Eye of the Beholder

politely.
    Trask contemplated Harriet in silence for a long moment. Then his mouth curved slightly at the corners. "Well, I'll be damned."
    Harriet's blue eyes sparkled approvingly. She winked at Alexa. "I must say, dear, your taste in men has definitely improved since we last met."

36

    "The little sociopath had us all fooled." Webster sank wearily into one of the suite's red tapestry chairs. "I still can't believe it. So Harry Trask really was murdered. You were right all along."
    "I was right, but for the wrong reasons." Trask lounged against the back of the red tapestry sofa. " Fenn admitted to Strood that he got rid of my father because Joanna was set on marrying him. He didn't even know that the partnership between Dad, Guthrie, and Kenyon had gone bad. Fenn wanted to make certain that Joanna's inheritance remained linked to Dimensions."
    "I'm so bloody sorry." Webster massaged his silver temples. "For everything."
    "No one in this room is to blame," Trask said very steadily. " Fenn was the killer. He bears full responsibility."
    Alexa, seated on the sofa below him, looked up. Her eyes were shadowed with concern. He put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. He had been finding excuses to touch her all evening, he realized. He did not want to let her out of his sight. He had a feeling that some of his old nightmares were soon going to be replaced with a new batch.
    He took a swallow from the glass of very expensive single malt scotch he had retrieved from a locked case behind the resort's bar. Alexa, Webster, and Harriet followed suit. A short silence descended on the small gathering.
    The confrontation in Elegant Relic showed every indication of turning into a major bonding experience, Trask thought. He had brought them all back to the suite for a late dinner and an informal debriefing after Strood had finished taking down their statements.
    It was nearly
midnight
now. The French doors were open to allow the desert night into the room. He took a deep breath of the clean air.
    "I must say, that young man, Fenn , is clearly bonkers." Harriet gave a delicate shudder.
    Trask watched in amused awe as she tossed back a healthy gulp of the potent scotch. Other than a slight brightening of her blue eyes, she appeared unfazed.
    "He said he wanted to sacrifice Alexa to some things he called vortices," she continued. "Can you imagine?"
    "I'll tell you what I find hard to believe," Alexa said. "It's that Fenn was a hot shot corporate financial officer before he quit to follow the
Dimensions Way
    ."
    Harriet made a tut-tutting sound. "We all take odd turns in our lives from time to time. Who would have believed that a woman with an unerring instinct for early-twentieth-century art and antiques would have opened a shop that specialized in tacky museum reproductions, for example. "
    Alexa turned on her. "Of all the unmitigated gall. How dare you call my shop tacky? It's your fault that I had to open Elegant Relic in the first place ..."
    "Now, now, ladies," Trask said soothingly. "We're straying from the subject."
    Webster walked to the open doors. "From what I can gather, Stewart was so zealous about the
Dimensions Way
    that he was an easy target for Fenn to manipulate. In addition, because of his past, violence was not foreign to him."
    Trask thought about what he had learned during the talk with Strood. "Dylan appointed himself Stewart's personal meditation guide and swore him to secrecy, just as he did with Liz. They both went along with it because they believed he really could teach them how to ascend to a higher plane of consciousness."
    Alexa looked at Webster. "How is Joanna doing?"
    "Much better." Webster gave her a wan smile. "I talked to her for a few minutes after Strood finished with me. She said that, deep down, she had always wondered about the circumstances surrounding the death of Harry Trask."
    Alexa glanced at Trask and then turned back to Webster. "But she never said anything because of you."
    Webster hesitated. "In some distant corner of her mind she was secretly afraid that I might have killed Harry to keep him from getting his hands on her money. I can see where she got the idea. She and I had some almighty quarrels over the subject of her marriage."
    "This Joanna was obviously caught between a rock and a hard place," Harriet observed.
    "Bad enough to lose the man she loved," Alexa said quietly. "She could not endure finding out that her only living relative, her beloved brother, might have