My first thought was that I had the world’s worst hangover. What else could it be? A painfully dry mouth, hammers pounding my temples, dizziness and, when I tried to raise myself on one elbow, instant nausea.
I was on a bed, a mattress with no sheets or blankets. Through half-closed eyes, I noticed the walls were bare of decoration and needed a fresh coat of paint. The door across from the bed was closed and the only window was high on the wall next to the bed. I tried to sit up, but the stomach wasn’t having it and I fell back on the pillow and closed my eyes against the shifting room. Only then did what had happened sink in. I had been kidnapped, hit with something hard, and brought to this room.
There was a plastic water bottle next to the bed. I reached for it without raising my head and inspected it close up. It’s easy to be paranoid when you’ve been kidnapped, but I tried to be logical. Sealed cap, brand name. My body was begging me to risk it and I did, forcing myself to sip slowly, the way people in movies were always admonished to do when they were rescued from terrorists or deserts. Even so, I gagged and had to settle for letting some dribble down my throat as I looked for a way out.
When I could, I struggled to a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed, telling my stomach to behave. Maybe I was in a motel. If so, there would be other people around who could help me, unless they were all Norman Bates clones. Involuntarily, I glanced around for a bathroom. No other doors. It would be hard to rent motel rooms that didn’t have bathrooms. So, not a motel? An apartment?
No one who went to the trouble my kidnapper did to get me here in the first place was going to leave the door of the prison open, but I had to try. I could see Charlie’s face later if I had to explain I’d been unlocked up and couldn’t get out. Sudden tears blurred my vision even more than the crack on the head. Would I ever see Charlie’s green eyes again?
I pulled the door toward me inch by inch until a voice—the same voice—said, “I wouldn’t do that,” and an arm with a gun appeared in the doorframe. I jumped and let go of the door handle as if it were on fire.
“Let me go, please,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I don’t know who you are or what this is about, so you can let me go and I won’t say anything.”
“Back on the bed.” The gun barrel waggled up and down. I swallowed hard, retreated to the bed and pulled the pillow up against the backboard. The door slammed shut.
Think, think, I urged myself, useless advice because I was already thinking, just not clearly. Okay, I could yell and beat on the door, although that only made sense if Bruce Willis was nearby and itching to come to my aid. I could get on something high and look out the window, maybe even open it and climb out, but there was no chair. There was no anything except the bed and the table next to it. Thinking the table might work as well as a chair, I rolled to one side to check it out. My feeble spark of energy leaked away when I realized it wasn’t a table, but part of the headboard that extended out a foot on either side of the bed frame. I yanked on it to be sure. Damn.
He’d taken my bag, of course, and my phone. It would have been too easy to have a lipstick to write, “Help” on the window, and other handy Nancy Drew tricks. It must be almost dark. Charlie might be off the plane by now. If so, he’d call the detective and alert him to my latest folly.
The door opened. A man stepped through it quickly and closed it behind him. The first thing I noticed was that he had a gun, after which it was hard to focus on much else. I had to know, however, so I looked up from the barrel and saw Vince Margoletti’s son glaring at me.
“I know you. You’re J.P., the polo player, Vince’s son.”
“That answers one question,” he said and marched over to the bed, grabbing my arm with one strong hand, and yanking me upright. “Does your head hurt? You aren’t seeing double or anything? That’s all I need.”
“Yes, of course it hurts like hell. Thanks for asking.” I couldn’t be too badly injured if my snark was still operational, I realized, and in fact my head was clearing.
“I need to know what you found out.” He dropped my arm and stepped back.
I squinted at J.P. It was hard to see him as a desperate criminal. He looked and sounded preppy, expensive haircut, tanned, wearing a fitted, black leather jacket that must have cost the moon. It was as if he was trying to act a part in a student film. “Found out about what?”
“Tell me what you learned about my father.”
I swallowed. “Are you doing this for him?”
