The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  “Oh.” A former guest? Could it have been Garin Braden? She needed to think about this, so without a place to land she checked in.

  Once in her room, Annja decided a sauna was well deserved. The spa was gorgeous and soon the sweat was rolling down her skin. Twenty minutes later, she felt like a wet noodle when she exited the intense heat, but oh, what an awesome feeling. Quickly wrapping a towel around her as another woman entered the sauna, she covered the bruises on her shoulders and thighs and made a swift exit.

  Roux was probably enjoying a fine wine at his four-star hotel. He hadn’t offered to cover her expenses now, although he should have. She was, in essence, working for him.

  And she was not. She wanted to serve history. To save pieces once stolen and have anyone be able to view them and learn from them was what she was working for. Adding the music box as a possible new find would prove phenomenal. And then to convince the world it was a time-travel device? Uh-huh. Make that a time-shifting device. She hadn’t gotten her hopes up about finding it for exactly that reason.

  She tightened the belt on her terry-cloth robe provided by the hotel, then wandered down to her room.

  Did Roux actually buy into his fantasy about Leonardo having been a time traveler himself? No, he did not. He was just trying to make fantasy meet reality, as people often did when they wanted to believe in the impossible.

  Yet she believed in men who could live beyond a normal age, so Annja wouldn’t dismiss everything entirely.

  Depositing her backpack on the end of the bed, she dropped the robe and sorted through the new clothing that had been provided for her by Roux. Very basic, but everything fit, so she couldn’t complain. The gray cotton T-shirt and olive-green cargo pants were actually comfortable. She pushed aside the curtains and scanned the metropolis that had grown up into an amazing city.

  A major economic and financial center, Milan was also famous for a number of cultural and architectural sites. La Scala, the opera house, was one of her favorite places to hang out. She easily recalled the building’s sumptuous auditorium. The red velvet, silk and gilded stucco always caught her eye and the chandelier was a dazzler. The revered venue was just one of many in the city. She guessed tourists must flock to Milan almost as much as they did Paris.

  And what about when Leonardo da Vinci would have strolled the streets taking in every detail? She imagined herself in an elegant gown with her hair done up and decorated with a beaded headdress and rich gold trimmings on her sleeves and hems as she strolled beside him. Obviously, she imagined herself someone from the court.

  Annja laughed. “Why not? If I’m going to dream, I might as well have been rich.”

  Where rich was concerned, the de’ Medicis and the Sforzas popped instantly to mind. Annja powered up the laptop and typed in a search on the nefarious families. The de’ Medicis had ruled over Florence and accumulated much wealth to fund their influence and standing.

  Ludovico Sforza was Duke of Milan from the end of the fifteenth century until he died early in the sixteenth. He had commissioned The Last Supper from da Vinci. He had been big into taxation to support his artistic and agricultural ventures. An alliance with the French king Charles VIII turned sour and resulted in the French laying claim to not only Naples but Milan, as well. He had been responsible for starting the Italian Wars against the French, yet was eventually driven out of Milan by the French because he had no allies. He’d died in a French prison.

  Time travel was starting to lose its appeal.

  Annja shook her head, unwilling to make that leap. “It’s just a pretty music box that still holds historical value. And I will find it. I’ve come this far.”

  Because once set on a mission, she rarely abandoned the quest. Even when attacked by natives—or threatened by thugs miffed about losing 1.2 million dollars—she never gave up. It wasn’t in her DNA to surrender. And someone had to remain the calm, rational one who would see to bringing any found treasures to a local museum or university for authentication.

  Her cell phone rang. The No Caller ID flashing on the screen annoyed her. “Hello?”

  “Annja, I’m surprised you didn’t catch me. I think you let me get away, yes?”

  “We needed to follow you back to your home base.”

  “Which you didn’t find.”

  Yes, well, stating the obvious.

  “What do you want now, Scout?” She had to stop calling him by that name. While she spoke, she opened her email program. Roux had said he’d sent her a copy of the files she hadn’t seen.

  “I have this keen notion that you don’t know everything there is to know about this whole search for the missing music box slash time machine. Am I right?”

  “I know as much as you do, Scout.”

  “I think not. And I’m willing to divulge my secrets if you’ll meet me for coffee sans the white-haired old man.”

  Annja sighed. Playing into the enemy’s hand, allowing him to lure her to his choice of meeting place, was never wise. But he did have more knowledge than she did. And if he was willing to share?

  “I saw a bistro near the Parco Sempione that sported a pink pig hanging over the door,” she said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “I’ll have the coffee waiting for you. You take cream? No, wait. Black. You’re one tough lady.”

  She hung up, thinking she did like it black. Coffee that bit back was the only way to go.

  A message from Roux sat in her email inbox. Attached was a pdf scan of the police report filed by the antiquities museum in Poland after the heist. It didn’t tell her anything new. But the second page was a Milan police document regarding the arrest of Lisa Phelps and the subsequent arrest of her partner, Evan Merrick, a few days later in the States.

  The thieves who had stolen the Lorraine cross.

