Free Glass Houses by Stella Cameron Page B

waited.
    “You can take some of the money and leave it for Kitty, if you like,” Winston said while he gathered up the envelope Rupert had given him. “ Not that you can make a habit of using business funds.”
    “Thank you,” Rupert said.
    Winston took out two individual negatives, held them up to the light, and squinted. Rupert crossed his arms. The storm had passed. Once Winnie saw he had what they really needed, he’d back off.
    Another two negatives, and another two were held up to scrutiny. Taking less time with each pair, by the time Winston looked at the last ones he barely raised them before his eyes before dropping his hands again. He gripped the anus of the chair and allowed everything to slide from his lap to the Savonnerie carpet beneath his hanging feet.
    “Winston?” Rupert frowned. “Are you ill?”
    “You paid her?”
    “We agreed I should.”
    “How much?”
    Rupert grew warm. That had been a mistake he’d hoped to rectify at the airport, but there had been no way and now she was gone. And he was bloody well going to have to follow her. “I’m not really sure.”
    “Give me what’s left.” Winston held out a hand.
    “Can’t” He always ended up feeling like a stupid kid.
    “What did you pay for those?” Winston pointed to the negatives on the floor.
    Rupert puffed up his cheeks and longed for a bag of crisps. “I gave her the envelope, like you told me to.”
    “I never bloody well told you to give her the envelo pe, you fool. I told you to see how little she’d settle for. You were supposed to offer her fifty, then up it to a hundred or so if you had to. What the hell are we going to do? ” He rocked his head from side to side. “Give me the deposit slip for the checks. Or did you mess that up, too, and forget to go to the bank?”
    Rupert glanced at a Japanese ceremonial sword on a credenza behind Winston. Supposedly it could decapitate a man with a single swipe.
    Too messy. And too public.
    “ Rupert?”
    “The checks aren’t in the bank.”
    “I should have known better than to allow you to take the bank deposit at the same time. Where is the bank deposit?”
    “We’ll get it back,” Rupert said. “I had the two envelopes in the same pocket. They must have got stuck together.”
    “Oh, my God.” Winston flopped back in the chair. “You put everything through her letterbox. No. Say you didn’t. There was thousands in cash. And those two checks—three quarters of a fucking million in checks.”
    “She got the lot,” Rupert said. “I didn’t expect her to hold out the way she did, and I made a mistake. I was rattled. There, that’s the way it was.” She should have been dead but wasn’t. That was also the way it was, but Winnie would never find out that Rupert had botched a murder attempt.
    Winston moaned repeatedly and wiped at his mouth. He said, “Tell me you’re joking. If you’re not, she knows exactly who we are and how to find as.” He paused with his mouth open.
    “ And we’re going into overdraft. Expenses have been over the top. We had to speculate to accumulate, you know that. The money will start rolling in again soon. I had a plan. We’d tell our latest customer—he who wrote those two checks, in case you’ve forgotten—we’d tell him his transaction’s on hold. That the merchandise is coming. Keep him quiet for a bit and use his money. Then we’d bring our old friends in New York to heel. And they wou ld come. We know what they’ve al l got hidden away. There are private collectors all over the world who would pay to see our list of those paintings. They’re all stolen. Those crooks would come when we called, and they’d pay for our continued silence about what they’ve got.”
    “And they will still come, and we’ll be in clover,” Rupert said, rubbing his hands together. “Nothing’s changed there. And we’ll get to tire FitzDuriiam woman and make sure she’s no bother. It’ll all be fine.”
    Winston said, “Not if