The Long Game Page 12

  “He’s from New Orleans,” she added.

  The bit of lasagna I’d just swallowed caught in my throat, and I coughed. I lifted my head and rapidly shifted my gaze from Spencer to her father. Tommy’s expression darkened and I saw the muscle of his jaw twitch, but his face was impassive again within a second. I looked back at Spencer and was relieved to see she hadn’t seemed to notice her father’s reaction because she hadn’t taken her eyes off me. She frowned, her expression a mixture of concern and amusement.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded and took a few gulps of water. “Fine, yeah.” I grinned at her. “Sorry. I guess I should take smaller bites.”

  She giggled. “Respiratory distress tends to take the fun out of the meal. Chewing is recommended.”

  I snickered, relieved the moment had passed without incident. “Thanks for the advice.” I winked at her.

  She beamed and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. I returned my attention to the plate in front of me but glanced at Tommy from the corner of my eye. He continued to eat in silence but occasionally looked at his daughter with a sort of worried expression. Spencer smiled at her plate and pushed her food around its surface with her fork. I wondered if she wished as badly as I did that we were back in her sorority room instead of sitting at her father’s dinner table in uncomfortable silence.

  After several minutes, Tommy laid his fork across his empty plate and leaned back in his chair. “That was wonderful, hon.”

  Spencer set down her fork and smiled wearily at him. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “It was amazing, Spence,” I said, propping my elbows on either side of my empty plate.

  “Thanks.” She smiled at me, too, though she seemed much happier for the compliment now. “Oh, so, Dad…” She turned back to Tommy. “You know the thing on Friday?”

  “The very important dinner I’m having for clients that you promised to help with?” Tommy raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m aware of it.”

  “Yeah, that.” Spencer rolled her eyes. “I’m definitely going to be there, but I was wondering if you’d mind if Shane tagged along? We could always use the extra hands, and if he’s there, I wouldn’t have to spend the whole night talking to a room full of boring old guys in suits.”

  “Those ‘boring old guys in suits’ pay your tuition, you know.” Tommy tried to look stern, but it was obvious he very rarely said no to his daughter.

  “Please?” She folded her hands like a little girl begging for a pony.

  “Sure,” he relented. “Fine.”

  Happy to get her way, she stood and began collecting the dirty dishes and utensils. As I watched her, I was aware of Tommy watching me.

  Neither of us moved to help clear the table until Spencer spoke. “You know, I did most of the cooking. It would be great if I didn’t also have to do all of the cleaning up.”

  I pushed my chair back, jumped to my feet, and reached for the plate she held. Had we been in the Village, it wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary for an entire table of men to sit while she cleared every dish, but we weren’t in the Village, a fact I needed to keep in mind while I was here. Besides, I had a feeling that Spencer might not have stood for it even if she’d grown up as a Traveler.

  Spencer retrieved a glass and started toward the kitchen. I followed her with my armload of dishes, and Tommy brought up the rear with the now-cool pan of lasagna.

  “You can put those in the sink.” She pulled the salad bowl from the top of my stack. I crossed to it and set the plates, flatware, and glasses down on the stainless steel.

  Tommy worked on putting away leftovers, and Spencer started a pot of coffee. I saw my opening. “Mind if I use the bathroom?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She smiled at me over her shoulder. “It’s just down the front hall, around the staircase, first door on the right.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  I moved quickly down the hall, aware I had very little time before either Spencer or Tommy might come looking for me. Since Spencer had said they didn’t use the upper levels of the house, I assumed Tommy’s bedroom, and maybe an office, would be on this floor. I rounded the staircase and found a second hall with doors along the right side. I ignored the first one, where Spencer had said the bathroom would be and reached for the handle of the second.

  Jackpot. The room was dark, but the shape of a desk and chair was visible in the light from the hallway. I debated whether to flip on the wall switch but decided against it as I moved into the room and gave my eyes a second to adjust to the dim light. I went to the desk first.

