After Glow

Chapter 8

The offices of Hepscott Enterprises, Inc., radiated class and financial success. The furnishings and decor were in various shades of gray punctuated with occasional hits of black and crimson. The reception lobby alone was twice as large as her apartment, Lydia thought.

On the way to the front desk she passed a number of glass cases that contained models of several Hepscott projects. Among them was a gated community of expensive homes and a new banking and financial tower that were going up downtown.

A neatly folded copy of the Cadence Star was on the low table in front of a long black leather sofa. She glanced at it and saw the large headlines, Wyatt Critically Wounded. Guild Officials Appoint Acting Head.

She had read the story that morning at breakfast, sitting across from Emmett. There was nothing in it that he had not already told her. The reporter had stuck to the facts and not descended into gossip. There was no mention of Emmett having once been engaged to Tamara Wyatt. The Star left that sort of thing to the tabloids.

Lydia was very glad that she had splurged on the new suit and a pair of heels that matched the conservative rusty brown color of the outfit. The ensemble had cost her a month's income but it was worth it. She looked almost as serious and businesslike as the receptionist.

"May I help you?" the woman behind the desk asked politely.

"I'm here to see Mr. Hepscott."

The receptionist looked doubtful. "Your name?"

"Lydia Smith." Lydia gave her the special smile she had developed for handling the secretaries who guarded the offices of senior faculty members at the university. "I have an appointment."

The woman's brow cleared instantly. "Yes, of course, Miss Smith." She leaned toward the intercom and pressed a button. "Miss Smith is here, sir."

"Send her in please, Elizabeth." Gannon Hepscott's voice was well modulated and infused with self-confidence. It went well with the decor of his reception lobby.

"Yes, sir," Elizabeth got to her feet. "This way, Miss Smith."

Lydia followed her to a tall door paneled in red amber-oak.

The interior of Hepscott's private office was even larger than the lobby. It was done in the same colors. The view out the wall of windows was nothing short of spectacular. It encompassed a long, meandering swath of the river and most of the Dead City of Old Cadence.

In spite of her determination to project oodles of cool, professional competence, Lydia caught her breath at the glorious scene outside the windows. Last night's fog had burned off early this morning and the green quartz towers of the alien city sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight.

She had always wondered if the ancient Harmonic architects had been trained in art and poetry in addition to structural mechanics and design. The buildings they had left behind aboveground had an airy, ethereal quality that never failed to fascinate her. The soaring spires, arched roofs, colonnaded balconies, and sweeping walkways dazzled the eye and summoned forth a deep sense of wonder.

"I know just how you feel," Gannon Hepscott said from somewhere behind her. He sounded amused. "Every morning when I walk into this office I go straight to the windows and spend a few minutes looking at the ruins. And every day I ask myself the same question."

She smiled in understanding. "Why did they leave?"

"We'll probably never know the answer."

"No, but I doubt that we'll ever stop asking the question." She turned around and smiled at the man standing next to the large, semicircular desk. "Keeps things interesting, doesn't it?"

Gannon Hepscott chuckled. "Yes, it does."

This was the first time she had met him in person. Until now she had dealt only with members of his staff.

Hepscott appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was tall, with long-fingered hands and a slender, graceful build that did wonders for the beautifully tailored suit he wore. His features were sharp, almost ascetic.

She had been warned, albeit respectfully, that Hepscott affected a rather eccentric style. Now she comprehended why he had acquired that reputation. He was a study in pales.

His eyes were a very light shade of gray. He had striking platinum hair that she knew could not possibly be natural. Even more arresting was the fact that he wore it shoulder-length and tied back at his nape. It was a look favored by a lot of macho, khaki-and-leather-wearing ghost-hunters but not by CEOs and presidents of corporations. Yet Hepscott managed to pull it off brilliantly. On him the style was at once very masculine and very elegant.

His suit and shirt were white on white. His accessories were silver.

"Please, have a seat, Miss Smith. Thank you for making the time available this morning."

"My pleasure." She took one of the pair of black leather chairs he indicated and set her portfolio case on the plush gray carpet. "I'm looking forward to hearing more about your plans."

"As my architect and designers no doubt told you, I intend to call the project the Underground Experience." He picked up a sheaf of papers and lowered himself onto the black sofa directly across from her. "My goal is to create the most exciting casino resort to be found in any of the city-states. I plan to locate it near the South Wall." He paused, mouth tilting slightly at one corner. "For the atmosphere."

"I see."

