Sullivan's Last Stand, page 15
“You and your partner are right, Bailey.” Lips that were free of any artificial color curved into a small, regretful smile. “I was the woman at the Harris with my father last weekend, and I knew Angelica had someone watching us. It was just as you guessed. I deliberately let that Jackson man get shots of me that could be construed as being evidence of an illicit meeting between Aaron and a mystery woman.”
“Tracy, enough.” Her father moved forward, his tone urgent. “Don’t tell them anything more, for God’s sake!”
“They suspect most of it anyway, Aaron.” Finally stepping into the room with unhurried grace, she touched him briefly on the arm and then turned to Bailey and Sullivan. “It was almost exactly the way you outlined it. Angelica and I wanted to create a woman who didn’t exist.”
She paused, and for the first time Bailey could see a spark of emotion in those clear gray eyes. Before she could go on, Sullivan spoke, his voice harsh.
“It was murder, then?”
Tracy nodded slowly, her gaze meeting his. “Yes, Mr. Sullivan, the crime our mystery woman was to be framed for was murder. And you were right—it was my father we intended to kill.”
Chapter Eleven
“You’re a lawyer, Ms. Weiss.” Sullivan’s interruption was terse. “Do you want to call someone from your firm before you say anything further?”
“I admit my knowledge of criminal law has become a little rusty since I moved into the corporate field and away from the necessity of meeting with my clients in holding cells.”
The attractively modulated tones held a hint of wryness, Bailey noted with a flash of faint surprise. Even at this moment, Tracy Weiss remained detached enough to see the irony in the situation.
“But no, I think I can dispense with the services of a fellow attorney for the moment, Mr. Sullivan.” Tracy inclined that glossy head of hair graciously. “Or may I call you Terrence? Bailey, of course, I’m on a first-name basis with, but after hearing some of the lawyers at my firm lauding the results your agency produces, I feel that I know you, too.”
“If you did, you’d be aware that I go by the last name only.” He sounded impatient. “But go on. You were confessing to planning a murder.” He shook his head as if in irritation at himself. “Or no—I was forgetting you’re a lawyer and probably prefer the two-buck term over the nickel words the rest of us use. It’s patricide, right?”
“Your tone’s offensive, Sullivan,” Plowright cut in. He moved to his daughter’s side, almost but not quite close enough to touch her. “You have no official standing in this matter, so I’ll thank you to remember you’re here on my sufferance only.”
“And what about me, Aaron?” Bailey looked curiously at the man. “Am I here at your pleasure, too? Are you about to have me thrown out because I don’t have my party manners on?” She narrowed her eyes speculatively at him. “I happen to find murder offensive. We’re not exchanging idle chitchat here over tea and cucumber sandwiches. Your darling daughter just confessed to wanting to kill you, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, dear.” Beside her father, Tracy looked suddenly taken aback. Her eyebrows lifted like two perfect dark wings above the gray eyes, and although her glance encompassed both of them, Bailey had the distinct impression that her words were aimed at Sullivan. “Probably this is one of those times when the more exact two-dollar phrase should be used, in order to avoid any misunderstanding.”
Her smile was politely apologetic, but as she moved to the chair in which her father had been seated earlier, she came close enough to Sullivan that he was forced to take a step back to allow her to pass. Bailey saw quick reassessment in his eyes, just as swiftly veiled.
“And creating misunderstandings is something you seem to do well,” he said smoothly. “What say we try real hard to clear this one up? I’m with Bailey. If you weren’t confessing just now, I’m damned if I know what the hell we’ve been talking about.”
Tracy’s legs were elegantly crossed, the dove-colored skirt sliding just barely above one knee, and her perfect posture didn’t relax enough to allow her to sink back against the cushions of the chair. She reached for the half-full sherry glass that Aaron had set on the table and raised it to her lips, her lashes dark against the creaminess of her skin. In her own way she was as feline as Angelica, Bailey told herself with a trace of envy at the woman’s unhurried grace and flawless beauty. But where Angelica was a Persian kitten, all fluff and innocence, Tracy was a Burmese—sleek, dark, and with her claws sheathed only because she had no need for them at the moment.
