by Lind, Hailey
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Annie, had I wanted the Picasso, I would have taken it. But I would not have taken it from you. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“A liar and a cheat.”
“I suppose you’ve got me there,” he said with a slight incline of his head.
“And what’s with engineering the Stendhal fainting at the Brock so that Carlos Jimenez could steal the Chagall?”
“Ah, so you figured that out.”
“Answer the question.”
“Which question was that?”
“How were you involved? And why?”
“I owed Carlos a favor from last spring’s Caravaggio fiasco. When I realized the guys in Bryan’s group were enthralled with the idea of the Stendhal Syndrome, it seemed like the perfect diversion. I planted the idea that the most sensitive among them might be overtaken with emotion in the presence of the Gauguin. I never imagined they would all hit the floor.”
“I guess they’re a sensitive bunch,” I mused. “Why did Carlos want the Chagall?”
“I have no idea.”
“And if you did, you wouldn’t tell me?”
He shrugged.
“You are going to get the Chagall for me, though, right? That’s our deal. I act nice tonight, and you get the painting back so Bryan’s off the hook. Right?”
“A promise is a promise, Annie. It should be ready in the next day or two.”
“What do you mean, ‘ready’?”
“I mean I should have it for you in a day or two. Trust me.”
I peered out the window, but darkness had fallen and the wooded landscape did not offer much in the way of night vistas.
“I’ll bet being self-employed makes it hard to find a love life,” Michael said as the Lexus snaked along the rural road.
“Not really. It just so happens I’m seeing someone.”
“Oh, please,” he scoffed.
“It’s true!”
“Since when?”
“For a little while.” Emphasis on little.
“I see. So who is this guy?”
“His name’s Josh.”
“Does Josh have a last name?”
“Reynolds.” What the hell. Josh didn’t have anything worth stealing that I knew of.
“Never heard of him.”
“Why would you have heard of him? This isn’t high school.”
“Is he in the business?”
“What business would that be?”
Michael gave me A Look.
“It just so happens he’s not currently wanted by the police, if that’s what you mean,” I retorted.
“Already done his time, has he?” Michael chuckled. “What line of work is good ol’ Josh Reynolds in these days?”
“He owns his own business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Construction business.”
“Oh brother . . . So that’s it, is it?”
“What’s it?” I bristled.
“You want some, bad.”
“What? I do n—” Of course I did. But it wasn’t any concern of his. “You are such a jerk!”
“Annie. You should have called me,” he continued, unfazed. “I would’ve been happy to help you.”
“Help me into jail, more like.”
“Not on purpose,” Michael mused. “Those construction guys have some muscles, huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not my girlfriend, Michael. I’m not going to tell you about my lover’s manly body.”
Michael brought the car to a halt at a deserted intersection, set the parking brake, and turned toward me. “Girlfriend? Not hardly,” he said, his voice low. “But I do know this: You’d rather be sleeping with me.”
“You are the most arrogant, conceited, self-centered—”
Michael’s mouth swooped down onto mine, my pulse shot into overdrive, my stomach plunged, and my toes began to curl. By the time his tongue started playing with mine my entire being had been reduced to the consistency of Play-Doh.
So much for playing hard to get.
I was on the verge of getting naked when he broke the kiss and reality came flooding back. “Hell, Annie,” Michael whispered, his voice gruff, his green eyes piercing mine. “I’d be happy to help you with your lack of a love life anytime.”
“Just drive the damned car,” I said through clenched teeth, and Michael put the car in gear. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was preoccupied with corralling the raging hormones his kiss had released. They were putting up quite a fight.
“I didn’t mean to put an end to our delightful conversation,” Michael said, glancing at me from the corner of his eye. “But I’ve wanted to kiss you for quite some time.”
“And my calling you names made me too hard to resist, is that it?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“What, precisely, are you referring to? I don’t believe anything you say, as a rule.”
“You don’t believe that I’ve been wanting to kiss you?”
