Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  “Rent it is, then.” Julia turned decisively around.

  Celine followed the former fed, fingers crossed, hoping she’d made the right decision.

  “I’ll be glad to get the finial out of our hands and safely back at the Gardner,” Julia said over her shoulder as she briskly walked toward the Enterprise-Rent-a-Car counter at the airport.

  A long line of people waited ahead of them.

  “Great!” the former fed huffed. “This could take forever!”

  “Or not.” Celine smiled as she caught sight of a uniformed man holding up a placard with their names. “Looks like Penny Hoskins sent someone for us.” Relief set in for the first time since they’d landed.

  She caught his eye and held up her hand—two fingers and a thumb extending upward.

  “Exce—” Julia began to say as she turned around, but the word was instantly replaced with an imprecation.

  “You were right,” she hissed. “Trouble’s here!”

  Celine frowned. “I don’t understand.” Sister Mary Catherine was uttering her warning about choices again. The Lady was obscuring her vision—a semi-transparent screen through which little was visible. “What is it?”

  “Blake Markham.” Julia’s voice was tight.

  A tall, well-built man in a suit was striding purposefully toward them.

  “Julia! Ms. Skye?”—he held out his hand—“Blake Markham, FBI.”

  There are choices to be made, Celine. Judge wisely.

  She took his outstretched hand as he turned to Julia and said: “I’ll be escorting you to the Gardner Museum.”

  “There’s no need for that, Blake,” Julia replied coldly. “I’m quite capable of handling the situation.”

  Celine’s head swiveled from Julia to Blake. The hostility between the two agents was palpable. Her gaze shifted to the sea of people beyond.

  The Gardner’s uniformed chauffeur was pushing his way through the crowd. She’d need to make another quick decision.

  She turned to Blake.

  “How did you even know—?”

  “About the item you’ve recovered?” Blake’s eyes—narrowed to suspicious slits—never left Julia’s face. “I’d say common courtesy dictated we should have been told. This is still our case. I’m even more surprised that you didn’t think to mention it to Detective Mailand.

  “What could your motive have been, Julia?”

  Julia cocked her head to one side. “I’m guessing Grayson Pike came to you with a story about having discovered the location of the item.”

  Blake didn’t respond, but the sudden widening of his eyes gave him away.

  The uniformed chauffeur was approaching. Celine held up her forefinger—silently asking him to stay put. He nodded to indicate he understood and kept his distance.

  “Grayson wanted the reward money, didn’t he?” Julia continued softly. “He wouldn’t have jeopardized his chances of getting it. And the reward for bringing back the Vermeer would be even greater.

  “So why would he have brought the mob to Dirck Thins’ bar? The answer is, he wouldn’t? The leak must have come from somewhere else.”

  Julia’s insinuation that the source of the leak stood right in front of them was so thinly veiled, it took Celine by surprise when the special agent agreed with her friend’s assessment.

  “That’s why I’m here,” he responded with a smile. “To ensure the item does actually find its way back to where it belongs.” The smile grew wider. “We wouldn’t want to hear that you were unfortunately waylaid, now, would we?”

  His innuendo was even more plainly voiced than Julia’s had been. But his words had unexpectedly illuminated the path for Celine. There was just one thing she needed to clear up.

  “Special Agent Markham, you haven’t answered my question: How did you know the item”—she was using their euphemism for the finial—“was in our possession?”

  He turned to her—his gray eyes cold. “From Penny Hoskins, the Director of the Gardner Museum. I understand”—his gaze returned to Julia—“that you did at least inform her of its discovery.”

  “Fine, we’ll go with you.” Celine turned to Julia. “I have no objection to that.”

  “Why?” Julia looked both outraged and betrayed. “The Gardner’s sent a car and—”

  “And we’ll dismiss it,” Celine said firmly. She turned to Blake. “I do fear we might be attacked. If it does happen, I’d prefer that a federal agent be a witness to the crime. Someone who’s armed and able to protect us.

