Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  That again! Celine let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding.

  The Gardner Museum theft had come into play in the unsolved case in Durham as well. The killer had gotten away then. She hadn’t thought about it until earlier this evening when . . .

  “Greg brought that up as well. The Gardner Museum heist. But what does that have to do with Dirck and our art?

  “I don’t know, kiddo. I just don’t.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was when Grayson’s tracker began moving toward the Paso Robles Police Station that Special Agent Blake Markham began to worry. At first he’d thought Grayson was finally heading back to his motel.

  The tracker had moved west on 13th Street and then turned left onto Spring Street where Grayson had booked a motel. Blake knew that because he’d seen the tracker at the location of the inn. The FBI wasn’t springing for a hotel. It had made Grayson’s travel arrangements, but that’s as far as it went.

  As for the rest, Grayson had been issued money in the form of traveler’s checks and told to fend for himself. Grayson had griped long and hard about being handed an obsolete form of currency; one that required going to a bank—during regular business hours—for ready cash.

  But the FBI had figured that this way any money the washed-up former artist-turned-informant was given would be less likely to be gambled away or wasted on liquor. It was a form of control; a way of keeping an unreliable operative on a fairly tight leash.

  All these thoughts had passed through Blake Markham’s head as he stared, bleary-eyed, at his laptop screen. He was at work now; had been for hours. His eyes felt dry, but although he’d felt in his drawer for his prescription eye drops and had them in his hand, he hadn’t torn his eyes away from the screen long enough to put the drops in.

  The tracker was literally blazing down the streets. Grayson was obviously in a car. With whom? Simon Duarte? Grayson hadn’t rented a car; the tracker hadn’t been near a car-rental place since it had first shown up in Paso Robles, even though there were two near his motel.

  Why get into a car now? Because Grayson had managed to get control of all thirteen pieces stolen? Blake’s hopes surged. That would be quite something. Maybe that’s why Grayson and Simon had been so long at the Delft. The art was probably all stashed in the bar—cleverly concealed, no doubt.

  Blake had refrained from calling, either on the tracker or on Grayson’s cell phone. If the guy was with Duarte, Blake’s call would only compromise the operation. No doubt, Grayson would call him as soon as he got to his motel room. A team would be sent out to retrieve the art the second Grayson gave them the go-ahead.

  But then, inexplicably, the tracker had turned left on 10th Street, and then right on Park Street and cruised straight into the local police station.

  Goddammit! Grayson was in a car all right. But it was a police car. What exactly had gone down at the Delft?

  Blake leaned back in his leather office chair; the chair swiveled to the right. He glanced at the clock on the wall and made some quick calculations in his head. Not time for the Delft to open yet, but if police had been called to the bar, there might be someone there to answer the phone.

  He swiveled back to his desk and pulled his phone toward him. He could hear the phone ringing at the other end. It kept on for some minutes. He hung up and tried again. And again.

  Even if there were crime scene technicians there—the only reason not to answer a ringing phone—they’d get so tired of the incessant, ear-piercing trr-rrring, someone on the team would pick up the receiver just to make it stop.

  “Hello.”

  “Yes, I’d like to speak with the owner, Dirck Thins, please?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “A customer.” Blake hesitated. “From out of state.”

  “I’m sorry to inform you Dirck Thins is dead, sir. Murdered, from the looks of it.”

  Murdered?

  Before Blake could ask any more questions, the voice at the other end had advised him to call the Mechelen Winery to place his order, given him a phone number, and hung up.

  Murdered? Dirck Thins had been murdered. By whom? Grayson Pike?

  But a few discreet inquiries had yielded no further information. The owner of the Delft had been discovered tortured and garroted; somehow that didn’t sound like Grayson.

  The Sheriff’s Office was handling the case. But no one by the name of Greg—Grayson’s code name for the operation—had been arrested by either the Paso Robles Police Department or the Sheriff’s men.

  A chilling realization struck Blake Markham. Grayson Pike had ditched his tracker—must’ve ditched it sometime in the early hours of the morning. Just outside the bar, and someone had picked it up. Who? Not the police? Whoever had found and reported the body most likely.

  The tracker was probably in the hands of detectives by now—a clue to the killer.

  A clue to Grayson—code-named Greg—Pike.

  The media would have a field day with this. Blake could just see the headlines: FBI Informant Kills Prominent Businessman. It was the last thing the Agency needed after the Russia collusion debacle. If word of Grayson the shitstain’s involvement got out, it would be the final nail in the coffin of alleged FBI corruption.

  Jesus F—in’ Christ.

  He could lose his job over this.

  Blake banged his fist on the desk. Dammit! He needed to find Grayson. Today.

  So the bastard had ditched his tracker? Had he ditched his phone, too? Would the motel Grayson had booked himself into know anything?

  Blake’s gray eyes were blazing as he mentally composed the instructions he’d give his personal assistant. He didn’t need a state-of-the-art LSS3i tracker to find Grayson. He could find that piece-of-shit lowlife without all that high-end gadgetry.

  “I will hunt you down, bastard!” he snarled.

  “What exactly did your employer know, Ms. Skye?”

