The Marquesa's Necklace (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (16 page)

“Or he wanted to make one last score,” Scotty suggested. “But I haven’t found anything that tells us where the necklace came from.”

I felt like we were missing something obvious, but I was out of ideas. So was everyone else.

Lando made a run for beer, snacks and supper while Scotty taught me how to hide the location from which I was accessing the internet from by using a system of special servers. Proxy sites, he called them. The lessons were interesting, but reminded me of the driving instructions Jake gave me. I would never put the information to use. Elijah took a nap—I hadn’t realized he’d been awake almost the entire night, first rescuing me, and then sitting by my bedside making sure I was all right.

I should have been falling all over myself to thank him for helping me, but I was holding back. My gut told me he was hiding something, something important. He was a Hennessey, after all.

We took shifts that night to monitor the hotel security cameras and the police radio. Scotty and Lando took one shift; Elijah and I the other. Lando and Scotty commandeered Elijah’s room when it was our turn to run the computers. We flipped a coin to decide who would work with whom, but I suspected Scotty used a two-headed coin. He seemed to imagine himself a matchmaker.

I got my room to myself. The guys moved one of the nightstands in front of the hallway door. Then they stacked a couple of empty beer cans on top.

“It may not stop a determined intruder,” Elijah said as he examined their work. “But at least it will make so much noise that no one will be able to sneak in.” I thought the whole thing was overkill, but I wasn’t going to tell him so.

At least I didn’t have to worry about Sarah any more. Scotty helped me send her an anonymous email to tell her to stay away from Eric. I wanted to put a whole lot more in the message, but he wouldn’t let me. “The less information she had the better,” he said. At least for a while.

Elijah and I took the first shift. He wasn’t tired after his nap, and I was too keyed up to go to bed early. He was supposed to be watching the webcams although I think he was texting on his cell more than anything else. I had the headset on monitoring the police. Not much was going on in Oak Grove that night, with most of the high-schoolers out of town for a football game. One call reporting a possible sighting of me, but it turned out to be a lady walking her dog.

So I killed time reading the Pittsburgh newspaper. At one point, I put down the paper and clicked the mouse. “That’s strange,” I said. “Sounds like this guy is making a call on his personal cell and his mike key is stuck. But he keeps talking about the rabbit.”

“Are you recording it?” Elijah asked as he leaned forward and jerked the headset cable out of the front of the speakers so he could hear the conversation too.

“Yeah, I started the record function right away.” I tapped the screen to show the progress bar. “It’s weird listening to just one side of the conversation.”

“Who’s on duty?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know their codes. The voice sounds familiar, but with the static I can’t quite place it.”

Elijah turned up the volume about the time the officer released his mike key. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve never heard of the police catching rabbits.” I paused to consider the possibilities. “Although I suppose there might be some kids in town keeping them as 4-H projects. If one got stolen, I guess the police would handle it. But why would they be taking the call on the phone?”

“Keep going,” Elijah encouraged me.

“So we assume that it isn’t police business, and it wasn’t a rabbit they were talking about.” I tried to recall the details of the bits I’d overheard. Something about the rabbit going deep underground and having to flush her out. Why would they refer to a rabbit as a her? How would they know its sex? Then it struck me.

Shit. I was the rabbit.

Chapter Twenty

I must have looked like I was going to faint, because Elijah twisted the cap off a bottle of water and thrust the bottle into my trembling hand. About half of it slid down my throat before I recuperated enough to talk. “Well, I guess that confirms your suspicions,” I said, still shaking. “I didn’t want to believe that anyone on our local force was involved, but I guess that proves me wrong.”

He fiddled with the computer and played the message back. We both listened intently. “Are you sure you don’t know who that is?” he asked.

“The radio distorted the voice just enough to make it unrecognizable,” I said, shaking my head. I used the mouse to hit replay. When it finished I closed my eyes and twisted the water bottle between my fingers. “I got nothing.”

Comforting hands cupped my shoulders, and despite my instincts, I didn’t pull any self-defense moves. Instead, I leaned back, eyes still closed, and enjoyed the gentle kneading. “So,” I asked. “Can you do your magic and find out who is on duty?”

When the hands disappeared, I wished I’d kept quiet. “That shouldn’t be too hard,” Elijah said, taking his seat and turning towards the other laptop. I tried to watch what he was doing, but he typed so fast I couldn’t keep up. At least one of the proxy sites Scotty showed me flashed by.

“I’m going to have to let the city know about this leak when we’re done,” he muttered as he worked. “They need to tighten their security.” He worked for a few more minutes. “And we’re in,” he announced, sitting back. “Now I need to find the scheduling roster. Never needed to see it before. Hopefully, it’s not locked down with a password.”

He frowned as he scrolled through a list of files. “What would you name a document you updated each week?”

“Did you try weekly schedule? Or duty roster? With a date on the end to show the current one.”

“Sounds too easy,” Elijah muttered. “Too logical.” He grinned. “That’s just one of the many things I like about you.”

I bent to pick up the headphones that had fallen on the floor to hide my blush. “You want complicated? Try D-U-T-R-O-S-S-C.” I spelled it out letter by letter. “As behind the times as our city officials can be, they probably haven’t updated the name since they got their first computer system.”

“By George, I think she’s got it!” He pointed at the screen.

“No way!” I craned my neck to see, and punched his upper arm. Clear as day, the highlighted file was called “Duty Schedule.”

“Ouch! That hurt!” he said, rubbing his arm.

“Right.” I ran my hand over the same spot. Then his hand slid on top of mine. I looked up, and nearly got lost in the longing in his eyes.

