Your Scheming Heart

by Kress, Alyssa

  The old ladies smiled, they tittered. The one with the knitting poked her neighbor in the ribs. "That's all right," the poked one chirped. "We were ready to turn in anyway, weren't we, girls?"

  There was a chorus of affirmatives to this obvious falsehood.

  With a natural, unforced charm, Vincenzo accepted the thanks of the women as they rose. He'd had a lovely evening. He was so grateful they'd included him. The women tittered some more, gathered their things, and started for the elevators. Sabrina was left with Vincenzo at the empty table in the hotel lobby.

  "You are earlier than I expected." Vincenzo smoothed a hand across the now-clear tabletop.

  "The reporter wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped."

  Vincenzo smiled. "Good." He caught himself and scowled. "I mean, it is good you didn't waste any more time than was necessary."

  "I couldn't agree more. What were you playing?"

  He gave her a blank look. "What? Oh. Canasta. One of my mother's favorite games."

  Sabrina wondered how Vincenzo, the financial genius, had managed to keep from whipping the ladies' pants off. Yeah, he was a real shark.

  "Sabrina?"

  "Hm?" She raised her eyes, realizing she'd been staring at his chest.

  He frowned. "I will walk you upstairs."

  They went in a mutual, thoughtful silence up the stairs to their second-floor rooms. Outside Sabrina's door, they both stopped.

  Vincenzo won't touch a woman, echoed in her head. Echoed? No, it pounded. And now, despite the hunger with which he'd looked at her downstairs, he didn't make a move to follow up on it, just turned toward his own door.

  "Vincenzo?"

  At her voice he stopped and turned back, his expression open, innocently questioning.

  She hesitated. "Vincenzo, I need to know, about the Lady." But maybe it was better not to know.

  "Yes?"

  It was never better not to know, Sabrina scolded herself. Information was the life-blood of a con artist. Knowing was essential. And yet, she'd put off asking this question several times already.

  But tonight she had to ask. "The painting, the Lady. Why—exactly—do you need her? What—precisely—is she supposed to do for you?"

  His openness started to close. "It is not a question of what she does for me. It is what I must do for her. I must bring her home."

  "But, why?" Sabrina growled. With an effort she calmed herself. "Oh, yeah, I know that you are Nicolazzi. I know about the drought in your village and all the reasons you've fobbed off on me. This time I want to know the truth. What do you expect from all this?"

  His face closed up even more, but Sabrina was determined. Taking a deep breath, she reached down and touched his hand.

  Knowing Vincenzo, it was a dirty trick. But it worked. He looked down at their hands, and his mask fell away. Only to be replaced by a different mask, though. The rage she'd seen a few times before rose in his eyes and a muscle twitched in his jaw. But now Sabrina knew that rage was directed against himself.

  She squeezed his hand. "Vincenzo."

  He closed his eyes. "You ask this of me..."

  "Do you think I shouldn't?"

  With their hands still clasped, he seemed to deflate. The rage seeped away. "No. That is—" He sighed deeply. "You will not believe me."

  "Oh, give it a try."

  He opened his eyes and looked down at her. "You certainly will not believe me."

  "You've never lied to me," Sabrina said, and felt a little sick to realize this was, quite possibly, true.

  He sighed again. "Very well. If you insist, then I will tell you. The truth. The best truth I know."

  "That's all I want."

  They were alone in the hotel corridor, nothing but the tasteful armoires and vases of dried flowers to keep them company.

  Looking tired now, Vincenzo let go of Sabrina's hand. "I told you how it was between myself and Carlotta."

  Yes, Sabrina remembered. Made for each other.

  "Well, after she died...I had to do something. Anything. The first thing I did was go to work. I worked like a demon. I couldn't stop, you understand."

  Sabrina understood. If he'd stopped he would have had to think. Worse, he would have had to feel.

  Vincenzo rubbed a hand over his chin. "After two weeks of this Sylvio found me sleeping on my desk. He kicked me out, sent me home."

  Yep. That sounded like the man Sabrina had met tonight.

  "I went home, to the village. But I didn't go to bed. Not to my house."

