A Magnificent Crime

by Kim Foster

  Frowning, I opened drawers and checked the armchair. By the time I crouched down to look under the bed, I had a very bad feeling.

  Now, everyone misplaces things from time to time. And people don’t typically panic over a missing sweater.

  But as a thief, I notice when things are missing. I pay attention to these things. Because in my world it’s hardly ever a coincidence.

  I checked if anything else was missing. All my valuables, my purse, my passport, my iPod, everything was where it should be. Nothing else was gone.

  Just my cardigan?

  I lived a pretty messy existence, I admit. But I always had a sense of where I’d left things. It was like a constant mental inventory, like a big game of Memory, and I always knew when something was gone.

  And there was no doubt in my mind that my cardigan was definitely gone. Which meant it had been taken.

  My mouth felt dry. I began searching for signs of entry. As a pro, I could spot when someone had busted in, even if they were also a pro. But there was nothing. No scratches on the door handle. No sign that things had been moved about or overturned.

  I started doubting myself. And laughing at my own ridiculousness. Why on earth would a thief break in here and steal a cardigan? Cold evening? Feeling a little chilly and couldn’t be bothered to go back to his own place?

  I must have left it somewhere. At a café maybe.

  I guess I needed that bath more than I’d realized. The cardigan would turn up. I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. And tried to ignore the uneasiness between my shoulders that just wouldn’t go away.

  Chapter 23

  Ethan tried not to shudder as he walked through the doors to La Santé Prison in the Fourteenth Arrondissement. It wasn’t the morning chill that made him feel cold as he entered the concrete and steel structure. Everywhere he looked, all he could see were steel bars, moldy concrete, locks and alarms. It was a building designed to contain people like him. Was it any wonder the very sight of it made him want to turn and walk very quickly in the opposite direction? Instead, though, he was voluntarily strolling in.

  Ethan had been working all day on this lead. Now it was time to see if he could pull it off.

  He knew they needed an insider’s view of breaking into the Louvre. It wasn’t something that currently occupied a spot on his own résumé, sadly. He’d done jobs in Paris, of course. You couldn’t call yourself an art thief otherwise. But only from smaller galleries and private collections.

  The Louvre was his white whale.

  A buzzer sounded in the prison—harsh and jolting—as the security guards buzzed him through to the inner layers. To hide his discomfort, he straightened his suit, tugged on the starched cuffs of his shirt. He wore a sharp pin-striped three-piece and a Zegna silk tie that alone cost more than the guards’ weekly wage. Ethan knew he looked good. Which was important. He had to play the part here.

  Because although he’d never hit the Louvre himself, he did know someone who had. And today Ethan was posing as his lawyer.

  The thief was an old acquaintance, a man named Bruno Murphy. Ethan had succeeded in tracking him down. For the most part. With just one catch.

  The man was in prison.

  Last night he’d called Montgomery to tell her about his plan. When she’d answered the phone, a smile had come over his face at the very sound of her voice. Which he quickly shook off. What the hell was he? A fifth grader with a crush? Jesus.

  “I’m going to go talk to this guy named Bruno Murphy,” he’d said.

  “Okay. Why?”

  “Because he’s the only person I know who has successfully broken into the Louvre.”

  “No,” she breathed. “That’s perfect.”

  It was slightly less perfect when he told her where the guy was currently located.

  “But . . . how are you going to get any useful information?” she asked. “If you visit, won’t your conversation be recorded?”

  “That’s why I’m going posed as his lawyer. It’ll be a confidential conversation that way.”

  There was a pause. “Isn’t that kind of risky? Going to the enemy’s nest that way?”

  Ethan heard the worried edge in Montgomery’s voice. And in spite of himself, he could feel a smile growing again. She’s concerned about me.

  “Yes, there’s a risk. But I think I can pull it off. Don’t worry, Montgomery. I’ll be fine.”

