Deadly Little Secrets (5 page)

“Good evening, ma'am.” The attractive, tuxedoed man at the door greeted her with a smile. “If I could have your name?”

“Oh, certainly!” She pretended a breathy excitement she in no way felt. “It's Shirley, Shirley Bascom.” She smiled in turn. “
Ms.
Shirley Bascom,” she emphasized as she tossed the long strands of the red wig over her shoulder. She'd already assessed him as gay, but you never knew where a little flirting might get you. She was rusty though, and it showed.

Confirming her suspicions, he blushed a bit but suavely deflected her ersatz interest. “Yes, of course. Here you are. Please, go right in. The bar is to your left about halfway down the gallery. It's quite a crush in there,” he added, his impersonal smile back in place.

“Oooh, I've so been looking forward to this,” she gushed, turning toward the doors with an absent “thank you.” She had to suppress a smile at his soft sigh of relief as she turned her attention elsewhere.

Once inside the doors, she moved confidently through the crowd. She'd recognize Jen, of course, but her friend was quite petite and there was, as the gatekeeper had warned, a real crush. However, she'd seen photos online of Jack D'Onofrio. It was hard to miss a six-foot bald man with a goatee.

Thought was as good as deed, and she homed in on the tall form of the supposed millionaire standing near a pillar not far from the bar. Easing through the mass of people, Ana touched Jen on the arm.

“Hey, A—”

Ana hugged her friend to cut off the use of her real name.

“Hi sweetie!” Ana gushed. “How fun is this? Ohmygosh, I told that gorgeous man at the door my name, and he let me right in.” She rolled her eyes at Jen and saw her friend's expression change. “And he said, ‘Here you are Ms. Shirley Bascom, go right in,'” Ana grinned at her ploy to remind Jen of the name she was using. “How about that?” She pushed the fashionable green glasses she was wearing back up on her nose. The action was always good for distracting anyone from remembering her face. The more you adjusted them, the more they focused on the glasses, the less they saw the features. Make the glasses a color and people only remembered the glasses.

“It's fun, all right,” Jen agreed. “Glad you could make it. Let me introduce you to my date tonight, Shirley.” Jen managed to say the name without flinching. She easily introduced Ana to Jack, and using the effusive Shirley persona, Ana took his measure. He was solid rather than fat, a good weight for his height and interesting looking rather than handsome with his shaved head, goatee, and a shadowy scruff of beard where the goatee ended.

She decided D'Onofrio seemed very self-possessed for someone who used a dating service to meet a woman. To his credit, D'Onofrio had eyes only for Jen. He did offer his services however, for drinks. “It's quite a crowd,” he murmured, his New York accent making the words sharp and distinct. “What can I get you from the bar, Shirley?”

When he'd maneuvered through the crowd to get her a glass of red wine and to refill Jen's vodka tonic, Ana filled Jen in on what she was hoping to accomplish. “I want to meet Carrie McCray, if I can manage it. Other than that, I just want a look around at the facility; get a sense of the place.”

“You gonna tell me about this case later?” Jen asked, handing her empty glass to a passing waiter.

“Sure. It's long cold. Probably won't amount to much.” Ana shrugged.

Jen laughed. “Yeah, right. You closed that other one, didn't you?”

Pleased she remembered, Ana was forced to admit she had.

Jen grinned at her. “See? You'll do something with this one too. I know you. Why else would you be here incognito?”

“It's just procedure,” Ana began when a look from Jen forestalled her.

“Here you are, ladies.” D'Onofrio was back with their drinks.

Ana accepted the wineglass and gave him an absent thanks. She kept one ear half tuned to Jack and Jen—and wasn't that too cutesy for words?—as she scanned the crowd.

“So, Jack,” Ana said, pretending interest. “You have that accent. Are you from New York City?”

He laughed and said, “You might say that. My business is all over. Magazines in racks, that sort of thing. I grew up near the Big Apple though, and worked there for a long time. You don't lose the accent.”

Or the bluntness,
Ana thought, letting his talk of his business prowess in getting West Coast contracts flow right over her. She made interested noises periodically, just to keep him talking.
I wonder if he buys art?

