Chapter 10

Then, just like that, the pressures lightened a bit.

It happened within a matter of hours. Remington returned from lunch with Anna with the news that she planned to spend the weekend cruising from San Diego to Malibu aboard The English Rose. In terms of his sham courtship, he was off the hook for the next two-and-a-half days.

The Steeles reacted like a couple of school kids let loose for an unexpected holiday, slightly giddy with the sudden freedom. The only fly in the ointment was Anna's detective and the necessity of evading him if they wanted unfettered time together. But Remington circumvented it brilliantly by putting together a spur-of-the-moment, Friday-night flight from LA to the Lake Malibu cabins managed by an old client and friend, Billie Young.

Content to follow his lead, Laura left the execution of his elaborate escape plan, which involved Bumpers, Mildred and two vehicle switches, up to Remington. Not long after five o'clock, the Rabbit was headed towards Tijuana as a decoy with Bumpers in the driver's seat and Mildred riding shotgun. Meanwhile, Bumpers' Cutlass transported Remington and Laura north to Twin Pines, where happy memories of the weekend of their wedding awaited them.

Twin Pines was peaceful and rustic as always, Billie an undemanding hostess who instinctively divined her guests' need for privacy and respected it. Ordinarily Laura would've deplored the lack of distraction. If past history was any indication, so would Remington. But just now solitude was the perfect medium for resuming the rhythm of their married life. It was the little things that worked the magic, falling asleep and waking up next to each other, sharing living quarters once again, the easy banter and sparring, and the companionable silences that fall now and then between two people who know each other very well. They gave her back all of Remington, friend and partner, lover and husband: hers. As for him, he wore the air of a man who'd laid down a heavy burden he'd been bearing far too long. Relief, she thought it was, and thankfulness for the respite. She hadn't noticed before how fine-drawn with fatigue he'd grown over the past few weeks.

The observation sparked a pang of guilt. She was his wife; she was supposed to notice those things. Why hadn't she?

They didn't do much besides hang around the cabin, making love frequently and insatiably, or scour the small towns nearby for decent burger and rib joints when they got hungry. But it was probably the most potent restorative they could've asked. By dawn on Monday morning, starting back to Los Angeles, they'd recovered some of their pre-Anna solidity.

At the office they found Mildred ready with the report of Anna's financial dealings. It was a long one in which numbers eloquently told the story. Laura absorbed the computer printout and passed it to Remington. "It looks to me like she's in the process of liquidating her assets."

Mildred nodded. "Everything she can get her hands on, and some things she can't. Not for lack of trying. But Patton's other heirs are standing their ground. More power to 'em, if you ask me."

"Ah, Mildred. Where would we be without you and your pithy commentary, eh?" Remington put in with an approving grin.

"But she's had access to some hefty cash balances since Patton died, hasn't she? Money she could get at fairly easily?" asked Laura.

"I'll say. Six figures' worth in money market funds and CD's."

"So why the sudden need for loads of ready cash? Theories, Mr. Steele?"

"To pay off a blackmailer," said Remington without glancing up. "First thing that popped into my head," he added.

"Well within the realm of possibility," Laura agreed. "If it wasn't for the personal relationship, Endicott would be a prime candidate."

"Or whoever in high government circles is responsible for turning her loose among an unsuspecting populace," he replied.

"Could be gambling debts," offered Mildred.

"A big purchase, like a house? Her lease at the Rexford Palms is up on the thirty-first. That's next week. Has she said anything about where she plans to go?" Laura was addressing Remington again.

"Not a word."

"She's selling houses, not buying them," objected Mildred. "All except the place in Malibu. Maybe she's planning to leave the country."

It was by far the most plausible explanation. Laura gazed across at Remington. "Could that be it?"

"Possibly. If she feels she's accomplished whatever purpose she set out to achieve."

"She has Patton's fortune, or most of it…she has Endicott…she thinks she has you. What more could she be after?"

"An excellent question, Mrs. Steele, one I believe is up to me to explore in greater depth. No time like the present." And he headed off to his office, where, Laura knew, the charm offensive was about to begin afresh. She sighed a little wistfully. Their idyllic weekend—and the short hiatus from Anna—were officially over.

In between paying cases, she spent the bulk of the next two days sifting through the data Mildred had accumulated. The more thorough review confirmed her first impressions but left her puzzled. Anna was definitely dismantling and selling off her deceased husband's empire, piece by piece. But what was she doing with the money? Her day-to-day expenditures remained constant, with no inexplicable, upward spikes; she hadn't made any new investments. She wasn't banking it. A second search for offshore accounts in her other names, Marleau and Simpson, turned up nothing. Was she amassing ready cash preparatory to departing Los Angeles, perhaps the country, as Remington had suggested?