“I wasn’t confessing, Mr. Sullivan. I’m not the type to bare my soul.” Tracy’s voice suddenly hardened. “But Angelica is. She came to me with what she thought was a foolproof plan to murder her husband for his money, and she assumed that I was as venal as she was. She asked me to help her, and I said I would.”
“Again, you’re not being real clear here, lady.” Sullivan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying—that you got cold feet and backed out of the deal after you played that little charade for Jackson’s camera?”
“I’m saying that from the first I intended to betray her. I’m sure that’s clear enough for you to relate to, Mr. Sullivan.”
Whether it was a lucky shot, or whether somehow the woman had heard something about his past Bailey didn’t know. But the claws were now out, she thought, taking in the politely questioning expression on the perfect features across from her. The claws were out, and Tracy had drawn first blood, judging from the tight set of Sullivan’s jaw. Suddenly she was tired of playing nice.
It’s time to show her what a tough street-tabby’s claws can do, she thought coldly.
“Yeah, crystal clear, Trace,” she drawled offensively. “Going back to those nickel words we laymen use, you’re covering your sweet butt right now. Maybe Aaron can persuade himself that your involvement in this was totally innocent, but I can’t. Angelica could never have come up with something like this without your help, and even if she had, at the first hint of a problem she would have panicked.”
“She did.” Tracy lowered her gaze and looked down at her hands, now folded neatly on her lap.
For a moment Bailey didn’t realize the implications of what had just been said. Then comprehension came, swift and shattering, and without consciously thinking about it she was suddenly on her feet and bending over the woman in the chair.
“You’re lying!” she snapped, her face thrust close to Tracy’s. “Hank Jackson was executed—brutally. My sister may have gone along with your scheme to eliminate Aaron if she thought he was about to discard her for another woman, but if she’d panicked, she would have run. She isn’t capable of anything as cold-blooded as bringing a gun up to a man’s face and deliberately pulling the trigger.”
Bailey straightened and the hand that had been gripping the back of the chair fell to her side. Her eyes still held the expressionless gray gaze looking up at her. “But I think you might be.”
“Try and prove it,” Tracy said softly. “Somehow I don’t think you’ll be able to, Bailey, because deep down you don’t really believe she’s innocent, either. You can’t forget she came to you first, and you’re not so sure your little adopted sister would have had any qualms about eliminating you if you became a threat, are you?”
Bailey felt the blood drain from her face, but before she could muster a denial, Tracy stood. Ignoring Sullivan and her father, she walked slowly over to the display table and the Venetian globe that her father had replaced on its stand only moments before. She picked it up, handling it with care.
“I never thought she was serious. Knowing Angelica, I assumed this was simply another of her attention-getting ploys, but Aaron’s right—she’d been acting odder than usual lately, and I decided to go along with her incredible plan just to see how far she’d take it.”
With a delicate finger she followed the gold tracery on the surface of the glass ball. She looked up, meeting Bailey’s eyes.
“By the time I got home from the Harris last weekend, I’d decided to tell my father. Before I could, I got a phone call from Angelica. She was worse than I’d ever heard her—raving on hysterically about how the investigator she’d hired suspected that she hadn’t been totally honest with him, and that he’d somehow recognized me as Aaron’s daughter.” Tracy shrugged, the ball cupped in her palms. “I suppose it’s possible this Jackson person might have known who I was. Anyway, I tried to calm her down, but it was impossible. She said that if you’d taken on the job as she’d hoped, she knew you wouldn’t have betrayed her, but Jackson had said he was going to tell his boss the next morning and let him decide how to handle the matter. Angelica was terrified they would go to Aaron and inform him that his daughter and his wife seemed to plotting something against him. She begged me to come with her to Jackson’s and get the photos from him, because she thought without them, he would have nothing to show Sullivan and the matter would go no further.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sullivan said flatly. “If Jackson had come to me with doubts about a case, he wouldn’t have had to back his story up with proof. His judgment would have been good enough for me, and I would have been on the phone to Aaron right away.”
