“Why did you pick Tuesday morning?”
Her gaze touched his, amused. “You weren’t here, and you’d announced that you were sending the tablet to the British Museum.”
“How did you know I wasn’t here?”
Now the slight smile touched her mouth. “You told the Wall Street Journal you’d be in Stuttgart until Thursday.”
“What’s so funny?” he asked, wondering what she would say if she knew he’d canceled a dinner with a senator and her husband to barbecue at his poolside for her.
“My guy said you can’t trust somebody who lies to the Journal.”
“Your guy?” he repeated softly, curling the question at the edge.
“My broker. My fence. The person who sells the things I steal.”
“Oh. I thought you might have had a partner,” he said.
“No. I work alone, these days.”
He was actually a little more relieved than he should have been at the confirmation of her solo career. “I don’t suppose you’d suspect ‘your guy’ in any of this?”
“I’d suspect Tom Donner first.”
He shook his head. “Tom’s not a thief.”
“No, he’s a lawyer. That’s worse. And you trust him, which is stupid.”
Richard narrowed his eyes. “We’re talking about your friend—not mine. Does this ‘guy’ have a name?”
“I would imagine so,” she said casually, taking another sip of iced tea, “but I’m trusting you with my freedom, not his.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew something specific about all this—and not any of that thief’s intuition nonsense. “If it bears on this investigation—”
“If it does, Sherlock, then I’ll think about it. But it doesn’t. I…Great.”
He didn’t have to turn around to know that Donner had returned poolside. “Tom, how—”
“I’ll just be over here,” the attorney interrupted, picking up his beer as he sat at the far table.
His look at Samantha was less than friendly, but Richard wasn’t overly concerned. Donner knew he’d stepped too far, and while tossing him into the pool might have been extreme, so were the circumstances. “I was just going to ask how you wanted your steak.”
“Are you doing that mushroom-and-onion thing?”
“Hans is in the kitchen sautéeing as we speak.”
“Medium well, then.”
“So you barbecue a lot?” Samantha asked, dividing her attention as she kept an eye on Donner. She hadn’t been kidding; Sam Jellicoe didn’t like lawyers. She did, however, seem to like him, and he found that perversely pleasing.
“When I’m here,” he answered. “Tom and his family are good sports about being my culinary victims.”
“I doubt they mind.”
Halfway over to check on the coals, Richard glanced back at her. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. He’s practically attached to your butt as it is. You think he’s going to object to being asked over to the Florida version of Buckingham Palace for dinner?”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Not from where I’m sitting, attached to your butt,” Donner grunted.
“Solano Dorado is nice,” she offered.
“Thank you.”
Green eyes met his, then slid away again. “You’re welcome. But then you already know that I lie all the time.”
Donner took another swallow of beer. “This is all very cute, but I’d still like to know who tried to blow Rick to hell, if y’all don’t mind. Since it wasn’t you, Jellicoe.”
Richard was beginning to wish Tom hadn’t stayed for dinner. Besides the fact that he would prefer being alone with Samantha, he wanted her to relax a little, or he’d never get more than a glimpse of the information he wanted. “After we eat, Tom. For now, ask Miss Jellicoe what she thinks of Meissen porcelains, why don’t you?”
“I’d rather ask what she thinks of Trojan stone tablets.” Donner clanked his bottle on the ornate iron table. “But you didn’t try to snatch it for yourself, did you? Who were you going to sell it to—or do you steal things, then look for a buyer?”
“I work on contract,” she answered, surprising both men. “My guy gets a request for an item, sometimes a location, we agree on a price and the timing if necessary, and I do some research, then go in and get it.”
Sliding the steaks onto the grill and smothering them with mesquite sauce, Richard thought about what she’d said. “The tablet was only here for a fortnight, but it wasn’t a secret.” He pursed his lips, considering just how personal he could make his questioning before she managed another change of subject. “Without betraying any confidences, did your guy indicate whether this buyer asked for my piece specifically?”
“Trojan stone tablets aren’t exactly off-the-shelf items,” she returned, giving him a slightly superior look, as though she would have expected him to know something like that. He did, actually, but this was her turn for show-and-tell. “There are only three in existence, if I recall,” she continued, fiddling with her glass. “But yes, they would have wanted yours specifically.”
“Why?”
She stayed silent for a moment. “I don’t know. Convenience, I would guess. The other two are in private collections in Hamburg and somewhere in Istanbul. And maybe price.”
Tom snorted. “You mean his stone tablet was cheaper than the others?”
Her soft lips twitched. At least Richard imagined they would be soft. “Maybe,” she returned. “Or the buyer could be U.S.-based. Getting contraband items from one country to another can be expensive—and tricky. Especially now.”
“Hm,” Richard mused, flipping the steaks, “it was going to London in a few days. You may have a point.”
“But we’re not after my buyer,” Samantha pointed out. “We’re after someone who uses explosives in enclosed spaces, and whoever might have hired him.” Rising, she strolled over to the barbecue, watching as Richard fiddled with the steaks. “That smells good.”
So did she. “It’s my best recipe.”
“I really would like to see the gallery again. It might give me some ideas.”
