High Rhymes and Misdemeanors (26 page)

“No.”

“Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

Grace chuckled, surprising herself.

Monica and Calum had taken the “back road.” Grace still hadn’t worked out exactly why. Calum had mumbled something about the element of surprise. The plan, such as it was, was that they would all meet up at Penwith Hall before the witching hour.

She didn’t like the idea of a midnight rendezvous, but it had taken half the day to get in touch with Aeneas Sweet, and once they had reached him he had insisted that they connect that very day. Now there was nothing left to do but ride it out to the end.

She stretched her legs, she had been sitting a long time, and her foot once more nudged the metal case. Along with the boots, Grace wore black jeans and one of Peter’s black turtlenecks; he seemed to have an unlimited supply—perhaps left over from his former career. He, too, wore black jeans and black turtleneck.

“What the well-dressed commandos are wearing this season,” Grace joked, plucking at the material of her shirt and glancing his way.

“We could use a couple of commandos,” Peter replied, shifting gears as the road wound through the trees.

“Well, we have Monica and Calum.” At least they would, if Monica and Calum didn’t get sidetracked along the way. They seemed easily distracted. Especially by each other.

Peter retorted, “Exactly. We could use commandos to protect us from Monica and Calum.”

She said slowly, “Do you not trust them?”

Peter said grandly, “I suspect everyone. And no one.”

Grace chuckled. “Oh Monica’s all right.
He’s
not what I expected. Especially when you figure Monica’s period is the Victorians. Robert Browning was always her ideal man.”

“And instead she married the nutty professor?”

Grace chuckled but Monica’s emotional detour did bother her on some (granted) irrational level. The changes Monica had made in her life and her future meant changes in Grace’s own life. She would miss Monica when she returned to St. Anne’s without her. Tom and Chaz would miss her, too. Tuesday night bridge would never be the same.

“I’ve been thinking about the cameos,” she said, to distract herself from that line of thought. “I think each one was intended to represent something significant to Byron. Even the dog. Byron loved animals, especially dogs. He built a monument to his favorite dog, Boatswain, on the grounds of Newstead Abbey.”

“You think the cameos would have been his tacit acknowledgment that Medora was his daughter?”

“I don’t know. He never singled her out in any other way, never showed her any special attention, but if you take into account what each of those cameos seems to represent individually, especially the Astarte one, and then put them all together …”

“Not so tacit an acknowledgment after all,” Peter concurred.

“Those cameos are as irreplaceable for what they symbolize—for what they represent to Byronic scholars—as they are in intrinsic value,” Grace said.

Peter’s eyes left the road and met hers for a long moment.

It was quite late by the time they reached the Pen-with estate. Peter parked in the woods and cut the car engine. They could see lights from the tower rooms winking through the trees.

Peter glanced at his watch. “Right on schedule.”

“Should we wait for Monica and Calum?” Grace shivered. It wasn’t that cold in the Rover, so it had to be nerves catching up with her. The night was alive with the sound of crickets, the whisper of leaves. Normal friendly sounds that somehow emphasized how alone they were.

“Look to your left.”

She looked. Several yards away, deep within a stand of trees, a car’s headlights flashed once, twice, and then all was black.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” Grace whispered as Peter reached for his door handle. He paused.

“Gee, a midnight meeting in a tomb in the middle of the woods? I don’t know,” he whispered back. For some reason his smart-aleck response cheered her up.

Together they walked across the cleared area to the blue Mustang parked in the trees. Monica and Calum were waiting beside their car.

Monica gave Grace the thumbs-up. Calum offered Peter a drink from his flask, which Peter declined. Monica took a swallow instead. It didn’t appear to be the first time the flask had made the go-round. Grace could feel Peter’s exasperation, but he controlled it as he reminded everyone of his and her various roles in “The Plan.”

Grace thought that “plan” was an exaggeration, but they had come too far to turn back now.

At the appointed hour they separated once more, Monica and Calum tip-toeing off amid the crunch of autumn leaves.

Peter sighed and then glanced down at Grace.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He hesitated. Grace put a hand on his arm. “I know,” she said.

His smile in the starlight seemed twisted. “Then you’re way ahead of me, Esmerelda. I’ve no idea what I’d say to you even if we had time to say it. Just keep your head down, will you?”

“I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”

In white relief above the square entrance, Grecian women wept into hankies. At least they looked like hankies. Grace supposed the ancients had another word for them.

She glanced at Peter, wondering if he would have trouble entering the confines of the crypt. She remembered his reluctance the morning of their first visit to Penwith Hall. He looked cool enough now, though stern. Meeting her gaze he gave her a crooked grin.

“Scared?”

Grace shrugged. “I’m getting used to it.”

“One way or another it will all be over tonight.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you may think.” Her eyes scanned the darkness looking for a sign that Calum and Monica were providing backup as planned.

Ahead of them, the door to the crypt stood open. Open but not inviting. There was no light inside, no sound of voices or movement. Could they be first to arrive?

“Ladies first,” Peter said.

“Very funny.”

He slipped through the black mouth and Grace followed cautiously. Inside it smelled of cold and damp, old moldering leaves and something sharp and metallic that raised the hair on the back of Grace’s neck.

Peter’s flashlight beam played over cobwebs and stone sarcophagi, lighting at last on a body lying facedown in a pool of blood.

Grace sucked in her breath to scream. Peter’s stillness, his lack of surprise, held her silent.

“It’s Aeneas Sweet,” she breathed at last, taking in the disheveled mane of white hair, the giant frame now soft and boneless.

Peter knelt, rolling Aeneas over onto his back. His head lolled. Grace closed her eyes.

“Bugger all,” she heard Peter mutter.

That was all the confirmation she needed. She moved, backing toward the door.

