Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Pawns
JAMIE
Rick drove the SUV toward south Redondo with Holly sitting next to him disagreeing about which roads to take. Shannon and Kyle were in the way back seats canoodling, which left Jamie sitting next to Cliff, energy crackling, sparks flying, as she began to tell him what they’d discovered.
“So, we think we know what was stolen from Duncan Reeves’s place. It was a rare antiquity—”
“The Golden Cobra,” Holly interjected. “A necklace that once graced the neck of Nefertiti. It was bound for Egypt this morning, but it is now missing from my museum. It is priceless and to make matters worse, there is a brotherhood of Egyptian men sworn to retrieve it who will stop at nothing to get it back.”
Jamie spoke quickly, “We think Duncan had it in his possession to impress a woman by the name of Chanel Emam. And this is what got me: this necklace, this antiquity, is exactly the kind of thing you would steal, right?” She was excited, but then remembered to add, “In your previous life.”
Cliff gave her a reassuring smile that meant no offense had been taken. “Yes.”
Shannon turned to face them, putting her arm on the seat in front of her.
“So, our theory is that while the necklace is priceless, the real intention was not to steal it for its value, but to set up Duncan to take the fall. So, we did some digging into his ex-wife, Elizabeth Reeves, who weirdly has zero presence online. But,” she raised one finger in the air, “I managed to dig up an old driver’s license picture of her, and check it out. ”
She held up her phone in Cliff’s direction, but he didn’t even look at it.
Cliff offered, “Elizabeth Reeves is Lorna Gray.”
Everyone in the car went silent. “How did you know that?” Shannon asked.
“Because she hired me to overhaul the security on her house. I had the schematics. I told her how I’d break in so I could devise a system that was unbreakable—theft-proof.”
“And Lorna’s Gray’s house was in fact—” Holly said slowly.
“Duncan Reeves’s house,” Cliff answered.
“Whoa,” Kyle said. “So, she knew you were a thief. And she set you up?”
Cliff nodded slowly. “I think we all must have had a role to play in this. Kyle, did you do anything for Lorna when you first met her?”
His eyes went wide. “Yeah, I helped her disable her other phone. She had the login info, so it was just a matter of showing her…” lightbulbs seemed to flicker in Kyle’s head.
He blipped like a computer on the fritz, finally rebooting and finishing, “Oh my God, I showed her exactly how to hack a phone. She said it was her business phone.”
“It was likely Duncan’s phone, which she disabled so he wouldn’t be alerted to the alarm going off on his house,” Cliff said.
Kyle nodded his head emphatically, as if he’d already calculated that same position.
“Shannon, how about you? Anything weird?”
Shannon drummed her polished nail against her chin. “Come to think of it, she asked me if I had any Trazodone samples. Said she was having trouble sleeping. I gave her five samples.”
“That must have been how she drugged the guard dogs.”
Holly tapped her lip. “I was with her the day I saw that text message from my shifty boss.”
“She knows Duncan, knows how he thinks. She probably knew he was going to procure the necklace,” Cliff said.
“Or she wanted Holly to testify against Grimbsy when the time came?” Jamie asked.
“Makes sense.” Holly tapped her lip. “It’s also possible that Lorna knows the Egyptian woman Duncan was trying to bed.”
Cliff grunted his agreement. Like the first move on a chessboard, it made sense. “And that explains Melvyn Ott, too,” he said. “It was something he said when I had him on the ground. He told me a woman hired him, but that he had been set up. That when he broke in, there was no necklace.”
Jamie remembered hearing Ott say that, but she had no idea what it meant at the time. Her mind was churning, trying to figure out if she had been used, too.
“Jamie, ah, brilliant Jamie.” Cliff smiled at her, could see her questioning her place in the whole thing, too.
“Lorna knew you would assess me. She knew you had seen my file, hell, she may have even put my file in front of you for all we know. But she knew, given enough time, like the time one might have if the power went out, and a town went on lock-down, that you would absolutely put the pieces together and finger me for the crime.”
“Especially since you were gone for twenty minutes,” Jamie said. “She must have had Amber lock you in the freezer.”
“I don’t think Amber took a lot of convincing,” Cliff added.
“Or maybe that was just a bit of luck,” Rick said.
But somehow Jamie didn’t think so. Perhaps Lorna Gray had gotten Amber hired at Piccolo, too.
Another piece was falling into place. She sat there, unsettled by how easy it had been for Lorna to manipulate her.
All of them, really. But Cliff was right, she did exactly as she always had.
Used her abilities to smoke out the truth.
But this truth was an elaborate, masterful lie. “Damn, I hate being predictable.”
“What about me?” Rick piped up excitedly from the driver’s seat. “What role did I play?”
The other five people in the Lexus sat there, puzzling over how Rick, the advertising creative director, played a role in Lorna’s scheme. As the silence grew, Rick said, “Come on, I had to have some purpose. Right? I had to play an important role, too?”
Holly seemed to be trying especially hard, which was saying something for someone who could only be radically honest. “Rick, love, you’re useful in many ways.”
Rick looked crestfallen. “Really? I wasn’t a pawn like the rest of you? I was just some stiff willing to fill a seat on a blind date?”
“We can’t see Lorna’s entire plan,” Jamie kindly offered. “Until we ask her.”
Rick nodded glumly and carried on driving until he reached their destination then pulled the car over into a parking spot in front of the gastropub where the Dinner for Six office resided above.
He parked, while Holly patted his thigh, and then put money in the parking meter lest the Redondo Beach Parking Authority descend like vultures.
All of them piled out onto the street, raced up the stairs to the door of Dinner for Six, keen on confronting Lorna Gray. But much to everyone’s astonishment except Jamie’s, who knew a woman this calculating would never be caught unaware, the office was deserted.
Through the clear glass door, they could see the furniture was gone, the sign removed, leaving only some wire and hooks on the walls.
They could just spy a giant corkboard on the far conference room wall that looked like a police evidence board with each of their pictures and red string all leading to a graphic of a table in the center.
At the top of the board was a picture of Duncan Reeves.
“I knew she wouldn’t be here,” Jamie said. “She’s way ahead of us.”
Cliff stood there, hands on hips, and said, “There’s one more place to look.”