Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [80]
Alyssa looked at the photos. The Miss Chinatown Pageant was a very big deal. When she was a young girl, she'd even had thoughts of trying out for it herself. Until she was reminded that only a pure Chinese girl could win.
"See anyone familiar in this picture?" Ben asked her, pointing to the one of Fae's grandmother. It had been taken at the party after the pageant, and there were a number of people in the picture, but none really jumped out at her. Although ...
"Is that my grandfather?" she asked in astonishment, recognizing the familiar profile.
"Yes, and he's talking to Wallace Hathaway. David Hathaway's father."
And her grandfather.
A shiver ran down her spine at the connection.
"Hathaway was probably the Master of Ceremonies for the pageant," Ben continued. "They usually had someone from the city council or chamber of commerce announce the winner."
"I had no idea they'd ever met," she murmured. These two men, who had shaken hands some fifty years ago, were her grandfathers.
"It's a small world," Ben commented.
"Yes," she agreed. And it was getting smaller by the moment.
* * *
Riley set his grandfather's armchair back into its upright position and adjusted the cushions. He looked around at the living room his grandmother had always kept so neat and wondered if it would ever look that way again. Whoever had ransacked her house had been hastily and ruthlessly brutal in their search. Obviously time had been a factor. There was also a sense of purpose. This hadn't been a random burglary. It didn't appear that anything had been taken.
He moved over to the end table, staring down at the piles and piles of photographs that had been dumped out of the box his grandmother kept them in. It had been a family joke for years that Nan was not a photo-album kind of person. She'd been talking about organizing the photos of her life for as long as he'd been alive, but here they were, a mass of black and white and color photographs from a lifetime of living.
He sighed. He wished he could just hire a cleaning service to come in and tackle this mess, but his grandmother had already told him that she didn't want any more strangers in the house. She'd do it herself tomorrow, and that would be fine, but he couldn't let her face this.
His cell phone rang, and he answered. "Yes?"
"There's a beautiful blonde casing the house," Gilbert, one of his security guards, told him. "She's been standing on the sidewalk for almost five minutes. You want me to talk to her?"
"No, I think I know who it is," he said, feeling an unexpected jolt at the information.
"She's walking up to the door now."
"I've got it, thanks."
Riley slipped his phone back in his pocket and went to open the front door. Paige was in the process of reaching for the doorbell. "Looking for me?" he asked, surprised and pleased to see her. He'd spent most of the day with her, but he'd missed her the past few hours. Damn, not a feeling he wanted to examine too closely.
"How did you know I was out here?" Paige asked.
"I have a sixth sense."
Her gaze narrowed speculatively."You have an undercover guy sitting in a car at the corner."
He grinned at her. "Very good, Miss Hathaway. He said you were stalling. Why?"
"I was having second and third thoughts. Can I come in?"
Riley held the door open for her. "It's a mess, I warn you."
Paige walked into the room, her eyes widening as she took in the destruction. "My goodness. When most people say their house is a mess, it's usually spotlessly clean. But this really is a mess."
"They did quite a job. Take a look." He led her around the downstairs, showing her the living room, dining room, and kitchen, where they had to step over pots and pans to get to the back stairs. The upstairs was just as bad. The bedding had been tossed off all the beds, the drawers upended, items pulled off the shelves.
"Oh, Riley." Paige shook her head at the sight of his grandmother's bedroom. "Whoever did this was very serious."
"I know. You live in a secure building but you should be careful, Paige. Until your father can tell us what happened,