Carine stretched out her legs, the grass damp and soft, the icy morning frost long melted. She felt chastised, as if she was being petty and stubborn. "I can provide them with prints and a separate disk of just their pictures, as I have right along."
Turner considered her words, then nodded. "I'll tell them."
Ty's truck pulled into the driveway and bounced over a rut before it came to a stop alongside Turner's car. Ty climbed out, his manner casual, easy-going-deceptively so, Carine thought. "I brought you a load of wood," he told her. "Enough for a few days."
She got to her feet, feeling a self-conscious rush. He'd think Turner showing up proved Manny's point that she needed to have Ty stick to her, keep an eye on her. If she didn't ask for trouble, it'd find her.
The two men introduced themselves and shook hands briefly. "I thought you and I'd get the chance to meet each other before now," Gary said. "I guess we've just missed each other."
"Guess so." Ty walked back to his truck and opened up the tailgate, playing the good neighbor, but Carine could feel his intensity. "Don't let me keep you two."
"I was just leaving," Gary said.
"Glad I didn't block you in."
But, of course, he deliberately hadn't parked behind Turner-he meant to run him off, if not to be rude about it. He wasn't even being that subtle. Carine didn't know if she should be relieved, because he wasn't a bad guy to have on her side and Turner had just been ratcheting up the pressure over the pictures, or annoyed, because she'd had the situation under control and Turner was, in fact, taking no for an answer.
Turner shifted back to her, his pale eyes almost transparent in the late morning light. "Now that I've mentioned the memory disk, I know you won't be able to resist looking at it. I warned Mr. Rancourt this could happen if I asked you for it, but it's the risk he decided to take." He smiled faintly. "He knew I wasn't going to wrestle you for it."
" Gary, I honestly don't know what you're talking about-"
"I know you don't. Think back to this conversation when you view the pictures." He seemed more tired, even ill at ease, than irritated. "Remember that I tried to be discreet."
He nodded politely at North, who'd obviously taken in every word as he dumped wood out of the back of his truck. Then, without another word, Turner got into his car, started the engine and backed out.
Carine exhaled, almost choking on tension. "Damn. Ty, listen, I don't know what the hell's going on, but I need-I need to go back to your house and get my camera."
He tossed another couple of hunks of cordwood onto her driveway. He wasn't wearing his work gloves, and she noticed he'd scraped a knuckle, not badly. "Uhhuh. You want to give me a hint what this is all about?"
"First you tell me if you knew Manny planned to recommend Sterling Rancourt fire Louis Sanborn."
"It came up. Why, is it out there?"
"Apparently."
"Pissed I didn't mention it?"
"Does it matter?"
He shrugged, unapologetic. "It doesn't explain anything."
"Then why not tell me? You don't need a security clearance, Ty. Keeping your mouth shut comes naturally to you."
"That's what my third-grade teacher told the security guys when they came up here and checked me out."
"You're making that up."
He jumped out of his truck, landing lightly on the dirt driveway. "Is Gary Turner going to break into my house and steal your camera if we don't get over there?"
"He might, but I think he credits himself with playing by the rules."
North examined his skinned knuckle, then shrugged it off. "Depends on whose rules we're talking about, doesn't it?"
"Anyway, it won't do him any good if he does steal the camera," Carine said. "I have the disk he's after in my coat pocket."
"Well, well, aren't you lucky he didn't frisk you?"
"I thought about taking pictures today-I didn't want to use the same memory disk. I had my camera with me yesterday when my apartment was searched. If it was searched."
"Rancourt and Turner both saw you yesterday with the camera." Ty frowned at her, thinking. "I take it you didn't have it with you during lunch on Wednesday?"
She shook her head. "I left it in the hall of the Rancourt house." She swallowed, not relishing what she had to do. "I hope Gary 's wrong and there's nothing on the disk but pictures of the drawing room mantel."
Ty stood very close to her, smelling of wood, reminding her of their intimacy yesterday in her apartment. She'd known he wouldn't refuse her. Somehow, she'd known that.
Had someone slipped into her apartment to find her digital camera?
What was on the damn disk?
Ty smiled at her. "You look like someone's asked you to eat a dead bug."
"That's one way to put it."
"I've done it, babe. It's not so bad."
Her shoulders sagged, and she almost managed a laugh. "Ty, damn it-"
"Come on. Hop in my truck." He slung an arm over her shoulders, still playing the good neighbor, the buddy who'd been at her side for as long as she could remember, even if it was sometimes so he could push her out of a tree. "Let's go see if someone borrowed your camera at lunch and took incriminating pictures before, during or after poor Louis Sanborn got shot with a.38 in the library."
Carine angled a look at him. "You don't know it was a.38."
"It's an educated guess."
"Whose? Yours or Manny's?"
"Colonel Mustard's. Come on, Carine. Give me a break."
"What else did Manny tell you that you haven't told me?"
"That you'd be a meddling pain in the ass if I didn't keep you occupied." He dropped his arm, opening the truck door. "He fed some line about you having a strong moral compass."
She climbed into the passenger seat, fighting an urge to let him take the disk and see what was on it while she stayed here and stacked wood. "I have a feeling if my strong moral compass was working, I'd have given Gary Turner the disk."
Carine could have popped the memory disk back into her camera and looked at the pictures on its tiny LCD screen, but she waited to boot up the computer in Ty's den, attaching a USB cable to the corresponding port on her camera. A screen came up on the monitor, with a contactlike sheet of all the photos on the disk. It was a fresh disk. The only photos on it, at least as far as she knew, were those she'd taken Wednesday morning on Commonwealth Avenue, before lunch, before she found Louis.
She was supposed to click on what she wanted to do with the pictures-copy them to the hard drive, view a slide show, print them-but she was so stunned, all she could do was gape at the monitor.
The few pictures she'd taken were there, idle shots of the drawing room mantel and chandelier-she hadn't expected to keep any of them. But it was the four pictures she didn't take that had her attention.
All four depicted a mostly naked Jodie Rancourt up against the library wall, her legs wrapped around the waist of an apparently fully clothed Louis Sanborn. His back was to the camera, but there was no question of his identity-or what he and Jodie were up to.
Ty whistled, peering over Carine's shoulder. "I wonder who took these last four shots."
Carine shook her head, stunned. "It wasn't me. Someone must have used my camera while I was at lunch. The pictures-the angle-" She paused, making herself breathe, and tried again. "Whoever took the pictures must have stood in the doorway to the hall. My camera was right there on the radiator."
"Talk about nature photography."
She elbowed him. "That's lame, North."
"Just trying to ease the tension in the room. Damn. You didn't have any idea-"
"No. None. Jodie Rancourt and Louis Sanborn? He'd only worked for the Rancourts for two weeks."