Читать книгу All A Man Can Ask - Virginia Kantra - Страница 13

She was not going to panic.

He couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. Faye met Aleksy’s hard, implacable gaze. Her stomach flopped. Could he?

In her best teacher voice, she said, “I’d feel more comfortable if we continued this discussion somewhere other than my bedroom.”

He grinned, and her stomach flip-flopped again. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

“What I want is for this whole situation to go away,” she said. “But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

He looked briefly regretful. “Probably not,” he admitted.

Even though she was expecting his answer, it came as a blow. She tried not to flinch. “Okay.” She tugged the door shut behind him and led the way back to her living room studio, trying to get control of herself and the situation. “Then the more pertinent question is, what do I have to do?”

“Call the police.”

She stopped. “You’re police.”

“This isn’t my jurisdiction.”

“But if nothing’s been stolen—”

“You should still call it in. You notify the local police department, they can beef up patrols, file a report, maybe dust for fingerprints.”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” The realization sharpened her voice. “You want to find out who was here without it looking like you’re the one who wants to know.”

He didn’t deny it.

She felt slightly sick. Used. “You said I wouldn’t be involved.”

“You’re already involved.”

“Because someone thought you were living here,” she insisted. “Now they know you’re not.”

He raised his eyebrows. “If they know that, then they have to think you were lying. And they’re going to wonder why.”

She stared at him, her stomach churning.

“Call the police,” he said again, his voice gentle. “See what the chief says.”

She remembered the smooth voice over the phone. “He’s your brother. He’ll say whatever you want him to.”

Aleksy shook his head. “Jarek’s one of the good guys. He’ll do whatever he thinks he has to to protect you.”

Police chief Jarek Denko was like his voice, polite, controlled and serious. He arrived within ten minutes of Faye’s call. A female officer, lean and graceful as a greyhound on a leash, stalked beside him. Aleksy went down the steps to meet them.

Faye watched from the porch as they communicated in terse phrases and unspoken signals, as foreign to her as if they really were the animals they resembled. Sniff, sniff, wag, wag, growl. A bubble of amusement rose in her throat.

And then they turned in a pack to face her and she swallowed hard.

“Miss Harper?” The chief of police was a more compact version of his brother, equally intense and almost ten years older. Aleksy’s eyes were dark as coffee. Jarek’s were light as frost. “I’m Jarek Denko. We spoke on the phone.”

It was stupid to feel breathless. “Yes, I—I know.”

He smiled Aleksy’s smile, with more understanding and less edge. She wasn’t reassured, but she caught herself smiling back. “Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Oh. No. Please.” She retreated to the living room and dropped into a chair, clasping her hands tightly in her lap.

The chief sat forward on Aunt Eileen’s comfortable, ugly couch, his notebook balanced on his knee. Aleksy propped against the fireplace, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on her face.

Faye straightened her spine. Ridiculous to feel as if she were a troublemaker called to the principal’s office. But she did.

She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. But it didn’t matter. She hadn’t been wrong to recommend Jamal for an art scholarship, either, and she’d still had to face a reprimand from the principal.

“Just a few routine questions,” Jarek said. “Baker, why don’t you see what that door will tell us.”

The young female officer sprang to the sliding doors and pulled out a flashlight. Faye watched as she angled the beam one way and another.

“Latents?” Aleksy asked.

Officer Baker, her long, dark hair pulled back smoothly from her narrow face, looked to her chief, clearly waiting for his command.

“Dust it,” Jarek ordered. “Now, Miss Harper…”

Faye did her best to answer his questions, trying to ignore the young woman shaking fine black powder off a fat black brush all over her aunt’s door frame, and Aleksy, alive and restless by the fireplace.

“And that’s when you went to find Alex?” Jarek prompted.

“Yes,” Faye said. “I was—just a little nervous.”

Not nervous, she thought miserably. Cowardly.

“Not nervous,” Aleksy corrected her. “Smart.”

Jarek turned his head and regarded his brother. “And what were you doing on Miss Harper’s property?”

“Fishing.”

“Do you have a license?”

Aleksy straightened away from the mantel. “What?”

“A license,” Jarek repeated, deadpan. “To fish.”

“Bite me,” Aleksy said.

Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Get one.”

“Jare, you know I’m not after—” He looked at Baker and stopped.

“As long as you’re here, you’ll do everything by the book,” Jarek said. “Everything. You got me?”

They would make an interesting study, Faye thought. Two brothers stamped with the same harsh Slavic cheekbones and passionate Slavic mouths. One all hot energy, one all cool control. In her mind, she began to draw them.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Aleksy said.