Or could she be planning to share the fortune with someone in her life, as she'd as good as hinted to Remington at that fateful first meeting? With Clayton Endicott? Remington himself?

What better incentive to dangle in front of a would-be lover who was exhibiting reluctance to take the ultimate plunge with her?

The scenario was ugly and sordid, Laura had to admit. But it wasn't far-fetched. Anna's mind worked precisely along those lines. She was perfectly capable of offering herself and the money as a package deal without a trace of shame. And frankly, how many men would be able to resist?

Thank God Remington was impervious these days to that kind of temptation. And for the weekend just past, which had done so much to shore up Laura's beleaguered faith in him.

It was why she was able to accept it philosophically when he felt he had to devote Tuesday evening to wining and dining Anna again. There was no question of Laura stealing into his hotel room afterwards, but she did wait up for his promised phone call. Only it came much later than she'd anticipated, and he was apparently in no laughing mood as he opened the conversation. "Can you meet me at the agency?" was all he said.

His tone was brusque. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"I've something to tell you, but not over the phone. Can you?"

"Give me twenty minutes."

"I'll be waiting."

He was. From the darkened reception area he led her into his office, shut the door and flicked on the overheads. She didn't waste time asking if the extra precautions, lights off, closed doors, were warranted; the look in his eyes said he wasn't playing around. "What's the matter?" she asked again.

"Were you followed?"

She told him about the late-model Toyota that had stuck with her for the entire trip across Wilshire, but had shot off into the night once she'd veered into the parking lot. Then she posed the question for the third time. "What is it?"

"I've done it at last, I think."

"What?"

"Earned Anna's trust. She's asked me to cruise from Malibu to San Diego with her this weekend."

Laura's response was sharp-voiced and immediate. "Out of the question."

"Why not?"

"Two words. Club 10."

"How did I know you were going to say that?"

"Well, what did you expect?" She left her seat beside him on the sofa and moved behind the chair that stood at right angles to it, holding hard-knuckled to its back. "For me to cheer you on? Applaud while you run your neck willingly into the noose? Sorry, but I'm not ready to bury you just yet.

"Nor am I ready to leave you a widow. But Laura, she'd hardly go to the trouble and expense of putting out to sea merely for an opportunity to murder me."

"You must be joking. It's the ideal set-up for her. The two of you, out in the middle of nowhere, with no witnesses? She tosses you overboard along with your effects, clears up the mess, and that's the end of Remington Steele."

"Except for one thing. You don't run a yacht that size without a crew, and she has one. Captain, co-pilot and-Steward? Stewardess? I'm not quite sure what to call her. The woman who does the cooking and washing up, at any rate."

"Her employees! You think they're going to keep you safe?"

"They're not employees, they're private contractors. They've no loyalty to her apart from collecting their payment at the end of the voyage. I seriously doubt she'd try anything with them on board, even if I wasn't ready for her. Which I am."

She was silent for a moment, not because she agreed with him, but because it was time to address the elephant in the room, and she wanted to choose her words with care. "You know what she'll be expecting from you," she said slowly. "How do you plan to avoid it?"

He didn't pretend for a second that he didn't understand what she was talking about. "We won't be sleeping on board. She's booked adjoining rooms at a hotel near the marina."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"I don't know. I hope it will. Because either way…I'm going with her."

Despite his increasing impatience with her opposition, he hadn't lost his temper, and he'd spoken calmly enough. But there was no mistaking the steel that lay underneath. It meant that he'd made his decision; barring a catastrophe, there was no unmaking it. And that scared her more than any explosion from him could ever have done.

"You can't," she said. It was nearly a whisper, lacking the force of her first, more emphatic, veto.

"I have to. It's the best chance we have for recovering the evidence."

"She's going to hand it over to you?"

"I wouldn't consider going otherwise. Perhaps it's a ploy, but if it is, the joke's on her. I mean to retrieve it no matter what, with your help."

That should've been intriguing. Instead, Laura's sense of foreboding intensified. "I don't like it. It smells like a set-up."

"No more than I liked it when you deliberately put yourself in harm's way in Liguria. But you didn't let that stop you."

"Oh, now I get it. That's what this is. Payback."

