Devious: Book Five in the On The Run series

by Sara Rosett

  “This is Felix,” Masard said as the man crossed the room and shook their hands. As Masard performed the introductions, Felix gave them both a European bow-handshake combination with his gaze fixed somewhere around their knees, except for a few quick darting glances at both of their faces. Zoe could barely hear Felix’s voice as he replied to their hellos. He was probably in his late thirties, Zoe decided. He had a narrow face and a long thin nose. The downturned corners of his mouth gave him a despondent air and the fact that he kept his gaze on the floor added to the impression.

  “Thank you for taking a look at the painting,” Zoe said. “Is now a good time? Should we come back later?” They hadn’t heard from Masard and had come directly from the hotel.

  Felix addressed the blue bamboo-patterned carpet. “No, now is fine. I am afraid the news is not good.”

  “Oh?” Zoe asked, her thoughts mentally skipping to the worst possible outcome. “What is it? The painting is a fake?”

  Felix raised his face and looked at her directly. “No, nothing like that. Come see.” His words were accented, and Zoe thought his inflection sounded a bit Italian. The painting rested on the end of the plastic table on top of its familiar brown paper wrapping. As he approached the table, his retiring manner vanished. His posture straightened, and his gaze sharpened as he adjusted a bright light so that it illuminated the painting. “First, I examine it with a…ah…” he turned to Masard and held up a pair of square glasses attached to a circular band.

  “Head loupe,” Masard supplied, then added, “They magnify.” He put his palms together and then drew them apart.

  “I understand.” Zoe turned back to see that Felix had slipped on the headgear, giving him a bug-eyed appearance.

  He picked up a thin pointer and said, “I look at—”

  “Excuse me.”

  Everyone in the room turned at the loud voice from the doorway. A dark-haired man with a strong jaw strode quickly across the room. “Won’t be but a moment.” He spoke with an English accent and smiled widely, deepening a dimple in his chin.

  Masard stepped forward. “Are you with the Hass family?”

  “No, but not to worry.” He brushed by Masard then moved around Zoe and Felix. Zoe assumed he was with the movers and was going to the intricately inlaid doors that stood open, the entry to the next room along the chain of rooms, but as soon as he was around the table, he picked up A View of Edinburgh, brown paper and all, and darted through the open glass door. “I’ll take good care of it,” he called over his shoulder.

  17

  IT TOOK EVERYONE A SECOND to react. Jack was the first off the mark, shifting between Masard and Zoe to sprint through the open door. Zoe was right behind him, but by the time she’d cleared the door, Jack was already halfway across the narrow garden area that ran behind the house. Six-foot hedges enclosed the garden, except for two openings at either end of the long garden. She caught a glimpse of the man as he slowed his pace to fold the brown paper over the painting and tuck it securely under his arm then he disappeared through the gap in the hedges. Jack was several feet behind him, but running all-out, and he crossed the distance in seconds.

  Zoe reached the gap a few seconds later and turned in the direction both men had gone. The gap opened into a narrow alleyway between the garden and the next house. About twenty feet away, cars swished along a busy street. Before Zoe got to the street, Jack jogged around the corner. “He’s gone,” he said shortly, his tone frustrated. “He was too far ahead of me. He got in a gray hatchback. It pulled away from the curb as I came out there.” Jack tilted his head toward the street. “They were gone before I’d taken a few steps.”

  “They?” Zoe asked as they turned back to the gap in the hedges.

  “He got in the passenger side, and the car pulled away immediately.”

  “So two people.”

  “Right. One to snatch the painting and one to drive the getaway car.”

  Masard met them in the garden. Jack shook his head. “Gone.”

  Masard said something in French then fell into step with them as they crossed back to the open door. “Felix is calling the police. He speaks a little German.”

  Zoe exchanged a look with Jack as they went inside. “This is awful. I can’t believe it. Stolen. For the second time. I’ll have to call Poppy.” Her stomach knotted. That would not be a pleasant conversation. “And Harrington, too,” Zoe muttered as she walked to the far side of the blue room and back.

