Haunting Rachel (33 page)

A yellow rose lay on the rug at her feet.

She bent slowly and picked up the flower, turning it in her fingers as she straightened. She had glanced in her room as she passed, and the rose had been in the vase on her nightstand, as always. Now this one …

“If this is some kind of joke,” she murmured in a shaky voice, “I’m not amused.”

She hadn’t expected an answer, but a glimpse of movement made her look quickly at the far end of the hallway.
The door that led up to the smallest of the three attics was there. And it was slowly opening.

If she had behaved rationally, Rachel realized a long time later, she would have turned around and gotten out of there, especially when the distant doorway remained empty. Instead, she found herself walking slowly toward it, the rose still gripped between her fingers, her heart thudding.

Just a stray breeze, probably. Darby or one of her guys had undoubtedly left the door ajar, and some stray breeze had blown it open.

That was all.

Rachel stopped in the doorway, gazing at the stairs leading upward. Then she took a step back. Ridiculous. This was ridiculous—

“Rachel …”

It was only a whisper of sound, so faint she could almost convince herself she had not heard it at all. Almost. Except that the hair on the back of her neck was stirring, and she knew this was not her imagination.

Drawing a deep breath, she flipped up the switch on the wall at the foot of the stairs, then slowly climbed upward. At the top of the lighted stairs, she paused, looking slowly around. This space, like the other attics and the basement, was stuffed with furniture and other cast-off items, and since nothing had yet been tagged or sorted, it was clear Darby had not yet begun her work here.

But Rachel’s realization of that was distant and occupied little of her attention. She knew what she was supposed to be looking at. It was a storage chest that had, for most of her life, been in her bedroom. On one of her brief visits home after Tom’s death, her mother had explained that she had moved the chest to the attic. To spare Rachel,
because in it she had kept all the mementos and notes and silly little gifts from Tom.

Rachel had not been able to bring herself to sort through any of the things, not then, and not in all the years since.

Now the lid was raised invitingly, the bare lightbulb hanging directly above it seeming to spotlight the open chest, and Rachel knew without a doubt that she was being asked—commanded—to look inside.

“No.” Her voice sounded to her unnaturally loud in the close silence of the attic.

“Rachel …” Almost inaudible, like a breath of wind.

“No.”
She felt her eyes sting with tears, blurring her vision, and she had to swallow hard before she could go on. “I’m sorry. But you’re … you’re gone, Tom. You’ve been gone a long time. And I love somebody else now.”

She opened her fingers and let the rose fall to the floor.

There was a moment when the lights seemed to flicker, or something else seemed to happen, and when Rachel looked down, blinking the tears away, there was no rose. When she looked at the chest, it was closed, the layer of dust atop it undisturbed.

She stood there for a long time, listening, but heard nothing. She turned around and went back down the stairs, turning off the lights at the bottom and closing the attic door carefully.

She walked on, pausing only when she reached the door of her bedroom, and looked inside. There was no yellow rose on her nightstand, no bud vase. And when she went to open her jewelry box, there was no gold identification bracelet inside. She was afraid to look in her desk drawer, but when she did, the note from Tom was there.

On white notepaper, the kind he had used ten years ago.

Rachel sat down on her bed and murmured, “I must be a lot more tired than I thought I was.”

Or perhaps she had just needed concrete things to make her face and deal with her feelings about Tom. It seemed as good an answer as any, and infinitely preferable to the notion that she was losing her mind.

After a while, Rachel got up and went downstairs. A glance at a clock surprised her; only a few minutes had passed since Fiona had left the house. Shaking her head, Rachel went into the study and looked around slowly.

Maiden in a locked castle she might be, but only she had known her father well enough to have any hope of figuring out where he might have left a key for her to find. And without that key, they might well never have all the answers they needed. She concentrated on that.

Secret things in secret places.

However secret his private loans had been, Duncan Grant would not have left even that part of his estate untended. He would have made certain that everything had been set up in such a way that when Rachel eventually and inevitably discovered what he had been doing, she would not only be unharmed financially, but would have the option of safely continuing what her father had begun so many years before.

That meant detailed records, tax information, and a clear explanation of his system.

And given his secrecy on the matter, he would have left that information where it would not be casually discovered after his death, but where Rachel
specifically
would know where to look for it once she found the notebooks and journal.

Of course, he had certainly not counted on his daughter being so distracted by attempts on her own life and the fact that she had fallen in love, so what might have seemed obvious to him eluded her now.

“Where?” Rachel muttered, looking around absently. “Where does X mark the spot? Come on, Dad, I need your help. Where did you leave it? Where would you hide a key?”

A key.

Secret things in secret places.

Her mother’s handkerchiefs had hidden secret letters.

A woman would hide her secrets among treasured things put safely away; where would a man hide his secrets?

More important, where would he hide them if he expected his daughter to know where to look?

“You already know.”

“No, I don’t. I-”

“You know. You only have to remember.”

The dream conversation came back to her vividly, and Rachel frowned as she considered it. Her subconscious nagging at her again?
Was
there something she needed to remember?

Her father.

Secrets.

Secret things in secret places.
Secret things in secret places.

“Of course. My God—why didn’t I remember it before now?”

“It’s our secret, Rachel. Just yours and mine.”

As a small child, she had often played in her father’s study, and she had been endlessly fascinated with the desk he had designed and had custom-built years before. She
had loved the gleaming wood, the deep drawers, the leather desk set he had always used.

And the secret.

