Moving Target

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Irrelevant,” Dana said immediately. “People lie to themselves, much less to other people. If we had to know all of our clients’ motives before we acted, we would be lip-deep in stink. That’s why I made certain we were hired for a specific job: attempt to buy the pages for the House of Warrick. Why the Warricks want the pages is their problem.”

  “Until it becomes our problem,” Niall said.

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. If we get to it.” She gave him the kind of look that had shriveled lesser men. “At the moment, I don’t want your convoluted, paranoid military mind screwing up a simple, profitable assignment.”

  “Convoluted,” Niall said, savoring each syllable. “Is that a Fuzzy word for brilliant?”

  “What if the pages are real?” Erik asked quickly, heading off one of his bosses’ famous, furious slanging matches. Niall and Dana might consider them invigorating, but everyone else headed for the nearest exit.

  Dana swung toward Erik. “Are they?”

  “I won’t know until I see the originals, but if I had to put a bet down now, I’d say they’re real. The calligraphy certainly is right for the time. If the images match the text . . .” He shrugged. “Get me the originals. Then I’ll tell you if they’re fake or real.”

  “Bloody hell,” Dana said. “That might complicate things on our end. The House of Warrick thinks the pages are fake. They could go sideways on us if we insist the pages are real.”

  Then she was silent but for the movement of her fingertips on the conference table’s burnished maple surface. It wasn’t the random drumming of an impatient person but rather the intricate moves of someone who was accustomed to playing the flute.

  Erik waited.

  So did Niall. He might enjoy jerking Dana’s chain at every opportunity, but he had a profound respect for her intelligence. She was a Fuzzy by choice, not because she lacked the unflinching pragmatism to see the world as it really was.

  “If the pages are real, of course we protect them,” she said. “Our allegiance is to the art, not to the client. The House of Warrick knows it as well as we do. It’s in the contract they sign with Rarities Unlimited each year.”

  “Good,” Erik said simply.

  “Otherwise you were going to freelance this one, is that it?” Niall said.

  Erik nodded. “Serena Charters approached me, remember?”

  “Were you interested on general principles or personal ones?” Dana asked.

  “Both.”

  “Do you have a conflict with the client’s request?” she pressed.

  “I’d rather buy the pages for myself, but I can’t outbid the House of Warrick and I know it.” He shrugged. “Given that, I have no conflict with carrying out the client’s wishes.”

  “All right,” she said. “You’re on.”

  “I’ll need a complete background on Serena Charters,” Erik said. “And on the grandmother, too, since that’s where Serena says she got the pages.”

  “Grandmother’s name?” Niall asked.

  “All I know about Serena is that she lives here”—Erik handed over the cover letter that had come with the copies—“and she doesn’t answer that telephone number often enough to matter.”

  Niall’s winged eyebrows twitched but he said only “How long do I have?”

  “The usual,” Erik said. “Yesterday.”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised.” Niall stood and looked at his watch. “Is this one of Factoid’s telecommute days?”

  “He’s been coming in more often.” Dana smiled slyly. “He says that telecommuting isn’t as good as being in the flesh, so to speak.”

  “I like that boy’s ambition,” Niall said, heading for the door. Then he stopped and winked at Dana. “Good job he’s after Gretchen’s flesh, not yours. I’d hate to break every bone in his Fuzzy body.”

  “You break him, you replace him,” Dana said.

  “Gretchen isn’t my type. I prefer tiny little brunettes.”

  “I’m not tiny!”

  “Who said anything about you?”

  The door closed behind Niall.

  “Some day I’m going to kill that man,” Dana said thoughtfully.

  “How?”

  “In his bed.”

  “I doubt that he sleeps that soundly.”

  She smiled like a cat. “Did I mention sleeping?”

  Her fingertips began moving again as she stared at the bad color copies spread across the table. The possibility of jewel tones and the suggestion of graceful, intricate Celtic designs made her wish she could see the originals.

