Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(58)

For the first time, the attorney looked the slightest bit flustered. “Did I?”

“According to Elena.”

“I don’t know. I must have seen Bluestone and then your bio.”

“We don’t post bios.”

“Google, then. I don’t know.”

“No outside referral?”

“No. Not that I recall.”

“Not even from your client?”

The practiced smile returned to Rainy’s lips. “I don’t remember it that way, and in any case, that information would be privileged. Good day, Ms. Stone. Have a nice flight home. And give my best to Elena.”

With that, the attorney pivoted again and strolled quickly off. She watched him until he’d rounded the corner and was out of sight.

For a moment, Bree thought of taking his advice and heading to the airport and a plane home. But given that she’d taken the time and spent the money to come all the way to Cleveland, she felt she should leave no stone unturned before her departure.





CHAPTER 63




Hunting Valley, Ohio


THE RICH ARE VERY different from you and me, Bree thought when, through a glen of budding hardwood trees, she caught sight of a sprawling mansion on a grassy knoll. She drove past the gate and around the perimeter of the twelve-acre estate off the Chagrin River Road, glimpsing a tennis court and then a pool still covered for winter.

Her cell rang. Elena Martin.

“Boss,” Bree said.

“Explain why you are in Cleveland.”

“Gerald Rainy called you.”

“Uh-huh. And he was pissed.”

“Can’t help that, I’m afraid.”

“Bree, he pulled the plug on us yesterday. I told you that.”

“I know. After a mass murder that occurred after I wrote a report.”

Martin paused, then said, “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that until I understand exactly how I’m involved with a billionaire and a fashion icon and eleven dead people, I am still looking into this case. On my own dime and my own time.”

After a longer pause, her boss said, “I can understand that. But be discreet, Bree. Tread lightly. People with that kind of money can be terribly dangerous if provoked.”

Elena hung up. Through a hedge of rhododendrons, Bree spotted the roof of a greenhouse and decided she had to take the chance.

On the plane, she’d read an article in Architectural Digest about Theresa May Alcott’s renovation of her Hunting Valley home and a piece in Better Homes and Gardens featuring her Wyoming ranch house. According to the second article, Alcott was a die-hard horsewoman out west. According to the first article, she spent an equal amount of time tending her gardens back east.

“Gardening in Jackson is like doing combat with the elements,” Mrs. Alcott was quoted as saying. “And you nearly always lose. If I want to see something grow out of the ground under my care, I retreat to my gardens in the humidity of Ohio.”

Hunting Valley was one of the six wealthiest towns in the United States, a quiet, wooded village that billionaires and society matrons called home. Bree knew that leaving a rental car behind the property of one of the richest women in America was bound to attract attention.

Have to accept it, she thought, and pulled off the road by a thick grove of pine trees. She put on a tiny but sensitive Bluetooth microphone disguised as a small ebony carving hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck and connected it to her cell phone and a voice-activated recording app.

Bree tested the connection, then got out, crossed the street, and pushed through the rhododendrons. She emerged onto a wide lawn that felt like plush carpet beneath her feet and crossed to a wooden archway that led to a high-fenced garden that covered more than an acre.

Moving beneath the archway, she noticed the posts of it were wrapped in greening clematis vines, a few tentacles budding already. The walkway of crushed gray slate through the garden was bordered by five rows of raised beds on either side.

The rich soil in the far beds looked recently turned over and ready to be planted. In the near boxes, the annual flowers were already thriving. In another one, tulips and daffodils bloomed in full riot.

But Bree saw no sign of Theresa May Alcott anywhere in the garden. She caught movement in the greenhouse and walked to the door. Inside, a woman in her late sixties worked at a potting bench. She was tall, feline, with long pewter-colored hair in a braid, a classic beauty that put Bree in mind of the country star Emmylou Harris.

A big Polynesian guy was working beside her. He saw Bree, came up with a pistol, and walked toward her fast. “Who are you? What are you doing here? You do not have permission to be here.”

Bree held up her hands but before she could identify herself and apologize for the intrusion, Theresa May Alcott said, “It’s all right, Arthur.” She gazed at him and then Bree. “You have exceeded my expectations, Chief Stone,” Alcott said. “I predicted a phone call or a knock at my front door, not a barging into my greenhouse.” The billionaire laughed. “But then I guess you are a barging-in kind of person, aren’t you?”

Bree wanted not to like her, for some reason. But Alcott’s smile and laugh were genuine and contagious.

“I guess I am,” Bree said. “All elbows and knees.”