Shades of Earl Grey Read online

  “Delaine,” gushed Theodosia, “have you seen the jewelry yet?” She gestured over her shoulder at the small gallery she’d just emerged from. “It’s absolutely fantastic!”

  Delaine smiled wanly. “Not really. I’ve been gossiping with Hillary Retton and Marianne Petigru. You know, the two ladies who own Popple Hill Interior Design? Did you know they recently worked on the Lady Goodwood Inn? That superb tapestry in the foyer came all the way from France. I think it might have been hand-loomed by cloistered nuns or something.”

  “Are you okay, Delaine?” asked Theodosia. Delaine was looking decidedly unhappy and her voice had taken on a shrill tone. She was undoubtedly still upset from the other night. The fact that she’d been discussing the decor at the Lady Goodwood probably didn’t help matters, either.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Theodosia. I’ve just been trying to get another drink!” Delaine held up an empty glass and lifted her chin. “That fellow over there has been no help whatsoever. I’ve asked him twice now to bring me a Kir Royale and do you think I have yet to see my drink? Of course not!”

  “Delaine,” said Theodosia, “the man’s a security guard, not a waiter.”

  Delaine furrowed her brow and pulled her face into a petulant expression. “Well, he’s dressed like a waiter.”

  “That’s part of the setup,” Theodosia explained patiently. “Remember, we told you the Heritage Society would have extra security on duty tonight?”

  “Oh.” Delaine bit her lip as Drayton wandered up to join them, alone this time. “Yes, I guess you did mention that.”

  But from the look on Delaine’s face, Theodosia knew she was still unhappy about not getting her drink. It was amazing that just yesterday morning Delaine had been worked up about possible thievery at tonight’s event and now she was consumed with trying to get a drink. Theodosia sighed. Delaine did tend to be a bit self-centered.

  “Where’s Cooper?” Theodosia asked as Drayton joined them carrying a goblet half-filled with red wine.

  Delaine shrugged helplessly. “Off somewhere. Mingling, I suppose.” She turned to Drayton and eyed the goblet in his hand. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A marvelous Bordeaux, Haute Emillion, ’ninety-two. Take it,” he offered generously. “It’s freshly poured and as yet untouched.”

  “No thanks,” said Delaine. “I’m trying to get a real drink.”

  Drayton, sensing the impending onslaught of World War III, suddenly decided to take matters in hand.

  “Pardon me,” he said, flagging down a waiter who was hustling by with a tray of drinks in his hand. “Could you fetch us a drink?”

  The young, ginger-haired waiter stopped in his tracks, bobbed his head. “Of course, sir.”

  “Here you go, Delaine. This young fellow here . . .” said Drayton.

  “Graham, sir,” said the waiter.

  “Tell Graham what you’d like, Delaine. He’ll take care of you.” Drayton fumbled in his pocket for a few dollars, pressed them into the waiter’s hand. “For your trouble, young man.”

  “No problem, sir,” replied the waiter.

  “I’d like a Kir Royale,” Delaine told the waiter. “Cassis and champagne?”

  The waiter nodded. “Of course, ma’am. Be back in a moment.”

  “Evening, ladies,” boomed a rich male voice.

  Jory Davis, Theodosia’s on-again off-again boyfriend, grinned at them. Tall, well over six feet, with a square jaw, sun-tanned complexion, and curly brown hair, Jory Davis had a slightly reckless look about him. He didn’t look the way a traditional lawyer was supposed to look, all buttoned up and slightly pompous. Instead, Jory Davis had an aura of the outdoors about him. Dressed in casual clothes, he could have passed for a trout fishing guide. Or maybe a wealthy landowner whose life’s love was training thoroughbred horses.

  Jory Davis snaked an arm around Theodosia’s waist and pulled her close to him, touched his chin to the top of her head. Pleased, she snuggled in against him.

  The move was not lost on Delaine. “I see you two are still very cozy,” she said.

  “Mmm,” said Jory. “And why not?” He smiled down at Theodosia. “I was thinking about taking Rubicon out tomorrow. What do you think? Are you up for an ocean sail?”

  Jory Davis’s sailboat, Rubicon, was a J-24 that he kept moored at the Charleston Yacht Club. He was an expert yachtsman and regularly competed in the Isle of Palms race as well as the Compass Key yacht race.

