Free Triple Threat by Jeffery Deaver Page B

“I’ll Take Manhattan.”
    That steely spirit remained but the physical package to give it play was gone. She was an octogenarian, as tiny and frail as that gingko leaf outside the parlor window. And her
mind
, too. She wasn’t as quick; nor was the memory what it had been.
    What could she do about the Beasts?
    Now, sitting in the parlor, she dropped her hands to her knees. Nothing occurred to her. It seemed hopeless.
    Then, a key clattered in the lock. Sarah’s breath sucked in. She assumed that somehow the Beasts had copied her key and she expected to see them now.
    But, no. She sighed in relief to see Carmel return from shopping.
    Were tears in her eyes?
    “What’s the matter?” Sarah asked.
    “Nothing,” the woman responded quickly.
    Too quickly.
    “Yes, yes, yes… But if something
were
the matter, give me a clue, dear.”
    The solid housekeeper carried the groceries into the kitchen, making sure she didn’t look her boss’s way.
    Yes, crying.
    “There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Sarah. Really.” She returned to the parlor. Instinctively, the woman straightened a lace doily.
    “Was it him? What did he do?”
    John…. The He-Beast.
    Sarah knew he was somehow involved. Both Marian and John disliked Carmel, as they did most of Sarah’s friends, but John seemed contemptuous of the woman, as if the housekeeper mounted a campaign to limit access to Sarah. Which she did. In fact several times she had actually stepped in front of John to keep him from following Sarah into her apartment. Sarah had thought he’d been about to hit the poor woman.
    “Please, it’s nothing.”
    Carmel Rodriguez was five feet, six inches tall and probably weighed 180 pounds. Yet the elderly woman now rose and looked up at her housekeeper, who’d been with her for more than a decade. “Carmel. Tell me.” The voice left no room for debate.
    “I got home from shopping? I was downstairs just now?”
    Statements as questions—the sign of uncertainty. “I came back from the store and was talking to him and then Mr. John—”
    “Just John. You can call him John.”
    “John comes up and, just out of nowhere, he says, did I hear about the burglary.”
    “Where?”
    “The neighborhood somewhere. I said I didn’t. He said somebody broke in and stole this woman’s papers. Like banking papers and wills and deeds and bonds and stocks.”
    “People don’t keep stocks and bonds at home. The brokerage keeps them.”
    “Well, he told me she got robbed and these guys took all her things. He said he was worried about you.”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Sarah. And he didn’t want to make you upset but he was worried and did I know where you kept things like that? Was there a safe somewhere? He said he wanted to make sure they were protected.” The woman wiped her face. Sarah had thought her name was Carmen at first, as one would think, given her pedigree and appearance. But, no, her mother and father had named her after the town in California, which they dreamed of someday visiting.
    Sarah found a tissue and handed it to the woman. This was certainly alarming. It seemed to represent a new level of invasiveness. Still, John Westerfield’s probing was constant and familiar, like a low-grade fever, which Carmel had her own mettle to withstand.
    No, something else had happened.
    “And?”
    “No, really. Just that.”
    Sarah herself could be persistent too. “Come, now…”
    “He… I think it was maybe a coincidence. Didn’t mean anything.”
    Nothing the She-Beast and the He-Beast did was a coincidence. Sarah said, “Tell me anyway.”
    “Then he said,” the woman offered, choking back a sob, “if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t be able to protect you. And if those papers got stolen, you’d lose all your money. I’d lose my job and… and then he said my daughter might have to leave her high school, Immaculata.”
    “He said that?” Sarah whispered.
    Carmel was crying harder now. “How would he know she went there? Why would