Hidden Talents

his crooked smile and pointed the barrel of a gun at Caleb's midsection. “I didn't think you'd figure it out. At least not for a long time. What gave you the lead?”
    “A photograph,” Caleb said. “A picture of my parents taken shortly after I was born. It had ‘Asterley and Firebrace Studios’ stamped on the back.”
    “A photograph.” Firebrace grimaced. “How appropriate. So you put it all together and came looking for me.”
    “Not all of it.” Caleb glanced at the gun. “If I'd figured out all of it, I wouldn't have brought Serenity with me today.”
    “An unfortunate mistake as far as Miss Makepeace is concerned.”
    “Wait a second,” Serenity said tightly. “What's going on here?”
    “Don't you get it, Serenity?” Caleb asked. “Firebrace is not just a blackmailer. He's a murderer.”
    “Murderer?” Serenity stared at him in amazement. “But no one's been killed.”
    Caleb kept his eyes on Firebrace. “Ambrose Asterley was killed, wasn't he, Firebrace?”
    “Ambrose?” Serenity's hand went to her throat. “Oh, no, not Ambrose.” She turned accusing eyes on Firebrace. “You killed him?”
    “It was an accident,” Firebrace snapped. “I never meant for him to die.”
    “Accident?” Serenity breathed. “I don't understand.”
    Firebrace gave her a brief, impatient glance before returning his attention to Caleb. “He caught me that night when I broke into his cabin the second time. I thought he'd gone to bed drunk, you see, like the first time. But he hadn't. After his girlfriend left, he just sat there in his living room with the lights turned out. He heard me come through the window, I guess. It was almost as if he'd been waiting for me.”
    “Maybe he was waiting for you,” Caleb said casually. “Maybe he had a hunch you'd be back. After all, you'd already broken into his files a few days earlier, hadn't you?
    Firebrace's thin mouth tightened into an even narrower line. “The first time I went in to get the pictures of Miss Makepeace. He never heard a sound that time. Passed out in the bedroom.”
    “You returned the second time in order to put a receipt into the files, didn't you?” Caleb asked. “A receipt that showed the photos of Serenity had been sold to Franklin Ventress. You wanted to cover yourself just in case someone came looking for the blackmailer.”
    Serenity was outraged. “You deliberately tried to make Ambrose look like a blackmailer?”
    “It seemed the logical thing to do,” Firebrace said. “Just in case anyone ever came looking.”
    Caleb watched his face. “Too bad you hadn't thought of that little touch the first time around. Because things went wrong when you went back the next time, didn't they, Firebrace?”
    Firebrace's fingers tightened on the gun. “Ambrose heard me come through the kitchen window. He caught me. Demanded to know what was going on. I told him the whole story, tried to reason with him. I offered to cut him in on the deal, but he went into a rage. He came at me like a wild man. Said Serenity was a friend of his.”
    “I knew Ambrose would never have blackmailed me,” Serenity said.
    Firebrace didn't appear to hear her. He had an odd look in his eyes. “I ducked to the side but Ambrose just kept going. Straight through the open basement door. Straight down the stairs. I never meant for it to happen that way.”
    “You bastard,” Serenity whispered.
    “I realized afterward that I had to make it look like the accident it was,” Firebrace said quickly.
    Caleb shoved his hands into the pocket of his jacket. His fingers touched the palm-sized rock Webster had given him. It was still right where he had left it. He'd forgotten to take it out of the pocket.
    “You wanted it to look like an accident,” Caleb said, “because you didn't want anyone asking questions that might lead to an investigation or an autopsy. An autopsy would have shown that Asterley was not intoxicated when he fell.”
    “I got a bottle from his kitchen stash,” Firebrace said. “I knew him well enough to know that he always kept a bottle around, even when he was on the wagon. I poured the whiskey over him.”
    “Just another little added touch,” Serenity said angrily. “Like sticking the receipt into his files. I suppose it must be instinctive for a photographer to keep fiddling with his subject, trying to get everything perfect before the final shot. Why did you take the risk of showing up in Witt's End the morning after I found