“About other items you can liberate?” Donner suggested, without heat.
Samantha leaned back against the barbecue and smiled sweetly. “How’d you like to visit the bottom of the pool again?”
“Children,” Richard cautioned, taking the plate of sautéed onions and mushrooms from Reinaldo as the housekeeper appeared from the kitchen. “Behave yourselves.”
“I gave my word that nothing would end up missing from the premises, Donner. I keep my word.”
“I thought you lied all the time.”
Her eyes cooled, but her smile became more coy. “Only about some things. You know, Addison, I could find you a parrot to do the same work as Donner, and it’d only cost you a cage and some birdseed.”
“Yeah,” Donner countered, “but the bird would crap all over his paperwork.”
Richard flipped a steak. “I’m declaring a truce,” he said, sensing, even if Donner didn’t, that the lawyer stood a fair chance of ending up back in the pool. “Anybody who doesn’t wish to abide by it can get the hell off my property.” He held Samantha’s gaze. “We’ll go see the gallery after Tom leaves.”
“Great. Are you giving her a key, too?”
Richard ignored his friend’s grumbling. Besides, this guest didn’t need a key. “Have a seat, Samantha,” he said quietly, smiling. “I make great steak.”
Eight
Friday, 8:03 p.m.
Addison was right about one thing. He knew how to grill the hell out of a steak.
As dusk settled around them the pool lights kicked on, followed by trails of lights edging the flower beds and into the palm trees around the pool deck. Reinaldo emerged from the house with table candles, which he set out with practiced precision.
“This is starting to look like a date,” Samantha murmured, glancing at Addison. “Unless it’s for Harvard.”
“It’s not for me,” Donner said from his table across the pool deck. With a stretch, he rose. “Speaking of which, I’m outta here.”
“B’ bye.”
He scowled at her, then put an arm across Addison’s shoulder as they headed toward the house. “I’ll have some of the insurance paperwork ready tomorrow. You want me to bring it here, I assume?”
“Yes.”
As they rounded the corner of the house, Sam sat back to take another deep breath of flower-scented air. At this moment she had to think she’d made the right decision in coming to see the billionaire. Otherwise, she would have been holed up in that dingy old house in Clewiston, scouring the television for news and hoping she wouldn’t have to run until airport security got tired of looking so hard for her.
“Ready to see the gallery?” Addison asked as he reappeared. He’d worn jeans to barbecue, with a green T-shirt hanging loose to his hips and an open gray shirt over it. He’d thrown on flip-flops as well, and the light breeze ruffled his hair with gentle fingers. She wouldn’t mind running her fingers through that wavy black mass herself.
Sam swallowed. “The security room first.”
He was still wary about her having access to that; Sam could see it in his face, and that was why she’d pushed for it. They were doing the trust test, and he could just sweat a little, too.
Addison motioned her toward the front drive. “Around this way, then.”
He led them back into the house through the repaired patio door. “Impressive,” she said, looking at it. “Do you keep spare patio windows around, or do you own the repair company?”
“Neither. I’m just charming.”
That, he was. “What happened to the other glass?” she asked.
“The police have it,” he answered. “Dusting for prints, I would imagine.”
“They won’t find any of mine.”
“I should hope not. If there’s anything you can think of that might tie you to the other night, you’d best tell me about it now.”
“Not a thing comes to mind,” she said. “I told you that I’m good at what I do.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’m just trying to catch any problems.” Addison headed into the bowels of the house beyond the kitchen. A set of stairs led into a basement area, with an electrical room, pool pump and water heater room, then the security room.
“Mister Addison.” A man wearing the tan uniform of a Myerson-Schmidt guard stood upright so hastily that his chair rolled backward. Sam stopped it deftly with the sole of one flip-flop and slid it back to him.
“Louie. We’re just sightseeing.” Addison’s gesture gave her the run of the room.
Twenty monitors dominated the room, stacked in fours with a master computer in the middle and another two units to one side for playback purposes. “Is there usually just one guy in here?” she asked.
“Unless there’s a big party,” Louie said, resuming his seat, “one is all it takes.”
“How come we surprised you when we walked in?” she pursued. “Didn’t you see us coming?”
The guard cleared his throat. “I’ve been monitoring the outer perimeter cameras,” he returned, his expression becoming defensive. “With all due respect, ma’am, you wouldn’t have gotten indoors at all if Mr. Addison hadn’t been with you.”
She had several responses to that, none of which he would like, but she nodded. “Okay. The cops have the tapes from the other night, I suppose?”
“Yes,” Addison answered. “Anything else?”
“The gallery.”
They crossed back to the front of the house and started up the main stairs. The Picasso still hung on the landing, apparently having escaped all fire, smoke, and water damage. That had been a several-million-dollar piece of good luck for Addison.
“Does this sort of thing happen to you often?” she asked.
He slowed. “I’ve had death threats before, but this is the first time anyone’s gotten this close to actually killing me.”
“Nice line of work.”
“Look who’s talking.” Addison shrugged. “The fact that somebody invaded my home to do it makes me very angry.”
“But what if the bomb wasn’t supposed to kill you?”