  “So Phelps must have squealed on her partner, since he was caught a few days later,” she said as she scrolled through the document. “In his New York apartment.”

  “They admitted to knowing some details of the crime, but were never convicted. In fact, they didn’t even receive a court date. Lacking evidence.” She read the notes.

  Annja leaned back against the padded headboard, and dragged the laptop up onto her thighs. She glanced out the window.

  “Of course there was no evidence, because it had been dumped in the canal. I’m surprised they didn’t authorize dredging the canal.”

  Her eyes scanned the report and saw that the canal where Evan Merrick admitted the case had been dumped by his companion was listed as the Rio di San Vio. A canal positioned completely opposite in the city from the Fondamenta della Sensa, where they had recovered the attaché. It couldn’t have drifted from the southern edge of the city to the north. There were too many canals, too many twists and turns, and the tides didn’t move that way.

  “He gave them false information.”

  So how had Scout Roberts known to look in the Fondamenta della Sensa? Weird.

  She still found it hard to believe both thieves had been let off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. No fingerprints had been found at the scene of the crime, so...

  Thinking back to that first day she had met Scout—or whoever he was—Annja recalled his tale of a lovers’ quarrel in the gondola floating down the canal. The woman had dumped the attaché case while her lover’s attention had been distracted.

  So that must have been the big breakup. And in an attempt to get back at the man who had scorned her, had the woman purposely dropped him in hot water by partly confessing to the crime? She had to have known going in that they couldn’t charge her with the theft without evidence. But a confession should have been sufficient.

  The details of Lisa Phelps’s interrogation were not included. Someone on the inside had to have been helping the thieves. A dirty lawyer? Or judge?

  Annja sudd
enly didn’t care about the woman. There were only two people who knew the exact canal where the attaché case had been dumped overboard—Lisa Phelps and... “Evan Merrick.”

  Chapter 21

  True to his word, the man who claimed to be Scout Roberts sat waiting for Annja. A steaming coffee cup awaited her and she sat down before it and had a sip. Nice and dark. She didn’t want to get too cozy and start trusting the guy again. And she kept one eye on her surroundings as she sat there. He could have backup, and she wasn’t about to be tricked by this one again.

  “I also ordered some cookies,” he offered.

  “Cookies will not erase the double-crossing you’ve done, Merrick.”

  “Ah?” Stretching out his legs beneath the table and leaning back in an open come-at-me posture, he winked at her. “Well, look at you. Took you long enough to figure that one out, Creed.”

  “Like I said before, I didn’t have the police report going into this.”

  “Roux just sent it to you now? Are you really his employee or maybe something more like his errand girl?”

  “You should stop trying to bait me, Merrick. It won’t work.”

  The waitress appeared and set down a plate of iced cookies. Evan ate one in a single bite. “Sweet.”

  “Clever,” Annja said, “the way you orchestrated the dive and your ultimate escape with the cross.”

  “After you arrived, my plans required some last-minute changes. I impressed even myself with my quick thinking.”

  “Glad to be a problem. So why involve Roux? Why not just dive for the case yourself?”

  “Creed. If I could afford a boat and the equipment, I would have gone down weeks after losing that stupid case. But Lisa, my vindictive ex-partner—”

  “And lover?”

  “She expected me to propose to her that evening, Annja. I thought we were going to have a nice meal, hug, then take a break from each other for a few weeks like our normal routine. Marriage? I did not see that one coming.”

  Annja shook her head, noting the man’s genuine dismay.

  “She took everything from me,” Evan explained with clear disbelief. “I called ahead to New York. My good buddy who lives down the hallway in our high-rise reported she—or someone she had hired—had cleaned out the apartment in less than two hours. The walls were bare, and the safe door was hanging open. Light fixtures were even missing the bulbs. Can you believe that? I was incarcerated wearing tennis shoes. That is so not my style, Creed.”

  “I’m having trouble shedding a single sympathetic tear.”

  “You women are all the same.”

  From behind another sip of coffee, Annja lifted a brow. She did not like being cobbled into the category of “you women.” But it wasn’t worth the argument.

  “Totally erasing herself from your life. That’s a gutsy female. And she had every right to do so.”

  “Yeah? She had no right to erase me. She emptied all our accounts.”

  “You didn’t have separate bank accounts?”

  “We did. But one of the reasons we worked so well together was that she was the fingers—” he waggled his fingers, then twisted them around as if manipulating a safe dial “—and I was the logistics and getaway man. But as well, Lisa was the computer geek. Could crack a digital code in seconds. Bank accounts? No problem.”

  “Sounds like she was doing most of the work.”

  “Not fair, Creed.”

  “Which is why you confessed, to get back at her, which resulted in her arrest in Milan.”

  “I had to go for it, Creed. I knew they didn’t have any evidence. I made a plea bargain and walked out of the police station that day.”

  Annja slid back against the wicker chair and sighed. “Listen, I’m an archaeologist. I’m not an expert in personal relationships. Or theft.”

  “Here I thought you wanted the whole story?”

  “I guess I do. How did you get the attaché case open if she was the digital-code cracker?”