  Felix slipped his phone into his pocket. “They will arrive as soon as they are able.”

  “What is it with that painting?” Zoe asked. “What did you find?”

  Felix spread his hands and shrugged. “Nothing. It is a Victorian landscape.” He reached for a folder on the table. “The infrared reflectography test showed the artist only sketched a few lines, roughing in the position of several of the larger features of the landscape, like the spire of the monument.” He flicked through several pages in the folder then showed Zoe and Jack a black and white photograph that looked like a simple line drawing of the painting. “The depth of the craquelure is consistent with the reported age of the painting.” He turned to another section of the folder. “And the x-ray,” he shrugged again, “does not suggest any other painting under the landscape.” He closed the folder and handed it to Zoe. “More tests are available, but since the authenticity of the painting is not in question, only the possibility of underpainting…I limited my examination to those features. I intended to ask if you wanted more extensive testing, but now…”

  Zoe looked toward Masard. “So there is no reason to steal it. It’s just a painting of a landscape. There’s not a Rembrandt hidden under it?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Masard said. “I looked over the results. I do not see any incentive for theft of that particular painting.”

  “And yet,” Jack said. “Someone stole it.”

  Zoe lowered herself into one of the delicate chairs. “There has to be a reason.”

  For the second time in as many days, Zoe and Jack reported a theft to the police. This time the officer was female and spoke nearly flawless English. She talked to Zoe and Jack first, with Felix stepping in a few times to help with a couple of words she did not understand. They couldn’t tell her much. The front door of the building had been open when they arrived, and they assumed it had remained that way. Anyone could have slipped inside. They had no idea who the man was. They’d never seen him before, and their description of him was terribly inadequate—medium height and weight, but a little on the thin side with dark brown hair. Zoe thought his jacket had been gray. Jack thought it was black.

  “Eye color?” the officer asked.

  “I wasn’t close enough to see,” Jack said. He looked to Zoe. “He brushed right by you. Did you notice?”

  “No. I have no idea. I just noticed he was smiling. He had a strong jaw line, kind of squared off. Oh, and he had a dimple in his chin, if that helps.”

  The police officer hesitated for a moment then made a note as if considering whether or not dimples should be included in physical descriptions. She asked them to wait while she spoke with Masard and Felix.

  “A dimple, huh?” Jack was seated on the floral couch beside Zoe. “Should I be worried?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somehow I don’t think it’s a good sign when your wife starts noticing dimples in other men.”

  Zoe elbowed him. “It was a distinctive feature. You know the only dimples I care about are yours.” Zoe’s phone rang, and she blew out a deep breath before answering. It was Harrington. She had called both Poppy and Harrington while waiting for the police. Neither one had answered. She’d left a message for Harrington, but decided she would simply call Poppy back. She didn’t want to leave a voicemail for Poppy about the painting being stolen again.

  “Zoe, my dear, are you all right?” Harrington asked after she answered.

  “Yes. I’m fine, except for feeling mortified that the painting has been s
tolen again while I had it.”

  “It’s not as if you left it lying about unattended on a restaurant table like so many people do now with their phones. Simply inviting theft. You couldn’t have had any idea someone would make another attempt.”

  “But he just walked in and took it. I should have done something to prevent it.”

  “Um, yes, brazen. But you should not put yourself in danger. He might have had a gun or knife that he might not have hesitated to use.”

  Seated next to her on the couch, Jack must have been able to hear Harrington’s words, because he nodded in agreement.

  “Have you informed Poppy?” Harrington asked.

  “No. She didn’t answer. I’ll try her again after this call.”

  “Good. Keep her informed. She will be angry, I expect, but don’t try to hide or delay telling her. We always keep the client up to date, even if it isn’t good news. See if she wants you to continue to look for it. I think she will.”

  “Really? I think she’ll want to fire me.”

