Past Tense (8 page)

“Bennett Price.”

“Of Price Enterprises?”

The fear she’d had about Tony communicating with Bennett resurfaced. “Do you know him?”

She was immediately reassured by his off-hand reply. “Not personally. His business is well known. We’ve never met. Different lines of work.”

Bennett Price. Hiding the jolt the mention of Price’s name had given him, Tony sent his mind back over the list of people involved with the trade delegation from Canada. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that Price’s name was on one of the documents.

Was it possible that Samantha— No, if she had broken her engagement and fled Montréal to avoid Price, he could pretty well write her off as a security risk.

He leaned forward, intensely curious about her reasons for leaving. “What happened, Samantha? Did Price take it badly?”

“No. I don’t know.” The words rushed over themselves. “I didn’t see him again, so I don’t know how he took it.” She licked her dry lips. “It was something else.”

In a flat, emotionless voice she told him about her father’s death and the incident at the house the day after the funeral.

Tony didn’t say anything for several moments after she finished. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost contemplative. “He’s the one you saw in the elevator, isn’t he? He wasn’t dead, then. He must have recovered.”

Didn’t he believe her? “When I saw him last, he looked dead. And Bennett wiped the floor, although from the landing I couldn’t see much.” She shuddered, a violent convulsion that racked her body. “Bennett and the others were so cold-blooded about it, as if nothing unusual had happened.”

Her voice shook and she couldn’t go on as she remembered the horror that had gripped her. She’d shrunk back from the stair rail and crouched next to the window on the landing, moving only when she’d seen the car drive away.

“Samantha.” As if from a long way she heard Tony’s voice, and realized he’d called her several times. “Samantha.”

He shifted nearer and pulled her against him, wrapping his arms tightly around her to stop her trembling. “Please, Samantha, it’s all right now.”

She shuddered again and sat up, her eyes dry, her mouth firming to a resolute line. “It’s not all right, Tony. Someone’s after me.”

“You’ve got me now,” he said. “I’ll help you. Can you tell me the rest? Were the men arguing?”

Her brow wrinkled as she tried to remember. The visual part of the incident was etched in her memory, but anything the men had said remained unclear, even though she’d replayed it through a hundred sleepless nights.

“Not at first. I was upstairs when I heard the door open and close, and then several voices. I recognized Bennett’s and wondered what he was doing there when he was supposedly out of town. I was about to go down when another man shouted something I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see clearly because of the angle of the stairs, but I heard an odd sharp sound, then a thud, as if someone had dropped a heavy box or something.”

She dragged in a long breath. “I suppose that was the man falling.”

“Samantha.” Tony’s warm voice and firm hands compelled her to look at him. “Samantha, you’re safe for now.”

She gave a ragged laugh. “For now. But what about when they find me?”

“I’m here. Sam, would they even have known you were there?”

“They could have found out. My aunt Olivia knew I was there. Bennett might have asked her.”

Tony frowned. “So he could have known what you’d seen, and might have wanted to shut you up.”

“I’m sure of it.”

Tony propped his elbow on the arm of the sofa and pressed his fingers into his forehead. “So you just took off. Didn’t it occur to you that there might have been an innocent explanation for what you saw?”

There might have been, except for the incriminating presence of Claude Germain. From him came the real danger. To a man like Claude Germain, anyone who got in his way, however innocent, was expendable. “If the man was hurt,” she said carefully, “why didn’t they call an ambulance? Wouldn’t that be the normal thing to do?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to waste any time. Maybe they took him straight to a hospital.”

“I suppose it’s possible. But you have to understand it was a shock to see Bennett there. He had told me at the funeral that he would be out of town until the end of the week, that I might not see him until the day of the wedding. And the way he looked when he glanced up the stairs—it frightened me. I thought I knew Bennett. But in that moment I suddenly realized he was a stranger.”

“Did you talk to him before you left?”

