Finding Laura Read online

  His eyes were narrowed slightly, very intent on her face, and when he smiled suddenly it was with rueful certainty. “Yes, I can see that. You don’t have to look so uneasy, Laura—I’m not going to wrest the thing away from you by force.”

  “I never thought you would,” she murmured, lying.

  He chuckled, a rich sound that stroked along her nerve endings like a caress. “No? I’m afraid I’ve made you nervous, and that was never my intention. Why don’t I buy you dinner some night as an apology?”

  This man is dangerous. “That isn’t necessary,” she said.

  “I insist.”

  Laura looked at his incredibly handsome face, that charming smile, and drew yet another deep breath. “Will your wife be coming along?” she asked mildly.

  “If she’s in town, certainly.” His eyes were guileless.

  Very dangerous. Laura shook her head. “Thanks, but no apology is necessary. You offered a generous price for the mirror; I refused. That’s all there is to it.” She half turned and made a little gesture toward the door with one hand, unmistakably inviting him to leave.

  Peter’s beautiful mouth twisted a bit, but he obeyed the gesture and followed her to the door. When she opened it and stood back, he paused to reach into the inner pocket of his jacket and produced a business card. “Call me if you change your mind,” he said. “About the mirror, I mean.”

  Or anything else, his smile said.

  “I’ll do that,” she returned politely, accepting the card.

  “It was nice meeting you, Laura.”

  “Thank you. Nice meeting you,” she murmured.

  He gave her a last flashing smile, lifted a hand slightly in a small salute, and left her apartment.

  Laura closed the door and leaned back against it for a moment, relieved and yet still uneasy. She didn’t know why Peter Kilbourne wanted the mirror back badly enough to pay hundreds of dollars for it, but every instinct told her the matter was far from settled.

  She hadn’t heard the last of him.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL late Sunday morning that Laura was finally able to make out what was stamped in the mazelike pattern on the back of the mirror. It was almost unnoticeable, designed so cleverly that it seemed a part of the pattern, but in the center of the maze had been stamped a tiny heart. There was a curving line through the heart, dividing it in half, and in each half was a letter. S in one half and B in the other.

  Below the tiny heart was a date. 1778.

  At first, Laura thought that might indicate the date the mirror had been made, which would make it well over two hundred years old. But then she found an additional date on the back of the handle, near the bottom. 1800.

  The second date, if it indicated the date the mirror was made, would mean that it was just shy of two hundred years old.

  Two hundred years.

  Then again, Laura told herself, the numbers might not be a date at all, either set of them. They could be some kind of brassmaker’s marks, or even something stamped into the metal by someone trying to make the mirror appear older than it actually was.

  That was her common sense talking. But when Laura touched the mirror, when she traced the swirling pattern in the brass, she felt age. She sat there on the couch for a while longer, gently polishing the mirror, letting her mind muse over those two initials in the heart. Because that had to be it, of course—the initials of lovers. The mirror must have been a gift from a man to his lady, and the date stamped just below the heart might commemorate a wedding or birth, or perhaps the date they had met.

  Laura still had no idea why she should feel so strongly about a mirror that was very likely almost two hundred years old, and she couldn’t help wondering if there was any way she could find out its history. Surely that would give her something to go on, something to explain why she was so drawn to the thing.

  When she heard someone knock on her door, Laura assumed it was Cassidy. She left the mirror on the coffee table and went to open the door, startled to find two neatly dressed middle-aged men standing there. Before she could do more than ask herself why Larry hadn’t announced visitors, one of the men opened up a folded wallet and showed her a badge.

  “Miss Sutherland? I’m Detective Bridges, this is Detective Shaw. Atlanta Police. May we come in and talk to you, please?”

  God, surely he didn’t tell the police I stole the mirror! “Talk to me about what?” she asked, aware that she sounded rattled.

  Neither detective seemed surprised that she kept them standing at the door. Detective Bridges said pleasantly, “Where were you last night, Miss Sutherland? Say, between eight P.M. and midnight?”

  Must not be the mirror, then. The relief was overwhelming. “I was here,” she said.

  “Alone?” Detective Shaw asked.

  She didn’t like the way he was staring at her, so suspiciously. “Yes, alone. Why?”

  Detective Bridges spoke again, still polite, his gaze seemingly pleasant. “Can anyone verify that, Miss Sutherland?”

  She frowned at him. “This is a secured building; the front lobby entrance is always manned by security, and you can only enter or leave the rear door with a keycard. The guard downstairs last night would have me in his log if I’d left the building—Hey, why didn’t he announce you two?”

  “We asked him not to, Miss Sutherland.” Bridges was still polite.

  More belligerent, Shaw demanded, “How do we know you didn’t leave by the rear door?”

  Laura’s earlier uneasiness returned full force. What was this all about? Slowly she said, “Every time a card is used, a computer records whose it is. Check with Larry—the guard downstairs. My card wasn’t used last night.”

  “You could have used somebody else’s,” Shaw pointed out nastily.

  “Maybe I could have, but I didn’t,” Laura snapped. “Look, what’s this all about?”

  Bridges smiled again. “I believe you know Peter Kilbourne, Miss Sutherland?”

