The Catspaw Collection

by Anne Stuart

  The question came out before she even realized it had been in her mind. McNab didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised. “Approximately three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the red, per egg, according to the last price paid at auction. No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I don’t have any children. Do you?”

  “I’m not even . . . planning to have any,” she amended quickly, about to betray the speciousness of her married state.

  “Why not?”

  “Too much responsibility. You can’t help but let them down, and then where are you? Better not to take a chance of ruining some young kid’s life.”

  “Did someone ruin your life?”

  Dany tossed back her silvery-blond mane and laughed. Only a very observant man would know that laugh was hollow, but McNab had struck her as very observant. “Do all Americans have such intimate conversations with strangers?” she countered.

  “We do tend to be an outspoken race. Why are you here? Don’t you have work to do with the circus?”

  “Is this a professional inquiry, Detective? Do you think I’m planning to pop the eggs into my handbag and walk out with them?” She could feel the adrenaline buzzing through her veins. This was what she would miss, the excitement of taking absurd risks and getting away with it.

  “Stephen,” he corrected. “And no, it’s not a professional inquiry. I might be more concerned if you were watching them set up the new security system for Mrs. Merriam’s Van Gogh, but I don’t think anyone’s going to bother with the eggs.”

  “Just out of curiosity, why?”

  “Too hard to fence. And as you said, if you don’t have a mantel you’re just plain out of luck.” There was a glint in his wintry-gray eyes, but his expression was suitably grave. He was laughing, secretly amused, but Dany wasn’t threatened. As long as there was that light in his eyes, he couldn’t suspect her of any worse crime than that of a married woman flirting with a police detective.

  “Wouldn’t the Van Gogh be even harder to sell?”

  “Indeed. But one would go to a lot more trouble for something worth forty million than for a Faberge egg.”

  “Well then,” Dany said, smiling easily, “I’ll be certain to steal the Van Gogh if I feel a sudden larcenous streak coming on.”

  “You do that,” Stephen said calmly. “In the meantime, can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t think my husband would like that.” Her eyes were demurely lowered, her tone chaste. “I’d better get back to him and tell him about the Van Gogh. Who knows, he might decide thievery is a better profession than owning a circus.

  “He might, at that. It certainly pays better than police work. Well, if you won’t join me, I suppose I’d better get back to work, too.”

  “What are you doing here, for that matter? Just taking in the works of art, or were you planning to pull off a heist on your own?”

  “You know, I never thought of that. Police pensions being what they are, I certainly ought to keep all possibilities in mind. But I don’t think The Hyacinths is the answer. So there’s nothing left for me to do but make sure the security system conforms to city regulations.”

  “Isn’t that some minor bureaucrat’s job?”

  “I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Porcini, but I am a minor bureaucrat.”

  “Call me Dany,” she said suddenly, impulsively. No one had called her Dany for more than fifteen years.

  “Dany,” he agreed. “Besides, if anything gets taken from this museum, it’s my butt on the line. So it behooves me to make sure security is everything it should be, particularly when it comes to the Van Gogh. But I wish she’d left it to some other city, one not in my jurisdiction.”

  “Cheer up. Maybe someone will steal it when you’re not on duty.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.” Beneath the lightly spoken banter something else was shifting, stirring, something incredibly enticing and too dangerous to bear. “Have coffee with me,” he said again, his voice deep and warm, like no voice she had ever heard before. He held out his hand, a good hand, with long, well-shaped fingers, a narrow palm, and strength that wouldn’t fail her.

  She wanted to put her hand into his. She wanted to turn her back on the Faberge eggs, once and for all. But there had been too many years, too many lies, and there could be no future at all for a cop and a thief. “Marco would rip your head off,” she said with a laugh. “He’s a very jealous husband. I’ll see you around.” And she took off, her high heels clicking lightly on the floor in her haste to get away from him.

  “Yes.” McNab’s voice followed her, just reaching her ears as she made her precipitous escape. “You will.”