“It didn’t have to make sense. Things seldom do, with Angelica.” There was an edge to the softly modulated voice. “Ask Bailey what her sister’s like.”
She didn’t want to be thrust into the position of having to confirm Tracy’s assessment, Bailey thought. But she had no choice. Reluctantly she nodded.
“Angelica focuses on one thing at a time. It’s possible she would have fixated on the photos and thought that all she needed to do to make things right again would be to destroy—” She stopped suddenly. Tracy was watching her with a small smile on her face.
“And I think that’s what she tried to do, Bailey,” she said softly. “But then something went wrong. Maybe the man didn’t fall for her tearful charms, or maybe she let it slip that what she’d been planning was a crime so serious that he knew he couldn’t keep quiet about it, no matter how much she pleaded with him. Except by then she wasn’t going to leave without those photos. They’re gone, aren’t they?”
“Anything the police have told us is confidential,” Sullivan said harshly. “Besides, like you said, Angelica wanted Bailey to tail Aaron last weekend. The woman’s not dumb enough to think that her own sister wouldn’t have recognized you at the Harris and immediately known that there was something suspicious about the whole setup.”
“Whenever I was supposedly being seen or watched in the hotel suite I was to make sure I kept my face averted. I was the mystery woman, remember?” Tracy flicked a careless glance at Sullivan, ignoring the hostility in his tone. “Of course, we’ll never know how it would have played out if Bailey had been the watcher and if Angelica realized that she’d recognized me and refused to keep quiet about it. You’re lucky you turned down the job.” This last was addressed to Bailey, but even as the brunette spoke she turned away to set the globe back onto its stand.
Bailey, still mentally reeling from the barbed implication in Tracy’s comment, was watching her at the exact moment it happened. Just as she settled the globe gently into its concave holder, Tracy let her right palm tip deliberately sideways and the ball rolled out of her hands.
It fell to the granite floor, smashing into a thousand tiny slivers.
“Oh, no!” Tracy’s eyes widened and she whirled around to face her father. “Aaron—I’m so sorry! How could I have been so stupidly clumsy?”
“No, that’s not like you, is it?” Plowright said evenly.
Standing between the two of them, Bailey was aware of an undercurrent she didn’t fully comprehend flowing between Aaron and his daughter. The woman had smashed the thing on purpose, she thought in stupefaction. Had her father seen how it had happened? Did he realize she’d deliberately destroyed one of his most valued possessions? His next words seemed to dispel that possibility.
“But accidents happen. Don’t upset yourself about it, Tracy. I was probably too attached to the thing, anyway. That’s never wise.” Aaron’s cool smile dismissed her protests. “I’ll ring for Marta to sweep—”
“Oh, Mr. Plowright, your beautiful glass ball! How does this happen?” The appalled comment came from the stocky woman standing in the doorway of the library, and Bailey recognized Aaron’s housekeeper, Marta. Plump hands were pressed to the woman’s mouth in shock. “I will clean up, Mr. Plowright. But there is some man come to see you—he say he is from police.”
“Sorry to barge in on you like this, Mr. Plowright. Sullivan, Flowers.” Striding past the flustered housekeeper, Donny Fitzgerald nodded briefly in the direction of his friend and Bailey, and his sharp gaze took in Tracy’s motionless figure still standing over the shattered remains of the once-priceless bauble, but it was Aaron he approached, his expression grim.
“We’re going to have to talk to your wife, Plowright,” he said tightly. “If there’s any way you can contact her, we’ll do this quietly to save you the publicity, but if we have to we’ll make it public. There’s a warrant out for her arrest.”
“Good God, man, have you lost your mind?” Aaron stared disbelievingly at the detective. “No one’s dragging my name through the papers, least of all you. Does Bill know about this?”
