The Collector

by Nora Roberts

  out the opening stomp-stomp-clap of “We Will Rock You.”

  She was changing that damn ringtone first chance.

  It was bad enough to be stuck in a cab after being bitch-slapped by the über-rich father of the man she’d recently decided to sleep with without being constantly bombarded by Queen.

  And she loved Queen.

  Her temper had cooled about twenty miles out, so now she took the rest of the drive in a sticky pool of self-pity.

  She’d rather be mad.

  She ignored Queen, the African tribal music beating out of the driver’s radio and the “Highway to Hell” guitar riff that was her text signal.

  Calmer, clearer—if sulky—she relented a little when they drove into the city. Enough to take out her phone and look at her incomings.

  Three calls from Ash, two from Julie. And one text from each. She blew out a breath, decided Ash won on a number of counts.

  She listened to his first voice mail, rolled her eyes.

  He’d handle it.

  Men.

  She handled herself and what came her way. That was Lila Emerson rule number one.

  She pulled up Julie’s first call next.

  “Lila, I just bumped into Giselle Archer. She said you’d left. What’s going on? What happened? Are you okay? Call me.”

  “Okay, okay. Later.”

  She listened to Ash’s second message. Sneered at his demand that she answer the phone. Then everything froze. Her finger trembled as she played the message back a second time.

  “No, no, no,” she murmured, and immediately brought up his text.

  Answer, damn it. On my way in via chopper. Need the name of your hotel. Lock the door. Stay.

  Going on instinct, Lila leaned forward. “Change of plans. I need you to take me to . . .” What was the damn address? She dug into her memory, pulled out the name of the shop Ash had mentioned, keyed it into a search on her phone.

  She rattled it off to the cabbie.

  “Cost you more,” he told her.

  “Just take me there.”

  Ash stood in the doorway of Vinnie’s office beside a uniformed cop. His rage, his guilt, his grief smothered under a thick layer of numb. The short and hellish flight from the compound, all the confusion, the panic faded away as he looked at the man he’d known and loved.

  Vinnie’s habitually dapper suit was stained with blood and urine. His face, always so smooth and handsome, showed the raw bruising, the engorged swelling of a vicious beating. The single eye stared out, filmed with death.

  “Yes, that’s Vincent Tartelli. In the chair,” Ash added carefully.

  “And the other guy?”

  Ash took a deep breath. His aunt’s sobs carried down the stairs, terrible sounds he thought might echo in his head forever. A female officer had taken her upstairs, away from this. Taken her and Janis, Ash corrected. Thank God they’d taken her upstairs.

  Ash made himself look at the body sprawled on the floor.

  Burly, broad-shouldered, big hands showing bruising and scraping along the knuckles. A shaved head, a square, bulldog face.

  And a tidy blackened hole dead center between his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. His hands—he’s the one who beat Vinnie. Just look at his hands.”

  “We’ll take you up with Mrs. Tartelli. The detectives will talk to you.”

  Fine and Waterstone, he thought. He’d called from the chopper himself, asked for Fine and Waterstone.

  “She can’t see this. Angie—Mrs. Tartelli. She can’t see Vinnie like this.”

  “We’ll take care of it.” He drew Ash away, into the main shop. “You can wait upstairs until . . .” He broke off when another cop signaled him from the main door. “Stay here.”

  Where would he go? Ash wondered as the cop walked to the door. He looked around the shop Vinnie had such pride in—gleaming wood, sparkling glass, the glamour of gilt.

  Old things, precious things. And nothing touched, nothing broken or disturbed that he could see.

  Not just a robbery, not just some murderous fuck looking for money or something to pawn.

  It all went back to Oliver. It went back to the egg.

  “There’s a woman outside looking for you. Lila Emerson.”

  “She’s a . . .” What was she exactly? He couldn’t quite pin it down. “She’s a friend. We were at my brother’s funeral this afternoon.”

  “Bad day for you. We’re not going to let her in, but you can step outside to talk to her.”

  “All right.”

  She shouldn’t be here. Then again, Angie shouldn’t be weeping up the stairs. Nothing was as it should be, so he could only deal with what was.

  She paced the sidewalk, stopped when she saw him step out the door. She gripped his hands, and like the first time he’d met her, compassion radiated from those big dark eyes.