  “We don’t accept the Gardner’s car,” she explained to Julia, “for the same reason that we weren’t going to take a cab. The strong potential for drawing an innocent bystander into the fray.

  “I assume,” she went on, gaze shifting back to Blake, “that you’re armed and that the car is armored.”

  He gave her a curt nod. “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  Chapter Forty

  The chauffeur from the Gardner had at first been startled when Celine dismissed him. But when she’d cut through his objections, a flicker of displeasure had crossed his features.

  “As you wish, ma’am,” he’d said coldly.

  His reaction had taken Celine by surprise and annoyed her no end. But Julia had intervened before Celine could say anything. “Please thank Ms. Hoskins on our behalf,” the former fed gracefully interjected. “We’ll be with her very shortly—”

  “They’ll be accompanying me.” Blake held out his badge. “Special Agent Blake Markham. Ms. Hoskins knows who I am.”

  He ushered them out of the airport. “The sooner we get out of here the better.”

  Celine found herself agreeing as she hurried after him. The image of the Lady had faded, but she could sense they weren’t completely out of danger. Not while they still lingered at the airport.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Julia hissed into her ear. “If the finial doesn’t reach its destination—”

  “It will,” Celine said, more confident in her decision now that they’d emerged from the arrivals lounge. A black Chevrolet Suburban slid up to the curb alongside them and purred to a stop. Blake held open the door.

  The interior was more spacious than a Tahoe, but Celine was still partly miffed—and partly amused—to find herself sitting between Julia and Blake.

  She pulled the seatbelt over her shoulder, struggling to find the slot for the buckle. “Feels like an outing with Mom and Dad,” she muttered.

  Blake glanced down at her. “Sorry about that. But you’ll be safer between us.”

  He turned to Julia. “You should probably call Penny and tell her we’re on our way. Knowing her, she’s not going to be too pleased about your dismissing the car she sent.”

  “Already on it,” Julia responded curtly. She clutched her phone to her ear.

  “Hello, Penny!” She launched into her apology. “What!” Her blue eyes had widened. “Oh, I see . . . No, no. Nothing to worry about, we’re on our way.” She hung up.

  Her palm—fingers still gripping her phone—dropped to her lap.

  “What is it?” Celine ventured after several minutes’ of silence had elapsed and the shell-shocked expression on Julia’s face had yet to subside.

  Julia’s head swiveled slowly to face her. “The Gardner didn’t send a car for us.”

  “You mean—”

  Julia nodded. “Yes. That was the attempt you feared. I ought to have realized something was fishy. I never requested a car. And Penny had no way of knowing when exactly we were arriving. I didn’t share our arrival time with her.”

  The former fed hadn’t shared those details with the FBI either. But it was one thing, Celine realized, for the FBI with all its resources to discover those details. Quite another for Penny Hoskins or anyone else to have come by them.

  Julia’s eyes shifted to Blake, her expression grim. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Blake stared back at her. “I just don’t believe it,” he snapped, but Celine could sense he was worri
ed.

  “Did you mention our arrival to anyone?” she asked.

  “SAC wanted a report,” he muttered.

  “Special Agent-in-Charge,” Julia explained for Celine’s benefit. “He heads the Boston bureau.”

  “Then that’s where the leak came from.” Celine couldn’t have explained how she knew that, but as soon as the words fell out of her mouth, she was certain she was right.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Julia and Blake snapped simultaneously.

  “An intern,” Celine uttered the words as they flashed across her mind. “Is there an intern?”

  “No . . .” Blake began to say, then his face turned pale. “Oh God! Mary. She’s the intern who took Dirck’s initial tip about the Vermeer, took the initiative to trace the call, and—”

  “Immediately informed her boss on the dark side,” Julia commented drily. “When was she moved up to the SAC’s office?”

  “Shortly after her work on that tip. I can’t believe—” Blake stopped himself, grabbed his phone, and barked out a few instructions. He waited a few minutes, his expression earnest. Then his face fell.

