Cut and Run by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2007-12-22T23:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

U.S. Senator Samuel Ryder, Jr., adopted a carefully constructed expression of pensiveness and control as he looked across his walnut desk to the wine-colored leather chair where Hendrik de Geer sat, rumpled, ashen-faced, spent, tired old man, reeking of sweat and gin. Ryder felt no sympathy. His aides had volunteered to call security—had pleaded with him to let them call—but the senator had refused. He’d insisted de Geer be ushered into his office, into the quiet, formal surroundings of a United States senator.

The room was unchanged from the days when it had been occupied by Samuel Ryder, Sr., the longtime senior senator from Florida. When elected, Sam had brought out all the furnishings that had been in storage—the desk, the carpets, the chairs, the mementos. Everything. There was only one addition: a portrait. It had been painted shortly before the senior Ryder’s death, an ominous picture of a man remembered for his soft baby blue eyes and deadly incisiveness, and it hung above the desk, behind his son, where Sam, Jr., wouldn’t have to look at it all the time.

“Are you absolutely positive that Johannes Peperkamp didn’t have the stone?” Ryder asked, concealing the panic brought on by the Dutchman’s succinct, unemotional testimony about the events over the past few days in Amsterdam. “He must have!”

“That’s what I thought as well,” the Dutchman replied calmly.

Did you kill him? Ryder’s mind burned with the question, but he didn’t ask it, instead convincing himself that the operational details of de Geer’s activities weren’t his concern. He licked his lips, rubbing one finger into the polished walnut of the edge of his desk. He refused to meet the Dutchman’s impassive, penetrating gaze, as if that would dissociate him even more from the events he’d put into motion.

“Then who has it?” Ryder asked.

“No one. The Minstrel is lost—if it ever existed.”

Ryder slapped his slate blotter. “It has to exist, and it can’t be lost!”

“Why, because you don’t wish it?”

“Dammit, man, do you know what this means?”

The Dutchman leaned back deeper into the chair, looking as if he might fall asleep—or fall down dead—at any moment. He had disengaged himself. “It means you must devise another plan to get Bloch his money,” he said. “You’re a clever man, Senator Ryder. You’ll think of something. With Rachel Stein’s death, you no longer have any hold over me. Even if I did know where to locate the Minstrel, I would no longer feel compelled to get it for you. If I’d known about her death before I left for Antwerp, I’d never have gone.”

“I don’t believe she was ever your sole motive for going along with me. It was a factor, to be sure, but the Peperkamps were your friends—”

“That was many, many years ago. Now, I’m afraid, they would all be delighted to hear of my death. You know what Rachel Stein said about me. It’s all true.”

“Did you kill her?” Ryder asked suddenly in a low, hoarse voice, regretting his words almost immediately. He couldn’t

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