“That’s what worries me,” Jarek murmured.

Aleksy grinned. “Can you run the prints?”

Jarek looked at Baker. The young woman shook her head. “No prints,” Jarek said. “Sorry, Miss Harper. We’ll keep an eye out, but unless they try again, it’s unlikely we’ll know who broke in.”

He spoke to her. But Faye thought his words were meant for Aleksy.

“I understand,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

Jarek stood, tucking his notebook away. “Anytime. Don’t let this spoil your vacation. You have a nice place here.”

“It’s my aunt’s,” she said, compelled to qualify. To apologize. To explain, following the pattern she’d been forced into since her disastrous error of judgment three miserable months ago. “I’m only borrowing it for the summer.”

“I know. To paint, you said.” He gestured to the sheets of paper tacked to the display board and stacked on the table. “This your work?”

She felt compelled to apologize for that, too. “In progress.”

Aleksy strolled over from his post by the fireplace. “What are you working on now?”

“That wet-in-wet of the boat at dawn. It’s not very good yet.”

“What’s a—” He stopped himself. “Show me.”

Impatiently she stepped to the table. “I only started it this morn—” She broke off.

Aleksy’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Dumbfounded, she stared at the blank spot in the center of her work space. “It’s gone.”

Jarek withdrew the notebook from his breast pocket. “Your painting?”

Aleksy’s sharp gaze swept the table. “What else is missing?”

“Nothing. That is— The photographs,” she said uncertainly. “I had an entire roll developed yesterday. Right here.”

The two brothers exchanged glances.

“Bingo,” said Aleksy.

“Do you remember the subject of the photographs, Miss Harper?” Jarek asked.

She ran a hand through her hair. “Not really. I didn’t take any one subject,” she explained. “I like to get different images on film. I do field sketches, of course, but you can get so much more detail with photographs. Rocks, water, interesting vegetation…”

Aleksy scowled. “But the missing painting—that’s of a boat, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know whose boat? Where was it?”

His investigation was spilling and flowing into her life like a watercolor wash gone horribly wrong. Her home had been invaded. Her work had been stolen. And from Aleksy’s rising excitement, she sensed things were about to get even worse.

“It was tied up across the lake.”

“At Freer’s dock? Is it his boat?”

Oh, dear. “I don’t think so. That is, I only saw it there once. When I went back the next morning, it was gone.”

By the doors, the uniformed officer was quietly packing her bag to go.

“What type of boat?” Jarek asked.

She spread her hands in frustration. “A boat boat. Not a sailboat. I don’t know boats. It was sort of beige.”

“Beige.” Aleksy blew out a short, exasperated breath. “I thought artists were supposed to be observant.”

“Ask me about the quality of light or the contrasts in tone,” she flashed back. “For everything else, I’ve got snapshots.”

He grinned, his good humor apparently restored by her own display of artistic temper. “And did you take a snapshot of the boat?”

She elevated her chin. “I took several.”

“All of them missing?”

She pushed at a stack of half-finished paintings; lifted a plastic palette. “Yes. The whole roll is gone.”

“Could you have misplaced them?”

She was too used to questioning her own judgment to resent his question. Much. This was her work they were talking about. “No. They were on this table this morning. I’m sure of it.”

Jarek scratched at his jaw with the end of his pen. “Who knows about your picture-taking habit, Miss Harper?”

Her uncertainty returned. “I suppose anyone could have seen me out with the camera… And I get the film developed in town.”

“Weiglund’s Camera?”

She supposed in a small town the chief of police would know most of the merchants. But it was oddly charming, all the same. “Yes.”

“Well, if Greta Weiglund knows about you, then everybody in town knows,” Jarek said, with a glint of humor that was hard to resist. “Thanks, Laura. That’ll be it.”

Officer Baker let herself out the front door.

“Faye.” Aleksy leaned in on her other side with the steady look and oh-so-sincere smile he’d tried on at their first meeting. She was flanked by Denkos. Surrounded. “It would really help us out if you could describe the boat.”

She was not amused. She would not be charmed. But she might be helpful, and, if she were lucky, they would go away.

“I can do better than that,” she said. “I can show it to you.”

Excitement flared in his eyes. “Where? How?”

Oh, my. She smoothed her hands down her skirt, trying to hide their trembling. “The photos are only backups for the sketches. I still have my sketchbook.”

His smile warmed to something real. “Clever girl,” he said softly. “Show me.”

