As if responding to a cue, Reese stepped into the room.
“My darling girl.” Avery moved to her and pulled her in for a quick hug. “How are you holding up?”
“Good.”
Avery drew back, studied her. “Liar.”
Another knock sounded on the door, and this time Avery went to answer it. In the background, Mac could hear Avery welcoming the sheriff and a room service waiter. But he kept his gaze on Reese. Avery was right. She was smart. How much longer did he have before she figured out who he was?
And what would she do when she did? Send him away? Fear knotted in his stomach. That was the real reason he hadn’t told her who he was up front. Once she knew, once the fantasy was peeled away, there was a good chance she would send him away.
He wasn’t going to let that happen. And he wasn’t going to tell her who he was until they figured out who was behind the black roses and she was safe.
But gut instinct told him that the clock was ticking on both revelations.
8
9:00 a.m. Friday—Singles Weekend, Day 1
“AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING trite, this is like finding a needle in a haystack.” Avery placed his stack of photos and clippings on the coffee table. When a breeze pushed its way through the open balcony doors and scattered a few, he quickly gathered them up and placed an empty coffee mug on top of his pile.
Reese tucked her own stack of photos beneath the edge of one of the now empty scrapbooks. Each of the five years since she’d entered Le Cordon Bleu was recorded in one of the books. They’d been sorting through the stuff she’d pulled out for over an hour. They’d taken turns exchanging the piles and shuffling through them, and Reese had answered questions. Mac had moved closer to the balcony to take a call on his cell. The fact that someone was calling him reminded her of how little she knew of his personal life.“We have to start somewhere.” Nate glanced at Reese. “An L.A. police captain is going to get back to me if he turns up anything on his end. In the meantime, I have some questions.” He took a photo out of his stack and placed it on the coffee table. “After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, you were hired by one of your instructors, Jean Paul LeBeau, to work at his five-star restaurant in the Loire Valley. You collaborated with him on a cookbook. Any chance LeBeau was annoyed when you left his employ and went to L.A.?” Nate asked.
Reese shook her head. “No. Jean Paul is closing in on eighty. He’s like a father to me. He insisted on sending me alone on the book tour to promote our cookbook because he wanted me to be in the spotlight. He said it was time for me to leave the nest.”
“You must have made some impression on him.” Mac pocketed his cell phone as he moved toward the coffee table.
“He was a close friend of my mentor at the convent, Sister Margherite,” Reese said. “I think they had a history together—before she became a nun. They still correspond.”
“I can check into his whereabouts,” Nate said. “Just to make sure.”
“I vote we cross the octogenarian off the suspect list.” Avery straightened and nipped a photo from the top of his pile. “My favorite candidate for the black rose sender is Charles Dutoit. He knew you back at the beginning of your career, he’s currently living in L.A. and all of a sudden he’s here at Haworth House. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“I agree,” Mac said. “He’s been in L.A. ever since he graduated from Le Cordon Bleu. And he opened his first restaurant, Avec Charles, two years ago.”
When everyone glanced at him, Mac shrugged. “I called a friend earlier. She checked him out and just called me back. There’s something else. A few months ago, Dutoit shot a pilot for a TV series—the idea was to reimagine classic French cooking for a fast food society. It was a play on the kind of thing Julia Child did in the seventies. So far, no one has picked it up. The word is Charles is not the kind of presence in front of a camera that a show like that would need.”
“In other words, he’s no Julia Child,” Avery said.
“He’s not even a Reese Brightman,” Mac pointed out. “Which could mean he’s jealous of Reese’s success. The first threatening note arrived within days of the news of her show’s sale hitting the media outlets.”
There was something in the look Reese gave him that reminded Mac forcibly of Avery’s advice. She was already wondering how he might know the specifics of when the news of her TV series broke. Or about who he might know in L.A. who could fill him in on Dutoit’s unsuccessful attempt to launch a TV career.
