Moving Target

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “You’ve never forgiven Carson for taking the job you wanted, have you?” Erik asked.

  “The taller they are, the shorter their business,” Larry retorted.

  “You just keep telling yourself that.”

  Erik ripped off his headset, grabbed the envelope with the copies from pages of the Book of the Learned, and jumped out before he could hear Larry’s undoubtedly raw reply. Marines swore like the sailors they were supposed to be, even when they were helicopter pilots.

  Larry got even by taking off with enough force to rock Erik on his big feet.

  Niall waited until the dust settled before he walked up. He was dressed the way Erik was, comfortable jeans, comfortable shoes, and a clean long-sleeved dress shirt rolled up to the elbows. If he had worn a jacket this morning, it was hanging over the back of a chair somewhere.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, boyo?” Niall asked, shaking Erik’s hand. “Never piss off a short pilot.”

  “Or a tall one, for that matter. What are you doing here? Have you joined the Fuzzy side?”

  “Somebody has to keep the dainty little darlings alive.”

  Erik cocked his head and looked in Niall’s blue-green eyes. “Something up?”

  “I wish. Things get any quieter here and I’ll fall into a coma.”

  “What about that Old Master you were guarding in one of the clean rooms?” Erik asked, referring to the special rooms where potential buyers, sellers, and other interested parties met to discuss business. It was one of Rarities Unlimited’s most popular services—a safe, neutral place to view priceless pieces of art.

  “The Van Dyck?” Niall shrugged. “It went back to its original owners.”

  “Too bad.”

  Niall grinned. “Not really. Patrick said the paint on the bastard was barely dry.”

  Patrick was Patrick Marquette, who vetted a lot of paintings for Rarities Unlimited.

  “There’s one born every minute,” Erik said ironically.

  “Optimist. I’m thinking it’s more like a sucker born every second.”

  “Lots of business for you.”

  “Idiots. They never figure out that if it sounds too good to be true, it damn well is a lie.”

  Niall opened a glass door. It was bulletproof, like every other piece of exterior glass—and most interior glass—on the premises of Rarities Unlimited. Dana had fought the whole idea until some crackpot with a grudge and a pistol went hunting a former girlfriend who was working part-time for Rarities. Niall had been cut up by flying glass before he disarmed the man. The bulletproof glass was installed a week later. Niall had never mentioned it. Neither had Dana.

  “What about those color copies the Charters woman sent you?” Niall asked. He glanced at the large envelope. “Do you have them with you?”

  Erik nodded.

  “Still fancy them?” Niall asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll let Dana tell you.”

  Erik lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more.

  Dana was waiting in her office, which had a garden view on one side and a city view on the other. When the two men walked in, she glanced at her elegant gold watch.

  “Don’t blame me,” Erik said. “Air traffic in L.A. is almost as fouled up as the freeways.”

  “You were the one off chasing goats.”

  “Sheep,” Erik corrected patiently.

  “Whatever,” Dana said, dismissing the subject. “They all have fur.”

  “Wool, actually,” Erik said, deadpan.

  Niall snickered.

  She glanced over at Niall with soft, dark eyes. “Kill him.”

  “Before or after he talks to our clients?” Niall asked.

  “Bloody hell,” she muttered.

  “I love you, too,” Erik said.

  She grimaced. “What do you know about Norman Warrick?”

  Erik was accustomed to Dana’s lightning shifts of conversation. “More than you have time to hear.”

  “Is he as good as his reputation?” she asked.

  “Are we talking about his ability as an appraiser?”

  “I’m not vetting his sexual skills or putting him up for sainthood,” she said impatiently. “Is he any good or is he coasting along on an old reputation?”

  “Last I heard his eyesight was good and his mind was intact. That puts him right up there with the world’s top appraisers of illuminated manuscripts in general, and fifteenth-century French manuscripts in particular.”

  “But not of twelfth-century Insular Celtic manuscripts?”

