Rivals (43 page)

“I'd forgotten that.” Flame halted momentarily at the base of the stairs and turned back to the housekeeper. “If I want anything to eat later, I'll get it myself. There isn't any need for you to stay. It's been a long day all the way around. I'm sure you'd like to go home.”

“I am tired and…” Maxine hesitated. “If you're sure you don't need me anymore this evening, I think I will go back to my place.”

“When you leave, would you stop by the bunkhouse and ask Mr. Rainwater to come to the house?”

“Of course.”

With that minor detail handled, Flame started up the steps to put the rest of her plan in motion, her thoughts racing ahead as she tried to recall what evening wear she'd noticed in Hattie's closet.

28

F
rom
the street below, Flame couldn't see any lights shining from the windows of the Stuart Tower's twentieth floor. On a Saturday night, it wasn't likely anyone would be working—unless it would be a cleaning lady. Just the same, she drove slowly around the block for another look.

A quick drive through the underground garage confirmed no Jaguar was parked in the space reserved for Chance. Satisfied that all was safe, Flame drove the ranch's Lincoln around to the building's front entrance and parked at the curb. She gripped the steering wheel with both gloved hands and breathed in deeply, trying to settle the clamoring of her nerves, heart, and senses.

Before she could question the wisdom—or indeed the sanity—of her actions, she stepped out of the car and nervously smoothed a hand over the hipline of the coffee-brown satin gown. Its slim line suggested something out of the midfifties, but the simplicity of its style made it almost ageless, and definitely suitable for her purpose since society's critical eye wouldn't be reviewing it. She reached inside the car for the matching evening bag and the full-length fox coat. The fur coat had been an absolute find. It wasn't in the best condition, its sleeves and collar showing wear, but it was exactly what she needed.

She draped it around her shoulders and unconsciously cast a furtive glance down the street, but all was quiet, with few cars moving about in the downtown area. She turned toward the building's glass entrance and the lobby within, brightly lit with fluorescent lights. Pausing, she felt the front of her gown and made sure the orchid brooch of diamonds was securely pinned at the center of its V-shaped neckline.

Thank God she needed to appear anxious, agitated, and upset, because that was exactly the way she felt as she hurried to the doors, moving as quickly as the gown's front-slit skirt would allow. At the doors, Flame stopped and rattled them and tapped repeatedly on the glass. Finally the uniformed guard behind the lobby's security desk looked up, a Hostess Twinkie halfway to his mouth. Flame gave him her most appealing smile and rattled the locked door again.

He hesitated a split second, then laid the Twinkie on its cellophane wrapper, and hastily wiped the crumbs from his mouth with a backhanded scrub, got up, and walked around the desk. The guard was somewhere in his early sixties, the gray hair beneath his cap cut close to his head in a short butch, and his double chin hanging over the collar of his shirt, the same way his beer belly hung over the belt of his pants. But it was the noisy jingle that caught Flame's attention as he approached the doors, a large metal ring strung with keys dangling from his hand.

On the other side of the door, he stopped and searched through the keys. Flame glanced anxiously over her shoulder, certain that Chance would drive up any second and she'd be caught in the act. Powerless to hurry the guard along, she waited, mouth dry, nerves screaming with impatience while he separated one key from the rest, and inserted it in the lock. The instant a crack showed, Flame darted inside.

“Is something wrong, miss?” He eyed her curiously, tipping his head down to look at her through the top of his black-rimmed bifocals.

“You don't know how relieved I am to see you.” She clutched at his arm, drawing him with her as she moved from the door toward the bank of elevators. “I was afraid there wouldn't be anyone here to let me in. I didn't know what I was going to do. The most awful thing has happened.” Near the security desk, she let go of his arm and unfastened the jeweled clasp of her evening bag. She started to reach inside, then stopped and looked at him as if just realizing. “You have no idea who I am, do you? And here I am rattling on. I'm Flame Stuart—Chance Stuart's wife.”