“I don’t know what to believe, Michael,” I sighed, dropping my head against the leather headrest and closing my eyes. “That’s what comes from dealing with you folks in ‘the business.’ You know the saying ‘once burnt, twice shy’? I learned the meaning of that the hard way.”
I felt Michael’s hand on the back of my neck, massaging very gently.
“You can believe the part about my wanting you. Annie, I—” He cut himself off. “We’ll have to finish this later.”
I opened my eyes to see a pair of massive black wrought-iron gates topped with a curlicued H highlighted in gold leaf. A circular driveway skirted an expansive green lawn, in the center of which was an ornate, ten-foot-tall fountain. Chubby cherubs frolicked with sea creatures as water splashed gaily about them. The façade of a magnificent red brick Georgian mansion was lit up like a theater production, highlighting the massive Corinthian columns that marched along the façade with military precision. Where were we—Tara?
Michael gave me an encouraging look and squeezed my hand. “Showtime.”
“Cue the orchestra,” I replied.
He rolled to a stop in front of the portico, handed his keys to a hovering valet, and came around the car to help me out. His grip on my arm was too tight.
“I’m not going to run away,” I whispered. “Not in these shoes, that’s for sure.”
“Sorry.”
Could the X-man be nervous? I wondered as granite chips crunched underfoot. I studied my escort out of the corner of my eye. I had assumed Michael was attending this shindig for reasons other than a love of cocktail wieners, but I never thought whatever scheme he was cooking up would unfold tonight. Was I about to become an unwitting—read: incredibly gullible and likely to be railroaded by the district attorney—accomplice? I doubted how long I’d hold out under even a half-assed interrogation. I’d probably crack if somebody so much as shone a forty-watt bulb in my face.
I was considering faking a case of sudden-onset food poisoning when a uniformed doorman materialized at the carved cherry double doors and ushered us in, demonstrating that being wealthy meant never having to turn a doorknob. I chanced another glance at Michael’s tense expression. Too late to back out now, Annie, I thought. Do it for the Chagall.
The two-story foyer boasted marble trim with gold-leafed accents, a sparkling crystal chandelier, and a stunning hanging staircase along the curved rear wall. I stifled an urge to race up the stairs and sweep back down, à la Scarlett O’Hara, and declined the doorman’s offer to take my jacket. Before I paraded around half naked in front of strangers, I needed a drink. Maybe several.
We were shepherded down a hallway toward the sound of muted conversation and tinkling glassware. A cavernous room was paneled in dark walnut with a vaulted, beamed ceiling and a massive stone fireplace where a fire roared. Heavy carved furniture and expensive Oriental rugs did little to disguise the room’s outsized proportions or lend it an air of
warmth, and I marveled at the number of trees that had been sacrificed so our hosts could live in such splendor.
A small man greeted us. He was in his late fifties and wore his salt-and-pepper hair swept back from a gleaming forehead. A pallid complexion and a pair of rosy lips, combined with prominent front teeth, gave him the unfortunate appearance of a rabbit. The man’s pale gray eyes had a hard, calculating gleam as they looked me over from head to toe.
Make that a really mean rabbit.
“Ah! Raphael! So good of you to come!” The man spoke with an odd accent that sounded British with vaguely Germanic overtones. It was not from Australia or New Zealand, I was sure of that. It took a moment to realize the man was speaking to Michael.
Raphael?
“I am ver’ heppy to be here,” Michael replied in a straight-from-cable-TV Italian accent. “May I introduce Signorina Anna? Anna, this is Signore Nathan Haggerty.”
“Charmed,” Nathan assured me. “Delighted you could make it, Raphael, you und your charming companion. Do tell me what you’ve been up to since Johannesburg.”
Aha! I thought. His accent was South African.
Nathan introduced his wife, Diane, a skeletal brunette in her late forties. I wondered if she’d been ill, or if she simply didn’t eat anymore. Her slight figure suited her chic Jackie O-style dress, which she had accessorized with an ostentatious necklace of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires in filigreed platinum. I decided the stones had to be real because no woman in her right mind would wear something that hideous unless it had cost a fortune.