She flushed and dug in her canvas bag for her pad. She thumbed through the watercolor sketches—color impressions of a cloud-layered sky, a wooded bank, posts in a river with the sun behind them—until she found her study of a moored boat at dawn.

Both men bent over the table to look.

“Do you recognize it?” Jarek asked Aleksy.

Aleksy grunted. “Not from my files. You?”

“It’s a beige boat with a cabin.”

“You’re a fat lot of help.”

Jarek smiled thinly. “You want me to take it further?”

“Take what further?” Faye demanded and then bit her lip. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be involved.

The Denkos ignored her anyway.

“I’ll take it. For now,” Aleksy said.

“Don’t step on any more toes,” his brother warned. “I’ve got a good relationship with the feds and I want to keep it that way.”

“Don’t worry. I’m unofficial.”

“Be very unofficial,” Jarek said. “Start with Mark.”

Aleksy looked revolted. “DeLucca?”

“He knows boats.”

“Yeah, but—”

“He’s going to be family.”

“Ain’t that a kick in the head,” Aleksy muttered.

Jarek pinned him with a look. Faye’s fingertips tingled at the sudden tension in the room.

Aleksy sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk with him. Tonight.”

Jarek nodded. His gaze, cool as lake water, met Faye’s. “Miss Harper. I’ll do what I can to increase patrol presence up here. But those sliding doors are easy to force. You might consider blocking the track with a broom handle.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Aleksy said. “I’ll take care of her.”

“See that you do.” He walked to the door.

“Thank you,” Faye said.

“Hey, bro,” Aleksy called.

Jarek half-turned.

“Give my love to Tess.”

The chief’s harsh face relaxed in a smile. “Come to dinner Friday. You can give it to her yourself.”

They made quite a picture on their way to the black-and-white cop car—the same dark hair, the same long, muscled backs, the same unconscious arrogance in the set of their shoulders, the same assurance in their strides. Another woman would have drooled. Faye’s fingers itched for her sketchbook.

But before the impulse formed into action, Aleksy came back up the walk alone. Faye caught herself admiring the proportions of his chest, the strength of his thighs, and flushed like an art student with her first nude model.

To hide her embarrassment, she asked, “Who’s Tess?”

Aleksy pushed open the screen. “Teresa DeLucca. Local reporter. Got herself engaged to Jarek about a month ago.”

“You don’t approve,” she guessed.

“It’s not up to me to approve. Jarek seems happy.” He wandered toward her kitchen. “Got anything to drink?”

He certainly didn’t mind making himself at home, she thought. But he must be thirsty. She wondered how many hours he’d spent on her bank spying today. He smelled like the outdoors, like leaves and sun and sweat.

Faye sighed. One drink, and then she’d send him on his way. “Beer or soda?”

“You keep beer in your refrigerator?”

“It’s perfectly legal,” she said. “I’m over twenty-one.”

He flashed his lethal grin. “You look about sixteen. But that’s not what I meant. I pegged you as the designer water and herbal tea type.”

At least he hadn’t told her she looked twelve. “Do you want the beer or not?”

“Yes, please, teacher.”

She tugged open the avocado green refrigerator—a mistake left over from the seventies, like disco or silk shirts for men—and pulled out a long-necked bottle. He thanked her and tipped it back. She tried not to stare at his throat as he swallowed. There was an angry pink sunburn above the collar of his T-shirt. When he stretched his neck, she could see a line of pale, smooth skin below. Her own mouth dried.

Oh, dear. Oh, no.

She hugged her left arm across her chest, holding it like a barrier between them. “Why don’t you like your sister-in-law?”

“Future sister-in-law.” He set the bottle down on the counter. “And I like Tess fine. We’re a lot alike in some ways.”

She tried to hear what he was not saying. “Pushy? Stubborn? Obnoxious?”

Aleksy laughed, a warm, rich, surprised sound. “She’s not as bad as me. Just…independent.”

“Not too independent to get married, apparently.”

He picked up his beer. “We’ll see.”

Faye didn’t want to get involved, but this was fascinating stuff. “You don’t think she’ll go through with it?”

“I think she’ll do it. I just hope they can make a success of it. Marriage is a tough proposition.”

“What made you such a pessimist?”

He lowered the bottle from his lips. “Experience.”

Faye could understand that. She took another beer out of the fridge. Her own mother was currently vacationing in Florida with husband number four. Her father—her mother’s second husband—was a self-absorbed academic who had always preferred the company of his books to the demands of a wife and child.