Chapter 5
Saturday, 2:18 p.m.
Richard released Samantha’s arm and watched as she pulled on a lacy blue bra and a matching thong. She was absolutely correct about her work and his work, and it simply wasn’t like him to lose sight of the larger picture, as it were. She was gainfully employed, and he was complaining that the jobs weren’t as lofty as he’d like. Idiot. A few months ago he’d been worried that she would reject any gainful employment at all for a quick, exciting, and illegal job somewhere. Bloody muggins.
“You’re the perfect choice for me,” he said aloud. “I apologize.”
She glanced over at him. “I’m not perfect,” she said smoothly, stepping into a pair of jeans, “but I am kinda cool. Don’t worry about it. You were wrong; I was right. I rule the kingdom.”
Richard snorted. “You had something you wanted to ask me about Japanese antiquities?”
“Mm hm. Put your clothes on, first. You’re very distracting with just that towel on.”
Obviously he hadn’t fumbled badly enough to make her angry, though that was pure and simple good luck on his part. If he was looking for signs that she still had her doubts about their relationship, he wasn’t finding any. Richard gave a slow smile as he exchanged the towel for boxers and jeans. Rather, if he was looking for signs that she meant to stay with him, he was finding them. And that was a very fortunate thing as far as he was concerned.
“Better?” he asked, fastening his pants.
Samantha gave a quicksilver grin. “Not necessarily. But I’d like to have our conversation in your armor gallery. Can we do it after dinner?”
“Certainly. Do you want me to keep you company at the Malloreys’?”
“I don’t think so. You just don’t know what to do with yourself when you don’t have work, do you? It’s called relaxing. Taking it easy. Call Donner. Maybe there’s a ball game you can attend or something. Or golf those other nine holes you missed yesterday.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?” he asked, collecting his gray T-shirt.
“Let’s just say that I don’t want you sharing your opinion of Gwyneth Mallorey with her until after I get paid. Whoever said words can never hurt me obviously never had an argument with you.”
That seemed like a compliment, although she probably hadn’t meant it as one. “Very well. I’ll call Tom and keep myself occupied. Perhaps Mike is playing ball today.”
“He’s not. He’s having dinner at his friend David’s house.”
Richard paused. “And how do you know that?”
“I’m looking for Anatomy Man, remember? I had to go talk to my client.” She glanced at him as she glided on her deodorant. “Mike’s a good kid, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Why?”
Samantha shrugged. “Just a question. I don’t know kids very well.”
“The Donner kids certainly like you.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like them. I said I don’t get them.”
That made sense, given her so-called upbringing. “Ah. Any clues so far?”
“It’s too early to tell.”
Samantha went into her walk-in closet and reappeared a moment later pulling on a yellow blouse and a black dress jacket. Christ, this was strange, her going off to meet a client and him scrambling to keep himself occupied. She was right again. He needed to learn how to relax a little. Of course, enjoying the moment was considerably easier when she was present to enjoy it with him, but he could cope for an afternoon. He’d use it as a character-building exercise.
Tucking in her blouse, Samantha lifted up on her tiptoes to kiss him softly on the mouth. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
He grinned. “That doesn’t eliminate much. Good luck with Gwyneth Mallorey.”
“Luck’s for schmucks, but thanks.”
Richard walked her down to the garage and held open the door of her blue Bentley for her. He’d given her the car a year ago, and had offered to purchase her a new one since then, but she’d turned him down. Apparently the Bentley was the first car she’d ever actually owned legitimately, and she didn’t want to give it up, even for a new model.
As soon as she left, he pulled out his cell phone and hit one of the speed dials. After two rings the line clicked open. “Hey, Rick,” Tom’s voice came. “I don’t know where Jellicoe is, if that’s what you’re calling about.”
“It’s not.”
“Oh. Okay. Problems with the LAX negotiations?”
“No, everything’s fine. What are you up to right now?”
“Hold on a sec.” Dimly on the open line he heard what sounded like a radio deejay. “Okay, what’s up?”
Richard held the phone away from his ear for a second to look at it. “Nothing. What are you doing right now?”
“I’m regluing the leg on a barstool,” Tom finally answered. “No more WWE wrestling for Mike this month. Now do I get to ask what you’re doing?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Really? Where’s Jellicoe, since she’s not here?”
“Meeting a client. So Katie’s at home, is she?” Richard continued, ignoring the sudden accelerated beating of his heart. Why not do this today? He’d been wanting to for weeks, and Samantha had told him to go enjoy himself. This wasn’t what she would have had in mind, but now that the idea had occurred to him, it seemed like a bloody fine plan.
“Katie’s here. Mike’s at his friend David’s, Livia went to her friend Tiffany’s house, and Chris is at Yale. Anything else?”
“Might I speak to your wife?” Reminding himself that Tom was his closest friend and that as an attorney he was obsessed with minute details, he took a breath and counted to five.
“Okay, but now I have to go back into the house. Hold on.”
“Good God,” Rick muttered.
“I heard that,” came back to him. “Here she is.”
“Who am I talking to?” Katie Donner’s voice came in her charming Southern accent. “Rick? Hi, Rick.”