  A laptop sat in the middle of the blotter on its surface, and a neat stack of folders was on the left. Tommy’s apparent preference for order made scanning the contents of the desk easy, and there was nothing resembling the ledger Pop had described. I pulled open the middle drawer and found neat rows of pens and pencils and a pile of paperclips stored in one of the drawer’s compartments. I slid open the drawers that ran down each side and found a postal scale, a jumble of cords, printer paper, notebooks, and one drawer of hanging folders, but no ledger.

  There was a bookshelf built into the wall behind his desk, but most of the shelves were taken up by a collection of leather-bound law books with spines that looked like they’d never been cracked and a handful of framed pictures of Spencer at various ages. I wouldn’t have minded getting a closer look at those, but my pulse quickened with each second that ticked by. I moved closer to the bookcase to get a better look at the law books in case the ledger had been hidden among them, but no dice.

  I was about to give up and go back to the kitchen when something caught my eye. A stream of light from the doorway fell on a watercolor seascape that seemed out of place in an otherwise tastefully decorated office. It reminded me of the painting in Pop’s office—the one that hid his wall safe. It would be an intriguing sentiment for Tommy to choose a similar painting to cover his own safe, but it was worth a try.

  The painting swung away from the wall on hidden hinges, and a black safe with a silver keypad stared back at me from behind it. If the ledger was in this office, this is where I’d find it. I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure no shadows moved down the hall and then punched in the first combination I could think of: 0418. Spencer’s birthday. The green digital display flashed, but the safe door refused to budge.

  “Shane?” Spencer’s voice echoed down the hall.

  I swung the painting back over the safe and moved quickly back across the room. I pulled the door closed and made it to the hallway just as Spencer rounded the staircase.

  “Find it okay?” she asked, a slight frown pinching her brow.

  “Yep,” I lied. “But thanks for coming to get me. It gives me a chance to do this.” I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. It was definitely not the sort of kiss a girl expected to get with her father a few rooms away, but she soon relaxed against me. I pushed her back against the wall, and when she brought her arms up around my neck, I knew any suspicion she’d had about what I’d been doing was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “SO, WHAT YOU’RE telling me is you fucked up?” Judd angrily paced the floor between the kitchen and sofa. “You were in his house, and you didn’t get the book.”

  “I didn’t have much time, but there will be way more people at the party on Friday, so it’ll be easier to get into his office without someone noticing. There’s a safe. I just need to figure out what he’d use as the combination.”

  “Ask your girlfriend.”

  “Right.” I flopped down onto the sofa and kicked my dress shoes off over the arm. “And she won’t wonder at all why I’m asking.”

  “Who the hell cares what she wonders? You’ve already wasted way too much time trying to do things your way. I say we go over there right now, put this in his face—” He produced the gun from his waistband and waved it in the air. “—and get the damn book back.”

  “Pop wanted to keep this quiet. He doesn’t want the police involved.” Even though the
re was truth in these words, my main motivation for talking him down was for Spencer’s sake. She’d be staying at Tommy’s for the next few days to help organize the caterers and decorators, and there was no way I was going to let her get caught in Judd’s crossfire.

  “My old man’s always been a little too subtle for my taste,” Judd said, still brandishing the black pistol. “What’s the point in playing the long game when this’ll get the job done a hundred times faster?”

  “Yeah, and get you killed if you’re not careful. Put that thing away before you shoot your own dick off.”

  Judd huffed in disgust but put the gun on a side table and collapsed into the armchair next to it. “You’d be awfully sad about that, wouldn’t you, nancy boy?”

  I laughed. “Trust me, Prince, if I swung that way, I’d have better taste.”

  “You should be so lucky,” Judd sneered.

  “Look,” I said, steering the conversation back to Tommy and the ledger. “I can get the book back without anyone getting hurt or going to jail. If I play it right on Friday, he won’t even notice it’s missing until we’re long gone.”

  “That’s a big if, as far as I can tell, and I’m tired of waiting.”

