Cooke herself. No one else could have planted it on you. I thought this pair was after that, but that proved to be untrue, as events have shown. They’re unabashedly interested in jewels and probably in the jewels Lydia Cooke obviously sewed into your bag. But why send the jewels off with you if she was sending those two thugs off after you to retrieve them?”
“Unless they weren’t working for her.”
“But if they weren’t working for her, then how could they possibly have known what you had sewn into your bag?”
She felt her mouth fall open. “Now, that’s creepy.”
He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Agreed. So, I suppose the question now is, who would be interested in those jewels and might suspect that Lydia was trying to—well, let’s limit her to at least moving them to a different location. Who would know? Who would care?”
She felt something slide down her spine and it certainly wasn’t Derrick’s hand. “Edmund Cooke.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“I thought they were happily married.”
“I’d say that might be assuming too much, but we’ll see.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I am going to crash his rehearsal and chat with him in public. You are going to sit in the car with Ewan and his collection of things he shouldn’t own.” He shot her a look. “Today is my turn, remember?”
She shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
He shot her a skeptical look, then turned back to the road. She considered, then decided that perhaps the occasional romance novel Granny Mary had slipped her might come in handy. She looked at Derrick.
“Hold hands?”
He looked at her in surprise, but didn’t argue. And he left her hand on his leg when he shifted, which was handy, giving her ample opportunity to trace lazy circles on his jeans.
He took her hand and put it back in her lap. “Stop that.”
She reached up and slipped her hand along the back of his neck. He rolled his eyes.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This will not get you what you want, Samantha.”
“Won’t it?”
He glanced at her, then laughed miserably. “Who are you?”
“Someone who survived Elizabethan cuisine and stood through an entire performance of Hamlet that seemed to last about ten minutes, that’s who. Now, don’t you think I’d be safer right next to you?”
He opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, then sighed. “Very well,” he muttered. “But stop touching me before I run off the road.”
She folded her hands primly in her lap and smiled. “All right.”
He shook his head with a sigh, then concentrated on getting them to where they needed to be. Eventually, he pulled his earphone and mic from off the dash, put them where they were meant to go, then started up the usual drill.
“Peter, how does the area look? Excellent. Ewan, which car park? Aye, that’s close enough. We’ll watch for you—nay, I’ll not run over you, you ass. Oliver, thugs under wraps?” He was silent for a moment or two. “We’ll make for the theater. I’m assuming quarry is there.” He waited, nodded, then looked at her. “I don’t like this.”
“You’d like it less if your car got stolen with me in it.”
“I suppose you have a point there.” He looked at her briefly. “You know that thing you were doing before?”
“The give me what I want because you can’t help yourself thing?”
He nodded. “Do that again later.”
She smiled, because he was so utterly charming, she could hardly keep her hands to herself.
Fifteen minutes later, she was walking with him along the river, past houseboats, and down to what she assumed was the rehearsal theater for Edmund’s latest.
“How are we going to get in?”
“I thought I’d pretend I was my brother.”
“Well, there is that.”
He got them inside the building with no trouble and inside the theater with only a puzzled frown as their reward. They made it halfway down the aisle before things took a turn she couldn’t say she’d expected, though Derrick didn’t seem terribly surprised by at least part of it.
“Edmund straight ahead,” he murmured. “And, oh, look, there’s Lydia doing her best harpy imitation.”
“No, I think that’s your brother staggering around up there on stage.” She watched him for another moment or two, then shook her head. “He’s terrible.”
“Aye, he is.” He nodded toward the wings. “I think that one there is Lydia Cooke.”
“Could be.”
“I’m not sure this can get any dodgier,” he said grimly. “I imagine you know what I’m thinking about now where you’re concerned.”
She looked around, then froze as she watched a couple get up from where they’d been