The Private Eye (16 page)

A knock on the door came just as Maggie started to part
her legs for Josh's touch. “January? You in there, man?” the Colonel called
softly.

“Hell.” Josh groaned and rested his forehead on the
hollow of Maggie's shoulder. “I don't believe this. Say it isn't so.”

Still disoriented from the riot of excitement and
passion that was singing through her, Maggie cradled Josh's head in her hands
and stared up at the canopy. She tried to figure out what was happening.

The Colonel rapped softly once more. “January? Still
awake?”

“Josh?” Maggie threaded her fingers urgently through
his dark hair-”It's the Colonel. He's at the door.”

“No one could be this unlucky,” Josh growled as he
reluctantly raised his head. “Not even me.” He rolled to the side of the bed,
got out and grabbed his jeans. He raised his voice to call out softly. “Hang
on, Colonel. I’ll be right there.”

Maggie felt the laughter well up in her at the sight of
Josh's grim face. She struggled to conceal her amusement but Josh saw it. He
glowered down at her and then varied over the bed, trapping her between his
arms.

“You,” he ordered very, very quietly, “are not to move.
And don't you dare make a single sound. Not one peep. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” She grinned up at him from the pillow and
reached out to tug playfully on his chest hair. She was feeling very bold.

Josh stifled another groan and straightened. Then he
caught hold of a fistful of quilt and yanked it up over Maggie, covering her
from head to toe.

Maggie lay curled in the pleasant warmth and listened
intently as Josh crossed the room and opened the door.

“What's wrong. Colonel?”

“Believe the furnace is down,” the Colonel announced
briskly. “It's been getting colder and colder.

When I got up to reset the thermostat a second time, I
realized it wasn't functioning. Thought we'd better have a look. Could be a malfunction,
but the last time this happened, we suspected sabotage, if you'll recall.
Couldn't prove it, but we all knew someone had monkeyed with the damn thing.”

“It was working fine after Wilcox serviced it. I
watched him myself.”

“Well, something's gone haywire. I'm going downstairs
to have a look, Thought you might want to come with me. No need to awaken the
ladies. They'd only worry.”

“Right. I'll come with you,” Josh replied.

Maggie waited until the door had closed and she could
hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Then she pushed back the covers and sat up in bed. Her
amusement faded rapidly as she contemplated the possibility that another “incident”
had occurred.

She slid to the edge of the big bed and got to her
feet; she found her quilted robe on the floor and pulled it on quickly-She
would follow the men downstairs and see what was happening. The Colonel would
think she had been in her own room all along and had simply been awakened by
the cold.

Maggie walked over to pull the fire screen in front of
the blaze Josh had built and saw the glow of the computer monitor. It was
facing the far wall, which was why she hadn't noticed it when she'd entered earlier.

Josh had obviously been working late on the case, she
thought. She was touched by his dedication to the job, She was certainly getting
her money's worth.

Curious, Maggie stepped closer to read the text on the
screen. She had always wondered how reallife private investigators worked....

I went down the darkened corridor, pausing briefly at
each door to read the sign outside. The office building had been closed for
hours. The guard was a creature of habit and would be doing his rounds on the
third floor now.

I figured I had maybe thirty minutes before he got to
the twelfth floor.

I found Stallings's suite at the end of the hall. A
quick check of the lock revealed that getting inside would be easy. Maybe dead
easy. A man like Stallings, who was getting ready to steal millions and was
prepared to cover up his theft with murder, didn't use cheap hardware-store
stuff like this.

I stroked the little lock as carefully as if it were a It
was simple-Nothing to it. All in the wrist, you know. No doubt about it, I
could be inside in fifteen seconds, max. The damn thing was practically an open
invitation.

The last time I'd accepted this kind of invitation,
though, I'd almost gotten killed. But what the hell. I was born to be socially
flexible.

I went to work on the lock. I was wrong. It only took
twelve seconds to open it. I spent the time wondering why Stallings was making
it so easy for me to get into his private office.

Maggie sat down and stared at the screen, stunned ,by
what she was reading. It looked as if Josh was writing a book!

Her work as a librarian had made her very familiar
“with computers. She frowned down at the keyboard and found the key that enable
her to scroll through the text on the screen. She made her way back through the
story until she found a chapter heading. It was a book. A mystery novel, from
the looks of it.

She had been cheated! She hadn't gotten herself a
private investigator—she had gotten a writer. No wonder Josh spent so much time
up here in his room. His free room. And no wonder he was so insistent on having
his home-cooked meals and his tea and scones. Unpublished writers were
notorious mooches— always down-and-out and looking for a handout. Josh probably
thought he'd landed in clover when he'd talked his way into this cushy job.

Maggie jumped to her feet, outraged by the way she'd
been taken in. Josh wasn't even a published mystery writer, she reminded
herself grimly. If he were, she would have heard of him. She'd read hundreds of
mysteries.

She glanced around the room, her eyes narrowing. It was
time she found out just what sort of man she was dealing with, she decided. She
stalked over to the dressing table and started jerking open the drawers.

A collection of socks and briefs had been neatly
arranged in the top drawer. There was nothing in the other two. Maggie stomped
into the bathroom and surveyed the array of shaving gear on the counter.

She headed for the wardrobe next and flung open the
doors to reveal several shirts, his one good quality jacket, and a tie. The two
suitcases she had laboriously brought up the stairs that first night were stacked
on the floor. Maggie knelt down and pulled them out. They were both unlocked
and empty.