He immediately brightened, his jowled cheeks lifting in a smile. “Of course, Mrs. Stuart. The whole building's been buzzing with the news of your marriage to Mr. Stuart,” he declared. She'd counted on that—just as she'd counted on the slowness of the word getting around that she'd left him. “Everybody said Mr. Stuart found himself a beautiful redhead and they certainly were right about that.”

“Aren't you so kind, Mr.—” She glanced at his nametag.

“Dunlap. Fred Dunlap.”

“Mr. Dunlap. Let me explain my problem. As I said, the most awful thing has happened,” she rushed on, reaching into her purse again, this time taking out one of the diamond earrings that matched the brooch. “I've lost the mate of this earring. Chance—Mr. Stuart—gave them to me as a gift, along with this pin. I'm supposed to meet him in an hour and he expects me to be wearing them. I've searched everywhere. Then I remembered that I was wearing them the day we came here. Is there any way you can let me into my husband's office so I can see if maybe I left it there? I can't bear the thought of telling him I lost it.”

“I sure can, Mrs. Stuart. It's no trouble at all.” He shifted his heavy bulk toward the elevators, again going through the many keys on his ring. “You just come with me and I'll take you up.”

“You have no idea how grateful I am, Mr. Dunlap. I've been half out of my mind with worry over this.” She was certain she sounded like a babbling fool, but she couldn't seem to stop talking as she followed him to the elevators. “I know the set must have cost him a fortune. But it's more than that. It was the first present he gave me. Well, not the first. He sent me orchids first. That's why he had this pin and these earrings designed in the shape of orchids, because they were actually the first.”

Flame wasn't even sure the security guard was listening as he used a key to open some sort of utility panel and flip some switches inside. The Up arrow blinked on above the elevator directly in front of her and its doors silently glided open. She practically ran into the cage, then waited again for the lumbering guard to join her. He punched the button for the twentieth floor. Seconds ticked by with unnerving slowness before the time-delayed doors finally slid shut.

As she watched the light above the doors blink on the ascending numbers of the floors, the silence seemed worse than her previous chatter. “I never realized how slow these elevators were,” she declared in utter truthfulness.

“It's always like that when you're in a hurry. Nothing ever moves fast enough.”

“I guess not,” she said and laughed nervously.

Finally the elevator came to a stop on the top floor. With stomach churning, Flame waited in its dimly lit lobby while the security guard went to turn on the office lights. Again the seconds seemed to drag forever before he came back and led her down the wide hall to Chance's office. There she had to wait again for him to find the key and unlock the door.

When he followed her into the office, Flame wanted to scream at him to leave. Instead, she forced herself to smile. “Thank you so much, Mr. Dunlap,” she said, turning to face him, letting her body language indicate to him that his presence was no longer required.

He hesitated uncertainly. “I'd be happy to help you look for that missing earring, Mrs. Stuart.”

“That isn't necessary,” she rushed. “I mean, you've done so much already and I wouldn't want to take you away from your desk. After all, you do have a job to do. It wouldn't be right for me to take you away from your duty.”

“I suppose not.” He nodded a grudging agreement. “If you should need me, though, you just call thirty-one thirty-one. That's my extension and I'll be up here in no time.”

“I'll remember that. Thank you, Mr. Dunlap.” She remained where she was, watching as he turned and left, not drawing an easy breath until she heard the distant
ding
of the elevator. Then she hurried over and closed the door—just in case he decided to come back and check on her.

Turning, she swept the long fox coat off her shoulders and scanned the room, trying to decide where to begin her search for the preliminary drawings of the proposed development. She started with Chance's desk, specifically the long credenza behind it. But none of the papers on top of it contained any reference to the project, and a search of the drawers and doors proved equally fruitless.

Aware that time was against her, Flame moved quickly to the built-in cabinetry along the wall in the informal sitting area. Behind one set of doors, she found a bonanza of blueprints. She wasted precious minutes going through them and, again, came up with nothing.

