Izzy smiled faintly over the rim of her own cup. “Is that it?”
Gaby looked puzzled. “What do you mean? Did I miss something?”
Izzy arched one tweezed eyebrow. “I notice you made no reference to my vocal qualities.”
“Your vocal qualities!” Gaby shifted into a plummy English accent. “Oh, very nice, indeed, my dear, but personally, I prefer singing.”
She accompanied this with a deep-throated, melodious laugh straight out of her old Verdi repertoire, and that made all three of them laugh like old friends. Alix had warmed up to both of them more quickly than she usually did with strangers.
“Oh, just put me down as jealous,” Gaby said, sobering. “Izzy, you were so damn smart to stick with your career instead of… ah, what the hell, it’s too late now.”
“Well, it’s not like I had a lot of choice in the matter, Gaby. The guys chasing me weren’t exactly the cream of the potential-husband crop. There weren’t any fairy-tale gazillionaires who came to me on bended knee wanting to turn me into a princess.” She raised one eyebrow in thought. “Well, there was one, but he was too bizarre, even for me. Anyway, why would I want to get married? Durward provides everything I need from a husband, and he doesn’t bother me with all the sex crap. I’m happy.”
“Fairy tale,” Gaby said. “Yup, that’s my life in a nutshell. Princess first, and then a wrinkle or two turns up on your face, and poof, you’re a pumpkin.” She smiled. “Except that if Panos had gotten down on bended knee, he wouldn’t have been able to get up again.” She tossed her head and turned to Alix. “Ever been married, Alix?”
“Briefly,” she answered and then seized on the opportunity to change the subject that Takis’s arrival with their breakfasts offered. “Wow, that smells wonderful.”
As they ate, the conversation turned to the usual safe female topics—food, fashion, travel. The omelet she’d ordered really was worth talking about, wonderfully fluffy and quiche-like, cooked in olive oil and filled with melting goat cheese and chives. And after the subject of food was exhausted, she was able to hold her own in the fashion talk. Before hanging out for those weekly happy hours with Chris at her wine bar, she’d have been at sea. Until then, what she’d known about fashion had been ten years out of date. There had indeed been a time when she’d worn outfits straight from the designer showrooms, but dear old Dad’s debacle had put an end to that. And afterward, in those years of dedicated art restoration study with Santullo, she’d totally lost interest in the subject and never regained it. A good thing, too, given her current economic status. But Chris had made the fashion reeducation of Alix one of her objectives, on the simple grounds that any fully formed woman of today should know such things. Alix didn’t quite agree, but she seemed to have absorbed a lot of information, mostly by osmosis.
Sitting there, Alix was struck by the fact that she was somewhere between the two women at the table, metaphorically as well as physically. Careers and marriage had become more complex in today’s world, and both were littered with land mines. Gaby had apparently walked into her minefield willingly, but Alix was in no position to feel superior. She herself, after all, had once been married to Paynton Whipple-Pruitt, of the Whipple-Pruitts (of Boston, Watch Hill, and Palm Beach), patrons of the arts, society-page regulars, and stalwarts of New England’s inbred, old-money elite. And first-class prigs, one and all.
How she’d gotten herself into that situation in the first place was something she was trying to forget and certainly had no desire to talk about. With anybody. Suffice it to say that it had happened at a bad time, the most susceptible and insecure time of her life. Geoff’s self-destruction had just occurred and with her college savings, along with the family money, gone, she suddenly had no family, no money, and no future. Bereft and adrift, she’d accepted Paynton’s noblesse-oblige-motivated proposal of marriage. It hadn’t taken her long to get a grip, though, and to comprehend the enormity of her mistake. On day number eleven of their wedded life, she had begun the process of filing for divorce—this despite the prenuptial agreement drawn up by the Whipple-Pruitt attorneys that allowed her nothing at all if the marriage lasted less than a year. That had been fine with her; she’d had no interest in contesting it or negotiating something less draconian. She just wanted out.