She spotted someone who could only be the artist, a flamboyant young man in yellow brocade. Hideous color for his swarthy skin tone, dark hair, and dark eyes. It made his sallow tones lean toward jaundice rather than jaunty.

Had she seen this guy before? Despite the Technicolor coat, he looked familiar.

Ana felt a spurt of adrenaline. Next to the artist was Carrie McCray.

Target acquired.

“Hey guys.” She turned a bright smile on her temporary cohorts and pushed up the glasses again. “I'm going to go look at the paintings, okay?”

“We'll go with you,” Jack said, slipping an arm around Jen and moving them through the crowd. On one hand she was glad that he was with them, plowing a path. On the other hand, she'd hoped to slip through the crowd and make her way to Carrie McCray.

 

From the balcony, Gates watched as a young woman in a floral wrap and brightly colored dress made her way through the crowd with two others. Her face was lean and interesting, her full lips a splash of rich pink to contrast with her red hair.

He could see that she was animated, chattering to her companions with a great deal of verve. In the concealed earpiece, he heard Queller mention a man who was giving Dav the eye, so he shifted his vantage point. Pressing on his throat, right under the knot of his tie, he activated the walkie-talkie function.

“Keep an eye on that guy, Queller. Thompson, can you see the woman, maybe five-foot-seven, red hair, glasses, blue flowers on her shawl or whatever they call those things? Dress is a similar color at the bottom.”

“Got her.” Another voice sounded in his ear. That was Pike. “Nice. That's that guy D'Onofrio, the one who's putting together that distribution deal with the Hammels for the new lux homes mag. He wanted to feature Britney Spears, but she turned him down.”

“Is the target baldy's date, or is that the other woman?” Gates asked.

“Blue shawl is not his date, uh check it out.” A third voice picked up the tale. That was Shuel, and she was laughing.

Gates left off watching Dav just in time to see the end of a lip-lock between the bald guy and the diminutive blonde he had tucked under his arm. Blue shawl girl looked away, a deliberate separation from the event, so she wasn't with them in any kind of threesome.

“Keep an eye on her,” he ordered, pivoting slightly to check on Dav. His friend was in a quieter part of the room at the moment, although quiet was relative, chatting with the parents of the artist, Paul Winget. The whole family group was some kind of cousin to Dav, and the wife, Ehlana, didn't like Gates. She'd made her disdain painfully obvious, so he was careful to keep his distance. Evidently, she believed her older son should have gotten the job Gates held.

Gates smiled, imagining any of the young relatives trying to manage Dav. That wouldn't work. Not for one minute.

Another exchange in his earpiece let him know the lady he'd asked about was moving in on the artist and Carrie McCray.

He was puzzled by the woman. Her chattering, socialite demeanor was at odds with the watchful, appraising sweep he'd seen her give the crowd when she walked in. Even though he couldn't see her face, he'd seen that maneuver. He knew it. He'd seen it before, done it every time he walked in a door.

Since Ehlana, the cousin, wished him to hell and her son was the center of attention, Gates had stayed out of sight, monitoring the crowd from his perch on the gallery's mezzanine level. From that vantage point, he'd seen the woman in the blue shawl walk up with a purposeful stride, a lean, elegant form outside the thick waving glass of the old building's front windows. Her long legs and flowing red hair had immediately drawn his eye, until he'd seen her simpering over the doorman. While it made him deem her an ingénue, it also had him dismissing her threat potential.

Gates had reevaluated that opinion the minute she strolled through the heavy glass doors and moved into the gallery. She'd worked hard to maintain the body language of a hesitant neophyte, but the deliberate sweep, the pauses, the back-checks, that was a professional casing. As he'd watched, she'd catalogued everything and everyone in the room. That appraisal, so at odds with her outward persona, immediately put him on alert

“She's trying to maneuver in and talk to the gallery owner, McCray.” Queller spoke through the mic once more. “Any concerns, boss?”

“Not yet. She's nowhere near Dav, so whoever or whatever she is, I don't think she's hunting in our yard.”

“Check,” Queller said, then fell silent.