  Detective Rick Mailand folded his arms one over the other on the desk and eyed Celine as though he suspected her of withholding information.

  They were in the Paso Robles Police Station interview room, but Detective Mailand, a man with a deeply tanned face and craggy features, was one of the Sheriff’s detectives. He’d accompanied the Coroner’s Unit when they’d finally arrived shortly after five o’clock to process the crime scene—and had stayed.

  He’d caught the case—and Celine suspected that, given the circumstances, he meant to keep it.

  But the question he’d put to her still hung, unanswered, in the air.

  “About what?” she responded finally. She was stalling. The words Gardner Museum Heist had fluttered across her mind in golden letters. She deliberately wiped them off her mental screen as she pushed the stirrer into the Styrofoam cup of coffee Detective Mailand had handed her.

  Clumps of powdered creamer floated in the tawny-brown liquid and grains of a packet of sweetener flecked the surface. No amount of stirring would dissolve either. Celine sighed. She’d been yearning for an aromatic cup of espresso. Instead, here she was with a cup of what looked like muddy brown water straight from the Salinas River.

  Satisfied that her mind was completely blank, she looked up and gazed into his eyes—the color of mahogany rimmed with gray. Unusual eyes. Attractive eyes. And, at this point, deeply suspicious eyes.

  “I don’t know, Ms. Skye. I was hoping you could enlighten me. He must have known something about some matter to be tortured and killed the way he was. You were a trusted employee, were you not?”

  Celine nodded.

  “Did he ever mention anything that seems relevant now in the light of what’s happened? There were cigarette burns on your employer’s face. He was garroted. That seems to indicate a personal motive for the murder, Ms. Skye. Rather than that Mr. Thins was just a random victim of a break-and-enter.”

  “I was a trusted employee, Detective, but I wasn’t Dirck’s confidante.” She paused. “I think he was meeting someone. He hustled me out
of the bar and when I returned I noticed the glasses of wine in the sanctum.” She was repeating the information she’d already given him. “He may have been expecting two people. There were two glasses of wine.”

  Celine was quite sure now that Dirck had been expecting to see only Greg. The other glass of wine would’ve been for himself. But she had no other way of conveying her impression that there’d been two men attacking Dirck not one.

  “You’ll have to figure out a way of telling the police that,” Julia had advised her, “without letting them know about your visions.” Perhaps it was just as well, Celine thought, that she didn’t have any identifying features to share about Dirck’s attackers. There’d have been no explaining how she’d managed to get hold of that information.

  Detective Mailand nodded, pushed his notebook out from under his hand, and peered at the penciled squiggle marks on its lined pages.

  “And you think one of those two people was the patron called Greg?”

  “It seems to be the only explanation that fits, Detective,” she replied. “Greg was interested in the art hanging on our walls, very interested in seeing Dirck’s art and in the fact that he was from Boston as well.”

  Detective Mailand regarded her from under a pair of broad, well-marked eyebrows. “Mr. Thins was from Boston? Did he have any associates there? Any connections he was still in touch with?”

  Celine shook her head and smiled for the first time that night. “Dirck and John left Boston in 1990, Detective. They haven’t been back since and if they left any friends there, they’ve long been out of touch.”

  A memory stirred as she spoke. Surely there was someone Dirck still knew back in Boston. Not that there was any point mentioning the possibility to the detective—she glanced at him. He might have been handsome had it not been for the furrows etched on his forehead and the deep lines creased into his stubble-coated cheeks.

  A sensation—possibly attraction; it had been years since she’d felt anything of the sort—arose within her. She thrust it aside and returned to the matter at hand.

  No, she didn’t know whom Dirck might still have known in Boston or even why the thought had occurred to her.

  “Nineteen-ninety, eh?” Detective Mailand cupped his chin, allowing his broad thumb to pass back and forth over the stubble dusting his chin.

  Celine stared back. Had Julia mentioned the Gardner Museum theft to him? What clues to the robbery could Paso Robles hold?

  “Nineteen-ninety,” Detective Mailand repeated. “Was it after or before the infamous museum heist?”

  Julia had mentioned it, then. Or maybe the detective was just well-informed.

  “I don’t know, Detective.” Celine’s fingers closed around the edge of her seat, gripping hard. “What I do know is that neither he nor John Mechelen could have had anything to do with the Gardner. They both had too much respect for art to steal it.”

  The impressions she’d received within the Delft’s sanctum crowded back into her mind. The attackers had been after some object or other; something that could be easily concealed behind the back of a painting.

  Money?

  Drugs?

  Whatever it was, Dirck had known about it. It’s hiding in plain sight, she heard his voice taunting his killers.

  The only thing hiding in plain sight was the gewgaw she’d concealed for him. But that could hardly be concealed in the back of a work of art. Besides, he’d said it belonged to someone else and needed to be returned.

  No, no. That wasn’t it at all.

  “Ms. Skye.”

  The detective’s voice pulled her abruptly out of her reverie. She looked up, startled.

  “Yes?”

  He regarded her with resigned patience. “Was there any significance,” he began, enunciating each word slowly, “to the paintings that were taken off the walls? Not all of them were, as you might recall.”