  IT WAS AFTER SEVEN when Ferris let herself into her apartment. The sun had already set, and shadows filled the twisting line of rooms that made up her apartment. Blackie was in residence, waiting with regal feline disdain to be fed and released from bondage. Ferris kicked off her shoes and headed for the kitchen, dumping her bag of Mrs. Field’s Cookies and the pasta primavera from Willey’s Deli onto her spotless counter.

  She held herself very still. Nothing in her apartment was ever spotless—it went against the very grain of her nature. And Blackie had gone out that morning, refusing her enticements to return inside, and the early-morning chill had precluded leaving the terrace door open even a crack.

  She knew all the rules—any single woman living alone in a city knew them. If you suspect your apartment has been broken into, you don’t wait around looking to see what has been taken. The perpetrator might still be lurking inside a closet. You run, and call the police from the nearest public phone.

  Of course, those rules applied to single women unacquainted with John Patrick Blackheart’s peripatetic ways. Besides, he had already gone, and the apartment was empty. She knew that as well as she knew her own name—whichever one she happened to be using—and if she felt a wrenching regret, she told herself it was only because she wanted to scream at him.

  “I bet you welcomed him with open arms,” she accused her haughty alley cat, dishing him up a generous portion of herring in sour cream that hadn’t been in her refrigerator that morning. She peered into its barren depths, wondering if Patrick had left her any other tokens of esteem, but nothing but Diet Coke, yogurt and Sara Lee Cheesecake, her usual staples, met her eyes.

  There must be something else. Fond as Blackheart was of his namesake, he wouldn’t have broken into her apartment and left nothing but herring and clean counters.

  He’d made the bed, too. Not with the pastel flowered sheets she’d been using; he’d managed to unearth the maroon ones that reminded her far too clearly of him. “Damn him,” she muttered under her breath. There was no way she’d be able to get a decent night’s sleep in those sheets. She should have thrown them out, not hidden them under a pile of towels.

  Of course, she thought, dropping onto the bed and folding her arms under her head, in the normal course of events those sheets would have stayed hidden. It wasn’t her fault that she’d fallen in love with a cat burglar who made himself at home in her apartment, rummaging through her linens to his heart’s content—

  She sat bolt upright, staring ahead of her. The one thing her tiny bedroom held, beside the queen-size bed, was an oversize television set, its top usually cluttered with empty ice-cream dishes, old magazines, discarded panty hose, single earrings, and anything else that a normal person would throw out. All that had been ruthlessly removed, and Ferris had no doubt she’d find everything in the trash. In its place was a sleek, black, beautiful Blu-ray player, a twin to the one she’d coveted in Blackheart’s apartment.

  Two DVDs sat on top of the black metal. She was almost afraid to look, but curiosity overruled caution. The first was obvious. To Catch a Thief. It would be a cold day in hell before she watched that one, she thought, dropping it into her
overflowing wastebasket, knowing perfectly well she’d retrieve it before she took the trash out. Still, the gesture was satisfying.

  She picked up the other box. Spanish Dancing, it read. The woman on the cover was wearing red shoes just like the ones Blackheart had given her, the ones that were hiding somewhere under her bed. Holding the DVD in her hands, she sat back and burst into tears.

  NO ONE KNEW he was there. The house was empty, with only the servants sound asleep in their beds. He looked at The Hyacinths, reveling in the wash of sheer color and beauty that had somehow sprung from a madman’s mind. He could see the tiny pinpricks of red light from the security system, a system only three people could legally circumvent. It didn’t matter who took the blame when the painting disappeared. The only issue of any importance was that no one would suspect him. If he could pay off an old score or two into the bargain, then so much the better.

  If life were only just a tiny bit simpler. Someone was going to take this painting and lock it into a vault, gloating over it in deepest privacy, never allowing anyone else to marvel at its beauty. Decades, generations later it might resurface, after enough time had passed to cloud its dubious passage from the Merriams’ San Francisco mansion. He wondered briefly if the painting was insured. Certainly not at forty million. But if Regina Merriam could afford to give forty million away, she could certainly afford a loss on her insurance.