With a last look at Dav, Gates left his post and meandered down the stairs. “I'm on the move,” he said, prepping to turn off his mic for now. “I'm going to check her out.”

They might razz him about it later, but for now, everyone was all business as they let him know they'd heard him.

He wanted to assess this potential threat personally, face to face.

 

Ana continued to sip her wine as D'Onofrio moved them through the crowd. They paused here and there for Jack to introduce Jen to people, absently including Ana in the introductions as Jen's friend, Shirley. She got some appraising looks, and one definite overt flirtation, as they slipped closer to Carrie McCray.

Surreptitiously, Ana looked over her shoulder. Her back was twitching. That only happened when someone was watching her. Unfortunately, she caught the eye of the man who'd flirted with her, and he gave her a smile—more of a leer—and winked.

Ugh. Married and smarmy. She sure knew how to attract 'em.

Ana had just handed the half-empty wineglass to a waiter when she saw a familiar face out of the corner of her eye.

Had that been…?

No. She was imagining it. Why would Gates be here on a Friday night? Hadn't he said his boss was out of town? Or had he?

It niggled at her, but she shook it off and focused on Jen, who'd asked her a question.

“I'm sorry.” She indicated the crowd as she said, “It's so noisy. What did you say?”

“I asked if you like the display?”

“Oh, no—” She stayed in persona. “I'm more partial to uh, representational art, landscapes and stuff, you know? This,” she shielded her pointing finger behind her shawl, making Jen giggle. “It's ah, kinda, too unusual for my taste.”

“It's a good investment, though,” Jack began. He was about to continue, his arm outstretched in an encompassing gesture, when Ana saw the accident begin.

It was as if it happened in slow motion, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. A huge man backed into the man right behind Jack. The smaller man, dressed in a natty tuxedo with a pink cummerbund, was caught by Jack's outstretched arm and went flying. Jack merely stumbled, but Pink Cummerbund was the catalyst for a chain reaction. Like the Keystone Kops, Pink Cummerbund hit a waiter with a tray of canapés, the desserts went flying, and so did the waiter. Between the tray, the canapés, and the waiter, three more guys and two women went down, their drinks flying as well.

Another woman in the chain reaction hit the floor with a shrill scream. Her glass and its contents flew toward Ana, but despite the flying liquid, she got out of the way of the tumbling bodies. From the corner of her eye she saw a tall, dark-haired man moving sideways, preventing the pin-wheeling arms and legs from hitting his older, but equally spry companion.

Problem was, his action put him right into the path of two other young men and a shrieking, high-heeled matron, all of whom went down as they tried to avoid the spills. The welter of flying shoes and tangled clothing made for a continuing trail of hazards.

To Ana's surprise, the man turned the fall into a controlled roll, which brought him right to her feet.

“Here,” she said, instinctively offering a hand to help him up, as more people went down like dominoes. If he stayed on the floor, he'd be flattened. Bracing herself, she lent him balance as he rose, then yanked him toward her as she moved back, to keep them both out of the continuing fray.

His head was turned away, but she could see the surprise written on his familiar profile. Internally, Ana cursed.
Crap, crap, crap.
The fragile flower appearance of Shirley Bascom, all fluttery and female, was totally blown by the strength she'd used to help him, and if she wasn't mistaken…

“Why thank you, ma'am,” the man drawled as he turned, his lush brown eyes going from amused to surprised to a sharp, piercing assessment. Every alarm bell and curse she'd ever learned flowed through her mind in a rush. Damn it all to hell. She'd recognize the voice anywhere, much less that smiling face.

Why, oh why, did this have to happen now?

“Thank you for the timely rescue,” Gates Bromley whispered, pressed against her to allow the gallery's young helpers to start bringing order to the chaos. The crowd moved toward them, squashing Gates into her. “Hold on to me, we'll both keep our footing if you do.”

Seeing no other option, she did.

How was it possible to regret such a heady rush of pleasure with all these people looking on?

Oh, Lord, he must work out every day.
The irreverent thought was the first thing that leapt to mind as her hands slid around his waist to anchor them together, brace them from the ebb and flow of the mass of patrons. Now there were emergency personnel, coming in to check on the clientele who'd hit the deck.