Chapter Thirteen
Jack was inside, moving along the walls and studying them as though taking some sort of inventory.
Cora watched him, her suspicion mounting.
He paused for a long moment in front of the southern wall, the only one in the room void of any oversized windows or fireplaces.
He was carefully examining four heavy, gilded frames.
Frames that held priceless oil paintings in a straight, masterful line.
Cora’s breath went ragged.
She pushed open the door and stepped out from the shadows.
“That’s William Blake, is it?” she asked suddenly.
Jack swore, turning so fast that he bumped into a glass lamp. His hand struck out to catch it just before it fell.
Cora actually smiled. It felt delicious, for once, to be a step ahead of him, and she relished the taste of it.
Jack set the lamp aright and smoothed his tie. It was a lush pattern of fine, gray dots that mirrored his pocket square. His hair was slicked back with pomade.
“Yes,” he said, then turned his back to her and examined the painting. “Blake,” he continued. “It’s called Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing.”
Cora took another step toward him, keeping her focus on the fireplace poker.
“And another William?” she asked. She came to stand beside him and nodded toward the second painting.
Cora admittedly knew very little about art, but she had stolen a glance at the Yeats signature in the corner and made a calculated guess.
Jack gave her a side glance at that, as if amused; and when their eyes met, a jolt shot through Cora’s veins.
“No. That’s a Jack, actually,” he said casually, crossing his arms, as if he had all the time in the world.
As if he wanted nothing more than to be there standing with her, teaching her about art.
“Jack Butler Yeats. Spelled differently than mine, and a good bit cleverer with a paintbrush. This one is entitled The Liffey Swim.”
“You see something here you like?” she asked. “Your collection isn’t quite complete yet?”
“Truman Byrd has good taste,” Jack said, his tone cooling. He turned back to the art.
Could he really be planning to steal more from right under Byrd’s nose?
What a brazen bastard, Cora thought, practically marveling.
They stood there together, Cora dressed in her maid’s uniform, Jack in his crisp hundred-dollar suit, gazing at the wall with their elbows almost brushing.
In an alternate universe, they could almost be on holiday together at a museum, looking at art for pleasure.
Every nerve in Cora’s body was awake and tingling as Jack examined the third painting closely—a portrait of Byrd.
Surely he couldn’t intend to steal a portrait of Byrd himself? She glanced nervously at the door.
“This is a Celeste Lourd,” Jack said conversationally, as if reading her mind. “It’s an interesting choice for a commissioned portrait. She’s a real up-and-coming young artist.”
“And you know your art better than anyone else here, I’m sure,” Cora said. She wielded her voice like a delicate knife.
“It’s been quite an informative decade since Pelican,” Jack agreed, but there was a look in his eyes that Cora had never seen before. Almost as if he were holding back an ace he desperately wanted to play.
They circled each other in the dimness, the plush rug giving softly underfoot.
Jack glanced slightly toward the fireplace, toward the panel Cora had shut behind her.
Cora sensed that he already knew it was there.
If Jack had studied the grounds of Enchanted Hill as well as Cora had, then he knew there were ways to smuggle art out of the Assembly Room without ever being seen.
The fourth and final painting that hung behind them was a Degas.
Even without any expertise in art, Cora could guess that the pieces that hung in that room were worth close to a hundred thousand dollars each. Maybe more.
“Just so you know,” she said, “if I don’t come back tonight, I’ve left your real identity hidden for one of my maid friends to find.”
“Noted,” he said.
Byrd’s portrait loomed above them, his hand tucked into his vest, the chain of his pocket watch dangling in a golden arc from his pocket. Celeste Lourd had painted him with generosity, making him seem younger and more athletic than he truly was. But she had rightfully depicted his imposing glare.
Cora followed Jack’s gaze toward it. “What are you doing in here, Jack?”
“I’m a connoisseur of the arts,” he said. “I thought you knew that.”
“Yes, your reputation precedes you in that regard. Yet you still expect me to believe that you aren’t here to take Truman out or steal something?”
“I already told you,” he said. “That’s not why I came.”
“For some sort of revenge, then? For the way Byrd took you down in his papers?”
“Not revenge, exactly, no,” he countered. He touched his chin and looked at her with piercing eyes. “More like justice.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ah. See, now: information will cost you information,” Jack said. He was close enough that she could smell him, like pepper and leather.
“All right,” Cora said warily. “What do you want to know, then?”
“I want to know why you’re really here.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said, gesturing to her uniform. “I’m a maid.”
“Bushwa.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m working undercover on something.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Who hired you?”
She hesitated. “I’m not at liberty to share that information.”
“Who are you here to watch, then?”
“Clementine.”
“Byrd hired you to watch Clementine?” Jack guessed. “So you’re here acting as his own personal spy.”
Cora gave the smallest nod and thought: You have no idea.
“Now,” she said. “You have one more chance to answer my question.” She turned toward a hidden panel in the wall and pulled it open, revealing a secret telephone. “Or I’m calling the police. Why did you come to Byrd Castle?”
Jack felt himself go cold. He could tell, looking at Cora’s face, that she wasn’t bluffing.
With one finger, with a few potent words, she held the rest of his life in her hands.
Whatever the fallout for her, it would be worse for him—she had the upper hand, and she knew it.
But he had one play left—it wasn’t a sure ace, but had that tingle of being the winning card anyway.
He took a deep breath and, like he always did, went for the gamble.
He turned and looked at her. Calmly, he said “I’m here to find out what really happened the night of the Bastion murders.”
Color flooded into Cora’s face. “Not this again, Jack,” she snapped. “I stopped believing in your innocence about the time we found Rusty with his head bashed in.”
