A Stranger in Wynnedower (36 page)

Jack was home to her in
a way that Jeremy never was, never could have been. Rachel had made sure Jeremy
would be prepared to not only dwell in the world but to succeed. His path had
changed, but everything she’d ever done, ever sacrificed for the sake of his
future, had been worth it. Including the outcome that he had changed his path
and didn’t need her anymore. He loved her, but he didn’t need her. Without her,
his world would go on.

Jack needed her in his
world. She believed that.

It frightened her that
she couldn’t control Jack in the same, best-intentioned way that she managed
Jeremy’s life, and even Aunt Eunice’s.

The ground seemed to
tremble beneath her feet, and truth shivered up through her body.

“You’re shaking. You’re
not afraid, are you? Trust me, Rachel. Will you?”

Home. Not necessarily a
building, but a place where, without you, it isn’t home for anyone who matters
in your life. For anyone who cares about you. It’s the place for which you’ll
risk everything to keep it and them safe and sound and they’ll do the same for
you. She nodded, ‘yes.’

He moved away from her
and pulled an object from his pocket.

She stared. “What’s
that?”

He motioned with the
shiny black piece of fancy electronics in his hand. “My phone?”

“Since when?”

“New York. Amanda
convinced me.” He paused, and his face flushed. “Away from home and all, I was
cut off from…everyone. Everyone here at Wynnedower. You….” He gave up poking
his fingers at the slick cover and shook it as if it might rattle.

“Oh, give it here.” She
snatched it and hit the button that restored it to life.

“How’d you do that?
They showed me in the store but–”

He moved close to her,
to look over her shoulder, and his scent enveloped her, not perfume, but good
old-fashioned soap and water and fabric softener. Despite herself, she leaned
slightly backward, as if magnetized.

Jack said, “Amanda
deals with things like this in her line of business. I’m not taking any
chances. I’m staying with these paintings until they’re secure—certainly more
secure than here at Wynnedower.”

 “Call her, then. Call
the police, too. I feel like we’re sitting ducks.”

“Will you check on
Helene? She should’ve been in to say hello already. I don’t want to leave you
here alone with these paintings. If someone is after them, I don’t want to put
you in more danger.”

“She was here earlier.
I guess it was while you were outside unloading the car. I asked her to wait in
her rooms.” Rachel nodded and touched her hand to his chest.

He held her hand
between both of his. “It’s all going to work out. Don’t worry. Think of it.
Here, all these years, under our noses…old Griffin’s probably sitting up in his
grave and yelling for his cane.”

His excitement and
optimism were contagious, but the feeling of imminent danger persisted. She
captured his darkly warm eyes in her memory and took the image straight into
her heart. She put her free hand to his cheek.

“Be careful, Jack. I’ll
come right back.”

Out of Jack’s presence,
her unease redoubled. She ran up the stairs and down the hall. Helene’s door
was closed, but unlocked.

She eased it open and
said softly, “Helene?”

No response. She peeked
inside.

Helene’s corner chair
was empty. A book lay open and abandoned on the side table. Rachel moved into
the room. The rooms felt empty, and empty they were.

She wasn’t going to
chase Helene around the house. She’d already been gone too long. She returned
downstairs.

May was back. She stood
in the entrance hall, her expression anxious. “Is there a problem?”

Rachel scrambled to
figure out how much she should say and settled for, “Have you seen Helene?”

“I was going to ask you
the same. Did Jack return from New York?”

“He did. A short time
ago.”

May frowned. It looked
more like a squint. “I saw a strange car. Did he come back alone? I thought
maybe Amanda….”

Rachel fought back a
sudden, illogical urge to cry. Only being caught in the vise between sympathy
and antipathy toward May kept her cool.

May glanced toward the
upstairs. “Miss Helene’s okay?”

“She wasn’t in her
rooms, so…” Rachel fidgeted. She should tell her what was going on, at least
enough to keep her safe. “May–”

“I’ll go check for
myself.” May grasped the newel post and started up the steps. She turned back.
“I heard a noise in the basement. I hate to say this, but maybe we should get
in an exterminator? Also, as I walked up the path, I noticed the carriage doors
looked crooked. At the very least, they need to be fixed to keep out rodents
and weather.” She didn’t wait for an answer but continued on up the stairs,
muttering, “Brendan was supposed to have already taken care of that.”

Grateful to return to
Jack, Rachel was unprepared to open the dining room doors and find him gone. A
quick scan reassured her that the paintings were still hidden among Jack’s other
paintings.

She ran down the hall
and looked in his quarters. “Jack?”

This made no sense.
Jack’s big ring of keys was missing from the wall. She looked out the window.
His rental car was parked on the side. Her heart wanted to gallop. She willed
it to slow. She needed her wits.

Back in the dining room
she walked along the walls of windows looking for something, anything that
might answer her questions.

Crooked, May had said.
The carriage doors were more than crooked. They were open only a few inches and
the viewing angle was narrow, but she could see the chain was off the doors.

Jack had left the keys
in the dining room doors. She pulled the doors closed and locked them, dropping
the keys in her pocket.

Whatever was going on,
she couldn’t take any more chances. She went down the hall to use Jack’s phone.

The phone line was
strung from poles outside and entered the house near the top of the first
floor. It never occurred to her that the lines would be sabotaged, and likely
they weren’t, but the phone was gone.

The phone was gone. The
little clip at the end of the phone line dangled in the air.

She needed her phone,
and her car keys, too.

She ran up the stairs
and down the hall. Her doors were open.

At first, all she saw
was that her suitcase had been unzipped, and its contents were hanging out
across the bench and down to the floor. The dresser top was bare, except for
the doily. The ring of Wynnedower keys, her car keys and cell phone were gone.