"No, it's me doing what has to be done, the same way you did. It's time—past time, Laura-" he raised his voice as she turned away from him "-to put an end to her blackmail, before she can hurt us more than she already has." Jumping to his feet, he intercepted her in the center of the room and with his hands on her shoulders made her face him. "She's done far too much damage as it is. You think I don't recognize it, that look in your eyes? It's the one that greeted me every day for four years, give or take. Not quite certain of me…never entirely trusting me. She's brought it back, hasn't she? Just when I thought I'd proven myself for good."

So he'd guessed how deep her doubts about him had gone. She gazed at him, afraid that if she tried to speak, she would become completely undone.

"It was that moment on the stairs at Castagnoli's," he went on. "Remember? You couldn't go any farther, and I said leave it to me, I'll get you out. And you trusted me to do it. I saw it in the way you looked at me. You believed I'd come through for you. I did, didn't I?"

"You did." Sure enough, her voice betrayed her, shaking just as she'd suspected it would.

"Then believe in me now," he said. "I'll finish it this weekend, once and for all. You'll see."

He was quietly but fiercely resolute. What could she say to counter him? Nothing, and she knew it. Really she'd lost the argument weeks ago, when he'd sued for the right to confront Anna that first time, and she'd conceded it to him.

Her mouth tightened in a grimace, her eyes squeezing shut to hold back tears. To hide it from him she put her arms around him and buried her face in his sweater. "I hate this," she said.

"I know you do. So do I." He circled her waist with one arm while the other hand held her head against his heart—a wonderfully protective gesture she couldn't remember him ever making before. "But by this time Saturday night, it'll be over. Meanwhile we've plenty of time to work out a plan. Silent, swift and devastating. That'll be you and me, eh? Turning the tables on her at last."

Remington was right about one thing: they did have plenty of time. The plan was simple and easy to coordinate. He thought Saturday morning would offer the best chance for searching the yacht for the papers and photos; he could steal out of the hotel early, before anyone was about, and slip over to the marina. Anna's hotel room would be the next target if he failed to come up with anything. Either way, as soon as the evidence was in his possession, he would disappear into the city before Anna could miss it. Laura's job would be to wait for his phone call and then come and pick him up.

To tell the truth, she wasn't crazy about the logistics. In her opinion it would've made more sense for her to be in position in San Diego in case he needed her, instead of tied to the phone in LA. But he categorically nixed the idea. "Not as long as you're being watched, you can't," he said. "If her man gets wind of what's afoot, we're done for. Might as well save ourselves the trouble and throw ourselves on the LAPD's mercy right now. I won't mind occupying myself for a few hours until you arrive. In fact, it'll be therapeutic, gloating over our new-found freedom with her just a few miles away."

It wasn't a decision designed to promote peace of mind. To ease her misgivings, Laura concentrated on background checks for the three crew members—a job that ordinarily would've fallen to Mildred, but one she felt compelled to handle personally. It was worth it to discover for herself that none of the crew was on Anna's payroll, just as Remington had said. The captain's profile was especially reassuring. Mike Watts was well-respected in mariners' circles and in high demand as a pilot. His charter business was booming; there were no outstanding debts or property liens in his record. It all lessened the likelihood that he would've bowed to any financial pressure Anna might have sought to exert on him.

At the same time Laura mulled over and over the facts they'd uncovered so far. If she could only break the case wide open before Friday! Remington would never have to set foot aboard The English Rose at all. But the disparate threads refused to resolve themselves into coherence. Patton's illness; the relinquishment of power of attorney; the timing of the Pattons' marriage and her parole; the portrait's arrival at the agency; Anna's overtures to Remington; the sell-off of Patton's assets. There was a pattern, Laura was convinced. By this point in a normal case, she would've detected its outlines, if not its entire shape. This one continued to elude her, though, hovering at the fringes of her comprehension, out of reach.

With the possible end of Anna's power over them within their grasp, the Steeles had agreed it was in their best interests to forego another romantic rendezvous at the Plaza. Maintaining the illusion of distance and hostility between them was too critical to risk it for the sake of a few hours of pleasure, no matter how much they missed each other. But when Remington came into Laura's office to kiss her goodbye at the close of business on Thursday, he said: "Leave the French doors unlocked tonight, will you? And don't arm the alarm when you go to bed."

Cocking her head, she assessed the twinkle in the beloved blue eyes. "Mr. Steele, are you suggesting I leave myself open to an intruder?"

"I suppose it does lend a whole new meaning to the term 'unforced entry', as your old friend Butch Bemis would've put it," he agreed.

"For a man of limited vocabulary, he was amazingly descriptive. And unwittingly perceptive." Arms around his neck, she maneuvered him into a longer, deeper kiss. Then she went on, "You know, it's pretty romantic, you sneaking home under cover of darkness so we can be together."