  “Fake or real, they’re really quite extraordinary,” she said finally. “When will you know?”

  “If they’re real?”

  She nodded.

  “Once I get my hands on them,” Erik said, “I’m going to take a long time deciding if they’re what they seem.”

  “Will it be that difficult?”

  He grinned. “No, but it will be that much fun.”

  Chapter 12

  PALM SPRINGS

  THURSDAY BEFORE NOON

  The Rarities helicopter dropped Erik off at the clean, uncluttered, and mostly uncovered Palm Springs airport. He passed up the dubious delights of airport food and drove to a little roach coach a mile away that served the kind of tacos that had claws in them. The chilies were as real as the tears they drew from his eyes.

  No sooner had he taken a bite than the pager vibrated against his waist.

  “Now what?” he muttered.

  He wiped his hands on a napkin that was smaller than the taco he was eating and almost as greasy, punched a button, and saw a number. He called it and waited. Six rings later, someone picked up.

  “McCoy. What do you want.” There was no question in the voice, simply a kind of irritable snarl.

  “You tell me,” Erik said. “You called my number.”

  “Minute.”

  Erik went back to eating. Factoid’s idea of a “minute” was notorious around Rarities. It came from the fact that McCoy wore his computer clipped to his belt, used a palm communications unit called a widget as a keyboard when it would have been impolite to address the computer verbally, and viewed various screens through special windows placed in the glasses he didn’t otherwise need. Factoid could be face-to-face with you and at the same time on the other side of the world having a conversation with one or more mainframes. To him, reality was a virtual construct.

  “Okay,” McCoy said. “What did you want?”

  “To find out why you called me.”

  “Oh. Right. I loaded what I’ve found so far under your access code.”

  “Usual place?”

  “Yeah. Rarities folder, today’s date as the file title.”

  “I’m renaming that file Book of the Learned as soon as we stop talking. All future info on this case should go there.”

  “Minute.”

  Holding the cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, Erik took the last few bites of taco, wiped his hands, and wished that his cell phone/computer could compute and talk at the same time. He had tried it once. The results had been unspeakable, but that hadn’t prevented Factoid from mentioning it endlessly.

  “Cool book!” Factoid said.

  “You’ve got the Book of the Learned on one of your databases?” Erik asked.

  “Just a few rumors. Want ’em?”

  Erik smiled. He had never been able to afford a full Rarities search. Dana or Niall would have given him one for free, but he hadn’t wanted to ask. The Book of the Learned was, after all, only a hobby. He wouldn’t admit that it had become an obsession, no matter how riveting and frankly medieval his dreams were. “Hell, yes, I want what you have.”

  “So where do I pour the chocolate syrup?”

  Erik blinked and said without hesitation, “In her shoe.”

  “Her shoe.”

  “Um” was all Erik could say without laughing out loud.

  “Jesus, it’s a wonder you ever get laid. Her shoe. I
’m checking my databases on that one.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “Shoe. Mother. You’re sick, North.”

  “It’s all that chocolate syrup.”

  Grinning, Erik punched out and went to the computing/Internet access side of his hand unit’s silicon brain.

  A few moments later he knew that Serena’s full name was Serena Lyn Charters, she was thirty-four, self-employed, owned a house in Leucadia, a five-year-old van, no outstanding or recent tickets, had registered a neutered male cat named Mr. Picky with a pet recovery service, never married, and used no computer that was plugged into anything McCoy could tap. Social Security number was still out of reach, but it shouldn’t take long. More information would come when Factoid cracked Serena’s bill-paying habits. The telephone bill was first. As soon as he found her mother’s name—especially her maiden name—he would go after credit and debit cards. Then it would be a piece of cake.

  Erik glanced at his watch. Quarter of one. He could read this in comfort at his home computer, or he could keep squinting at the unit’s small display.

