White Lies (31 page)

Throwback.

Then he thought about how Clare had leaped to his defense when Ingle called him that. Some of the prowling tension inside him started to ease.

“What’s it like for you?” he asked quietly.

She did not ask him what he meant.

“When I first came into my parasenses and awoke to a world full of lies I had wave after wave of uncontrollable panic attacks,” she said.

“That was before you learned to filter the lies?”

“Yes. The Arcane House experts have very little experience in dealing with my type of sensitivity because it’s so rare. But eventually a parapsychologist realized that my particular senses are hardwired to the good old fight-or-flight response.”

“Sure,” he said, thinking it through. “Lies, in general, even the harmless type, always represent a potential threat, after all. You were reacting appropriately.”

“My therapist helped me create a psychic filter. It wasn’t easy. But the only alternative was to become a total hermit so that I could avoid all lies.”

“Sure glad you didn’t go that route.”

She smiled. “Me, too.”

“You were good back there with Ingle,” he said. “You worked him brilliantly.”

“Not the first time I’ve dealt with scam artists.”

“That was obvious. Fallon sure screwed up by not hiring you.”

“That is certainly my opinion.”

Jake settled back a little, shutting down his senses with an act of will. He needed to think and he didn’t always do his best thinking when he was running hot. One of the downsides to being a hunter.

“You know,” he said, “that part about McAllister getting agitated when the Glazebrook operation went south but refusing to call it off was interesting.”

“Yes, it was. Very interesting. Ingle was right. Most scammers in that situation would have disappeared. There must have been a very compelling reason to make a professional con stick with a bad project after it became clear that it would probably fail.”

“I keep coming back to the possibility that failure was not an option. Historically, the Arcane Society cabals have been very Darwinian organizations. If you want to ascend to the higher levels, you have to prove yourself every step of the way by accomplishing certain tasks that are assigned by the guys at the top.”

“If Brad McAllister was working for this new cabal it means that the organization must have sent him to acquire control of Glazebrook,” Clare said. “He may have been executed when it became clear that he had failed. In which case, the killer is probably long gone.”

“Maybe,” Jake agreed. “But I’m not going to close any more doors; I made that mistake back at the beginning of the investigation. Once was enough.”

“I keep wondering where Kimberley Todd fits into this thing,” Clare mused.

“You and me both. The fact that the analysts at J&J haven’t been able to find her yet may mean that she’s dead and buried somewhere out in the desert. Part of a cleanup operation after the project failed.”

Clare shuddered. “Think they got rid of her because she knew too much?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Maybe that’s why Valerie Shipley was killed, too. You heard what Ingle said. She was the one person Brad trusted. The cabal might have been worried that he confided the plan to her.” Clare tensed. “Good grief, I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“I wonder if Owen Shipley is in any danger. After all, he was married to Valerie. The cabal may decide he knows too much, too.”

Jake contemplated that briefly. “Elizabeth was married to Brad, but so far there’s been no attempt on her life. My guess is the cabal crowd would rather avoid gunning down every prominent resident of Stone Canyon who ever got near McAllister. It would attract way too much attention.”

“Someone tried to gun you down yesterday,” she reminded him.

“I know. But I’m not a pillar of the community. I’m just a passing consultant. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

She slanted him a disapproving glance. “I wish you didn’t sound so cheerful when you talk about someone trying to murder you in cold blood.”

“Sorry. Like I said, it tells me that I’m getting close.”

“Wonder why the cabal wanted Glazebrook, Inc., so badly.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it happens to be an extremely profitable company,” Jake said. “Every organization needs money.”

“Yes, but why Glazebrook? There must be hundreds if not thousands of very successful businesses that generate plenty of cash.”

“But not all are closely held, family-owned enterprises that can be quietly taken over without arousing the attention of a board of directors, shareholders and government watchdogs.”

“I see what you mean,” she said. “Nevertheless, it can’t be a complete coincidence that the cabal chose a very successful company that just happens to be owned by a member of the Society.”

“No big mystery there,” Jake said. “The leader or leaders of the cabal would naturally be inclined to go after companies they can research thoroughly. The genealogy records at Arcane House are open to all members of the Society.”

“Members do tend to marry other members,” Clare said. “They often form partnerships and close friendships with people connected to the Society. You’re right, the cabal would have been able to provide an enormous amount of background material to McAllister before he made his attempt to grab Glazebrook.”

“All right,” Jake said. “So much for looking at the deaths of McAllister and his mother from a cabal conspiracy point of view. Let’s try another approach.”

“Such as?”

“I wonder if we’re working too hard to connect them both to the cabal.”

Clare frowned. “I thought we agreed they had to be connected.”

“It’s a possibility, not a fact. Until you know for sure, you have to be able to step back and come at the problem from different directions.”

“Is that something they teach you at Jones & Jones?”

“No,” Jake said. “I learned it the hard way over the years.”

“Okay, let’s try your approach. Who else would have had a motive to murder Valerie?”

He looked at her. “If you were not a devout conspiracy theorist and if I wasn’t a hotshot undercover investigator for Jones & Jones who was sent out to track down a cabal freak, we’d be looking at an entirely different scenario to explain Valerie Shipley’s death.”

“Think she really did commit suicide?”

“That is still a possibility,” he said. “But if that isn’t the answer then we’ve been overlooking the most obvious suspect, the one person who is always at the top of everyone’s list when a wife is murdered.”

“Oh Lord, of course.” Clare’s hands clenched around the steering wheel. “The husband.”

Moonlight glinted on the tile roof of the large house. Jake studied the Shipley residence from the cover of a shallow arroyo. The bright moon meant that he would have to take extra care approaching the residence, but once inside it would be an advantage. Together with his jacked-up senses he would not even need the flashlight he had tucked into a pocket.