  “I knew that code all along. I mean, it was my case. But I couldn’t have used it with you watching. Right?”

  “Right. So what do you think you know that I don’t know?” she asked. “And will you tell me why you have so much information on this music box? I know Roux didn’t give you details on how it works. And you have no reason to know of its existence.”

  “Roux didn’t tell me anything.” He sat back now, crossing an ankle over his knee and gripping his calf. “But then, do you think Roux understands how it works? Maybe the old man’s slipping. Did you ever consider that?”

  He wasn’t making sense. Perhaps his intention had been to lure her into the open and waste her time while— “If you’ve sent men to my hotel room to—”

  “I haven’t. I’ve no reason to. You’re not the one with all the clout around here. You’re just the babysitter.” A protest stung her tongue, but he continued, “I know things, Creed. Things that you don’t, but certainly that Roux does.”

  The only way Scout—Evan—could know about the music box was if Roux or Garin had told him, yet she hadn’t seen Garin, so had no proof Evan was even working with him.

  No, he’d mentioned Garin’s name. Garin must have given up the details or else Merrick was bluffing, trying to get information out of her.

  “You have the notebook,” she suddenly guessed. The one in which Roux presumed Leonardo da Vinci had drawn sketches and schematics for the time-shifting music box. Perhaps it also detailed the Lorraine cross and its use in relation to the box.

  “I do. The notebook is sort of a partner to the Lorraine cross.”

  “You found it in the case we saved from the canal? Unless...”

  She sipped the coffee, letting her mind sort the timeline of events since she’d met him. He sat there with that annoying little smirk on his face waiting for her to work things out. The guy was not an archaeologist. What he was, was a confessed thief. And thieves could put their hands on all sorts of things others weren’t even aware existed.

  “You’ve had the notebook all along,” she decided. “Before diving for the cross.”

  Evan whistled in appreciation. “You are not stupid, Annja Creed.”

  “Why wasn’t it in the case along with the cross?”

  “Because it wasn’t in the museum. The only reason I pinched the Lorraine cross was because I’d been led there by studying the notebook. The notebook was a bonus item from a previous heist a few years ago. Can’t give you details, naturally.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Annja that the notebook would be separate from the cross, but of course, the museum would have listed the missing notebook in the police report. And surely anyone who took a moment to glance through the notebook would have matched the cross to any drawings that may have been done of it.

  “So the notebook was...in a library? A bookstore? Your mother’s attic?”

  “Found it in a dusty old tin box in the back of a safe,” Evan said. “The museum, or possibly bank—or it might have even been a dusty old castle—hadn’t any idea what they owned. It was never reported missing. I knew what it was immediately. Good old Leonardo. That guy was amazing, you know that?”

  “Are there drawings of the Lorraine cross and the music box in the notebook?”

  “Yes, and very detailed. Everything a guy needs to know to operate the music box is found within the pages of that notebook. Er, mostly. I’m still a little iffy on locations and such. I even took a trip to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana right here in Milan. Did it as soon as I arrived yesterday.”

  “What’s in that museum of interest to you?”

  “Da Vinci’s Portrait of a Musician.”

  Annja was familiar with the portrait. It was supposed to be the only instance Leonardo had depicted a male in his portraiture. The painting featured a gentleman in black and brow
n robes with a red cap holding a piece of sheet music. His focus was not on the music, but off in the distance. Often considered one of his least important works—since it seemed it was semi-unfinished—some even debated whether or not it was truly da Vinci’s.

  “Part of the musical score has been cut off at the bottom of the painting,” Evan said, “but I’m pretty sure there’s a tritone in there somewhere. I’m no musician. But don’t you think it makes sense? The devil’s chord having been banned?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Come on, how clever was that to maybe add the musical score when the notes were banned?”

  “Clever? I don’t see how.”

  “It’s the map to operating the device, Creed.”

  “But if there’s a key, what need have you for a map?”

  Evan scoffed and grabbed another cookie.

  Annja refused to get distracted by Evan’s twisted theories. “You’re diverting the attention from your criminal dealings,” she said. “What’s to stop me from notifying the authorities right now and having them arrest you?”

  “What proof have you besides a confession no one else has heard?” Evan grabbed another cookie and popped it into his mouth.

  “Do you have the Lorraine cross?” she asked. “The notebook? You said Garin Braden had the cross.”

  He grinned, but only chewed the cookie.

  “Nothing you’ve said to me has been true. You haven’t handed the cross over to Garin. And you don’t intend to.”

  “Of course not. You’re good, Creed. What I’d like to know is more information about Roux, because you know what?”

  “Dazzle me.”

  “Roux is proof that the time-shifting device works.”

  “Absurd—”

  Evan’s gaze darted to something behind her. He stood and grabbed a handful of cookies. “Suspicious characters at the side door. Could be Braden’s bullies. I’m out of here. Nice talking to you, Creed. See you in Rouen.”

  He took a step, and Annja reached to grab his wrist. He’d done this disappearing act on her once too often. She would not let it happen again. Evan shook off her grasp.