  “You know,” I said carefully, “there’s a chance the book isn’t even there. Tommy isn’t an idiot. He probably has it in a safe deposit box on the other side of the country.”

  “Not a chance,” Judd said, effectively killing any hope I had of talking myself out of this mess. “He was stupid enough to steal from us, and he’s stupid enough to keep the book nearby. There’s no way he’d keep it somewhere he couldn’t check on it once in a while.”

  “I guess.” I rested my head on the arm of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. It didn’t matter what I said or did; there was no getting around hurting Spencer. “Then it has to be in the wall safe. He might even have the combination written down somewhere in his office, and if it’s there, I’ll find it.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it, Buffer.”

  “And when I do,” I said, pushing myself up to glare at him, “you better think of a new fucking nickname because I’m tired of this ‘buffer’ shit.”

  “Oh-ho, big talk from the guy who’s made such a damn mess of things so far.”

  “I may not be working on your schedule, Prince, but I’ll get what I came for.” I gave him a hateful smile. “And soon after that, you’ll have to start calling me brother.”

  The muscle in his jaw flinched, but apparently he wasn’t in the mood to reassemble any more tables today. “Since I know you won’t be able to get your head outta your ass long enough to do anything useful, I ain’t too worried about it.”

  I’d been ready for another fight, but my sore ribs were grateful I hadn’t been successful in provoking him this time. I was too tired to keep arguing, and we were both quiet for a long time.

  “I would’ve thought you of all people would be okay with Tommy Costello getting hurt,” Judd said.

  I looked up to see him sliding the gun back and forth across the tabletop. “Why’s that? He didn’t steal from me.”

  “He did though.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought he took the money and ledger from Pop’s safe.”

  “I’m not talking about money, dipshit. I’m talking about Wiley Jim—your dad.”

  I sat up again, this time pushing myself all the way so I could look him square in the face. “They worked together, I know that, and Pop said something about Tommy betraying my da, but he betrayed the whole clan when he stole the money, didn’t he?”

  “He stole from the clan and took off, yeah,” Judd said. “But what he took from your father was far more valuable.”

  “And what was that?”

  “His life.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MY FACE WAS starting to hurt from the smile I’d plastered on when I’d reached the mahogany door of Tommy’s house. The party was already in full swing when I’d arrived, and it had taken me several minutes of fighting through the sea of designer labels and overflowing martini glasses to find Spencer. She was in the kitchen, directing a staff of uniformed waiters loaded with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Her efficiency would have impressed Bridget Sheedy, although she spoke in a voice much too kind for that old bat’s taste.

  “There you are,” she said, skirting around the edge of the island to avoid knocking into one of the waiters. “I was wondering if you’d come to your senses and decided to skip this horrible event all together.” She crossed to the kitchen door and lifted herself on her toes to kiss me hello.

  I kissed her back, though it was hard to revel in it the way I would have done before Judd’s revelation. She’d been so busy the last few days helping her dad that we hadn’t had much time to talk, giving me plenty of time to stew over what Judd had told me. Tommy murdered my da, and although his sins certainly weren’t Spencer’s, it was getting harder to separate the two. There was no denying I’d missed her the past few days, but finding out the truth had lit a fire under my ass. There was no way I’d be leaving this house tonight without the ledger. I might’ve thought I loved this girl—and maybe I really did—but I was certain I loved my mother and my brother, and what Tommy had done had nearly destroyed my entire family.

  “Are you finished giving orders?” I asked, my arms still wrapped around her waist.

  “I think so.” She glanced around the kitchen. “These guys cater every one of my dad’s parties, so they know what they’re doing.”

  “Good,” I said, holding her at arm’s length to get a better look at the cranberry dress that hugged the curves of her body and ended around mid-thigh. “This dress is too good to waste on standing around in the kitchen.”

  “You keep talking like that, and no one will be seeing this dress for the rest of the night.” She kissed me again, and this time whatever her father had done to mine twenty years ago didn’t stop me from returning it with all the heat and electricity I felt running through every nerve in my body. If there would’ve been any real chance that she and I could sneak up to one of the neglected guestrooms upstairs, I might’ve even put my mission to find the book on hold for a while.