  “Ash.” She squeezed his hands. “What happened?”

  “What are you doing here? I told you to go to a hotel.”

  “I got your message. Your uncle was killed—Oliver’s uncle.”

  “They beat him.” He thought of the ugly bruising on Vinnie’s neck. “I think he was strangled.”

  “Oh, Ash.” Though he felt her hands tremble, they stayed strong on his. “I’m so sorry. His wife. I met his wife for a minute.”

  “She’s inside. Upstairs. They have her upstairs. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why should you have to deal with this alone? Give me something to do, some way to help.”

  “There’s nothing here.”

  Her fingers tightened on his. “You’re here.”

  Before he could respond, before he could think of a response, he saw the detectives.

  “I asked for Waterstone and Fine. They’re here. You need to go to a hotel. No, go to my place.” He started to dig for his keys. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I’m staying, for now. They see me standing here,” she said quietly. “I can hardly run off—and I’m not leaving you to deal with all this on your own.”

  Instead she turned to stand side by side with Ash.

  “Mr. Archer.” Fine met his eyes, looked deep. “Once again, we’re sorry for your loss. Let’s talk inside. You, too, Ms. Emerson.”

  They stepped in, out of the summer heat and fuming traffic into the cool and the weeping.

  “His wife,” Ash began. “I know you have to talk to her, ask her questions. Could you do that quickly? She needs to go home, get away from this.”

  “We’ll expedite that. Officer, find Ms. Emerson a quiet place to wait. Mr. Archer, you can go upstairs, wait with Mrs. Tartelli. We’ll be up to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  Separating them, Ash thought, as Lila gave his hand a squeeze before releasing it to go with the officer.

  It was standard procedure, he assumed, but still made him feel heavy with guilt and rawly frustrated.

  He went upstairs, sat with Angie, held her while she trembled. Held Janis’s hand while she fought not to cry.

  And thought about what needed to be done.

  They sent for Janis, who shot him a grief-stricken look out of red-rimmed eyes before she went down.

  “Janis said he had a late customer.”

  “What?”

  Angie hadn’t spoken coherently until now. She’d wept, rocked, trembled. But leaning against him, she began to speak in a voice scraped raw from tears.

  “When Janis left for the day yesterday, he had a customer. A woman who said she was furnishing a new apartment. She picked out a lot of things, good pieces. Her husband was going to come in and approve, Janis said. So he was here late. Someone came in before he’d locked everything up, or caught him before he’d finished. He was here alone, Ash. All the time I thought he was running late, or dallying, he was here alone. I didn’t even call him last night. I was so tired after dealing with Olympia, I didn’t even call him.”

  “It’s all right,” he said useless
ly.

  “When he left for work yesterday, I nagged him not to lose track of time. He can do that. You know how he can do that. He was so sad about Oliver. He wanted a little time by himself, but I nagged at him when he left for work not to lose track of time.

  “He’d have given them whatever they wanted.” Tears rolled like rain as she kept her eyes locked on Ash. “We talked about that all the time. If someone came in to rob him, he’d give them whatever they wanted. He always told the staff the same. Nothing here’s worth your life or your family’s grief. They didn’t have to hurt him. They didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” So he held her until she wept herself dry, and the detectives came up the stairs.

  “Mrs. Tartelli, I’m Detective Fine, and this is Detective Waterstone. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

  “Can I see him now? They wouldn’t let me see him.”

  “We’re going to arrange that in a little while. I know this is hard, but we need to ask you some questions.”

  Fine sat in a rosewood chair with cabbage roses covering the seat. She kept her tone soft, as she had, Ash remembered, when they’d come to tell him about Oliver.

  “Do you know of anyone who’d wish your husband harm?”

  “People like Vinnie. You can ask anyone who knows him. No one who knew him would hurt him.”

  “When did you last see or speak with him?”

  Ash held her hand as Angie told them essentially what she’d told him, expanding when asked why he’d stayed behind another day.

  “Olympia wanted me—Oliver’s mother. She’s Vinnie’s sister, but we’re close. We’re like sisters. She needed me.” Her lips trembled. “I went up with our kids, and their kids. Vinnie was supposed to come up last night or this morning, depending on how he felt. I could’ve made him go. He’d have come with us if I’d pushed. I didn’t, and now—”

  “Don’t do that, Angie,” Ash murmured. “Don’t do that.”