  “No, I don’t think that will happen, but if it does, what do you want to do? Go home?”

  “Of course not. I want to find out what is going on with that painting. Now more than ever, in fact.”

  Jack sighed.

  “Just as I expected,” Harrington said, and Zoe could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Predictable, am I?”

  “Only when it comes to these sorts of problems, I believe. If Poppy should not require your services, then the company will cover a few more days in Salzburg to give you time to look into this theft. What were the results of the tests, by the way?”

  “The painting is exactly what it seems, a middling Victorian landscape.”

  “That is very interesting.”

  “Is it? It only makes everything more perplexing.”

  “I’ve often found in these types of cases, the more convoluted they become, the more clarity it gives you.”

  Zoe turned her head and looked at Jack, her brows drawn together. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Well, now you know that the painting’s value isn’t intrinsic. It must be something else. Let me know how it goes with Poppy,” he said and ended the call.

  Zoe hung up, shaking her head. “So the painting isn’t valuable, but it is.”

  Jack shifted, running his arm along the back of the sofa behind Zoe’s shoulders. “And there’s another aspect to think about. How did someone know the painting was here in Salzburg in this exact mansion at this exact time?”

  “No one knew that, besides you and me.”

  “You didn’t tell Poppy or Harrington?”

  “Not this address. I didn’t even know where we were meeting Masard until he gave me the address last night.”

  Jack looked across the room. “That means…”

  “That someone followed us here,” Zoe said, finishing his sentence. “They had to.”

  “Yes, your instinct about someone following us must have been right,” Jack said.

  Zoe fingered the strap on her messenger bag, which she’d placed on the sofa beside her. “That could mean that the mugging last night wasn’t so random after all.”

  “And you did think someone had been in your hotel room in Edinburgh.”

  She picked up her phone again. “I wonder where Theo Cooke is. I wonder if he’s still in jail.”

  “You think he followed us here from Edinburgh?”

  “Apparently someone has. Who else could it be? I’m texting Carla.” She sent the text, then said, “If someone—like Theo—was able to get into my hotel room in Edinburgh, my laptop was there with the flight details. I checked-in for the flight before going down to breakfast. Theo wanted the painting before, enough that he didn’t wait for Justine to arrive in Edinburgh.”

  “But why would he sell it to the art dealer then come after it again?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thought it wasn’t valuable then figured out it really is.”

  “Inspector Homes said Theo was in custody that morning,” Jack pointed out.

  “I’d forgotten that,” I said with a sigh.

  Carla must have been online because less than a minute later, Zoe’s phone buzzed and she opened the photo attached to the text. She held out the phone. “In any case, it wasn’t him.” The man with red-tinged hair and a bulky build was nothing like the more lithe dark-haired man who took the painting.

  “Wrong build, wrong hair color,” Jack agreed.

  “And wrong…demeanor, I guess. This guy looks grim and determined. Wrong everything.” Zoe glanced across the room to the police officer and Masard. He was at the glass door, pointing across the garden. He led the police officer outside. “Looks like we’re not getting out of here anytime soon.” Zoe opened the file Felix had handed her earlier. Felix had documented each of his authentication steps and included the photos along with a typed summary. Zoe flipped to the x-rays and the tests that looked through the layers of paint. Except for the sketch under the paint, it truly looked as if it was a blank canvas. Jack said, “Let me take a look at the report.” Zoe handed him the written report and switched to examining the x-rays, which included the painting’s frame. “Well, I’m no expert, but that looks like just a frame to me.”

  “Thought something might be inside the frame?”

  “I was hoping for diamonds or microfiche. It’s always about the microfiche in old movies.”

  Jack chuckled. “Do they even make microfiche anymore? No, you’d better look for a flash drive or microchip.”

  “Nope, nothing but wood, which according to Felix is probably poplar. Here, see if you see anything.”

