“Gone ahead with her cameras,” Whiteway answered. He lowered his voice to a hoarse stage whisper that Josephine could have heard in the next county and pleaded, “See if you can talk sense into her—she’s throwing away the chance of a lifetime.”

Bell replied with a silent nod.

As Whiteway backed out of the room, he appeared to see Bell for the first time. “You look like you’ve been wrestling grizzly bears.”

“You should have seen the other guy.”

“Help yourself to the whiskey.”

“I intend to,” said Isaac Bell.

Chapter 41

41

“WANT SOME?” Bell asked Josephine.

“No.”

Bell filled a short glass, tossed it back neat, filled it again, and sipped. “Josephine, what did you say when Marco asked you to come with him to North Africa?”

She looked up from the carpet, eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

“He made Harry Frost the same offer.”

“Harry? Why?”

“Marco wanted Frost to kill your new husband.”

Josephine’s eyes went dead. “Marco’s worse than Harry,” she whispered.

“I’d say they were neck and neck. What was your answer, Josephine?”

“I told him no.”

Bell watched her closely as he said, “I’ll bet Marco thinks you’ll change your mind when you’re a rich widow.”

“Never . . . Is Preston in danger?”

“Harry Frost is dead.”

“Thank God . . . Do you think Marco has the guts to kill Preston without Harry’s help?”

Instead of answering that question, Isaac Bell said, “I know why you’re quitting the race.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re quitting because Marco Celere, disguised as Dmitri Platov, sabotaged the best of the other machines.”

She looked away. “I wondered,” she whispered. “I didn’t just wonder, I suspected. But I didn’t stop him. Losing the race will be my punishment. I have been terrible.”

“Because you didn’t stop him or because you went along with Marco’s plan to frame Harry for murder?”

“Did Harry tell you that, too?”

Bell smiled. “No, I stumbled on that on my own.”

“Looking back, I know it was an evil plan. I knew it then but Harry deserved to be locked up again.”

“Why did you let Marco talk you into marrying Whiteway?”

“I was too tired to argue. I just wanted to win the race—”

“Perhaps you thought that if one marriage could be annulled, so could another?”

“Sure, if we had no honeymoon. And I swear, Isaac, I had no idea Marco planned to kill Preston. Poor Preston, he’s just so . . . Poor Preston, he is such a fool, Isaac, he really loves me.”

Bell gave her a gently teasing smile. “Maybe Preston thinks that when you fall in with the wrong men and don’t see what they’re doing, that you’re not so terrible—just single-mindedly myopic in your determination to fly? Maybe that’s why he can’t believe you won’t finish the race.”