  “He’d have given them whatever they wanted. Why did they have to hurt him like that?”

  “It’s our job to find that out,” Fine told her. “There are a lot of valuable things in here. Is there a vault?”

  “Yes. In the third-floor storage room. That’s mainly for pieces on hold for a client, or in for appraisal.”

  “Who has access?”

  “Vinnie, Janis. I would.”

  “We’ll need to take a look. Would you know if anything was missing?”

  “No, but Vinnie would have the records in his office, on his computer. And Janis would know.”

  “All right. We’re going to have you taken home now. Is there someone we can call for you?”

  “Ash called . . . my kids. Our kids.”

  “They’re already at the house,” he told her. “They’ll be there for you.”

  “But Vinnie won’t.” Her eyes filled again. “Can I see Vinnie?”

  “We have some details to go over, but we’ll notify you when you can see him. An officer’s going to take you home. We’re going to do everything we can, Mrs. Tartelli.”

  “Ash—”

  He drew her to her feet. “Go on home, Angie. I’ll take care of things here, I promise. Anything you need, anything I can do, just ask.”

  “I’ll walk you down, Mrs. Tartelli.” Waterstone took her arm.

  “These are your half brother’s relatives,” Fine said when Angie was downstairs. “You seem close, given that connection.”

  “In a family like mine you’re all relatives.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “They’ve been married longer than I’ve been alive. What’ll she do now?” He dropped his hands. “There’ll be surveillance. I know he had good security here.”

  “We have the CDs.”

  “Then you’ve seen who did this. There had to be at least two of them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Vinnie didn’t shoot the man dead in his office. The man who, from the look of his hands, beat Vinnie. You don’t have to be a detective to figure that much out,” Ash added. “You just have to use basic logic.”

  “When did you last see the deceased?”

  “I saw Vinnie Thursday evening. He came to my loft. Let me see the CDs.”

  “Being logical doesn’t make you a detective.”

  “You suspect Vinnie’s murder is connected to Oliver’s. So do I. I’ve never seen the man in his office, but maybe I’ve seen the other one, or the others. Detective, do you think Angie would lean on me this way if Vinnie and I had any friction? She’s right in what she said before. Everyone liked him. He was a good man, a good friend, and it might not fit your definition, but he was family.”

  “Why did he come to your loft Thursday evening?”

  “I’d lost a brother, he’d lost a nephew. If you want more, let me see the tapes.”

  “Are you bargaining with me, Mr. Archer?”

  “I’m not bargaining, I’m asking. Two members of my family have been murdered. My brother worked for Vinnie, here in this shop. If there’s any chance I can do something to help you find who did this, I’m going to do it.”

  “Was Vinnie keeping something for your brother?”

  “No, but someone may have thought he was. Vinnie was absolutely honest—you don’t have to take my word, and you won’t. You’ll check into it, and you’ll see.”

  “And Oliver?”

  The pounding in his head kicked up enough it nearly drowned out her voice. “Oliver could bend the line to suit the circumstances, and never understand—genuinely not understand—he’d crossed it. Detective, my family is shattered.”

  He thought of his father—inflexible, unreachable in his anger and grief.

  “Finding who did this is a start to putting it back together.”

  “And family is the thing?”

  “Yeah, it has to be. Even when it’s fucked up.” Again, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Maybe especially when it’s fucked up.”

  She got to her feet. “It won’t hurt to show you. Why was Ms. Emerson here?”

  “She was at the funeral, and left before I did.”

  “She came to your brother’s funeral?”

  “I asked her to. I wanted her there. When Janis called, after finding Vinnie, I contacted her. If this is connected to Oliver, it could put her in the middle.”

  “What’s your relationship?”

  “Evolving,” he said simply.

  “We’ll have her look at the recording. Problem with that?”

  “No.” He shook his head as they walked downstairs. “It’s probably better if she does.”

  “A screwed-up family can bog down an evolving relationship.”

  Oh boy, couldn’t it just. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  More cops now, Ash noted. And techs—crime scene techs, he assumed. Going about the business of blood and death. Fine signaled for Ash to wait, then walked over to speak with one of the officers. As he waited, Ash stepped over, looked into the office.