Standing in the Shadows (McClouds & Friends #2)(24)

Sean grimaced. "Woman trouble. Julia is camping out in her car in front of my condo. I told her from the start not to get all intense on me, that I'm not looking to commit right now. Didn't work. Never does. So I figured if I don't come home till morning for a few nights, she'll figure I'm boffing someone else and get a clue."

"You slut," Connor said. "Someday you'll pay up, big time." He picked up the last vitamin, a big, yellowish brown pill. "This is the one that makes your piss turn chartreuse, right?"

Sean glanced over at it. "That's the one. B complex. Great stuff."

"It looks like a rabbit pellet," Connor complained. "And it smells like horseshit. Why do you guys torture me with this crap?"

"Because we love you, *. Shut up and eat the pill."

Connor froze, startled by the edge in Sean's voice. Sean stared out at the water. A muscle twitched in his sharp, clean-shaven jaw.

For a moment, he caught a glimpse of the depths of his brothers' worry for him, and a hot ache swelled up in his throat He covered by shoving the evil-smelling pill into his mouth, and choking it down with a gulp of coffee. "Jesus. I've got yellow skid marks on my esophagus."

"Suffer," was Sean's succinct rejoinder.

They sipped their coffee. This tense, meaningful silence was too much for him to take first thing in the morning. He had to knock it down to the level of bullshit banter, so they could both breathe again.

"So, uh… Julia," he ventured "Is she the aerobics instructor with thighs like a vise?"

Sean seized onto the change of subject with evident relief. "Hell, no. That was Jill. You missed Kelsey, Rose and Caroline."

"Ah. I see," Connor murmured. "So what's with this Julia?"

Sean winced. "Curly blonde hair, big blue eyes, five-inch heels. I met her at a club a few weeks ago. It was fun for a while, and then bam, out of nowhere, she mutates into this gigantic bloodsucking insect."

Connor winced. "Shit. I hate it when that happens."

"Me, too. Lurking in the dark outside my condo all night, brrr. Creeps me out. Next thing I know, she'll be boiling my bunny."

Connor made sympathetic sounds. "Sounds painful."

The screen door flew open, kicked by Davy's massive booted foot. He laid two plates before his brother. Thick slabs of grilled ham, a heap of scrambled eggs full of melted cheddar. Four pieces of toast, dripping with butter. A pile of fresh honeydew, cantaloupe, and pineapple chunks with a big scoop of cottage cheese perched on top.

Connor blinked. "Whoa. So, uh… where's my damask napkin and my lemon-scented finger bowl?"

Davy shrugged, unembarrassed. "You need protein."

No arguing with that. He dove in, ignoring his rapt audience. A few minutes later, he pushed back two highly polished plates. "Let me have it," he said. "What's up with Claude Mueller?"

Davy flipped open a manila folder full of computer printouts. "There's not as much as I would've expected, for such a rich guy," he said. "Born in Brussels in '61. Mother Belgian, father Swiss, a big shot industrialist. Outrageously wealthy. Claude was sickly as a child, suffers from some weird form of hemophilia, now more or less under control. A reclusive loner type. He studied art and architecture at the Sorbonne from '80 to '83 and then gave it up due to ill health. In 1989, his parents were killed in a car accident. Claude was the sole heir to a fortune of around a half billion or so."

Connor choked on his coffee, and wiped his mouth. "Jesus," he said. "Hard to wrap your mind around that much money."

Sean gave him an evil grin. "My mind is stretchier than yours."

"Poor Claude was traumatized by his parents' deaths," Davy went on. "From that point on, he secluded himself on a tiny private island off the south of France. Never married, no children. All he cares about are antiquities. He had a collection of medieval reliquaries, weapons, Viking and Saxon artifacts, and of course Celtic stuff. He's a big presence on the 'Net. Spends lots of time in art history chat rooms and message boards. He administers the Quicksilver Fund, which he established in the early nineties. It's a stinking pile of money that he doles out to arts organizations. All of whom suck his virtual toes."

"Photos?" Connor asked.

"I couldn't find a recent one. These are over sixteen years old." Davy shoved a pile of color printouts across the table to him.

Connor pushed aside his plate and leafed through them.

Claude Mueller was thin, nondescript, neither handsome nor ugly. Bland features, olive skin, blue eyes, thinning brown hair. The clearest of the lot was a passport photo taken two decades ago. A chubbier version of the same man, with a mustache and goatee.

Connor studied them, letting his mind float open like a net, scooping for images, connections, snags, feelings. Nothing jumped out, nothing flashed by. All he felt was a prickling, restless unease. "Novak could pass for this guy," he mused. "Same height and build."

Davy and Sean's swift glances clearly continued a conversation they must have started last night after he'd gone to bed.

Davy shook his head. "I got into the database of the Quicksilver Fund last night. I found the transactions for the plane tickets Mueller bought for Erin in the past few months. The pressing business that kept Mueller from meeting Erin in Santa Fe was ill health. I saw the medical records. Two days before she was scheduled to go to Santa Fe, Mueller was admitted to a posh private clinic in Nice for a bleeding ulcer."