  “He’s as good as anyone else that comes to mind.”

  “What about you?”

  Erik looked hard at the petite brunette who appeared much too delicate to be as fierce as he knew she was. And as bright. “His reputation is international and long-standing. Mine is just getting to the point that my name is on the must-consult list for Insular Celtic manuscripts, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “What I want to know is will you be right or will he?” she asked bluntly.

  “Should be interesting to find out.”

  Niall laughed out loud. “You don’t belong with the Fuzzies, boyo.”

  “Stuff it,” Dana said quickly. “You’re not getting him.”

  “If I screw up,” Erik said to Niall, “I’m yours.”

  Dana shot Niall a lethal glance, pulled her maroon silk jacket into place over a pearl-gray sweater, smoothed her matching slacks into a clean line, and said, “Don’t screw up. You’re the only manuscript expert we have who speaks English.”

  With that, she walked out. The men followed her into a hallway lined with photos of some of their more spectacular finds. Erik’s personal favorite was a wall hanging that dated to twelfth-century Britain; the design was intricate to the point of dizziness, yet fascinating. Everyone saw something different in it. The priceless textile had been discovered in a flea market. Rarities had certified that the textile was genuine.

  Dana’s high heels clicked rhythmically on the tile floor. Though her stride was shorter than that of her companions, she didn’t hold them back. She moved the way she thought: quickly, confidently. Despite the fact that she was his boss, a decade older, and not interested in him sexually, Erik couldn’t help admiring the rhythmic, essentially female motion of her hips beneath the fitted silk jacket. She had a walk that would melt steel plate.

  “Watch where you’re going, boyo,” Niall said under his breath, “not where she’s been.”

  “Her view’s better.”

  “Shut it, children,” Dana said crisply. “It’s showtime.”

  Chapter 10

  Cleary, Garrison, and Paul were seated around a steel conference table that was big enough to comfortably seat eight. Steaming cups of coffee and plates of dainty pastries and biscotti told Dana that her assistant had been on the job.

  Dana introduced Erik to the clients. A glance told him that Cleary was expensively if unexceptionally dressed, her son likewise, and Paul less so. If Paul could afford a four-thousand-dollar suit and thousand-dollar loafers, he wasn’t wearing them today. His slightly graying hair was well cut. Garrison’s cut was better, just short of Hollywood flashy. Cleary’s hair was frosted, shoulder-length, and frothy, a style suited to someone her son’s age. But then, a lot of women in southern California’s body-conscious society dressed a generation or two younger than they were. Some of them even believed it.

  At a discreet signal from Dana, Niall sat where he usually did, in a chair with its back to the wall and its front facing the door.

  “Thank you for seeing us so promptly,” Paul said.

  Cleary gave Warrick’s head of security a look that said they were paying enough for the privilege of Dana’s company that they didn’t need to be polite about it. The yearly retainer the House of Warrick gave Rarities Unlimited only ensured a place on Rarities’ busy schedule; after that, expenses on specific assignments someti
mes piled up rapidly. But then, so did the results.

  “Our pleasure,” Dana said briskly. “You said it was urgent.”

  Garrison examined the toes of his expensive shoes. The expression on his handsome face said that he had lost an argument on the subject of just how urgent this business was.

  “Mr. Warrick,” Cleary said, “insisted the matter be concluded as soon as possible.”

  Dana wasn’t surprised. A man leaning hard on his century mark didn’t have time to be patient. In any case, it wasn’t in Warrick’s nature to wait. The man should have been born an emperor, a god, or a czar. Tyranny came naturally to him.

  “A young woman sent copies of four pages from a purported illuminated manuscript for Mr. Warrick’s appraisal,” Cleary said stiffly.

  “Purported?” Erik asked.

  Cleary gave him an impatient glance. “You heard correctly. Purported. May I continue?”

  “Of course,” he murmured. Apparently the old man wasn’t the only one who had a wide streak of impatience.

