“She offered up those details or did you look her up after your call?” Henrietta asked.
“Offered them. I didn’t have time to look her up. She wants to talk to me about forgeries. No details. I was up for a trip to London, and we agreed on meeting this evening. I decided to bundle this trip with some other business and meet friends for a pint or two.”
Oliver didn’t know if he fell into either category, but Wendell had asked if he’d be at Claridge’s tonight, presumably with Henrietta. “I don’t know Graham Blackwood personally,” he said. “But I’m familiar with his name. He has his own foreign policy think tank these days. It’s small and uncontroversial—more to keep him busy than anything else, I suspect. His father was a keen investor who did well in the tech tool-up in the 1990s, adding to the already healthy Blackwood fortune.”
“It’s only Verity who wants to meet with you?” Henrietta asked. “Alone? Why? Why is she staying here instead of meeting you in Oxford? Where’s her husband?”
Wendell drank more water, looking tired. He addressed Henrietta. “Verity said she got in from Boston this morning. Graham stayed behind at the last minute. She said she’d stay in London tonight. She thought that would be easier for me. I recommended Claridge’s since I know it’s one of Oliver’s favorites.”
“I see,” was all Henrietta said. Oliver made no comment. He noticed she had only a few sips left of her Scotch. He’d approved her choice of Auchentoshan Three Wood. Of course, she didn’t need or seek his approval, another of her appealing qualities.
He had a long list of things he liked about Henrietta Balfour.
The elegant hotel bar was quiet tonight, atmospheric, perfect for a meeting between an octogenarian art detective, an MI5 agent and an art thief. Oliver shook off any sense of romanticism, a bad habit, he knew, when he was trying to distance himself from unpleasant emotions. Regret, guilt, pride, embarrassment. Wendell’s furrowed brow and Henrietta’s serious mood—no thought of Thor movies now, clearly—confirmed to Oliver that he wasn’t alone in his unease.
“Verity mentioned she suffers from terrible jet lag,” Wendell added. “I tried ringing her room but she didn’t answer. She could have fallen asleep. She was eager to meet when we spoke this morning—I’ve been debating using the key, seeing if that rouses her. I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I figured we’d get to details when we met.”
Oliver frowned. “Do you think she went out?”
“I have no idea. I don’t like the feel of this. It’s not as if I walked a couple of blocks or took a taxi for this meeting. I flew.” Wendell rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, lined, bony, veins bulging. “I’ve never had much trouble with jet lag but a lot of people do.”
“Yes,” Henrietta said. “However, I can understand your concern.”
“What about you, Wendell—do you have a place to stay tonight?” Oliver asked. “You’re welcome to the guest room at my apartment. Henrietta has a room here herself.”
“She does? I thought you two were an item.”
“That’s complicated and personal,” she said, answering before Oliver could get in a word, her smile taking any edge off her words.
“I see. Hint taken.” Wendell turned to Oliver. “I’d be pleased to bunk in your guest room. Did you leave your puppy at the farm?”
“Happily, yes. He’s incorrigible without Martin, I’m afraid. Martin wants me to be the alpha dog with Alfred, but it’s too late. Martin is obsessed with the idea that I need a dog. A companion. But I have Henrietta as a companion and...” Oliver stopped himself and winced. “Oh, that didn’t come out right at all.”
Fortunately, Henrietta burst into laughter, her eyes bright and filled with humor as she winked at Wendell. “We’re still working on Oliver’s people skills.”
“The point is, Alfred’s not at the apartment,” Oliver said. “A good thing because he’d have peed on all the walls by now.”
“My kind of dog,” Wendell said.
Henrietta started to rise. “Shall we look in on Mrs. Blackwood?”
* * *
They took the sweeping main staircase to Verity Blackwood’s second-floor room, Henrietta in the lead. If there was any trouble, Oliver would happily defer to her with any hotel staff, too. She didn’t go at her usual breakneck speed, perhaps because Wendell Sharpe was in his eighties and not his thirties. He’d insisted he’d be fine, of course, and didn’t look winded when they paused at the stop of the stairs. Henrietta stood back, allowing him to pass since he was the one with Verity’s room number and key.