  He kept squinting, haunted by the faded copies with their hints of a long-ago life written in a man’s slashing hand and introduced by two dragons, intertwined yet hostile. And he had no doubt the beasts were hostile rather than loving; he had managed to decipher a few more words.

  The thought that this time, this day . . . I will see her drives me . . . starving wolf to food.

  Though I know . . .

  God’s teeth, I was foolish. Why didn’t I see?

  Erik could fairly feel the rage and acceptance of his long-dead namesake. Then he blinked and saw the tiny readout rather than fragments and phrases that were almost a thousand years old, words that were seared on his memory as though he had once written them, felt them, lived them.

  With an impatient movement of his thumb, Erik scrolled down the screen for information that was more modern. A few moments was all it took to see that Serena’s grandmother had offered even less fertile ground for investigation than Serena herself. The grandmother’s full name was Ellis Weaver.

  Erik paused, frowning. Odd name for a woman. Must have been an old family name that they stuck on a girl when they ran out of boys.

  Ellis Weaver had no Social Security number. No work. No income. No retirement benefits. No pets. Nothing but a piece of land and a house out in the high desert that only Joshua trees cared about, because only Joshua trees were tough enough to survive there. The truck that had burned with the house was registered to Morton Hingham, her lawyer, in Palm Springs. She had no driver’s license. Birth date unknown. No savings account. One safe-deposit box. One dead daughter. One living granddaughter.

  One unsolved murder.

  Even for a preliminary search, that wasn’t much information. Factoid must be doing laps looking for more. Obviously Serena’s grandmother had led an unplugged, unwired life. Cash only, no credit cards, no checks, no use for any of the multitude of official programs designed to make life easier for the aged while various governments tracked everyone to the grave, giving benefits with one hand and collecting taxes with both.

  A warm breeze curled through the open car windows, bringing with it the faint herbal scent of the desert. The air was silky with sun and warmth. The sky was a radiant blue. The thought of going back and confining himself indoors with the requirements of calligraphy or illumination didn’t appeal to him right now. He needed something more physical to appease his restless mind and body.

  He scrolled back over Ellis Weaver’s records, noted her address, and decided to look around. Any place where someone had lived for nearly fifty years had to have some kind of information to offer about that person, some trace, some thing that would yield an insight into the woman who had apparently owned—and concealed—four incredibly intact pages from the Book of the Learned.

  Unless the whole thing was a story and Serena was exactly what Warrick had said she was, a woman out to make good money on bad art.

  As Erik turned on the engine and pulled out onto Bob Hope Drive, he realized he didn’t want Serena to be a fraud, because that would mean the pages from the Book of the Learned were fraudulent, too.

  He could live with the woman being a cheat, but he really wanted those pages to be real.

  Chapter 13

  EAST OF PALM SPRINGS

  THURSDAY NOON

  Serena knew there was nothing more she could do but watch the erratic breeze stir ashes across her grandmother’s abandoned hearth.

  It was hard to be here, to match past memories of warmth and safety with present destruction. The shoulder-high native stone walls were scorched and ruined. The wooden beams and roof that had been high enough to house a big loom beneath were less than charcoal. What had once been a stout wood door was nothing but a gap in the rock walls. The chimney stood alone, a tall memorial to the fire that had consumed everything but stone and the single ancient strip of textile that had miraculously survived.

  That fragment haunted and compelled Serena in a way she couldn’t describe. She still wore the cloth draped around her neck and tucked inside her blouse. The textile was quite wonderful—cool when she was warm, warm when she was cool, always kitten-soft and appealing to her skin.

  The pages haunted and compelled her in a different way, like her dreams. Each time she studied the leaves they felt deeply familiar. There was a sense of relationship, of belonging, that was both eerie and inescapable. She wondered if it had been like that for her grandmother, if she somehow had been enthralled by the past, unable to move, caught by lives she had never lived yet knew too well to deny.