“No, but I tried to. I thought if I saw him, I’d find it was all a horrible nightmare. But when I went to his office, his secretary seemed surprised to see me, said Bennett was still out of town. So I went back to my own apartment to pack. I wrote him a letter and left it at his office. I also left a letter for my Aunt Olivia, telling her I needed a holiday. The same message went to James Michaels, Smith Industries’ CEO. James has always been like an uncle to me, and oddly enough, he never liked Bennett. He must have been glad to hear I broke off the engagement. Don’t worry, I didn’t take any chances.”

Briefly she sketched her convoluted journey, and the arrangements she’d made with Amelia and Mr. Collins. “I changed my hair color in Toronto.”

“What about from Nice to London? It’s obvious that they traced you there, although it took long enough.”

“Amelia sometimes travels to Paris or London by returning rental cars to the point of origin. She made an arrangement for me to take one, in her name. The trail would have ended in Nice. As far as anyone is concerned, I could be anywhere.”

“But you got that note on the brochure.”

“That might have been luck. They might have tried sending mail through our other European offices as well, on the off chance.”

Tony frowned thoughtfully. “These threats, and the accident. Is Bennett the vindictive type?”

Bennett? Bennett hardly mattered against the danger posed by Germain. “What do you mean?” Samantha asked, careful to keep her tone level.

“Would he have been angry enough at you for jilting him that he’d try to kill you?”

She twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t know. Once, I would have said no. When he wanted to be, he was charming. He had great success in business because he knew how to get along with people, how to get them to agree with him. But with me or with his closest friends, he was often moody and intense. He got angry very quickly. Once he rammed a car door just because someone opened it on the street when he was passing. But more often it was in his attitude. He had very little tolerance, especially for those he called bums—the unemployed, the homeless. He’d make donations to animal activists instead. He said that animals couldn’t help their situation but humans could.”

Tony’s brows shot up. “And you were marrying this guy?”

“He was a respected businessman. Our marriage was considered a good match.”

Tony snorted. “Was it going to be a marriage, or a business merger?”

From her present perspective she could understand how it would look to an outsider. At first Bennett had seemed an ideal partner. After a disastrous experience with an impoverished Italian prince during her last year at a Swiss finishing school, she’d been wary of fortune hunters. Bennett was rich, successful, and charismatic. But as the wedding date drew nearer, she’d felt as if a noose were tightening around her neck.

“A marriage, of course,” she said with a heat that sounded defensive even to her own ears. “At least we both had our eyes open.”

“And your family approved, no doubt.” Tony’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I know what those Westmount families are like. The right schools, the right colleges, the right careers, and finally the right marriages.”

“We didn’t live in Westmount during my teens,” Samantha said. “We’d moved to the suburbs. Besides, I haven’t lived at home for years.”

“But you kept up the communication.”

“They were my family. It meant a lot to my aunt who was like a mother to me since my own died when I was a child. She and my grandmother. Aunt Olivia approved of Bennett.”

She lifted her eyes, noting the frown that creased his brow. “Tony, it’s silly to argue about this. I wasn’t going to marry Bennett. I was planning to break off the engagement when my father died. With the funeral and everything I hardly saw Bennett. Then he left on his alleged business trip.”

She spread her hands. “Please understand, it wasn’t a simple matter. This was the third engagement I broke off. It’s not easy to admit failure yet again.”

Under other circumstances, his look of surprise would have been comical. “You were engaged three times? Samantha, you hardly seem the type.”

“I know. I’ve changed. I’ll never be that person again.” Her breath hitched in her throat and she bit down on her bottom lip. “I could have been a princess. I was engaged to an Italian prince, but I broke it off when I found out about his penchant for skiing in Saint Moritz, sailing in Antibes, and his aversion to work. He’d gone through the family fortune, and he’d spent the money left him by an elderly widow he’d married before he met me. She’d conveniently died soon after—worn out, no doubt. Of course he didn’t tell me any of this, but I found out later that he’d also been cheating on me, so I was well rid of him.” She broke off, hugging her arms around her chest.

Tony was conscious of relief. Contrary to what he might have thought, given her background, she wasn’t a playgirl, blithely cutting a swath through hordes of men, leading them on, and then dropping them when she got bored.