Wendell knocked on the appropriate door. “Mrs. Blackwood? It’s Wendell Sharpe. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I want to be sure you’re all right.”
They waited in silence but there was no response.
“Hand me the key,” Henrietta said. “If any of us gets in trouble, let it be me.”
Wendell didn’t argue and handed her the key. If the door was locked from the inside, a standard, extra measure of security, they would ask the hotel to check on her—but it wasn’t, and they went in.
A single floor lamp was lit in the living area of the beautifully appointed art-deco suite. A suite was an indulgence for a solo occupant but one the Blackwoods could well afford. Oliver, hardly a pauper, would have happily settled for a more modest room to sleep off jet lag. Then again, he wouldn’t have been meeting with a renowned private art detective, as had been Mrs. Blackwood’s plan.
Henrietta stopped abruptly in the open doorway to the bedroom and held up a hand. “Allow me.”
Oliver acquiesced without comment. He didn’t want her thinking she could bark orders at him just because she was MI5, but as she tiptoed into the bedroom, he realized her status as an intelligence officer wasn’t what had prompted her decisive order. She was a woman looking in on another woman. He suspected Wendell had the same thought as he, too, came to a halt. Verity Blackwood lay facedown on the bed, her yellow-blond hair tangled and matted from what Oliver guessed was sweat, spit and possibly vomit. She wore black yoga pants and a white tunic, twisted and bunched up, and her feet were bare, her toenails painted a bright coral.
Dead to the world. Had she taken a sleeping pill?
Henrietta eased toward the prone woman. “Mrs. Blackwood? My name is Henrietta Balfour. I’m here with Wendell Sharpe. We were concerned about you and—” She stopped, gasping. “Bloody hell.”
Oliver sprang forward, given her shocked tone. “What is it?”
Henrietta turned to him. “We need an ambulance here at once.”
“Henrietta—”
“Now, Oliver.”
He grabbed a house phone and rang the front desk. Wendell followed Henrietta into the bedroom and switched on a bedside lamp. “Oh, dear God. Oliver...”
“I see.”
Oliver saw now that Verity Blackwood appeared unconscious, and if she was breathing at all, it was dangerously shallow. Henrietta checked Verity’s wrist. “She has a faint pulse but at least there is one.” She pulled up one of the motionless woman’s eyelids and let it close again. “Pinpoint pupils.” She stood straight. “She’s overdosed.”
“But she’s alive?” Wendell asked.
“Barely. I’m sure it’s an opioid overdose. I don’t know if it’s too late for naloxone, but she won’t make it unless help gets here fast. I’ll do what I can until then.”
Oliver frowned, phone in hand. “You’ll do—”
“It’s not my first overdose,” she said, climbing onto the bed. “I need to do rescue breathing.”
Verity’s lips and fingernails had turned blue. Oliver shuddered, but a front desk clerk answered his call. He provided a clear, concise description of the situation. The clerk promised to phone an ambulance and send up hotel staff who could help.
Henrietta got about the job, pinching Verity’s nose and then covering the dying woman’s mouth with her own
and breathing into it. No hesitation—Henrietta could waffle about flower borders, but Oliver was impressed with her decisive action now, with a woman’s life at stake.
He looked around the bedroom and noticed an herbal medicine bottle on the bedside table. He didn’t touch it. The label stated the contents were micronutrients, vitamins and minerals ideal for stress relief.
Wendell nodded to the bottle. “It might be snake oil, but it’s not what caused the overdose.”
A near-empty glass of red wine stood next to the bottle. Oliver was no expert, but if Verity Blackwood had ingested some sort of opioid, alcohol would exacerbate the depressant effects of the powerful drug. Had she known what she was doing? Had she hidden opioid tablets in the herb bottle and planned to get high—or had she planned to kill herself? Was this a suicide attempt?
Had she wanted Wendell Sharpe to find her body?
Wendell walked over to the open bathroom door. “I don’t see a syringe. I’d guess she took pills.”
“Did she sound depressed when she spoke with you?” Oliver asked.