  “Isn’t it still raining?” asked Theodosia.

  “Tonight it is,” said Jory, “but the weather’s supposed to clear by tomorrow. If there’s a chop on the water, it’ll just make our sail all the more interesting. And challenging,” he added.

  Clear weather and a chance to clear my head, thought Theodosia. Truly a heavenly idea. The past two days had been fairly fraught with tension, what with the terrible accident at the Lady Goodwood and Drayton’s fear that something might go wrong here tonight. Jory’s suggestion of a sail in Charleston Harbor and the waters beyond would be a perfect way to put it all behind her.

  “You’re on,” she told him.

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll pick you up around nine, then we’ll go rig the boat. And bring that goofy dog of yours along. We’ll turn him into a sea dog yet.”

  “Sailing sounds like fun,” said Delaine. The note of wistfulness in her voice was not lost on the two of them.

  “Say,” said Jory, “I’m going to slip across the room and have a word with Leyland Hartwell. He’s representing the Tidewater Corporation in a zoning dispute and I’m second chair. Be back in a couple minutes, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Theodosia as she watched her tall, tanned boyfriend navigate his way through the crowd.

  Ligget, Hume, Hartwell, the firm Jory Davis worked for, was also her father’s old firm. He had been a senior partner along with Leyland Hartwell before he passed away some fifteen years ago. Her father had become a distant memory now, but he was always in her heart. As was her mother, who had died when Theodosia was just eight.

  “What kind of law does Jory Davis practice again?” asked Delaine.

  “Mostly corporate and real estate law,” said Theodosia. “Deeds, foreclosures, zoning, leases, that sort of thing.”

  “So he’s never faced off against Cooper in a court-room,” said Delaine.

  The thought amused Theodosia. She could see Cooper Hobcaw with his arrogant stance arguing torts against a bemused Jory Davis. But no, that would never happen. Cooper Hobcaw was a criminal attorney, Jory Davis a real estate attorney.

  “Cooper Hobcaw seems like a nice fellow . . .” began Theodosia when, suddenly, every light in the place went out. Whoosh. Extinguished like the flame on a candle.

  Oh no, thought Theodosia, her heart in her throat. Not again!

  Plunged into complete darkness, the room erupted in chaos. Women screamed, a tray of drinks went crashing to the floor. Across the room, something hit the carpet with a muffled thud. Disoriented by the dark, people began to lunge to and fro. Theodosia felt an elbow drill into her back, a sleeve brush roughly against her bare arm.

  Suddenly, mercifully, from off to her left, someone flipped on a cigarette lighter and held the flame aloft like a tiny torch. There was a spatter of applause, then a deep hum started from somewhere in the depths of the building.

  “Generator,” murmured a male voice off to her right. “Emergency lights should kick on soon.”

  Ten seconds later, four sets of emergency lights sputtered on.

  They blazed weakly overhead, yet did little to actually illuminate the room. The lighting felt unnatural and fuzzy, like trying to peer through a bank of fog.

  “Hey!” called a voice that Theodosia recognized as belonging to Jory Davis. “Someone’s down over here!”

  Theodosia quickly elbowed her way through the crowd in the direction of Jory Davis’s voice.

  Ten feet, fifteen feet of pushing past people brought her to just outside the small gallery. In the dim light
she could see one of the security guards sprawled on the floor. Jory Davis was already on his hands and knees beside the man, making a hasty check of his airways, trying to determine if he was still breathing.

  “Is he okay?” asked Theodosia.

  “He’s still breathing,” said Jory, “but he’s for sure out cold.” Jory put a finger to the top of the security guard’s head, came away with a smear of blood. “Looks like he took a nasty bump to the noggin.” Jory glanced up at Theodosia. “Somebody sapped this poor guy, but good,” he added in a tight, low voice. Then Jory Davis scrambled to his feet. “Can someone please call an ambulance!” he shouted.

  With Jory Davis’s forceful lawyer voice ringing out across the room, no fewer than twenty people responded instantly. Cell phones were yanked from pockets and evening bags, and twenty fingers punched in the same 911 call, completely swamping the small crew that manned Charleston’s central emergency line.