“Katie. I was wondering if you had a few hours this afternoon to help me out with something.”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“I need you to come with me.”
Silence. “With Sam?”
“She’s busy elsewhere. Might I pick you up in twenty minutes?”
“Um, okay. What should I tell Tom?”
“That we’re going somewhere I won’t disclose to you until you get in the car with me.”
“Hold on a sec.” Even with her hand over the speaker he could make out “secret” and “sex” and “rendezvous” as she translated the conversation to her husband. If the Donners hadn’t been high school sweethearts, and if he hadn’t known the two of them for a little over ten years, even the joking implication would have made him uncomfortable. As it was, he grinned and shook his head.
“Tom wants to know if he can come,” Katie finally said, her voice amused.
Bloody wonderful. “Only if he swears to keep his opinion on any and all related subjects to himself.”
She relayed the information again. “He agrees. Am I supposed to abide by the same demands?”
Rick popped open the lockbox on the garage wall and pulled out the keys to his green Jaguar. “Absolutely not. I want your opinion. See you in twenty.”
“We’ll be ready. And don’t worry, I’ll make Tom change his shirt first.”
He didn’t want to know what Donner might have been wearing to prompt that comment. Instead he debated whether he should change his destination now that Tom had invited himself along. Turning him down would have been simple, but however much he publicly disagreed with his friend’s assessment of Samantha and her character, Donner’s was the only voice of reason he had where she was concerned.
“Do you want me to drive you, sir?” his driver, Ben, said from the near corner of the garage where he was stacking clean rags in a cabinet.
That would definitely be more convenient, but it would also mean a witne
ss in the household—another member of the staff who’d been charmed by Samantha almost from the moment she’d arrived at Solano Dorado. “I’ll manage, Ben. Thank you.”
Twenty minutes later he pulled into the Donners’ driveway in front of their nice two-story house in the West Palm Beach suburbs. Middle-to upper-class families lived everywhere here, with their two or three children and pets. They even had block parties at least twice a year. Domesticity. He hadn’t used to think much of the condition, until recently. Until Samantha. Now, though, seeing the trio of helmeted children riding their bikes up the street actually made him feel warm and fuzzy. Odd, that.
A few seconds later Katie and Tom emerged, and Tom squeezed his long legs into the back seat so his wife could sit up front.
“Okay, do we get to know where we’re going now?” Tom asked as they headed toward I–95 south and Bal Harbour.
“Yes. We’re going to Harry Winston.”
He felt the seat jolt as Tom straightened. “Harry Winston?” the attorney repeated, his voice squeaking. “The jewelers?”
“Yes. To look at rings.”
Samantha sat at Stoney’s Formica-topped kitchen table, her head propped in her arms, and watched his sliding-eyes cat clock tick off the minutes. In front of the counter a few feet away Stoney paced, his phone to his ear and his expression, well…stony.
“You’re a real piece of work, Merrado,” he grumbled. “I told you I’d pay you for a good lead. Those are directions, not a lead. And I don’t need your help to go there.” Swearing under his breath, he hung up the phone.
She lifted her head. “Directions?”
“On where I can stuff my—well, you get the picture.”
“Shit,” Samantha muttered. “These people used to fall all over themselves to work with us.”
“You don’t exactly top the list in Thief of the Month magazine anymore, honey. You helped put Veittsreig and his crew in jail. Fences don’t make money when their acquirers are in prison.”
“Even scary, gun-toting acquirers who tried to feed me a bullet?”
“Even those. We aren’t a discriminating bunch, really.”
She sent him a grim smile. “You are. Now, anyway.”
“Yep.” He frowned. “And so are they, now, since nobody wants to talk to me anymore. Not about new thefts, or old ones, or which rich black hat is collecting what.”
“So nothing on who’s collected samurai artifacts in the past, present, or future.”
“Nope.”
“What do you know, then? I’ve commissioned for pieces like that. So did Martin, back in the day.”
Stoney cleared his throat. “There were a couple of regulars. It’s been a while, though. Since my memory’s not as good as yours, I’ll have to look through my files.”
“Need any help?”
“Not even you get to know where I keep my client files.”
“You don’t trust me?” She put a hand over her heart. “Me?”
“I don’t trust that you’ll never use anything you see against somebody we worked for. You remember everything you see and hear, Sam. So if you don’t look in the first place, I won’t have to worry about some of those really scary guys you stole for getting a visit from you and taking the opportunity to blow your head off. Or my head off, since you live behind big walls and I don’t.”
Frowning, she pushed to her feet. “So this is for my own good?”
“And mine.”
She could probably argue him into giving her a look, but he had a point. She’d turned down security jobs for people she’d robbed in the past, and she already knew a few unsavory things about some of Rick’s business and social acquaintances, things he had no idea about. Maybe ignorance would at least save her from a sleepless night once in a while. “Okay. I’ll see you Monday, then. But call me if you think of anything.”
“I will.”
