Zinnia (24 page)

“Someone just gave me the name of the forger who produced the fake copy of my father's journal,” Nick said quietly. “I was on my way to talk to him when you showed up. Want to come with me?”

Leo swung around. “Are you serious?”

“Why not? I could use some backup. Just in case.”

Twenty minutes later Leo studied a small nondescript house through the Synchron's front window. “How do you know that this Alfred Wilkes is the man who forged the journal?”

“The source of my information on this is highly reliable.” Nick opened the door. “You coming?”

“Yeah. I'm coming.” Leo looked wary but determined. He got out of the car and stood waiting as Nick came around the front of the vehicle. “The name on the mailbox is Boyd, not Wilkes. You sure this is the right place?”

“I'm sure. Let's go.” Nick went up the walk of the house.

“You're going to just knock on the guy's door?” Leo asked, incredulous.

“Got a better suggestion?”

“I guess not. But Wilkes must know who you are. Why would he open the door to you?”

“Maybe because he'll be afraid to not open it.” Nick knocked twice and waited.

There was no response.

“See?” Leo looked morosely satisfied. “I told you he wouldn't answer.”

“Let's go around back.”

“Huh? Wait. What are you going to do?”

Nick did not bother to respond. He walked quickly around the corner, down the narrow space that separated Wilkes's house from its neighbors, and arrived at a small, tidy backyard. Leo followed, looking more uneasy than ever.

He stood watching as Nick studied the door. “Look, if you're thinking of breaking in or something, you can count me out.”

“All right. Wait for me in the car.” Nick examined the lock as he pulled the thin driving gloves out of his pocket. He was interested to see that the mechanism was much more sophisticated than most jelly-ice house locks.

But it was still child's play for a matrix-talent whose every instinct was to seek out patterns. Even without a prism to focus for him, Nick had no problem with locks. He pulled on the gloves and set to work.

Leo made no move to return to the car. He stood watching, first with sharp concern and acute disapproval and then with gathering curiosity and fascination as Nick made short work of the lock's secrets.

“Where'd you learn how to do that?” he asked as Nick opened the back door.

“I had what some would call a misspent youth.”

“Yeah, I'll just bet you did.”

Nick stepped into the kitchen. “Feel that?”

“Feel what?” Leo glanced around at the pristine interior. “Something wrong?”

“I don't know yet. Don't touch anything.”

“Believe me, I wasn't going to touch a damned thing.”

“Good.” Nick walked through the house the same way he had once walked through the jungles of the Western Islands, with every sense on full alert. The feeling of wrongness was strong, but there was no outward sign of it.

“Looks like Wilkes is a perfectionist to a fault,” Leo
observed in a subdued voice as he glanced into the small bathroom. “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

It was true, Nick thought. Each of the rooms in the single-story house was in painstakingly neat condition. He noted absently that there was a pattern to the order of everything from the way in which the books were shelved to the arrangement of the furniture. Taken as a whole, it all formed a coherent matrix that spoke volumes about Alfred Wilkes.

There was no sign of the owner of the house. But the sense of wrongness persisted.

“Maybe he's out grocery shopping,” Leo suggested.

“I don't think so.” Nick sent out a short surge of talent.

Without a prism he could not hold a focus. But he could use the wild energy long enough to catch some glimpses of the internal workings of the patterns that surrounded him.

For a few seconds the scene around him came into exquisitely sharp focus. The position of every item in the room assumed a deeper significance.

Too neat. Too orderly. The condition of the house was too perfect, even for an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist. Nobody lived in these rooms. This was a forgery of a real house.

Realization came to Nick as his flickering talent dissipated. He looked up. “There's no attic, so there must be a basement. Look for a door.”

Leo frowned. “I don't see one.”

“It has to be here somewhere.”

“Not everyone is into secret rooms that way you are, Chastain.”

“Whoever owns this house definitely has another place where he lives and works.” Nick walked slowly back through each of the perfect little rooms.

He found no telltale lines in the walls, no secret
doors inside the closets. Together he and Leo pulled up the area rugs, but there was no trapdoor in the floor.

“The rooms where Wilkes really lives have to be here somewhere. Stonebraker is never wrong when it comes to this kind of stuff.” Nick reached the kitchen and stood gazing at the various appliances. “Notice anything missing?”

Leo glanced around. “Nope. Looks like a normal kitchen.”

“Except for one thing. The icerator isn't humming.”

Leo looked at the large white appliance in the far corner. “You're right. Maybe he turned it off.”

“Or maybe he uses it for something besides keeping food cold.” Nick walked across the kitchen and opened the icerator door.

There were no shelves or containers of food inside. The interior was at room temperature. At the back of the wide appliance was the thin, almost invisible outline of a door.

Nick reached into the icerator and shoved hard against the back panel. It swung open without protest to reveal a flight of steps.

Leo whistled soundlessly. “Five hells. How did you guess?”

“You've seen one hidden entrance, you've seen 'em all. Ready?”

“Yeah. I hate to admit it, but this is getting interesting.”

“It does kind of grow on you.” Nick stepped into the icerator.

Leo followed quickly.

Halfway down the basement steps, Nick knew that he had found the real house, the place where Alfred Wilkes lived and plied his trade.

There was another complete apartment here, including
kitchen, bath, and bedroom. But most of the downstairs suite was devoted to what was obviously a workroom.

And it was a shambles.

Leo whistled softly. “Synergistic hell.”

Benches, racks of chemicals, tools, reams of paper, and various instruments were scattered around the room. Drawers stood open, their contents in jumbled disarray. A lamp lay smashed on the floor.

Nick studied the scene closely. Superficially, it bore a striking resemblance to Morris Fenwick's ransacked bookshop. But there was something different about the matrix pattern of this mess. Unlike the other situation, which had struck him as a completely random piece of vandalism, this bore the subtle earmarks of a frantic but deliberate search.