  But it didn’t look like that was going to happen, at least for now. She turned the open-mouthed kiss into a quick peck and leaned back. “I guess we should go see if my dad needs me to do anything else.”

  We found Tommy in the living room, entertaining a group of suits. “So an American on vacation in Ireland decides to play a round with a few local gentleman,” Tommy said, waving the Scotch glass in his hand as he spoke. “He takes a few practice swings, sets up his tee, and proceeds to hook the hell out of the ball, which goes way out of bounds.”

  “Is this a story about you, Richards?” a middle-aged guy with an orange spray-tan asked, eliciting a round of chuckles from the assembled crowd. Richards lifted his glass, offering a good-natured smile and a mea culpa nod.

  “So the guy re-tees,” Tommy continued once the chuckles had died away. “He says to the gentlemen, ‘I’m taking a mulligan,’ then pounds one down the fairway about 280 yards. Proud of himself, he beams at his playing partners and says, ‘In the U.S., we call that a mulligan. What do you call it here?’ The locals stare at him for a long time and finally one guys says, ‘hitting three.’”

  The room erupted into laughter. I glanced down at Spencer who shrugged at me, apparently less familiar with golf than she was with Phillies baseball.

  “There she is,” Tommy said, noticing Spencer for the first time since we’d joined the group. He waved her over. She left my side, flashing an apologetic grin, and joined her father at the center of the room. “Dave, you remember my daughter, Spencer, don’t you?” This he said to the orange guy who’d taken the piss out of Richards a minute before.

  “Sure!” Dave said, giving Spencer a lecherous smile that Tommy didn’t seem to catch. Or, at least, I assumed he didn’t since he didn’t deck the guy on the spot. “You still in the business program at Bala
nova?”

  Spencer nodded, leaning away from him a little.

  “She’s in her second year,” Tommy said with a proud smile. “And at the top of her class. Well on her way to the MBA program at the Wharton School.”

  Spencer looked at me for help, and I gave her an encouraging smile. When she turned back to the conversation, I decided that this was my chance to get back into Tommy’s office. I skirted the crowd that had gathered to regale Spencer with tales of their days at the University of Pennsylvania and found my way back into the entry hall of the house.

  I was relieved to find the hall on the other side of the stairs deserted, although the light from under the bathroom door told me it might not stay that way for long. I found the second door to the right and slipped inside, pulling it closed beside me. I didn’t have time to fumble around in the dark, so I took the risk of flipping the light switch. The fixture overhead filled the room with soft light, and I crossed to the desk and opened the drawer I knew contained a stack of notepads. I flipped open the cover of the pad on top and found some hastily scrawled notes and a list of names and phone numbers. Nothing that looked like a combination. I turned a few pages to find much of the same and moved on to the next book. This one had a list of what I guessed were company names, some marked with a star, others with a question mark, some crossed out with a stroke of Tommy’s pen. Potential investments, maybe, but nothing that could help me get into the safe behind the ugly seascape. The rest of the notebooks were empty, and I slammed the drawer in frustration.

  The sound of feet moving down the hall drew my attention, and I crouched behind Tommy’s desk. I waited for the doorknob to turn, debating whether I should hide myself better or just make up a reason for being in the office, but the feet passed by without stopping. I blew out the breath I’d been holding and straightened up to my full height again. I tried the drawer with hanging files next. The tabs at the top told me these were mostly client files, but several folders were unmarked. I opened one, pulled out a handful of receipts, and paged through them. Tommy had shelled out several thousand dollars for this cocktail party, it seemed. The catering company alone had cost him almost five grand for food and the wait staff. Another five for the alcohol and bar service. Though, in this crowd, I was surprised it hadn’t been more. You could take the Traveler out of the Village, but give him a no-limit platinum card and he’d still throw a damn good party.