Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel

by Warren, Nancy

  Picasso? Van Gogh? Nazis? She felt a chill run up her arms and read on.

  To us, the greatest crime of the Nazis was that they destroyed some of these works, and mocked the rest. Even when Poland fell, our talk was maybe ninety percent art and ten percent war. Then the Nazis marched through Europe. They were closing in on Paris and now our talks were ninety percent war, ten percent art. Louis joined the underground resistance. As an American, I knew I had to leave. When I said good-bye, my friend gave me the Van Gogh, and asked me to take it to America for safekeeping until the war was over, when we would once again be free to drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and talk about our great love, the Impressionists.

  But Louis didn’t live long enough to see the end of the war.

  Gillian was no expert, but she had a pretty good idea that an original painting by Vincent Van Gogh was worth a hell of a lot of money. Her grandfather had carried one home with him?

  I waited, and no one contacted me for the painting. I waited several years and it was clear no one knew I had it. All this time I’ve kept it hidden. I could have given the work of art back to France, but after a while it became too difficult to explain why I took so long to come forward. I’ve said to myself that if I hadn’t smuggled the canvas out of France the Nazis would have burned it. So I rationalized my decision to hang on to a valuable object that didn’t belong to me.

  Now it’s yours.

  I’d hoped to be able to return the painting somehow and collect a reward, but of course, they’d know I was responsible for taking it and I’d receive contempt and accusations instead of any reward. But, once I’m gone, you two will be able to say you stumbled across the painting. My reputation won’t matter to me when I’m six feet under and it will give me pleasure to know that the reward money will give you girls a decent start in life.

  If I were a banker, I’d say the key to your heart is in a vault. But I’m a painter, though sadly I was never a very good one. I say the key to your heart is a blank canvas.

  Paint your canvases well, my darling granddaughters. The future is yours.

  Your loving grandfather, Franklin George Forrest.

  Gillian sat blinking for a moment, then leaped from the couch, her boxes forgotten. Her mind was overcrowded with new information and the unpleasant thoughts that accompanied them. Tom, she thought. Tom has to see this.

  Tom knew that doing the right thing was sometimes difficult, but he discovered that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons was even worse. He knew that what he was about to do could cost him his job, possibly even the woman he loved.

  He was planning to execute a search warrant of Eric Munn’s premises, even though the information Gillian had shared with him this morning meant her ex-husband couldn’t have killed Plotnik.

  However, he was convinced that even if Munn hadn’t committed the murder, he was involved. The warrant might turn up something useful, and for that reason alone, Tom would keep his mouth shut about Gillian’s admission that her ex had spent the night of the murder at her place.

  He was walking out of the door of his office when Gillian herself came in the front door, her pretty face pink, her hair dancing around her head. She wore snug jeans and an old jacket that was too big for her and he thought she was the most amazing sight he’d ever seen.

  Had he somehow summoned her by thinking about her so much? “Hi,” he said, trying not to sound guilty.

  “Hi,” she said. “Raeanne told me I could come right in.”

  “Sure, yes.” He continued forward until they were close but not touching. “You here to look at mug shots?”

  She was flushed and her eyes appeared a little wild. Her mouth opened and then shut it again. “First, you’d better read this.” She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to him.

  He read the letter. Once rapidly, in gathering amazement, and then again, slowly, as more pieces of the puzzle fit themselves together.

  Gillian stared at him anxiously the entire time.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was in the pocket of Eric’s coat. He must have left it at my place the night he came over—the night that man was killed.”

  “Do you still stand by your story that he was snoring in the front room until five A.M.?”

  She glared and started to form words he knew were going to be nothing but mouthing off and he didn’t have time for that. “Yes, or no.”

  “Yes.” She glared.

  He was tired of telling her all the time how he trusted her, but he was a cop and doing his job here. He was also a man facing a woman whose self-esteem was frail at best. His trust was a big deal for her, he understood that, but there must be a way to make it clear he would always believe her.

  She was standing there, both belligerent and vulnerable. And then suddenly the words were there. The words he needed to say and that she needed to hear.

  “I love you. And I want to marry you,” he said, and kissed her.

  She blinked. “Are you kidding me? You’re proposing in the cop shop? While I’m wearing old crap that’s going to Goodwill?”

  He considered. “Yes.”

  “Okay then. I love you, too,” she said, her eyes as bright as stars. “And yes, I’ll marry you.”

  He gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. “We’ll figure everything out later. Right now, I have to go.” He took a step away from her and then turned, knowing he had to tell her. “We’ve got a search warrant for Eric’s apartment. When he gets back to town, I’m hoping we’ll have reason to arrest him. I’m sorry, Gillian.”

  She blinked at him, and he realized she was suffering major information overload. Then her eyes widened. “Eric’s back in town. I passed his car on my way here.”

  28

  “I am so tired,” Alex said, straightening her back. They were trekking up from the basement of her grandparents’ home—spider heaven, as she’d discovered as she poked into every dark corner and in every murky cupboard down there. They emerged into the dazzling brightness of a kitchen in daylight. Her grandparents’ house looked exactly the same as it always had. If her key opened something in the house she had no idea what it could be.