  “Theodosia!” Timothy Neville was suddenly at her side and clutching her arm. “It’s gone!” he told her in a tremulous voice. “Vanished!”

  “What’s gone?” she asked, momentarily confused.

  “The Blue Kashmir,” Timothy hissed. “The sapphire necklace. It’s disappeared from its case!” Timothy clapped a wizened hand to the side of his face and seemed to collapse in on himself.

  Theodosia stared at Timothy in disbelief. When the power went out, the sensor beams had stopped working, too, she realized. Oh, no . . . we didn’t even consider that possibility. Had someone cut the power deliberately? Or had the storm just knocked it out?

  No, she decided, if a guard’s been injured, the power had to have been disabled on purpose.

  In the dim light Theodosia could see that Timothy was dangerously on the verge of passing out.

  “Are you okay, Timothy?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes,” he said hurriedly, although perspiration had broken out on his face and his breathing had suddenly turned shallow.

  Ohmygosh, Theodosia thought to herself. Heart attack? Not Timothy. Please, Lord, not Timothy. Not now.

  Pushing his way over to them, Drayton took one look at Timothy Neville’s face, grabbed him firmly by the arm, and steered him to a nearby chair a few feet away. “Are you all right, Timothy?” he asked as Timothy sat down gingerly, looking paler than ever.

  “Yes, I think so . . .” rasped Timothy, “. . . just let me catch my . . .”

  Theodosia whirled about and threw herself down next to Jory Davis. He had once again taken up his position next to the fallen security guard and had bunched up his jacket and put it under the poor man’s head. A woman whom Theodosia recognized as Dr. Lucy Cornwall, Earl Grey’s veterinarian, was administering CPR to the downed security guard, while Jory Davis continued to monitor the man’s pulse.

  “There’s something wrong with Timothy,” Theodosia told them in a rush. “I think he’s having a heart attack!”

  CHAPTER 5

  ON THIS LAZY Sunday in late October, autumn was clearly in the air. The wet weather was temporarily held at bay by a warm front that had finally drifted up from the Gulf of Mexico. It seemed like a toss-up as to whether the day would dissipate into scattered thundershowers or weak sunshine would punch through the low-hanging clouds.

  Down at Charleston Harbor, people strolled through White Point Gardens and Battery Park, delighted by the huge displays of Civil War cannons and gazing at the magnificent harbor where whitecaps rose like peaks of frosting. Out on the water, sailboats bobbed like corks, tossed about in the boiling froth, masts straining against strong twenty-knot winds.

  But Theodosia was not out sailing today. She was not slicing through the waves, enjoying salty breezes and the exhilaration of navigating tricky cross-currents.

  Instead, she sat with Drayton and Timothy on the side piazza of Timothy Neville’s home. The sun was warm and caressing, the view conducive to Zen-like contemplation since the piazza overlooked the bamboo groves, rocky paths, Chinese lanterns, and trickling fountain of Timothy’s Asian-inspired garden. But the mood was not particularly serene.

  Timothy hadn’t experienced a heart attack last night after all. After rushing him to the hospital along with the security guard, an EKG had been administered, cardiac enzymes monitored, blood pressure taken every fifteen minutes.

  Extreme stress, the doctor had ruled, once he’d studied the test results and learned of the strange events that had taken place at the Heritage Society’s party. Extreme stress had triggered a rush of adrenaline and a flood of cortisol, which had produced symptoms that closely mimicked an all-out heart attack.

  A shaken but stoic Timothy had put up with all the tests and ministrations at the hospital, but staunchly vetoed any notion of an overnight stay even if it was intended purely for observation.

  The security guard hadn’t fared as well. He lay in intensive care, his head swathed in bandages, fluttering in and out of a coma, hooked up to a host of beeping, glowing monitors.

  “Have you seen this?” Timothy Neville winced as he held up the front page of the main news section of the Sunday Post & Courier.

  “We’ve seen it,” said Drayton. He sat in a wicker lounge chair facing Timothy, looking anything but relaxed. In fact, Drayton was wound so tightly it looked as though his bow tie was about ready to spin.

  “Jackals,” spat Timothy. “How do they get this stuff out so fast?”

