When she was gone, the door closed behind her, Richard took his seat again. “Dammit.”
“She’s a thief, Rick. You’ve found a use for her now, which is fine, I suppose, but—”
“But what, Tom?” Richard retorted, his temper flaring before he could yank it back under control. “I can’t ‘save’ her? You think she’s a charity project or something?”
“You’re a philanthropist. Maybe you can’t help it.”
With a forced smile, Richard pulled over one of the stacks of papers Donner had brought for his review. “Samantha’s not the only one with self-control. But I’ll do as I please, as well.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t rattle your saber at me; I just work for you.”
“I know, I know. On the phone you said you’d found out something about her father.”
The problem wasn’t Donner, and it wasn’t even Samantha Jellicoe. As they became better acquainted, Richard wanted to make excuses for what she did: She had had a poor childhood; she gave her profits to the poor; someone had blackmailed her into a life of crime. At the same time, he sensed that none of that was true. She was a thief because she enjoyed being a thief. And she was bloody good at it.
Whatever her father had done—and from Castillo’s reaction to the name he assumed the senior Jellicoe had been a thief of some notoriety—she was a bright young woman. If she’d wanted to find a different career for herself, she could have and would have done so.
“Okay. I called in some favors at the DA’s office, and we found a Martin Jellicoe, who served five years of a thirty-year prison sentence in a maximum security prison.” Tom pulled over some more papers and flipped through them. “I assume it was maximum security because he broke out of everywhere else. Three times.”
“What did he do?”
“Stole things. Lots of things. From just about everywhere, apparently. And there’s pretty much a consensus that he got away with a lot more than they found him guilty of. Florence and Rome were putting together an extradition request in 2002, which they’ve since dropped.”
“Why?”
“Because he died in prison that year. Heart attack, from the autopsy report.” Donner glanced up at him. “Remember the whole Mona Lisa theft fiasco a couple of years ago?”
“That was him? Jesus.” A frightening thought jolted cold through him. “It was him, wasn’t it? Not her?”
“It was one of the jobs they convicted him of. Besides, how old is your Miss Jellicoe? Twenty-four, twenty-five? I doubt she could have pulled it off at sixteen, Rick. They suspected a partner in some of his jobs, but he never fingered anybody. If it was her, though, she’s way more than some pickpocket.”
“I realize that.”
“Rick, I’m serious. They stole things from some very wealthy and very powerful people. And most of it’s never been seen again. Crown jewels, original Monets, the captain’s logbook from the Mayflower.”
Richard sat back, turning his gaze to the window. She was out there, sitting on a bench facing the pond and tossing what looked like bread crumbs to the fish who resided there and the ducks who were visiting. He’d told her that he admired her, and he did; not for her career, but for the spirit she displayed and her obvious skill.
“So, all I’m going to say is that when this is over and you’ve cleared her of breaking in here, she’s not going to become a schoolteacher.”
“Drop it, Tom.”
“The next time she takes something, it’ll be because you lied to the cops and let her—”
“Drop it. Now.” He took a deep, slow breath. “One thing at a time.”
“Well, here’s one more thing for you, then.” Donner shoved the style and events section of the Palm Beach Post in his direction. “Page three.”
He already knew what page three meant. It was the society page, featuring photos of the richest and most famous who happened to be in Palm Beach, and who or what they were doing. Directly after his divorce every tabloid in the world had seemed to feature him every day with a different woman, whether he actually knew her or whether they happened simply to be crossing the street at the same time. Once Donner had gotten through with a dozen lawsuits they’d become a little more cautious, but in the ensuing year and a half, he’d become a little less so. Divorce hadn’t made him a monk, for Christ’s sake.
The photo was quite good, considering the distance the photographer had been from the limousine. Donner leaned against the car while he stood with a slight smile on his face, talking with “mystery woman,” who thankfully had her back half-turned to the camera. “Don’t tell her about this.”
“I’m not telling her anything. That’s your department.”
With a last look he closed the paper and shoved it back at Tom. “All right. Show me the insurance report.”
They had moved from estimated loss compensation to going over the expense of repairing the damage to the walls and floor of the gallery when Danté knocked at the door. “Rick, Tom,” he said, half-bowing as he took a seat at the table. “I did a new invent—”
“Was anything missing other than the stone tablet?” Richard interrupted. If more items had vanished, his partnership with Samantha was going to have to alter. He’d begun to trust her—or at least her opinion on the theft. If she’d lied…
“Just the tablet taken. The damage to some of the other pieces, though, is horrific. I—”
“Wait a minute.”
Rising, Richard went to the window. Nothing else was missing. Thank God. His relief didn’t make any sense; as Tom had said, she’d done a lot of damage elsewhere. But he was relieved.
She’d never been arrested for anything—he knew that. At the same time, he was perfectly aware that she’d done at least some of what Tom had claimed. She was too good, too practiced, for him to fool himself into thinking for a moment that this was the first job she’d attempted. And he hadn’t become successful by ignoring reality.
He unlatched one of the windows and pushed it open. “Samantha!”
She started, looking over her shoulder at him.
“Will you join us for a moment?”
