The Carpet Cipher

by Jane Thornley

  The Carpet Cipher

  A Phoebe McCabe Mystery Thriller, Volume 1

  Jane Thornley

  Published by Jane Thornley, 2020.

  The Carpet Cipher

  The Agency of the Ancient Lost and Found, Book 1. A Phoebe McCabe Mystery Thriller

  JANE THORNLEY

  River Flow Press

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Afterword

  Prologue

  Venice, February 2019

  * * *

  How long had it been since she had last ventured into the Venetian streets at night—five years, ten? Too long ago, in any event, and to do so tonight of all nights, when the carnival finale was in full swing and the revelry would reach a raucous pitch, seemed foolish even for her. How she detested the noise, the crowds, even the fierce and gilded costumes that would press against her in the dark like fevered dreams. To stay home by the fire with a book and a glass of wine seemed far preferable. Still, it must be done. After tonight she would lay one matter to rest and possibly see the conclusion of another, much older mystery.

  She opened the front door, hesitating briefly before leaving the safety of her palazzo and plunging into the throng, her velvet coat wrapped tightly around her to ward away the spring chill. As expected, the young people were outdoing each other with fantastic finery. Gone were the days when only the time traveler mode of long gowns and medieval costumes ruled, though plenty of those still roamed the streets. Now creative interlopers had arrived with glittery fairy wings, and was that a chicken? Yes, a chicken, complete with an enormous egg tucked under one false wing! She stifled a laugh.

  Her own mask, on the other hand, was demure by comparison, a lovely sun/moon creation she had had especially made for another carnival long ago when she had been a young woman, her whole life stretching ahead. Then, the duality of light and dark had been no more than a playful game. As on that evening, she also wore the cape worked in deep blue velvet stenciled in gold stars with Mariano Fortuny’s distinctive flair. Now, that subtle silken loveliness seemed to sink like a poor cousin against the surrounding sequins and gaudy trappings.

  Never mind, she told herself, the man she was to meet would appreciate it for what it was: a testament to artisan beauty in a world that had long lost sight of what does not scream for attention. That she would reunite with the one with whom she had first worn the ensemble was a fitting end to their long torturous relationship. Though they had not seen one another for many decades, she prayed that he had finally forgiven her long enough to help her now. He of all people would know the significance of what she had discovered.

  But first, she must resolve the other matter. There was to be no meeting at her family’s weaving studio, on that point she was firm. The call had come just moments before she left the villa and her first response had been to refuse the request, but then she reconsidered. The matter could not be avoided forever and perhaps could be dealt with fairly. Her counteroffer was generous. She would make the meeting brief, citing her other appointment to excuse her haste, and hopefully the ugly matter would be laid to rest at last.

  The chosen rendezvous was tucked away from the street in a corner she had reason to believe would be suitably private, close to the canal but not in the midst of the celebrations. She slipped through the press of merrymakers. At least they were good-natured and she could only hope that the person she was to meet would be in a similar mood, or at least open to compromise.

  She passed a market stall now caged for the night and turned a corner to where the winter storms had damaged the street so that temporary planking now bridged the narrow side canal. Behind the repair works, tucked against the side door of an ancient church with steps leading to the canal, the meeting place offered privacy.

  Still, it was surprisingly dark, much darker than she had anticipated. Fool. Why hadn’t she thought this out more carefully? Two, maybe three shapes detached themselves from the dark clot of shadows against the church door, one of them immediately recognizable, and at once she knew she had miscalculated. There would be no easy resolution, after all.

  1

  The man staring at me had been dead for over two thousand years yet still made a better companion than some of the men I’d known.

  “Phoebe?”

  I tore myself away from the bust to see Serena, my gallery manager and friend, arriving on my stair landing office carrying a mug of tea. The shop was closed for renovation but she had been busy storing our rare textiles while workmen banged away downstairs. Baker and Mermaid was in the midst of a metamorphosis from textile gallery to undercover art retrieval and repatriation center that we jokingly referred to as the Agency of the Ancient Lost and Found.

  “So, this is what I’ve discovered so far,” I began. “Our Roman here is a probable mid-first century A.D. funerary piece discerned because of the dark earthen encrustation on the back of the head. Dr. Rudolph confirms that assessment but has no idea where the piece might have come from. We ran it through Interpol’s database but nothing.” My specialty was actually textiles but no one can afford to be too narrowly focused in the art and artifact retrieval business. “Anyway, there’s no trace of anything matching this description missing from any of the museums so I’m guessing it’s from a looted grave.”

  “Phoebe.”

  I stopped and stared at her. “Serena?”

  “You sit up here all day and many hours in the evening and work, work, work. It is not healthy.” She passed the boxes of books and personal belongings ready for storage and scanned the piles for a place to set the tea. “We thought you could use some cheering up.” It took a moment to clear a spot on my desk. “There, see? Chocolate helps.” A small wafer of very expensive Swiss chocolate was slid in beside the piled papers.

