The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(84)

Olivia smiled. “Besides, the last thing our brand needs is another media frenzy focused on a crazy fake psychic who solves murders.”





CHAPTER 40


Gwendolyn Swan went to the door and turned the Open sign to Closed. She crossed the salesroom floor to her desk, picked up the receiver of the old landline phone and placed the call to her sister.

Eloisa Swan answered on the first ring. “Well?”

“Bad news, I’m afraid.” Gwendolyn leaned against the counter. “The project is a failure. The Fogg Lake lab has been located, but the Foundation is now in control of it.”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“What went wrong?” Eloisa asked finally.

“I could list any number of things, but in hindsight it’s clear that the biggest mistake was made back at the beginning when the triplets botched the kidnapping. They grabbed Olivia Le Clair without incident, but they missed Catalina Lark that same night.”

“You said she wasn’t at her apartment when they went to get her.”

“She had gone to see a client,” Gwendolyn said. “There was an incident at the client’s house. A fork was involved. Lark wound up spending half the night with the police. One thing led to another. Reporters showed up at the front door of Lark’s apartment building early the next morning. The triplets got nervous and called off the operation. They tried to pick her up on the street a couple of hours later but by then the Foundation had a man in Seattle. Things went downhill from there.”

“Any way to know how the Foundation got out ahead of us on this?”

“Victor Arganbright was suspicious of Ingram’s and Royston’s deaths from the start. He got nowhere investigating the Ingram case, but after Royston died in a similar fashion, he sent his nephew, Slater Arganbright, to Seattle to take a look at the crime scene. Victor suggested that Slater contact Lark and LeClair for assistance. But by then LeClair had vanished. Next thing I know, Arganbright and Catalina are in my shop asking about Royston’s collection.”

“If both women had simply vanished simultaneously there wouldn’t have been any trail for Arganbright to follow,” Eloisa mused.

“Maybe or maybe not. We’ll never know. Regardless, what’s done is done.”

“Any loose ends?”

“No. Nyla Trevelyan is deceased. The triplets don’t know anything about you or me. Trey Danson is under arrest for murder and attempted murder. He’ll talk, of course, but if he tries to explain that he was hoping to join a secret organization named Vortex that is dedicated to paranormal research, all he’ll succeed in doing is convincing a judge and jury that he’s a member of the tinfoil hat club.”

“He knows about you,” Eloisa said.

“All he knows is what every collector in Seattle knows. I sell antiques and collectibles and trade gossip. He asked me to let him know if anyone came around to my shop inquiring about Royston’s collection. I obliged by informing him Slater Arganbright was in town. That’s not a crime. I doubt if Danson will even mention it to the police, because it will only serve to tie him more closely to Royston’s murder.”

“Think it will dawn on Danson that he was played?”

“We didn’t play him. Vortex made him and his sister a legitimate offer. In exchange for membership in the organization they were required to come up with an entrance fee. They failed. Offer rescinded.”

“So, no loose ends,” Eloisa said. “One hell of a disappointment, though. Damn it, we were so close to gaining control of one of the lost labs.”

“It wasn’t the Vortex lab,” Gwendolyn pointed out. “That’s the one we’re after. There will be other opportunities.”

“The Foundation will be looking for it, too, now that they have some reason to believe that Vortex is more than a legend. We need an edge, Gwen.”

“We have one,” Gwendolyn said. “The best possible edge. We’ve got Aurora Winston’s diary.”

“Which is only useful if we figure out how to break her private code,” Eloisa said.

“We’re making progress. We’ve decoded some of her experimental drug formulas.”

“Just the simple ones from the first part of the diary,” Eloisa said. “We need to decipher the more heavily encrypted passages toward the end. That was when she started doing her most important experiments in the Vortex lab.”

“I’ll go back to work on the diary tonight,” Gwendolyn said. A muffled thud from the basement interrupted her. “Oh, damn. I’ve got to go, Eloisa. I’ll call you if I get anywhere with the diary.”

She put down the phone and went around the end of the counter and into the back room. She opened the door at the top of the basement stairs and hit the light switches. She shut and locked the door and descended the stairs.

Sure enough, there was another rat in the trap that guarded the underground tunnel. You’d think the idiots would learn that it was not wise to try to steal from Swan Antiques.

The trap always caught burglars by surprise, probably because it did not look like a security device. It was a clockwork doll about four feet tall dressed in a vintage nursing costume—a crisp white uniform and a perky white cap. In the shadows the syringe in her hand was almost invisible.