Stone Kissed (5 page)

She pushed past him to the back door of the shop. “Benson called this morning. He said the fire was an accident.”

“That makes no sense, Delia. The ashes are still smoldering. He can’t close the case.”

“I’m just telling you what he said.” It bothered Delia, too, although she’d never admit it to Grant. Carl Benson had sounded flat and apathetic on the phone, simply repeating himself every time she asked a different question. But he hadn’t brought up her father, and Delia hadn’t either.

Grant pulled off his sunglasses and she looked up into his steely eyes.

“He didn’t do it,” Delia said. Grant raised an eyebrow and she flushed. “No motive, Grant. The house was uninsured.”

He swooped in like a bird of prey, crowding her. “Why didn’t you insure your house?”

The shame washed over her in a fresh wave, and she slumped, shaking her head. She couldn’t explain it to him. How did you tell your erstwhile superhero you’d been stupid? How did you tell him you had trusted your father to take care of the basic grownup duties of home ownership for you—when Father hadn’t taken care of anyone or anything else?

It wasn’t Grant’s business. It wasn’t his problem.

Nor were the statues in the shop. Sure, Grant “owned” them now. But statues were, for the most part, unconcerned about human notions of property. Being alone in storage, however, was difficult for them. They didn’t fear the dark, but the ones Delia knew were all social creatures. The longer they spent locked away from people—or at least, from her—the less coherent they became. The really old ones reverted to older, sometimes dead languages.

“I’ll clean up a bit before you come in,” Her voice was embarrassingly husky. “You won’t find anything if I don’t.”

He reached out and wrapped his palm around hers, peeling the keychain from her fingers. It was balmy, and his body heated the air around her even more. She shut her eyes against the shimmering waves.

His breath brushed her forehead. The damned man was gravity itself. If she were to retain any self-respect whatsoever, she would pull away from him in all ways as quickly as possible, or she would find herself both figuratively and literally on her back—with no guarantee he would join her. She jerked her hand, attempting to pull free.

“The key,” he said.

Delia tugged again and he released her. She leaned sullenly against the door frame to twist the key off its ring. She dropped it in his palm without touching him, without risking being enfolded in his warmth once again. But his finger closed over hers and he smiled as if he knew what he did to her. The jerk.

Grant unlocked the door and held it open for her. The back office was layered in dust, and the top drawer of the battered steel desk was open. The folding chair sat askew and Delia was positive her father hadn’t fixed the lock on the filing cabinet. In what remained of the floor space, he’d stacked boxes, stolen milk crates, bags of packing peanuts and rolls of bubble wrap in precarious columns from floor to ceiling. She was embarrassed. She’d been in Grant’s warehouses. She knew and respected that he ran a tight ship.

“I really think you should give me a chance to clean up in here.” She flapped her hands loosely. Turning to face him, she was drawn up short, her nose only an inch from his chest.

“I’ll stay.”

Jerk.
Planting her palms on his chest, she pushed back against her desire to lean in. Her butt landed on the desk. She reached into the open drawer so he wouldn’t see her flushed face.

“Let me find the list.” Delia shuffled through the stack of paper within and pulled out a crumpled sheaf of papers covered with her father’s spidery scrawl. Grant pulled it from her hands and her finger gripped empty air. She huffed out a breath in irritation.

“You don’t understand. It’s a mess out there. You won’t find half of what’s on those sheets without my help. Some of those pieces are treasures. Some might even be from Steward House.”

“After all these years?”

“You know how it works. People buy things at local sales and bring them back when they fall on hard times. Who knows what you’ll find in a dusty corner?”

“If it’s worthwhile, I’ll find it.”

His calm confidence infuriated her. “Like the Claudel?” she challenged.

“Exactly like the Claudel.”

“Do you remember—” She bit down before the last word came out—
me?

“Who could forget? That sculpture is one of my all-time best finds.”

Delia’s breath was shallow and her chest was tight. She closed her eyes and slid off the desk. “Let’s get to work,” she muttered, as she brushed past his chest to the door to the front of the shop. She resisted the urge to reach back for her purse, just so she could brush up against him again.