  The smell of the prison as he walked in was the thing he was least prepared for, in spite of the notoriously bad reputation French prisons maintained. No amount of industrial cleaner would ever kill the smell of urine. Or tobacco. Prisoners—especially French prisoners—did little else other than smoke all day long.

  Ethan had never been to prison, which was unusual for a career criminal, to be sure. Most crooks ended up in the pen from time to time. Usually just short stints, if they were lucky. It never seemed to stop them from falling back into old ways when they got out, of course.

  But Ethan had never been caught.

  So walking into this prison now, and being shown into a small concrete room featuring a door with steel bars, was not high on his wish list for Paris sightseeing. That he was obliged to leave his phone outside with the desk clerk served only to increase his discomfort. He was cut off from the outside world.

  The door closed, and he waited.

  And did his best to maintain his composure. Inside he felt like scaling the walls. Outside he hoped he looked cool. He knew he had a pretty good ability to appear unflappable—he’d been told this many times—but that didn’t mean he never got stressed. He did. He just had a better poker face than most.

  Something he was counting on today.

  At last, the doors made a loud clunk as they were unlocked, and a prisoner was shown in.

  Bruno was a tall, lanky man, much taller than Ethan. He had a long horse face and slightly asymmetric eyes: the left was just a little higher than the right. It was the face of a Picasso painting. Appropriate for an art thief, truly.

  Ethan knew Bruno to be an agency man. He had worked for an American agency with a French branch. Bruno sat down and looked up at him with dead eyes. He pushed back a curtain of lanky hair, and then recognition dawned. A bitter fire kindled in Bruno’s eyes.

  The guard left, closing them inside the room. The room Ethan was trying his best not to think of as a cell.

  Bruno gave a snort. “You’ve got balls, man. Showing up here, pretending to be legal counsel.”

  Ethan smiled and gave a slight shrug. “It’s good to see you again, Bruno.”

  “Right. So, what do you want?”

  Ethan nodded. The sooner they got down to business, the sooner he could get out of there. “I want to talk to you about the Louvre. You broke into it.”

  Bruno nodded.

  “How did you do it?” Ethan asked.

  Bruno laughed, an unpleasant noise that sounded like he was coughing up a fur ball. “You want me to just describe it? Why?” He narrowed his eyes. “You planning to try the same thing?”

  Ethan shrugged.

  Bruno’s mouth twisted angrily. “Did that son of a bitch Lafayette send you? Are you working with him now? Bastard. Fucking double-crosser.” He spat with rage.

  Ethan had no idea who Lafayette was, but decided to play along. “Are you saying I shouldn’t trust him?”

  Bruno laughed again. “Sure. Trust him. Be my guest. He’ll give you everything you need. Then fuck you up the ass if it suits him.”

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” Ethan said. “Yeah, I’d had a feeling he wasn’t a good partner. So can you help me instead?”

  Bruno just stared at him a moment, studying Ethan’s face. And then his expression went from merely unpleasant to downright hostile. His lips curled back. “You don’t remember, do you?” Bruno said, eyes flashing with a vaguely psychotic spark. “That makes it even worse.”

  Ethan’s brain started spinning, trying to figure out what the man was talking about. He scanned thro
ugh memories, anything that involved Bruno. And then—

  Oh, shit. Many, many years ago—like, maybe seven—Ethan had slept with Bruno’s girlfriend. He’d totally forgotten about that. She’d been a bookings clerk at the Agency. It had meant very little to Ethan—obviously. He’d never figured it would come back to bite him in the ass now.

  Ethan held his hands outward in a gesture of supplication. “Dude, I can explain—”

  “Are you for real? Are you fucking kidding?” Bruno was getting increasingly agitated. Ethan started sweating.

  “I should out you right now,” Bruno said. And then laughed. It was the short, barking laugh of someone who is seriously pissed and right on the edge of five-alarm crazy. “Of course I can’t, though. How’s that for irony? I pled not guilty. So how would I know another professional thief? I’d be incriminating myself.” He was rambling to himself, a very concerning sight.

