The Chase: A Novel (14 page)

She slid off the bed—it was so high she had to jump down a few inches—and ran around to the monster chest. She inspected the tickets. He had flights to London and Cardiff, Wales, tomorrow!

Ian returned. “What are you doing now?” He sounded resigned.

She held up the tickets. “You’re holding out on me! These are for tomorrow night.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s in Wales?”

“Claire—”

“If this has anything to do with Elgin, I’m on board. Glue, remember?”

“Krazy Glue,” he said. “How could I forget?” He lifted the beer bottle, a Budweiser, and drank.

But she had seen the smile he’d tried so hard to contain.

“Maybe you can help,” he said finally. “I am going to visit Lady Elgin in the north of Wales.”

She went on alert. “Lady Elgin?”

“Elgin’s stepmother.”

Claire stared. “She’s still alive?”

“She’s only a few years older than Elgin. His father remarried a very young girl.”

Excitement sizzled inside her. “I wonder if they’ve been in touch.”

“I doubt it.”

“But you wonder, too!”

He smiled a little and drank down half the beer. “Yeah.”

“Do you think she could recognize him today?” Her excitement vanished, replaced by an equally intense fear.
Her father was not Elgin.
It was absurd. And how could it be William? He was the one who had always picked her up when she had fallen down as a child.

Suddenly she couldn’t help recalling the first Christmas after her mother was buried. Her family had celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. Only a few weeks had passed since the funeral, and Claire and her father had been invited to spend Christmas Eve with the Dukes. That morning, Claire had not wanted to get up. She hadn’t cared about all of the presents underneath the huge Christmas tree. But Santa had come knocking on her door, towing a bag of the presents behind him. And in spite of the Santa costume and disguise, there had been no mistaking who it was. William had made her laugh for the first time since she had buried her mother.

“I have no idea. But we will find out,” Ian was saying.

Claire stared, jerked back into the present painfully. “You have photos, don’t you? Of Jean-Léon, of William.” Elgin had to be someone else, someone other than her father, William, or the uncle she believed to be dead.

“I do.”

Claire grew uneasy.

“What is it?”

Claire shook her head. She was not going to tell him something that was just now striking her as strange. There were no family albums at home that predated her father’s marriage to her mother. Or were there? Perhaps they were in an attic somewhere. For surely her father had photographs of himself—and Robert—as children, as boys, as young men.

Claire smiled her best smile. “Whatever happened to Elgin’s father? I read in the file that his father disappeared in 1940.”

Ian reached out and pressed his thumb to the side of her cheek. “Don’t play brave.”

Claire froze at his touch.

He dropped his hand, turning away and slugging down the rest of the beer. “He disappeared in August 1940, and no one ever learned what really happened to him.” Ian sat and tore off his socks as if he had not just touched her face. Claire told herself that the gesture had not been intimate. It hadn’t meant a thing. He began lifting the polo shirt, revealing his navel, his hard abs.

Claire was about to protest, then decided to enjoy the show. “That was a bit convenient,” she said, staring as he pulled the polo shirt over his head. He dropped it on the floor, and she looked away.

“Very,” he said, walking over to a built-in closet. He opened it and grabbed a torn T-shirt from a shelf, as well as very faded jeans. Claire glimpsed rows of beautiful suits, dress shirts, casual slacks, and trousers. There was a rack of ties. On the floor, she glimpsed half a dozen pairs of black loafers and one pair of tan oxfords. She glimpsed shelves of sweaters, mostly in shades of beige, brown, and blue, and they looked to be cashmere. She saw ragged tees and beat-up jeans. She saw running shoes, biking shoes, a cycling helmet. She saw a tennis racket and a gym bag.

She had never before realized what a closet could tell you about a man. He was impeccably dressed and very athletic. His girlfriend did not live in.

“At the time, the elder Elgin left letters behind suggesting that
he
was the fascist, and that he’d fled to Germany. It was a joke, Claire. So much incriminating evidence was left be hind at Elgin Hall—I doubt any self-respecting spy would be so lackadaisical.” He faced her. His eyes glittered again. “Lionel inherited his title and his estates, his respectability and his connections,
everything
, upon Randolph Elgin’s death.”