  Cleary took in a jerky breath. For a moment she ducked her head. Then she turned to Erik. “I’m sorry. This has been very upsetting. My father is, frankly, in the kind of fury that a man his age can’t afford. For the sake of his health, this must be settled immediately.”

  “Exactly what is the problem?” Erik asked.

  “That woman tried to sell him fake pages.”

  Erik waited. When Cleary didn’t say any more, he said carefully, “Surely that has happened before.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Cleary looked at her manicure as though seeing it for the first time. Her expression said she didn’t like what she saw. “Mr. Warrick—my father—has been a target for such people from time to time.”

  “It adds to my collection,” Garrison said, smiling.

  Cleary sighed. “My son collects fakes. He insists they’re art in their own right.”

  “When you think of it,” he said, leaning forward, “there’s no difference between well executed—”

  “Not now,” his mother interrupted. “This is no time for one of your lectures on reality, expectation, and post-postmodernism.”

  He smiled in amusement at himself. “Sorry. I do get carried away. I’d love to have Serena’s pages for my collection. Not at the price she’s asking, of course. The thing about fakes is that they’re cheaper, once they’re uncovered.”

  “You want us to prove the pages are fraudulent so that you can buy them at a good price?” Erik asked neutrally.

  “No proof required,” Garrison said. “Granddad had a fit when he saw them. He hates frauds the way some people hate snakes. A phobia, you know.”

  “One you don’t share,” Erik said.

  “Nope.” Garrison grinned. “I think the Spanish Forger is one of the great artists of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.”

  Erik’s bronze eyebrows lifted. He had a fondness for the Spanish Forger, too, but only because the miniatures were painted on “erased” vellum. Some of those pages had come from the Book of the Learned. But all he said aloud was, “Must make for some loud discussions at home.”

  Garrison laughed. “Are you kidding? He’d blow something vital. I don’t talk about my hobby at home.”

  “Since you’re certain the pages are fraudulent, why do you need Rarities?” Erik asked.

  “Granddad,” Garrison said simply. “He said he wanted them off the street. We can’t talk him out of it.”

  “Our services don’t run to confiscation,” Niall said.

  Cleary started as though she had forgotten Niall was in the room. It would have been easy to do. For a big, well-built man, Niall could take up very little space when he wanted to.

  “We don’t want anything that drastic,” Paul said with a smile. “We were trying to buy the pages when Ms. Charters became irritated at Mr. Warrick’s abrupt manner and left. We called her house repeatedly, but there wasn’t any answer. We decided to turn the whole thing over to you.”

  Niall glanced at Dana.

  “Then you want Rarities to find Ms. Charters and negotiate on your behalf for the purchase of the pages Ms. Charters brought to you,” Dana said. “Is that correct?”

  “Correct,” Cleary said. She glanced at Niall. “I believe that is within the company’s purview.”

  “ ‘Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect,’ “ Niall said, quoting the company motto.

  “Precisely,” Dana said. “What is the upper limit of Mr. Warrick’s price range for the pages?”

  “He didn’t mention one,” Paul said before Cleary could. “He was really quite furious.”

  “A million dollars’ worth of mad?” Erik asked dryly.

  “Two million. Three. Whatever it takes.” Cleary’s voice was clipped. “This isn’t business. This is a matter of life and death. My father’s.”

  Chapter 11

  Dana waited until she heard the helicopter taking off to return Cleary Warrick Montclair and her escorts to Palm Desert. Only when she was certain that the chopper was airborne did she reach for the envelope Erik had brought with him.

  “Does this mean I’m walking home?” he asked, watching the aircraft make a wide swing past a bank of windows.

  “By the time Larry gets back, I might be finished with you,” she said, laying out the color copies.

  “Sounds ominous,” Erik commented to Niall.

  He grunted. “You still fancy those pages?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Dana asked, looking at them. “The copies are execrable but it looks like the pages themselves might be quite beautiful.”