That put her more in Izzy’s camp than in Gaby’s, she supposed, although her choice of a career—could you call art consulting a career?—had proved a pretty rocky road so far. But as she’d truthfully told Izzy a little while ago, she wasn’t complaining. She was where she wanted to be, things were looking up, and life could hardly have been more interesting.
The clatter of an approaching helicopter brought her from her thoughts, and suddenly everybody was rushing around. Stewards and stewardesses descended on them to usher them safely away from the landing pad and to clear away the table and chairs. The two-or three-passenger helicopter—white with Prussian-blue detailing (she was starting to think of it as Papadakis blue)—hovered directly overhead, a few hundred feet up, and the clatter grew deafening. It got even worse as the big machine descended, and Alix had to cover her ears, as did Gaby and Izzy.
Then came the terrific wind from the rotor blades. “Damn!” Izzy exclaimed as it tore the visor from her head and sent it sailing into the sea. “Well, at least it was the mauve one,” she muttered. Gaby and Alix managed to grab and hold onto their own visors. The copter’s landing skids touched down, the rotor slowed, and the wind fell away. From somewhere, Panos Papadakis approached as a one-man welcoming committee, and then Gaby went to stand beside him. Other guests, drawn by the helicopter’s arrival, also gathered nearby. Alix and Izzy remained on the edge of the crowd.
The passenger door of the pod swung open, and a dark-haired, youngish man with a sport coat slung over his shoulder hopped athletically out onto the deck, hand extended, already returning Panos’s smile.
Behind Alix’s sunglasses, her eyes widened.
You’ve got to be kidding, she thought.
15
The good-looking man who had dropped so effortlessly to the deck was—unmistakably, indubitably, inarguably… and inexplicably—Special Agent Ted Ellesworth of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s art squad. Alix was stunned not only into silence, but into total incomprehension. She had not the faintest clue to what was going on, so she simply stood quietly where she was and waited for him to call the shots.
“Well, now,” Izzy said in a low, appreciative voice, “not bad. Hey, if his mother’s a countess, does that make him a count?”
“It’s his aunt, not his mother,” said Alix, whose wits were beginning to reassemble, “and no, I don’t think it does.” She continued to watch as Panos, once again wreathed in oleaginous smiles, stepped forward. “Mr. de Beauvais, I welcome you greatly to my little boat. I am so glad you could come in place of your dear aunt, Countess Saskia. I hope she is not very hurt?”
“No, Aunt Saskia will be fine, but she didn’t think it was wise to travel yet. She’s grateful that you’ve allowed me to bid in her place.”
“Not only bid, my dear man, my dear fellow, but enjoy yourself in every way as a most honored guest. And here is my beautiful wife, Gabriela, formerly Gabriela Candelas, who I am sure you heard of.”
“Heard of and heard,” Ted said to Gaby. “I was privileged see you in Parsifal at the Shubert in Boston a few years ago, Ms. Candelas. You were superb.”
This had to be a tribute to Ted’s research skills, not his love for opera. When they were in New Mexico, they had driven past the Santa Fe Opera amphitheater on their way back from Taos, and she had asked him if he liked opera. He’d said that, while he enjoyed the occasional Verdi or Puccini production, there was no way anyone could drag him to another one by Wagner, not after he’d been taken with his high school class to a performance of Tristan and Isolde. He’d made her laugh when he’d told her that it was the most boring, exhausting experience he’d ever had. “They started it at five o’clock because it was so long, and w
hen it went on and on, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore I checked my watch to see how much more there could possibly be. And it was five twenty.”
But Gaby was predictably charmed, and they exchanged a few more words. Then Panos began leading him around the semicircle of observers, making introductions. With Izzy, Alix was at the far end, so she had a little more time to put her thoughts together before she was face to face with Ted.
“Roland de Beauvais,”’ was one of Ted’s undercover aliases, the one he’d been using when she’d first met him in New Mexico. Somehow (the mind boggled) the FBI had transformed him into the nephew of this countess-client of Panos’s and put him aboard in her place. Clearly, he was here to gather evidence on Panos’s fractional-shares scheme; in short, to do—and do better—what she was supposed to be here for. So why did he need Alix? And why would he spring this on her as a surprise? Why had he not let her know he would be coming?