  And speaking of her, she’d be back anytime now. He’d have a hard time explaining his presence in her upper halls with nothing but moonlight and the occasional beam of infrared to keep him company. He’d better get out, fast. He’d be back soon enough.

  DANY KNEW MARCO was watching her, much more closely than he had in recent months. There was no way he could have the faintest idea what she’d planned, but his watchfulness disturbed her. He hadn’t seen her meeting with Stephen McNab. He’d sent her over to scout out the museum while he was busy at the circus grounds—otherwise he would have gone himself. Wouldn’t he? So it couldn’t be misplaced jealousy. Of course, he did have a dog-in-the-manger air about him. Even if, thank heavens, he didn’t want her, he didn’t want anyone else to have her.

  But he’d been so busy preening before a crowd of fascinated women that he wouldn’t have had time to notice if Stephen McNab had shown a flattering amount of interest. He couldn’t possibly have guessed her plans. She’d been very outspoken about her decision that this would be the last job. Marco was the sort who believed only what he wanted to believe, and if her future didn’t fit in with what he wanted, then he would ignore them.

  But she’d been very careful. There were no plane or train tickets, and her tiny horde of cash was so well hidden even Marco couldn’t find it. Not that it would take her very far. She was counting on her share of the money from the eggs to keep her, not in style for a few months, but in modest peace and safety for years. She’d grown up making do on very little. She could survive for years on her ill-gotten gains.

  Marco was sitting on the bed in the crowded little caravan, watching her. She had never thought she’d look back on that antiseptic little motel room with nostalgia, but anything was better than these close quarters, closer even than their cabin on the old freighter. This time she had nowhere to run.

  “I want to know,” he said suddenly, his voice breaking through the silence like a rusty saw blade, “what you told the cop.”

  Damn, thought Dany. So much for thinking she was safe. “Not a thing. We talked about the Van Gogh.”

  “I’m going to have to remind you of something, little one,” Marco growled, flexing his fingers. Marco had very strong hands. “You belong to me. Until I let you go, whether I want you or not, you’re mine.”

  Her response didn’t matter. If she meekly agreed with him, he’d hit her anyway. She had nothing to lose.

  She met his gaze with blithe indifference, her chin held high in defiance. “I don’t belong to you, I have never belonged to you, and I never will.”

  She hadn’t taken into account the fact that if she angered him, he’d hit her even harder. The force of the blow knocked her backward and she fell against the side of the van.

  “Go to hell, Marco,” she said, her voice muffled from her split lip.

  He was advancing on her, meaty hand upraised, his face contorted in rage, when her calm voice stopped him. “Don’t you think my new boyfriend will notice if I’m bruised?” she taunted him.

  “You think your handsome cop will come to your rescue? He’s more likely to slap you in jail, once I get through talking. And what about your long-lost brother? You think you can count on him for anything? You never could before.”

  “I can count on myself. And I can count on you to remember the bottom line and not jeopardize your career because you don’t like the way a man looks at me. If the cop has the hots for me, so much the better. He’s less likely to think I’m up to something if he wants me.”

  “Maybe,” Marco said. “But he’s more likely to want me out of the way.”

  “It’s only seven days. Don’t you think I can string him along for that short a time?”

  “I don’t trust you, Danielle.”

  “That makes us even. I don’t trust you. But you should remember that you can’t get the eggs without me. You don’t have time to train anyone new. And I can’t get the eggs without you. So we’re just going to have to keep on with this unpleasant partnership for one more week.”

  He nodded in reluctant agreement. “Just don’t push it. I might decide it would be worth the risk to do without you.”

  She was so close, so very close to everything she’d ever worked for. She’d be a fool to risk it for the sake of taunting Marco, for the sake of McNab’s beautiful gray eyes. “You do your part,” she said, “and I’ll do mine.”