“Someone really tore this place apart.” Leo sounded shaken.

“The question is, did he find whatever it was that he was looking for.” Nick crouched down to study some papers scattered on the floor.

They were miscellaneous receipts for some expensive office equipment. Forged receipts, he concluded after a closer glance. Probably commissioned by one of Wilkes's clients for use in an embezzlement scheme.

“If Wilkes was a professional forger he must have made a few enemies over the years,” Leo noted.

“Yes.” Nick rose and began to walk slowly through the disarray, searching for some pattern that would give him a clue to the object of the hasty search.

“I wonder what happened to Wilkes.”

“I don't see any signs of a struggle. No blood on the floor. I don't think he was around when this happened.”

Leo looked up from an examination of a small printing press. “He probably decided to take a long
vacation in one of the other city-states after he finished forging the Chastain journal. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have gone all the way out to the Western Islands. Maybe a little farther. He must have known that sooner or later you'd come calling.”

“Yes.” Nick paused beside a desk and surveyed the cluttered surface. “He must have known. He was the cautious, careful type. He'd have left town as soon as he got his money.”

A glint of gold on the floor caught his eye as he turned away from the desk. It winked at him from under a table. He bent down and scooped up a small cuff link. An elegantly scrolled letter
C
entwined with a smaller
O
was inscribed on it.

“Find something interesting?” Leo asked from the other side of the room.

“No.” Nick dropped the small bit of beautifully wrought gold into his pocket. He would have to pay another call on his uncle to ask him why one of his cuff links had been found in the secret room of a master forger.

“Any idea why someone would have done this?” Leo asked.

Nick glanced at more papers lying on the floor. “I think whoever went through this room was trying to cut off the money trail.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's a pattern to the papers that have been pulled out of the drawers and the desk. Most of them relate to routine business matters. Receipts, bills, orders, that kind of thing. Some are real, some are forged.”

Leo glanced at the papers. “So?”

“I have a hunch that whoever went through this room was trying to find any records Wilkes might have made regarding the sale of the forged copy of the Chastain journal.”

“You mean the man who ordered the fake journal came back because he figured out that Wilkes might have made some incriminating records of the deal?”

“It's one of a couple of possibilities.” Nick thought of the cuff link in his pocket. “Money leaves a stain that is just as permanent as blood. Very hard to wash out.”

Leo slanted him a sidelong glance. “You sound like you know something about the subject.”

“Anyone who runs a large business has to know something about it. A money trail can be dangerous.” Nick was suddenly annoyed with himself. “I should have considered that element of the matrix more closely. I've been concentrating on other factors.”

“Think the guy who did this found what he was looking for?”

Nick surveyed the room. His attention was caught by the broken lamp. “I don't know. But it's clear he was in a rage when he did it.”

“How can you tell?”

Nick gestured toward the smashed lamp. “It didn't fall accidentally. It was hurled against a wall.”

“Whoever tore this place apart was real mad, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe he was scared, too,” Leo offered. “Maybe like the forger, he figured out that you'd come calling.”

Zinnia held the phone in one hand and used the other to flip through the latest copy of
Architectural Synergy
as Wilhelmina continued her tirade.

“The entire family is appalled.” Wilhelmina's voice rose to a shrill pitch. “Absolutely appalled. How can you shame us like this? What will that nice Duncan Luttrell think when he sees that dreadful picture in that cheap tacky tabloid?”

“You'll be glad to know that Duncan called an hour ago, Aunt Willy. We had a pleasant chat.”

“Thank God. Such a nice man. How on St. Helens did you explain that disgusting photo?”

Duncan had been kind, understanding, and very sympathetic. He had, however, offered a gentle warning about the folly of risking one's reputation with a man such as Nick Chastain. Zinnia had resisted the nearly overpowering urge to tell him to mind his own business. She knew that Duncan meant well.

“I told him the same thing I'm telling you. Mr. Chastain has hired me to restore the interiors of his new property. He was showing me the house.”

“That isn't his property. It's the old Garrett estate.”

Zinnia smiled. “Better start calling it the new Chastain estate.”

“Nonsense,” Wilhelmina sniffed. “That would imply that it belongs to the legitimate branch of the Chastain family, which it most certainly does not.”

“Has anyone told you that you're a snob, Aunt Willy?”

“Someone in the family must maintain standards.”

“I know, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. Look, I've got to run. I've got an appointment in a few minutes. Goodbye, Aunt Willy.”

“I haven't finished, yet—”

Zinnia pretended not to hear Wilhelmina's squawk of protest. She hung up the phone very gently.

She exhaled deeply, tossed the magazine aside, and leaned back in her chair. Morosely she eyed the heavy glass paperweight that sat atop a stack of sketches.

The sketches had been made for a new client who had phoned a few minutes earlier to fire her. The client had been horrified by the photo in
Synsation.

Business was drying up quickly. She wondered if she ought to accept Nick's offer of a real job. She needed the money and the designer in her was excited at the prospect of redoing the classic interiors of the new Chastain estate.

But the part of her that was falling in love with Nick
found it difficult to accept the fact that another woman would live in the house once it was completed. Better not to pour her heart and soul into that particular project, she decided. Things were dicey enough as it was.

On impulse, she reached for the phone and punched in his private number. Feather answered.

“Yeah?”

“You have a lovely telephone personality, Ms. Feather. So warm and welcoming. Is Mr. Chastain back yet?”

“He just walked in the door with your brother.”

“Leo?” Zinnia was so surprised she nearly dropped the phone. “What's he doing there?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Put him on the phone, please, Feather.”

“Mr. Chastain or your brother?”