Light in Shadow (9 page)

“No, I'll be in touch.”

He checked the speed-dial function on the phone and found only one number had been entered. There wasn't even a name, just the letter A.

He called it.

“Gallery Euphoria,” a woman said in a voice that belonged to a nightclub singer.

“I'm looking for Zoe.”

“Who is this?”

“Ethan Truax. I'm working for her. It's important that I locate her immediately. Any idea where she is?”

“Truax Investigations?”

“Yes.”

“I'm a close friend of Zoe's. Is something wrong?”

“She's not here. Her calendar is blank for the afternoon.”

“Is this about Davis Mason?”

“Yes,” he said trying to hang on to his patience, “Just tell me where you think she might be right now.”

“I saw her at lunch. She told me that she was going to do a final walk-through at the home of a client today.”

“Give me a name.”

“The Taylors. There should be a number and an address in Zoe's files. What's this all about? Did you turn up something important, Mr. Truax?”

“The bed.”

 

Zoe's car was
parked in the drive. There was no indication that Mason or anyone else was in the vicinity.

Ethan told himself that was a good sign, but his gut wasn't buying it.

He removed his pistol from the center console and got out of the car. There was no need to worry about alarming the neighbors. The lots were large in this neighborhood. The nearest house was almost a quarter mile away.

He went to the front door. The knob turned easily in his hand.

He let himself into an elegant front hall. The first thing he noticed was a red tote. The second thing was a slight draft. There was another door or a window open in the house.

“Zoe?”

There was no response.

There was an intercom panel on the wall. At the top was a button labeled
SEND ALL
. He pressed it.

“Zoe, this is Truax. Talk to me.”

The words echoed through every room in the house.

“Ethan, get out,” Zoe shouted through the intercom. She had also hit send all. Her warning blared from every speaker in the place. “Mason's here. He's got a gun.”

“Big deal. I've got one, too. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I'm inside the wine cellar.” She sounded breathless, but coherent. “The door is locked. He can't get to me. A few seconds ago he was in the kitchen, but I don't know where he is now. For God's sake, get out of here. Call the cops.”

He did not respond. He was out of his shoes, moving silently down a long, airy central hall with arched openings. He could see the living room and kitchen area.

Footsteps erupted suddenly from the vicinity of the kitchen. Mason burst into view, fleeing toward French doors that opened onto a walled patio and pool.

“Stop. It's over, Mason.”

Mason spun around, gun coming up.

Ethan dove behind the nearest solid object, an ornate wooden chest.

Mason fired wildly.

A glass case containing a collection of antique silver and turquoise jewelry exploded nearby. A cold rain of shards fell around Ethan.

“You can't touch me,” Mason shouted. “You'll never prove anything. You hear me? You'll never prove it.”

The gun roared again. Shots thudded into the heavy chest.

The guy had gone over the edge, Ethan thought.

He made his way to the far end of his wooden barricade, leaned around the corner, and squeezed off a single shot.

Mason yelped, jerked, flailed wildly, and then crashed headlong onto the tile floor. He dropped the gun to clutch his right leg.

Ethan counted to five before getting to his feet. Pieces of glass fell from his shirt and hair and skittered on the tile.

“Ethan, wait.” Zoe was flying toward him down the hall, sandals in her hand. “There's glass everywhere and you're already bleeding.”

He did not take his eyes off Mason. “You shouldn't have come out here alone today.”

She ignored that and slid her feet into her sandals.

“Hang on,” she said with startling gentleness. “I'll get a rug to cover the glass.”

She was talking to him as if she thought he was in shock, he realized. Maybe she didn't know he was just furious.

“Get Mason's gun first,” he said.

“Right.” She scooped up the weapon and brought it back
to him. Then she seized a long carpet runner and tossed it down across the worst of the glass.

When she straightened, he got a good look at her face. She appeared too pale, but she was obviously in control.

She gave him a quick, frowning survey, and then she untied the little red and orange silk scarf she wore at her throat and handed it to him. “That cut doesn't look too bad, but it's getting messy.”

He felt something warm and wet and realized that a trickle of blood was running down his jaw. Absently he dabbed at it with the silk scarf as he crossed the living room to where Mason lay, moaning.

Zoe followed.

Mason clenched his thigh with both hands, gritting his teeth. A pool of blood had formed on the tiles.

“You can't prove anything.” Mason looked up, his face twisted with pain and rage. “You can't prove a damned thing.”

“Don't bet on it.” Ethan brushed a couple of slivers of glass off his shirt, reached into his pocket, and took out his phone. “I found the bed.”

“Okay,” Zoe said,
“How did you find that bed?”

Ethan took a swallow of the champagne Arcadia had insisted on ordering for the table and put down the glass. Champagne was not his beverage of choice, but Zoe seemed to like it and he was trying to go along with the client. He consoled himself with the thought that he could always pour himself a stiff shot of whiskey later when he got back to Nightwinds.

It was late, and the trendy little Fountain Square restaurant was starting to empty out. A few couples lingered, and there was one large group on the far side of the room. He recognized a familiar face and figured it for a business dinner.