Blowing him a kiss, she left the nondescript house perched at the edge of Pompano Beach and climbed back into her really out-of-place Bentley. Halfway back to Solano Dorado she detoured to one of the chain bookstores to pick up a handful of magazines devoted to showcasing the interior designs of the rich and famous. Stoney might not have any leads about who collected samurai artifacts, but with any luck she could narrow it down herself.
Most people didn’t just randomly collect. They collected things they liked—Impressionist art, Greek pottery, Renaissance sculpture. A fan of Picasso probably wouldn’t be moved to commission for the theft of a thousand-year-old set of Japanese armor and samurai swords. And anybody who could commission for that would be the kind of person who could afford the cool stuff that landed them in interior design magazines.
It was a long shot, but hey, she lived by long shots. Back at the estate she keyed the front gate open and drove up the long, winding drive amid the swaying palm trees. Even with all of the traveling they’d done over the past year, her business was here in Palm Beach, and she and Rick had spent enough time in Florida that he would have to pay a substantial tax penalty.
She probably would, too, if the government ever found out about any of her income other than that from Jellicoe Security. Her Milan retirement fund, savings from all of her burglaries and other various bad deeds, lay safely in a numbered account in Switzerland. Though she’d been dipping into it in order to set up her business, she wasn’t volunteering any information about it to anyone.
Ben Hinnock met her just inside the garage and took charge of the Bentley for her. Despite the number of cars in the bat cave, as she’d begun calling the stadium-size car storage facility, every one of them had its place. “Ben, what time did Rick leave?” she asked, noting the absence of the Jag.
“At about two-forty,” the driver returned.
“Thanks.” He and Tom had probably gone golfing again. Personally she didn’t see the point of hitting a little ball around a park unless there was loot in the holes, but Rick enjoyed it. And he’d taken her advice to go have some fun.
Smiling, she headed upstairs to change out of her business clothes. And then she went up to the third floor and the long art gallery there. Long, floor-length windows lined one side of the hall, while suits of armor stood on the far side, other war-related artifacts scattered among them.
This was where she and Rick had first met. Of course she’d been trying to rob him at the time, and he’d returned home early from a trip to Stuttgart in time to get himself involved in an explosion and a triple-cross that had nearly killed both of them. “Ah, the good old days,” she murmured, grinning.
A large part of the gallery had been replaced after the explosion, and several of Rick’s pieces had been damaged or destroyed. Anyone coming for a first look wouldn’t have any idea—not only did Rick have enough antiques and pieces of art to keep several houses full, but he had very sharp taste about what looked good where.
She sat cross-legged on the floor beside a suit of samurai armor and looked through the magazines. A couple of the houses in the layouts featured Japanese and other Far Eastern decor, but she knew enough about the items she saw in the photos to eliminate all of them. People showed off their best stuff for a photo shoot, and while she didn’t expect to see the Yoritomo armor, there wasn’t anything close to that monetary value.
“Damn.” Okay, no suspects, but at least she had six non-suspects. That was a help, dull and mundane as finding it out was.
“How was the camera installation?”
She jumped, looking up as Rick topped the stairs. Her breath always caught when she first got a look at him—if she’d been the girly, giggly type it would have been flat-out embarrassing. Wherever he’d been, he still wore the jeans and gray T-shirt with a black open shirt over that, a pair of sockless loafers on his feet. “Lucrative,” she returned, standing up to grin at him. “When I told Gwyneth that my appearance would cost her an extra grand, she was too snooty to turn me down, so I stood there for two hours and ate her cashews.”
Rick chuckled. “You still want spaghetti, thoug
h, I assume?”
“That’s a different stomach.” She slid a hand around his waist. “What did you do this afternoon, stud muffin?”
He closed his arm over her shoulders and drew her closer to kiss the top of her head. “More golf.”
“Did Donner lose?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.”
“Any leads on the school or the armor thefts?”
“Some ideas on the school. And I know a couple of collectors who didn’t take the armor.”
After a moment Rick let her loose and walked over to one of his two prime suits of samurai armor. He’d gotten pretty good at letting her go before she started to get squirrelly about it, but she’d been working at stuff, too, at touching him before he had to reach out to her. She and Martin had left her mom when she’d been five. She didn’t remember anything about unconditional acceptance before then, and after that her job had been to learn everything she could to be good at what she did. Better than Martin, eventually. Rick was a whole new chapter; hell, a whole new life.
“The armor Joseph wants you to look for is from the late Heian period,” he said, half to himself. “This is about three hundred years later, from the middle Muromachi period.”
She nodded, strolling over to join him. “Viscanti sent me the exhibit book and a couple of photos. How much do these things weigh?”
“About sixty pounds. It’s mostly metal and leather. Samurai fought from horseback then, and the saddle supported some of the armor’s weight.”
Samantha grinned again. “Look at you, knowing all kinds of stuff about ancient Japan. Way to go, Brit.”
“I collect what I like,” he said with a shrug.
“That’s kind of what I wanted to ask you about,” she said, running a finger down the overlapping plates of steel that would have protected a samurai’s upper arm while he shot arrows at people. “People collect what they like. Do you know of anybody else who likes warrior stuff? Japanese in particular?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “So now we’re suspecting my acquaintances?”
A Touch of Minx Page 6