The detective got in the driver’s seat, Dagne in front, and Flynn pushed Rachel into the back. They backed out of the space so quickly that Rachel feared she’d been whiplashed, but then he threw it into drive so fast that Rachel almost went through the window. Flynn caught her again, pushed her down in the seat. “You might want to buckle up there.”
“Will someone please tell me what is going on here?” Rachel begged as she fished around for the seat belt. “For starters, who is he?”
“Like I said, Detective Keating,” the detective snapped.
“Oh please,” Dagne muttered.
But it was all beginning to sink in for Rachel—the police had come for her and Myron, and he’d used Flynn and Dagne to find her. “Oh God,” she said, looking at Flynn. “Oh God, I’m so sorry—”
“What are you sorry for?” Detective Keating barked as he made a hard right behind Myron.
“Oh for Chrissakes, will you stop acting like a big bad cop?” Dagne insisted, clearly exasperated.
“You are interfering with official police business, Red,” the detective said to Dagne.
“Well, someone needs to tell her what is going on!” Dagne shot back.
“Actually, Joe, if you don’t mind . . . I’ll take this one,” Flynn said.
Joe? Rachel looked at Flynn again; he was calmly considering her, as if he knew all this was going to happen.
“Okay, that’s it!” she snapped. “Who are you really, Flynn? I thought you were a computer guy, so how do you know a cop and call him Joe? How do you know Dagne? I didn’t introduce you to Dagne! I want to know what is going on here!”
“All right,” Flynn said, and put his hand on her leg, rubbing her thigh very gently, calming her. “Take a breath or two, will you? All right, here it is. The truth is . . . I’m not actually a computer guy. I’m a fraud investigator for Lloyds of London. Lloyds insures quite a lot of property in the United States, and one of their clients is the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Society.”
“Oh my God.” Her head was going to explode. Literally. Right off her body and it would be a godsend. He was an insurance fraud investigator and her house was full of insurance fraud. But worse, much worse, far worse, she realized as her heart sank to her toes . . . “You mean you lied to me?” she asked weakly.
“I’m afraid I did,” he said. “But more importantly, Rachel, you must be truthful now. Are you part of Professor Tidwell’s scheme?”
“No!”
“I told you!” Dagne said angrily. “Look, you’re making her cry. Stop it!”
“Miss Delaney, if you please,” Flynn said sharply.
“I mean it, you little wack-job,” the detective quickly interjected. “I’m about to pull over and put a gag in your mouth,” he added, and Dagne snorted indignantly.
“Rachel, the items in your house,” Flynn continued.
“I know,” she said, stopping him. “I thought he’d bought them at the gift shop with his cheap-ass employee discount,” she said, realizing instantly how foolish and ridiculous that sounded. “He . . . he owes me money, and he never pays me back, and I thought he got some huge discount, so that was his lame way of sort of paying me back.”
“He had a discount, all right,” the detective snorted.
“Oh God, oh God,” Rachel said, and began to hyperventilate. “What’s happened? What has he done?”
She just barely glimpsed Joe’s roll of the eyes, because Flynn shoved her head down between her knees. “Breathe!” he commanded her. “Deep breaths, one, two, three . . . that’s right, there’s a good girl.” He held her head down a moment more until he was certain she was breathing. When he let her up, they had pulled into a parking lot.
“Now then. It seems Myron has been stealing from the various museum properties—mostly estates in Newport,” Flynn explained.
Rachel had guessed as much, but she still couldn’t figure out why. “But . . . but to what end? It doesn’t make any sense. If he stole stuff and hid it in my house, what good does it do him?”
“Fraudulent claims,” Flynn said, as the detective pulled into a parking spot. “I’ll explain later.”
The four of them watched Myron jog up the steps to one of the condominiums, fit a key into the lock, and go inside.
“Let’s go,” Joe said. “We’ll take it slow and easy, let her go first,” he said, indicating Rachel. “He knows her. He’ll see her and open the door.
“What about me?” Dagne whined.
“Sit here and keep your mouth shut and don’t touch anything,” he said, stepping out of the car, and leaned down, said to Flynn, “I’m calling for backup.”
“Oh wow,” Dagne exclaimed, and got out of the car, too, in spite of being told not to.
But Rachel was too stunned; her mind was whirling around the improbable and impossible events. As she stared at Flynn, the pieces were coming together, coming to the realization that their chance meeting had been no chance at all. “Did you . . . did you ever see me on campus?” she asked tearfully. “Or was that a lie, too?”
Flynn pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“So it was all a lie? Everything was a lie?”
“No, no, not everything, Rachel. Everything between us, that was real, just as I tried to tell you.”
“You were using me to get to Myron,” she said, ignoring him.