She heard a click
behind her and spun around.

“Rachel?” Brendan shut
the bedroom door. “Where are the paintings?”

“So, it was you. How
could you?”

“How could I? How could
I what? Finders, keepers, Rachel. As simple as that. No one even knew about
them. It would have, should have, been easy to take them out through the
basement—no one knew so no one would miss them. Until you screwed it up by
snooping around. You took something simple and turned it into a mess, a big
mess.”

“Me? Are you seriously
trying to blame me?”

“They’re mine, Rachel.
I found them.”

“They belong to
Wynnedower. To Jack and Helene.” She changed her tone. “Walk away, Brendan. I
understand your excitement at the find. What I don’t understand is how you
thought it would be okay to spirit them away and dispose of them on the sly.”

“It’s complicated. I
found a guy with an ‘in’ who’s going to help me sell them. I needed someone who
knew buyers, plus I owed him.” He gripped her arm, and she winced. Anger mixed
with fear on Brendan’s face. “He isn’t going to let anyone just walk away. I
have to have the paintings, Rachel.”

 She tried to bring the
tension down a notch. “Instead, let’s figure out a way to handle that guy. Call
the police.” She grabbed his arm with her free hand, refusing to show fear. “Brendan,
listen to me. What laws have you actually broken? I mean, really? We can
arrange a finder’s fee for you, but that only works if no one gets hurt.
Where’s Jack?”

He shook his head. “I
don’t know.”

“Brendan, how dangerous
is that man? If he has hurt Jack….”

“He’s been here before,
back before I found them. He was…he thought…well, he was curious. Didn’t
believe me about this place. He thought I was talking big. Now he’s expecting
the paintings.”

“We’ll call the police.
When he sees the police cars, he’ll run away. We’ll put out some kind of press
release saying the paintings are phonies….which they probably are. That’ll get
him off your back.”

“You don’t think
they’re real? They look real.” He was truly pale and sweating.

She tightened her grip
on his arm and shook him. “Counterfeit art is as old as art itself.” She paused
for emphasis. “Don’t you feel it, Brendan?”

“Feel what?”

“The way out. Take it
while it’s available. Before it’s too late. Help me find Jack.”

“There’s Kilmer, too.”

She frowned. “What
about him?”

“He knew work had been
done in the area of the stairs, that doors had been closed off when his
grandfather was a kid. He gave me some info that helped me find the paintings.
In exchange, I gave him information about Helene.”

Her heart ached. She
put her hands in her hair and pressed her fingers against her head.

Think, Rachel.
Think.

“So, it was both of you
sneaking around Wynnedower. Or should I say ‘three of you’?” She shook her
head. “Is Kilmer in the house now?”

Brendan nodded.

“Find him. Tell him
it’s over. Get him out of the house while I call the police. Where’s my phone?”

He put his arm around
her shoulders. “I appreciate that you want to help me.”

They were near the
bathroom door. Suddenly he pushed, shoving her down onto the ceramic tile.

“I’m sorry.” His words
were muffled by the slamming of the door and the twist of the key from his
side.

“Brendan, don’t do
this.”

He didn’t answer. She
beat at the door, calling his name, knowing it was useless unless May or Helene
heard her screaming. But Brendan had taken the key. If anyone heard her, how
long would it take them to find a duplicate key?

Helene. David was in
the house.

She sat on the edge of
the bathtub and heard the gentle clink of the two keys in her pocket. Would they
work? What was the likelihood?

She pulled the keys
from her pocket.

No rhyme, no
reason—hadn’t Jack said? She closed her eyes tightly. In her mind, she watched
the key fit. She felt the lock mechanism slide open. Breath held, she inserted
the key and turned.

Nothing. Logic made the
result obvious, but she tried the other key, too.

She slid to the floor,
her head and shoulder against the wooden door, too discouraged to yell again.
Even if she got free, what could she do?

What, indeed? She
closed her eyes and tried to see it—what she could do if she escaped. No, not
if, but when. It was hard to keep up the positive outlook. Resilience didn’t
matter if she was trapped.

Jack missing. Helene
missing.

Jack had been with the
paintings. Had he called the police before being interrupted? Interrupted, yes,
because otherwise he wouldn’t have left before finishing what he was doing.

Brendan, maybe? While
she was looking for Helene. It would only have taken a simple, ‘Hey, Jack, come
see…or Jack, Rachel needs you.’ Jack would be lured away. Down to the basement,
surely.

That was all. The
images ran out.

Why wouldn’t they dry
up? She was stuck here with no one to help her. If not her, then who would help
Jack?

It felt like she’d been
there forever when something touched her thigh.

She looked down and saw
the metal stem of a key. Its little orange tag showed from under the edge of
the door.

“Hello?” She pulled the
key the rest of the way through and clutched it. “Hello?”

She bent and placed her
cheek against the floor. Through the narrow gap she saw feminine fingers and
the lavender fabric of Helene’s dress puddled on the wood.

“Helene?”

A gentle shushing noise
came from the other side. She blinked, and no one was there.

Rachel pushed the key
into the lock, and the tumblers rolled.

Forehead against the
crystal doorknob, she took a long drag of air into her lungs and held it for a
few seconds to calm herself. She visualized herself going into Jeremy’s room,
then the hallway, then the three stairways. Which would be the best choice?

She didn’t have her car
keys or the keys to Wynnedower. Presumably Helene did, so if the doors in the
stairwells were locked, that only left the central stairs. Once downstairs, she
would have to go straight out the front door and run down the dirt track for a
mile or so. And then what? Wave down a passing motorist? Or go to Mike’s Towing
and hope Mike wasn’t in on the theft?