Docketful of Poesy (16 page)

Mona waved to me from where she sat with several
members of the crew. I waved back, but continued on my way
upstairs.

However, once I let myself into my room and stared at
the stack of books waiting for me I was seized with a sudden
restlessness. I touched up my makeup and hair and went back
downstairs and outside, got in the battered Citroen, and headed off
to Craddock House.

The way the Citroen smoked and sputtered, I imagine
Peter heard me coming a mile off. I parked beneath the trees next
to a silver rental car that I didn’t recognize, and went up the
flagstone walk.

The shop was in darkness but the upstairs lights were
shining amiably.

I rang the bell. The draperies twitched overhead, and
then a few moments later the shop lights came on.

The front door opened, bells tinkling softly. Peter
stood before me in faded jeans and a soft heather-hued tailored
shirt. The collar of his shirt and a couple of buttons were undone;
he looked very relaxed.

“Hello,” I said. “Is this a bad time?”

“For what?” He sounded interested, moving aside for
me to enter. I moved past him into the shop, glancing at a display
of colorful vintage tins, a pair of barley twist candlesticks, my
gaze lighting on a Victorian aneroid barometer. The barometer
needle rested permanently between Rain and Change. I was glad that
I wasn’t a superstitious woman.

“I noticed the car out front.”

“Tracy’s here,” he said. I couldn’t read anything in
his tone—I was too busy trying to process what I felt at that
news.

“Great minds,” Tracy said from the top of the stairs.
I looked up. She was standing in the doorway to Peter’s living
quarters, leaning back against the frame, brandy snifter in hand.
Her hair was tousled and she was scantily dressed, but since she
was always scantily dressed, I didn’t place too much importance on
it.

“Hi!” I said brightly. I’m sure I looked as thrilled
to see her as she looked to see me.

“Just happened to be in the neighborhood?” she
inquired.

“Well, no,” I said.

I heard something behind me that might have been the
whisper of Peter’s laugh, and I started up the stairs.

Tracy watched me every step of the way. I had to give
her credit: she had nerves of steel.

“How was dinner?” Peter inquired. “I heard you dined
out.”

Indeed? No mystery where he’d heard that. But he knew
Brian and I were friends, and I was sure he wasn’t making any more
of that than I was of Tracy lounging around his living room at ten
o’clock in the evening.

“It was nice,” I said. “We went to the Garden House
in Kendal. Did you know, at one time Alfred Wainwright lived
there?”

“Any relation to Wainewright the Poisoner?” Tracy
inquired.

Now that brought me up short. If I’d thought Tracy
could read at all, I’d have expected her literary taste to be
confined to
Cosmo
. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright was a
contemporary of Byron and a friend of Charles Lamb, William Blake,
Henry Fuseli, and many notable others. A talented artist and an
infamous murderer, he ended his days in Tasmania where he was
transported after murdering his uncle, mother-in-law,
sister-in-law, and a few other people who got in his way. There
were three biographies of Wainewright that I knew of, but I
couldn’t imagine Tracy reading any of them.

“Not that I know of,” I said. “Different spelling for
one thing. This Wainwright was famous for his handwritten,
hand-drawn pictorial travel guides of the fells.”

As we reached the landing, Tracy outflanked me by
moving back into the flat. She took a chair across from the red
leather sofa and stared down at her brandy glass. I sat on the
sofa. Peter closed the door to the flat behind us.

I said to him, “Brian thinks they have a lead on the
gunmen.”

He didn’t seem particularly impressed. “A lead but no
arrests?”

“Not yet. But he’s sure they’ll pick them up
tomorrow.” I didn’t want to say more than that in front of Tracy.
In fact, Brian would probably have considered even that much too
much.

Tracy said, “I didn’t think people in this country
were even allowed to own guns.” For the second time in five minutes
it occurred to me that Tracy might be brighter than she appeared. I
suspected that she was one of those women who felt she would get
farther playing dumb and trading off her looks.

