Never Trust A Lady

“I won’t. Really. Please… I’m sorry,” Jane gasped. Discovering that the auditorium doors were there at her back, she groped for the handle and pushed through them, throwing out one more anguished, “I’m sorry. ” The last thing she saw as the doors swished shut was a look of black and impotent fury.

Inside the auditorium, the auctioneer’s voice droned on.

“There you are,” said Connie, appearing at her elbow. “I wondered where you’d got to. Everything all right, dear? You look a bit whacked.”

“Oh, I’m fine.” Jane was already finding it hard to recall what it was, exactly, that had been so unsettling about the confrontation with the persistent Mr. Campbell His eyes, perhaps. Something about his eyes…

“You won’t believe it,” she said to Connie with a short, incredulous laugh. “That man-the one who was bidding against me for the painting? He just offered to buy it from me. He told me to name my price. Can you imagine?”

Connie’s glasses tumbled from their customary perch on the end of her nose, coming to rest before reaching the limits of their tether on her ample, sweatered bosom. Her eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t sell it to him, did you? Oh, my dear, after all that!”

“No, of course I didn’t,” Jane assured her with a huff of indignation. “Are you kidding? I love that painting. I’d never sell it. So-how are you doing? Buying lots of good stuff?”

She straightened as she spoke and pushed away from the doors, but the nerves on the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades still prickled with a strange awareness-she’d never felt anything like it before and couldn’t think what else to call it-awareness of the two enigmatic and vaguely upsetting men she’d left on the other side of them.

Hawk turned away discreetly as the gentleman he’d just heard identify himself as Aaron Campbell plunged past him, through the glass doors and out into the rain. Under different circumstances, he might have allowed himself a smile; to say Mr. Campbell was pissed was like saying a hurricane might be a little windy. Hawk half expected to see steam rising from under the coat collar the man had hastily turned up against the drizzle.

He considered following Campbell- But it was the Carlysle woman who had the painting, and judging from the fire in his eyes, Campbell didn’t seem like the type to give up the game so easily. A sudden vivid image of the shopkeeper Loizeau staring up at the ceiling with his three vacant eyes wafted through Hawk’s memory. An image of the tall brunette in those same circumstances wanted to follow, but he blocked it with a reflexive rejection that surprised him. For some reason, the thought of those sea-gray eyes clouded and empty of all light and life made him feel queasy, like a bubble of indigestion lodged at the back of his throat. He told himself it was only because he couldn’t see her as Loizeau’s killer, and if she wasn’t, then she didn’t deserve to die. No matter who she was, or where she fit into the picture.

And that was the next thing he had to find out. Who in the hell was this Jane Carlysle? Watching the slick way she’d neutralized Campbell during the bidding, he’d figured her to be a player for sure. After seeing her up close, talking to her, he’d thought, okay, not one of the bad guys-CIA, maybe. Even, God forbid, the FBI. He’d been thinking maybe it was time for a little team effort, a limited pooling of resources. As long as the good guys won, right?

Now, though, after seeing her with Campbell, he was beginning to consider a whole new possibility. One that made the bad taste at the back of his throat even more bitter. What if Jane Carlysle was exactly who and what she appeared to be-an innocent antiques lover who just happened to have fallen in love with that particular painting? What if-jeez, stranger things had happened-Campbell really had fainted? Sure wouldn’t be the first time an innocent had gotten caught in the crossfire of someone else’s war…

Enough. The grimace with which he banished that thought was more of annoyance than pain. God, he wanted a cigarette.

The young woman at the reception desk looked up as he approached, elegant eyebrows arched in welcome. “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

Hawk glanced at his watch and made his smile as charming as he knew how. “Sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you can tell me-I think this is where I’m supposed to meet my wife. She called me this morning-major crisis-apparently she’d gone off without her credit cards.”

The woman laughed in mock dismay. “Ooh, a real disaster.”

