“Miss Harper,” she said. Her voice was coolly polite with just the right touch of reserve that women in her position employed when dealing with salesclerks and the hired help. “Please come in.”
“Thank you,” Chloe said. She knew she could not achieve the same degree of refined reserve, so she went for confident and professional instead. The combination usually worked well with clients like Rollins.
She moved into the soaring, two- story foyer. A massive chandelier, in the unmistakable style of a famous Northwest glass artist, was suspended from the ceiling. It looked like an explosion of crystal flowers.
“Please come with me,” Barbara said. “I want to talk to you before I show you the collection. As I’m sure you can understand, the decision to sell George’s antiquities has been an extremely difficult one for me. He was quite passionate about the artifacts.”
“I remember.”
She followed Barbara Rollins into a glass-walled room done in classic old-school Seattle designer-style: beige-on-beige accented with wood. Beyond the windows was an extensive garden. Beyond the garden a boat dock jutted out into the lake. She was mildly surprised to see that the boat tied up at the dock was a small cabin cruiser. The last time she had called on the Rollinses there had been a large sea-going yacht sitting in the water.
Automatically she opened her senses and examined the heavy layer of psi prints in the room. Some of the tracks of dream psi were decades old. Footsteps on the carpet glowed faintly with the usual mix of human emotions—love, anger, excitement, yearning, sadness and loss. But none of the prints burned with the eerie heat that indicated powerful psychic ability. There was no sign of the disturbing acid-hued smoke that she had come to recognize as the hallmark of formula-enhanced talent.
The fact that she was even looking for evidence of Nightshade here in the home of an old client told her that her nerves and her senses were still on edge. She tried to relax and prepared to go to work.
“I don’t see the yacht,” she remarked.
“It went to my son and his wife,” Barbara said. “But none of my children want the antiquities.”
“Estate sales are often difficult,” Chloe said gently. This was not the first time she had dealt with grieving spouses who felt guilty about selling off a collection of valuable objects that had been acquired by the dear departed.
“Please sit down, Miss Harper.” Barbara gestured to a glass-and-beige-stone coffee table where two pots and two delicate china cups and saucers had been laid out.
Chloe sank down on one of the off- white chairs. She set her satchel on the floor at her feet.
Barbara indicated the gleaming silver pots. “Tea or coffee?”
“Tea, thank you.”
Barbara picked up one of the pots. “As you know, George collected the antiquities over a number of years. I think he intended to leave them to a museum, but he never got around to making the arrangements. My son and daughter are encouraging me to sell the artifacts. But before I make any decisions I want to get some idea of the value of the various pieces. George trusted you. He said you were very reliable. Milk or sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
Barbara handed her the cup and saucer. Then she poured some coffee for herself. “I suppose I shall have to think about selling the house now, as well. It’s too big for one person. But I hate the thought of moving. This was our home for forty years.”
“I understand,” Chloe said.
She sipped some tea. In situations like this clients needed time to talk. She listened politely and tried not to glance at her watch.
Eventually, however, she set her cup down with a firm little clink of china on china.
“Shall we look at the collection, Mrs. Rollins?”
“Yes, of course. The gallery is at the back of the house.”
Barbara put down her coffee cup and got to her feet. She led the way along a hall and stopped at a door that could have doubled as a bank vault. She punched in a code.
“George had this gallery built especially for the collection. State-of-the-art security all the way.”
“I remember,” Chloe said.
Barbara opened the heavy door and stood back graciously.
Chloe moved into the shadowed room. The space was filled with glass cases crammed with objects. A number of stone statues dotted the gallery. She set her satchel on a nearby table and started to open it. There was something wrong with the leather buckle. She could not seem to grasp it properly. A wave of dizziness hit her. She tried to focus, but the room was spinning and nothing made sense.
Tentacles of darkness reached out, wrapped around her and dragged her down into the depths.
47
“LET’S GO BACK TO THE START OF THIS THING,” FALLON SAID. “How did they drug you?”
“I don’t know. I went out for a couple of beers with an old friend and client,” Jack said. “Jerry Bergstrom. That’s all I remember.”
“Eat anything?”
“No.”
“Given the timing, whatever they used to knock you out had to be in the beer,” Fallon said.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I just can’t see Jerry getting involved with Nightshade.”
“The enhancement formula causes some major personality changes. None of them are good, trust me.”
“He was the same old Jerry. He seemed genuinely worried about me.”
“There’s a para-hypnotist mixed up in this thing,” Fallon reminded him. “The woman who showed up at Drake Stone’s house in Vegas.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” He went to stand at the window of the office. “It’s possible that she got to Jerry. Maybe she gave him the drug and hypnotized him into using it on me. I’ll have Chloe talk to him, see if she can pull up any lost memories the way she did with Stone.”
“Do it,” Fallon said. “Meanwhile, I think you’re on to something here with this chain of gyms. The question now is, what do we do about it?”
“Shut them down?”
“Why am I always having to remind people that we’re not the cops or the FBI.”
“You didn’t hesitate to put those five Nightshade labs out of business a while back.”
“We had no choice,” Fallon growled. “Zack and the Council agreed that with five labs running there was just too much of the formula being produced. We had to cut off at least some of the supply. We managed to make it look like accidental fires in all five cases. It helped that the labs were widely scattered up and down the West Coast and shared no obvious connection. But if three gyms here in the Northwest that just happen to be owned by the same private corporation go up in smoke someone will ask questions.”