He looked at me as if I were an idiot, which pretty much matched how I felt. “Don’t play games with me. You’re telling them whether or not to accept my father’s proposal.”
“I’m verifying the gift contract he’s setting up with his college. What’s so bad about that?”
“You talked to his accountant.”
“No. Look, there’s some kind of mistake here. “You have to let me go. Everyone will be looking for me.”
“Like who?” he snorted. “The maid who cleans your hotel room? Let’s face it. You’re a long way from home.”
“I have to call my assistant. She’ll be expecting it.”
“It’s Sunday. I don’t think so.”
“My boyfriend. He’ll try to call me.”
“The Ferrari? He’s not staying with you. I checked.”
“No, but—”
“We have some things to talk about and there’s not much time.”
Weird, but his preppy accent took the evil force out of the words. I half expected him to start laughing at any moment, and tell me it was all a prank. People don’t smash other people in the head with real guns for fun. I opened my mouth and he raised the gun. I closed my mouth.
“First, what do you know about the paintings?”
“There are a lot of them. Which do you mean?”
“Don’t mess with me.” He lurched toward the bed.
I scooted down and away. There’s something about seeing the firing end of a gun aimed at you that paralyzes the brain. “I was hired to review your father’s gift contract and to make sure the artwork was properly accounted for. I swear, that’s all.”
“What about the ones his clients gave him? Did you see the papers for them?”
“Papers?” I repeated numbly. “There’s no special documentation for gifts he received in what we have. Wait, is that what the auction papers were?”
The ones that were on the copier? So it was something about the handful of expensive paintings for which the paperwork was incomplete or unusual that was wrong. Was whatever we couldn’t see in them enough to make Bart Corliss jump under a moving train? Larry Saylor must have figured it out or gotten close. “J.P., I’m in the dark. Is your father selling those pieces because he can’t make good on his pledge?”
“My father has more money than God.” He laughed suddenly, that same whinnying sound he had made when he was talking to me at the polo match. “But I don’t.”
“I thought—” I stopped but not in time.
“What?” he said, leaning over me, the gun close to my cheek. “That daddy would make sure his only son had a decent income?” He pulled himself upright with a jerk and started to pace. “You know how much it costs to keep a stable? Ten ponies, two grooms, trailers, saddles, everything? And to stay with the team in Argentina, never mind keeping the loan sharks at bay?”
Argentina. The international phone number I found in Saylor’s notes. “Did Lynthorpe’s vice president call you? Is that why you surprised him at the golf course?”
“Surprise? No way. He agreed to meet me there so I could explain my problem, the sleazeballs who want a hundred thousand like yesterday, and why I had to have the rest of the money.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if he were struggling to focus. “When I met him that night on the course, I thought he’d see that it was a matter of life or death and, since there was so much else the college was getting, he’d look the other way.”
“So he did find something, but he didn’t agree?”
“He got all pious about the evils of gambling.” J.P. was pissed. “Look, I didn’t kill the old guy. All I did was push him into the pond to make my point that he’d better keep quiet. I guess he wasn’t too healthy.”
“He drowned while having a heart attack your threats brought on, and you didn’t try to save him, so you did kill him.” Maybe not the wise thing to point out at this precise moment, but making excuses for murder bugs me.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that when I left.”
I bit my tongue so hard that I felt and tasted a speck of blood. Entitled rich brat. “So your father’s cash gift to Lynthorpe is money he could lend you to pay gambling debts, is that it?”
“Lend? No matter how much he spends, my father has more every year, like magic.”
“Then what? You want it all? Fair enough.” Not really, but talking might calm him down. I hitched myself up on the bed and wiggled to one side a bit. If there was any chance to run out of the room, I was going to be ready.
“Of course not, just my share. There’s nobody else, and he’s always saying how proud he is of my polo, so why not invest in me?”