Delia watched Grant’s face as they entered the front part of the shop, wondering if he sensed the laughter and the chatter of the statues on the shelves and up the aisle. People’s moods infused the stones around them, but Delia tried not to kid herself that the opposite was true, that others sensed what she heard, and that she was not alone in what her father and mother had insisted were delusions.

His face remained relaxed and confident, giving no indication that he noticed a thing.

When Grant stopped to examine a stack of paintings, she nodded at a pair of alabaster shepherdesses gossiping on a high shelf next to an eyeless Raggedy Ann doll. The room hummed with voices, all of them new since Christmas. Obviously Father had gotten his hands on a small property. In the past few years he had fewer and fewer occasions to cross paths with big dealers like Grant. Father bought out the estates of retired teachers. Grant bought out New York apartment buildings, Estonian castles and California ranches.

“Why are you here? I mean, it doesn’t fit. Steward House and…this—” Delia waved her hand at the room. “This is small potatoes for you. Surely you have someone you could have passed this job off on.”

“My business is my business, Miss Forrest. You’re here now on my sufferance. Don’t overstep.”

“Who-eee!” a high feminine voice called out. “We have a live one.”

Delia fumed, but she was quickly distracted. Beyond the shop counter tucked into the back corner of the room, a brown marble bust of a Roman matron sat on a waist-high plinth, her carefully carved curls rolling in waves back from the diadem of her forehead. She was a late reproduction, perhaps only four or five hundred years old. Delia was relieved—the museum-housed originals were forever complaining their pigments had worn off and begging her to touch them up with a little paint or some gilding. Delia picked up a disposable coffee cup from the plinth and tossed it in the trash.

“Thank you,” she said to Delia in warm, cultured tones, “It’s been there for years.”

Delia reached into her pocket for a glove to wipe a smear from the Roman matron’s cheek. Then she heard a high, soft, familiar voice.

“Delia? Is it time to go home yet?” he chirped.

She sucked in a breath and scanned the room. She wove through the stacks of LPs, battered baskets and tins of old buttons to the glass case in the display window. Kneeling behind it, she pushed aside a crate of sheet music.

“What is it?” Grant asked.

Reaching into the shadows under the case, Delia braced herself to pull a three-foot-tall granite Victorian hare. The carved flowers on his vest buttons were almost as clear as they’d been when she was a child. Someone had taken good care of him since he’d first been stripped from the Steward estate. He still had the tips of both ears.

“Bert,” she whispered.

“Are you going to read me a story today? I sure like the one about caterpillar that you read me last week.”

She could hardly breathe, but she patted her pockets for the other glove. She knew she should stop touching him. But this was
Bert.

“What is it?” Grant was standing over her shoulder, and Delia forced herself to talk as if Bert were only a cold lump of stone.

“Victorian hare. Part of the Steward Estate. A local family bought him for a song. But he’s back now. It’s back,” she amended.

“Dime a dozen.”

“Hardly. And certainly not like this.” She took a breath to steady her voice. “He’s in near-perfect condition. They kept him indoors.” She stroked Bert’s back. “I played with him as a child.”

“But your father sold it.”

She couldn’t answer him. The lump in her throat was too large.

“Bring him here, dearie! I want to see that man.”

Delia looked up and tried not to laugh. The voice came from the corner shelf next to the front window. A marble Art Deco carving of a flapper danced in the dust motes and sunshine. Her perfectly rounded breasts came to smooth points on a ribcage shifted slightly to the right, elongating her gleaming white belly on the diagonal. Her arms snaked overhead, the backs of the wrists touching. Her face was emotionless and perfect, but her voice was all vinegar and sass.

“She’s new.” Delia lifted her chin toward the figurine even as she stroked the hare’s back. “Unusual too.”

Grant had already passed behind her to pick it up.

“Asymmetrical. Interesting.” He held it up, examining it in the sunlight from the front window. “It’s cheap, but there’s something about it…”

“Cheap? I am Sophie! Josephine Baker kept me!”

“Maybe,” Delia said carefully. “Check the inventory.”