  Marco nodded. “Now all we have to worry about,” he said in a dream voice that sent shivers down her back, “is the very nosy Ms. Ferris Byrd. A small accident, don’t you think? Something to incapacitate her for the next seven days?”

  “Why?” Dany breathed.

  “She’s just a little more observant than I like. I prefer women who lie back and keep their eyes and mouths shut.”

  “I’m sure you do. What has Ms. Byrd said to make you nervous?”

  Marco smiled. “I don’t think I need burden you with that information. You have too much to worry about already.”

  Dany was growing more and more distraught. Damn Marco. If he couldn’t hit her, he still knew other ways to get to her. “What are you going to do to her?”

  “Something creative, little one. Something creative.”

  FERRIS HAD STRANGE dreams that night. It was little wonder. She’d spent the evening crying, crying until runnels of mascara streaked her face, crying until her cheeks were bright red and her lashes bleached white from the salt water of her tears. She lay on her back and let the tears race down her face and drip into her ears. She lay on her stomach and cried into the maroon sheets. She wandered through her apartment, hiccupping and sobbing, occasionally flopping onto the love seat to beat against the pillows until she remembered the first night she’d made love with Blackheart, starting on this love seat and ending in her bed. She’d jumped up, bawling anew, and sobbed her way into the kitchen, into half the Sara Lee Cheesecake, which wasn’t improved by the added salt, and then on into her oversize bathroom. But her bedraggled reflection wasn’t the sort of thing to cheer her up, either.

  Blackie offered no comfort at all, demanding to be let out and away from his howling mistress. That was the difference between dogs and cats, Ferris thought morosely. A dog would cuddle up to you, licking your face and sharing your distress. A cat simply shrugged his elegant feline shoulders and stalked away. Maybe she should trade in this model Blackheart, too, for something affectionate and malleable. Maybe a Peek-a-poo, one those peculiar crosses between a Pekingese and a toy poodle.

/>   Once the tears subsided, she considered resorting to brandy to induce a decent night’s sleep. But she didn’t want to get into the habit of it—Blackheart had already had far too devastating an effect on her. He wasn’t going to turn her into a secret tippler besides.

  So she drowned her sorrows in Diet Coke and ice cream. She took as long and as hot a shower as she could stand, pulled on her softest, oldest flannel nightgown, and climbed into bed. And fell asleep watching To Catch a Thief.

  When she awoke in the drizzly gray light of a rainy predawn, she had a smile on her face and a warm, delicious feeling in her body. It took her only a moment to remember she had nothing to smile about. She sat up, pushing the hair out of her face, grimacing at the rain falling on her slate terrace. The television screen was black. That was odd. She thought she’d fallen asleep just as Cary Grant went swimming in the Mediterranean. She must have gotten up sometime during the night and turned the set off.

  It was a shame she’d had to wake up. Whatever she’d been dreaming had been both comforting and definitely erotic. Maybe it hadn’t even been about Blackheart, she thought hopefully. Anything was possible in this world. Though not very likely.

  Ferris suddenly sniffed the air. It smelled like roses. She’d bought flowers a few days ago in a vain effort to cheer herself up, but they’d been scentless daisies, and they were sitting, brown and dried out, in a vase in the living room. Slowly she turned her head. There on the pillow next to her lay a single white rose.

  She reached out for it, her hand trembling slightly. And on her finger was the canary-yellow diamond engagement ring she’d thrust back at Blackheart days ago.

  She stared at it for a long moment, considering whether she should once more bathe herself in tears. But she’d cried enough to last for a good long time. Looking down at her replaced engagement ring, she began to laugh.

  MARCO WAS ACCUSTOMED to getting up early. If he slept too much, his body grew slow and sluggish, and he couldn’t afford to have anything happen to his body. His talent was a gift, and he had to treat it with the respect it deserved.