J.P. was looking at me as if I were the judge on Family Court. I wanted to tell him to grow up, but now wasn’t the right time. I remembered someone telling me J.P. was a playboy even in college and hadn’t done very well in his few semesters at Lynthorpe. I could believe it. It was obvious the son didn’t have his father’s smarts.
He was still talking. Apparently, I was his therapist at the moment. “Such a big shot. I’m sure he’s hired the best P.R. firm already, and the slimy little president of Lynthorpe has worked up some ass-kissing statement about the great man, benefactor to mankind stuff. What do you think, Miss Do-Gooder? Is my father the biggest hero since Bill Gates conquered malaria in Africa?” His voice dripped with bitterness, but something else too. Fear.
I had a mental picture of the senior Margoletti’s manner as he looked me over with those cold eyes, measuring me. Did J.P. not quite measure up? One of Dickie’s friends at the polo match said Vince was proud of his son, but it seemed like J.P. didn’t feel the love. Another image of Vince surfaced in my head, the tightly wound big shot who pushed hard against any holdups in the deal to transfer a fortune in art to the little college he had been only slightly involved with previously, but whose hand opened and closed spasmodically during our meeting.
“You’re not doing this with someone from Lynthorpe?”
“Are you kidding? They tossed me out a few years ago. And anyway, how could they help me?”
So Coe Anderson’s ultimatum had nothing to do with Margoletti’s son. “So who’s in this with you?”
The toothpick. The man J.P. had been talking to who could make sure the apartment didn’t hold any clues for the police. The cop who had been on the scene right after the shooting. The cop Dickie had instinctively disliked. The name clicked into my head smoothly, like it belonged there. I breathed rather than said his name. “McManus—is he involved?”
“Shit, how did you know?” J.P. shouted. “I didn’t tell you! You remember that when he gets here.”
Bad news. “Why would he do something illegal for you?”
“He’s helping me get through this mess at Lynthorpe, that’s all. I did him a favor once, when I was in school here, and he’s paying it back.”
“A favor?”
“Some drugs. I could get them and he could sell them. Nothing major, mostly pot and pills.”
Ah, the innocence of college days among the privileged. But, hey, nothing major. I was beginning to understand why daddy dearest was not willing to bankroll his polo-playing son for the easy life in Argentina. But I had to get out, and fast. “Why am I here? You aren’t thinking you can ransom me? Your father wouldn’t pay ten cents for me, never mind a year’s stabling costs for your horses.”
“When I saw you come out of the building, I knew you’d heard me, so you know too much. McManus is on his way as soon as his shift is over. He’ll take care of you.”
The cocky small-town cop who seemed to be around all the time, who watched from behind dark glasses, who liked showing off for college kids and, apparently, liked selling them drugs? Who was among the first responders when Gabby was shot, come to think of it. The image of Gabby lying on the floor, a pool of bright blood forming under her head, came back to me. Before I could stop myself, I gasped. “He killed Gabby. Or, did you?” I blinked and looked up at him.
“No,” he said, sounding startled, “I didn’t kill her. Who thinks that?”
My ears were buzzing and I was feeling faint. “You killed Larry, and it was either you or McManus who shot Dermott.”
“Not me, he said sharply. “You make me sound like some serial killer. I don’t even own a gun.” I looked at the gun in his hand. “This is McManus’s.”
So J.P.’s job was to hold me there until McManus arrived to deal with me. That meant I had a few minutes or maybe longer, depending on what the crooked cop was up to right now, to get out of here. I needed to make this count.
“J.P. listen to me.” I made my voice as soothing as possible. “You’re a decent guy caught up in something that got too complicated, aren’t you? You would never kill someone deliberately, but bringing McManus in has raised the stakes. Maybe too high? What was your original plan, before McManus went rogue and killed the researcher?” I tried to sound reasonable, as if we were not having a conversation that might be the last one I’d ever have.