"It's taken me five years to acquire the adjoining properties required for the resort but I've finally put together a parcel large enough to suit my purposes."

"Your staff said that you wanted to create a theme based on the underground ruins."

"Yes." He spread some drawings out on the table. "What I want is a dazzling, fantasy version of a trip through the catacombs. From the moment a guest walks into the lobby of my resort, I want him to be surrounded by genuine relics and artifacts, not reproductions."

"That's where I come in, I take it?"

Gannon smiled and sat back against the sofa. "Yes, Miss Smith, that is precisely where you come in. I want the settings to be as authentic as possible. You'll have a generous budget. I want you to use it to acquire only museum-quality antiquities. Attend the auctions. Contact your connections on Ruin Row. Get the word out to the private collectors. Do whatever it takes. I want only the best pieces. My design team will incorporate them into the decor."

"It sounds like a very exciting project," she said.

"I'm not one to micromanage." Gannon rose to his feet. "I hire qualified people and I let them do their job. However, this project is very important to me and I will expect to be kept informed. I'd like weekly status reports in person. Will that work with your schedule?"

She realized that he was terminating the meeting already. "No problem, Mr. Hepscott."

"Please. Call me Gannon." He studied her with a warm, considering expression. "Something tells me that you and I are going to make a great team, Lydia."

Forty minutes later she leaped out of the cab in front of Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, paid the driver, and rushed through the entrance. The meeting with Gannon Hepscott had gone smoothly and swiftly enough, but the cab had encountered a rush-hour traffic jam on the way back downtown and as a result she was twenty minutes late for work. She hoped that her boss was not yet aware of that fact.

The elderly man behind the ticket booth waved to her. "Morning, Lydia."

"Morning, Bob. Is Shrimp here yet?"

"Nope, you're in the clear."

"Great. Thanks." Relieved, she slowed down to catch her breath.

Thirty years ago, Shrimpton's had started out as a third-rate museum featuring low-end alien relics. The establishment had gone rapidly downhill from that point. By the time Lydia had put in an application for a position on the staff seven months ago, it was considered more of a carnival fun house than a legitimate museum. No respectable antiquities expert took it seriously. Certainly no one with her credentials would have even considered working in the place under normal circumstances.

But she had not had a lot of career options after the university had let her go. Her professional reputation had been in shreds.

Shrimpton had given her a job when she had needed one desperately and she would be forever indebted to him. Although she was trying to build a new career as a private antiquities consultant she had vowed to give her employer his money's worth. She would work through lunch to make up the twenty minutes, she promised herself.

She walked quickly along a long exhibit hall that was dramatically shadowed and lit with glowing green fluo-rez lamps designed to provide the eerie, creepy atmosphere that was the hallmark of Shrimpton's.

In spite of its low reputation, the museum had acquired, under her direction, some rather nice relics including several wonderful carved urns and a matching pair of green quartz columns.

Her greatest acquisition, however, one that had forced the more upscale antiquities community to sit up and take notice, was a little vessel of pure, worked dreamstone. It occupied a place of honor at the end of the main gallery and was protected by a state-of-the art security system that had been donated by Mercer and Tamara Wyatt. The placard next to the beautiful little object read, Unguent Jar. Dreamstone. A gift of Mr. Chester Brady.

Unfortunately, the gift had been posthumous because Chester, a shady ruin rat who had made a career working the illegal side of the antiquities trade, had run afoul of an illicit excavation operation. He had been murdered, his body dumped into a sarcophagus here at Shrimpton's.

Lydia had been escorting Emmett on a tour of the Tomb Wing when they had discovered the body. She knew that she would never again be able to walk past the display of not-quite-human shaped coffins without thinking of Chester.

She opened a door and walked into the small suite of museum offices. There was no light showing through the opaque glass panel of Shrimpton's door. Bob had been right, the boss had not yet arrived. Shrimpton had probably stopped for a box of doughnuts.

The door to the office of Shrimpton's secretary and all-around general assistant, Melanie Toft, stood wide. Lydia put her head around the corner.

"Morning, Mel."

Melanie looked up from the tabloid she was perusing. She was an attractive, dark-haired woman with lively eyes and what could only be called a very fashion-forward sense of style. Lydia sometimes wondered if she shopped for all her clothes in the lingerie departments of the stores. Melanie had an extensive collection of sheer blouses, very short skirts, and daring little dresses that resembled nightgowns and slips.

"About time you got here," Melanie said. "How was the meeting with Hepscott?"