  “Help what?” I could always use chocolate and tea, of course. That was a given. “Okay, so I’ll take a break.”

  I pushed away from the desk and reached for the tea.

  “Phoebe.”

  I looked up.

  “You must snap out of this. You seem depressed, in the doldrums—is that the right word? Max agrees.” Serena’s English had much improved over the years but the Italian roots still tangled with her syntax.

  “I’m not in the doldrums, I’m working—a considerably more productive state of mind altogether. Besides, I must work,” I pointed out. “There’s so much to do.”

  Everybody had plunged into a fury of activity readying Baker and Mermaid for its dual existence. We had recently acquired a haul including three paintings, the Roman sculpture, and an assortment of other museum-quality artifacts as yet unclaimed or even identified, and that was only the beginning. Our colleague, Nicolina Vanvitelli, had a similar cache housed in Rome.

  And in case you thought, as I once did, that there are well-financed government departments in the world with the sole purpose of handling the retrieval and return of stolen art and artifacts, forget it. What exists remains underfinanced, overworked, and shackled with cross-border red tape. Interpol’s divisions on the theft and illicit traffic in works of art, cultural property, and antiquities accept all the help they can get, provi
ding we work closely with the multiple affiliated organizations involved.

  “You do not have to work all the time,” Serena was saying. “We think you are depressed.”

  “Depressed—are you kidding me?”

  “You have much to be depressed about, I understand this. There is no shame in admitting it.” Serena was squeezing my shoulder as if testing a grapefruit for ripeness.

  In summary, I had just sent my brother and only living relative to prison, ended a romance (actually, I sent Interpol after him, which is probably the same thing), and outmaneuvered a friend to the point where we were no longer speaking. I didn’t blame myself for any of this, you understand. I had simply experienced a three-incident pileup at the moral crossroads of life and finally taken the high road amid the wreckage. For the record, the high road has to be the loneliest damn path on the planet.

  “I would never feel ashamed admitting that I had any kind of mental health issue had I one but, in fact, my mood is more on the triumphant side.”

  Most of the time, that is. I knew that the end result of my actions had offered the best long-term solution to all involved, though I doubt anyone saw it that way. My brother was receiving medical help for his addictions in a Canadian penitentiary and Noel, if not the love of my life, certainly the current main attraction, was back on the run with Interpol barking at his heels. Really, I wasn’t trying to get him arrested so much as to end the impossible situation in which he and my brother had ensnarled themselves. As for Sir Rupert Fox, aka Foxy, preventing one thief from stealing from another hardly seemed like much of a crime to me.

  So yes, for months all I did was work, primarily categorizing and classifying the art and artifacts we had brought back from the Jamaican raid and working closely with Britain’s Interpol Works of Art Unit coordinator, Sam Walker. It was a way of burrowing myself away from my pain, perhaps—a classic case of avoidance, if you’re into pop psychology. By hiding deep inside the minutiae of classification and research, I didn’t have to examine too closely the yawning hollows in my life. That was not what I term depression, more like recalibration.

  I stared at my desk and frowned. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you and Max discussing me behind my back.”

  “Then we’ll carry on the conversation in front of you, darlin’,” my godfather boomed as he marched up the stairs.

  I sighed. A delegation. Max Baker had gifted me half of the rare textile gallery, Baker and Mermaid, but it was I who mostly bore responsibility for branching off into this new initiative. Branching out required effort, something I took seriously.

  Max had been my late father’s best friend and the one who had dragged my family into the treasure-hunting muck years ago. He held himself responsible for all the trauma that followed and couldn’t quite let go of the guilt, even to the point of trying to play father to my thirty-five-year-old self. Sometimes I didn’t mind, considering that my own father had passed years ago, but at other times I chafed in the shackles of caring.

  Standing over me now, he was as debonaire and handsome as ever at seventy-five, “You really do need to snap out of this. I know you’ve had a blow at the Jamaica debacle but it’s time to move on and—”

  “I am moving on.” I gazed up at him. We’d had this conversation before, multiple times. Patience was my mantra.

  “Really? You’ve barely moved at all, as in left the building in weeks. Besides, you can’t continue to sit here while they tear up the stairs.”

  That was true, especially since my open-plan Perplex office landing was essentially on the stairs. Soon we would have three levels, including a high-tech work space in the basement plus an enhanced gallery area on the main floor with my flat above caught up in the transformation. The basement art repatriation center was something entirely new. In two days or less, I literally would have no place to sleep.

  “Are you going to come stay with me or not?”

  A month spent under the same roof as Max wouldn’t be unbearable but it didn’t strike me as the best scenario, either. I had yet to make a decision. For some reason, decisions had become so monumental that I preferred to wait until they went away.

