The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (63 page)

In his study, Michael Archer watched his mother move across the living room to pick up her son, watched her collapse with him on the damask sofa, watched her throw back her head and laugh when he tickled her ribs.

No sound came from her mouth.
 
But her eyes were shining.

He picked up the remote, pointed it at the television, zoomed in and froze on her face.
 
She looked happy.
 
He held the shot for a few seconds, then pressed a button and faded into the next clip.

Michael leaned toward the television and tried to remember the lost scenes of his childhood as they unfolded before him.
 

Anne Ryan stood on tip-toe as she placed a large tinfoil star on top of a Christmas tree decorated with strings of popcorn, twinkling lights, frosted glass balls.
 
When the star was in place, she stepped back and smiled at her handiwork.
 
She turned toward the camera, curtsied, then made a face and pointed across the room.

The camera whirled and swept across a small apartment that was neat, festive and filled with people.
 
His father was sitting in an antique rocking chair, cuddling an infant in the crook of his arm.
 
Louis kissed the child on the forehead, brushed its cheek with the back of his hand.

Michael lifted the receiver to his ear.
 
“How did you get these films onto DVD?” he asked his father, who had called moments before.
 
Louis had asked Michael to go to his study and look in the drawer beneath the television.
 
There, Michael found a DVD player and a stack of DVDs.

“They were brought to a man on Third Avenue,” Louis said.
 
“He takes old home movie footage and puts it onto DVD.” There was a beat of silence.
 
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Why isn’t there any sound?”

“Your grandfather shot everything.
 
He used his camera.”

Michael watched his mother.
 
She was now wearing a long, flowing white dress and holding a stuffed Easter bunny in front of her son.
 
He watched himself giggle, watched himself grin.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I want you to remember your mother as she was.
 
It’s been a long time, Michael. You’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Michael said.
 
I haven’t.

The line went dead.

When the phone rang thirty minutes later, Michael was viewing the final DVD. Feeling drained and exhausted, he paused the frame and reached for the telephone, thinking it was his father.

It wasn’t.

For the next several moments, Michael listened quietly to the man who gave him the loan in Vegas.
 
He listened to him threaten, he listened to him shout.

“I understand in a few days your father’s going to ask a favor of you,” the man said. “For your sake, you better do it, Michael.
 
Because if you don’t, if you decide not to kill Redman, your father won’t give us the final payment—and then Mr. Santiago will be asking me to do a favor for him.”
 

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

“How are you this morning?”

Diana turned from the window she was standing at and looked across the small living room at Jack Douglas.
 
He was standing in the arched doorway, holding two cups of coffee and wearing a faded blue bathrobe that was spotted with purplish bleach stains and frayed at the sleeves.

Diana shrugged.
 
“I’m all right,” she said.
 
“Considering.”

Jack nodded—he knew.

His eyes puffy from lack of sleep, his hair tousled, he moved to the center of the room and sat at one end of a sofa.
 
“I made coffee,” he said.
 
“Want a cup?”

Diana said she would love a cup.
 
As she crossed the room, it occurred to her how strange it was that they were here together, comforting each another in his apartment. Yesterday, after the police left with Eric, Jack went upstairs to her bedroom, packed her an overnight bag and told her to come home with him.

Diana didn’t want to be alone in her apartment.
  
She was grateful for his kindness and agreed.
 
Now, as she sat beside Jack, she wondered again how anyone involved in the takeover of WestTex Incorporated would get through these next few days without losing whatever sanity they somehow had managed to keep.

Jack handed her one of the steaming mugs.
 
“That was Harold on the phone a few minutes ago,” he said.
 
“He and the board have been caucusing with WestTex and Chase since last night.
 
Frostman has been key to moving things forward.
 
The paperwork’s nearly finished.
 
Chase has cut us a deal.
 
Everything’s a go.”

“Then we leave tomorrow afternoon for Iran?”

Jack nodded, relieved that Celina’s funeral was scheduled for early morning, hours before he, Diana and Harold would have to board Redman International’s private Lear to London, then on to Iran.

“It’s a long flight,” he said.
 
“By the time we arrive to sign the final papers, it’ll be Tuesday morning in New York and the deal with WestTex will have just been completed.
 