“What are you saying?” Claire whispered, enthralled. “Surely you don’t think Lionel killed his own father?”

“I don’t know what to think—except that it was convenient as all hell.” He smiled grimly at her, jeans in hand, poised to enter the master bath. “Sandwich?”

“Sure.” She waited while he disappeared behind that closed door, and when he came out, barefoot, in the soft jeans and torn tee, she followed him out of the master bedroom and into the kitchen. “Ian? I need to book those flights.”

“At this hour, you’ll have to call the airline directly,” he said.

She could hardly believe it. “Really? You finally accept the fact that I’m your partner?”

“Did I say that?” He took a loaf of bread and a jar of low-fat mayo from the refrigerator. “Lady Ellen is in her eighties. Remember, I grew up surrounded by women. I
know
women. At least, I know women when I’m not romantically involved.” His grin was crooked. “She’ll do better with another woman than with me.”

“So now we’re officially partners,” Claire said, feeling a rush of adrenaline.

He sniffed a package of deli-sliced ham, made a face, and tossed it in the garbage. “Peanut butter okay?”

“Only if you have bananas,” Claire said. “Or even better, bacon.”

He looked at her. “You’re joking, right?”

Claire smiled. “I’m in the market for a heart attack. PB’s okay. You do have jelly?”

He smiled, and it reached his eyes. “I have a maid, Hayden. She does all the shopping.”

Claire watched him replace the mayo in the fridge and take out no-sugar-added jam. “Is your girlfriend on a diet?”

He popped bread in the toaster, not even looking at her. “Broke up almost a year ago. She wasn’t what I wanted.”

Claire felt relieved. She scolded herself for feeling so. “Why not?”

“She wasn’t too bright,” he said.

Claire liked that. “Beautiful?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t like that. She watched him make the sandwiches, realizing she was envisioning his ex-girlfriend as a Cindy Crawford or Gisele Bündchen. It made her spirits sink to a new low.

She had to stay focused. This was not a lark or an adventure. A real killer was out there. And what if he was William? Claire couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would hurt Elizabeth.

But she would prove that Jean-Léon was not even remotely connected to Elgin. That was why she was standing in Ian Marshall’s kitchen at three
A.M
. There was no other reason.

He handed her a plate and a glass of skim milk and they went over to the very small kitchen table by the single window in the room. Claire realized she was famished even though she had eaten every single crumb of her two airline meals.

“You’re too thin,” Ian commented. “Want another sandwich?”

“Could I?”

He laughed and got up.

“I’ll call the airlines while you do that,” Claire said. She tried to remain focused as she went to the telephone. Ian’s ticket was business class. Claire knew she had to travel coach, but she really wanted to sit with him. That way she could make sure he remained annoyed and did not forget that she was his official partner. She smiled a little as she called the airline, calculating how many months it would take her to recoup the amount of money spent on such a fare. If she stayed under her new budget by two hundred dollars a month, for a year and a half, she could afford the fare. She booked her seats and returned to the kitchen, this time barefoot. “Done.”

His eyes slid over her and they seemed warm. “Done.” He handed her the gooey sandwich.

Claire ate more slowly this time, somewhat self-conscious, aware of Ian’s regard. When she finished, she realized she was finally tired. “You never told me how you came to suspect William and my father and even Robert Ducasse,” she said, sitting back in her chair.

“Through David. There’s been no trace of Elgin for years, Claire. And then David calls me. Frightened and able to identify him. I have a team working for me, a small team, but they did a full bio on David in less than twenty-four hours. The two significant men in his life who are in Elgin’s age range and who are both European are William and your father. And then there’s the Courbet.” He had been studying his hands as he spoke, as if his mind was racing ahead with other thoughts he did not wish to share with her.

“My father bought it in Paris,” Claire said sharply. “Clearly it had been stolen.”

“Maybe,” Ian said. “It’s fortunate he loaned the painting with several others to the Met a few years ago. One of my guys made the connection; he’d seen the Courbet there, and when he read Lady Elgin’s report in the Elgin file, a quick call revealed the painting’s provenance.”

