And he probably didn’t hide them unless he had a good reason.
Charlotte scanned the streets as they entered the 4th District and the neighborhood known as Wieden. It was the kind of neighborhood that existed only in Europe, old architecture and homogenous modern buildings co-existing alongside the chic bistros and funky cafes that indicated a Renaissance in the making. They were neighborhoods that predated every World War. Neighborhoods with old palaces and museums that had somehow remained standing as office parks and restaurants sprang up around them. Many of the oldest buildings were turned into historical sights or small museums. Some of the grand old homes remained privately occupied, though not often by heirs to the original property. And everywhere she looked, people went about their modern business, walking dogs and pushing strollers and drinking coffee, seemingly unaware of the past.
But Charlotte could see it, lurking underneath the sights and sounds of Wieden, like an original drawing covered by a fine overlay, only to be revealed when the tissue paper on top was lifted.
They pulled off the main road and onto a smaller side street. Old homes lined either side, a few mature trees still looming over the sidewalk. Christophe slowed down, then stopped in front of an old home that looked like a mini palais.
“Is this it?” Charlotte asked, peering at the beautiful building through the window.
It was two stories tall, with a wide staircase leading to a large, partially glassed-in porch. Above the first floor, Doric columns lined tall, narrow windows.
“This is it,” he said. He got out of the car and came around to her side to open the door. “Do you have the ring?”
She slipped a hand into her pocket, felt the cool metal against her fingertips. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
They walked up the steps side by side. Charlotte wasn’t surprised to find that they were marble. The house was well designed, probably built for someone important in the eighteenth century. When they got to the door, Christophe rang the bell. He was lifting his hand to ring again when the door suddenly opened.
“May I help you?” The man was tall and lanky, his face angular, cheeks hollowed out.
“Christophe Marchand and Charlotte Duval,” Christophe said. “I believe Mr. Weisman is expecting us.”
The man’s gaze swept them both. A quick assessment was clearly conducted in the moment before he stood back to open the door. “Please come in.”
Christophe gestured for Charlotte to enter, then stepped into the foyer behind her. The man closed the door and turned to offer his hand. “I apologize for my hesitation. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit spooked. I’m Michael Weisman.”
Christophe took his hand. Charlotte did the same, and the man looked into her eyes. “You’re Edgar’s daughter.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry to hear of your loss,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear of yours.”
He gave her a small nod. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “Your father was a good man with a good eye.”
“You knew him?” she asked.
He nodded. “Stefan had been working with him for some time. In fact, your father made several house calls to show him photographs of important pieces before the internet made it so easy to send them online.”
She smiled. “He did used to do that.”
“It was very kind,” Michael said.
“He always wanted to find the best homes for his pieces. He must have thought Mr. Baeder offered one.”
He nodded. “Indeed he did.” His gaze slid to Christophe before returning to her. “Please follow me.”
They trailed him into a parlor off the entry. Unlike so many old houses, this one had retained its original bones, its rooms small and high-ceilinged, each one cut off from the others. There was no “open floor plan”. No great room or big, modern windows. Instead the parlor looked much as it would have three hundred years earlier. The draperies were thick, heavy velvet, hanging deep enough on either side of the glass to block out much of the sunlight. There were floor to ceiling bookshelves, and old oil paintings dotted the walls between the original moldings. A large frayed rug dominated the room under the old and obviously fine furnishings. At one end of the room, opposite the sofa, a beautiful table was surrounded by carved chairs. The table’s surface was covered with boxes, some of them taped, others half full. The room was obviously in the process of being packed. The thought made Charlotte sad. Baeder hadn’t been unlike her father; both men had devoted their lives to the care of forgotten things. But when it was all said and done, those things went on to live a hundred more lives while the people who shuttled them through the ages became nothing but dust.
Perhaps that was the point.
“Please.” Michael gestured at the sofa. Christophe and Charlotte sat. “May I bring you coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Charlotte said. “We don’t want to trouble you.”
“It would be no trouble.” He looked around the room, and an expression of sadness passed over his features. “I should have made it before you arrived. I must confess to being a bit scattered these past weeks…”
Charlotte gave him a gentle smile. “Please don’t worry about it. We’ve just come from breakfast.”
He nodded, then took a seat in one of the high-backed wing chairs opposite the sofa. “I must confess I was surprised to hear from you,” he said to Christophe. “You were not a regular client of Stefan’s.”
“No,” Christophe said. “Although I ended up with one of his pieces through Edgar Duval.”
Michael Weisman’s face lit with interest. “Really? Which one?”
“The sixteenth-century Spanish desk,” Christophe said. “I’m very happy to have it. It looks a lot like something that once sat in my childhood home.”
Michael tipped his head. “It’s a lovely piece. One of my favorites. You must have had a lovely childhood home.”
The familiar pained expression passed over Christophe’s features before it was shuttered. Charlotte wondered if she would ever find out what it meant.
