Free Crystal Coffin by Anita Bell Page B

She danced sweetly to his tune even now, when she couldn’t hear the music.
    Ironic, he thought, that to rid himself of the last heir to the Dumakis fortune he had to first make sure she was safe for a while. But his plan was working. After two years of careful spinning, his four hundred billion dollar web was almost complete, and now, with all his annoying little flies in one place, he could finish what he’d begun.
    Aaron Fletcher smiled at that thought. Then he reached for his cell phone and dialled.

‘Thank goodness you’re home now, Meggie,’ Janet squealed into the phone. ‘I’ve been calling you for ages.’
    â€˜I had to get fuel, babe,’ her sister replied calmly. ‘What’s up?’
    â€˜You’ll never guess who I saw today. Never, never, never. Jayson! You know, Jayson? The guy who —’
    â€˜Dumped me,’ Meggie Slaney finished, answering over the top of her baby sister. ‘You’re delirious, babe. He’s in Timor.’
    â€˜No way!’ Janet said, hopping up and down like she was standing in fire ants. ‘I saw him, heard him mostly,’ she said, twisting her fingers into the phone cord. ‘But I did see him. Well, the top of his hat anyway. He was here!’
    â€˜Where? In the store? Why?’
    Janet grinned, dragging a metal stool across the tiles towards her butt. She could think of a few reasons why Jayson Locklin could be back and each theory buzzed inside her head like a mosquito trying to get out. She hooked her skinny hip onto the vinyl cushion and took a breath.
    This was going to take a while.

    Eric Maitland watched the yacht leave and wondered how he was going to break the bad news to his stepbrother. He walked back to the car scratching his goatee, relieved at least that Singapore and Lowood were pretty much the same in one respect. He could do business in an old sweatshirt like a forty-year-old hippie without anyone taking much notice of him.
    He watched an old peasant woman chop the head off a chicken while his driver opened the car door for him, and then his phone rang. He pulled his phone off his belt as he got in and noticed the number that was trying to contact him was the one that he was dreading. He pushed a button to receive the call, and in the split second it took to bounce the signal up to a satellite and get another one back to his ear, his heart had climbed into his throat.
    â€˜Bad news, Aaron,’ he said before hearing the caller’s voice.
    â€˜You didn’t finish the deal?’
    â€˜Yeah, I did,’ Maitland said, hearing muffled street traffic on the other end. ‘The buyers had plenty of merchandise to keep them happy and I watched them transfer the money. I just didn’t have that special item you wanted me to find a home for while I was over here.’
    â€˜Then where is it?’ Fletcher asked, squeezing the steering wheel of his rented Mercedes until the leather squeaked. He knew exactly what item his younger stepbrother was talking about. It was evidence — very expensive evidence that he preferred to sell outside the country for a profit than hand over to court officials who might use it to put him behind bars for his wife’s murder. It was also part of the murder weapon and if it was missing, his brother was about the only person alive with an opportunity and a motive to steal it.
    â€˜I don’t know where it is,’ Maitland said. His hands were shaking but Fletcher couldn’t see that. ‘Maybe I took it out. I don’t remember now.’
    You’re a lousy liar, Fletcher thought, wondering if his stepbrother might be planning on blackmailing him with the evidence. He made a fist around his cell phone and turned hard right, cutting off another driver to get onto the freeway. He was tired, which always made him cranky, but this wasn’t the first time that Maitland had let him down.
    â€˜All right,’ he said, dragging a