Read Online Roses in Moonlight by Lynn Kurland - Free Book Online Page A

have considered that things were truly looking up.
    Maybe tomorrow, if she was lucky.
    She considered what to take, then decided she would pack as light as possible. Money for food and some ID were probably enough. And as far as clothes went, she wouldn’t take more than would fit in her rather small backpack. After all, it wasn’t as if she would be seeing the same people all the time.
    She went to pull her backpack down off the wall and get ready to go.

Chapter 4
    D errick leaned against a handy outcropping in an otherwise quite uninspired bit of brick wall and watched the door a hundred feet to his left. It was not quite seven, but he’d had a feeling the excitement would begin quite early in the day. He glanced to his right as Oliver simply appeared from nowhere, two cups of something steaming in his hands. He gave one to Derrick, then joined him in his leaning. He looked alert, which Derrick could definitely not say about himself, and he had been the one sleeping through the night whilst Oliver kept watch over the Cookes’ residence.
    “You could have slept in this morning,” Derrick remarked.
    “I slept at the office last week.”
    There was no denying that. Among Oliver’s many gifts was the uncanny ability to lose himself in slumber in any location and on any surface. Derrick had avoided him rather well in the lobby of Cameron’s suite of offices, stepped over him several times in the middle of the rug in his own office, and marveled at his ability to make himself comfortable on a sofa that just wasn’t quite long enough for him.
    “Perhaps I’ll sleep on the train,” Oliver continued easily, as if he discussed whether to have a scone or a croissant for breakfast. “Or not. No matter. What of you?”
    “I slept.”
    “After you snooped, no doubt.”
    Derrick conceded that with a slight nod. “Had to have something useful to do.”
    “What’d you find out?”
    “Nothing that makes any sense.”
    “Criminals are like that.”
    Derrick sighed, then returned to his study of the Cookes’ front stoop. “They’re both humanities professors, though they seem to do an appalling amount of acting.” He had to take a deep breath because he did indeed know more about Edmund Cooke than he wanted to admit, but it was nothing he would divulge. He would just have to feign a sort of baffled ignorance. “They’re not rich,” he continued, “but they’re comfortable. No points on their licenses, no brushes with the law, current on their council taxes, no illegal telly time.”
    “How boring.”
    Derrick almost smiled. “It would look that way, wouldn’t it?”
    “And what do they have of ours?”
    Derrick looked at him then. “A rather large, perfectly preserved piece of sixteenth-century lace.”
    “The one the Earl of Epworth left behind his utterly inadequate piece of glass?”
    Derrick nodded. “That’d be the one.”
    Oliver shook his head and looked vaguely unsettled, if such a thing were possible. “Don’t care much for that thing, if you want the truth. I think it’s cursed.”
    “Or worth a fortune.”
    “
Cursed
sounds more interesting.” He sipped his coffee. “How do you know they stole it?”
    Derrick set his cup down at his feet, then folded his arms over his chest. “I watched the security tapes at Epworth’s castle. Professional burglar, if you can believe it. The Cookes were also attending a house party at the castle the same night.”
    “That’s a stretch.”
    “So was watching the thief as he visited our good Mr. Cooke in his office a week later. I thought perhaps our sticky-fingered lad’s backpack seemed a little lighter afterward.”
    Oliver pursed his lips, but his eyes almost twinkled. “Still on the thin side, don’t you think?”
    “The subsequent conversation Mr. Cooke had with his wife about their new lacey acquisition wasn’t.”
    “Very well, I’m convinced. What now? Are you telling me these two paragons haven’t been squirreling away their