A waiter offered us drinks and we started to circulate. Most of the other guests were Hong Kong nationals who acted pleased when I attempted the few Mandarin phrases my grandfather had taught me. I omitted the one about demanding a lawyer.
I was engaged in a discussion with a physician about whether feng shui was a valid design philosophy or—as I had always suspected—just a bunch of hooey when a tall blond man named Kevin Something joined us. He seemed somehow familiar as his little piggy eyes squinted at me, and he hovered too close for comfort, gazing at my cleavage. For some reason Kevin decided we would like to know why South African apartheid hadn’t been such a bad an idea after all.
As I listened to his tired racist twaddle I waited for our host or hostess to interrupt, but no one said a word. I figured I had two options. I could ignore him, in deference to my status as a guest in the Haggerty home. Or I could take him out, in deference to right-thinking people everywhere.
I took him out.
My words of denunciation rang out loud and strong. I was on my second glass of a smoky, twelve-year-old single-malt scotch and had not eaten anything in hours, a combination that made me unusually loquacious. The phrases “Hitler wannabes,” “fascist scumbags,” and “limp-dicked losers” may have made an appearance. When I finally wound down I realized the room had fallen silent and all eyes were trained on me. Michael smirked, the Haggertys looked surprised, and the Hong Kongers seemed embarrassed. Kevin the Nazi wore a ghost of a smile.
Once again I was a social pariah.
Warmed by the scotch and the argument, I excused myself and slipped into the hall, where a Latina maid hung my jacket in a closet. She glanced around furtively and winked. I winked back, and she disappeared into the kitchen. I longed to follow, since that was clearly where I belonged. Instead, I lingered in the hall, dreading a return to the hostile crowd and feeling more than a little exposed with nothing but air on my bare back.
And warm fingers running up my spine.
“That is one hell of a fine dress,” came Michael’s low, sexy growl in my ear.
“Do you like the earrings?” I asked over my shoulder. “My friend Samantha made them especially for tonight.”
“I like them very much. But I adore this dress.” He turned me around so that we faced each other, his hands resting lightly on my waist.
“Thanks for the support with Kevin the Nazi, pal.”
Michael laughed, his eyes crinkling adorably. “Are you kidding? You didn’t need my help. You could have taken him out with one hand tied behind your back.” His voice grew more intimate. “He was outmatched and outgunned. You were magnificent, sweetheart. I love it when you pontificate.”
“I do not pontificate!”
“Au contraire, my dear. You are the most pontificating female I have ever had the, ah, pleasure to know.” He rested his forehead against mine. His skin was smooth and warm, and I felt his breath on my face. I had another Gone with the Wind moment, imagining Michael scooping me up in his strong arms and dashing up the curved stairs to have his wicked way with me. I swallowed, hard.
“Raphael, won’t you two lovebirds join us, per favore? We’re gathering in the library for a little show,” our hostess called out with a gracious smile and a rotten Italian accent.
“Of-a course,” Michael/Raphael replied, letting go of my waist.
“What’s the story with this crowd?” I whispered as we followed Diane.
“Most are Nathan’s business associates. He must have something in the works in Hong Kong. By the way, you womenfolk are supposed to keep your mouths shut and your opinions to yourself. Did I forget to mention that?”
He emitted a satisfying “oof” when I elbowed him in the stomach.
We arrived in the library, where the guests were oohing and aahing over a painting spotlighted above the stone fireplace. I halted midstride, transfixed, the babble of voices fading. When I finally tore my eyes away I saw Michael watching me.
So this was why he’d brought me here.
It was a magnificent oil portrait of an elderly man, his gnarled hands and wrinkled features exaggerated for effect as he gazed at the viewer with a stubborn yet serene air. The signature in the lower right corner of the canvas was that of Quentin Massys, the son of a blacksmith who had become one of fifteenth-century Antwerp’s leading artists. In America the northern European Renaissance artists were not nearly as well known as the Italian masters, but in Europe Massys was famous for his dramatic triptych altar-pieces and his expressive portraits, which emphasized the individuality of his subjects. The Massys above the Haggertys’ fireplace looked to be one of his best.