"Fine. He gave me a budget that is several times what I get to spend here in a year. I can't wait to start buying."

She went into her office and set her portfolio case against the shelves holding her extensive collection of the Journal of Para-archaeology.

She was stuffing her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk when Melanie appeared in the doorway, rattling the copy of the tabloid.

"Have you seen the papers?"

"Hard to miss the headlines. The news that someone tried to murder Mercer Wyatt is above the fold of every newspaper in town. I also caught the report about it on Good Morning, Cadence on the rez-screen before I left my apartment."

"How can you sound so calm and casual?" Melanie sashayed into the office and propped one well-rounded hip on the corner of the desk. "For goodness sake, woman, you're dating the new boss of the Cadence Guild."

"Acting boss."

Melanie winked. "The job could become permanent if Wyatt doesn't make it."

"Got a hunch Wyatt will survive. He's a tough old specter-cat."

Melanie held up the tabloid. "You never told me all the juicy details about Emmett London's connections to the Wyatts. How could you keep that kind of gossip from your very best friend? I'm crushed, crushed I tell you."

Lydia glanced at the cover of the Cadence Tattler and froze. A large, grainy photo of Tamara Wyatt and Emmett going into the main entrance of Cadence Memorial Hospital together filled most of the available space.

The headlines screamed New Guild Boss Involved in Lovers' Triangle? The type had to be at least an inch high.

"Let me see that." Lydia snatched the tabloid out of Melanie's hand.

"Be my guest," Melanie replied.

Lydia raced through the article, her stomach growing colder by the second.

Emmett London, newly appointed chief of the Cadence Guild, was formerly engaged to wed Tamara McIntyre (now Mrs. Mercer Wyatt) in a Covenant Marriage in Resonance City. According to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, the wedding was called off abruptly after the bride-to-be was introduced to the boss of the Cadence Guild, Mercer Wyatt, at the engagement ball.

In a magazine interview last month, Mrs. Wyatt maintained that she had been "swept off her feet" by the dynamic Wyatt and that the two intended to convert their current Marriage of Convenience into a full Covenant Marriage in the near future.

A spokesperson for the Resonance Guild assured this reporter that the engagement between London and Tamara Wyatt had ended amicably. But other sources, speaking off the record, hinted that London was furious about the breakup and vowed revenge.

"Revenge?" Lydia reread the last line of the story, appalled. "This idiot reporter is implying that Emmett wanted revenge because Mercer Wyatt stole his fiancée."

"Yes, indeed."

"Oh, jeez." Lydia sat down hard on her desk chair. "This is terrible."

"You'll notice that the article stops short of actually suggesting that London may have been the one who shot Wyatt," Melanie said dryly. "But the implication is a little hard to miss."

"It's impossible to miss." The chill in Lydia's stomach turned into an even more unpleasant sensation of hollowness. "This could turn into a disaster."

"Forget that. Let's get to the interesting stuff. Any of it true? Was the lovely Mrs. Tamara Wyatt London's fiancée at one time?"

Lydia cleared her throat. "Well, yes."

Melanie's eyes rounded. "Oh, my."

"But the engagement didn't end because Tamara got swept off her feet by Mercer Wyatt." Lydia thumped the cover of the tabloid in disgust. "Good grief, he's forty years older than she is."

"Still in great shape though, I hear," Melanie said cheerfully. "At least he was until yesterday. Why did the engagement end?"

"Emmett informed her just before the engagement party that he had accomplished his objectives for the reorganization of the Resonance Guild and planned to step down. He wanted to go into private consulting. That did not suit Tamara. She had other goals."

"Wanted to be Mrs. Guild Boss, huh?"

"She sure did. As it happened good old Mercer Wyatt had recently been widowed and was apparently in the market for a new bride." Lydia turned one hand, palm up. "Tamara ended the engagement."

Melanie drew up one bare knee and clasped her hands around it. The motion hiked her lacy skirt dangerously high on her thighs. "How did Emmett feel about being dumped?"

"He had a very narrow escape and he knows it."

"It says in the paper that they were planning a Covenant Marriage. It would have been a legal and financial nightmare to get out of it once the vows had been spoken." Melanie shook her head. "Wonder why they didn't go for a standard Marriage of Convenience, first?"

Lydia cranked back in the squeaky desk chair and swiveled slightly from side to side. "Emmett is a long-term planner, one of those types who sets goals and then does whatever it takes to accomplish them. He probably applied that management approach when he set out to marry Tamara."