  If I fail and you decide to go after your heritage, remember me when I was your age. Think like the woman I was then.

  Even though the temperature was almost eighty, Serena rubbed the gooseflesh that roughened her arms. She didn’t know precisely what her grandmother had meant by that statement—how could she think like someone she had never known as a young woman?—but there was no mistaking the warning that followed.

  She just wondered if the warning had to do with madness or sudden death.

  Trust no man with your heritage. Your life depends on it.

  Shivering, she couldn’t help thinking that the sheriff was wrong, that Lisbeth’s death had been premeditated murder rather than a random violent act. If so, sending out copies to two appraisers who happened to be men was rather like putting raw meat in front of hungry wolves.

  Forgery is a dangerous art.

  Maybe the pages locked in the storage compartment of her van were extraordinary, elaborate, dangerous lies, lies that had ultimately killed her grandmother. Was the granddaughter now the next in the line of fire? Was that her heritage?

  Without realizing it, Serena put her palms against her neck and let the peace of the ancient cloth seep into her. Her rational mind knew she shouldn’t wear the textile, knew that her skin was leaving its traces on the weaving, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it off. She felt naked without it. Vulnerable.

  I’m getting as nutty as people thought my grandmother was.

  Serena shook herself and forced her thoughts away from danger, murder, madness, death, everything that had haunted her since she had read her grandmother’s note, seen the pages, felt the weaving warm to her touch like something alive. Whatever her heritage might ultimately be, nothing of it survived here in the burned shell of her childhood home.

  Abandonment lay like a sooty shadow over everything. Long after the police had left, target shooters had moved in. Someone had tied a piece of crime-scene tape to the charred frame of the pickup truck and used it for shooting practice. The tape had faded to pale yellow and was ragged with wind and bullet holes. Brass cartridges—some tarnished, some bright—dotted the gritty face of the desert. Spent shotgun shells in a rainbow of colors lay scattered like giant confetti around the perimeter of her grandmother’s yard. Obviously the locals had decided that the abandoned cabin was more entertaining for target practice than t
he place they had been using, which was closer to the graded road.

  A pale flash of movement caught the corner of Serena’s eye. She turned toward the dirt track that led to the ruins. Barely a mile away, a light-colored SUV kicked grit and dust into the air.

  Instantly she knew the vehicle was headed right for her. There was no other place it could be going. The twin ruts dead-ended at her grandmother’s isolated house.

  Trust no man. Your life depends on it.

  Without stopping to consider, Serena yanked her keys from her pocket and hit the remote-lock button for her van. Then she turned and sprinted away on a faint trail that went up the steep slope just behind the cabin.

  For all their height and bold name, the Joshua trees offered no hiding places for someone her size. Neither did anything else. The brittle shrubs that grew out of the unforgiving earth were little more than waist-high. Their stingy, stunted leaves offered no real chance of concealment.

  She didn’t even give the plants a second look. She knew exactly where she was going, just as she knew there were two ways to get there. The shorter way was more difficult, because it involved climbing down the steepest part of a broken cliff. She had learned the hard way that it was easier to climb up rather than down. She had much less control in a descent.

  Serena took the long way to her hiding place. Boulders bigger than a man poked out of the loose, rocky soil. She dodged around them and cut back into a narrow ravine. The farther into the ravine she ran, the steeper the trail got. Finally it ended in a fractured, jumbled granite cliff. Three quarters of the way up the uneven wall there was a shallow cave. As a child, she often had gone up there to sit, look out over the empty land, and dream of patterns she would weave on her grandmother’s loom.

  Exposure had softened the rough edges of the ragged stone wall until the outer surface crumbled and came apart at a touch. Decomposed granite, or DG as the natives called it, was tricky in dry weather and treacherous in rain. If it had been wet, she wouldn’t have tried the cliff at all. Even as dry as it was, she still slipped and nearly went down several times before she pulled herself close to the lip of the hidden cave.