A Touch of Minx

by Suzanne Enoch

  “I just want to be sure you know what you could be getting into.” Samantha hopped onto the reception desk beside the office phone.

  “I’ve been to Wild Bill’s estate before,” Aubrey drawled from his usual chair at the desk. “Never for a private tour, but for one or two seasonal parties.”

  “For charity?”

  “Nearly all of them are, but I don’t recall specifically. Is that a clue?”

  She smiled at his enthusiastic tone, even though it worried her a little. This wasn’t like having an amateur park down the street and call her if a car drove up, or her following a bunch of teenagers to a burger stand; this would mean bringing a novice into the house of somebody she knew had acquired at least one antique illegally, and who likely had more. And they were going specifically to look for things Toombs might not want them to see. “I’m more curious about his character,” she returned. “Everything means something.”

  “This is so exciting. I brought gloves.”

  “Leave them here. That would be just a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “What about fingerprints?”

  “He’s inviting us in. We’re supposed to leave fingerprints.”

  Aubrey blew out his breath. “I obviously have a great deal to learn about this clandestine stolen-item recovery business.”

  Samantha folded her legs Indian style. “You have another business, Aubrey. And the unattended ladies of Palm Beach won’t ask for your escort if they don’t trust you. So are you sure you want to get involved with this? At the least, somebody’s gonna get mad. At the worst, we’re talking handcuffs and bad booking photos and press coverage.” There were even worse things than that, but she was trying to be realistic, not scare him to death.

  He touched her knee with one finger, then backed off again. “I’ve been a walker for twelve years now. Between January and March I doubt I eat a single meal alone. Some of the ladies I escort are very nice, very kind, and very smart. But I could sit down at this moment and write out every conversation I’m likely to have over the entirety of next season. There are never any surprises, and every event might as well be scripted. I wouldn’t have started working for you if I didn’t want something different. And this is definitely different.”

  “Different is one thing. Dangerous is another. Just because you want one doesn’t mean you have to accept the other. I’m giving you a chance to back out, Aubrey, with no blame on anybody.” Yes, she’d promised Rick she’d take Aubrey with her, but if the walker decided he didn’t want to put his safety on the line, she’d work solo. It would be far from the first time for that.

  “I am a Southern gentleman, Miss Samantha. As such, I would never abandon a lady about to step into danger. Even potential, hypothetical danger.” He flashed his perfect teeth in a grin. “And as we’ve discussed previously, though some of my clients are very pleasant, others—and their friends—never let me forget that I provide a service, like a caterer, and that that is the only reason I’m allowed to attend events.”

  She looked at him for a minute. Really looked at him. Age-wise she would put him in his late fifties, tanned with blond hair just going to silver, and in great physical condition. From their frequent conversations she knew he had a better formal education than she did, and that he was fairly well-traveled and had a wide range of sophisticated interests. What he’d done previous to twelve years ago, she had no clue.

  He played up being gay, though he’d never come right out and said what his sexual preference might be. Rick claimed he was faking his orientation to avoid tension with the husbands of some of the wives he escorted. She wasn’t so sure, though at the moment all of his usual affectations were missing.

  “Wow,” she said finally. “So you really don’t have a problem with taking some of these guys down a few notches.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “You’ve socialized with Toombs.”

  Gray eyes met hers steadily. “I really don’t have a problem with this,” he repeated.

  She checked the time on the reception phone. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

  Aubrey switched the phones to the away feature, locked up the office, and followed her down to the parking garage to collect the Bentley. Reluctantly she let him drive again; chances were that Toombs would watch them pull into the drive, and her respectful, semi-submissive female schtick had gotten her this far.

  She’d put on tan slacks with a short-sleeved pink knit top, a pale green shirt open over it to modestly cover her arms, and flat tan sandals. It had all been chosen as carefully as Rick chose his suits and ties, though her outfit had to serve two purposes. She had to look fresh and demure, and she had to be able to move quickly and silently with a second’s notice. In her pants pockets she carried two paper clips and a rubber band, with a strip of duct tape wound around the inside bottom of her left pant leg. The dark side of MacGyver, as Stoney said.

  Unlike Rick’s Solano Dorado, which lay right on Lake Worth in the very most exclusive part of Palm Beach, Gabriel Toombs’s house didn’t have a name or an ocean view, though it was right on the edge of a golf course. It was still nice by just about anybody’s standards, but Samantha approached it as she did any job, looking for faults, blind spots, windows obscured by vegetation—anything that could be used to her advantage. Maybe it was a cynical way to look at things, but so far it had kept her alive.

  As Aubrey put the car in park at the top of the half-circular drive, Samantha took a breath. Adrenaline flowed into her muscles, heightening her awareness of her surroundings and goosing her heartbeat. Be cool, Sam, she reminded herself. This was a visit to see some artifacts in which she had an interest, and she had to be as nonaggressive as possible. After all, she’d once stolen something for this guy, and even though he very probably didn’t have the slightest idea that it was her, there was no way in hell she wanted to come across as a cat burglar–type personality.