She opened her mouth and Mac braced to handle the question, when Nate turned to her. “Were the two of you rivals at Le Cordon Bleu?”
She shifted her gaze to his. “I suppose you could call us competitors. We all competed within the class. But Charlie and I never saw ourselves as rivals.”
“But when he dumped you and you ran away, he effectively eliminated the competition,” Mac pointed out. “Who graduated first in the class?”
“Charlie, I suppose.”
“And if you hadn’t run away?” Mac pressed.
“I probably would have.” Reese frowned. “But that’s ancient history. What does Charlie hope to accomplish by sending me threatening notes and black flowers? He has a successful restaurant, a line of cookware.”
“You have a TV series and a new book deal,” Mac said. “And you’re getting a lot of attention in the L.A. press.”
When her gaze locked on his, Mac read the curiosity and realized he’d put his foot in his mouth. The book deal had just been signed. Very few people knew about it. The first chance she had, she was going to ask him how he knew.
Avery reached over to take her hand. “Hey, darling girl, the loonies are not all in the looney bin. Let’s not forget Belle Island’s star real estate agent who tried to incinerate both your sister Jillian and Ian MacFarland a month ago.”
Another breeze dislodged a few of the photos from the piles, and in an effort to shift away from Reese’s gaze, Mac glanced down at them. Then, leaning closer, he gave them a second look. “Wait. These were from different years in the scrapbooks, so I didn’t notice this before.” Mac lined up two of the photos, side by side, on the coffee table facing Nate, Avery and Reese. “We just may have a clue here. Do you recall when each of these was taken, Reese?”
Pressing fingers to her temples, Reese focused on the pictures. “The one on the left was taken at the reception given for the incoming class at Le Cordon Bleu. That was over five years ago.”
“Do you recognize everyone?” Mac asked.
“My classmates. We’re all in the front row. But we were allowed to bring guests. Sister Margherite isn’t in the picture because she was the photographer.”
Stepping over Nate, Mac squeezed in next to Reese on the sofa and tapped a finger on a woman standing in the second row. “Do you remember anything about her? Do you recall ever seeing her again?”
Reese considered, then shook her head.
Mac tapped the second photo. “Tell me what you see in this one.”
Reese frowned. “Those are photos I brought with me. They were taken on the set of the pilot of my TV show. The producers threw a party to celebrate the sale of the series.”
Nate opened his notebook and flipped it open. “According to my deputy’s notes, the first black rose was delivered to you during that celebration.”
Reese leaned closer to the photo. “I think I need Sherlock Holmes’s magnifying glass.”
“Or Watson,” Avery commented.
Reese ran her gaze over the photo again. The second she saw it, a ripple of fear moved through her, and she reached for Mac’s hand. “It’s the woman in the catering jacket, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it what?” Avery asked, leaning closer.
But Nate was already tapping a finger on the woman Mac had pointed to earlier in the picture of the reception in Paris. “We can blow the pictures up, but I think you’re right. They could be the same person.” He glanced at Mac. “You have a good eye for faces.”
Reese was still studying the photos. “It can’t be a coincidence. The pictures were taken over five years apart,” Reese said. “She was in Paris and then in L.A.”
“And I think she’s here on Belle Island,” Mac said.
When they all turned to stare at him, Mac shook his head. “I don’t have any more than that. I do have an eye for faces. And I think I may have seen her at some point here on the island. That’s what drew my attention to the photos. It will come to me.”
“Dutoit is traveling with his publicist,” Avery said. “Could it be her?”
“The woman with the big straw hat and glasses,” Mac mused. “I only glanced at her briefly, but the chin’s the same. So is the mouth.”
“Maybe Sister Margherite would remember her,” Reese said as she pulled out her cell. “I’ll try and reach her.”
A ring from the room phone had everyone glancing toward it.
Nate picked up the receiver and handed it to Reese.
“Hello.”
“Reese, I have to see you. There’s something important I need to talk to you about.”