by Fiona Quinn
Steve eyed the bourbon again. Then forced himself toward the bathroom, dropping his clothes along the way.
Who was it that was alive, damn it? Lacey never picked up her clothes at the dry cleaner. He didn’t even know if that was the dry cleaner she had used before he had insisted on taking over that chore. Had she thought that was odd? Did Lacey go there to try to figure out why he did that? Lacey didn’t think in those terms, though. She thought in terms of strokes of paint and pallette colors. She thought in terms of finding beauty in surprising and unexpected places—the rust on a gate, or a mud-stained shoe in the street.
“It’s so interesting, Steve. Look at it from this angle, and you have the grey of the cast-away shoe juxtaposed with the bright red leaves the dogwood is casting away, too,” she’d say.
“Juxtaposed” was one of her favorite words when Lacey was viewing things through her Lacey-colored glasses. She’d brought the world to him in a whole new way. Surprising. And poignant.
“Poignant.” That was another Lacey word. She’d use it when she was crying over articles about elephants that were rescued from circuses or when dogs with the mange were given veterinary care.
“It’s so poignant. These poor animals were cast away, and then someone reached out and helped them.”
Huh. “Cast away” seemed to be another Lacey phrase. Yeah, she used that one a lot.
Was she alive? Or was she cut open by a medical examiner, weighed, and repackaged in her skin bag, waiting for someone to claim and bury her? Who would even do that? Lacey’s only relation was her Uncle Bartholomew. And her uncle would never put himself at risk to come home and make final arrangements for her. Steve thought probably it would fall on him to do it. That winded him. He leaned forward in the shower and sucked and blew air in and out like an old man with respiratory failure.
He imagined himself sitting in the office, talking to an undertaker. What would he do if that became reality? What would she want to have happen? Maybe it was in her will. Maybe it would have to be that shithead Reynolds who would claim her and use the process to make some big show to get himself more time in front of the camera. That was exactly what that guy would do. Just look how he trotted Lacey out in front of the crowd and risked her life for a little celebrity. And that action had killed her.
You don’t know that, he tried to talk himself down. But still, there was a sniper and there was an abductor. There was a body.
“A day or two,” the medical examiner had said. “We should know by sometime later in the week.”
Of course, in a day or two the con would be done. The Zorics would either succeed or not. The Bureau would either succeed or not. But the dead woman would always be dead.
Steve wasn’t sure he could survive this feeling until he knew for sure what had happened to Lacey. He turned off the water and rubbed himself dry with a towel. Until they’d definitively IDed the victim, Lacey could still be alive. And if she were alive, she was okay enough to go to the drycleaners. And that meant he might have enough time to find her and save her.
He pulled on a pair of jeans and a turtleneck, yanked on some socks, shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his jacket and keys, and ran from the apartment. If only he knew where he was running.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lacey
Tuesday Night
As Lacey came down the stairs, she was surprised that Deep didn’t react. He didn’t glance up at her and offer her food. He didn’t glance at her at all. But she didn’t mind. It gave her time to observe Deep’s face when he wasn’t being his steady, tender self.
This must be his warrior’s glare. His lip snarled back. Disgust painted his face with intensity. She watched his finger tapping the enter button, watched his eyes focus on the screen. Each tap seemed to roil his emotions. Each tap seemed to make his muscles expand like Maori warriors performing the Haka, showing how they’d use their primal ferocity to drive the enemy back into their boats and away from their shores. Yes, that’s what glowed in Deep’s eyes. Primal ferocity. And it unnerved her. She moved to scamper back up the stairs, but then Deep noticed her.
He quickly shut the lid of the computer, tamped down on the overt waves of aggression, and stood. “There you are. Are you hungry?” His voice was a lower range than usual, but as he directed his words toward her, there was only gentleness and concern.
The laugh that bubbled from Lacey’s throat was from nerves. “I knew that would be the first thing out of your mouth. Food. I’m not hungry. Thirsty, though. I’m going to get some water. What can I get you?”
“Water’s fine.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, further calming the combative energy that swirled around him. He followed her into the kitchen. “The mystery woman was pretty darned smart,” Deep started.
Lacey stood on the tips of her toes and stretched for a glass. She could just barely touch one with her fingertips. Deep came up behind her, reached past, and handed two down to her open hands. “Thank you kindly,” she said as she moved to the fridge and pressed the button for the ice maker. “Smart, how?”
“She needed something of value to offer to the pawn store, and so she used the coat.”
“She needed money?”
“She needed to hide two thumb drives somewhere off-premises is my guess.”
“Two more?”
“Yup.” Deep took the water from her hands and sat down at the kitchen table.
From her point of view, Deep looked like he was weighing his words carefully. Lacey gingerly sat in the chair opposite him and waited.
“How well do you know your Uncle Bartholomew?”
Lacey’s gaze searched over the table, then returned to Deep’s. “I’m not sure how to quantify that for you.”