  “No. That is, I’ve met him. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. But I don’t know him. Why?”

  “He came here late yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Laura gritted her teeth and promised herself this was the last question she’d answer until her own was answered. “I bought a mirror yesterday from his family’s estate sale. He showed up hours later and said it had been put up for auction mistakenly. He wanted to buy it back. Now, what the hell is going on?”

  Bridges must have realized she was about to stop being cooperative. Or maybe he just knew how to time an announcement to create the maximum amount of shock. In any case, he chose to answer her.

  “Peter Kilbourne was murdered last night. And as far as we can determine, you were one of the last people to see him in the hours before his death.”

  “And,” Shaw added in a voice of frightening satisfaction, “he checked into a motel last night not three blocks from here—with a redhead.”

  Chapter 2

  They didn’t believe me.” Laura was curled up in her big chair, drained and more than a little frightened.

  “They can’t have any real evidence, because you didn’t do it,” Cassidy reminded her.

  “I can’t prove I didn’t leave the building last night, that’s what they kept coming back to. Even though the door guard didn’t see me leave and my keycard wasn’t used, they said I could have used somebody else’s. Nearly thirty people left the building last night between eight and midnight, according to the computer log, and that one cop is convinced I used one of their cards.” Laura shivered and tried to think of something else. “By the way, how was your date?”

  “Never mind my date.” Cassidy, sitting on Laura’s couch, was a little pale and definitely worried. “It was cruddy and I came home early—and this is no time for small talk. Look, once everybody who used their card last night verifies that, you’ll be in the clear. Right?”

  “I don’t think so. When they got the printout from Larry, he said something about at
least a couple of people in the building losing or misplacing their cards. If those lost cards were used last night …”

  “You don’t have a motive, you’d just met the man.”

  “Yeah, well. The nicer cop said they’d check with the family and see if anyone could verify that he came here to see a stranger about a mirror she’d bought at the estate sale. All the driver knew was that he brought Peter to this address, and that Peter mentioned my name.”

  “Somebody in the family is bound to verify it, Laura.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t know that it would matter if they did. The police could always say that Peter did know me and used the mirror as an excuse to see me. Those newspapers of yours weren’t kidding about his charm, and I’ll bet the woman last night wasn’t the first one he’d taken to a motel. He made a move on me, for God’s sake, and we’d just met.”

  “I hope you didn’t mention that to the police,” Cassidy said ruefully.

  “No, of course not.” Laura put a hand up and rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I just wish that so-helpful chauffeur had driven Peter when he went back out last night after he left here and went home. But Peter drove himself—and his car was found parked two blocks from here. Dammit, I think it looks bad, and I know I’m innocent.”

  “Look, if he was with another woman, maybe his wife—”

  “His wife is—or was, since she’s probably on her way home now—visiting relatives in California. Haven’t you read the special edition of the newspaper they put out this afternoon?” She nodded to the untidy stack of newspapers on the floor beside her chair. “I looked at it while I was waiting for you to get back from your tennis date. Peter Kilbourne’s murder is a front-page story. They didn’t have a lot of details, but they had a few. Seems the wife is the only one of the family with a strong alibi. The rest of them were scattered about last night, several at home with no proof they stayed there, and one or two out on the town, possibly with witnesses.”

  “Then the police will find the woman he was with,” Cassidy offered.

  “Oh, yeah.” Laura sighed. “Seen late at night by a sleepy hotel manager who remembers only that she was a redhead. Hotel rooms being what they are, I’ll bet the police found enough fingerprints to paper a billboard. And whoever killed him had the presence of mind to wipe the handle of the knife, so that probably won’t help identify anyone.” Laura shivered again. “I hope the newspaper exaggerated. It said he had been stabbed a dozen times. God, Cass, how badly would you have to hate a man to stab him a dozen times?”

  “Don’t think about it,” Cassidy said, looking a bit sick herself.

  “I can’t help it.” She managed a wavering smile. “I don’t have your ability to compartmentalize, remember? You’re the mathematical one; I’m the one with the vivid imagination. Even though I didn’t do it, I … I can see it, Cass. In my mind. How it must have happened. The violence of it. The blood … God help me, I could probably paint it.”

  It was Cassidy’s turn to shiver. “That’s creepy.”

  “Tell me about it. There’s a downside to everything, including imagination.”

  “Then let’s use logic,” Cassidy suggested. “We know who didn’t kill him—you. So who could have done it, and why?”

  “I don’t know. How could I?” Laura stared at the mirror on her coffee table and frowned. “All I know is that Peter Kilbourne came here to buy back that mirror—and he wanted it badly enough to offer me five hundred dollars for it.”

  “Is it worth that much?” Cassidy wasn’t nearly so scornful of the “ugly” mirror today, but whether because Laura had polished it up or because it appeared to be far more important than it had yesterday was something she didn’t explain.