Hawk did his lopsided smile again, accompanying it with a chuckle. “For me it’s more of a disaster when she has ’em. Anyway, I don’t seem to be able to locate her.”

“Have you taken a look inside? Perhaps she’s gone back to the auction.”

Hawk nodded. “I checked a while ago. Didn’t see her, but it’s a pretty big crowd. I wonder, would you mind checking her registration card for me? Just to make sure she’s checked in.”

“Certainly. Name?”

“Carlysle-Jane.”

“Carlysle…let’s see…how is that spelled?”

Hawk’s heart lurched. Shoot. Well, hell, he had a fifty-fifty chance. He had his mouth open to take a stab at it when the woman said, “Oh, yes, here it is. Jane Carlysle-from Cooper’s Mill?”

Hawk exhaled and put the smile back on. “That’s the one.”

The receptionist plucked the card from the file and placed it on the desk in front of her. Hawk tried not to crane too obviously. “Well, according to this, your wife plans to pay for any purchases by check.”

“My wife? Can’t be! Let me see that…” And as he’d been certain she would, the receptionist obligingly turned the card around. He leaned over and gazed at it long enough to commit Jane Cartyste‘s-with a Y-North Carolina driver’s license to memory, then straightened with a sigh. “That’s her, all right. Well. I guess I’d better find her and see what she wants to do. Maybe she’s already paid up and gone. Is that possible?”

“For that, you’d have to check with the office-that’s through the auditorium, door to the, um, right of the stage. She’d need to pay for her purchases there, then pick them up in holding. That’s in the backstage delivery area- there’s a loading dock there, for large items. I suppose your wife might have gone out that way, if you-”

Hawk muttered. “Thanks, I’ll check,” as he turned away. He pushed through the auditorium doors on a surge of adrenaline, nerves already kicking in to full battle readiness. He was pretty sure he knew now where Campbell had been going in such a hurry.

“Look. there he is again,” Jane said in a loud whisper, tightening her grip on the shopping bag containing her precious Roy Rogers cap pistol as if she expected an imminent mugging. “The man I told you about, the one who was bidding against me, the one who tried to-to bribe me.”

Connie’s slightly protuberant blue eyes glittered dangerously. She shifted, moving closer to Jane, her stocky body lending unspoken support. “Yes, yes, I see him. Never mind, dear, stand fast, don’t let him intimidate you. You won the battle, fair and square.”

“Right,” said Jane, breathing through her nose. She watched, hovering anxiously, while a Rathskeller’s employee carefully wrapped the painting of the ballroom dancers in layers and layers of brown paper. It was the last of the lot, thank God. Connie’s purchases-and there had been a good many of them-had already been loaded into her van, which was conveniently parked near the foot of the loading ramp.

It was there that Jane had spotted the ubiquitous Mr. Campbell, leaning against the fender of an anonymous black sedan, arms folded and ankles crossed, seemingly oblivious to the cold and wet. Watching. Waiting.

Jane shivered and turned her back to him. “I wish he’d just give it up,” she said crossly to Connie as she accepted her wrapped parcel from the young employee. “I’ve already made it perfectly clear to him that I’ve no intention whatsoever of selling this painting. I love this painting. You know, people like that seem to think they can have anything they want if they just pay enough money. He gives me the creeps-oh!” Turning with the painting in her hands, she’d clumsily barged right into someone. “Oh-I’m so sorry. Please excuse me, I…” And then she stopped, bemused, completely forgetting what it was she’d meant to say.

“We meet again,” Tom Hawkins said with a smile.

Well, okay, so it wasn’t much of a smile-a lopsided quirk of the lips that didn’t soften the forbidding terrain of the rest of his face one iota. She found it oddly endearing. “Mr. Hawkins,” she breathed, her own smile blossoming without reservation. “Tell me, did you ever find your friend?”

He gave his head a rueful waggle. “The girl at the front desk suggested I try back here, but…” His shrug had