With a quick nod she rose and disappeared back along the path toward the house. Whatever they knew or thought they knew about her, it could wait. He’d made a deal, and he would honor it. As he’d told Donner, one thing at a time. He would worry later about what to do with her when this was finished.
People had every right to protect their property, and to attempt to stop anyone who tried to invade their domain. Etienne had been cocky and more than a little greedy, but he’d understood the rules and the danger as well as she did. To hear that he’d been found floating in the ocean, full of gunshot wounds—that wasn’t a death in the line of even a thief’s duty. That was just murder. And that wasn’t part of anyone’s game. Game. This one had stopped being amusing at the moment of the big boom.
“Did you find out anything more about Eti—” she began as she pushed open the office door. A third man had joined them, and she stopped her sentence abruptly. “You must be Danté.”
Richard had stood as she entered the room, his English manners showing. “Samantha, this is my art acquisitions manager, Danté Partino. Danté, my new security consultant, Samantha Jellicoe.”
God, she wished he would stop handing everybody her name like that. It jolted her every time she heard it on his lips. “Hi,” she settled for, taking the seat beside Addison when he motioned her to the table. “What’s going on?”
“Danté’s been compiling a list of my damaged and destroyed artworks. I just wanted you to hear it.”
“Trying to make me feel guilty?” she murmured.
“No. You didn’t blow anything up. I want your opinion.”
She didn’t quite see why, since her concern was only for the bomb and for whoever had wanted the tablet—and now, for whoever had killed the man who had taken the tablet. Even so, she nodded.
“Security consultant?” Partino repeated, eyeing her much as Donner had when they’d f
irst met. “With Myerson-Schmidt?”
“No, she’s independent,” Addison replied, giving her a look of veiled amusement. “Miss Jellicoe specializes in security for valuables. Go ahead.”
Partino read through the list, item after item, each one followed by its original, then estimated current market value, the amount of damage, and if it was repairable, how much that would cost. He knew his stuff. And Sam couldn’t help remembering that her host had at least three other residences, and that as far as she knew, all of them were choked with antiques and works of art. For her, it would have been Christmas, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving, all rolled into one.
She had trouble concentrating on the lengthy soliloquy, though, with Addison sitting so close beside her that she could feel the warmth of his body seeping into hers. Sam wondered what he would do if she simply grabbed his face and planted another kiss on his unsmiling, sensuous mouth.
Yeah, right. This was his game, but the stakes were much higher for her. Ignore the attraction, she ordered herself. She was in too much shit for anything else. If Etienne could be shot and killed, it could happen to her, too. She shifted, leaning closer to look at the paper he was holding. It could happen to him.
“Anything catch your attention?” he murmured, looking sideways at her.
Sam blinked. “No. It’s all sellable, but no one thing more than any other—except for the stone tablet, which somebody really wanted, obviously.”
“Miss Jellicoe,” Partino returned, “not to doubt your expertise, but I assure you that a preeminent collector would recognize the value of every item in this collection.”
“Tell that to the guy who only stole one thing and didn’t care about blowing up everything else.”
Partino twitched. “I do not recommend poor-quality artworks for purchase. Everything here is of the highest quality.”
“You tick off everybody, don’t you?” Donner asked her, with a low chuckle.
That was enough of that. “Well, here’s Harvard, a guy who wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from a Degas,” she shot back. “Let’s take a look at him.”
Donner narrowed his eyes. “Whatever you’re implying, I don’t appr—”
“I was invited to this show,” she snapped, standing. “Play with yourselves for the encore.”
Half-expecting Addison to call her back, she slipped out the door and back down the hallway to her bedroom suite. Somebody, probably Reinaldo, had put a bowl of fresh fruit on the coffee table, and she snatched up an apple, tossing and catching it while she tracked down the remote for the theater-sized television and turned it on.
A moment of searching found WNBT, the station Addison was after. Godzilla again trampled Tokyo, this time in the company of Monster X and Rodan. It figured.
Twenty minutes later the doorknob behind her rattled and turned. Though she was certain who it was, habit and a strong sense of self-preservation made her glance up over her shoulder. “When you buy a television station, do you change the format?”
Addison closed and locked the door, then dropped into the chair beside her and set two cans of soda on the coffee table. “Not always. Why?”
“First of all, don’t you use coasters?” she asked, leaning forward and slipping two Victorian flower-patterned coasters beneath the drinks. “This is a Georgian table, you know. Two hundred and fifty years old.”
“Two hundred and thirty-one years old,” he corrected.
“Secondly, this is the only station around here that shows the classics.” She gestured at the huge screen with the remains of her apple. “This is Godzilla Week, for example.”
“I see.” Helping himself to a peach, he bit into it. Juice ran down his chin, and he wiped at it with his thumb, absently licking the sweet liquid off. “Godzilla being one of the classics, of course.”
Oh, yum. “Most of ’em. A few of the ones from the late seventies turned Godzilla into an environmental avenger, which is just silly. After all, he’s a by-product of nuclear testing. He’s supposed to be bad.”
“Why do you steal things?” he asked abruptly, his gaze still on the rampaging monsters.