He didn’t exactly calm down, but his shoulders slumped a bit and he leaned against the door, the gun in his hand still pointed at me. “I told you. I need money. There’s no not paying these people, especially because they know who my father is. He has over a hundred expensive paintings just sitting in a storage facility. All I wanted was to take one or two, sell them, and head back to South America. No big deal.”
The ones Larry and Gabby couldn’t find on the list sent to them by your father’s accountant? They were pieces you stole, the auction purchases?”
“I only took one. I haven’t got it yet, but I will as soon as I get out of here.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“I didn’t get it and neither did Gabby. We were just trying to come up with a tally for insurers.”
J.P. licked his lips. “Good try. You know those paintings were payoffs. Why else was she copying them?”
“Payoffs? Wait, you’re saying they were payoffs to you?”
J.P. glared at me. “Of course not. Dear old Dad made sure the CEOs knew they had to keep him happy if they wanted to avoid being investigated for stealing intellectual property.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure. His way of making money. High risk, high reward, he told me. Except when I did it.”
I remembered Ethan Byrnstein using the same words, the Silicon Valley mantra.
“So,” I said slowly, “your father’s squeezing the clients he helped by having them buy the paintings at auction, a way to launder the payoffs. You figure it out, and now you want to blackmail your father.” I looked at my watch. “We don’t have much time. McManus is a loose cannon. We can figure out how to present this so you don’t get into too much difficulty—”
“No way. You know too much.” The gun snapped back up to point at my chest.
“So do you, as far as your corrupt cop is concerned.”
“I need to finish this last deal.”
“J.P., trust me, I am not as dangerous at McManus right now. Sitting here waiting for someone who isn’t going to want either of us as witnesses isn’t smart.”
“McManus doesn’t get his share of the money until I’m safely in Argentina. In fact, his plan is to go with me.”
“Someone will figure this out, especially if I’m dead, you and McManus have disappeared, and there are two unsolved homicides at Lynthorpe. There will be a full on investigation and someone will remember you had access to the family storage facility, even if it was high security.”
When Margoletti Senior found out the Hopper painting was gone he’d have the FBI and Interpol all over looking for the trail. Whoever bought it would either ditch it or get caught and go to jail.
“And,” I continued, talking fast as I pieced it together, “if the auction items that were listed as gifts were lumped together, he’d be worried about his own exposure, so he was eager to get the gift booked and the documents accepted without question. But Bart Corliss enters into this somehow. Was your father pressuring him for a painting too?”
J.P. gave me a hard look. “Why should he get all those pieces? If I just asked for one, I’d be set. In his name, of course.”
Vince must have figured out that J.P. got to Corliss, and wanted desperately to shut down the deal. He couldn’t call in the police, but when Corliss committed suicide, the threat of discovery was imminent. Vince had to get all the remaining paintings out of his—and therefore his son’s hands—before J.P. tried anything else. If any of the missing art was noticed, J.P. might be linked to it. But with their relationship so poisoned by J.P.’s fear and sense of entitlement, Vince couldn’t talk to him directly. So, he decided to give it all away.
“So far, your mistakes are all in the area of what is called ‘white collar’ crime,” I said, Larry Saylor’s heart attack aside for now. “It’s McManus who’s in deep trouble. And, J.P., think about it. He plans to kill me because he thinks I know more than I do. But he can’t let you go. I think we should get out of here right now and go to the police. Well,” as J.P. stirred and pushed off the wall, shaking his head violently, “maybe not the local police. I know a San Francisco cop I trust.”
He glanced at the door, and then at the window. The gun, still aimed at me, was unsteady. I was right. J.P. was afraid of McManus. The way he handled the gun, like it was a prop, and the fact that he hadn’t simply taken me to an isolated place and shot me when he grabbed me in the parking lot, told me he wouldn’t kill me.
A flush darkened his face. “I haven’t got much time. We have to get out of the country before my father figures it out and calls the cops.”
If he didn’t have time, then I didn’t. I forced myself to stop thinking of the gun and concentrate on getting away from here fast.