  “You’re sure you never saw him with a safe?”

  She shook her head with the exaggerated patience of someone who’s been asked the same question fifty times and given the same answer every time.

  “No,” she reminded him in case he’d developed amnesia since he’d asked the question half an hour earlier. “There was the safe at his shop, but Eric has that.”

  “I checked that safe. No Van Gogh.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course you did.”

  “Some day I’ll tell you how my uncles taught me to crack a safe.” He planted his feet on the black and white tile floor and gazed around him. “The painting has to be here somewhere.”

  “Well, it’s not in the attic or the cellar—there isn’t a wall safe on the main floor.” Or if there were they’d failed to locate it, despite combing every inch of wall, looking behind every painting, and moving all the furniture.

  Duncan closed in on her and picked up the chain around her neck with one finger. He smelled of dust and sweat and if irritation had a scent, it was liberally spritzed all over him. “Maybe he was just cheap with his birthday gifts.”

  “Of course he wasn’t,” she said huffily, snatching back her chain. “It was my twenty-first birthday present–he wouldn’t give me gold-plated junk.” She thought hard, running the key back and forth on its chain for inspiration.

  “Key to your heart,” she repeated. “Maybe that’s a clue?” Her eyes widened. “Hidden in plain sight! My grandmother’s sampler.” She raced into the living room, Duncan’s heavy tread thumping behind her. On the wall was the cross-stitched sampler her grandmother had made before she and Gillian lived there.

  The heart of the home is the family was stitched inside a border of twining hearts.

  “We already looked behind behind it.”

  “I
know.” She reached up and removed the sampler from the wall. Thick dust coated the top of the frame. She flipped it over and tried to remove the small nails that held the backing in the frame but they were jammed in tight. “My grandfather hated all those cutesy sayings my grandmother embroidered. I thought he’d left this one up for sentiment. For her.” She cursed when a tiny missile of red-polished finger nail bounced off the frame. “Get some pliers from the basement,” she told Duncan.

  “Maybe he was sentimental,” he said, pulling the frame out of her hands and opening one of those Swiss Army Knife gadgets with enough pull-out utensils on it to guarantee a Swiss soldier’s survival whether stranded in the Alps in need of a tiny saw, or at a party with no corkscrew. Of course, there were mini-pliers and Duncan went to work swiftly but carefully extracting the tiny black nails.

  “Grandpa kept Grandma’s picture in a silver frame but he took down the cross-stitched sheep in the kitchen that said Somebody Loves Ewe.”

  “Can’t blame him for that.”

  “He also removed the floral one in the bathroom that said Grandmothers Bloom with Love.”

  “A man has to have some standards.”

  She knew she was babbling to let off some steam while she watched Duncan slip off the backing and then ease out the cross-stitched sampler. The stitching was done on cream-colored linen which was tacked onto a stretcher board. Duncan turned the piece to the back but all they learned was that her grandmother had been such a meticulous needle-worker that the back of the piece appeared almost as neat as the front.

  “You must take after your grandmother,” Duncan said.

  Then he turned the stretcher board to the side and there, in black ink, was a series of four numbers.

  3578.

  They looked at each other and she felt the excitement fizzing in her belly. “Three-five-seven-eight,” she said aloud, “and the key.” She lifted it almost to make certain it was still there.

  “It must open a safety deposit box somewhere.”

  “But where?”

  “Right here at the Evergreen Savings and Loan,” announced a voice from the hallway.

  She started and turned, recognizing the voice. “Eric, you startled—” She petered out when she saw that Eric was holding a gun and it was pointed in their direction.

  “Shit,” Duncan said, still holding the cross-stitched sampler in his hands.

  “What are you doing?” Alex shrieked, feeling as though she’d stumbled into the last scene of a murder mystery play without having sat through the first part.

  Both men ignored her, seeming to be intent on each other, like one of those nature shows where the alpha reindeer circle each other before locking horns. Of course, on a nature show, it was antlers only. One of the reindeer wasn’t normally packing heat. Duncan passed her the sampler. She had no idea why, but she took it. Her grandmother had stitched the piece with love in every cross stitch. She hung on tight, praying for help.

  “Did you kill Jerzy Plotnik?” Duncan asked.

  Eric sniffed, and she noticed his nose was bleeding. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and staunched the flow. “No. Some friends of mine did. I promised to sell them the Van Gogh, but Franklin Forrest died before he told me where it was.”

  “You knew about the Van Gogh?” She had to ask.

  Eric nodded. “The old man got the guilts. He decided he wanted to return the painting quietly, collect a reward that he’d pass on to you girls.” He turned to Alex. “He didn’t want you to know that your dear old grandpa was a thief.”

  “I don’t believe he stole that painting,” Alex said.

  She noted that Duncan was closer to her than he had been before and realized he was surreptitiously moving. She suspected he had some kind of heroism in mind and for some reason that made her tremble more than the sight of the black gun staring at her with its one round eye.

  “Believe what you like. He told me he had it in a safe place and as soon as I made the arrangements to return the painting and get the reward, he’d give it to me. But I got to thinking that there was a lot more money to be made selling the thing. I’ve got a friend in L.A. who knows some people. He brokered a deal.”