Disgusted with the lack of clues as to Josh's true
identity, Maggie closed the closet doors and considered the rest of the small
room. Her gaze fell on the nightstand beside the bed.

She walked over and jerked open the drawer of the
little table. A blush rose furiously in her cheeks when she saw a little foil
packet lying inside next to a pen and notepad. The man obviously believed in being
prepared. He'd probably been a Boy Scout. She slammed the drawer hurriedly and
went back to the computer.

Slowly she sat down in front of the screen again and
began to read.

“DAMN.” Josh crouched in front of the furnace's guts,
which had been revealed when he'd removed the access panel. He teased one wire
out from the nest of control wiring and examined the neatly severed end.

“Look at that sucker. Someone sliced right through it.”

“Sabotage,” the Colonel muttered. “I knew it.”

Josh nodded, “Sure looks that way. No telling when it
was cut, but it must have been done recently. Probably while Maggie and I were
at dinner.”

“You think someone got in while Odessa and Shirley and
I were watching television?”

“It's possible.” Josh remembered how he and Maggie had
found all three asleep in front of the droning television set.

“Our hearing isn't what it used to be,” the Colonel
admitted. “And we had the television on loud. Someone could have gotten in here
and cut that wire without us hearing him, I suppose.”

Josh put his left hand on the furnace housing and
levered himself to his feet. He wished he'd thrown on a shirt before leaving
the bedroom. The basement was cold. “The windows are both closed,” he observed
as he crossed the room to look up at them. “Closed and locked.”

“What do you think is going on here, January? You're
the expert.”

“I think,” said Josh, “that I'd better splice that cut
wire so we can get some heat going in this place. The whole house will be
freezing in another hour or so. Tomorrow morning I'll take a look around
outside and see if I can find the point of entry.”

The Colonel nodded, looking suitably impressed. “Right.
What about the ladies?”

Josh shot him a sidelong glance, wondering if the
Colonel had any notion of where Maggie was at that moment. He didn't want her embarrassed
in front of her three old-fashioned tenants. “We'll tell them everything in the
morning. Like you said, there's no sense worrying them tonight.”

“Fine. I'll go on back to bed, then. Unless you need
any help with that wiring,”

“No, it's just a simple splicing job. I can handle it.
I've had a fair amount of experience with this kind of thing.” Josh hunkered
down in front of the exposed wiring.

“I suppose you use a lot of electronic equipment in
your line of work, don't you?” the Colonel remarked, apparently pleased at the
notion.

“Yeah, and you can't go calling in a service technician
every time something goes wrong on the job, You learn to make do.” Josh used
his pocketknife to strip the insulation back on the severed wire.

“Thought so. Well, then, see you at breakfast.”

“Right.” Josh relaxed as he realized the Colonel was
oblivious to Maggie's present location. He concentrated on the task of splicing
the control wire as the older man went back up the stairs.

A few minutes later Josh replaced the access panel,
dusted his hands and took a last look around the basement. The ground-level windows
were definitely locked and they could not have been relocked from the outside—not
after the way he had rigged them this morning. That meant whoever had sabotaged
the furnace must have entered the basement through the doorway at the top of
the stairs.

Which meant that the intruder had let himself into the
main part of the manor through a door or window upstairs while three of the residents
were at home. It was the first time, as far as Josh could tell, that the vandal
had taken such a daring risk. The bastard had walked straight down the front
hall, as if he owned the place.

Josh frowned as he climbed the stairs to the first
floor, He didn't like the idea that whoever was staging the “incidents” was
apparently getting bolder. It was a sign that the sabotage and vandalism might soon
grow more menacing. At the rate things were going, someone would eventually get
hurt.

He had to put a stop to this now, before it got out of
hand. Josh decided. He had hoped his presence in the house would discourage
whoever was behind the incidents, but clearly that was not the case. And now
the guy was getting desperate. Desperate men did dangerous things.

Josh walked through every room on the first floor,
checking locks. Every window and door was securely fastened. An inside job?
Josh wondered as he went up the stairs to his room. He thought of the list of
suspects and motives he had given Maggie over dinner.

He doubted that Odessa or Shirley would have known how
to disable the furnace. On the other hand, it didn't take a lot of mechanical aptitude
to figure out that cutting a wire would cause trouble. But then, there was the
water-pipe incident. Someone had definitely entered the house from outside to
pull that one off. Or had someone inside merely wanted it to look that way?

Possibilities and motives clicked rapidly through
Josh's brain as he reached the top of the stairs and opened the door of his
room. The first thing he saw was Maggie sitting in front of the computer. The
eerie blue glow of the screen bathed her face in a cold light. She looked up as
he entered the room.

Josh saw the suspicion and anger in her gaze and his
stomach clenched with despair. What a fool he had been! He'd forgotten all
about the computer and the book when Maggie had come knocking on his door
asking him to kiss her good-night. And now he was going to pay the price of his
stupidity.

“Maggie, honey.” Josh closed the door very softly and
stood there, trying to think clearly. His brain, which had been in overdrive a
minute earlier, suddenly seemed to have turned to cobwebs. He had to explain
this, he told himself desperately-He had to make her understand. He took a deep
breath and tried again. “I know you must be wondering about what you're seeing
there on that screen.”

She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs under
her robe and folded her arms. She gave him a disdainful look. “I suppose you're
going to tell me that since you're posing as a writer, you wanted to have some
props around in case anyone came snooping. I suppose you think I'll believe
that you just selected some mystery novel at random and typed up a few chapters
so anyone who came in here would believe you really are a writer.”