  A small article, mercifully positioned at the bottom of the page, led off with the headline GEMS NABBED FROM HERITAGE SOCIETY.

  “At least it’s not in seventy-two-point type,” Drayton pointed out.

  Timothy stared at him with a mixture of anger and disgust.

  Nervously, Drayton crossed his legs then uncrossed them, deciding that perhaps humor wasn’t the most practical approach here.

  “We look like idiots,” raged Timothy. “This is going to cost us donors and then some!”

  Theodosia knew that Timothy Neville was worried sick that this incident might also cost him his job as president of the Heritage Society. The man was eighty-one, she reasoned, and had done a masterful job for the past twenty-five years. But how long could he continue? Would this be the political scandal that brought about his downfall? She hoped not, but it was certainly possible.

  “Timothy,” began Drayton, “I know you have serious doubts about opening the Treasures Show to the public next Saturday. Please . . . just take into consideration how much promotion has already been done, how much publicity we’ve gotten.”

  Timothy gazed at the front page of the newspaper again. “Publicity,” he snorted. “This kind of publicity we don’t need. What’s important now is damage control. This incident has been the worst kind of blight on the Heritage Society.” Timothy spat out the word blight as though he were discussing manure.

  “Which is why we should stay the course,” pleaded Drayton. “Open the Treasures Show to the public next weekend as planned. Show everyone that it’s business as usual, that we haven’t been affected!”

  Timothy sighed deeply. “I don’t know. I’ll have to speak with the insurance company. And our executive advisory committee, of course.” Timothy sat quietly in his chair, staring out at the garden. “Any word on the poor fellow who got clobbered on the head?” he asked finally.

  “The man’s name is Harlan Wilson,” said Drayton. “He was one of the security guards from Gold Shield who has been employed by us on several other occasions. As far as we know, he’s still terribly groggy, in and out of consciousness. He has a rather nasty concussion as well as a hairline skull fracture. The results of his ECG, his encephalogram, looked very positive, however. There are no interruptions in brain activity, which is a very good sign. Doctors, being doctors, are remaining cautious, though. They haven’t allowed the police to question Mr. Wilson as yet. They warn that it might be a day or two before he’s well enough for that.”

  Timothy shook his head. “Such a terrible thing. Poor man getting hurt like that.”

  Theodosia had remained
quiet during most of the exchange between Timothy and Drayton. She wasn’t on the board of the Heritage Society like Drayton was. And she wasn’t a close friend of Timothy’s like Drayton was. But she did share their anger and frustration. After all, she’d also had a nervous rumbling about this. And had thought, mistakenly it would appear, that security guards and some newly purchased gadgets would be enough to ensure safekeeping of the European Jewel Collection.

  Did that make her partially responsible for what happened last night?

  With Theodosia’s sense of fair play, the answer was a resounding yes. Yes, she was partially responsible. So, yes, she was determined to try to help resolve this problem.

  Delaine had begged for her help in trying to find the missing wedding ring; now Drayton and Timothy seemed to be in a fairly tight situation as well.

  Theodosia also knew that the one issue that desperately needed to be discussed remained unspoken.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” began Theodosia quietly.

  “Of course,” said Timothy with an air of resignation. “It means our good name has been besmirched. How willing are people going to be to donate a silver tankard or a piece of Chippendale if they think the Heritage Society can’t even offer decent security?” He shook his head. “I doubt they’ll even trust us with a dog-eared photo album now.”

  “Timothy,” Theodosia said slowly, “this second theft gives us a fairly good confirmation that some kind of special thief or cat burglar is operating in the historic district.”

  She watched as Timothy lowered his head in his hands.

  “Why, oh why, didn’t I take this more seriously?” he lamented. “I assumed that missing wedding ring had just rolled into a corner somewhere and was lying there in a puff of dust. I never thought any kind of serious theft would occur at the Heritage Society. Not in my wildest dreams!”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” spoke up Drayton. “I’d say you took our warning very seriously. When I spoke to you about the wedding ring disappearing from the Lady Goodwood Inn, you were extremely agreeable about taking precautions. You even approved the expenditure for the electronic equipment. Which means you did everything right, Timothy. No one could possibly fault you or hold you responsible.”