  “I don’t know enough about antiques—even antique mirrors—to know what it’s worth, but I’m willing to bet he didn’t want it back because of its intrinsic value. No, there was something odd about the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Laura’s frown deepened. “Well, for instance, he said it had been in the family a long time, implying that it was an heirloom. But you saw the condition it was in when I bought it. That mirror’s been stuck in a trunk or box, or lying on a dusty shelf somewhere, for years. Maybe even decades. That’s not the way a devoted family takes care of an heirloom. And then there’s the way he reacted to my collection of mirrors. He asked me if I had always collected mirrors, not as if the idea of collecting them surprised him, but as if my collecting mirrors meant something else to him.”

  “Like what?” Cassidy asked, puzzled.

  “I don’t know. It was all inflection, and something in his eyes, too brief for me to really get hold of it. But …” Laura hesitated, then went on slowly, “you know, I have the weird feeling that he left here without the mirror only because he saw my collection over there. When he got here, he had every intention of offering me whatever it took to get the mirror, but something changed his mind.”

  “Maybe he knew how obsessive collectors could be, and realized you wouldn’t sell.”

  “I don’t think that was it. He seemed to … recognize something. It was almost as if, when he saw my collection, he suddenly understood something that had been a puzzle to him until then.”

  “Why you bought a mirror, maybe?” Cassidy shook her head before Laura could respond, and said wryly, “No, people buy all kinds of things at estate sales, so that shouldn’t have puzzled him.”

  “I don’t think it did. But something did. Until he saw my collection.”

  Cassidy watched her brooding friend for a moment, then said, “So, what happens next? I assume the police will be asking all of us about our keycards, but what about you?”

  Laura’s mouth twisted. “The nice one asked me if I would—voluntarily—consent to having my fingerprints taken. The implication being that if I didn’t agree, they’d charge me, or arrest me, or officially take me in for questioning. Or do whatever it took to get my prints whether I like it or not.”

  “I guess you consented?”

  “I’m supposed to go first thing tomorrow morning, before work.”

  “Well, okay—we both know they won’t find your prints in that motel room, and without that, they have nothing. I mean, Laura, all they really have is the fact that Peter Kilbourne spent fifteen minutes here hours before he was killed. So you’re a redhead—big deal. How many redheads are there in Atlanta? And that’s assuming the hotel manager saw what he thought he saw—late at night when he was sleepy, as you said.”

  “All that’s perfectly true,” Laura admitted. “And it’s undoubtedly why I wasn’t arrested this morning, because they don’t have any evidence against me. But, Cass, it’s virtually certain I was one of the last people to see him alive, and if they can’t find another redhead lurking somewhere in his immediate past, then they’re going to concentrate on me. They’ll be looking for connections between me and Peter Kilbourne.”

  “But there aren’t any,” Cassidy protested.

  “You know that, and I know it, but the police are going to want to find out for themselves. They’ll examine me and my recent past, if not my entire life, with a microscope. Talk to people who know me. Maybe have me followed. God knows what else. And when the press gets hold of my name … damn. At best, my life is not going to be fun for a while.”

  “And at worst?”

  “At worst, the police won’t be able to find another suspect.” Laura managed a smile, but she wouldn’t have wanted to see what it looked like. “And even if their case is too weak for a courtroom, I’ll bet the press will be able to come up with all sorts of scenarios in which I murder Peter Kilbourne.”

  “But if you’re not even arrested—”

  Laura heard herself utter a sound that might have approached amusement. “Come on, Cass. If you don’t think they’ll rush to judgment, you haven’t been paying attention to the news in the last few years.”

  “Then what’ll you do?” Cassidy asked soberly.

  Returning her gaze to
the mirror on the coffee table, Laura said slowly, “The police weren’t at all interested in the mirror, except for it being the alleged reason why Peter came here yesterday. So they won’t be investigating that. But I think somebody should. I can’t help feeling that it’s important for me to find out why he wanted to buy the mirror back. I think I need to find out as much as I can about its history, about how it came to be in the possession of the Kilbourne family.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Laura said, not admitting that she had decided earlier to do this on her own account, to attempt to explain why she felt so strongly about the mirror. “You remember that college student I used last summer to do research for me?”

  “Yeah. You said she was good.”

  “Very good. I think maybe I’ll give her a call and see if she wants to earn a little extra money.”

  “Researching a mirror?”

  Laura shrugged. “There are a couple of dates on the back to give her a place to start, so why not? Maybe she won’t be able to find anything. But maybe she will. Maybe she’ll be able to tell me where the mirror came from and how it ended up in the possession of the Kilbournes.”

  “And what do you expect that to tell you?”

  “Why it was so important to Peter Kilbourne, I guess.”

  “Do you really think this mirror had something to do with why he was killed?”

  “No. I don’t know. It’s the only thing I’ve got to go on, Cass. The only thing I know of Peter Kilbourne is that he wanted this mirror back the day he died. I have to find out why.”

  After a moment, Cassidy shook her head. “Sounds like a long shot to me, Laura. But I guess you have to do something about this situation.”

  “I can’t just sit around and wait for the police to decide I didn’t do it,” Laura agreed, then frowned. “Problem is, it’ll take a while to get the research done, even if Dena gets lucky. And she’ll have to start with the origins of the mirror—I think nearly two hundred years ago. That’s an awful lot of ground to cover before getting to the Kilbourne family.”