“Not so fast,” a familiar voice said. A hard hand in the middle of her back shoved her forward. “You’ve got something that belongs to us.”

As Grace stumbled forward, Peter steadied her.

“Well, well,” Sid said, stepping into the spotlight of Peter’s torch. “The gang’s all here.” Grace could only see the round black eye of the gun barrel staring at her in the flashlight’s glare. To Charlie, hovering behind him, Sid ordered, “See if they’re carrying.”

“Carrying?” Grace glimpsed Peter’s grim profile.

“Packing. Armed.”

Charlie, his face just as dour without the dog mask, moved toward Peter.

“That’ll do, laddie!” Calum’s voice came sharply. He filled the doorway behind Sid, his genial face looking surprisingly tough. Grace went weak with relief. “Get their weapons,” Calum instructed Monica.

“Don’t step in front of the gun,” Peter warned as Monica squeezed between Calum and the door frame.

“What? Oh.” Monica edged over to Grace. “Do you believe this?” she said under her voice, and then gingerly took Sid’s gun from his unresisting hand. Both Sid and Charlie seemed dumbfounded at this turn of events.

A new voice cried shrilly, “Cancel that! Cancel that, I say!”

It should have been funny. There was a kind of surreptitious exchange of group glances. Otherwise, no one moved, although there was motion behind Calum’s bulk.

“Drop that gun. Put your hands up!” The voice persisted.

Calum started and dropped the gun. His hands went up.

I know that voice, Grace thought, but it seemed too farcical to be true.

“Get in there!”

Calum crowded into the room, past Sid. Ferdy wriggled through the doorway and squinted into the flashlight’s rays. He pointed his gun at the light. “Lower it.”

The flashlight beam dropped down. Tonight’s bow tie was black. It seemed appropriate, coordinating as it did with the funereal gleam of the small gun Sweet’s nephew held.

In books and movies bad guys whip out guns and good guys unhesitatingly tackle them. In real life it wasn’t like that. Everyone had gone stiffer than the wall frescoes. It was so quiet they could hear the crickets outside. Aeneas Sweet’s body was a vivid illustration of what guns could do.

“And just who the hell are you?” Calum demanded, as Sid plucked his gun out of Monica’s grasp.

Ferdy’s gun swung toward Calum.

“Easy,” Peter said. “Let’s think this through.”

The gun veered back to Peter. “I’ve thought it through,” Ferdy said. His voice wavered. “You came here to rob my uncle. The old fool struggled with you and you shot him.”

He didn’t look dangerous, Grace thought numbly. Even now he seemed more like someone out of a Wodehouse novel than Raymond Chandler. An evil Bertie Wooster? And yet, as innocuous as Ferdy appeared, something mean and cornered in his eyes did not bode well for them.

Peter still reasoned with him in that calm, slightly ironic tone. “In the family crypt?”

“Why not?”

“It’s a bit unlikely, don’t you think?”

Ferdy waved the gun impatiently and his accomplices, eyes on the barrel, shifted uneasily. “We’ll clean this up and move him into the house naturally.”

Peter’s eyes never left the gun. “And what about the other four bodies? How do you plan on hiding a massacre?”

“Shut up!”

“Actually, I’d rather discuss it now, while I’m still breathing.”

Ferdy looked to his henchmen for guidance. Sid said staunchly, “What’s the problem? We’ll leave ’em here in the crypt and lock the door. No one comes here, right? None of the regulars is going to object, eh? They could be here for years and who’s the wiser?”

“Are you crazy?” demanded Monica. Perhaps it was rhetorical; no one answered her.

Grace, shaking off the horror that had gripped her from the moment she had spotted Sweet’s body, spoke at last.

“So it’s all about money? You killed him for money?” Her voice cracked.

Ferdy snapped back, “What else would it be? Who the hell cares about bloody Byron or his buttons? I’ve got a Japanese buyer who can pay three million pounds for these trinkets.” Ferdy nodded at the metal case Peter held.

“He’s daft,” Peter said to Sid. “You know how it works.”

“Sure, I know,” Sid drawled. The look he cast Ferdy did not promise a long working relationship.

Ferdy burst out, “For
years
I’ve listened to this …
twaddle!
Byron’s lost manuscript, Byron’s jewels, Byron’s—”

“Manuscript?”
Grace, Monica and Calum echoed.

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Ferdy fired at the ceiling. Something whined past Grace’s ear and, beside her, Charlie keeled over.

One glance at his face told her all she needed to know. One glance was all she had time for. Monica screamed, her voice joining the reverberations of the bullet, rolling around the stone confines of the tomb. Peter swung the metal briefcase and clobbered Sid, who crashed into Ferdy. They went down like dominoes.

“Go!” Peter pushed Grace out the door.

“But—”

“Run!”

She ran. Her feet pounded across the wet grass. A glance over her shoulder showed a light flitting like a firefly in the crypt. The sound of pandemonium echoed through the woods. More shots rang out.

Oh God,
Grace prayed.
Please don’t let anyone else be killed
.

She faced forward in time to avoid plowing into a tree. She had no idea where she was going—or what she would do when she got there.

She thought she was headed in the right direction, but before long she slowed, then stopped. She was lost. She had no idea where the cars were. And Peter still had the keys.

Intently, she listened to the night sounds. To her left she could see the tower lights still flickering through the trees. She could try to call the police from the Hall, perhaps. She didn’t have many options at this point.

Then she heard it.

Something—someone—was moving toward her. Grace recognized the crackle of leaves, the snap of twigs. She turned and banged into another body.

Hands fastened on her shoulders.

“Where are they?” Ferdy shrieked into her face. In the glimmering light his face looked pale and inhuman. His breath was hot on her skin.