Rachel had to sit down on the floor in order to get far enough underneath the desk, and it took her several moments to remember which place in the kneehole to look, but eventually she found it. A small section of wood with no seams showing, so cunningly crafted it would have taken an inch-by-inch measurement—if not a total dismemberment of the desk—to determine hidden space.

Carefully, Rachel’s fingertip probed, and she felt the tiny indentation. And pressed firmly.

Obediently, the secret compartment popped open. And her fingers closed over a small box hidden inside.

Adam looked over Nick’s shoulder as he worked at the computer on his desk. “I still can’t believe this Alan Fuller just walked into your bank a couple of weeks ago and calmly rented a safe deposit box.” He shook his head. “We might well have had all the answers we needed right under our noses for two weeks.”

“It was a smart thing to do,” Nicholas noted absently as he began to access the information on the disk. “As long as either he or Sammy got word to me, getting the disk was easy for me, even without the renter’s key. In the meantime, Walsh didn’t have a clue where it was—and he’s been in and out of here at least twice recently.”

“I’m wondering if Walsh had Fuller’s place searched before or after he was killed. If he did, and if he got his hands on the key, he’ll be turning up here or sending somebody else quick.”

Nicholas nodded. “If we get anything at all off this disk, we’ll need to move fast.”

Grim, Adam said, “Let’s just hope whatever we get is worth two lives. If we don’t get him for anything else, I want to burn Walsh for Fuller and Sammy.”

“You and me both.” Nick’s skilled fingers moved lightly over the keys. “Ah.”

After a moment, Adam said, “I’ll be damned.”

“So he was an explosives expert, just as he claimed,” Nicholas noted as he read the information on the screen. “But also a computer genius. It looks like Walsh was just a bit careless with access.”

“People who don’t understand computers often are,” Adam observed, also reading. “Look at that—Sammy was right. Lists of paid-off judges and cops, with dates and amounts. Bribes and kickbacks. Everything necessary to bust Walsh’s entire operation here in Richmond.”

“The D.A. is going to love us,” Nick said.

“What about Duncan’s death? Is there some record of that explosion?”

Nick frowned as he read. “Nothing so far. Let me go back a few more months….”

In her office, Mercy worked at her own computer.

She knew Nick and Adam had gone out and that they’d returned, and she’d been unable to answer Leigh’s so-casual question when the office manager had come in to ask her why Nick had made a sudden and unexpected trip downstairs to the lock boxes.

She had, of course, wondered herself, but made herself do as she’d promised Nick. She stayed in her office and asked no questions.

And worked at her computer.

It was an hour or so after Nick and Adam had returned
that she suddenly frowned and leaned toward her screen. Well, now, that was odd.

That was very odd.

The box was small and made of intricately carved wood. It had been a gift from Rachel to her father several years before. Another way Duncan had ensured she would search for what was hidden; eventually, she would have wondered what had happened to the box, because her father had loved it. “Oh, Dad …”

Rachel climbed back up and into her father’s chair, and put the box on top of the desk to open it. Inside, as she had expected, was a small key, obviously to a safe deposit box. And a note.

The key to the safe deposit box was neatly labeled with the name of the bank.

Rachel shook her head over it, but she was smiling. She had no idea if her intuitions and judgments about people would prove as accurate as her father’s had been, but she was willing to put them to the test.

Then her smile faded, and she looked at the key in her hand, wondering if among that information lay the connection
that she and Adam—and Nick—had been searching for. The connection between Jordan Walsh and someone Duncan had known and trusted.

She wanted to leave now, to rush out to the bank and find out exactly what information awaited her in the box. But she also wanted Adam to be with her. Whether or not his meeting had been successful, he might be at the bank with Nick—

The phone rang.

Hoping it was Adam, Rachel hurried to pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

“May I speak to Rachel Grant, please?”

Rachel didn’t recognize the voice. “This is she.”

“Miss Grant, this is John Elliot. I got a message to call this number and speak to either you or an Adam Delafield.”

For a moment, Rachel was totally blank.

“I’m a private investigator,” he added.

“Oh. Oh, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Elliot, things have been a bit hectic, and I’d forgotten…. The reason we called was that we wanted to ask you a question about some work you might have done for my father.”

“Duncan Grant?”

“Yes. Among his papers, we found a note indicating that he might have asked you to investigate someone shortly before he was killed.”

“As a matter of fact, Miss Grant, he did. But he was killed just days later, and we never finalized the arrangement.”

“I see. Was it Jordan Walsh he asked you to check out?”

Immediately, Elliot said, “No, ma’am, it wasn’t. He just said he was looking at a potential business problem, and wanted me to do a little digging, very quietly.”

“Did he give you a name?”

“No, ma’am. He said there were a couple of things he wanted to check on himself first, and that he’d be in touch as soon as he did that. I can’t be sure, of course, but from the way he talked, I got the idea it was somebody he’d trusted up till then, somebody close to him.”

“I see. And that’s all you can tell me?”

“I’m afraid so, Miss Grant. As I said, the arrangement was never finalized.”

Not very helpful, but there was nothing Rachel could do about that.

“Thank you anyway, Mr. Elliot, for calling. I’ll pass on the information to Mr. Delafield.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, Miss Grant.”

“So am I. Good-bye, Mr. Elliot.”

“Miss Grant.”

Rachel hung up the phone slowly.

And then a voice came from the doorway.

“Hello, Rachel.”

Mercy opened the door of Nick’s office without knocking and marched in. She saw both men look up in surprise from the computer they’d been intent on, and spoke before either of them could.

“I know you boys like the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but let’s cut to the chase. Do you know about Graham Becket?”

achel stared across the study at Graham. She felt very cold, and not only because he had a gun.