  The rest of the photos in the file were full-color images of the painting itself. Felix had been thorough, beginning first with shots of the front and back of the painting then he’d zoomed in, photographing each area of the painting. Zoe looked at the close-ups of the brushstrokes, but felt at a loss. If Masard and his expert couldn’t see anything special about the landscape, she doubted she could. She flipped to the last photos. Felix had divided the back of the canvas into four sections and recorded close-ups of each one. Three of them were blank, and Zoe only gave them a glance, but she paused to look at the cataloging mark.

  Felix had used a thin pointer to roll back the edge of the curling paper. When Zoe looked at the mark earlier, she had thought it was a zero and a number seven, but with the paper flattened, she realized that there was more to see, which made it completely different. Her mind whirling, she grabbed Jack’s arm. “It’s not a seven. It’s a one. And with an eight in front of it…”

  Jack looked up from the photos he was studying. “What?”

  “It’s not painting number seven. It’s painting number one.”

  “I don’t follow,” Jack said.

  “The cataloging mark.” Zoe pointed to the photo. “I saw it when I first looked at the painting in Edinburgh, and I thought the cataloging mark was all digits, a zero and a seven, but Felix flattened the paper where it had curled up and uncovered a letter, a capital letter, an ‘N.’ And,” Zoe edged toward him in her excitement, “There were two numbers, five and eight before the capital letter.”

  “So the cataloging number is five-eight-N-zero-one.”

  “No, I saw Agatha’s list of the paintings last night. It was in one of the books Poppy gave me. She didn’t use letters at all, only numbers.”

  “Agatha?”

  “The sister of the woman who painted A View of Edinburgh.” I shifted on the couch so that I was facing Jack. “Annabel Foley painted. Agatha Foley wrote books…and, well, she was the organized one. She made the lists and ran the household. I could tell from reading the travel journal last night. Agatha was the one who handled the details. She did that, too, with Annabel’s paintings, cataloging them with a basic system, simply numbering them, but she didn’t use letters.”

  “Then maybe that mark isn’t from her at all.”

  “No, I think it is. It looks like the
handwriting in the travel journal. I bet when we get back to the hotel and check the list that A View of Edinburgh will be listed as the fifty-eighth painting.”

  Jack took the photo from her. “And the rest of it?”

  “I think she abbreviated the word ‘number.’ Instead of writing a pound sign, she wrote a capital ‘N’ and a small letter ‘o.’ See the dot there? And I was wrong about the last number as well. I thought it was a seven, because the—what would you call it—the upstroke on the number is so long, but looking at that list of paintings last night, I noticed that Agatha wrote the number one with a long upstroke.”

  Jack handed the photo back. “I’m lost. You’re obviously incredibly excited about this. Your face is practically glowing, but I don’t see why.”

  “Because, if I’m right, the cataloging mark means that this is painting number fifty-eight, number one.”

  Jack’s mouth gradually widened into a smile. “So that would mean there is probably a painting fifty-eight, number two somewhere out there.”

  “Yes. A View of Edinburgh is one of a pair.”

  “I knew it.” Zoe tilted the journal so that Jack could see the entry above her fingertip. “Here it is on the second page of the list. She grouped them together as entry number fifty-eight. She listed it as ‘Edinburgh No. 1’ and ‘Edinburgh No. 2.’

  They were back at the hotel. As soon as the police officer finished, they had quickly explained to Masard what they’d discovered, collected Felix’s bill, and hurried back to the hotel.

  Jack already had Zoe’s laptop open. “I get lots of hits when I type in Annabel Foley and painting, but not much when I add the exact name of the painting.”

  “Try using the word landscape with her name. She didn’t paint many of those.”

  “That’s more like it. Much more manageable,” Jack said.

  Zoe heard him clicking away, checking the links, but she was focused on the journal, scanning for any other mention of the pair of landscapes. “Two paintings. Wouldn’t it be incredible if the other painting is the one that’s valuable? All this time, everyone has been chasing the wrong painting. We’ve got to find the other one.”