Perilous Waters by Sandra Orchard

Author:Sandra Orchard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2014-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Sam helped Jen and Cass escape the press only to be cornered by the investigators aboard the ship. He managed to extricate the twins from the probing about what was found in Bellamy’s room fairly quickly and, after walking Jen and Cass to their cabin to rest before dinner, he stormed back to the meeting room where he’d left his fellow FBI agent.

“Why am I only hearing about Reginald Michaels’s disappearance from a news reporter twenty-four hours after the fact?” She’d said he’d closed the gallery early yesterday afternoon—timing uncomfortably coincidental to Jen’s plunge in the river—and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

“We only found out about it minutes before you.” The harsh edge to the older agent’s tone left no doubt who he blamed for failing to recover the stolen painting. But clearly, more was going on here than they’d anticipated.

Sam drilled him with a glare. “You were supposed to be searching Bellamy’s cabin for evidence he was behind the other attacks against her. So what’s with giving Jen the third degree over the printout you found in his room of the gallery’s acquisitions and disbursements?”

“If it was stolen from her cabin, as she claims now, why didn’t she report it missing at the time?”

“She told you. She didn’t realize the papers were gone. When did she go from being a victim to being a suspect?”

The agent’s eyes narrowed. “She’s been a suspect from day one. Something you seem to have forgotten.”

“For your information, a few moments before your news reporter made a circus out of this investigation, Jennifer Robbins revealed to me her discovery of the stolen A Duel After the Masked Ball and her suspicions of her former guardian.” Sam held his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart and thrust them toward the agent’s face. “And I was this close to convincing her to work with the police to bring him down.”

He clenched his jaw at the thought of how she’d intended to cover for her thieving “uncle” by quietly selling the gallery. Was it out of a misplaced sense of loyalty? Or purely out of self-interest, as Cass had implied?

Sam shook off the thought. Based on how Jen had cowered at the press’s onslaught, she’d done it out of self-preservation. Cass was another story. He wasn’t so sure her supposed ignorance of the theft wasn’t an act to throw him and Jen off.

“For your information—” the FBI agent’s gaze veered to the ship’s window “—we didn’t sic the news reporter on the women.”

“Then I hope you’ve confiscated that cameraman’s tape because if they run it and someone tips them off to my real identity—”

“Taken care of.”

Sam nodded his appreciation. “Have you located Bellamy’s roommate?”

“Still looking.” The agent handed him a picture. “She’s aboard the ship somewhere. We also found pills that could be Rohypnol in Bellamy’s shaving kit. We’ll have them tested and let you know what we find out.”

Sam studied the woman’s picture. “Is her name on the list of people

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