  “Oh great!” he said—and hung up.

  “She didn’t show up to work today,” he informed them. “Nothing about her checks out. The name so generic, she could be anyone. The address is fake. She’s gone—like a fart in the wind,” he concluded bitterly.

  “Doesn’t matter. We still have the finial.” Celine was determined to look on the bright side. Then as another thought occurred to her, she turned toward Blake. “I’m curious—why didn’t you let the SAC know you were planning to meet us at the airport?”

  “It was . . . uhmm. . .” he hesitated, a faint trace of red suffusing his cheeks.

  “A spur-of-the-moment decision,” Julia guessed. “To ensure the FBI had a presence at the Gardner when one of its lost pieces was returned. Even though you had nothing to do with its recovery.”

  “Something like that,” Blake mumbled.

  Celine found herself reaching out and squeezing his hand—now, why had she done that? It was inexplicable. Special Agent Markham was a grown man not a youngling in need of reassurance.

  “We’re both glad you did,” she informed him. “You were instrumental in saving us—and the finial. Julia and I were on the verge of taking that car. I thought it was a Godsend when I saw that guy holding up a placard with our names on it.”

  The memory made her shudder. She’d made the right decision. But what if she’d been swayed by Julia’s hostility toward a former colleague? What if . . . ?

  “Way to give a man credit, Celine.” Julia rolled her eyes. “And for something he had no idea he was even doing.”

  The Suburban sped through Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor—“We’re ninety feet underwater,” Julia informed Celine, her voice sounding hollow—and then emerged onto the 90 West.

  “Seaport’s to our right.” Julia seemed determined to make what was essentially a business trip seem like a tourist visit.

  Celine started to say she knew where Seaport was but stopped herself just in time. She wasn’t ready to explain how she’d come by that knowledge just yet. But Julia’s remark had dislodged a memory or two and these in turn had raised questions—issues that only one person could clear up.

  “We’ll need to see Annabelle Curtis.” She’d kept her voice low, but Blake had overheard and turned sharply toward her.

  “Why?” The single word uttered so forcefully, it sounded like the explosive report of a gun.

  She wasn’t prepared for the question either, and it took several seconds before she was able to frame a response.

  “She was close to Simon”—Celine’s voice choked as she uttered the name—“Simon Underwood.”

  “I understand.” Blake dropped the matter as abruptly as he’d brought it up.

  “And I want to know if she recognizes the finial,” Celine softly added.

  “I beg your pardon!” Blake’s torso twisted around to face her.

  Celine felt herself squirming under his piercing gaze. He likes Annabelle, she thought. Respects her even.

  “Celine has psychic abilities,” Julia intervened before the silence could grow any more uncomfortable. “Her visions suggest the finial was intended for Annabelle.”

  “What visions?” Blake demanded. His gray eyes—darkening in anger—bore through Celine.

  He couldn’t have been more outraged, Celine thought, if she’d put forward the bizarre notion that it was his sister who was the intended recipient of the finial. She provided her explanation, attempting to gently guide him to her conclusions.

  “There’s also the fact,” Julia added once she’d finished, “that Dirck never mentioned the existence of the finial when he called in his tip.”

  The former fed inhaled deeply as though forced to confront a difficult truth. “He may, I suppose, have been concerned that the FBI had a mole within its ranks—someone who’d instantly deduce that the existence of the finial meant that his friend Duarte, at least, was still alive. I think it’s safe to conclude that John Mechelen was, in fact, Earl Bramer—and he died some months back.”

  “Or Dirck had no idea what he had,” Blake said. Celine couldn’t understand why the special agent was giving Dirck the benefit of the doubt. But she could contain herself no longer.

  “I’m pretty sure Dirck knew exactly what he had,” she burst out.

  “Celine!” Julia gently touched her arm.