He seemed genuinely curious, but the more he knew about her, the more dangerous he was. “Why did you marry your ex?” she countered.
Addison shifted in his chair. “Sooner or later you’re going to trust me enough to tell me,” he said without heat.
“Sooner or later you’ll do what you promised, and I’ll be out of here,” she returned, tossing the apple core into the wastebasket by the door. Two points.
“Do you want to leave?”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now. Today. This minute. Do you want to go?”
No. “What I want to do,” she said slowly, finding it difficult for the first time to meet that deep gray gaze of his, “is to go to Butterfly World.”
He pushed to his feet, reaching over and taking her hand to pull her up beside him. “Fine. Let’s go now, and we’ll have time to sightsee a little.”
“You’re weird.” She couldn’t help grinning at his chuckle.
“I’m mysterious,” he corrected. “You should appreciate me more.”
If she appreciated him any more than she was beginning to, they’d be naked on her borrowed bed right now, and screw the consequences.
Eleven
Saturday, 1:18 p.m.
“We are not taking your limousine.” Samantha folded her arms across her chest.
Trying not to smile, Richard stood on the front steps beside her and decided not to ask why she had such a prejudice against his limousine. “I didn’t say we were, love.”
“You told Ben to bring the car around.”
A yellow Mercedes-Benz SLK rounded the house and cruised to a halt in front of them. “Yes, but I didn’t say which car.”
“Doesn’t James Bond drive a BMW or something?” she asked, heading for the passenger side as Ben exited the driver’s seat. “Banana yellow. Very inconspicuous.”
“I’m not James Bond. Shut up and get in.”
She liked the car; he could see it in her tease of a smile as she sat. Samantha ran her hand across the dash, which was another good sign. She seemed to learn by tactile sensation. It would be interesting to see if that continued into the bedroom. He shifted, abruptly uncomfortable. Cold shower. Think cold shower.
Finally, she buckled in and grinned at him. “Can we put the banana’s top down?”
Obligingly he pushed a button on the dash. The trunk lid popped open, and the roof lifted and swung backward into the trunk with one fluid motion. “Better?”
“Cool,” was all she said, as they rolled down the drive.
The police still stood at the outside gate, but they were beginning to look more bored than hopeful of catching a bomber. Of course they’d already found the bomber washed up on the beach, whether they’d realized it or not. He glanced at Samantha, leaning one arm on the window frame, her chin tucked along it.
“The police identified DeVore and consider him a suspect,” he said, “but since I described a woman inside my house, they haven’t given up looking.”
“They probably figure he had a partner. Tracking him won’t lead them any closer to me, but I’m definitely not in the clear.” She shot him a look. “Yet.”
“Has he ever used explosives before?”
“I don’t know all the jobs he’s pulled, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He wouldn’t have called to warn me away if we’d just been competing for a simple grab.” She shrugged. “He’s done hits before, but he always said it wasn’t as much of a challenge. People move around and make themselves vulnerable. Objects stay put, and you have to go to them.”
“Were you and DeVore ever …partners?”
She sat back and punched on the stereo. “Oh, that figures,” she scowled, as Mozart drifted into the car. “Partners. I assume you mean in bed as well as in crime. In crime, no.”
Gripping the steering wheel, his stomach clenching in a jealousy that was as unexpected as it w
as ridiculous, Richard nodded. “Then I’m sorry again.”
“Quit apologizing. It wasn’t your fault. People drop in and out of my life all the time. I’m used to it.”
“Cynical, aren’t we?”
“I try to stick to what I’m good at. Besides, you shouldn’t be complaining. You’re ‘in’ at the moment.”
For how long? he wondered. “It was a comment. Not a complaint.”
Samantha flashed her quicksilver grin. “Good. Anyway, I’m just hoping Stoney will know who Etienne was contracted with. If not, we’ll be stuck at about the same place the police are.” Auburn hair whipped across her face, and she pulled a rubber band from her Gucci bag to pull the wavy mass back into a pert tail.
“I thought we were trying to blend,” he commented. “So why the expensive handbag?”
“It’s all I had with me. Besides, it’ll help me look like a tourist. I hope you brought a corny baseball cap or something.”
“Sorry, I didn’t dig into the corny section of my wardrobe this morning.”
She studied his profile for a moment, while he pretended to keep his attention on the highway. Thank God the traffic was light.
“Just keep your sunglasses on. You’re not wearing a suit, so that should help. We’ll get you a Gilligan hat or something.”
“No, we won’t.”
Samantha was silent for a moment, though she eyed the stereo with such keen disappointment that it was almost comical. “You told watchdog Donner where we were going, didn’t you?”
“I trust him, Samantha. And—”
“I don’t. Never trust somebody who knows how much you’re worth.”
“Everybody knows how much I’m worth.”
“Yeah, but everybody doesn’t have the kind of access he does.” She drummed her fingers on the window frame. “Your death’s gotta have a huge profit built into it for him.”
Richard frowned, already putting the notion out of his head. Tom Donner was his closest friend. The idea was ridiculous. And he was careful about whom he let into his life, these days—with one glaring exception. “I trust him,” he repeated. “Drop it.”
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