“That’s once,” he said gently when she didn’t speak.

“Yeah. It seems I couldn’t stop there. As soon as I got home after the school term, I started seeing a boy I’d known since kindergarten. It was strictly on the rebound from the prince. Luckily I came to my senses in time. Such a gentle boy. I hated to hurt him but I’m sure he now realizes it was for the best.”

She lifted her hands and rubbed her temples, her mouth turning down in self-disgust. “Oh, forget it. I was a fool.”

“We’re all fools sometimes,” Tony said. Far from undermining the attraction he felt toward her, her story only increased it. She was human; she’d made mistakes and been hurt. But she’d learned from the mistakes.

The knowledge warmed him. He’d been afraid her aloofness might be her whole personality.

But none of this solved the immediate problem of who was harassing her.

“Do you think Bennett’s found you?”

She gave a harsh laugh. “I’d say we can assume that. Or one of the other men.”

Tony looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “Did you know any of them?”

“Yes, Robert Dubray, the man I thought was dead. But he’s hardly likely to be after me. He would have been too busy looking after his own skin.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, there was some sort of scandal in city hall. I don’t remember the details. I never thought I’d ever see the guy, so I didn’t pay attention to the stories.”

Tony’s brows drew together, his thoughts racing. “Anything else?”

“No. Yes.” She closed her eyes, again feeling the gut-wrenching fear that had dogged her during the first weeks after she’d left Montréal. The terror was beginning all over again. And since Tony was now involved, it was better that he knew the worst. “Yes, I saw the man who hit Dubray. It was Claude Germain.”

Tony stared at her, an icy chill creeping over his skin. “Claude Germain the mobster?”

“Yes.”

He gulped. “No wonder you ran away.”

For a long moment he was silent. Claude Germain. Here was the first evidence that Samantha’s problems might be linked to the upcoming trade conference. If rumors were to be believed, Claude Germain had financed the threat that had aborted the trade conference last April. Because of the continued uneasy relations between French and English speaking factions in Québec province, the conference had been rescheduled to take place in London. Was it possible that someone had breached the shroud of secrecy and again posed a threat?

Robert Dubray, perhaps? If Dubray were connected with Germain, his presence in the hotel might have significance far beyond what Samantha had imagined.

“We’d better check if Dubray is really at the Regal Arms,” Tony said. “That should prove whether he’s dead or alive.”

“I’ve already done that, Tony. He wasn’t registered.”

“He wasn’t? Well, that doesn’t prove it wasn’t him. He might have been in the hotel to see somebody, or for a meeting.” He sat up straighter. “You know, Sam, we should be able to find out if Dubray was killed. A body is not so easy to get rid of. Of course, there is dumping it in an isolated wooded area, in the proverbial shallow grave. But if the dead man was a prominent person, he would be reported missing.”

“Newspapers,” Sam exclaimed. “It would have been in the newspapers.” She turned toward him, her face animated again. ”Tony, where can we get hold of back issues of the Montréal papers?”

All of Tony’s earlier suspicions about Samantha evaporated. Her willingness to follow up on her story, and get to the bottom of it, was genuine. He would give her every assistance he could since it also served his own purpose.

He smiled. “The Montréal papers are part of a major newspaper consortium, aren’t they? Either a library or one of the offices on Fleet Street should have copies in their archives. If we can get a look at them, we should find out something.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Can you take a day off?”

“I suppose. I’ll work some evenings to make it up if I have to.”

* * * *

They were coming back from dinner an hour later when they met Jason Wheeler at the second floor landing.

“Good evening, Miss Clark,” he said, shifting the basket of laundry in his arms. “Did you enjoy your day out?” He didn’t address Tony, merely nodding in his direction.

“Yes, I did,” Samantha lied. “Except for the rain. How did you know my name?”

“Oh, that was easy.” Propping the basket against his hip, he gestured airily. “I asked Miss Hunnicott. Translations? That’s what you do, isn’t it? How are you at French?”

“Fluent, Mr. Wheeler,” Samantha said crisply, wishing he’d move aside so they could get by.