He placed the statuette down, but didn’t take his hand off the base, as if he were reluctant to let her go. He rifled through the sheets of paper with the other hand, then flipped back to one and stared at it. “If you could prove this…”

The urge to tell him more, to impress him with knowledge she couldn’t possibly have, was hard to control. She’d done it once before. It had been gratifying to see admiration in Grant Wolverton’s eyes. It had been disastrous.

“Calling me cheap.” Sophie sniffed. “Dilettante.”

Grant stepped back, surveyed the shop and shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

“Lars,” he said, as she pulled Bert out to set him on the counter for closer inspection, “rent a dumpster for the shop and send down Ralph and Travis.”

“It’s not necessary to summon the henchmen,” Delia said. “St. Vincent de Paul will take most of this.”

“I wouldn’t wish it on them.”

“Let me do it. I told you before, I know what’s what.”

“May we go home now, Delia?” Bert asked. He was eternally six. She’d grown up without him and it made her sad.

“Please, Mr. Wolverton.” She swallowed, keeping her eyes on Grant’s square jaw, keeping her gloved hands pressed firmly into her thighs. “Please let me clean out the shop.”

He ducked his head to catch her gaze, “What are you hiding, Delia?”

“Nothing!” she gasped, because he was within inches of her and a breath from the truth. If he knew what she had planned, he’d never let her near the statues—or Steward House—again.

“Right. Listen, if your father was dealing anything besides secondhand goods, you had better tell me now. We can call in Chief Benson and deal with the abatement properly.”

Delia struggled to keep the anger out of her voice. She had a job to do, and she could not risk him kicking her out of the shop. “There’s nothing to abate, Grant. I’m just trying to help.”

He smelled like everything a man should—and lavender soap. It should have been funny, but instead, it just made her want to press her nose into his neck.

“I need…” she whispered, then caught herself and made her voice louder. “I need something to
do.
” A dark curl fell over his temple and she clenched her fist to keep from brushing it back. “I can’t spend every hour at the hospital. I need work. I need to keep busy.”

“How much do you want to be paid?”

“What? No!” She recoiled. This was her duty, her privilege. But he couldn’t know that.

“Why not? I’m paying the guys.”

Delia grew wary. He had a tone, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “Thanks, but I’m fine for cash.”

He acknowledged the jab with a twitch of his lip. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Ralph and Travis will be here tomorrow with the truck and they’ll do whatever you tell them.” He scanned the room once more and added, “Let’s go.”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“No, you have to eat. Then we have to go see Chief Benson.”

“The case is closed.” Delia looked at his impassive face and sighed. “My father didn’t try to burn down Steward House.”

“Someone did. If not him, who?”

She flushed. “Well I didn’t do it! I was in D.C., which you damn well know.” She’d given up trying to hide her bitterness.

“Delia.” He took her by the shoulders. “I know you didn’t set the fire, but I intend to find out who did. If you know anything, it’s time to say so.”

She wrenched herself out of his grip and pushed past him to the back office.

“You’ll be back, won’t you?” Sophie’s plaintive question was at odds with her brazen posture. Grant was behind Delia now as she strode to the rear door, so she couldn’t even give the statues a reassuring wave.

But she’d be back. And she would keep her friends, old and new, out of the warehouses, which were as cold and dark as Grant’s own heart.

***

“Are you related to Chief Benson, too?” Grant growled two hours later as he pulled in beside her car in the lot behind the shop.

Delia leaned on her rattletrap, arms folded. Another dark curl fell loose from the short, sloppy ponytail at the nape of her neck. She looked exhausted. He’d offered her the room at Blossom’s Folly for a nap, for God’s sake, but she’d refused. He had to wonder why.

“Come on, Delia,” he said through the open window as he shut off the Lexus. “Is this some small-town-everybody’s-everybody’s-cousin thing?”

Her lips were pursed. She looked indignant and fearful, a dark kitten about to hiss.

Grant released his grip on the wheel and climbed out. The interview with Benson hadn’t gone well. Grant hadn’t been able to tune into the man, to read him, and Benson didn’t seem to be all there. He’d just kept repeating, “No motive, no witnesses and no reason to waste time.” Grant had stood in the still-smoking house. He’d smelled the gasoline. But the officer was writing the fire off as an accident.