“Not at all. She wanted to meet with me as soon as possible. She didn’t want to wait. She said she’d come to Dublin if I couldn’t get to London. She sounded impatient more than anything else.”
Oliver glanced at the woman, still not responding to Henrietta’s rescue breathing. “How did she get your number?”
Wendell hesitated a fraction of a second. “I don’t know. I figured I’d ask when I saw her.” He paused, staring at his would-be client. “I wonder if I should call Lucas before the cops get here.”
Lucas Sharpe was Wendell’s grandson and the executive director of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery in Heron’s Cove, Maine. Oliver didn’t know him well. He was better acquainted with Wendell, the company’s founder, who’d run a Dublin office since the death of his wife sixteen years ago.
“And Emma?” Oliver asked.
“She is the cops.”
Oliver hadn’t considered law enforcement would need to get involved, but he supposed they’d have to, given the circumstances. If Verity indeed had arrived that morning from Boston—if she hadn’t lied—could she have secured her drugs there? How? Why? When? Those were reasonable questions, but Oliver would let Wendell and Henrietta deal with the authorities on either side of the Atlantic.
Henrietta continued to perform rescue breathing, unflappable as she did what she could to administer basic life support to the dying woman. Oliver was well aware that as little as three to five minutes without oxygen to the brain could cause permanent damage, even death. Verity Blackwood hadn’t moved that he could see. He knew that opioids were a central nervous system depressant that decreased breathing.
He turned to Wendell. “Do you know how to reach Verity’s husband?”
“No idea.”
“But he didn’t fly back to London with her?”
“That’s what she said.”
Wendell stared at the woman he’d flown from Dublin to meet. Oliver could see the shock of finding her in such duress was affecting his elderly friend. Fortunately, two hotel staff members arrived, quickly followed by an ambulance crew—and, not surprisingly, the police.
The paramedics took over from Henrietta. She climbed off the bed, pushing back her hair. “I’m a garden designer in the Cotswolds,” she told a police officer without a twitch of disingenuousness. “Mr. York, Mr. Sharpe and I are friends. Mrs. Blackwood was late for a meeting with Mr. Sharpe, and we looked in on her.”
“What was the meeting about?” the officer asked.
“Art.” Again, Henrietta didn’t miss a beat. “Mr. Sharpe is a specialist in art recovery.”
“And Mr. York?”
“He’s a mythologist.”
Oliver supposed Henrietta’s smooth answers and demeanor—even after administering rescue breathing—were the result of her MI5 training and experience, or perhaps simply sitting on Freddy Balfour’s knee during her early childhood. She had an explanation at the ready for how she’d known what to do to help an overdose victim. Oliver didn’t hear the entire bit, but it went something like, “One knows these things nowadays, doesn’t one?”
The paramedics strapped Verity Blackwood to a stretcher. Her color had improved slightly, or perhaps it was the change in the angle of the light. She hadn’t regained consciousness.
“How are you holding up, my friend?” Oliver asked Wendell.
The old man stared at the woman he was to have met about forgeries. “I hope she makes it.”
It wasn’t an answer. Oliver clapped the older man on his shoulder. “She has a chance thanks to you.”
“Thanks to Henrietta. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“It’s hard to believe that just a few minutes ago we were discussing opera and Thor at the bar,” Oliver said.
Wendell offered the faintest of smiles. “What a pair you two are.”
Oliver was grateful to offer a moment of levity as Verity Blackwood was taken from her hotel suite.
The police, of course, wanted to interview her three rescuers.
Oliver had a feeling it would be a while before he could sneak in a call to Wendell’s FBI-agent granddaughter in Boston. Emma Sharpe might not need to know about a woman who’d suffered a drug overdose hours after arriving in London from Boston, but she would without question want to know that the woman had been about to meet with her elderly grandfather.
5
Boston, Massachusetts
Colin didn’t take an immediate dislike to Adalyn McDermott, but it was close. She struck him as spoiled, entitled, ungrateful and superior, making no secret tonight’s dinner with her mother and her mother’s friends hadn’t been her idea. On the other hand, her mother was late, and Colin couldn’t have said he’d have wanted to celebrate his twenty-first birthday with three FBI agents. Adalyn was in the bar with two friends and the Yankowskis when he and Emma arrived at the popular Back Bay restaurant on upscale Newbury Street. It was a hot Sunday evening after a Red Sox game, and everything was crowded.