Panos and Ted had reached them. “And this charming lady,” Panos was saying, “is our little art expert”—he made it sound like a private joke—“She—”
“Oh, Alix and I are old friends,” Ted said, smiling at her.
Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it. Caught by surprise, with no idea what she was supposed to say, she smiled and adjusted her sunglasses.
“You do remember me, I hope, Alix—Rollie de Beauvais?”
“Yes. Sure. Of course. I’m happy to see you again, uh, Rollie. I didn’t know you’d be here.” You crud, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?
“I didn’t know it either,” he said smoothly. “Not till yesterday. Well, I’m looking forward to getting to know you even better over the next few days, Alix.”
He gave her a flirty smile, which did nothing to unconfuse her. Was he doing that so that nobody would think it odd if they were seen alone talking? Or was he simply flirting? If she had to bet, she’d put her money on the former. From what she knew of him, he didn’t do too much that wasn’t carefully thought out ahead of time, and he wasn’t really the flirty type. Only, what did she know of him? All she had to go on were those four days in New Mexico, during which they’d spent a total of, what, maybe twelve hours in each other’s company? And half of that time, he was being Rollie de Beauvais, not Ted Ellesworth.
“And this,” Panos said, moving on to Izzy, “is—”
“And this,” Ted interrupted, “unless I’m mistaken, is the famous Pocahontas. It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Miss Clinke.” And he held out his hand.
“Izzy, please,” she said.
Alix, a little ticked off about that “real pleasure” business—what was he saying, that meeting Alix again wasn’t a real pleasure?—was further annoyed by Izzy, who was practically simpering. If it was Ted who was asking her to sign her name on his forehead (or on any other part of his anatomy), Alix grumbled to herself, Izzy would leap at the chance.
Ted was then whisked away by Panos, and Alix whisked herself away to her stateroom, where she hid out for the next few hours, until she was due in the music room and salon for her first “informal chat session.” Izzy and Gaby, and maybe one or two of the others, had heard Ted say that he and Alix were “old friends,” and she didn’t want to try to field questions from them about how it was that she and Ted knew each other and just what kind of relationship they had and so on and so forth. She needed to talk to him first so that she didn’t blow whatever story he’d cooked up. She was more annoyed than ever at him for not giving her any warning. For that matter, why wasn’t he getting in touch with her right now to tell her what was going on? He had really put her in an uncomfortable spot. The man did have some attractive qualities, true, but he was a long way from perfect, and he could be damn irritating.
Grumbling about Ted did her good, but she spent most of the time reviewing her art resource materials so that she wouldn’t make a complete ass of herself when it came time for the session. Midway through, she took a break, called in an order for a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and put “Pocahontas” into YouTube. Up came fifteen pages of videos, split about half and half between the Pocahontases of Walt Disney and Izzy Clinke. Watching one of Izzy’s, she would have had a hard time believing that the sensuous, exotic, extravagant creature on the screen and the lanky, low-key, tongue-in-cheek Izzy were one and the same, if not for that unmistakable helmet of orange corkscrew curls. Gaby had done a good job of describing her, the hypnotically smooth, almost boneless movements, the emotionless, unchanging expression, and the strange, grating, chant-like singing. Hair excepted, she made Alix think of one of those Indian statues of a multiarmed goddess come to life. Her costume was some kind of Indian-Egyptian-Tahitian mishmash that left only the bare minimum (of Izzy) to the imagination. As Gaby had said, it was hard to stop watching her. One would think that if Izzy hated being hounded by the fans and the paparazzi as much as she’d implied, all she had to do was to go out in public in ordinary clothes, sunglasses, and a cover for her hair. No one would know her.
At three o’clock Alix headed for the music room. Only Mirko Koslecki, the Man With Six Countries, was there, standing in front of the collection’s Renoir, one of his lush, fleshy nudes-in-the-bath. Alix walked boldly up to him and started right in doing some heavy-duty informal chatting.