  Of course he couldn't have gone home, to where he knew Carlotta wouldn't be.

  Vincenzo slit a glance toward Sabrina. "I went into the church. I will admit, I had not been there in years."

  "You were alone there," Sabrina guessed.

  "Yes, completely alone. It was dark outside. Inside, candles were lit. It was quiet. I could rest there, I thought. And, in fact, I fell asleep." A crease formed between Vincenzo's brows. "At least, I think I fell asleep. I am still not entirely sure."

  "I'm listening," Sabrina said, when it seemed he'd decided not to go on.

  "You are not going to believe this next part."

  "Maybe not, but go on."

  He sucked in his lips. "I woke up. There were many more candles lit. It was light inside the little church. Over the altar the light was the brightest. And then—I saw her."

  It was easy to guess who he'd seen. "The Madonna della Montagna."

  Vincenzo nodded. He fingered the knob on Sabrina's door. "She looked just as I had seen her in photographs of the missing painting. But, more brilliant, in the light over the altar."

  Oh, boy. This was even worse than Sabrina had imagined.

  Vincenzo sighed. "She...spoke to me. In a way. It was more that I knew what she meant to say, than that I heard any words, you understand? I felt—there was such despair coming from her. I could feel such pain. She was lost, she told me. She wanted to come home. Please, please, would I find her?"

  Briefly Sabrina closed her eyes. Visions over church altars—who spoke. There'd be no arguing logic against that.

  Vincenzo let his hand drop from the knob of her door. "So that is the story. Perhaps it sounds crazy to you, but it was very real to me."

  "Oh, yeah, Vince. I'm sure it was...very real to you." His subsequent actions proved it had been even more real to him than the family business.

  He gave her a brief, close look and turned away. "I knew you wouldn't believe me," he muttered.

  "I believe you," Sabrina countered, frustrated. She watched him stalk to his room door. Unfortunately, she believed every word. "What else would explain everything?"

  He stopped outside his room door and glanced back at her. Their eyes met for a strange, naked moment. In that moment Sabrina saw that he was holding out on her, that he hadn't told her the whole story. As if sensing his indiscretion, he quickly broke the eye contact, bending forward to fit his key in the lock.

  "Vincenzo." Sabrina took a step toward him. Funny tingles worked up her spine. "Vincenzo," she repeated.

  He halted, looking ahead of him at the door.

  "She said something more to you that night, the Lady, didn't she?"

  He stood there, stolid, unresponsive.

  "What did she say?" This, those funny tingles told her, was the crux of it. This was behind all the madness. In a flash of intuition, Sabrina understood. "She promised you something, didn't she? What did she promise?"

  For a long moment Vincenzo stood unmoving, as though he hadn't heard her. Then, staring at the white painted door, he finally answered.

