“So,” I said, my voice tinged with sourness, “should the opportunity arise to get into a helicopter with him, remind me not to sit next to the door.”
“The other things that came up were that he was very good at hand-to-hand, and an excellent shot with a pistol.”
“Oh great,” I said. “What am I supposed to do to find out for definite if he is who he says he is, then-pick a fight with him?”
Sean laughed softly. “I know who I’d put my money on,” he said.
When I walked down the staircase I heard the quiet murmur of voices behind the door to the study. Simone and Lucas. I thought briefly about knocking but couldn’t think of a good excuse to do so other than nosiness. For a moment I was tempted to use that one anyway, but I didn’t.
So far, Lucas and his wife had been somewhat nonplussed by the news of my real role in Simone’s life. Simone had explained my presence by telling them about her problems with an ex-boyfriend-being careful not to name Matt, or admit he was Ella’s father. She also left out all mention of the fact that most of her problems had started the moment she became a millionairess.
Even I have to admit the way she put it, it sounded reasonably convincing. She’d been stalked, she’d said, and Ella had been scared by the whole thing. The promising reports from the private eye, O’Halloran, had convinced Simone to fly out to Boston and I’d come along to make sure the boyfriend didn’t follow her over here and cause more trouble.
Yes, there were holes in the story if you looked closely enough, but fortunately neither of them seemed inclined to do that. Interestingly, they had asked if she had any hopes for a reconciliation with her ex. When she said a categorical no-even going so far as to hint he was into drugs — they’d lost a lot of the stiffness in their attitude, become friendly again. I thought I’d even caught a hint of relief in them, but I could have been wrong about that.
Now, I followed the sound of chattering voices to the open-plan kitchen, where Rosalind and Ella were baking cookies. At least, Rosalind was baking the cookies and Ella just seemed to be making a mess over as wide an area as possible. At Rosalind’s invitation, I helped myself to coffee from the pot and stayed well back, strictly in an observational role.
Ella was in her element. Rosalind had given her a flattened piece of cookie dough and a plastic cutter in the shape of a star and she was busily stamping out as many ragged shapes from the dough as she could manage. Her little face wore a frown of utter concentration and a liberal coating of flour. Flour was also down the front of most of her dress, in her hair, and spread across an ever-increasing area of the kitchen tiles.
To my surprise, Rosalind didn’t seem at all disturbed by this sudden intrusion of chaos into her well-ordered domain. In fact, she was supervising the operation so skillfully that I’m sure even Ella didn’t realize the level of her intervention. Not enough to frustrate the child, but sufficient that the end results were likely to be edible, at least.
Rosalind arranged Ella’s misshapen cookies on a baking tray alongside the perfect examples she’d already cut, and whisked them into the oven.
“Now then, Ella,” she said, “if we can get this all cleared up by the time those cookies are done, we might be able to have some while they’re still hot. What do you say?”
Ella nodded enthusiastically.
“OK, well, I think a big girl like you can wash her hands all by herself, can’t she?”
Ella quickly clambered down off the chair she’d been using to bring her up to tabletop height and skipped off towards the downstairs cloakroom near the front door, eager to prove how grown up she was without quite realizing how well she’d been conned.
“You’re very good with her,” I said as Rosalind began wiping down the work surfaces.
She gave me a sad little smile. “Yes, well, I always wanted a family.”
“But you and Greg never had children,” I said, remembering her comment to Vaughan the day before. We made the decision not to have any children. Not exactly a free choice, by the sound of it.
She paused a moment and flicked her eyes over me and there was a touch of defiance in them, as though I was deliberately goading her. I kept my face neutral, friendly. “No,” she said at last. “We married late and, well-” she shrugged, “-it was never to be.”
“Have you two been married long?”
She paused again, as if looking for the catch in every question. “Coming up on fifteen years,” she said, almost reluctantly, as though I was probably going to use the information against her in some way. “I hired Greg to work for me,” she added, grudgingly.
That surprised me. “At the military surplus store?”
“That’s right,” she said, pride lifting her chin. She wiped a pile of spilt flour into her cupped hand and dropped it into the sink. “My daddy built the store up from nothing, right after he got home from Korea.”
For want of a better reaction I raised my eyebrows and nodded, looking suitably impressed.
Rosalind’s shoulders came down a fraction. “Daddy was a quartermaster sergeant.”
“He and Greg must have got on well,” I said. It was a throwaway comment but she tensed.
“Why do you say that?”
Damn, the woman was touchy. I shrugged. “Well, Greg was a sergeant, too, wasn’t he?” I said carefully. “I understood Simone’s father was in the SAS.”
“Daddy died before I met Greg,” Rosalind said, and some fleeting emotion passed across her face, too fast for me to fully identify it. “And anyways, Greg doesn’t like to talk too much about those days.”
I nodded again. “The genuine ones never do,” I said. “For every one real SAS trooper there must be a dozen who claim they’ve been in the Regiment.”
She gave me a smile that seemed almost grateful, that she didn’t have to explain it, that I understood.
‘And now Greg’s taken over the store,” I said.
The smile blinked out. “We both run it,” she said stiffly.
“Of course,” I said, with what I hoped was an ingratiating smile of my own. “I look forward to seeing it.” That earned me another quick frown. Whatever I said seemed to make Rosalind uneasy
“So where does the charming Mr. Vaughan fit in to all this?” I asked. Hell, if I was going to make her uncomfortable, I might as well go the whole hog Besides, the pair of them had neatly sidestepped any previous questions about the man.
She came upright and practically glared at me. “Greg felt we needed some additional investment to expand and Felix was generous enough to provide it,” she said, terse. “I know he can seem a little abrupt, but military men can be straight talkers if you’re not accustomed to them.”
I thought of Vaughan’s deliberate rudeness, and the Lucases’ own discomfort with it, but wisely kept my opinion to myself.
Ella reappeared at that moment. Her hands were wet and largely free of flour, but where she’d splashed the front of her dress it now looked like she was wearing a pastry vest. Rosalind took charge of her, wiping her down and dusting her off as she quickly returned the kitchen to its former pristine state. If I hadn’t known better I would have said the woman was glad of the excuse not to have to answer any more of my questions.
Ella seemed to have really taken to the bony woman, and I wasn’t quite sure whether to be insulted or relieved by the little girl’s sudden shift in allegiance. Maybe Ella found Rosalind’s rather reserved manner refreshing after all the anxiously smiling faces that adults usually present when faced with a small child.