“Hello, again, Mirko,” she said brightly. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Did you know that the woman is one of Renoir’s favorite models, Suzanne Valadon? She modeled for Toulouse-Lautrec too, and Puvis de Chavannes. A fascinating person, born very poor—the daughter of a laundress—she became a circus acrobat as a child, until she fell off a trapeze and had to take to modeling. Believe it or not, she actually became a pretty decent painter herself. She was supposed to have had an affair with Renoir, but nobody really knows. Never married, but she did have a baby at eighteen, and she taught him to paint too. A lot of people believe Renoir was the father.”
She paused in the interest of narrative tension, but also because she needed to take a breath. “And would you like to guess the name of that baby boy who may well have been the natural son of Pierre August Renoir?” she asked triumphantly. “None other than—”
“Maurice Utrillo,” Mirko mumbled without ever once having looked at her, then pulled down his head and scuttled off on his tiny feet to the furthest corner of the room to look at a picture by Seurat.
Well, that went well. Obviously, Alix had pumped herself up and come on a wee bit too strong there. And just as obviously she’d been overly cavalier in taking it for granted that these people didn’t know very much. Okay, lesson learned, let’s move on. Toward the salon she strode. Mirko, fearing she was coming in pursuit of him, quickly crossed the room again, to a Sisley beach scene. Alix sighed. Had she done anything right since putting foot on the Artemis?
There were two people in the salon: Emil Varga—the one whom she’d overheard talking to Edward earlier, scoffing at her “credentials”—and a man she hadn’t seen before. They weren’t looking at the paintings but standing in the middle of the room having a spirited discussion.
Varga spotted her as she came in. “You’re Alix London, aren’t you? Come and join us, there’s something we’d like your opinion on. We were just talking about you.”
“Oh?” Alix said with a smile. I can just imagine. He was a bigger man than she’d realized, with wider hips and shoulders, and standing up he had a bearlike, lumbering quality to him.
“My name is Dr. Emil Varga, Alix.”
That’s two more strikes against you, chum. What kind of self-aggrandizing jerk introduces himself in a social situation as “doctor”? Besides which, technically speaking, “doctor” isn’t your name, it’s a title. You’d think a guy with doctorates from Harvard and Oxford would know that. Well, at least he didn’t refer to himself as “Doctor Doctor.”
Second, and more egregious in her opinion, if he was going to refer to himself as “doctor,” the least he could do would be to address her as “miss.” This is going to be a hard guy to like.
“A pleasure to meet you,” she said, “Emil.”
A single small tic below his left eye and a brief compression of the lips indicated that she’d hit her mark. She wasn’t sure how happy she was about that. Antagonizing the guests was a totally dumb thing to do and yet she couldn’t stop doing it. She was there, at least until further notice, to gather information, and that wasn’t the way to encourage it. On the other hand, it did feel good to skewer the pretentious SOB.
But really, she’d have to stop indulging in these small-minded jabs. She could save them for Ted when she got the chance.
“And this is my good friend, il professore Lorenzo Bolzano of Firenze, Italia,” Varga said.
“Molto lieto, professore,” said Alix.
“Lorenzo, please! And it is kind of you to speak in my language, but I enjoy speaking English very much. I am glad to see that you were not seriously hurt last night, Alix.”
She was trying to figure out what it was that was so “indescribable” about him. A bit odd looking, that was true, but pretty describable as far as she could see: bald, beaky, and hollow chested, with moist, dim-sighted black eyes peering amiably out from behind wire-rimmed glasses that sat slightly awry on his pinched nose. His monk-like ruffle of gray hair was ridiculously long, so that it hung limply down all the way to his collar like the fringe on a cowgirl skirt. The accent was thick but his English was fluent and correct.
“Actually, Alix,” Emil said, “we were talking about last night, about your, uh, interesting and—no offense, arguable—conclusion that the Manet is a forgery.”
So Izzy had been right, she thought. Panos could forget about keeping any secrets on the Artemis. “Actually,” she said, “I’d hardly call it a ‘conclusion,’ and I don’t think I used the word ‘forgery,’ or at least I hope I didn’t. That’s a term I’m very careful with. Forgery is a slippery, woolly kind of concept that—”
A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) Page 13