  "Absolution," he told the door ahead of him. His voice was a harsh whisper. "She promised me absolution." Then he pushed the door open and disappeared inside.

  ~~~

  Breakfast was a somber affair. In the bustling hotel coffee shop, Sabrina and Vincenzo were an island of silence. With his thoughts apparently a million miles away, Vincenzo actually drank his coffee without putting a drop of sugar in it.

  Sabrina, however,
was all too aware of her surroundings, and particularly of the man sitting across the table from her. Absolution. He thought finding this damned painting was going to bring him absolution for the imaginary sin of killing his beloved wife.

  Suddenly, Vincenzo set down his coffee cup. "Sabrina, did you truly learn nothing from the newspaper reporter?"

  His question, coming out of the prolonged silence, startled Sabrina as she was sifting her fork through an omelet. "I learned something," she admitted, caught off guard.

  Earlier in the morning, the reporter who'd written the article about Francesca Miller had returned Sabrina's call from the day before. "But nothing very helpful," she quickly added, remembering that's what she'd told Vincenzo already.

  "No?" His dark eyes frowned at her. "What did he tell you?"

  "It wasn't good news." Sabrina set down her fork. "If we were thinking of approaching Mrs. Miller by posing as another charity, like the Children's Hospital, it won't work. She won't talk to anyone who actively solicits." It was curious to Sabrina that this discouraging news actually cheered her up some.

  It seemed to cheer up Vincenzo, too, but for a different reason. "Ah, then he told you where to approach her, yes? He had her address?"

  Forcefully, Sabrina shook her head. "No. He wouldn't give me her address." Again, she felt oddly cheered by this setback.

  "But he knew the address," Vincenzo's brows knit again. "There was that picture of her house."

  "He probably did, but he wouldn't spill it. Her dirty secrets about collaborating with the Nazis? Yeah, he'd publish that in a newspaper, but her address he wouldn't part with."

  Vincenzo bit the inside of his cheek. "We need to find that house."

  "Won't do us much good if we did," Sabrina returned. "There's no obvious way in."

  He looked up at her. "Then what do we do?"

  "We...think."

  "Think?" His brows drew down. "Thinking takes time."

  Indeed it did, and time was something Sabrina did not have in great supply. Not if she wanted to take Sylvio up on his two hundred fifty grand offer. She'd have to get Vincenzo back to Milan in a week.

  "Still," she told Vincenzo, "thinking is what I need to do."

  Vincenzo drummed his fingers on the checked tablecloth. "No matter what plan you come up with, we will need to find the house."

  This was true, but Sabrina didn't want to do anything about it. Not yet. She did have to think. "If I remember the photograph in the paper, the house looked like it sat on a big estate, probably far away from any neighbors. We can't just drive around ritzy parts of the county looking for it. We'd be too visible."

  He inclined his head. "Very well, we cannot drive." His fingers continued to drum, pinkie to thumb, pinkie to thumb. "Walking would be just as bad."

  "True."

  Pinkie to thumb, pinkie to thumb. His gaze narrowed on her. "How about we fly?"

  Sabrina tilted her head. "An airplane? Sure, great idea, except for the logistics." Not to mention the cost, but hey, who was picking up the tab?

  He tilted his head. "What logistics?"

  "We'd need to rent a plane and, worse, hire a pilot. The pilot would see where we were going, what we were interested in. It would be too easy to trace us, later."

  Vincenzo's fingers stopped their infernal drumming. "We do not need to hire a pilot."

  "Oh, you plan to take that plane up with the power of positive thinking?"

  A smile twitched one corner of his mouth. "No, I plan to take it up myself. I am a trained pilot, you understand."

  "You?" Sabrina didn't know why this skill should so stun her. After all, hadn't she recently learned that Vincenzo was a financial genius? What was one more unexpected skill?

  "I've had a license for years. Shall we take a little flight this morning? Yes?" He was already removing the napkin from his lap, getting his wallet out to pay the bill.

  "Now, wait just a minute." Staying seated, Sabrina attempted to stall. She wasn't ready to go flying, or anything else that might lead to actually nabbing the painting. First she needed to sort out the growing confusion in her brain. "We, uh, still have to explain why Mr. Andreoni and his business partner have taken it into their heads to rent a small airplane."

  On his feet, Vincenzo threw a generous tip on the table. "We are looking at available real estate. For a resort on the coast."

  From her chair Sabrina stared up at him. "You're getting rather good at this."

  "Scusi?" Vincenzo was scowling over the bill. Though he'd tip like a millionaire, if there was a penny off in the reckoning he'd make a federal case out of it.

  "Conning," Sabrina said. "You're becoming something of a professional yourself."

  At that his dark eyes flicked from the bill to meet hers. There was a peculiar amusement, she thought, in his gaze. "I am only learning," he said, "from a master."

  ~~~

  Even though Sabrina took a good look at Vincenzo's pilot's license, she was leery about climbing into a plane with him. Small planes were not her favorite mode of transportation under the best of circumstances, and it was difficult to convince herself a man who thought he'd seen the madonna over a church altar could pilot a twentieth century aircraft.

  "You rented the plane for three hours," Sabrina accused, once they'd been led to the single-engine craft. She watched with longing as the charter company's man walked away from them, across the tarmac. "I have no intention of staying in the air that long." Assuming she could talk herself into getting into the plane at all.