"Not to mention the added fillip of lurking danger, the ever-present possibility of discovery, our unquenchable determination not to be kept apart, despite the odds against us…"

"Enough!" she laughed. "You've already sold me. What time can I expect to be…intruded upon?"

"I'll be there as near on ten as I can make it."

Actually, he was better than his word. It was at a little past quarter of ten that she heard the soft snick of the French doors opening from the patio, audible in the silent house, even from their bedroom. There was the sound of his footfalls and the creak of floorboards as he checked the other windows and doors on the first floor. And then, finally, the stairs protesting under his weight as he bounded up them two at a time.

It took all the self-discipline she possessed to lay motionless, allowing the anticipation to build. Her whole body was tingling with it, her breasts, her warm, wet center. And at the sight of him striding to the bed, already peeling off his turtleneck, his bare chest and shoulders and arms emerging in the moonlight, her heart began to drum in an instinctive welcome. Oh, yes, he was gorgeous—and, oh, how she wanted him…

The mattress dipped as, dispensing for once with pajamas, he settled on its edge and pulled back the sheet. Then he began to laugh. For, prompted by an impulse to hasten the first moment of skin-to-skin contact—or maybe guided by the strength of their connection to read his mind before he knew it himself—she hadn't worn a nightgown to bed.

He seemed to think it was the latter. "Ah, Laura," he teased. "If ever there was proof that we were meant for each other, this is it. Two minds with a single thought between them, two souls, tuned to the same wavelength-"

The only cure for his soliloquizing was to cut him off before it soared into full flight. "Remington?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up and come over here."

He was more than happy to oblige. Once; twice; again and yet again, until she forgot to keep track, and it didn't make any difference, anyway. But she wasn't too overwhelmed to note something different about his lovemaking, an extra dimension of warmth and richness she couldn't quite put her finger on. The enforced separation, or the uncertainty tomorrow would bring, or a need to demonstrate his devotion to her all over again: which was the cause? Whatever it was, it blew her away. She'd never been one to wax poetic over good sex; Remington could usually be counted on for enough effusiveness to cover both of them. But tonight, entwined with him in the afterglow, exhausted and languorous and enraptured, she could almost have poured out every single metaphor she'd ever heard-and meant them.

By the time she woke the next morning, it was after six. Even as she registered the empty space where he should've been, Remington was rounding the foot of the bed. Fully dressed in jeans and a shirt, he crouched on the floor beside her. That position brought his face just about level with hers. "Hi," he whispered, drawing the greeting out so that it sounded like a caress.

For a moment memories of last night, warm and vivid, wrapped around them like a cocoon shutting out the rest of the world. Then it came flooding back, the reason he was here in the first place. "Out and about early, huh?" she replied.

"She wants to start off at first light. We'll make San Diego early this evening if we do."

"Nice to know it's the last order she'll be able to give you."

"It will be if I have anything to say about it."

His hand was sliding beneath her hair; his face was next to hers on the pillow. She opened her mouth to him, her lips clinging to his, prolonging the kiss, trying to infuse it with the pent-up emotion that she, for all her pride in her forthrightness, was never quite able to express to him. It was a good thing, because the first words that occurred to her when they parted were completely inane. "You taste like peppermint."

He smiled. "As well I might." Under the sheet his hand was traveling lower, stroking her shoulder, one finger tracing a line between and around her breasts, his palm coming to rest lightly on her stomach. "Ah, me darlin'," he said softly. The smile was in his brogue, too. "For sure you're the loveliest woman I've ever laid eyes on. You take me breath away, so you do."

Usually he reserved endearments like that for foreplay. Laura blinked at him in perplexity. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Never better, thanks to you. Think of it, my love! Today's the beginning of the end of Anna's nasty scheme. And the only woman I'll be wooing thereafter is my beautiful wife."

His upbeat mood bore both of them up through their final good-bye. But as soon as he'd disappeared by the route he'd arrived, merging into the shadow-filled backyard, the full weight of apprehension fell on Laura's shoulders. And it resisted every effort to dislodge it. There was something about Anna and this whole misbegotten adventure, to borrow one of Remington's phrases, something Laura still couldn't grasp. What was she missing? What had she overlooked?