“All automatic, semi-automatic, and hand guns of .22
caliber and above were outlawed over a decade ago,” Peter said. He
met my eyes levelly. I didn’t know much about guns but I was
willing to bet that the pistol he’d been carrying yesterday was not
legal issue.

“Brandy?” he asked.

“Yes please.”

He looked inquiringly at Tracy. She shook her head.
He poured a brandy, and brought it to me. There was a rather
awkward silence as he sat down on the sofa next to me.

After a moment Tracy drained her own glass.

“Well, I guess I should be going. We’ve got an early
start tomorrow.” She gave me a long, cool look.

I met it equably. “See you tomorrow bright and
early.”

Her smile was a little tight, but she covered well.
Peter rose to see her out, and I leaned back on the sofa staring
around the familiar room. High ceilings, black wooden beams, glossy
wooden floors. Even at night it felt bright and open. A beautiful
old curio chest functioned as a coffee table. There was an enormous
moon-faced grandfather clock against the far wall. A mounted
telescope stood before white-framed Georgian windows.

I knew this room well, and maybe it didn’t make
sense, but I felt welcomed here. My tension drained away.

I heard the jingle of the bells, and the lights in
the shop went down. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then
he was inside the room, his back to me as he closed the door.

Peter turned slowly to face me. He was smiling.

I smiled back.

Chapter Twelve

“W
hat time is it?” I asked
sleepily.

Peter’s chest shifted beneath my head as he turned to
read the clock. “Five-thirty.”

“Mm. I should probably get up.” But I made no move,
and neither did he. It was lovely like this: warm and comfortable
in bed together, listening to the soothing sound of the rain on the
roof.

His fingers drifted lazily through my hair. His heart
was beating in slow, steady thumps against my ear. I felt boneless,
sated, drowsy. In fact, there was nothing I’d have loved better
than to permit myself to fall back to sleep.

Instead, I asked, “Do you know Barney or Barry
February?”

“No.” There was no hesitation in his voice; his
heart’s rhythm was calm. “Who are they?”

“Brian thinks they’re the two men gunning for
you.”

Just for an instant his fingers paused in that absent
caress. “I see.”

“The police are supposed to bring them in for
questioning today. If they can find them.”

“Drummond told you this?”

I nodded. We hadn’t wasted the night before talking.
Oddly enough Tracy might have done me a favor. Not only had her
mention of my dinner with Brian bothered Peter just enough to get
him past his chivalrous qualms about spending time with me, her
presence had apparently reinforced his own weariness with his
former lifestyle. Not that he’d exactly
said
so, but I felt
I could safely draw a few deductions from his enthusiasm once we
were alone.

“It sounds like they’re career criminals,” I said.
“Ne’er-do-wells.”

“What else did Drummond tell you?”

“That was basically it. That they had a lead on these
two. But you don’t know them?”

His head moved in slight negation.

“Why do you think they came after you?”

“Grace —” He bit it off, but I could hear the
weariness in his tone. “I don’t know. I’ve thought it over. There’s
nothing. No reason. Not now.”

“Not now?” I raised my head and met his eyes—shadowy
and blue like the distant mountains.

He acknowledged, “Once, maybe. I was in a line of
work that…encouraged bad behavior. I fell out with people. Made a
few enemies, I suppose. But not the kind of enemies who would wait
years to come after me—and not for the kinds of things that we fell
out over.”

“What about Catriona?” I asked of his (I personally
believed) mentally unbalanced former girlfriend.

Peter said wryly, “If Cat wanted me dead, she’d kill
me herself.”

“That’s
so
sweet,” I cooed. “That special bond
the two of you still have.”

He laughed.

“So you don’t believe there’s anyone in your
mysterious past who might want you dead? What about someone from
the Istanbul job?”

Peter’s last job as a jewel thief had been to steal a
fabulous Turkish artifact called the Serpent’s Egg from the Topkapi
Palace. Though he had succeeded, he and his team had been betrayed
by the man who hired them, Gordon Roget. Peter’s team had escaped
but he had been taken prisoner and spent fourteen months in a
Turkish hellhole of a prison before finally escaping with the help
of a corrupt guard. Roget had disappeared with the stone, never to
be heard from again.