  She’d discovered that people who stole things, or who commissioned for items to be stolen, rarely did so only once. Addiction or a loosening of a certain morality or whatever it was, if they got away with it that first time, they did it again. Toombs had acquired one item that didn’t belong to him. To her that made it logical that he would have more. And he did love his antique Japanese shit.

  “Ready, my dear?” Aubrey asked, offering his arm as he came around to the passenger side of the Bentley.

  “Yep. Just play it cool, and follow my lead.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Samantha stifled a quick grin as they climbed the trio of shallow steps up to the front door. At least Aubrey wasn’t complaining about being roped into something he didn’t want to do.

  The door opened as they reached it. “Good afternoon,” Gabriel Toombs said, bowing from the hips.

  “Good afternoon,” she returned. “And thank you again for inviting me. I hope you don’t mind that I brought Aubrey with me; he knew the way and offered to drive.”

  “I thought he might join you,” Toombs returned, stepping back so they could follow him inside. “Aubrey, as he likes to say, is a gentleman. And a gentleman wouldn’t send a lady unescorted into a man’s home.”

  Certainly not in the nineteenth century, anyway, but Samantha refrained from commenting about that. Instead she smiled, inclining her head in as close to a bow as she could manage without looking like she was mocking him. “You are a very gracious host.”

  “I try to be, but I would be more flattered if you called me gracious at the end of your visit.”

  She’d be more interested in calling him guilty, but that would have to wait for proof. “I’m anxious to see your collection,” she said aloud.

  “Then please come with me. Aubrey?”

  “Don’t mind me, Wild Bill,” her receptionist said. “I’m just an interested bystander.”

  Toombs led them through the foyer toward the large sitting area at the back of the house. “I’ve tried to keep the entire house thematically pure,” he said, stopping b
efore a half-size sculpture of a samurai on horseback, “so that my treasures are noticeable without standing out.”

  “I feel as though I’ve walked into the Japanese Imperial Palace,” Samantha said agreeably, wondering silently if he forced his maids to dress as geishas or something.

  “That is precisely the feeling I wanted to evoke,” Toombs agreed, smiling a little and then quickly putting his Mr. Spock face back on. “I had the feeling you would see the truth of it.”

  For a second she wondered whether he’d ever actually been to Japan, or whether he was basing his appearance and demeanor solely on The Seven Samurai and Black Rain. But then again, someone like Toombs wouldn’t want to look stupid, and if he collected all of this without even having visited the country, he would look both stupid and weird. Weirder.

  “I’ve divided the house into sections,” Wild Bill continued, stopping in front of a well-displayed cabinet at the edge of the foyer, the case filled with teacups and pots and pestles. “Hearth, politics, religion, and war.” He gazed at her. “I’m afraid I have very few Hina dolls, though one or two of them might be of interest to you.”

  “My interest in Hina dolls is on behalf of the girl who collects them,” she returned with a warm smile, resisting the urge to demand that they head right for the war section. “My own interests are a bit broader. I’d love to see the entire house.”

  He bowed his head. “Then you shall.”

  Toombs led them from room to room, explaining the intricacies and cultural or historical importance of various pieces in his collection. While she’d started out thinking Wild Bill was an odd eccentric, it didn’t take long for Samantha to be underwhelmed by the overall theme. It wasn’t that his things were less than impressive—some of them would be worth a fortune on either the legitimate or the black market.

  Rather, he seemed to view everything the same way. If it was Japanese, he revered it. Even collectors of modern pop culture knew that different items had different value. A 1978 Han Solo mint in its bubble pack was worth way more than a 1995 version in the same condition. And yet here the only criterion to make it into a display cabinet seemed to be that it was traditionally Japanese and in use before WWII.

  If a thief came in here for a quick grab-and-run without knowing anything about Japanese antiques, it would be a crap shoot. She had enough experience to know what to look for, and because of the sheer quantity of items it was still a little confusing. Maybe that was his best defense, though; have so much stuff that because of time considerations at least some of the better-quality items were bound to get missed.

  “These are arquebus,” he said, gesturing at a dozen wall-mounted guns. “All of them work; I had the matchlocks repaired where necessary to meet the specifications of the Sengoku period when they were made.”

  “Impressive,” Aubrey said, leaning in to look at one of the weapons more closely. “These are the front loaders with the balls and ramrods, right?” He straightened to send Samantha an amused glance.

  “Yes. All of the accouterments are in the glass cases there. I even have some of the original match cord, though after all this time it would probably go up in smoke before you could light the powder with it.”

  “Do you have any of the gun powder?” Aubrey pursued.

  She hoped he wasn’t planning on setting the place on fire as a distraction or something. No way did she want that, and especially not before she’d found what she’d come looking for.

  “Yes. Two of the powder pouches are full. I like to take the arquebus out and fire each of them once a year. It is what they were made to do.”

  As he said that last bit, he looked straight at Samantha. Her Spider-sense was tingling, but at the moment it seemed to be more because the guy creeped her out than because any danger was coming her way.

  “How do you protect all of this?” Aubrey asked. “I’d hate for somebody to break in and then run me through with one of my own samurai swords.”

  “Are you about to recommend Jellicoe Security for my security needs?”

