell and the Institute?”

  “Someone, presumably the shooter, scattered a whole bunch of files involving the Trust on Radstone’s desk tonight. I think he did it while he waited for Radstone.”

  “You believe that he wanted those files to be found together with the body?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me.” Trask crossed the room to the yellow lacquered cocktail cabinet and opened the door. “If I’m right, if someone tried to kill Radstone tonight because he was skimming from the trust, then it fits with the pattern.”

  “I see what you mean,” Alexa said slowly. “Radstone may qualify as someone else who was a financial threat to the Institute.”

  Trask took two miniature bottles out of the cabinet, broke the seals, and emptied the contents into two snifters. “Like I said, it fits.”

  “Did you tell Strood that Radstone tried to say something about a guardian?”

  “I told him.” He handed her one of the snifters. “He didn’t pay too much attention. Thinks Radstone was trying to say guard, not guardian.”

  Alexa inhaled the brandy fumes in her glass. “Theoretically, all we have to do now is wait for Foster to recover and hope that he’ll be able to tell us the identity of the person who tried to kill him.”

  Trask stopped and looked at her. “He may not know who he is. The guy was masked. Even if Radstone can identify him, he may have no interest in doing so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because in the process he’d probably have to admit that he was trying to bilk the Dimensions Trust. Radstone is guilty of something. I got the impression that his first assumption was that the jester would be open to a payoff. He acted like a man who had been threatened with blackmail.”

  Alexa winced. “It does sound like you’re right about his being a con man.”

  “Something tells me that when Foster recovers, he’ll fade away into the sunset. He’ll figure that if he decamps, he’ll be safe. Hell, he may be right. After all, if he takes himself out of the picture, he’ll no longer be a financial threat to the Institute.”

  “And threats to the Institute seem to be the main focus of whoever is behind all this.” Alexa paused. “That still leaves Joanna. Maybe she’ll tell us something when she recovers.”

  Trask swallowed brandy and looked grim. “I’m not too sure that we can depend on her to help us get to the bottom of this. She’s gone out of her way to try to keep the past buried.”

  “If her close call with the gas was not an accident, she may be at risk again when she gets out of the hospital.” Alexa sighed. “How are we going to convince her that she may be in danger?”

  “If she’s trying to protect someone, there may not be anything we can do,” Trask said quietly.

  Alexa sat up very straight in the chair and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “The only person she would go that far out of her way to protect is her brother, and I still can’t see Webster as a murderer.”

  “We all have our little biases,” Trask said dryly. “But there’s something else we need to consider. If Radstone survives, and if Joanna’s accident wasn’t an accident, it will mean that between us, we screwed up the shooter’s plans at least twice in the past few days.”

  Alexa shuddered. “Yes.”

  Trask carried his glass to the open French doors and looked out over the darkened desert. “Whoever he is, he’s probably not a real happy camper right now. In fact, I have a hunch he’ll be getting desperate. Which means he’s more dangerous than ever.”

  “We don’t even know if the killer is a he. Could be a she.”

  Trask hesitated, thinking about the frantic grappling at the window of Radstone’s office. Reluctantly he nodded. “Could be a she, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is going to sound a little primitive, but the fact is, he didn’t smell like a woman.”

  “You mean no perfume? I don’t think you can depend on something that vague…”

  Trask shook his head. “It’s a little more basic than that. Women smell different than men. At least, they do to a man. This guy was sweating and he smelled like a guy. For all the good it does. Still not much to go on.”

  Alexa shivered in the warm night air. “You said he wore a Dimensions bracelet. Could be some crazy out at the Institute.”

  “Half the town wears those bracelets.”

  A knock on the door interrupted Alexa’s bleak thoughts.

  “That’ll be room service,” Trask said. “I’ll get it.”

  He turned and went back into the suite to open the door.

  Alexa watched a young man in Avalon hotel livery roll a cart into the suite. China and silver clinked gently.

  When the server finished setting up the tray, he looked expectantly at Trask. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No,” Trask said. “That’s it.”

  “Shall I pour the tea, sir?”

  Alexa stared at the teapot. A vision of the empty mug and the nearly full package of loose tea in Joanna’s kitchen flashed in her mind.

  “Good grief,” she whispered.

  The server looked as if he had just glimpsed his own doom. “Something wrong, ma’am?”

  “No.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “No, nothing’s wrong. Just hungry, that’s all.”

  The server left hurriedly.

  Trask waited until the door closed. Then he looked at Alexa. “What’s the matter?”

  Alexa could not take her eyes off the gleaming teapot on the cart.
“There was an empty mug and a package of loose tea sitting on Joanna’s kitchen counter yesterday when I pulled her out of the house.”

  Trask watched her intently. “What of it? Half of Avalon drinks tea. Just like half the town wears those Dimensions bracelets.”

  “Yes, I know.” She wrapped her arms around herself while she allowed her intuition to leap recklessly to the wild conclusion. “But when I spoke to Joanna earlier on the phone that morning, she told me she wished she had some of her tea. She said she was out of it. I told her I’d bring her some after work.”

  “Maybe she found an extra supply in her cupboard after she talked to you.”

  “Maybe.” Alexa dragged her eyes away from the teapot and looked at him. “That’s what I assumed at the time. But what if that’s not what happened?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Shortly before lunch that day I went to Café Solstice to get some sandwiches for myself and Kerry. Stewart Lutton, the owner, wasn’t there. One of his employees said he’d had to leave for a while, even though it was one of the busiest days of the year.”

  “Go on.”

  “This is a terrible thing to suggest without any proof, but what if Stewart took some tea out to Joanna?” She trailed off.

  “And hung around to make sure she took a couple of tranquilizers, waited until she went to sleep, and then sabotaged the gas coupling inside the house?”

  “Stewart lives in an old RV. He uses propane. He’d probably know how to rig the line. Of course, a lot of people know how to do stuff like that, don’t they?”

  “Some people know how to do stuff like that,” Trask corrected softly. “But if you’re right about the tea and the fact that Stewart was gone from his café for a while earlier in the day, it doesn’t look good.”

  “Stewart is very committed to Dimensions. He wears a bracelet.”

  “From what I’ve seen, a lot of people wear them.”

  “Yes, but they’re not all the same. People who are deeply involved with the work of the Institute usually have very expensive, unique designs. Stewart’s is like that. Unique. And expensive.”