Jack flinched. “Fine. But let me ask you this,” he said. “The night of the Bastion theft. Where were the stolen paintings, Cora? Why weren’t they found on Leo and me that night?”
She looked at him with suspicion. “You had an accomplice.”
“Or we were framed.” He could hear the anger in his voice, as fresh and raw as ever.
Cora cocked her head and raised her eyebrow.
She was going to be much harder to convince now than when she was fourteen, he could see that.
“There was no third person that night. It was just me and my brother, at the wrong place at the wrong time. Trying to help, even.” He shook his head in disgust. “Like a pair of rubes.”
“The evidence against you was indisputable,” Cora said, her voice rising. “The guards’ blood was on your clothes,”
“We were trying to help them,” Jack said, fighting to keep a hold on his frustration.
It threatened to escape his grip. “We were trying to save their lives. We were passing by late that night when we heard a woman scream from inside the museum. We went running toward it, like fools, right into a trap.”
“There were eyewitnesses who saw you,” she insisted. “You were convicted before a judge and jury.”
“They were paid off. There were no weapons on us, no art to be found. And yet we were thrown into Pelican to rot.”
He took a step closer to her, both his anger and frustration and hers simmering just beneath the surface. The air practically crackled between them.
“Don’t play me for a fool,” Cora said quietly. Dangerously.
“When I told you I was innocent, I was telling the truth, Cora. I didn’t kill those men and I’ve never touched that art.
I’ve never even seen it with my own eyes.
I’ve been trying to find it for years.” He fought to keep his voice low, but he felt his desperation mounting.
For some inexplicable reason, it suddenly felt like the most important thing in the world to make her believe him; like he was lifting a piece of his armor and waiting for her to strike the fatal blow.
“I spent years honing my chops on cards and craps, making connections and infiltrating the underground so I could find out what really happened that night. That path led me here. Because Truman Byrd knows more about the Bastion murders than he is saying,” Jack said. “And I want to know what that is.”
Cora was spluttering. “And you expect this to come up over cocktails and canapes?”
“Of course not. I’m going to speak to Byrd in the language he understands.”
“Which is what?” She glanced at the paintings. “Ransom?”
“No. Blackmail.”
Cora paled. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Let’s just say that Byrd has come into possession of something that some very influential people are very eager to get back.”
“And what would that be?” Cora asked suspiciously.
Jack looked over his shoulder, then took a step toward her. “Damning evidence that he’s gathered on the mob and every single one of their high-ranking politicians in the state of New York. He’s been holding it over them as collateral, and they want it back.”
Her hazel eyes narrowed. “So you are working for the mob.”
“I don’t work for the mob,” he said. “We’ve struck a temporary agreement based on mutual necessity. I work for myself.”
“They’re just paying you handsomely, then?”
“Yes. But not in money. In information.” Jack took a step toward her and lowered his voice even further.
A private confidence. “If I bring the damning evidence to them, they’ve agreed to tell me who sold those stolen Bastion paintings on the black market.
You have to understand, giving up a player like that is not something they do lightly.
The system only works if they can be trusted to keep sensitive dealings entirely confidential.
So I have to bring them something in exchange. ”
She nodded, her eyes still narrowed.
“Or,” he said, close enough to her now that he could see the lightened ends of her eyelashes, “alternatively, if Truman wants those files to stay in his possession badly enough, then perhaps he’ll tell me who paid him off to frame us in his papers all those years ago.”
Cora fished out a cigarette and lit it. Her fingers were long and slender as she held the flame near her mouth. They betrayed the slightest tremble, and he could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to believe him.
It was strange to think about being alone with her. How he hardly thought of her as a woman, but she was now. She would be twenty-seven—twenty-eight? It was unnerving, when all those years after Pelican he had pictured her as a girl, frozen forever in time.
The ember of the cigarette blazed and lit her face, casting a shadow that slid along her cheekbones, her mouth. “Believe me or not,” he said, meeting her eyes, “but I’ve thought of you often over the years. You were the only kind thing I remember on Pelican.”
She gave him a look that reached deep inside him and yanked. All the things he had tried to tell himself over the years—that he hadn’t ruined her life; that she would find it in herself to understand—fell away like ash.
She shivered slightly and tried to hide it, but he saw.
She folded her arms across her chest as though unconvinced, but Jack sensed something deeper in the gesture.
There was anguish behind it. It was self-protection from more of his lies, his subterfuge.
She believed that their friendship on Pelican all those years ago had meant nothing to him—that she had simply been a means to an end.
And she had. Yet it wasn’t that simple, and never had been. Whether she believed it or not, he had truly cared for her.
She had just opened her mouth to say something when the door behind them suddenly opened.
Cora took an instinctive step back.
“Ah, Conner! So here you are.” Governor Gilham strode into the room, the skin on top of his head as polished as a cue ball. His grin grew when he saw Cora standing there, and he gave Jack a sly look. “Not interrupting anything here, I hope—mm, Everett?”
“Just stepped away for a self-guided tour,” Jack said with a broad smile, gesturing vaguely toward the wall. “Are you much of a connoisseur, Gilham?”
Gilham barely spared the paintings a second glance. “They’re swirling like vultures for a game of euchre out there.” He waggled his finger at Jack. “What do you say?”
“I’m afraid I’m still nursing a bottle-ache from last night,” Jack said. “Not sure how much of a partner I’ll be.”
“Come on, old chap,” Gilham insisted. “Truman says you’re the best. I won’t be taking no for an answer.”
He clapped Jack on the back and firmly ushered him toward the door.
Jack glanced back at Cora. She stepped out onto the loggia, the lit end of her cigarette glowing like a firefly in the dusk. Her expression was unreadable.
He had no idea whether she believed his story or not.
Under the watchful eyes of Byrd’s portrait, he walked away.