"Well, you've got to admit, she does seem to be the perfect Guild boss wife. She's not only beautiful, she's stylish and smart. Heck, she's an executive in her own right. Look how active she's been on the boards of all those charities and social clubs this past year. She's done more to promote a more modern, mainstream image for the Cadence Guild in the past year than anyone else has done since Jerrett Knox defeated Vincent Lee Vance."

"I know." Lydia drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She did not need to be reminded of the long list of Tamara Wyatt's personal assets and accomplishments. "I've met her. She's impressive but she would have been the wrong woman for Emmett. I'm pretty sure he knows that now."

"Of course he does," Melanie said loyally. "It's obvious that you are the right woman for him."

They both thought about that for a while.

Melanie cleared her throat. "So, where was Emmett London in the early morning hours when Mercer Wyatt was getting shot in the back?"

"The leader of Zane Hoyt's Hunter-Scout troop asked him to help supervise the boys on a camping trip. They got back around two in the morning. By the time Emmett dropped the kids off at their various homes and got to his place it was three. Wyatt had just arrived in the emergency room."

"The paper says that Wyatt was shot sometime between two and three," Melanie pointed out.

"Uh-huh."

"Sounds like Emmett might have a little trouble accounting for the time between dropping off the last Hunter-Scout and answering the phone call from the hospital."

Lydia leveled a finger at her. "Don't even think of going there, Mel. At the most, we're talking twenty minutes."

Melanie pursed her lips but refrained from pointing out that twenty minutes was long enough to murder someone.

Lydia sighed. "Luckily, Detective Martinez seemed satisfied that Emmett was not a suspect. After all, it was Wyatt himself who appointed Emmett to take over on an interim basis. He wouldn't have done that if he thought that Emmett had tried to murder him."

Melanie rocked back and forth on the desk a couple of times. "But Wyatt was shot in the back, according to the papers, and never saw the person who tried to kill him. Plus, I'll bet that Martinez didn't know about this lovers' triangle thing when she questioned you and Emmett. Her view of the situation may change when she finds out those three had a tangled past."

Lydia slumped deeper into her chair.

"On the other hand," Melanie continued on a brighter note, "this is a Guild matter and everyone knows that the Guild polices its own." She hopped off the desk. "Well, gotta run. Things to do. By the way I meant to tell you that Shrimp is feeling very pleased with himself."

"Why is that?"

"He got an offer from a private collector for the Mudd Sarcophagus. The guy apparently saw it in the Tomb Wing last week and wants it badly because it fills out his collection. He's willing to pay a lot more than it's worth. Shrimp is thrilled, as you can imagine. He says you can use the profits to get a more interesting coffin." She rolled her eyes. "What a concept, huh? An interesting coffin."

"Thanks for the heads-up."

"The client is making arrangements to pick it up Friday at five. Shrimp wants you to supervise the crating and packing and see that it gets safely out the door with all the paperwork in order."

"I'll make a note." Lydia pulled her desk calendar toward her and flipped the pages to Friday's date.

"Also, just so you'll know, I'm going to slip out of here a little early today. Got a date with Jack tonight."

Jack Brodie, Lydia knew, was another in a long line of ghost-hunter dates for Melanie.

"Don't tell me, let me guess," Lydia said. "The two of you are going to spend the evening somewhere in the Old Quarter."

Melanie wiggled her brows. "Jack promised me that he'll summon a little ghost or two to burn before we go back to my place."

"Have fun," Lydia mumbled.

"Oh, I'm sure I will. You know what they say, there's nothing like a hunter in bed after he's burned a ghost. We're talking hot, hot, hot." Melanie grinned from the doorway. "But you already know that, don't you? After all, you're dating the top hunter, himself."

"Emmett is stuck in an office for the foreseeable future." Lydia knew she sounded unbearably prim. She couldn't help it. Melanie's easy way with sexual innuendos and her casual lust for hunters was always a bit disconcerting. She could feel herself turning a vivid shade of pink. "He hasn't got time to zap ghosts for fun and games."

"Too bad." Melanie disappeared around the corner.

Lydia sat for a long time, staring morosely at the front page photo of the Tattler. The gossip about a scandalous lovers' triangle at the top of the Cadence Guild was only going to get worse. The story was simply too juicy to fade away.

If anyone could take care of himself, it was Emmett, she thought. But he had his hands full at the moment.

Something told her that the next few days and weeks were going to be very difficult for all of them.