  “Not at all,” Samantha broke in. “I’m here because I’m fascinated, not to do business.”

  “In that case, if anybody ever tried to break in here, I think it would be very interesting,” Toombs returned, his gaze on the wall of swords opposite the projectile-firing weapons. “Using a daitu sword is an art. Someone who studies that art is much more equipped to…deal with trouble than someone who thinks of it as a pointy stick.”

  All that bravado would only work if he was home to defend his territory, but Samantha refrained from pointing that out to him—especially if she was going to be the one doing the breaking in. “I love the way you’ve displayed the swords,” she said aloud. “You see them as weapons, but also as works of art.”

  “Very perceptive, Samantha.” He smiled again. “One more room to go, if you’ll follow me.”

  Toombs led them farther down the hallway to a large circular room in the far corner of the house’s second floor. Windows rimmed half the circle, while battle flags covered the walls of the other half, including one flag that pretty closely matched the description of the one from Gorstein’s report. That, though, wasn’t her problem or her concern. In the middle of the room on metal framework stands stood five full suits of samurai armor. Bingo.

  “These are my pride and joy,” he said. “The flags match the period of the armor—they might have been employed in battle together. I like to think that they were.”

  Covering her accelerated heartbeat, Samantha moved forward. Whatever Gorstein might have on his watch list, she frankly didn’t care about battle flags. Not today. She was there to find a suit of armor.

  As she walked the perimeter of the room, studying the armor, she compared it to the image she carried in her head of the one belonging to Minamoto Yoritomo, the first shogun. “What period are these?” she asked.

  “The one in the center is Kamakura, the two closest to the window are both Azuchi-Momoyama, and the other two are Edo.”

  The Kamakura would be the oldest, but still a couple of decades short of the Heian period and Yoritomo. The armor was similar to the shogun’s, but it obviously wasn’t the one she was looking for. And given what she’d been discovering about Toombs’s character, she didn’t think he would lie to make a piece seem less valuable than it was.

  She and Aubrey looked for another couple of minutes, until Toombs offered them lunch. “That’s very kind of you,” she said, imagining platters of raw fish and steamed rice and trying not to hurl, “but we have a client coming by the office in about an hour.”

  “I understand. I’ll show you out, then.”

  They left the turret room, passing by a closed door directly to the right. From her look at the outside of the house, that would have been another turret room. “What’s in there?” she asked.

  “I’m doing renovations in there,” he said, gesturing again to guide her toward the stairs. “Nothing inside but planks and paint cans, I’m afraid.”

  Hm. If she hadn’t been pretending to be quiet and demure, she would have been saying, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” As they walked past the door she moved behind Aubrey, tapping him on the arm and angling her chin toward Toombs.

  He glanced at the door, then nodded. “You know, Wild Bill,” he said aloud, “I’ve been practicing my raquetball skills.”

  “Are you asking for a rematch?”

  Once the walker blocked Toombs’s view of her, Samantha reached out and pushed down the door handle. Locked.

  It looked like she would be returning to Wild Bill Toombs’s house after visiting hours. Hopefully while he was away and not guarding the doorway with one of his half a hundred samurai swords.

  Chapter 14

  Thursday, 3:28 p.m.

  Richard sat back, rotating his shoulders. Video conferences had their own difficulties, and he remained unconvinced that the convenience of being able to sit in his own office in his own house outweighed them.

  His cellular phone buzzed, an
d he pulled it from his belt and flipped it open. A text message from Samantha waited for his review, and he called it up on screen. “‘M home,’” he read. “‘R U free?’”

  “Five minutes, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, interrupting the latest argument, this one over supply priority between ANDFA—A New Day for Africa—and the Humanity Project. He pushed to his feet. “May I get you anything, Tom, Jim?”

  “I’m good,” Tom said.

  Jim Beeling, sitting opposite them and off camera, gave a thumbs up. Assuming that meant the technician was in agreement with Tom’s statement, Richard left the conference room and closed the door behind him. Then he dialed Samantha’s number. A few seconds later the James Bond theme began playing faintly from the direction of the stairs. Before she could pick up he closed his phone and headed that way.

  “Hi,” he said, as she topped the stairs in front of him.

  “Hi. Are you finished?”

  “Just taking a break. How was your tour?” He kept his voice easy and relaxed, hoping he didn’t look as relieved as he felt. Whether Gabriel Toombs had stolen the samurai armor she was after or not, Richard didn’t like him. Sixth sense, male rivalry, whatever it was, he was just glad Samantha was out of the man’s house in one piece.

  “Interesting,” she returned. “If he’d pare it down to what was really rare and precious and not just old and Japanese, he’d have a pretty nice collection.”

  As she spoke, Richard watched her face. “So you didn’t see Minamoto’s armor, I take it?”

  She blew out her breath, neither her stance nor her expression giving much away, even to him. “No, I didn’t. There was a familiar-seeming samurai battle flag, but none of the swords or armor I’m looking for were in sight. Neither was the bridle I took for him, though. There was one pretty big room he wouldn’t let us into, and that he had locked. He lives alone, with a pair of housekeepers who come in twice a week. Thursday’s not one of their days to work there.”