"Killing us will be the biggest mistake you ever made," Isabella warned.
"It wasn't my first choice, believe me. I know Fallon Jones will search for you. That is not a good thing. But I've been very careful. I'm sure that, in the end, he will conclude that you just took off as you have been known to do in the past."
"He'll find you," Isabella promised. "He won't stop looking until he does."
"When this is over, I will disappear so completely that not even Fallon Jones can find me." Sylvia glanced at the pieces of the music box. "You would have to break it. I don't suppose you have any idea what that thing was worth in certain quarters?"
"Speaking of money, you owe Jones & Jones five hundred bucks," Isabella said.
Sylvia smiled. "And you're here to collect?"
"That's right."
"Good luck with that." Sylvia glanced at her watch. "It will be dark in a few hours. You and he will be going over the bluffs into the sea as soon as night falls. I was planning to wait until midnight to make sure no one notices, but I don't think there's any need to hold off, not with this storm. No one will notice one more tourist stopping at the blowhole turnout to dump a couple of bags of trash."
"Since we've got all the time in the world," Isabella said, "mind telling me how you located the Bridewell curiosities?"
"I've been looking for them for years," Sylvia said. "To some extent, I was able to use the resources of the museum, but I had to be extremely discreet. I did not want to draw the attention of my colleagues or J&J. But after a certain point, I decided to fund my own search."
"And to do that, you needed money. A lot of it."
"More than I could afford on my salary from the museum, certainly."
"You set up a profitable little sideline selling off the odd paranormal weapon to Julian Garrett and Caitlin Phillips, using Orville Sloan as the broker."
"Sloan knew the world of paranormal arms dealing," Sylvia said. "It's a highly specialized field, as I'm sure you can imagine. He was the one who suggested that we work with Garrett and Phillips. The arrangement was quite successful for several months. Then I got a solid lead on a cache of curiosities."
"You found one of the two men who survived the explosion in the shelter, didn't you? Was it Kelso? That's the name of the family that used to own the lodge."
"His name was Jonathan Kelso. He was the last member of his family, and he was not mentally stable. By the time I tracked him down he was living in an institution. He told me a fascinating story about how he and two colleagues had discovered a number of Bridewell's clockwork curiosities. They wanted to find out exactly how they worked, but they knew the objects were dangerous. Kelso remembered the old bomb shelter behind the lodge and decided it would be a good place to run their experiments."
"They brought the curiosities here, tuned them up and then things went wrong."
"According to Kelso, there was an explosion. It killed one of the three outright. The second man's senses were severely affected by the heavy dose of radiation. He took his own life a few months later. Something about incessant nightmares. Kelso, himself, as I said, wound up in a psychiatric facility. But he was able to tell me about the commune that was going on in Scargill Cove at the time of the experiments. I started doing some research."
"You found Rachel Stewart."
"By the time I tracked her down she was dying of cancer and using serious pain meds. Her story was somewhat confused, but I was able to put the facts together into a coherent picture."
"She was a Seeker," Isabella said. "The woman everyone thought ran off with Gordon Lasher."
"Well, that was the plan. But Lasher was only interested in Rachel because it turned out she had a strong affinity for glass psi. Not only was she immune to the effects of the curiosities but she also intuitively understood how they worked. Furthermore, she could sense them at a distance."
"That was how she found the tunnel entrance to the bomb shelter."
"Yes," Sylvia said. "Lasher intended to use Rachel to remove the relics from the bomb shelter."
"She got one out for him, the clock."
"Yes. The idea was to store the devices temporarily in the Zander mansion until Lasher could figure out how to transport and sell them. When he and Rachel Stewart went back into the shelter to get another artifact, however, they quarreled. In the heat of the argument Rachel discovered that Lasher did not love her and was only using her. Surprise, surprise."
"So she crushed his skull with a tire iron."
"No," Sylvia said. "There was someone else there that night. Rachel said something about him not being right in the head."
"I hit him," Walker said. He rocked urgently, tears glistening in his eyes. "He hurt Rachel. He hit her and called her names. S-said he was going to take all the alien weapons. Rachel started to c-cry. So I hit him. Then she screamed and ran away through the tunnel and never came back."
"It's okay, Walker," Isabella said gently. She looked at Sylvia. "Thanks to Rachel Stewart, you knew the clock was somewhere in the Zander mansion and that the rest of the curiosities might still be in the shelter."
"Exactly. I set up as a real estate agent in Willow Creek and used my cover to search the mansion. I could sense the clock in the house but I couldn't find it."
"Because it was hidden beneath the new floor the killer had constructed in the basement," Isabella said. "He stored it there."
"I knew that even if I did locate the clock, there was no way I could get into the bomb shelter to get the rest of the curiosities. It was too well guarded by the good folk of Scargill Cove, not to mention a pack of dogs and a very serious lock. I could not find the tunnel entrance, either. I lacked Rachel's talent for sensing the glass psi at a distance."
"So you called in Jones & Jones," Isabella said. "You knew that Fallon would probably sense the clock if he went into the house and that he would tear the place apart to find it."
"Jones & Jones has a history with the Bridewell curiosities. I was quite sure that once Fallon Jones was on the trail, he would keep going until he turned up the rest of the artifacts in the shelter. I was prepared to drop a few hints about the events in the Cove twenty-two years ago if necessary, but as I expected, Jones was inside the shelter within twenty-four hours and the artifacts were trucked off to L.A. twenty-four after that. He's good."
"He wasn't working alone," Isabella said. This was hardly the time to get defensive, but an investigator had a professional reputation to consider, even when looking down the barrel of a gun.
"I'm well aware that you're a strong talent in your own right," Sylvia said. "Jones would never have hired you otherwise. If it's any consolation, I didn't know a serial killer was using the house as a dumping ground."
"Thanks for that. It's a wonder he didn't catch you inside the mansion."
"I was only in the Zander house once."
"You plan to return from your sabbatical and join Rafanelli in his research on the curiosities," Isabella said. "After a discreet amount of time has passed, you will arrange for the gadgets to disappear from the museum vault."
"I'm afraid poor Dr. Rafanelli will get the blame when the Joneses discover that the artifacts are gone," Sylvia said. "Can't be helped, though. Someone has to take the fall. I will eventually resign in due course and disappear."