Adalyn had on wrinkled wide-legged pants, a paint-stained lace top and flip-flops, her long hair pinned up haphazardly, its color a mix of mousy brown and pumpkin highlights. She was toying with the ice in her old-fashioned and griping about her mother to the two friends who’d stopped by to wish her a happy birthday but weren’t staying for dinner.
With Adalyn in no mood, Lucy Yankowski took on the role of gracious hostess and got Emma and Colin seated and their drinks ordered. Beer for Colin, chardonnay for Emma. Yank—Matt Yankowski—had a glass of whiskey in front of him. He looked as if he wanted to keep the bottle. He wasn’t big on social events, and he hated small talk. Lucy, however, could make anyone feel comfortable. They were in their early forties, Yank with touches of gray in his dark hair, in a light blue suit, Lucy dressed in chic but simple slim pants and a top that matched her brown eyes and pixie-cut dark hair.
She made introductions. Adalyn’s two friends were Jolie Romero, Adalyn’s employer, a local art conservationist in her fifties, and Rex Campbell, a client in his early thirties, if that. “We should get going,” Jolie said. She had short, spiky gray hair and blue eyes, and wore a brightly embroidered knee-length vest over a black top and pants.
“Give your mom our best,” Rex said, getting to his feet. He was dressed casually in expensive khakis and a navy polo shirt, his medium brown hair cut short. Hazel eyes, square jaw, fit-looking and clearly awkward.
“Are you sure you won’t join us for dinner?” Lucy asked.
“No, no, but thank you.” Jolie hoisted a large tote bag onto her shoulder. “Have a wonderful evening. I’m sure Tamara’s just running a bit late. Boston’s changed since she was in law school here. She probably mistimed things.”
Adalyn looked up from her drink. “I doubt that but thanks anyway.”
Jolie smiled without comment and fol
lowed Rex out of the bar. Adalyn watched them, her eyes shining with tears, but she sniffled them back. “I’ve called, texted and emailed. No answer, but I wouldn’t put it past my mother to turn off her phone and stand me up out of spite.”
Lucy looked taken aback. “Would she do something like that at your birthday dinner?”
Adalyn reddened and waved both hands as if to cancel out what she’d just said. “Sorry. I’m being unfair. I had a mimosa at brunch, and I sucked down half my old-fashioned too fast. Honestly, I have no idea what’s gotten into my mother.”
“Does she often run late?” Emma asked.
“Oh, yeah. All the time. She’s the ‘crazy-busy’ prosecutor. She’s always filled with apologies and excuses. Very important last-minute work, calls she couldn’t put off, emails she had to answer or the world would end. She never puts it that way.” Adalyn made a face. “Why don’t we take our table? I promise to cheer up.”
She sprang to her feet and grabbed the hostess to seat them at their table—which Tamara McDermott had reserved. Colin took a sip of his beer. “I’m suddenly wishing I stayed behind to clean the oven.”
“I’d have helped,” Yank said.
“Tamara didn’t give any indication she would blow off dinner when I saw her earlier,” Emma said. “I didn’t sense she was irritated with her daughter, either. She seemed eager for us all to have dinner tonight.”
Colin narrowed his gaze on her. She was steady, analytical and brilliant, and falling in love with her had been the best move of his life. Not that he’d thought about it. It’d just happened. “Are you worried?” he asked.
“Getting there.”
They joined Adalyn, Yank and Lucy at a table by a window in the main restaurant. There was an extra chair if Tamara showed up after all. Their waiter brought their drinks from the bar, but Colin switched to sparkling water. Emma and Yank did, too, a sign they were concerned about their AWOL federal prosecutor.
Adalyn tried calling her mother again. “Call me, Mom, please. Next is checking the emergency rooms, y’know?” She disconnected and set her phone on the table next to her. “Sometimes you can’t be subtle with my mother.”
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