  “I appreciate that,” Ethan said.

  “Don’t. I might decide to take a chance, after all. You need to get the fuck out. Before I do change my mind.”

  Ethan could tell he was serious. It was time to fold his hand.

  “Much obliged, Bruno. Good luck to you.” He called for the guard and exited quickly.

  Well, that sucked. The encounter had proved way less helpful than he’d hoped. Except for one piece of information.

  A name: Lafayette.

  Chapter 24

  Stone saints glared down at me as I walked through the great oak doors into Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. A gloomy drizzle filled the sky outside. The inside somehow managed to be even more gloomy.

  Perhaps it was the smell of burning candles with a faint undertone of sweat—people who prayed were nervous, evidently. Tall Gothic windows surrounded a black-and-white chessboard floor. Honey-colored stone archways and columns soared to the heavens. Wooden chairs, arranged in perfect rows, appeared to have been lined up by a worker wielding a ruler. And a bad case of OCD.

  I shivered; the air was drafty and cold.

  Faulkner had wanted this meeting. He had more or less demanded it, saying he required a progress update. I wiped my hands on my pants and tried to get some saliva into my mouth.

  Of course, this could be a trap. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he was growing tired of all this and would simply decide to get his satisfaction.

  But I couldn’t have refused to meet him. And I couldn’t find anyone to come with me. Ethan wasn’t answering his phone. I tried not to think about the fact that he was going to La Santé Prison today.

  One thing was for sure. I needed to convince Faulkner to give me some more time. Because there was no way I was going to get the Hope before the week was up, like he’d wanted.

  Maybe if I had been able to retrieve all Severin’s fingerprints. Maybe. But not now. And there was no way I was going into the Louvre anything less than spectacularly well prepared.

  So I would just have to ask Faulkner for a short extension.

  I spotted him by a side alcove, standing in a trench coat, holding a drippy umbrella. I walked to the alcove, stopping to pick up a small votive candle from a table and to drop a coin in the box, and stood beside him in front of an oil painting of Saint Peter.

  “The stained-glass windows are spectacular, aren’t they?” I said casually, as though talking to a stranger.

  There was silence. And then, “I prefer to look at the gravestones. They’re people I’ve never heard of, and that fascinates me.”

  There weren’t many people in this corner of the cathedral. The one nearby woman wandered off to examine the organ pipes farther away.

  After another pause, Faulkner said, “You are on schedule, I trust?”

  “Er, well, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  He said nothing.

  So I kept talking. “I know you wanted me to do this job before the end of the week. But it’s impossible.” I had to make him understand the intricacies involved. “There are a lot of things at play here. It’s not a simple job.”

  “Miss Montgomery, the details are of no interest to me. I do not care how you do it. Only that you do it. And soon.”

  Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. Maybe hoping he was going to be reasonable was too much to ask. What was I going to do if he refused to give me more time?

  “I will, however, consider your request,” he said.

  I exhaled the air I’d been holding in.

  “Now, there’s one other thing you need to know,” Faulkner said. “You appear to have popped up on the radar of an Interpol agent. Or, at least, the idea that a thief is targeting the Louvre has.”

  This was a punch in the stomach.

  “What? How do you know?”

  He shrugged, disinterested. “What you need to understand is that if you go down for this, I am not going down with you. Shake Interpol, or I will cut you loose. There will be no connection between you and me. The name of the Interpol agent is Ludolf Hendrickx. And, evidently, he has just turned up in town.” He shook out his umbrella, readying to leave.

  “Here in Paris?”

  Faulkner pulled up the collar to his trench coat and opened his umbrella, heedless of any superstitions about opening umbrellas indoors. “Take care of it, Miss Montgomery.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  I swallowed. I had no idea how I was going to do that.

  Chapter 25

  I got off the phone with Gladys and sat back in the chair in my hotel suite. Fresh from the shower, I rubbed my wet hair with a towel and thought hard. This was not good.