“Commissioner Watkins?” Fitz’s broad shoulders lifted. “I left a message with his secretary to tell him we were on our way to see you. I’m well aware you and he are golfing buddies, Plowright, but that doesn’t affect my decision on this. I have to take your wife in for questioning, and the sooner I find her the better.”
“What’s my sister charged with?”
Fitz looked over at Bailey, and for the first time since he’d entered the room his rough-hewn features held a hint of uncertain sympathy. Then they hardened again, and when he spoke his voice was devoid of any warmth.
“We’re charging her with murder.” He looked suddenly tired. “There were fingerprints on the shower curtain Jackson’s body was wrapped in. They’ve been identified as hers.”
“HER PRINTS WERE ON FILE from when she was working. Apparently one of her employers insisted that anyone handling money had to be bonded, and they were taken then.” Sullivan’s gaze flicked briefly to the rearview mirror as he changed lanes.
It was early evening, and after hours of bad coffee and endless questions, they had finally been allowed to leave the police station and a frustrated Fitzgerald. After dropping his bombshell at Plowright’s house, he’d reluctantly agreed to give Aaron a grace period of twenty-four hours to find his wife and deliver her to the authorities, but as he’d left he’d curtly asked Bailey and Sullivan to accompany him to the station. Once there, he’d spent most of the afternoon trying to get a handle on the personality of his prime suspect by quizzing Bailey about her.
The only thing those seven hours had revealed was that she really didn’t know Angelica any better than anyone else did, Bailey thought heavily. Surely, as her sister, she should have been able to shed some light on why she’d committed such a terrible crime, but she hadn’t.
“Even though Fitz thought Hank’s death had nothing to do with what we told him about the fake tail job Angelica had him working on last weekend, he’s a good enough cop so that he ran her prints anyway. He said he didn’t believe it at first when the tech told him they were a match for the ones on the shower curtain.”
Sullivan glanced over at her, sitting silently beside him in the darkened interior of the car. “Aw, hell, Bails,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t think she was capable of it, either. Believe me, I never wanted it to turn out this way.”
“I let her down.” Her reply was quiet. “I wasn’t there for her when she needed me, not just when she left that message on my machine, but for years. No sane woman would have done what she did, Sully, but I didn’t see that she needed help. The signs must have been obvious, if even Tracy suspected something was wrong with her.”
“If Weiss knew Angelica was losing it, then encouraging her in her crazy schemes was criminally irresponsible of the woman,” Sullivan ground out. “I still don’t totally buy her story that she always intended to tell Aaron.” He frowned. “They might have pulled it off, at that. It was just bad luck for them that Hank got a clear enough glimpse of Tracy to recognize her as Aaron’s daughter.”
“A hundred-to-one shot,” Bailey agreed dully. “Despite what Tracy said today, most people don’t know she’s related to Plowright.” She fell silent for a moment and then she looked up, her brow creased. “But why come to me first? Even Angelica must have known how risky that was. All I would have needed was one quick glimpse of Tracy’s face, and I’d have known immediately who she was.”
“And if you had, you would have gone to your sister, explained that her suspicions were groundless and kept your mouth shut about the unsavory relationship Weiss seemed to be projecting with her father,” he said firmly. “You certainly wouldn’t have suspected that Angelica herself was involved in the charade.”
“She must have thought she could persuade Hank to keep quiet. It would have been her who brought that bottle to his house, I suppose.” Bailey pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly, feeling the headache that had been threatening all afternoon start to throb in earnest. “A couple of drinks to soften him up, then a breathless request to keep her little secret safe. She would have had no doubt that she’d have him wrapped around her little finger without even trying. Except Hank must have turned her down.”
“He was married once. His wife finally left him because of the drinking, and not long after that she was killed in a car accident.” Sullivan turned into the narrow alleyway that led between the rug store and the Chinese restaurant to the minuscule sliver of parking lot behind the two buildings. “He never got over losing Janine. In all the years I knew him, I don’t think he ever showed an interest in any other woman.”