  “So was the Spanish Forger’s work,” Erik pointed out.

  “Who was he?” Niall asked.

  “Could have been a she. Nobody knows.” Erik shrugged. “The Spanish Forger’s specialty was erasing genuinely old vellum and then painting and selling miniatures that were supposedly taken from old illustrated manuscripts.”

  “Erasing? How?” Niall asked.

  “Lots of ways. Sometimes he scraped the old words off and painted a miniature on the ‘erased’ vellum. Sometimes he cut out a rectangular piece of the undecorated margin of an old choir book and painted a highly decorated capital letter on the scrap. The result looked like it had been cut from an old Book of Hours or Psalter.”

  “What good was just a capital letter?” Niall asked.

  “There was a Victorian craze for alphabet books whose letters were made up entirely of elaborate capitals that had been cut out of old manuscripts.”

  Dana winced. “You mean they would take something as elegant as this and butcher it for the pretty letter?”

  Erik looked at the page she had pointed to. It took a good eye and a better imagination to see the clean, balanced columns of calligraphy that filled the page. The only relief was in a palm-sized capital T made of intertwined dragons whose eyes, claws, and scales were probably picked out in gold foil; the copy showed the color more as a sickly bronze. As was customary in illustrated manuscripts, a heavily decorated and gilded capital letter signaled the beginning of an important passage: The thought that I will see her drives me . . .

  The idea that Erik the Learned might have arranged a meeting with his mysterious sorceress/lover/enemy intrigued his modern namesake. The words vibrated with emotion, but there was no hint as to whether such a meeting was in the past, in the future, or only in the scribe’s mind.

  “That’s exactly what the forgers did,” Erik said to Dana. “They couldn’t read the old Latin, much less the common language of the day. Few people could, and that included the folks buying the illustrated manuscripts. Even fewer people could read the vulgate commentary between the lines and in the margins.”

  “Vulgar comments?” Niall asked, looking interested for the first time.

  Dana gave him a black glance that could have left holes in two-inch steel plate.

  “Vulgate,” Erik said. “Same root. Much the same meaning. Common or coarse. Latin was the language of education and writing. English was considere
d a vulgar tongue.”

  “Still can be,” Niall said.

  “In your mouth, certainly,” Dana said.

  “Stop, now, you’re hurting my Fuzzy feelings,” Niall said.

  “I’d have to find them, first.”

  “Anytime you want to go looking, luv. Any time at all.”

  Her lips fought a smile. She lost. One of the things she liked about Niall was that he wasn’t a bit intimidated by her sharp tongue and even sharper mind. Just as she wasn’t intimidated by his intelligence, strength, and lethal skills. From time to time they fought like hell on fire, but they respected each other just as fiercely.

  “You were saying . . . ?” Niall invited Erik.

  “Alphabet books,” prompted Dana.

  Erik didn’t even blink. He was accustomed to the freewheeling conversations that passed for business meetings at Rarities Unlimited. “At the end of the nineteenth century, when self-made men like J. Pierpont Morgan were buying art by the carload to shore up their claim to social legitimacy, illustrated manuscripts in whole or in tiny parts became all the rage. Morgan bought them by the pound. Quite a few of them were compliments of the Spanish Forger.”

  “You mean the old robber baron bought a lot of frauds?” Dana asked, smiling at the idea.

  “He was buying what was available on the market at the time. The Spanish Forger was a big part of that market. Interesting thing is, today the work of the Spanish Forger is collectible in its own right. He or she was an artist. He couldn’t read Latin—the miniatures didn’t match the sense of whatever words survived on the page—but the images themselves were beautiful.”

  “Then it’s hardly something to have a heart attack over, is it?” Niall muttered. “A rose by any other name still has thorns. If Warrick had been suckered by these,” he said, waving at the pages, “then I could understand him popping a vessel over them. But he wasn’t suckered. So what is he really after?”