It had been Zoe's idea that they go out to eat after the long session with the police. They were both exhausted, and she said she was concerned about their stress levels. They needed to unwind.

“Dinner is on me,” she said. “It's the least I can do after what happened today.”

The offer had sounded too good to be true, and, as was often the case with such offers, it proved to be exactly that. Zoe invited Arcadia Ames to join them. The result was that instead of an intimate dinner for two during which he could have told her in great detail why she'd had no business taking off alone that afternoon, he was stuck with this not-so-cozy threesome.

He was acutely aware that he had no real grounds for complaint. If it had not been for Arcadia, he might still be looking for Zoe.

Every time he thought about Zoe locking herself inside the high-tech, steel-doored wine cellar to escape a crazy wife killer, he felt the inchoate anger and got the freezing sensation in his gut all over again. It had been so damned close.

So here the three of them sat, squeezed into a snug corner booth, sipping champagne. Maybe it was better this way, he thought. His relationship with Zoe was supposed to be all business, and the truth was he probably would have tried something really stupid if he'd found himself alone with her tonight.

The problem was that even though he was well and truly pissed, he also wanted very badly to take her to bed. The resulting tension had made him a little surly, and it was hard work trying to conceal his bad temper.

“The bed,” he said, focusing on the neutral topic. “Right. In the end that proved to be Mason's biggest problem. It was easy enough to wrap his dead wife in the shower curtains and bury her in the back garden. But he couldn't quite see digging a hole big enough to bury a king-sized box spring and mattress.”

“That might have gotten the attention of some of his neighbors,” Zoe said dryly.

“But he couldn't just haul them off to a landfill, either. People prowl through landfills looking for things to salvage and the bed was in pretty good shape.”

“Except for the stains, of course.” Arcadia turned her champagne flute slowly between her fingertips. “He knew
that if the blood-soaked mattress ever turned up it could be used as evidence of foul play.”

Ethan nodded. On the surface he could not see what Zoe and Arcadia had in common, but the emotional tie that bound them together was unmistakable and it worried him.

He wondered if the connection between the two women was sexual. His instincts told him that it was not, but he did not trust his gut reaction when it came to that kind of thing. Women were a mystery. His instincts might be in denial tonight because all he could think about was having hot, sweaty sex with Zoe.

Get your mind out of the gutter, Truax. You're supposed to be a professional.

Zoe smiled at him. She looked better than she had a few hours ago when she had emerged from the wine cellar, but there was an unnatural brightness in her eyes. He knew what was causing it. She was feeling the aftereffects of the adrenaline, just as he was.

“Davis was sure that you would never be able to find the bed,” she said. “He claimed that even if you guessed that it was in storage somewhere, there was no way you could find the right rental facility. He said there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them in the state.”

“Probably are.” Ethan removed the lid of the clay warmer in the center of the table and removed another plump corn tortilla. He dipped it into one of the three salsas that the waiter had brought to the table. They'd finished the salads, but the main courses had not arrived yet and he was ravenous.

“So?” Zoe prompted.

“The thing is, I didn't need to search every storage locker facility in the state.” He took a bite of the tortilla. “I only had to check out the ones that could be reached within about a thirty-minute drive from Desert View. I also assumed that in order to remain as anonymous as possible, Mason would have gone with a large operation that had lots of lockers, not a small outfit where someone was more likely to remember him. That cut the number of
possibilities down to a manageable number. I got on the phone and started calling.”

“Wait a second.” Zoe held up a hand. “How did you know that the storage facility had to be located within a thirty-minute driving radius of Desert View?”

“I got the pickup and drop-off times of the rented truck that Mason used. I knew almost exactly when he left Desert View with the bed. It wasn't hard to calculate how far he could have gone, allowing for the time to unload the bed at the locker facility.”

He paused to take another bite of the salsa-laced tortilla and noticed that the business dinner on the other side of the room was breaking up. At the head of the table, the big, sandy-haired man in the expensive linen blend jacket picked up the tab for the other five people with an easy flourish.

It was nice to have a large budget for entertaining clients, Ethan thought. He turned his attention back to his own client and her companion.

Zoe gave him an admiring look. “I'm impressed. You make it sound so simple and logical. The mind of a detective is an amazing thing.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said. “I've always wanted to be loved for my mind.”

Damn. That was not quite what he had wanted to say, he thought. Maybe he had better lay off the champagne. It did not seem to be mixing well with the aftermath of the adrenaline cocktail that still flowed through his system.

Arcadia looked faintly amused, but she did not say anything. If Zoe found the crack about being loved for his brain inappropriate, she gave no indication.

“I'm still a little confused though,” she said, serious again. “How did you figure out which truck rental company Mason used and how did you find out precisely when he left Desert View?”

Ethan started to answer, but he broke off when the big man in the stylish jacket suddenly loomed over the table.

“Truax.” Nelson Radnor gave him an easy grin. “Good
to see you. I hear you closed a big one today. Congratulations.”

“Word travels fast,” Ethan said.

“I've got my sources.” Nelson examined the bandage that covered a portion of Ethan's jaw and raised his brows. “Looks like you got knocked around a little.”

“Just some flying glass.” Ethan glanced across the table. “Zoe Luce, Arcadia Ames. This is Nelson Radnor.”

