Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (3 page)

“What makes you think my dad was on it?”

“It was a Bled plane. It took off at midnight. There was no manifest or flight plan.”
 

“Aren’t those required?”

“You grew up in the Bled world. You know better. The Bleds make the rules, they don’t follow them.”

I looked down into my cup at the dregs of foam clinging to the sides. Spidermonkey said something about power and money going hand in hand. He didn’t know anything. With all his resources, all his abilities to snoop in anyone’s life, he knew nothing. He saw the Bleds with their fat accounts, mansions, and art collections and thought he could see the truth. That all they were was money. The truth is always more complicated. Pain is universal. You can’t buy your way out of that, although people seemed to think huge houses changed it. They were wrong. I’d spent the last month at Millicent’s bedside. She’d gotten pneumonia and had suffered just the same as anyone else.
 

“Miss Watts? Did you hear me?” asked Spidermonkey.
 

“They’re real people,” I said.

“Did I imply that they weren’t?”
 

“Yes,” I said with a flash of unexpected anger.
 

He sipped his coffee and watched me quietly. “I thought I would see it, if I looked close.”
 

“What?”
 

“The difference between you and Marilyn Monroe, but I can’t. I swear I can’t.”
 

“What’s that got to do with anything?”
 

“You and your parents have enthralled the Bleds. Great beauty can do that. But you…you really love them.”
 

“Of course I do. They’re my family.”
 

“I have to admit when I started this line of inquiry for you I thought it would be fairly simple. The more I dig, the more intrigued I am.”
 

“About the house?”

“No, actually. It’s clear your father did the Bleds a service, legal or otherwise, and the payment was your life on Hawthorne Avenue. What intrigues me is why? Why did it happen in the first place? I can find no reason for your father to ever have met the Bleds, much less have been asked to do something that was clearly very important to them. Your parents weren’t in their circle. They practically lived on different planets, but the Bleds went to your father. They trusted him with something huge and he proved worthy.”

“They chose wisely,” I said.
 

“They did, but I want to know why it happened. It’s driving me crazy.”
 

“I can’t help you. None of them ever mentioned how they met. Millicent and Myrtle have always treated us like family.”
 

“You’re not, in case you’re wondering. I checked back several generations.”

“Did you find Josiah Bled’s death certificate while you were at it?”

“No. Josiah Bled went off the grid about the time the house was signed over. I can find no trace of him. If there’s a death certificate, it wasn’t filed in the States. Do you want me to keep looking? Overseas, I mean.”

“Yes. Start in France.”

Spidermonkey raised an eyebrow. “Why France?”
 

“He spent a lot of time there. Loved it. That’s what The Girls say.”
 

“Fine by me. What about your parents and the house?”
 

“Find out where Dad went. There was a pilot. Ask him or her.”
 

“Him. Donnell Frazer. Dead ten years ago. The rest of the crew was unnamed.”

“The family doesn’t like strangers. Whoever was on that plane was regular staff. Take a look at employee records.”
 

Spidermonkey laughed. “They don’t like strangers. Your father wasn’t a stranger then.”
 

“I guess not.”
 

“How far do you do want me to go with this?”
 

“As far as it takes. I have a feeling that Brooks’s lawsuit wasn’t the end of it.” I finished the heavenly cinnamon roll and started to get up.

“You’re right on that. Are you in the will?”
 

“Will?”

“Myrtle and Millicent’s will?”
 

“Probably.” I sat back down.

“They haven’t said anything about the art, in particular?”
 

“No.”
 

“There are noises in the art world about control over the Bled Collection after The Girls pass away. The art museum has been trying to get a hold of that collection for years.”

“I know, but that will never happen. They have family. Blood family, I mean. I assume Lawton will inherit.”
 

“Not you?” asked Spidermonkey.
 

“No way. Lawton is Myrtle’s son.”

“There are rumors that you or your parents have pieces from the collection. Do you?” he asked.

“That’s crazy. What do they think? That I have a Renoir hanging over my Ikea bed?”
 

“So you have nothing?”
 

“No. What’s this got to do with our house and Brooks’s lawsuit?”
 

“The art museum wants that collection, and if you inherit it, they could claim undue influence to get it away from you. The lawsuit and the house makes a good case for it. No one knows why Brooks dropped it.”
 

Of course I knew why Brooks dropped it, but I didn’t want anyone else to know.

“It’s Myrtle and Millicent’s property, they can do whatever they want. The art museum doesn’t have a say.”
 

“That’s what people thought about the Barnes Collection and it’s now in the Philadelphia Art Museum, exactly where Mr. Barnes didn’t want it.”
 

I nodded. The Barnes situation had upset The Girls terribly. They knew Mr. Barnes and what he wanted for his collection. Only the fact that they had family to protect the Bled Collection comforted them. Each piece was personal and came with a story. Some were heartbreaking.

“Find out whatever you can.” I paused. “Look into the art museum, too. Someone has to be behind it. If someone is building a case to steal the Bled Collection, we need to know who it is.”
 

“This will cost you,” said Spidermonkey.

“Curiosity always does.”
 

Chapter Three

The Central West End was quiet that morning. The vintage clothing, wine, and chocolate shops not yet open for business. By ten it would be hopping with stylish people out for a stroll and an espresso. It was my favorite part of St. Louis, where old and new meshed so well that you couldn’t make out the lines. I drove through a warren of short streets to the exclusive section, the part with high wrought-iron gates and statuary. Even Hawthorne Avenue’s alley said keep out with another gate and a small guardhouse that looked like a Chinese pagoda. Mr. Knox, the guard, was standing next to the pagoda with a clipboard. His frozen breath streamed forth like an old train engine.
 