  Vincenzo began calmly walking around the small aircraft, poking his fingers into various holes, checking the rubber tires. "We will probably not need the entire three hours," he conceded. "But it is best they have less of an idea just how far up the coast we are going, no?" He peered into some holes under the wing.

  Sabrina hated to admit that he was right, once again. Her brain was crowded with too many utterly extraneous and useless machinations to concentrate completely on the matter at hand. It was annoying. It was disturbing. Meanwhile, she watched as Vincenzo gave a test spin to the single propeller on the nose of the plane. "Tell me again. How long has it been since you've flown one of these things?"

  There was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes as he glanced at her from the propeller. "Shall we get you a parachute, Sabrina?"

  "Not a bad idea," she muttered.

  Inside the plane, Vincenzo went through the same system of checking that he'd done outside. He was humming a song under his breath, but the cool efficiency of his movements made Sabrina begin to believe that he might, indeed, know what he was doing.

  This belief gained momentum as they barelled down the runway for liftoff. The little plane sailed into the air with the grace of an eagle. "Hey, you do know how to do this," Sabrina remarked, gazing to the side as the ground fell swiftly away.

  Vincenzo turned to her with a pleased grin. He looked as smug as any little boy showing off for a girl.

  A pang hit her in the chest with that smile. Quickly, Sabrina turned to look out the window again.

  She knew what she had to do. Even before she'd left that big house on the hill over Santa Barbara last night, Sabrina's agile con artist mind had known the only logical course. First, get the painting. That was one hundred thousand dollars. It was going to turn out to be a crude job, not the elegant sort she favored, because she was going to have to accomplish this feat within one week. That meant another two hundred fifty thousand. Then, once the painting was in her hands, she would arrange for Darrel to 'steal' it. This would get Lise Gunther off her back.

  That was the plan. The only plan that made sense. Steal the painting from Francesca Miller, get the numbers to Vincenzo's Swiss bank account, steal the painting from Vincenzo. Make both Lise Gunther and Sylvio Ameri happy. Meanwhile, Sabrina would be three hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer and no worries.

  "The city of Santa Barbara is south in that direction!" Vincenzo shouted over the noise of the plane's engines. "Let's check along the
cliffs by the ocean!"

  Sabrina nodded and watched the green hills unfold beneath her. It was beautiful countryside, but she could barely pay attention to it.

  Vincenzo fully believed bringing this painting back to Italy and hanging it in the village church was going to bring him absolution for killing his wife. Now, Sabrina knew Vincenzo had not really killed his wife to begin with. And Sabrina knew no silly painting had the power to grant absolution, even if such a thing as absolution existed.

  But Vincenzo thought so. And his belief, she admitted, was enough to make it so.

  How in the world could she steal that painting from him?

  "Look!" Vincenzo gestured to his left, then banked the plane so Sabrina could see where he was pointing. "That stone wall!" he shouted. "It looks like the newspaper photo, no?"

  Sabrina gazed at a long stone wall, something like a miniature version of the great wall of China, wrapping over the hills and dales of the brush-shrouded mountains. The structure did, indeed look like the photograph of Francesca Miller's estate they'd seen in the newspaper article.

  "I will find the house!" Vincenzo yelled, excited.

  "Don't buzz the place!" Sabrina warned.

  He nodded his understanding, then banked to follow the line of the stone wall.

  Gaining interest, Sabrina noted the change from natural brush to carefully landscaped gardens of trees and lawns. A riot of colorful flowers crowded a long, single-story structure.

  Even from the air one could tell it was an elegant house, artfully crafted. A wood trellis extended along the back, heavily infused with flowering vines. Various wings of the house extended to either side.

  "The wall goes all the way around!" Vincenzo observed. He banked the plane and took it seaward. "I don't want anyone noticing us circling!" he explained.

  Sabrina nodded, automatically assimilating what she'd seen so far. Francesca Miller was obviously classy, given the look of her estate from the air. But the wall went all the way around: guarding, protective. The woman was a serious recluse.

  "Only one more pass!" Sabrina shouted, as Vincenzo turned the plane in a wide circle over the deep blue ocean. "Otherwise we're too obvious!"