Chapter 4
Derrick leaned against a handy outcropping in an otherwise quite uninspired bit of brick wall and watched the door a hundred feet to his left.
It was not quite seven, but he’d had a feeling the excitement would begin quite early in the day.
He glanced to his right as Oliver simply appeared from nowhere, two cups of something steaming in his hands.
He gave one to Derrick, then joined him in his leaning.
He looked alert, which Derrick could definitely not say about himself, and he had been the one sleeping through the night whilst Oliver kept watch over the Cookes’ residence.
“You could have slept in this morning,” Derrick remarked.
“I slept at the office last week.”
There was no denying that. Among Oliver’s many gifts was the uncanny ability to lose himself in slumber in any location and on any surface.
Derrick had avoided him rather well in the lobby of Cameron’s suite of offices, stepped over him several times in the middle of the rug in his own office, and marveled at his ability to make himself comfortable on a sofa that just wasn’t quite long enough for him.
“Perhaps I’ll sleep on the train,” Oliver continued easily, as if he discussed whether to have a scone or a croissant for breakfast. “Or not. No matter. What of you?”
“I slept.”
“After you snooped, no doubt.”
Derrick conceded that with a slight nod. “Had to have something useful to do.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Nothing that makes any sense.”
“Criminals are like that.”
Derrick sighed, then returned to his study of the Cookes’ front stoop.
“They’re both humanities professors, though they seem to do an appalling amount of acting.
” He had to take a deep breath because he did indeed know more about Edmund Cooke than he wanted to admit, but it was nothing he would divulge.
He would just have to feign a sort of baffled ignorance.
“They’re not rich,” he continued, “but they’re comfortable.
No points on their licenses, no brushes with the law, current on their council taxes, no illegal telly time. ”
“How boring.”
Derrick almost smiled. “It would look that way, wouldn’t it?”
“And what do they have of ours?”
Derrick looked at him then. “A rather large, perfectly preserved piece of sixteenth-century lace.”
“The one the Earl of Epworth left behind his utterly inadequate piece of glass?”
Derrick nodded. “That’d be the one.”
Oliver shook his head and looked vaguely unsettled, if such a thing were possible. “Don’t care much for that thing, if you want the truth. I think it’s cursed.”
“Or worth a fortune.”
“Cursed sounds more interesting.” He sipped his coffee. “How do you know they stole it?”
Derrick set his cup down at his feet, then folded his arms over his chest. “I watched the security tapes at Epworth’s castle. Professional burglar, if you can believe it. The Cookes were also attending a house party at the castle the same night.”
“That’s a stretch.”
“So was watching the thief as he visited our good Mr. Cooke in his office a week later. I thought perhaps our sticky-fingered lad’s backpack seemed a little lighter afterward.”
Oliver pursed his lips, but his eyes almost twinkled. “Still on the thin side, don’t you think?”
“The subsequent conversation Mr. Cooke had with his wife about their new lacey acquisition wasn’t.”
“Very well, I’m convinced. What now? Are you telling me these two paragons haven’t been squirreling away their ha’pennies, waiting for just enough of them to buy this legally?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
Oliver shook his head. “Not much market for a whacking great piece of lace of that vintage, is there?”
“That’s what baffles me,” Derrick admitted. “It isn’t as if they could dispose of it at a flea market, is it? I didn’t pay any calls to seedier suspects, but I did have friendly visits with most every legitimate dealer who would be interested in that sort of thing. I came up empty-handed.”
“Most,” Oliver repeated, glancing at him briefly. “Who’d you miss?”
“This is what doesn’t make sense,” Derrick said slowly. He looked at Oliver. “The only reputable bloke I didn’t talk to was Gavin Drummond.”
Oliver rolled his eyes, which for him was an appalling display of deep emotion. “That pansy-waisted Yank? He can’t even overcharge for bad art and you think he’s in the market for stolen lace?”
“I’m just wondering about him,” Derrick said, shrugging. “I’ve often wondered if he’s using Yolynda’s gallery as a stepping-stone to bigger things.” He shot Oliver a look. “Do you know who his parents are?”