I turned in and cranked down my window. “Good morning, Mr. Knox.”
 

“Good morning, Miss Mercy.”

I held out an extra large black coffee with three sugars that I’d gotten for him at Café Déjeuner because Christmas tis the season of freezing your butt off.
 

“You remembered.” He grinned and took a sip.

“First day of the official season,” I said. “Will I be able to make it to The Girls?”
 

“It’ll be tight, but I only got three in there right now. You beat the rush. Get in while the getting’s good.”
 

I rolled up my window and eased into the alley. It was quite narrow, having been built for small wagons, not lumbering trucks. Christmas was afoot and that Sunday was the day that Hawthorne got serious about decorating. Since these people were crazy wealthy, they didn’t do it themselves. From now until Christmas Day there would be a steady stream of florists, caterers and lighting designers clogging up the alley. I squeezed past a tree farm truck with six guys unloading three fifteen-foot Noble firs. Did I mention that no one has only one, except us of course. The Offenheimers usually have five. Mom tells a story about our first Christmas on Hawthorne with the lone Christmas tree when no less than seven executive assistants were dispatched to our house to find out if our supplier had difficulties and did my mother want any recommendations. Mom had to explain that we had one tree and that we would (gasp) decorate it ourselves. I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones with one tree and ornaments made of popsicle sticks and tin foil. My parents could probably now afford a floral designer to come in and do a theme tree, but we stuck with chopping down our single tree ourselves and covering it with tacky ornaments Mom bought from Walgreens on sale. We’re sentimental that way and by now residents of the Avenue were used to the cop’s family and our eccentricities.
 

I passed a florist van and another tree truck and made it to the back of the Bled property without scraping the paint off my truck. I was relieved, until I saw the vehicle parked next to the stable/garage. A black Camaro. Just what I didn’t want to see. The car was my cousin Chuck’s baby and he was there to annoy me, no doubt. I pressed the remote and one of the two-car bays opened. I parked beside Philippa’s Mini. Philippa was going to stay with The Girls while I was in Colorado. I’d been living with them since Millicent got sick, because she refused to go to the hospital. Myrtle and Millicent came from a world where doctors came to you, not the other way around. So I’d been in charge of round-the-clock care during Millicent’s illness and recuperation. My friends filled in when I couldn’t be there. Like I told Spidermonkey, The Girls didn’t like strangers. They knew Philippa, Shanna, and Angie because I’d gone to school with them and they could be trusted. Spidermonkey would definitely find out who was on the plane with my dad by going through the Bled Brewery records. It would be tedious and expensive, but the information was there.
 

I closed the garage door and went past some of The Girls’ car collection, not that they collected cars. Each one had personal meaning. They hadn’t bought a new car in my entire life, and wherever they went, they went in style, usually in the 1921 Maybach. They say it’s because the car was their father’s, but I think they like the attention. Not a lot of Maybachs running around, not even in the Central West End.
 

I trotted out of the car section and into the part maintained as a stable, even though there hadn’t been horses in there since the seventies. I took one deep breath of hay-scented air and entered the back garden where all the roses were bagged for the impending snow and the beds had been clipped back from their summer glory. The back door blazed with warmth and light and I went past one of the fountains.
 

“Miss Watts,” called a voice behind me.

I turned expecting Johnny, The Girls’ favorite Christmas tree guy, but it was a boy peering through the wrought iron at me. He waved again. “Miss Watts.”
 

He looked too young to be a stalker. I’d gotten enough of them to recognize the type and he wasn’t in his thirties or particularly weird-looking. I seemed to attract the weird ones, the weirder the better. Thanks to a bunch of old VFW guys who weaseled some pictures out of me and started a website devoted to me looking like Marilyn, I got guys following me pretty regular. They didn’t last long once they realized looks were deceiving and I was super boring on a day-to-day basis.
 

Since the kid didn’t look to be carrying a weapon, and Chuck was in the house waiting to bother me, I went over. My first mistake.
 

“Can I help you?” I asked, keeping my distance. Distance is good. Touching has happened.
 

“Good morning, Miss Watts.” The boy extended his hand, and once he did I saw that he wasn’t as young as I thought, closer to eighteen than fourteen. He had a mop of soft floppy brown curls on top of his head and a smattering of freckles sprinkled on his rosy cheeks. His coat was an ankle-length cashmere trench in a pale camel color. But the most interesting thing about him was his accent. He was Scottish.
 

I shook his warm hand. It was soft like a young girl’s with buffed nails. Definitely not my usual stalker material.

“Good morning,” I said.
 

“May I introduce myself. I’m Fergus Borthwick.”
 

“Seriously?”
 

“It’s a family name. I’m here to help you,” he said.
 

“Thanks, but I’m good.”

“You’re on a case. I can help you.”
 

Groan.

“I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not a detective. Thanks anyway,” I said.
 

“But you are and I’m going to help you.” He smiled, his green eyes lighting up.
 

Double groan.

“If you saw me on the news, that whole thing in Honduras was a fluke. I’m a nurse.”
 

“I know that, but you also work for your father and you’re on a case right now.”
 

“I’m really not.”
 

“You left the hospital thirty-five minutes later than usual and you didn’t go home as expected. You went to a coffee shop where you met an old man. He was expecting you, but you weren’t expecting him. What’s the case? I want to help.”
 

“I can’t believe this. You are stalking me.”

“Not stalking. Helping.”
 

“The line isn’t as wide as you think. There’s no case, and I wouldn’t let you help me if there was.” I turned and went up the walk.
 

“I’ll be here when you need me,” called out Fergus behind me.
 

Fan-freaking-tastic.