“Did you know he slept with other males?”
“Well, yes, I did. But he’s not the one who told me. Uncle Bartholomew hasn’t come out of the closet. The Assembly doesn’t approve of homosexuality. He wouldn’t be allowed to remain a member if they knew he was homosexual, so it was a tightly-guarded secret. His lover probably thought I was in the loop, because he mentioned it to me. Mentioned a little more than I could ever want to know, to be honest.”
Deep’s jaw tightened. “What did he say to you?”
“Oh you know, girlfriend gossip. ‘He’s so cute,’ ‘he makes me so hot.’” Lacey gave a shudder. “It’s fine to hear from your friends when you’re out for a drink, but I didn’t need the visuals put in my head about two old wrinkly men with paunch bellies going at it.”
“Visuals from words? Only wrinkly old men?”
Lacey stilled. “What’s going on, Deep?”
“What’s the man’s name whom your uncle was seeing?”
“Radovan Krokov. Why?”
“And you met this man in person?”
Lacey’s voice tightened down. The last thing she wanted to be talking about right now was Radovan. Poor Radovan. “Yes, but he’s passed away now. Why?”
“I’m going to tell you, Lacey, just. . . Let’s start somewhere easier first, okay?”
“Yes, alright.” She rotated her glass on the table, spinning it faster and faster, until some of the water sloshed out. “You’re really scaring me.” She got up to grab the dish towel, hanging beside the sink.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. One step at a time, okay? First step—while you were asleep, I searched the coat and found the thumb drives sewn into a pouch that attached to the pocket in the lining. It was very clever how it was placed. Like the thumb drive Bardman gave you, there is a purpose behind these, I’m sure. They both hold information. One is very clear and condemning information.”
“Like what?” With her spill sopped up, Lacey leaned forward and grasped Deep’s hands as if she was going over the ledge, and he was the only thing that could keep her from falling. She had no idea what was coming, but she knew it was going to be bad. And once she heard what Deep had to say, she knew she could never unhear it. She sensed that Deep was preserving some piece
of her innocence for a little longer, and while she appreciated that – it also made her feel terrified. Yes, there was that word again. It never seemed far. It was always painted right there in the picture with her.
“Okay, we’ll start with the first thumb drive. Mostly, it held some contracts. There were contracts signed by each of the painter’s agents lending the various works to the gallery. All of them included the provision that the paintings would be insured until sold or shipped back to the artist.”
Lacey blinked. “But that would have cost a fortune. Who signed these contracts?”
“Your uncle.”
“I doubt very much that my Uncle Bartholomew would sign something like that. Did he actually take out insurance on them?”
“Yes, but not the kind described in the contracts allowing the paintings to be represented by his gallery.”
“An insurance scam? No, he would know just how little insurance we have in place. We really just cross our fingers and hope for the best. Everyone in the business knows that theft is always a possibility. It’s in our contracts, for heaven’s sake. But you said these contracts were different.”
“Help me to understand that. Maybe, for example, your uncle took out extra insurance on this particular show you were planning.”
“That would stand out too brazenly. For example, do you remember the twelve works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that I was telling you about? That was one of the biggest art thefts in history, and those paintings were completely uninsured. Well, the collection was insured against damage, but not against theft. Part of the reason was the rapidly rising cost of art back in the ‘80s. And part of it was the increase in art robberies at that time, too. Both things coupled together made theft insurance more expensive than most museum or gallery’s operating budgets.”
“Okay, compared to value –”
“Which is subjective, when it comes to art,” Lacey interjected.
“Compared to subjective value, art in general has relatively little security and almost no insurance. I’ve been researching art theft for the last few days and it seems that not even the insurance companies are fighting to stop these crimes. When I looked it up, I found out the FBI’s art theft division is headquartered here in DC – but there are only sixteen special agents on their task force. That’s pretty small. Did you meet any of them when you called the FBI about the disappearance of the Iniquus art works from your warehouse?”
Lacey shook her head. “They spoke to Mr. Reynolds, my lawyer. Why?”
“Just wondering if you had a description of the agents. Wondered if maybe any of them have floated into your path since your part in the Iniquus case was put to rest. So we’re left with possible fraud and possible theft. What do you think about a combination of the two?”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a pretty odd setup, don’t you think? The team working on this is up to something complex. They’ve got someone pretending to be you who is setting up a gallery opening. And there is a whole file on the show, including catering receipts. There are printed invitations. There’s a location. They’ve made reservations for the artists’ agents at some very nice hotels. Pricey. Why?”
“They’re making copies of the work – the forger who’s doing them is really talented. I can’t tell which ones were fake and which ones are the real deal simply by looking,” Lacey said.
“When we were in the warehouse, you were wiping one of the paintings with a chemical. Why?”