“It was meant to kill someone under my roof, which means under my protection.”
“Your protection?” she repeated with a faint smile. “You sound like a feudal lord.”
Addison nodded. “Something like that. Be careful up here. There’s still debris lying about, and the floor’s got some weak spots.”
Yellow police tape stretched the width of the hallway right at the top of the stairs, but he pulled it loose as though it was nothing more significant than a spider’s web. The way Addison stood there, the way he eyed the destruction of the gallery with a deep, cold anger, made it clear just how personally he took what had happened.
“Wasn’t there more armor?” she commented, stepping past him.
“My estate manager sent some of the more salvageable pieces out to an armorer, to see what he could do with them.”
“They were beautiful.” For the first time Samantha reached the door that had secured the stone tablet, to find it hanging off twisted hinges and blackened with soot.
Richard stood back and watched her. He’d been over the floor himself already, but it fascinated him that she looked at it differently, that she saw things he would never have conceived of. She fascinated him.
“This is your secure room, right? Double-bolted, with infrared crossing the floor?”
Keeping in mind that he would ask how she knew all that later, he nodded. “Yes. With video on the far wall, facing the door.”
“And nothing showed up on tape, I presume.”
“Nothing so far, according to Detective Castillo.”
“If you’re so concerned with people invading your privacy, you maybe should consider putting more cameras inside the house,” she suggested.
“That would protect my things, not my privacy.” Walking closer so he could keep her in sight, he saw her squatting in front of the broken door, running her finger along the secondary lock. “What do you see?”
She straightened, brushing her hands off on her borrowed shorts, leaving black soot smudges across the yellow. “I was going to pick the secondary lock and cut the main,” she said after a moment. “Whoever did this thought the same thing. You can see the nicks the tools made.”
“A professional.”
“Yes.” She shrugged, moving into the room. “And…sometimes thieves do carry guns, even grenades, in case they get cornered or caught.”
“You don’t.”
Samantha flashed a smile. “I don’t get caught. I’m just trying to figure out what this was—a robbery or an assassination attempt.”
“And you can determine that by looking at tool marks?”
Slowly she nodded. “There were no signs of forced entry but mine anywhere on the estate, you said, but this is pretty obvious.”
“And?”
“And so he didn’t have to be careful here, because he knew he was going to blow up any evidence.”
She walked the edge of the room back to the video camera, but Richard stayed where he was. No signs of forced entry, but an obviously cut lock here in the middle of the house. Nothing on the video according to the police, though he’d had copies of the tape made and would go over it himself.
The number of people with access to the estate in his absence was almost endless; gardeners, security, housekeeping staff, pool maintenance, estate management, plus a select number of friends who were welcome to use the house whenever they chose. Though keys to the secured areas were harder to come by, they did exist—but not for the thief, apparently.
Finally she stopped at the fallen pedestal that had cradled the tablet. “This fell with a lot of force. The tablet would have broken.”
“You’re leaning toward the bomb being planted to cover the theft, aren’t you?”
Samantha glanced up at him. “Ma
ybe. At the least, someone knew the value of what was in this room and didn’t want it ruined in the process of whatever the hell he was doing.”
That was the third time she’d referred to the thief as a “he.” Normally he wouldn’t have found the masculinization odd—except that she was a thief, herself, and definitely female. “Does an assassin make an effort to preserve antiquities?” he pursued.
“I don’t know—I’m not an assassin.” With a quick grin she moved back into the gallery. “On the other hand, he didn’t give a damn about anything sitting out here, or the rest of the stuff in the house if your fire sprinklers hadn’t worked.” Samantha frowned, then cleared her expression as she glanced at him again. “How much is a good suit of sixteenth-century armor worth these days?”
“Half a million, give or take.”
“Ouch.”
“How did you know? About the bomb, I mean.”
She moved back to the large hole blown in the gallery wall, crouching to look at it more closely. “I didn’t. I mean I almost stepped into the wire, but then saw it at the last second. It pissed me off, actually.”
“Why?” Richard studied her expression, trying to ignore the abrupt tightness across his chest at the thought of her stepping into the middle of that bomb. She’d broken into his house, violated his sanctuary. But now he apparently worried about her.
“You had fairly top-line security everywhere, ineffective as most of it is, then a damned wire across the hall. It was just stupid. Guards, guests, would trip on it all the time and set off the alarm, or get hurt. And then I noticed that it wasn’t quite parallel to the floor, and that…bothered me.”
He crouched beside her. “Asymmetry bothered you. In the middle of a robbery.”
“It bothered me that everything else in this house is tasteful and meticulous and well thought out. It didn’t fit, and it obviously hadn’t been approved by you. It wouldn’t have been there for one thing, and for another, it wouldn’t have been crooked. I wasn’t completely sure, though, until I saw Prentiss marching toward me and not even glancing down.”
And he’d thought himself reasonably observant. “I would have walked right into it,” he muttered. In the dark, distracted and annoyed by the idiotic fax call, thinking about two meetings, a contract, and next week’s scheduled trip to Beijing, he wouldn’t have seen it until he tripped over the wire. And then he would have been dead. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
Flirting With Danger Page 8