Never Trust A Lady

happy to cooperate?”

He was silent for just a little too long. Illumination came as he was finally drawing breath for an explanation, and she got there first, overriding it with a startled gasp, then a squeak of incredulous laughter. “You thought I was after the…whatever it is in the painting? That I was one of the, uh… That’s it-you did, didn’t you? Oh, for heaven’s sake.” And borrowing one of her daughters’ favorite expressions, she added, “Get real.”

“You did bid on the painting,” Tom said in his stuffiest and most inflexible policeman’s monotone. “You and Campbell were the only ones hanging in there. And then…” he paused a chilling instant “…there was just you.”

“Yes, because Mr. Campbell fainted…” The word trailed off as she suddenly found herself running short of air. “Oh, but-oh, God, you don’t mean you think somebody did something to him, do you? That he didn’t just…faint?”

It must have been then that full comprehension finally hit her. It was like a blast of cold, dank air from a freshly opened tomb, a vault filled with dreadful, frightening, unthinkable things from a world that was totally alien to her. A world of violence and evil. Chilled and clammy, she whispered, “Oh, you can’t think I would do anything like that.”

“It seemed a possibility at the time,” said Tom in a neutral voice.

“That’s why you followed us,” Jane went on as if he hadn’t spoken. Her voice was low and still tinged with the horror that had overtaken her when she added curiously, “How did you manage to do that, by the way? When Connie and I left the auction, you were standing on the loading platform smoking a cigarette. I saw you. You couldn’t have gotten to your car in time to see which way we’d gone. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible.” She didn’t need light to see the twisted, ironic little smile. “But as a matter of fact, I used a GPS tracker.”

“GPS? What on earth’s that?”

“Global Positioning System-tracking by satellite. I put a signaling device in your friend’s van when I was helping you stow your stuff.” She felt him jerk slightly, and thought perhaps he’d shrugged. And then he offered an ambiguous, “Sorry.”

“And that’s how you found me today,” she said flatly, choosing not to hear the apology, if indeed that’s what it had been. “Isn’t it? You didn’t just ‘happen’ to be there, either, at The Wall.”

“Yes…” there was a long exhalation “…and no.”

Her throat was tight suddenly, her eyes itchy. Why did she feel such a sense of disappointment and betrayal? Remembering the way her heart had gone out to him in his vulnerability and pain, she thought, God, Jane, how stupid you are.

She was silent for a long time, waiting for that constriction in her throat to relax, all the while running his explanations over and over in her mind. Several things bothered her. “But,” she said finally, “you said the device was in Connie’s van. So how come-”

“There’s also one in your bag.” His voice was soft, almost diffident. “I put it there last night.”

“I see.” Last night, in her room. And she’d been so grateful for his nearness and comfort. God, she felt awful. Hollow… queasy. She took a deep breath, trying to fill the emptiness inside her, if only momentarily.

“Tell me,” she said, and was both startled and pleased that her voice sounded so steady. “Was any of what you told me true? About your father, I mean. And…your friend.” She wondered why his answer mattered so much.

Or why she felt such an odd little twinge-relief that was almost like pain-when he answered, with the gravel of sincer ity in his voice, “Oh, yeah, that was true. All of it.”

“And when…” Carefully, carefully, Jane. She began again, now with forced lightness. “When did you, uh, change your mind about me being involved in all this? Or maybe I should ask-”

“Oh, that was last night.” He still sounded hoarse but with a note of anger himself, now. “To be precise, when I saw you standing there in that doorway with the light behind you and that damn toy pistol in your hands. Right then and there I said to myself, nobody’s that stupid. She must be innocent.”

“Thanks,” said Jane tartly, “I think.” Then she cocked her head to one side, listening, trying to catch a replay of the exchange. There was something he’d just said…

But he wouldn’t let her concentrate, plunging on in that newly charged, guttural voice. “Lady, you’ve no idea what you’re mixed up in. There are people who’d kill for what’s hidden in that painting. People who have killed. Do you understand me?”

Her hands, she discovered, were knotted tightly together in her lap. In spite of that, and the fact that all her muscles were quivering with tension, her voice once again emerged with gratifying calm. “Have killed… Do you mean Campbell?”

“I can’t be sure. All I know is, three days ago somebody killed a shopkeeper in Marseilles-”

“Marseilles? France?”

“-by the name of Loizeau. And I have very good reason to believe that whoever did it was at that auction yesterday.”

Jane said nothing, just listened to the words he’d spoken in a tone of such flat certainty, playing them over and over in her head to the accompaniment of the steady thumping of her heart. Funny, she mused, how unbelievable things become quite believable when they are actually happening to you.

Presently she took a breath and said, “Well. Since you’re fairly sure now that it wasn’t me, and since we have the painting right here, don’t you think perhaps we should examine it?”

She felt minute air currents, stirred by his almost silent amusement. “We?”

“It is,” she stiffly reminded him, “still my painting. You’re welcome to remove this… whatever it is that’s supposed to be inside, but I intend to make sure it doesn’t get damaged in the process.”

He snorted and muttered, “Damaged…” Then, grudgingly, “Well, okay, here-hold the light.”

He switched on the flashlight and gave it to her, sending shadows leaping over the mounds of shrouded household belongings and across the ceiling of the van. Jane trained the doughnut of yellow light on Tom’s chest and held it steady while he lifted his arms and swiveled his upper body in order to reach the package he’d placed on top of the appliances behind him. As he did so, the brown leather jacket he was wearing pulled up and bunched across his shoulders, leaving a gap between its bottom edge and the top of his trousers. She made an involuntary hiccuping noise. The beam of light wobbled.

“You have a gun,” she said.

“You bet,” Hawk responded with a muffled grunt. He said nothing more while he lifted down the package containing the painting and placed it flat across his knees. Then he looked for her across the thin stream of light, and his lips quirked sideways in a smile. “What did you expect?”

He could barely make out her features in the reflected glow of the beam she’d pinned to his chest In the deep shadows, her eyes seemed as unfathomable and mysterious as the sea by moonlight. So when she spoke, it was odd to hear her voice sound so normal, as everyday-normal as a housewife discussing roses with the gardener.

“I’m kind of glad, actually. I mean, if there are killers around… What kind is it?”

He had to hand it to her, she was nothing if not resilient. “A Walther 9-millimeter.” he said as he took it from its nest, double-checked the safety and placed it on top of the brown-paper parcel across his knees. She skewered it with the light beam but made no move to touch it.

“I’m afraid I don’t know very much about guns,” she said after a moment. “Real ones, anyway. This one certainly looks, uh, effective. Mine, by the way-” and from the sound of her voice, she had to be saying this with an absolutely straight face “-happens to be a genuine Roy Rogers six-shooter revolver. It fires real caps.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Hawk in a strangled voice, “you brought it with you?”

“You bet. What did you expect? It’s right there in my tote bag.”

Laughter bumped around inside his chest, wanting out. He clamped down on it, made an exasperated hissing noise instead and returned his pistol to its resting place at the small of his back. “Just do us both a favor and leave it there, okay?” he muttered, adding a few choice words and “get us both killed,” under his breath.

There was no response from Jane, no sound or movement at all. He paused with his fingers under the taped edges of the painting’s paper wrappings to glance over at her, wondering about her sudden stillness, and saw that her head appeared to be tilted slightly, as if she heard voices.

“What?” he asked, oddly unnerved. Her shadowed eyes seemed to be staring right through him.