With customary foresight she'd amassed a pile of routine work in hopes that it would keep her focused, occupied, for eight hours or more. Before the morning was half over, she realized she'd already lost the battle. When she wasn't glancing obsessively at the clock, aggravated at the slowness with which the minutes were wearing away, she was staring at the wall or out the window, lost in speculation over what was happening on The English Rose. Visions of Remington and Anna frolicking together in the hotter-than-average weather unfolded in stunning clarity and detail. The two of them lying on the aft-deck, or whatever it was called, sunning themselves. Anna reaching for a bottle of tanning oil, passing it to him; he accepting it with a lazy, suggestive smile. His hands, long-fingered, sensuous, graceful, smoothing it over the other woman's back, her slender arms and legs, wandering little by little to the edge of her bikini top, outlining a slow trail along her skin to the tie that fastened the top around her neck…

It wasn't until her imagination had trespassed into explicit territory that Laura would come back to herself, her stomach in knots, as shaken and sick as if she'd been physically present, a voyeur spying on her philandering husband and his lover. She could bend back to her task in forced concentration all she wanted; she could try to summon up recollections of last night as a shield. Nothing seemed to help. She needed Remington.

But he was miles away…perhaps already caught in a snare into which he'd walked with eyes wide open.

She spent an unquiet night, alternately consumed by anxiety and tormented by jealousy. Seven a.m. or thereabouts: that was the time Remington had estimated he might first be ready to call her. It seemed to approach on leaden feet. But at last it was six o'clock—twenty-four hours since she'd had her husband in her arms. Gratefully she left the bed in which she hadn't slept a wink to revive herself with a very long, very hot, shower.

Seven o'clock arrived. Departed. No phone call.

Downstairs she prowled restlessly between the kitchen and the den, cup of coffee in her hand. For company she'd turned on the television in the one, the radio in the other. She was listening to neither. Any minute, she was thinking. Any minute now.

She wondered if he'd ridden the same emotional roller coaster the day she failed to call him from Pramagiorre.

Eight o'clock. When was the last time she'd confronted a situation like this, Remington incommunicado, circumstances conspiring to make it impossible for her to track him down? The Joan Gray case, almost a year ago. Two creeps, steroid-abusing athletes, had beaten him up in a parking lot at Union Station—played Red Rover with him, as he facetiously explained later—and dumped him there unconscious. They'd roughed him up pretty good; it had taken him four hours to wake up. She was tasting it again, the frustration, the impotence, hamstrung by lack of information when she knew—knew—she could've used her skills to rush to his rescue.

I'll bet you thought I'd run off with another woman, was the first thing he said when he'd finally got a hold of her. The irony wasn't wasted on her now.

At nine a.m., phone in hand, she was staging a heated debate with herself. To call his hotel room, or not; which was the safest? Which would increase chance that Anna would penetrate the masquerade and react accordingly? Which would provide him with an escape if he was in trouble?

"—Clayton Endicott," interrupted an electronic voice. "…murdered."

For a second or two she couldn't pinpoint the source. Then she knew it was the television. But her hesitation, brief though it was, had cost her. In the time it took her to drop the phone and run into the den, the news anchor had progressed to reporting on a robbery in Los Feliz.

Desperately she dove for the remote and flicked through the channels. Her persistence was rewarded the third time she landed on Spotlight News. Over videotape of attendants wheeling a covered gurney towards an ambulance parked in front of a sprawling house, the anchorman was intoning, "…body of prominent attorney Clayton Endicott, discovered last night by a neighbor in the garage of his Westwood home. According to police, Endicott may have been gunned down more than twenty-four hours before his body was found. Spotlight News reporter Sharon Sebastian has learned that Endicott's co-workers weren't suspicious of his absence from work on Friday because he'd excused himself for a weekend cruise to San Diego." The camera switched to a two-shot of anchorman and reporter, both wearing the professionally furrowed brows that were intended to emphasize the story's tragic nature. "Sharon?"

The reporter seamlessly picked up her cue, but Laura never heard her. The plan, she thought wildly. Anna's plan. Flawless in its execution. Deadly in its symmetry.

Two men enticed to Club 10 three years ago. One man shot to death, the other escaping with his life by the narrowest of margins.

Two men enticed on a weekend cruise. One man shot to death.

The other?

Shock had rooted her to the spot at first. It was a temporary aberration. Pumped with adrenalin, she sprang into action. Swift and devastating, wasn't that what Remington had said? Problem identified, an objective to be met: now she was at her best. The waiting game, by contrast, had never been one of her strong suits.

Purse, car keys, phone number to the San Diego hotel. She'd call his room from the road. There was one stop to make, the agency; fortunately it was directly on her route. Even if it wasn't, she couldn't head south without her gun.

It was her turn to save the life of her love.

TO BE CONTINUED