Zoe made the connection immediately. “Radnor Security Systems?”

Nelson gave her an approving smile. “Right. A pleasure. I understand there was a woman at the scene this afternoon when Truax took Mason down. Can I assume it was one of you two lovely ladies?”

“I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't make any assumptions,” Ethan said evenly. “My client would like to keep a low profile in this matter.”

“No problem.” Nelson switched his attention to Arcadia. “Truax is a lucky man to be enjoying such charming companionship tonight. Got a hunch he's having a lot more fun than I did.”

The best that could be said for Arcadia's smile, Ethan thought, was that it was polite. There certainly wasn't much warmth in it. Not that Radnor seemed to notice.

Ethan angled his head toward the small group of people making their way toward the front door. “Client dinner?”

“Yeah. Routine.” Nelson cast a quick, satisfied glance at the departing members of his dinner party. “The manager and some of his people from Las Estrellas.”

“The new resort outside of town?” Zoe asked.

Nelson nodded. “Looks like Radnor will be handling security for them.”

“Congratulations,” Ethan said. “Nice contract.”

“Thanks. You know, I may give you a call one of these days, Truax. We're running at full steam over at Radnor. Might be able to throw a little of the small stuff your way. You interested in some subcontracting work?”

“Depends,” Ethan said carefully.

“I'll be in touch.” Nelson appeared to realize that he had overstayed his welcome. He nodded at Zoe and Arcadia, his gaze lingering an extra second or so on Arcadia, and then he moved back a pace. “I'll let you folks get on with your dinner. See you around, Truax.”

He walked off toward the door of the restaurant.

“I call him my competition,” Ethan said. “But the truth is, we're not even playing in the same league.”

“Maybe not.” Zoe sounded amused. “But if I had to guess, I'd say he's jealous.”

“Of the fact that I get to have dinner with you two instead of those folks from Las Estrellas?” Ethan nodded. “As well he should be.”

Zoe shook her head. “He's not jealous because you're eating dinner with us. It's because of what you did today.”

“She's right.” Arcadia said with quiet certainty. “Radnor might be the big-time operator here in town when it comes to the security business, but his position as the CEO of a large corporation means he'll probably never have an opportunity to play the heroic private investigator who comes to the rescue in the nick of time the way you did today.”

Zoe chuckled. “Probably not much opportunity for swashbuckling when you're in the business of doing routine employee background checks and supplying guards for places like Desert View and Las Estrellas.”

“Got news for you,” Ethan said. “My swash nearly buckled permanently today when I realized you were in that house alone with Mason. Talk about stressing out on the job. Thank God you had the presence of mind to get into that fancy cooler.”

“It's not a cooler. It's a state-of-the-art wine cellar complete with its own refrigeration and humidity control systems.” She spoke very evenly. “The room was designed to be physically secure because the Taylors collect extremely valuable old vintages.”

“And another thing,” he continued, getting into it now. “You should have stayed inside that state-of-the-art cooler until the coast was clear.”

She said nothing.

Arcadia stiffened. “I hadn't,” she said slowly, “thought about the size of the wine cellar.” She broke off and gave Zoe a sharp, searching look. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“Yes,” Zoe said firmly. “It was just a room, Arcadia. I can only thank heaven it was available when I needed it.”

Arcadia's mouth tightened. “Have some more champagne.”

She did not wait for a response. Hauling the bottle out of the ice bucket, she refilled Zoe's glass.

Ethan watched the two women in silence.
I'm definitely missing something here.
It wouldn't be the first time, of course, but he had a feeling this was something important, something he needed to know.

Zoe looked at Ethan. “I believe you were about to tell us how you came to learn so many of the details about the timing of Mason's movements the day he rented the truck.”

“Yes.” Arcadia watched him with a speculative expression. “Finish your story. How did you come by all those facts and figures?”

“Radnor's a cheap employer,” Ethan said. “He charges the Desert View Community Association a lot of money to supply security guards, but he doesn't pay his men very well.”

Zoe's eyes widened. “You bribed one of the Desert View guards to let you look at the gate logs?”

“Yeah.”

“The straightforward approach. I like that,” Arcadia stated.

“So elegantly simple. Why didn't I think of that?” Zoe marveled.

“Probably because you are not a trained detective,” Ethan said.

“That must be it,” she agreed. “How much does it cost to bribe a Radnor security guard?”

“You'll find out when you get my bill. That bribe, as well as the one I used to get the attendant at the storage
facility to look the other way while I opened Mason's locker, will be listed under miscellaneous expenses.”

 

Outside the restaurant,
the desert night felt good but it did nothing to dispel Zoe's strange mood. She wondered if she had drunk too much champagne. Arcadia had refilled her glass several times. She knew why her friend was deliberately trying to get her a little drunk. Arcadia was worried about the time in the wine cellar.
A small room with a locked door.

As Arcadia suspected, the experience had brought back a lot of unpleasant memories that tonight might well trigger a few bad dreams about her time in Xanadu. But it was not as if there had been a lot of options this afternoon. The wine cellar had kept her safe until Ethan had arrived. That was the important thing.