But what of the other members of that betrayed team?
What if someone who didn’t know the full story blamed Peter? What
if someone believed Peter had the stone, that Peter had
double-crossed his partners?

“No,” he said. And there was something in his tone
that warned me he was not going to be open to discussing this
angle. But when did I let a little thing like infuriating my lover
get in the way of my sleuthing?

“You said there were six of you. Was that counting
Roget?”

After a long moment, he said unwillingly, “Yes.”

“So discounting you, Cat, and Roget, since he ended
up with the stone, that leaves three people who might blame you for
—”

“For what? I’m the one who went to prison.” He sat
up, dislodging me, pulled a pillow over and stuffed it behind his
back. I sat up, too. We stared at each other. After a moment I
slipped my hand into his. He squeezed it, instinctively, but I
could feel the restless anger humming in his system. He hated
talking about this. And right then he was probably regretting ever
telling me anything about his past.

“Do those three people know that Roget ended up with
the Serpent’s Egg? Is it possible that someone believes you have
the stone?”

He opened his mouth to refute this idea, then seemed
to consider it. “I don’t know. It’s not like we held a reunion. I
escaped, returned to England, and settled here. I never tried to
make contact with any one of them again.”

Not even Catriona—for which she would never forgive
him. Ideally.

“So it’s possible that someone believes you managed
to hide the stone. Hayri Kayaci believed it.” Kayaci was the
corrupt prison guard who had helped Peter escape; Peter had tricked
Kayaci into believing he had hidden the stone before his capture.
“They might believe that you recovered it once you escaped. That
all this —” I gestured with my free hand, indicating Craddock House
and Rogue’s Gallery, and by extension, the quiet, comfortable,
gracious existence Peter lived “was purchased with their share of
the loot.”

He frowned, elegant brows drawn together. “Why wait
seven years to come after me?”

“Maybe they didn’t know where you were. It took
Catriona nearly that long to hunt you down.”

“Cat wasn’t in the U.K. for most of that time.”

I really didn’t want to talk about Catriona—or think
about the fact that he knew what she’d been doing during those
years. I said, “Is it possible to find out what’s become of those
three men?”

“It’s possible.” He said carefully, “I’m not
convinced it would be wise.”

I looked my inquiry.

“An ounce of prevention. I’ve taken pains to steer
clear of most of my former associates. I have enough problems with
the law without resuming my old criminal contacts.”

“Well, unless you can think of anyone else who might
want you out of the way —”

“Other than Brian Drummond?”

“Brian?”

He was smiling but I didn’t have the impression that
he was entirely joking. I glanced beyond him to the clock, and
pulled my hand free. “I’m going to be late!”

I left him, his arms folded behind his head,
listening reflectively to the rain brushing against the window.

*****

Miles Friedman was more of an optimist than I had
imagined, which was why we were all standing in the graveyard at
ten o’clock in the morning while rain poured down around us. So far
we’d managed to get in all of one hour’s filming before the skies
opened up again.

Several of us had taken shelter beneath the high
portico and classical columns of a crypt. Tracy stood behind me
listening to Madonna on her iPod. At least, she seemed to be
listening to music; I was pretty sure she was listening in on my
conversation with Roberta.

“Did you ask Peter about filming in Rogue’s
Gallery?”

“He declined,” I told her. “I knew he would.”

“Couldn’t you have pushed a little?”

“I felt it was pushy enough to ask at all,” I said
dryly.

Her mouth tightened, but she let it go. Instead she
pulled her jacket up over her head and left the shelter of the
crypt to trot across the grass and graves to where Miles, Pammy,
and some of the others stood beneath a tarp awning.

I glanced at Norton Edam who was leaning against one
of the marble columns. He smiled politely—the way people do when
they feel like talking but can’t really think of anything to
say.

The tinny music behind me stopped. “So what is it you
find so interesting about poetry?” Tracy asked.

I glanced around, surprised. She said, apparently
serious, “You don’t really look like the type. I mean, you look
like a teacher, but you don’t look like
that
.”