  Gladys had learned a little more about the Interpol agent Faulkner had mentioned. She’d hacked into Interpol e-mail accounts and learned that Hendrickx was indeed in Paris. He was investigating the Gargoyle—whoever or whatever that was—and had a high-grade suspicion that a Louvre theft was an imminent part of the Gargoyle’s plans.

  Which made about as much sense to me as the hieroglyphic laundry instructions on my clothes.

  And what made even less sense was what Gladys said next.

  “You should know, Cat, that Jack asked me a similar question last week. He sent me a photograph of Hendrickx on a street in downtown Seattle and asked me to identify him.”

  “He what?”

  “Maybe you two should compare notes. Hendrickx is obviously a party of interest for both of you.”

  I sat there dumbfounded. Jack had spotted Hendrickx? He needed to identify him and went through my hacker to do it? Why?

  Gladys was right. In an ideal world, I should talk to Jack about it. Maybe we could help each other out.

  But that would mean telling Jack way too much about my situation. And I wasn’t ready to do that.

  No, I’d have to leave that alone for now. The whole thing left me feeling uneasy, though.

  Even if Interpol wasn’t investigating me, per se, Hendrickx’s radar was up about the Louvre and the Hope, and he was going to start poking around.

  I fiddled with the pencil on the desk and gazed out the window. The view of Paris was misted over with sheets of rain pouring down the plate glass.

  If only I had someone who could get close to this guy, find out what he knew, find out how much he knew about me, specifically. Someone who could gain his confidence, then maybe slip something into his drink, check his private files, his private notes . . . that kind of thing.

  I could do it in disguise, but the risk was insane. If he was already on the lookout for me, it would be a foolish thing to do. But I knew someone who could do it for me.

  Brooke Sinclair.

  This was absolutely her area of expertise. Getting men to trust her and tell her everything? That was her superpower.

  Playing the femme fatale was not my strength. Not like Brooke, anyway. If I tried it, I’d probably say something stupid. I’d probably say something incriminating. No. This was definitely Brooke’s domain.

  I had to convince her.

  Later that afternoon, I watched as a bent li
ttle Frenchwoman spun batter clockwise on a hot circular plate. She waited patiently for it to cook fully, then brushed the crepe with butter, dusted it with sugar, and folded it like a piece of origami.

  She slid the hot crepe into a paper envelope and handed it to me. It matched the one I held in my other hand.

  As far as bribery went, I thought it was pretty good.

  The rain had stopped, and the sun was out now. The Luxembourg Gardens were blossoming, the colors fresher because of the recent showers, the air crisp and lush with the scents of iris and lily.

  I walked farther into the park and spotted her. I had tracked Brooke down, finding her sunning herself in one of the Luxembourg’s numerous olive-green metal chairs and trying to attract the attention of local French businessmen on their lunch breaks.

  I handed her one of the crepes.

  “What’s this?”

  “I passed a crepe stand on my way over. They smelled irresistible.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. But took my offering and bit into the steaming, crispy crepe, nonetheless.

  I bit into mine and melted just as much as the butter. Parisian crepes are a miracle of hot, crisp, soft buttery sweetness. I took a seat next to Brooke.

  Sunlight glinted off the octagonal pond where small children played with wooden sailboats, pushing them with sticks, watching as the crayon-colored sails floated serenely in front of the grand palace of Luxembourg.

  “Brooke, listen. There’s this Interpol agent who is, apparently, crawling all over this case. It would be really helpful for me if I knew what he knew. And, ideally, if he could be directed to sniff elsewhere.”

  She chewed her crepe slowly and swallowed a mouthful. “Like a false trail. Good idea.”

  “So I was thinking,” I said, “who would be great at this? Who would be perfect for a job that involves gaining a man’s trust, getting him to let his guard down, getting information out of him?”

  Brooke barely paused a beat. “Cat, darling, flattery is not going to help you here.”