Clare had spent the evening trying to talk him out of his plan to search the Shipley house but he knew that, underneath the anxiety, she understood as clearly as he did that this was one of the few alternatives they had left.

Tonight was the obvious night to do the job because Owen had been invited out to dinner by Alison Henton, one of the many sympathetic, deeply concerned divorcées in Stone Canyon who were lining up to comfort and console him. Jake had seen enough of Alison in action at the country club during the past two weeks to know that Owen would be lucky to escape before midnight.

He made his way along the dry wash to the point that was closest to the house. There he halted again, pushing his senses to the limit. There was, as always, a lot of activity going on in the desert at that hour, but as far as he could tell nothing human moved in the vicinity of the house.

His preternatural instincts objected to the short dash through the open to the sheltering shadows at the side of the house. He suppressed the atavistic dislike of being exposed in the moonlight long enough to get to his destination.

His night vision was excellent. He could walk through the deepest shadows at the side of the house without fear of bumping into objects or tripping over a hose.

Contrary to the rumors about his kind, it wasn’t quite the equivalent of being able to see in the dark and it wasn’t like using night vision goggles, either. His eyes were human, after all, not those of a cat or an owl. They could only do so much with minimal illumination. But his psychic abilities afforded him a different way of perceiving objects and other living things when there was little light available.

He stopped at the side door. He had a clear idea of the layout of the interior of the residence because he had grilled Myra and Archer earlier that evening. Both had been frequent visitors to the Shipley home over the years.

Best of all, the Glazebrooks had a key to the house and the code to silence the alarm. He could have gotten in without those assets, thanks to the small J&J tool kit he carried, but having them made things easier. Owen had given both the key and the code to the Glazebrooks years ago in the event of an emergency while he was out of town.

He pulled on the plastic medical gloves he had brought with him and took the key out of his pocket. He opened the door and moved quickly into the hall. The alarm pad was right where Archer had said it would be.

He closed the door and punched in the code, disarming the system.

Slowly, he walked through the house, registering impressions on both the normal and paranormal planes.

He was searching for the special emanations of psi energy that clung to scenes where violence had taken place. But that was not all he hoped to find. He was here to do some old-fashioned detective work. In his experience that was usually what it came down to in the end.

People were people, regardless of whether or not they possessed a degree of psychic ability. The same emotions and motivations governed their actions. Once you knew an individual’s agenda and had an idea of how far he or she would go to achieve it, you had all you really needed to know to close a case.

His goal tonight was to nail down Owen Shipley’s agenda.

He replayed the conversation with Clare in his head.

“But why would Owen kill her?” she asked.

“I can think of a couple of reasons, starting with the obvious fact that she had become an embarrassing problem. The woman was a full-blown alcoholic and she was getting worse.”

“If Owen wanted to get rid of her, he could have simply divorced her.”

“Now, why would he do that when she had just inherited the bulk of McAllister’s estate?”

“Oh. Good point.” She paused. “On the other hand, Owen doesn’t need Valerie’s money. He’s rich in his own right.”

“As we have observed on previous occasions, that doesn’t mean he might not want to get richer.”

“I don’t know,” Clare said, dubious now. “Murder is a high-risk enterprise.”

“Sure. So is sex with strangers, but people do it for money all the time.”

“One more small problem,” Clare said. “Owen has an alibi. He was playing golf the afternoon that Valerie died, remember?”

“He was playing alone, in the middle of the afternoon on one of the hottest days of the year. He probably had the course to himself.”

“And the Shipley house is located on the twelfth fairway.”

“All he had to do was drive the cart into the arroyo behind the house, go inside long enough to drown Valerie and then return to the fairway to finish his game.”

“Pretty cold.”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Ice cold.”

Moonlight slanted through the windows of the pale great room. It didn’t seem likely that Owen would conceal his secrets in such an open area where visitors came and went freely. But he decided to give the place a quick going-over before moving into the bedroom wing.

He studied the wet bar and the liquor cabinet. Chances were good that Valerie had made heavy use of those particular items of furniture.

He checked the drawers beneath the small sink first. They were filled with the paraphernalia associated with the preparation of cocktails: bottle openers, corkscrews, napkins and spoons.

He closed the bottom drawer and reached for the handle of the small refrigerator.

The faint but explosive traces of violent psychic energy crackled through him, leaving an invisible energy burn. His already heightened senses flared even higher, sharpening to a feverish intensity. The spoor of violence was not fresh, but it was not very old, either. He concentrated, trying to feel what the killer had experienced at the moment when he opened the refrigerator.

Thirsty. Heart pounding. Hot, dark excitement pumping through his blood

Suddenly, heknew what had happened. Shipley had come in off the blistering hot golf course and found Valerie deep into a pitcher of martinis. Maybe she had taken one of her pills to calm down after the failed attempt on Clare at the spa. Shipley told her he stopped to get a bottle of water. The afternoon sun was unrelenting out on the course.

He had also been sweating, not just from the heat of the day but from the anticipation of what he was about to do. So he opened the small refrigerator and took out a bottle of water.

He no doubt overpowered Valerie easily enough. He was a strong, athletic man. Valerie had been scrawny and frail from the months of heavy drinking.

He would have had to take a few minutes to go inside the house and change his clothes. Carefully he’d chosen a second pair of golf slacks and a shirt in the same colors as the pants and shirt he had been wearing when he started the round. Then he went back out onto the course.

He probably planned to finish the game and have a few drinks at the club with friends before inviting an acquaintance home for cocktails. That way he would have a witness with him when he “discovered” the body.

It must have come as a shock to be told that Valerie had been found much sooner than he had intended.

Clare had been right, Jake thought. Valerie was murdered. It also seemed logical that Shipley was the killer, but unfortunately there was no way to prove that yet.