He pulled away first. “Do you recognize any of these names?” he asked, opening the document. I leaned in close and took a glance. I caught a hint of his aftershave. It had that earthy scent I’d first smelled in the library.

“Almost all of them.” I answered. “Who’s on tonight?”

His head pushed in close to mine. “If I am reading this correctly, Carey, Clearmont, Felton, McReedy. Looks like they added in Smith at the last minute.”

I wondered if he was going to try to kiss me. It sounded like a good idea, but when he didn’t I said “I’ve met everyone but McReedy. Still can’t tell which one made that call. I don’t know them well enough to say.”

“Without knowing who the call was to, it doesn’t help much.” Elijah scratched his head. “He might have been calling another cop, someone else in town, or someone all the way across the country. We just don’t know.”

“Any way to trace the call?”

“You got the number it came from?” Lando asked, emerging from the next room, yawning and stretching.

“No,” I said

Lando twisted until his spine cracked, then asked, “They called here?”

“No,” Elijah said. “We overheard it on the police band.”

Lando raised one eyebrow. “Recorded?” Elijah and I nodded in unison. “Probably no way to trace it,” Lando said regretfully. “But I’d like to hear it. After you two go to bed. Either separately or together, makes no nevermind to me.” He smiled and ducked as a not-quite-empty water bottle was tossed at him, the only weapon I had available.

Sleep didn’t come easy. Alone in my bed I tossed and turned, I wondered if I was safe. Even with the nightstand in front of the door, was there a way for someone to force their way into my room? Or was this all an elaborate ploy to get me to reveal the location of the necklace? What if it wasn’t stolen? After all, I hadn’t found any newspaper reports to indicate it had been.

I found myself wishing I could talk to Jake. I imagined his strong arms wrapped around me, making me feel safe. We had been so good together, I could almost forgive him for all the other women. But as I fell into a restless sleep, I remembered the expression on his face as he knocked one of the policemen to the ground as we were arrested. Death had been only a second away for the man, at the hands of my ex-lover.

Lando brought us breakfast from the lobby before taking off again. Then he headed to Pittsburgh to pick up the supplies needed for my disguise. Perfect timing, he said—the theater arts students at the university would all be out looking for costuming supplies, and he would blend right in. I hoped so, because I was getting cabin fever staying in the rooms.

It was like a scene out of “Mad, Mad World” when housekeeping showed up. While the maid emptied the garbage cans and cleaned the bathroom in the guys’ room, Scotty and Elijah moved the nightstand from in front of my door back to its place by the bed. While she cleaned Elijah’s room, I hung out in the bathroom of mine. And when she went out to the hallway to move the supply cart closer to the door of my room, Elijah hustled me through the connecting doors to the guys’ room. Because my clothes were hung up in the closet with the door closed, we were pretty sure she would never suspect a woman was staying there. Especially after Elijah made a point of spilling a small amount of his aftershave in my bathroom.

Scotty tried to keep me entertained by teaching me the basics of how computers all over the world can communicate with each other. IP addressing, he called it. Interesting stuff, and very logical, but I was only half paying attention. A quarter of my mind was occupied with monitoring the police radio, the other quarter kept wondering what Elijah was up to.

He was in his room working on his laptop, the door half open so he could hear us. When I asked what he was doing in there, Scotty just shrugged his shoulders, “Business, I expect.” Not real helpful, but I let it slide. The three of them were still keeping secrets, and I was waiting for the right opportunity to call them on it.

Evidently, there is only so much of listening to the police investigating reports of cars backfiring that one person can take. That, and the short night caught up to me, and I started yawning. A lot. And loudly. I closed my eyes for just a moment. Really.

I had that dream again. The one where the ghost picks me up and kisses me on the forehead.

When I woke up, I was lying on top of one of the beds in the guys’ room. Scotty was nowhere to be seen Elijah was manning my spot at the laptop, headphones on and his back turned to me, monitoring the cameras. He must have had eyes in the back of his head, because as I stretched, he turned towards me.

“Have a good nap?” he asked as he adjusted the headset so only one ear was covered.

“I didn’t plan on falling asleep,” I said, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

“I should’ve offered to relieve you earlier. We kept you up late last night.”

“You were up just as late,” I pointed out. “And you look as awake as you did this morning.”

He grinned. “Caffeine,” he said, holding up his coffee cup. “Lots and lots of caffeine. Besides, I’m used to it.”

“Why?”

“Occupational hazard. When I get on a roll with a project, I have a hard time stopping.”

That reminded me of a question that had been bugging me. “What do you do?”

He turned away and studied the security cameras for a moment. “Programming,” he said. I could make out blurry images of people moving around in the lobby downstairs. But he didn’t seem too worried, so I relaxed a bit.

“I hope your boss won’t be upset with you being gone.” I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to force it to behave, turned my back to him and did a quick check to make sure nothing had come unbuttoned while I slept.

“It’s all good. I haven’t taken a vacation for so long that a few days won’t hurt anything.”

Now I felt guilty. Vacation days can be hard to save up, and he was using his up on me. Just because Jake asked him to do it. That explained why he had disappeared several weeks earlier.

I stood up, walked over and peered through a crack in the curtains. From the looks of the dark clouds, rain was on its way. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He took the headphones off, pushed the chair back, and swiveled around. “For what?” he asked.

“For all the trouble I’ve caused. For you having to interrupt your life for me. For the people who’ve gotten hurt because of me.” The image of Detective Thomason flashed in my memory. I looked down and blinked hard to try to hold back the tears.

When I looked up he was in front of me. “None of this is your fault, Harmony,” he said, his lips in a taut line. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Jake’s. I love my cousin, but I’m not blind to what he’s done.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Tell me I’m right. You know I’m right.”