  “With a guy named Hector Mendes?”

  Eric’s eyes widened. He paused and then nodded. “But when I told your grandfather I had everything arranged,” he shuddered at some memory, “he turned suspicious.”

  “You were here the day he died,” Duncan said. “You were overheard having a heated argument.”

  Alex gaped at him. What?

  “I lost my temper. We shouted at each other. He said he’d changed his mind. He’d return the painting himself, or if he died first, he’d left instructions for you, Alex.” Eric made a face as though a skunk had sprayed his feet. “And he suddenly keeled over. Dead.”

  “No,” she moaned. Her grandpa shouldn’t have died like that. It should have been peaceful, not angry.

  “Meanwhile,” Eric continued, “I’d already taken a deposit which I couldn’t return.”

  “It went up your nose?”

  Eric ignored Duncan’s interruption. “To remind me of how serious they were, my connections in L.A. killed my buddy.”

  “Jerzy Plotnik,” Duncan said, and Eric nodded.

  “In my apartment,” he shuddered with distaste. “They left the gun pointing to a picture of me. The message was clear. I had to get the painting or I’d be next.”

  How typical that he’d have photographs of himself displayed in his apartment. “And you moved the body to the library?” Alex asked, wondering how she’d ever trusted this man.

  “Your grandfather said you’d know where the painting was, so I put Jerzy in the library. We were always good friends, you and I. I thought you’d turn to me when you got shaken up. You should have come to me instead of him.” Eric jabbed the gun toward Duncan.

  She recalled the second horrible incident, when she’d found a gun in her desk drawer. One that looked similar to the pistol now pointing at them.

  “And you planted that gun in my desk.”

  “Right again. I figured if you thought Duncan had put it there, you’d come to me for sure.”

  “And when that didn’t work, you tried to run her down in a car like mine,” Duncan said.

  “I never tried to kill her. I was going to scare her. It was better for her if we worked together. I had the letter and she had the knowledge to figure out what it meant.” He turned and blinked a few times, as though trying to bring her into focus. “You should have trusted me, Alex.”

  That was so blatantly absurd that she almost laughed. But things didn’t seem all that amusing when a gun was staring you in the face.

  She felt movement beside her but determined to keep Eric’s attention on her. She’d seen that the Swiss Army gizmo was still in Duncan’s grasp. He was no doubt trying to open the mini-bayonet. It was up to her to keep Eric talking.

  She tried to focus on something apart from the fact that she and Duncan were in serious trouble here. If she could keep Eric talking that would be good since she didn’t have any weapons on her. Only Duncan. But her mind was whirling at the knowledge that this man she’d trusted — her brother-in-law– was behind the wheel of the car that had run her off the road.

  “It was you who shot at Duncan when he was climbing, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, I had to do something. Your boyfriend came into my store and basically told me he was looking for the Van Gogh. I phoned Hector Mendes in L.A. and he knew all about Duncan Forbes. Told me to get rid of him.”

  Eric sniffed.

  “How could you?”

  “He said it was Forbes or me. They’d already killed Plotnik. I didn’t need another warning. Alex, do you have any idea how much money that painting is worth? There are tens of millions at stake. Enough to kill for.”

  “But Eric, think what you’re doing. You haven’t killed anyone yet. You’ve barely broken the law. We can return the painting like Grandpa wanted and no one will
ever know you were involved in all this.”

  She tried to keep her tone calm and reasonable and ignore the fact that a man who was high on drugs and an emotional wreck was pointing a loaded gun at her. “I promise. And we’ll get you help. There are programs—”

  “They’ll kill me if I don’t get them that painting. And it won’t be a pretty death. I figure I’ve got another week, tops. I’m sorry, honey. I hate to have to do this, but it’s you or me.”

  “You’re planning to kill me?” She could not believe this.

  “Well, officially, Duncan will kill you and then disappear with the painting.” He looked as though he expected praise for his clever plan.

  “Are you insane?”

  Eric smirked. “Of course, he won’t really escape with the painting. The Van Gogh and Forbes will both disappear and never be seen again.”

  Alex felt as though she might vomit, except her muscles were all so paralyzed by fear that they wouldn’t obey the distress message from her stomach.

  “I’ll need you for a while yet, Alex. The letter your grandfather left? It was impossible for me to understand. You’d have got it right away. But he was telling you to go to the bank in town. They won’t let me in to his deposit box, but you’re the executor. They’ll let us in together. We get the painting.”

  “Why should I help you? You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  Eric blinked. He’d obviously never looked at this from her point of view. He was high enough on drugs to have confidence in his crazy plan.

  It was small comfort to think he’d be bound to get caught but she and Duncan would unfortunately be dead by then.

  “I don’t want you dead, Alex. I never wanted you dead. I’ll take you with me. With money, there are places in the world where you can disappear. Poof. We’ll live like royalty.”

  Maybe playing along with him would buy her a little time. She was off the hook for now, but Duncan was of no use to him. She had to think. There had to be a way to stop him from killing Duncan.

  “I need you to draw the living room curtain now, Alex,” Eric said in that over friendly voice that was starting to jar.