  Celine shrugged her hand off as the Suburban slowed smoothly to a halt in front of a large square, steel-and-grass structure.

  “Let me get out. It’s stifling in here.”

  So this was the Gardner, she thought as she stood on the sidewalk. She’d barely had time to take in the new wing and the art installation on the façade—a rough, almost crude, line drawing in blue of a fish—when she found herself gazing at the yellow exterior of the museum as it had appeared on a dark night decades ago.

  There’d been a hatchback parked on Palace Road—directly behind Evans where they were now—on the night of March 17, 1990.

  “The truck was on Tetlow in the rear of the museum,” she said as the images receded.

  “What truck?” The question erupted from the mouths of her law enforcement companions at the same time.

  Celine closed her eyes, the bile rising within her yet again.

  “The truck that transported most of the art to Seaport,” she said.

  She opened her eyes and met Julia’s gaze straight on and elaborated:

  “The truck Dirck was driving.”

  Celine Skye’s revelation hadn’t been as much of a bombshell to Blake as it had for Julia. He followed them into the lobby, gazing out at the tall lacebark elms and witch hazels of the Lynch Garden as his companions approached the admissions desk.

  He’d initially been skeptical of the woman’s abilities, barely able to refrain from an involuntary eye-roll when Julia mentioned them to him. But he was compelled to admit: she was pretty good.

  But Blake could tell that even Celine Skye hadn’t put it all together. Yes, Dirck Thins had been involved in the Gardner heist. Blake had come to that conclusion shortly after his last conversation with Penny Hoskins.

  But the special agent had uncovered far worse. He’d hesitated to reveal every last detail, however. Despite Julia needling him when he’d agreed with Celine.

  “You’re trying to say Dirck Thins returned from Canada, making his first stop at Boston to join forces with the mob on an art heist?” Julia’s ponytail had flicked from side to side as she shook her head. “And there was no record of his presence here?”

  “Returned from Canada?” Celine’s head had pivoted from Julia’s to Blake’s, but neither agent had cared to elaborate any further.

  It had taken Blake a good measure of self-control not to blurt out the key detail he held. But one glance at Celine’s face had convinced him the young woman was neither psychologically nor emotionally ready to face the truth about her employe
r.

  He didn’t know much about the occult, but he wondered if Celine’s emotional state was blocking her intuition—providing tantalizing half-truths.

  He could tell Julia felt the same way he did. It didn’t take a psychic to sense that his former colleague had shared none of the details she’d dug up about Dirck Thins with her young friend.

  “She’ll have to face the truth someday,” he said to himself, his gaze lingering upon Celine’s slender, erect back. She looked so fragile, so young.

  Annabelle would have to face the truth as well, but Blake was convinced she could handle it.

  “She’s waiting for us.” Celine looked over her shoulder and gave him a smile. “Fourth floor.”

  He smiled back. “Up we go, then.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Penny Hoskins, Director of the Gardner Museum, was waiting for them in a spacious office in the new wing designed by Renzo Piano. The tastefully displayed floral arrangements and lush potted plants on their way up had helped Celine relax.

  She took in the Director’s beautifully appointed office, noticing that it afforded an expansive view of Evans Way Park just across the street.

  “Oh, there you are!” Hoskins rose—a slim woman in her fifties with gray shoulder-length hair framing her classically beautiful features in a bob. “I hope you enjoyed our art installation—Blue on Blue. Put together by our artist-in-residence. Fabulous, isn’t it?”

  Her green-blue eyes homed in like a pigeon on Celine’s face.

  “Absolutely,” Celine tactfully agreed, although the rough line drawing, left uncolored on a plain white background, hadn’t much appealed to her.

  Hoskins’ eyes traveled toward Julia, and her face took on a rueful expression. “I’m sorry about all that confusion with the car. I didn’t realize you were expecting to be met . . .” her fluty voice tapered breathlessly off.

  “We weren’t,” Julia assured her quickly, providing a brief account of their encounter at the airport.