  She did recall, and it puzzled her. Greg had wanted to see Dirck’s art, but all of his paintings and John’s had been left hanging on the wall. The ones taken down had been—

  “The ones we sell on consignment, Detective. Those were the pieces the men who did this were after.”

  The specific work they’d been after had been painted by Simon Underwood.

  Simon. The name had struck a chord in Julia.

  There’d been a Simon implicated in the Gardner theft, too, hadn’t there? A Simon Duarte? A simple coincidence? Celine wasn’t sure anymore.

  Simon Underwood was from Boston as well. And Greg had mentioned that John’s portrait in the guise of a turbaned Rembrandt bore a remarkable resemblance to Earl Bramer, Duarte’s friend.

  Was it possible her boss, Dirck Thins, had been harboring the men who’d been behind the notorious heist? What other information could he possibly have had? Surely not the art itself?

  Her fingers tightened around the wooden seat, abrading against the head of a nail roughly pushed in. No, no, never that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We’ll need a warrant to ping his phone, Blake.” Ella Rawlins, a dark-haired, bespectacled, young woman encased in a stylish skirt suit that emphasized her figure, poked her head around the edge of her desktop screen and peered up at her boss.

  Special Agent Blake Markham felt irritation, like bile, rising up within him as he stared down at his personal assistant. Ella may not have been questioning his orders, but it sure sounded like it to him.

  It was a habit of hers—to tell him what they needed to carry out any of his commands. As though Blake didn’t quite know the law and needed a constant reminder of the innumerable ways in which it circumscribed his power.

  He saw Ella’s gaze drop to his hands, expecting to see the piece of paper that, in her mind, would authorize their operation. The mildly anxious expression her face habitually wore deepened when she saw he was empty-handed.

  “Don’t we?”

  “No, we don’t,” he snapped. “Exigent circumstances. Grayson Pike is MIA on an undercover operation. He could be in trouble.”

  Or wanted for murder.

  Not that Ella needed to know that.

  “Just do it, okay?” Without waiting for a response, he turned brusquely on his heels and re-entered his office, resisting the urge to slam the door.

  This would go a lot faster without Ella questioning his every move. But he’d given her a solid reason to get on that ping. If she’d had any further objections, she wouldn’t have hesitated to run in after him to voice them.

  Now to call Grayson’s motel. He walked over to his desk and picked up the phone, too tense to sit down.

  “Checked out?” He repeated the information the clerk gave him. “When?”

  “The night clerk didn’t see.” The voice sounded apologetic. “He was either using the restroom or doing his regular check of the grounds. We don’t have security cameras covering the exterior.”

  The night clerk had returned to find Grayson’s room keys and a wad of cash to cover his stay stashed under the hotel register. There’d been an extra couple of hundred that even the night clerk had realized couldn’t have been part of an exceptionally generous tip.

  Grayson must have left in a hurry. Had he deliberately avoided the night clerk? Or was the absence of a witness just a coincidence?

  “Will your friend be wanting the additional amount sent back to him, sir?” the clerk inquired, the tone of his voice suggesting that he hoped the answer would be, no.

  “No, that’s quite all right. Keep it.” Blake was about to hang up when a thought occurred to him. “You said there are no cameras outside the motel. Are there any inside?”

  “Only in the lobby. The footage is grainy.”

  “Check it for me, will you?” He wanted to make sure Grayson had voluntarily checked himself out, although it was hard to imagine a burly, five-foot-ten guy being dragged out against his will.

  But at this point, Blake wanted hard facts. Not assumptions. Receiving an assurance of a callback, he hung up, sat on the edge of his desk,
and stroked his chin. He was trying to be objective. He didn’t have very many facts to draw any conclusions, but he had to admit to himself it wasn’t looking good.

  Grayson had ditched his tracker and quietly checked out of his motel. Not something an innocent man was likely to do.

  His worst fears were realized when Ella opened the door and poked her head in.

  “Looks like Grayson’s cell phone was switched off around about 2 a.m., Pacific.”

  And judging by its current location, the phone itself had been ditched in an alley off of Spring Street in Paso Robles. Grayson was officially on the run.

  “Anything else you want me to do, Blake?”

  “Call the airlines and see if anyone named Greg or Grayson left San Luis Obispo Airport last night.” It was a long shot. He didn’t actually think Grayson would have used either his real name or the ticket the FBI had purchased for him in his code name.”

  He barked out a few more instructions and then began planning his next move.

  The call from the motel on Spring Street in Paso Robles came sooner than Blake had expected. Despite the poor quality of the security camera footage, there was no doubt in the day clerk’s mind. It was the occupant of Room 64 who’d checked out. The time stamp on the camera showed it was a few minutes past one.

  “But the extra money your friend left behind won’t cover the damage to the door, sir.”

  “What door?” Blake wanted to know.

  “The door to Room 64. The cleaning staff found it smashed in. Maybe your friend tried to come back for his things, but—”

  “What things?”

  “The things he left behind. He had nothing in his hands when he checked out. He should’ve asked the night clerk for his key back instead of smashing the door in. We can’t let that room out until the door’s fixed. And we don’t have a credit card on file.”