“This is hardly some huge inbred conspiracy, Grant.” Delia fumed. Her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breaths. They were fine breasts—not huge by any standard. But their dark nipples would peak with the flick of his tongue.

Of course they would. It was biology. He needed to get a grip on himself. His palm spread flat on his thigh, his thumb riding up the inner seam of his jeans. He winced, reining in his thoughts and focusing on her words again.

“…as much of a stranger around here as you are, believe it or not. Even stranger, in fact.” Delia’s face melted all at once, her thick lashes blinking rapidly. Something in her expression was familiar, something…

“The Claudel,” he whispered, and her eyes went wide.

“I’ve got work to do.” Delia ran for the shop. She tugged on the knob, then dropped her forehead against the door frame.

Grant scanned her profile, looking for signs of the kid who had told him an amazing story of the treasure he’d found—a story which had turned out to be true. Delia returned to his car, her eyes downcast, and extended her hand. He held the key just out of her reach.

She knew more than she was telling. She always had.

“Which was it? An accident or arson?”

“My father didn’t set the fire.”

Grant sighed and handed her the key. The facts were obvious, even if pieces of the puzzle were still missing. Delia’s father had been alone in the house. He’d miscalculated when he set the fire and gotten burned for his troubles. No one in this town had any interest in finding out the truth because, simply put, there was no money it. If he wanted the truth, he’d have to hunt it down himself.

And Delia? She’d been a pretty little girl—and smart too. She’d known more back then than a kid had a right to know. Vernon Forrest’s daughter was a pretty woman now, and she’d retained the air of innocence he remembered from his warehouse years ago. He needed distance. He needed to give her a long line and see what she did with it.

After he saw her safely inside, Grant slammed the car into gear and spun out of the drive.

***

The music of hundreds of voices—human and stone—flowed over young Delia in waves. Her father hadn’t wanted to take her to the auction preview, but he had no choice. She was on spring break from her first year at the Hancock School, and Vernon Forrest didn’t know what else to do with her.

She’d been thrilled. The sculptures in the vast cavernous warehouse treated her like their guest of honor. She grinned when a stone Buddha invited her to rub his belly. She blushed when the charioteers on a sandstone frieze whistled at her. When a small Lord Shiva sang his greeting, she lifted her hand to wave at him—and felt the hard slap on her forearm.

Her father clamped her wrist in an iron grip. Staring straight ahead, he towed her, shuffling and stumbling, through the warehouse. She ignored the joyful greetings of fauns and dryads, of children and of heroes. She also ignored her father’s colleagues and foes as they stopped to greet him, showing all their teeth when they smiled at her.

Which was also a mistake. When the last combed-over scavenger moved on to feign fascination with a wicker chair next to a purring marble cat, her father rounded on her.

“Too good to talk to people, huh? Go back to that corner.” He jerked his grizzled head at the north side of the building, where the sunset sliced through the high row of warehouse windows. “Wait until I come for you. And for God’s sake, sit still and be quiet.”

Delia wove between the tables and ducked behind crates. Another dealer had gone bankrupt, and Wolverton International had bought the guy out, lock, stock and barrel. Bits and pieces from a dozen major estates would be auctioned the next morning.

If she were very quiet, if she hid, maybe Father would forget her altogether. She’d seen a snack bar on the way into the warehouse, and four-poster and brass beds scattered throughout the massive facility. She could live here for weeks.

Delia turned a corner and caught her breath—nested before her in the straw of a huge crate stood a statue of a woman and man, coupling. Their moans were quiet, but the vibrations reverberated through her lower belly, and her face flushed red and hot.

“Aren’t you a pretty one,” purred the woman. She was angled so her face looked over the man’s shoulder, one creamy marble leg wrapped around his narrow waist. Her thigh gleamed golden in the last rays of the sun. Her right hand twined through detailed curls of his hair while her left palm flattened between the sinews of his back muscles. His buttocks were forever clenched in thrust, his mouth locked on the side of her throat. She’d been carved with the heavy-lidded, self-satisfied gaze of a woman who had a man right where she wanted him.