Claire was silent. “And there’s the missing years from William’s life.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “And both men emigrated to the United States in ’forty-eight, within two months of each other. Interesting.”

She realized she was exhausted. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He stood. “You look beat. Why don’t you hit the sack?”

She looked up at him, thinking suddenly about his very large bed. It was large enough for two.

A deliciously warm feeling unfurled inside of her, and she knew what it was—desire.

Her body was charged with an animal attraction for Ian Marshall. It had been so long since she had felt this way. Not since the early years with David.

Ian might have sensed her thoughts, because he flushed and walked abruptly out of the kitchen. Claire stood slowly. Feeling this way just wasn’t right. Not only was it too soon, it was disloyal and far too complicated.

She took their plates and glasses to the sink and washed them, trying to rein in her wayward sexuality. When she finished, she realized he had been standing for some time in the doorway, watching her. Claire turned as she removed the rubber gloves and their eyes met.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

She shrugged. Her breathing wasn’t as even as it could be. “Habit.”

“I got you a spare quilt. I like to keep the AC high at night.”

She nodded. Would it be so terribly wrong if, after all that she’d been through—all that she was going through—she found solace in his arms? Claire had never slept around. She’d had one boyfriend before David. She’d had only that boy and David as lovers. For her, sex was anything but casual.

But this was the new millennium. Claire knew that many women took lovers as casually as experienced playboys. Many women faced the fact that they had the same physical needs as men. Today such behavior was not just heard of, it was sometimes even applauded. No one would condemn her if she went to bed with Ian Marshall in a casual way.

But Claire knew herself. She would condemn herself the morning after. Either that or she’d be head over heels in love.

“Thanks.” Claire gave him a stiff smile and hurried past him to her room. As she closed the door, she dared a glimpse of his face.

His expression seemed odd, strained, but she might have been imagining it.

Then she realized she had no pajamas. It was the devil, of course, prompting her to misbehave. Claire slipped out of her room.

Ian’s door was open and he was moving around. He sensed her and turned.

She kept her eyes wide and innocent. “May I borrow a T-shirt?”

Ian wasn’t home when Claire woke up at noon, clad only in Ian’s soft pale blue T-shirt. It was only nine in California, so there was no guilt. And amazingly, for the first time since David had died, she felt refreshed and well rested. For one moment, Claire lingered in the queen-size bed, wiggling her toes and enjoying the soft, worn cotton on her bare skin. The T-shirt had come out of the laundry, but she loved wearing it and thought she could detect a masculine scent upon it.

Claire got up and walked over to her bedroom window, which looked out over a part of the terrace that adjoined the living area and his bedroom. It was a beautiful spring day, and tonight they were on their way to Wales.

The bathroom was in the hall. Claire did not hesitate. Still in her makeshift pajamas—the T-shirt covered about four inches of thigh—she stepped out of the bedroom with her toothbrush in hand. The moment she did, she knew Ian wasn’t home. The apartment was silent, and worse, it felt empty. She sighed.

As Claire brushed her teeth, she regarded her gray-eyed reflection in the mirror. She had her father’s eyes, and they were sparkling. She did not look haggard this morning; in fact, she looked okay. Maybe she’d go on a diet of peanut butter for a while, peanut butter and Ian’s company.

Claire wandered into the kitchen after finger-combing her hair. Ian had left her a brief but nice note, telling her he’d gone into the office for a few hours and to make herself at home. He also wrote that a car would pick them up at four; their flight departed at seven
P.M
. Claire found herself smiling as she read the note and scooped coffee, which he’d left out on the counter, into the coffee machine. He was an awfully good host for a bachelor.

As Claire sipped, she debated calling her father and pressuring him to produce the bill of sale for the Courbet. That would do a lot to redirect Ian’s suspicions. And while Claire wasn’t a policewoman, now she was wondering if her father should volunteer to hand over a sample of DNA. If the killer had left anything behind, Claire was convinced it would not match her father’s bodily evidence.

Claire found eggs in the fridge and was scrambling them up and toasting bread when the telephone rang. She assumed it was Ian and did not hesitate. She lifted the receiver before it could ring twice.