“That’s why we’re here actually.” Charlotte reached into her handbag and withdrew the ring. “Did this belong to Mr. Baeder?”
Michael’s face turned ashen when he took the object from her hand. “But… where did you get this?”
He was on the verge of anger now, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. Charlotte hurried to explain.
“It was in the desk he sold to my father,” she said. “Stuck behind one of the drawers.”
He shook his head. “But that’s… that’s impossible.”
“I was surprised by it, too,” she said. “I was preparing the piece for Mr. Marchand when I noticed one of the drawers didn’t sit right in the desk. When I removed the drawer, I saw that it was obstructed by the ring. I looked up the inscription online and came across a mention of its purchase by Mr. Baeder at auction some years ago.” She hesitated. “There’s something in the filigree. I wondered if… well, I wondered if it might be blood. I thought I should return it to you.”
She didn’t want to say anything about the men who had threatened her for the ring. Not yet. Michael Weisman was obviously in shock. She should give the poor man time to process this new information.
“It was Stefan’s,” he said, turning it over in his hand. “I thought it had been stolen.”
“Why did you think it had been stolen?” Christophe asked.
Michael looked at him. “Because Stefan was wearing it when he was killed.”
“Do you know how it ended up in the desk?” Charlotte asked.
“That is a very good question,” Michael said. “I presume he put it there.”
25
“Stefan was alone when it happened,” Michael explained. “I always went to the market on Mondays and Thursdays, but I can’t help wishing something had stopped me that day.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Charlotte said, wanting to ease the anguish on the other man’s face. “If you’d
been here, you might have been killed, too. I can’t imagine Mr. Baeder would have wanted that to happen.”
Michael Weisman had introduced himself as Baeder’s valet, but it was obvious their relationship went beyond professional bounds.
“Yes, well, we’ll never know, will we?” His words were bitter, and he stood, pacing to the fireplace. He studied the ring in his hand. “I assumed the men who killed him did so for the ring, although it never did make sense.” He looked around the room. “There are so many valuables in plain sight. Why not take something else as well?”
“Forgive me for asking,” Christophe said, “but was there enough time between the assault on Mr. Baeder and his death for him to hide the ring?”
Michael seemed to think about it. “I’m not sure. The police have established a time of death, but it’s hard to say exactly how long he was injured before he… succumbed. But I was gone for nearly two hours. If the men arrived as I was leaving, I suppose he would have had time to hide the ring.”
“Can you think of a reason he might have done that?” Charlotte asked.
Michael put the ring in his pocket. “Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.”
“What might he have been trying to tell you?” Christophe asked.
Michael seemed to hesitate in the moment before he crossed the room, removing a set of keys from his trouser pocket. He flipped through them, then went to a large box on one of the bookshelves and unlocked it. When he returned to the sofa, he was carrying a folder full of paper.
“I suspect it might have something to do with this.”
He set the folder on the low table that sat between the sofa and chairs. Charlotte reached for it, then drew in a breath when she saw the picture on top of the other papers.
“Tucker’s Cross?” Charlotte studied the picture — a gold cross studded with seven emeralds. The edges of the piece were elaborately detailed, and a small pendant hung from either arm.
“It was something of an obsession for Stefan,” Michael said. “He’d been looking for it since it was reported stolen.”
“I can’t help wondering about the connection to the ring,” Charlotte said. “How would you have connected it to Stefan’s hunt for the cross?”
“The ring had been stolen once, too,” he said. “Stefan looked for it for nearly ten years before he found it, although it was not nearly as valuable as Tucker’s Cross. He had a particular interest in lost and stolen artifacts.”
“But surely he never found the cross?” Charlotte asked.
She couldn’t imagine it. Tucker’s Cross had been found in a Spanish shipwreck off the coast of Bermuda in the 1950s. It was put on display within a museum in Bermuda run by Tucker and his wife. The theft was only discovered when the piece was being readied for a visit from Queen Elizabeth the Second and was discovered to be a fake. The original was never found.
“Sadly, no.”
Charlotte sensed something left unsaid.
“But?” she prompted.
He sighed. “He had a contact. A woman he’d been meeting who said she knew someone who might know the location of the cross.”
“And you think she had something to do with Stefan’s death?” Charlotte asked.
“I think what Mr. Weisman is saying is that he believes someone else might have gotten wind of Stefan’s progress,” Christophe said.
Michael nodded. “It is possible. And it would explain why nothing was taken when he was killed. Stefan’s papers on the cross were kept in the locked box on that shelf.” He gestured to the bookshelf behind him. “It would have been impossible to locate quickly in this house unless his murderers knew exactly where to find it.” He looked up, letting his gaze sweep the room. “There are many treasures here. Too many to search in the brief window they would have had before I returned from the market.”
“How far had he gotten in his search for the cross?” Christophe asked.