Except Massys had not painted this portrait. Georges LeFleur, my grandfather and art forger extraordinaire, had.
“Anna?” I heard Nathan calling from what seemed like a great distance. “Is everything all right?”
I mentally shook myself and turned to smile at him. “What an extraordinary painting.”
“Aah,” Nathan said with a self-satisfied sigh. “An important Dutch artist. Do you know him?”
“Massys. But he wasn’t Dutch. He was Flemish.”
Michael chimed in. “You should-a take her word for it, Nathan. Anna knows a great-a deal about Renaissance art.”
“Is that right?” Nathan replied, his tone an unpleasant combination of skepticism and lasciviousness. “Perhaps I shall test you, Anna. Would you say that this painting”—he nodded at the Massys—“is genuine? Or perhaps a clever imposter?”
“Since you asked the question,” I replied, “I would say it’s a fake.”
Nathan roared with laughter. “But you are something of an expert, are you not? Raphael tells me that you studied with Anton Woznikowicz, the well-known art . . . restorer.”
“Briefly, yes,” I said. As far as the cops and the IRS were concerned, Anton was a legitimate art restorer. His real money, though, came from illegitimate art forgery. How much did Nathan know? And why was he playing these guessing games with me?
Kevin the Nazi came over to stand next to Nathan, and I realized why the two seemed familiar: I had seen them last Sunday morning leaving Frank DeBenton’s office. The Giggles Twins. Did they recognize me, too? How were they connected to Frank?
“Perhaps, Anna, you would you care to see my private collection?” Nathan asked, voice as smooth as silk. “It is in my study. I do not share it with many.”
Michael’s eyes gleamed with avarice.
Reality check. Grand theft was a felony, and a blazing orange prison jumpsuit was not a good look for me. Michael was gorgeous and charming and one hell of a kisser, but he was also a thief and a liar, and he never hesitated to use me. Why did I keep forgetting that?
“Why, I would adore seeing your collection, Nathan,” I whispered so only he could hear. As an art lover I was curious to see his collection; as a woman I was happy to spite Michael. “Could I get a private tour?”
Nathan’s eyes widened. He nodded, said he would be right back, and rushed off.
Michael sidled up. “What was all that about?”
I shrugged. “Nothing much. Oh look, here’s Diane.”
Our hostess sank her claws into Michael’s arm and dragged him away, chattering about her plans to attend Wimbledon next year.
Nathan escorted me up the plush carpeted stairs to the second floor and down a long gallery. Stopping in front of a stout mahogany door, he took a keycard from his vest pocket and swiped it in the card reader. The door unlocked with an audible click.
“I disarmed the sensors,” he said, waving me into his study. “This is a most valuable collection. I don’t allow anyone in here unescorted. I even dust the room myself!”
“Nathan, you are the zaniest!” I quipped, before the sheer beauty of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings lining the walls struck me dumb. The northern European masters were famous for their meticulous detail, use of dramatic light, and discerning portrayals of everyday life. I recognized two Marinus van Reymerswaele, another Massys, one Rembrandt van Rijn, two Jan Steen, and one each by Cornelius Bega and Adriaan van Ostade. There were three others in the same genre, but these were of lesser quality and I was not familiar with the artists.
I circled the room examining each. Both of the Jan Steen and the Rembrandt were forgeries, though I did not recognize the forger. The Rembrandt was not even particularly well done, I thought with a sniff, which surprised me because Rembrandt was not hard to forge. To my chagrin one of the Reymerswaeles and the van Ostade had been forged by my grandfather.
Not for the first time, I cursed the old man. I kept thinking Grandfather would become less prolific with age, but the opposite seemed to be true. But why did Nathan have so many of Georges’ forgeries?