  “Maybe,” I said, gazing through the transparent stairs at the chaos below. Stacks of lumber littered the ground floor and none of our extraordinary carpets remained visible—all in storage. Part of me quavered at losing the view of those rare textiles on a daily basis, since each of them had comforted my beleaguered heart on more than one occasion.

  “Nicolina says that you’ve barely communicated since she returned to Rome but for business matters. She’s sent messages and says you text only a few words back,” Max continued.

  I blinked at him, realizing I’d missed part of the conversation. “Pardon?”

  “Nicolina, she says you are incommunicado,” Serena added.

  A little self-defense was in order. “I prefer to think that I’m being succinct, and texting is hardly the safest way to communicate in our line of work, anyway. Who trusts encryption these days? By the way, is ‘incommunicado’ Italian or Spanish?” I lifted my head. “I often wondered.”

  “Phoebe,” Max said, tapping the desk. “I, too, am wrestling with the loss of Noel. I finally reconnected with my son only to lose him again, but I’m confident that he’ll eventually find us. He always does.”

  “He can find you, if he wants, but he can leave me out if it. It’s over,” I said with more asperity than I’d intended.

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” Max said.

  Why did people keep saying that as if I didn’t know my own mind? “Believe it. I’ve told you again and again that this is not a relationship. Either we’re together or we’re not and he chose not, at least not any time before I turn sixty-five.”

  “He chose not to go to jail. Surely you can understand that?” Max was shoving his thick gray mane away from his forehead, a sure sign of agitation. It made my heart ache to think that he’d once dreamed of the three of us as some kind of weird semi-criminal family. After all, Max, too, had once been in the thieving end of the business, though he’d crossed over to the light.

  “Of course I can understand that. It’s totally his right to remain a hunted criminal all his life and it’s equally my right not to join him. The moment he made his choice, it was over and, frankly, sending Interpol after him probably tipped the scales.” I stared into space. “As for Toby, I sent him to prison to save his life. Maybe someday he’ll even forgive me.”

  “He’ll kick his habit and live the life he wants, you’ll see,” Max agreed. “And you did save his life, Phoeb. You had no choice. It will only be three years and then he can live openly, maybe even join our business.”

  “Not long at all,” Serena added with a grin and a shrug. “You think three years a long time, then presto—” she snapped her fingers “—it is gone.”

  “How true. Hell, Maggie will be out of the can in a few months,” Max added.

  Maggie, I’d forgotten about her. Mags was my pseudo aunt and Max’s ex. Strange how she had all but evaporated from my mind after she tried to ship me off to the Baltic sex trade. Talk about dysfunctional families. I studied Max and Serena as I got to my feet. “Yes, well, it’s all been a lot to process and work helps me forget.”

  “Do you know what you really want in life, darlin’?” Max asked. He had to be watching Oprah reruns again.

  “Yes,” I said with enough assurance to surprise even me. “I want to retrieve stolen art and antiquities and return them to their original owners, thus preserving as much of history as possible for future generations.” Okay, so that sounded stilted but I loved history and art with a passion, enough, in fact, to eclipse all others. I added: “Oh, and be as happy solo as I would be as if I had a partner.” Oprah, that one was for you. “I’m done with love in absentia.”

  A sadness gathered like clouds in Max’s blue eyes. “Anyway, you need to take a break. While the shop is closed and renovations under way, it’s a prime time for you to get
out of Dodge.”

  “I have a feeling you already have a suggested location.”

  “Go to Italy to visit Nicolina,” said Serena, jumping in with a flourish to land the trump card. “You always love Italy and Italians, yes?”

  I nodded. “I love you, don’t I? But who goes to Italy in February?” I caught the exchange of glances and knew the significance: she’s really in a bad way. People of sound mind knew that any time was the perfect time for Italy apparently.

  “Nicolina, she needs you in Rome now. So much work to do since Jamaica, she says, but there are other matters that need your attention,” Serena said. “She would not share the details on the phone but it all seems very urgent.”

  “She has Seraphina to help her,” I pointed out. Seraphina was Nicolina’s überassistant. Everybody in this line of work had talented, armed assistants seconding as bodyguards except me. I was always a bit behind.

  “But she says she needs you, Phoebe.”

  “I suppose she needs my help in sorting through all the loot we brought back.” After all, we brought home about fifteen crates from my brother’s hoard—all that we could carry to the plane actually—leaving the remains for Noel to steal.

  So far, we hadn’t seen Nicolina’s share and the topic was hardly safe for electronic communication of any kind. I did need to visit and soon.

  Max was looming over me, hands on my shoulders doing the papa-bear thing, which I detested but totally lacked the energy to protest. “You must go to her, Phoebe.”