“His mother is some long-winded harridan with a penchant for cheap Victorian knickknacks and his father is a blowhard who thinks he’s the second coming of Sir Laurence Olivier, and both of them hold court in some exclusive little university in the States where their students no doubt live in fear of what’ll happen to their marks if they indulge in a very justifiable bit of sleeping to stave off the utter boredom of the classes this narcissistic pair purports to teach.
” He looked at Derrick blandly. “Is that about right?”
Derrick laughed a little in spite of himself. “Something like that.”
“And why do you think Gavin Drummond’s trying to better his life?”
Derrick watched the door open and a woman in her twenties step out onto the sidewalk.
She was pretty, in a bookish, spinsterish sort of way.
All she was missing to complete the picture were librarian-style glasses.
He wondered, absently, what she might look like if someone had cut off the thick, nondescript braid that hung down her back.
He had certainly considered that a time or two the day before when he’d been putting himself in her way in the Castle’s great hall. He nodded toward her.
“Because of that lass there.”
“The one who looks like she’s been kept in storage for the past thirty years?”
“The very same.” Derrick looked at him. “Know who she is?”
“Samantha Drummond,” Oliver said. “Gavin’s youngest sister.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I believe you were shadowing her yesterday.”
“My faith is restored.”
“I wasn’t snoozing.”
“You never do.”
Oliver shrugged. “I have a reputation to maintain. Pray I don’t disappoint when you need me the most.”
“I do, laddie, every day.”
“And you think she’s involved in this?”
“I can hardly credit it,” Derrick said, “but the timing of her arrival is suspicious. As is her occupancy here with this particular set of antique collectors.” He glanced at Oliver. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s convenient,” Oliver conceded. “Find out anything useful about her yesterday?”
“She believes in paranormal happenings.”
Oliver smiled briefly. “How interesting.”
“I thought so, too.”
Oliver was silent for a moment or two, then pushed off from the wall. “See you at the station. I’ll catch her bus. I checked us out of the hotel, by the way. In cash.”
Derrick expected nothing else. They’d both spent so many years flying under the radar whilst ferreting out details for Robert Cameron that remaining as anonymous as possible was simply second nature.
Derrick wondered now and again if that had made him paranoid, but he never wondered about it enough to change how he did business.
He tossed his coffee in the trash, slung his backpack over his shoulders and walked down the street to catch a taxi on the busier cross street, not looking up as the bus passed him.
The next train south left in an hour, which was enough time to make a few alterations to his appearance, have breakfast, then get a seat near his quarry.
It was possible, he supposed, that she might go another direction besides south.
It had been all he could do earlier that morning not to hack into Lydia Cooke’s bank account as well as paw through her emails to see what sort of travel arrangements she’d booked for Gavin’s sister, but that would have made things feel too easy.
The very sad truth was, he was slightly bored.
He wasn’t proud of it, but there it was.
He wasn’t so bored that he’d become sloppy, not truly, but enough that he had left things unknown that he normally would have investigated without hesitation.
Perhaps he had spent too many years rubbing shoulders with villains and the criminal class had ceased to hold any fascination for him.
Their methods were different, true, but in the end they were all nothing more than a lot of punters with no respect for the law or anyone else’s property.
He supposed there were those who might say the same about him for reading their private correspondence, but he supposed he wasn’t the only one, so perhaps that made it less unpalatable than it might have been otherwise.
He crawled into the back of the taxi that pulled to a stop in front of him, gave the cabbie his destination, then sat back against the seat with a weary sigh.
He was getting old, perhaps. He would be thirty-two in the fall, old enough to have settled down by now.
Perhaps he was getting broody, though he couldn’t imagine any woman wanting to settle down with him.
Instead of nights down at the pub with the lads, he spent his weekends—and some weeks, truth be told—with James MacLeod.
Not exactly anything to write home about.
Perhaps he simply had too many irons in the fire.
He could give up something, perhaps, and have a bit more peace in his life.
Cameron Antiquities, though, was his business and his source of not only pride but funds to keep petrol in his cars and food on his table.
The other, well, he wasn’t sure he was willing to give up the exhilaration that was traveling to exotic locales with the madman from the castle down the way.
It was no wonder Jamie was addicted to it. It was a damned good time.