“All of the paintings are oils. Acrylics dry very quickly, but oils can take months to cure, and then sometimes they’re varnished. But that last step is up to the artist. It looked to me like the forgeries of the paintings where the original artist chose to use varnish had been painted first, and the last ones to be forged were of the paintings that weren’t varnished, which makes sense. The room was set up with de-humidifiers, fans, and warm temperatures to encourage the quick drying process of oil on canvas. What I was doing with the cloth was testing to see if the painting was dry or not. On the real painting, the one that had been allowed to cure properly, I wouldn’t have picked up any pigment. I was reassuring myself that what I thought I was seeing was in truth what I was seeing.”
“You’re confident then that you saw fake paintings. And when we looked in the crates, we found what we think are the originals.”
“Right. I think they’re the originals, but I didn’t test them for dryness, and without the right equipment—even with the right equipment—that’s not my bailiwick. I don’t know that I could tell one from the other,” Lacey said.
“So what are they doing? Are they making the fakes to sell as the real deal? Are they going to give the fakes back to the artists and try to pass them off as the originals? Why go through all of the effort to have an impostor Lacey involved?”
“You’ve got me. These works are very valuable. The receiver will almost certainly know the work is illegal, so the buyer isn’t going to display the work to visitors who might recognize it as stolen. Unless, of course, they’re sending it to parts of the world where that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Like where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere outside of North America. Money and distance would be an illegal collector’s best friends.”
“Okay, I have another possibility. What about posing the fake paintings in a gallery show, stealing the real ones, and then contacting your gallery to ransom the real ones?”
“That’s a lot of work and an unnecessary extra step. Why not take the originals and ransom them? Why would you need fakes hanging up? Like I told you, we don’t have insurance to cover theft, so what would they get?”
“Your uncle has money – millions.”
“Great uncle. I can’t imagine he’d care. Remember, it would be the artists’ loss, not the gallery’s.”
“So let’s say they thought your uncle might be willing to cough up some money – say a million dollars or so—to save his reputation. Could you see him doing that?”
“Going back a few months, I really don’t know. Could have gone either way. He might have told them to go jump in the lake, or he might follow through for some reason. But he got caught up with the Iniquus theft in November. He ran off to his vacation home in Bali and moved all of his financial resources offshore. I don’t think he plans on ever coming back – so I can’t see how they could extort money from him. And if they succeeded in killing me, which is what they’ve been trying to do, how could they extort money from me?”
“You’re referring to your uncle’s money?”
“No, my own. I inherited a great deal of money. I work for pleasure, not necessity. And I lead a simple life by choice, not necessity.”
Deep leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Lacey watched carefully to see how he took in the information that she was an heiress. In fact, she was worth a lot more money than her uncle was. But her wealth seemed to pass right through Deep’s consciousness. He didn’t put any emphasis on it at all as he worked to figure out the scam. Lacey wondered what had been on the computer screen that made him look so fierce earlier. But she trusted that Deep was progressing forward in a systematic way and not simply dumping things on the table in a jumble, which she appreciated. Order amidst all of this chaos was appreciated.
“Okay, go back. On the flash drive, there are signed contracts with the artist’s agents.”
“Signed by whom?” Lacey asked.
“Your uncle.”
“What if the signatures were forged? That artist from the warehouse could probably do it.”
“I put them through a program I have that identifies the differences between known signatures and unauthenticated signatures.”
“How did you get a copy of a known signature?”
“I had one on my computer from when Iniquus was investigating their art theft.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Lacey pulled her hands back so she could wipe them on her pants.
&n
bsp; “The software authenticated his signature. The contracts state that the Bartholomew Windsor Gallery will be handling the show. It enumerates the ways in which the art pieces will be marketed, including a cocktail party for the agents that will, according to these contracts, be tomorrow night. It says that they will not be housed at the Bartholomew Windsor Galleries, but will be at a rented space in a more accessible and affluently inhabited part of the city, and they give an Alexandria address.”
“That’s what the man was talking about at the warehouse. So that means it’s still a go. And the pieces were insured for their whole amount?”
“There’s no indication that your uncle followed through on purchasing the theft protection insurance. But other contracts showed proof of insurance. For example, there was a contract for each of the paintings that was listed in the catalogue, price paid in full.”
“What? Before the show opened? Before they were publicly offered? All of them? That’s unheard of. Who bought them?”
“Eastern European businesses, all of them. And each of the art pieces is insured.”
“Against theft?”
“Against damage.”
“Oh.” Lacey rolled that tidbit over in her mind. “That makes all the sense in the world.”
Chapter Thirty
Lacey
Tuesday Night
Deep leaned farther across the table. “Tell me.”
“Well the theft insurance is so costly it would almost be a wash by the time all was said and done. But short-term damage insurance is comparatively inexpensive. Especially if it’s for an abbreviated time, such as for the time a show is supposed to be up, through shipping a piece to its new location. So, let’s say two months. With insurance in place, you could put up some counterfeits, and then do something that would cause them damage. It would have to be enough damage that an expert witness couldn’t prove they were fake, though.”