Where were they? She fought down the momentary panic and widened her search to the bookshelves near the conference table. Nothing. My God, what if they weren't here? What if they were in Sam's office instead?

Then she spied the long cardboard tubes in an upright rack next to the credenza on the other side of the burl table—the kind of tubing blueprints and drawings were kept in! Struggling to control the leap of excitement, Flame went to investigate, flinging the fur and the brown satin evening bag onto one of the conference chairs.

Ten minutes later, three of the tubes had offered up detailed drawings of site plans, preliminary blueprints for the proposed dam, and artist's renderings of the luxury hotel, marina, condominiums, and town houses. And the credenza had yielded an assortment of information—everything from an environmental impact study to a feasibility report. Plus Flame had found copies of several memos outlining the status on additional land purchases Chance was trying to make.

She was stunned by the amount of time, effort, and money that had already gone into the project. Which seemed to prove how confident Chance had been that he would get Morgan's Walk—one way or another. Nothing in Ben Canon's remarks had given her the impression that Chance's plans for the development had progressed this far. She wondered if the attorney knew.

Sobered by the discovery, Flame went through all the drawings, blueprints, and reports again, searching for duplicates, gathering them in a stack to take with her, and returning the rest to their original places. She doubted that Chance would ever notice there were copies missing. Fortunately, there were duplicates of everything with the exception of the colored renderings, an initial engineering report, and an overall topography map. But there were black-and-white copies of the renderings, a subsequent engineering report that appeared to contain much of the same information as the first, and a contour map showing natural water drainage.

Suddenly, from the outer office, came the muffled
ding
that signaled the arrival of the elevator. She froze. The private elevator—the one that came from the underground parking garage—the one that required a key to operate—the one Chance used! She went cold, her heart leaping into her throat and lodging there.

With discovery imminent, she looked frantically around the room for a place to hide. But there was no obvious place—no closet, no darkened alcove, no shadowy corner hidden from view. The office was too open, too exposed. She couldn't crawl under his desk; he was bound to go there. Hiding behind the sofa was out, too; he'd see her crouching behind it when he walked by.

There were footsteps in Molly's office. She had to act fast. With speed more important than silence, she scooped up the stack of information she'd gathered and dumped it in the corner, hoping it wouldn't be noticed, then grabbed the fur coat and the evening bag off the chair and dragged them with her as she scrambled under the round conference table and frantically pulled the chairs in closer, hoping the forest of legs would obscure her.

As the door to Chance's office opened, Flame tried to make herself as small as possible and pressed close to the center pedestal. She didn't dare move—or even breathe—for fear the satin of Hattie's gown would rustle and betray her presence.

But it wasn't Chance who entered. It was a woman. Flame could see her reflection in the office's smoked-glass windows. She almost breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was the cleaning woman. With her, she could talk her way out of this situation. Then she recognized Molly Malone and knew she didn't have a prayer of convincing Chance's secretary that she was under the table looking for her supposedly lost diamond earring.

“Honestly, these cleaning people,” Molly grumbled aloud. “Heaven knows how long these lights have been on. If they had to pay the electricity bill here for a month, they wouldn't be so free with them.”

There was a click, then darkness—except for the light shining through the doorway to Molly's office. In the reflecting windows, Flame saw Molly's silhouette briefly outlined in the doorway before she walked through and pulled the door shut behind her, throwing Chance's office into near-total darkness.

Flame breathed out shakily and relaxed a little. For the moment she was out of danger—but she was also trapped. She couldn't leave until Molly did. What was she doing here on a Saturday night? How long before she left? What if the security guard came up to see if she'd found the earring? What had made her think she could get away with this in the first place? Why had she taken so much time looking through everything? Why hadn't she simply grabbed what she could find and left? If she had, she would have been out of here and safely on her way back to Morgan's Walk.

She listened to the sounds of Molly moving about in the outer office, file drawers sliding open and clanging shut. A short span of silence was followed by the rapid tappity-tap of the typewriter. Helpless, Flame sat on the floor under the table, surrounded by an increasingly weighty darkness.