Harold seems to feel that everything will go smoothly from here on out.”

Diana smiled wryly.
 
She sipped her coffee.

“I see you’re having a difficult time believing that, too,” Jack said.

“Can you blame me?”

“Not at all.
 
In fact, I’d be surprised if something doesn’t go wrong.
 
Too much has happened.
 
My trust in this deal and in Redman International has dissolved.
 
Someone is out to destroy George and his family.”

“They still haven’t found the man who murdered Celina, have they?”

Jack shook his head.
 
All night long he had relived Celina’s death, trying to convince himself that he’d done everything he could to save her, but nevertheless feeling that he hadn’t done nearly enough.
 
“Harold said they’ve found nothing.
 
Not a thing.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“What’s all right?
 
I know that once this deal is complete, I’m out of here.
 
I’m going to leave Redman International, disappear somewhere.
 
Before I do anything else, I have to get my head on straight, Diana.”

“You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”

“Not a wink.”

“Me either,” she said.
 
“And I’m dreading going back to my apartment.
 
If I didn’t have to go back, Jack, I wouldn’t go.”

“Then don’t,” he said.
 
“You can stay with me until everything blows over.
 
When you’re ready to go back, you go back.”

“I wish it were that easy,” she said.
 
“But there are a stack of files I have to collect before we leave for Iran—and much of them are in my office at home.”

Jack finished the last of his coffee.
 
“Let me go with you,” he said.
 
“To be honest, I’d be grateful for anything that can help take my mind off Celina.”

*
  
*
  
*

The air was still when they entered her apartment.

There was no commotion, no officers talking into their cell phones, no one there to kneel by her side and tell her that everything was going to be all right while she sat stunned as they wheeled Eric’s body out of her apartment.

Instead, there was only quiet and it left her vacant.
 
As Diana followed Jack inside, she kept thinking how unreal this still was.
 
Just yesterday, she thought, as they moved into the living room and she saw the winding oak staircase, they had found Eric Parker dead at the bottom of it.

Jack must have sensed her uneasiness.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
 
“Where’s your office?”

Diana nodded toward the stairs, but she made no effort to climb them.

“Do you want me to get the files for you?”

She hesitated, but then said that she didn’t.
 
The files she needed were stored in her desk, packed away in a black crocodile briefcase.
 
Not only would it be easier for her to get the files herself, but she also knew that Eric had been using her computer yesterday afternoon.
 
She was still curious to see what he was so curious about.
 
“But I’d like it if you came with me,” she said.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Diana hesitated only briefly before she approached the closed office door.
 
She turned the handle and gave it a push. The door swung open, coming gently to rest against the rubber doorstop, exposing a plain room filled with the muted light of an overcast sky.

She moved toward her desk and noticed the large, black smudges soiling the back of her computer.
 
Jack noticed it, too.
 
“Looks as if you’ve had some computer problems,” he said.
 
“What do you suppose he was up to?”

“No idea.”

But she was determined to find out.
 
She sat at her desk and turned on the computer.
 
But when she flipped the switch, the machine did nothing.
 
She checked and saw that it was unplugged.
 
Plugging it back in awakened an odd buzzing sound, almost as if the computer’s circuits were frying.
 
The screen flickered—once, twice—and it then turned in on itself.

Jack reached over her shoulder and pulled the plug.

Diana stared at the screen.
 
“He broke it,” she said.
 
“Why?”

“We could spend all day wondering why.”

She turned in her chair and looked around the room, still trying to figure out why Eric would use her computer and then break it.
 
It didn’t make sense.
 
She wondered if he was after information of some sort, but even that didn’t make sense.
 
There was nothing Eric didn’t know about all aspects of Redman International.
 

Like her, he had had top clearance to all files and he was well-versed in every one of them.
 
And even if he had forgotten something in the two weeks that had passed since his termination—which, knowing him, she doubted—she had openly discussed several ongoing deals with him during the time they’d spent together.
 
She had updated him on everything—including the takeover of WestTex Incorporated.

There was nothing he didn’t know.
 
And yet he used and broke her computer for a reason.

She looked over at the long line of metal file cabinets along the far left wall and wondered if he had found her key and gone through those.