“I don’t know,” Michael murmured. “It was a very… personal search for Stefan. He didn’t like to discuss the details. It was an obsession, and a private one. I knew only about his meetings with the woman at the Belvedere.”
“Do you think Stefan gave the killers any information?” Charlotte asked.
“I would bet my life he didn’t,” Michael said. “It was in many ways his life’s work, and Stefan valued art above all else. He saw its protection as his sacred duty.”
Charlotte flipped through the papers in the folder. There were old news clippings, printouts from the internet, pictures of the cross and the shipwreck where it was found. Some of the information went all the way back to the 1950s. Michael was right; Stefan Baeder’s imagination had been captured by the theft of the cross since it had been discovered all those decades ago. What she wouldn’t give for a few hours to explore the information he had spent his lifetime collecting.
She reluctantly closed the folder, held it out to Michael. “Thank you for allowing me to look.”
He held up a hand. “Why don’t you keep it for now?”
She met his eyes. “But… are you certain? Surely Mr. Baeder would want you to have it.”
“Stefan would want it passed to someone who might finish what he started.”
Charlotte hesitated. “I’m not sure I can do that. I work in Los Angeles…”
He gave her a knowing smile. “You can return it to me whenever you like.”
Charlotte drew the folder back into her lap. She wasn’t at all sure she could finish what Stefan Baeder had started, but the mystery intrigued her.
“Do you think this woman would meet with us?” Christophe asked. “Tell us what she told Stefan before his death? If so, we might be able to find the men who killed him.”
“I don’t know. But it’s Thursday, and that means she’ll be at the Belvedere in…” He looked at his watch, “two hours.”
“Today?” Christophe asked.
Michael nodded. “Every Thursday. In front of The Kiss at two p.m.”
26
Christophe pulled up in front of the hotel, already anticipating Charlotte’s objections. They’d had time to kill, and they had passed it with a long lunch overlooking the river. He’d never known a woman who knew so much about art, who could discuss something like Tucker’s Cross, its origins, its discovery, its theft. In fact, most of the women he dated — and he used the term “dated” loosely since they never lasted long — were models or actresses, women he chose to excite his body. That there was a woman in the world who could stimulate both body and mind was a revelation.
And a warning he felt deep in his bones.
“What are we doing?” Charlotte asked as he stopped the car.
He waved away the doorman who moved to open Charlotte’s door. “We aren’t doing anything. You are staying at the hotel while I go to the museum.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “We’re in this together. I’m going, too.”
“No, you are not,” he said, gripping the steering wheel. “You’re safety is my responsibility. Or did you forget that’s why you came to me in the first place?”
“No, I did not forget,” she snapped. “But we’re not in Paris. It’s perfectly safe to go to the Belvedere in broad daylight to stand in front of one of the most famous paintings of all time. We’ll hardly be alone.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, keeping his tone formal, “this is how it will be.”
“I think you may be confused.”
He looked at her. “Confused?”
“Yes,” she said. “About our relationship.”
“Our… relationship has nothing to do with this,” he said.
“I think it does,” she said. “Because clearly you think you’re in charge. That you’re calling the shots and I’m following them.”
“There is no confusion on my part,” he said. “That’s the way it is."
Because that’s the way it always was with his women. The way it had always been. Their interest in his wealth outweighed his interest in their
bodies. That meant the balance of power was with him, and if they didn’t like it, he would be all too happy to show them the door.
She laughed a little, shook her head.
“Do you find something funny?” he asked.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “I find it funny that you think I’m here to follow your orders. We came to Vienna to find out more about the ring together. As partners.”
“Partners?” He didn’t have partners. He had employees. And he had very few men — like Julien — he trusted enough that some might call them friends. He had his father. His brother.
There were no partners in the mix.
“Yes, partners,” she repeated. “When two people work together to the same end?”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I know what a partner is. But I don’t have any.”
She sat back in the seat, looked out the windshield. “You do now.”
He took in the stubborn tilt of her chin and was surprised to feel not annoyance but admiration. The sensation was immediately followed by something too close to fear to be called anything else.
Fear that something might happen to her. That someone might snuff out the light that emanated from her like his own personal sun.
He slammed his fist against the steering wheel, and she startled in her seat.
“It’s dangerous, Charlotte.”
“No more so for you than for me.”
“I can protect myself. You want me to protect you as well?” He hated himself for the anger in his voice. It was a front. A cover for his fear and the knowledge slowly seeping through him. The knowledge that he would happily protect Charlotte Duval from any and all threats. That he would happily kill anyone who tried to harm her.
All of which spoke to some kind of attachment.
He didn’t do attachment.
“I’m not asking you to protect me,” she said. “You can do what you must. But I will be going to the Belvedere. With or without you.”
He sat back in the leather seat, opened and closed his fingers around the steering wheel as he weighed his options. He only had two: force her out of the car and risk having her show up at the museum alone and unprotected, or allow her to accompany him.
Covenant (Paris Mob Book 1) Page 10