Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  The swirling of Julia’s spoon slowed and she looked up, eyes narrowed, shadowed by mists of the past, forehead furrowing in an effort to remember.

  “I just don’t think any of the information we released would’ve led a member of the general public to draw the conclusions we did.”

  She lowered her head to the rim of her mug, wincing as her lips came in contact with the hot brew. “Sure you don’t want a cup?”

  Celine smiled and shook her head, no.

  “Did the media cover the crash?” she asked.

  It might have been irresponsible for law enforcement to speculate, but newspapers and television media rarely played by such rules. It took only the slightest hint made by a journalist for the most tenuous possibilities to spread and be accepted as Gospel truth.

  By the time the truth eventually came out, the lies would already have taken hold.

  Julia smiled. “Sure, they covered it.”

  She dropped her spoon in the sink and returned to the easy chair. Hands securely wrapped around her mug, she perched herself on the edge of the seat.

  “It wasn’t front-page news. But there were articles in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and several of the other papers in the region. But we’re talking about a different time, Celine. Journalists merely reported the facts then. Conjectures were left to the public.”

  Celine nodded, sipping her water. But the only conjecture that would have made sense was that Duarte and Bramer, both Gardner Museum employees, had been killed because of what they knew about the heist.

  Greg had said they’d been involved.

  “Was there any truth to the stories that they’d made off with the art?” she asked. “Or that it had all burned in the car crash?”

  “We had an informant who came in with that tip. He’d worked as a guard at the Gardner Museum. In fact, he’d been on duty the day before when his co-worker had flouted security procedure to let someone in after-hours. He said he’d gotten the word from a shady local antiques dealer.”

  “But there was nothing to it?” Celine guessed.

  “The antiques dealer categorically denied it. In fact, it was he who brought us one of the more credible leads in the case. Flakes of paint that could’ve been from one of the works stolen.”

  “Then the works do exist?” Celine leaned forward, a frisson of excitement pulsing through her nerves. She had no idea why the thought excited her. It just did.

  “That’s what we thought.” Julia gazed into her coffee. “It was hard not to do so. But then when lead after viable lead fizzled out, I think we began to wonder if those works of art hadn’t just burned along with Duarte and Bramer.”

  “But now you think Duarte may be alive?” Celine returned to the question that had initiated their discussion. Her gaze lingered on Julia’s face until the former federal agent finally looked up.

  “It was something I overheard at a bar shortly before I left Boston. After what Keith Elliot had told me, that I’d find the answers I’d been seeking here in Paso Robles, it seemed like a plausible lead. After all, if Simon Duarte hadn’t died, perhaps the art had survived as well.”

  “Isn’t it a stretch to think Simon Underwood is the man you’re looking for?”

  “Why? Because Simon Duarte wouldn’t have been foolish enough to retain his first name? When you’re on the run and the slightest slip can give you away, you keep the lies to a minimum. That was why I was always Julia when I went undercover. It’s my real name. I didn’t have to train myself to respond to a new name and—more importantly—train myself not to move a hair if someone addressed me by my real name.

  “If Simon Duarte is alive, he wouldn’t have lasted very long if he’d decided to change his first name.”

  “And you think Dirck knew?” Hot tears pricked Celine’s eyes. Neither Julia nor Detective Mailand had met Dirck. They couldn’t possibly know that accusing Dirck of having anything to do with a notorious art heist was as absurd as accusing Len Skye, her art historian father, of such a crime.

  Julia’s eyes, soft with compassion, rested on Celine’s face. “You were very fond of him, weren’t you? That says a lot about the man he must have been.”

  “Then why do you think—?”

  “Because Detective Mailand is right. Dirck Thins was tortured and killed either because he knew something or his attackers thought he did. We need to find out what it was. And Simon Underwood might just be our best lead now?”

  “And Greg?”

  Julia sighed. “I think Greg was sent by the Boston mob, Celine. It’s never been fully proven, but there’s a solid case to be made for the mob’s involvement in the heist. If there’s any truth to the rumors about Duarte and Bramer, the only other people interested in finding them will be the mob.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “And the Estate, cara? What will happen to it?” After the initial shock of hearing about Dirck’s murder, winemaker Andrea Giordano’s mind had turned to more practical matters.

  Celine had decided to phone Andrea right after Julia left her cottage. She could nap later. But now she regretted calling him. She had no answers to the questions he was asking.

  “Am I to also tell our workers that they will lose their jobs?”

  “I don’t know, Andrea.” Celine brushed strands of her red hair back, holding them in place with her fingers. “I’m not sure about my job either.” She sighed. “I’ll have to call Dirck’s lawyer.” She’d been looking forward to a nap. Instead she’d be discussing legalities with Charles Durand, the Mechelen’s lawyer. “I’ll call him right away.”

  “And until then, cara, what do you want me to do?”

  Celine wanted to say she didn’t know, but with Dirck and John both gone, claiming ignorance wasn’t a luxury she could afford. She considered her options. She wanted Mechelen’s employees to hear about Dirck’s death from a representative of the Estate not from the newspapers.

  The Delft would need to be closed for a few days. Wine tastings would go on as usual at the Mechelen Estate. And the work on the Estate—cutting the previous years’ canes to make way for new canes and shoots and pruning the early shoots that emerged, pulling away excess foliage while still leaving a sufficient quantity to protect the vines from the growing heat—could continue as well.

  If Dirck had died intestate and the Estate was taken over by the government, she imagined it would soon be up for sale again—to one of the winemakers in the region perhaps.

  “Bene,” Andrea replied when she’d communicated all of this to him. “But find out what you can, okay? We cannot afford to lose anyone at this crucial stage.”

  “I will,” Celine promised. “And there’s one more thing—there was a party booked for a wine tasting at the Delft at noon. Could you—?”

  “Of course. I will have someone call and change the venue, if they are agreeable, to the Estate Tasting Room, yes?”

  “That sounds perfect, Andrea. Thank you.”

  “There’s got to be twenty-four-hour shuttles to the airport,” Blake said. “Check Greyhound. Check Amtrak. I’d be surprised if Grayson was anywhere near Paso Robles at eight in the morning.”

  He’d have suggested Ella check for reports of stolen vehicles as well, but Blake didn’t think Grayson had the ability to hotwire a car.

  He waited until Ella had left the room before shifting his attention back to the laptop screen. The tracker was now at the Mechelen Winery. That was the place the guy at the Thins’ bar had asked him to call, wasn’t it?

  So one of the employees had picked up Grayson’s tracker. And discovered Dirck Thins’ body. Blake wondered who it was. He reached for his jacket hanging on a hook behind his desk and pulled out his unregistered private cell phone.

  A heavily Italian-accented voice answered his call. “Andrea Giordano. Mechelen Winery. What can I do for you?”

  Pretending to be an out-of-state customer, Blake complained about the Delft Bar not answering his calls. “I was told to call first thing today to confi
rm my order.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, then the voice said, “The bar will remain closed for some time, unfortunately. Our owner suffered a sudden death.”

  “You’re observing a period of mourning,” Blake said, his voice vibrant with sympathy.

  “You could say that.” The voice sounded mildly amused. “But it is an enforced and indefinite period of mourning. The police are investigating Mr. Thins’ death. I would suggest speaking with our marketing manager, Celine Skye, but it was she who found the body, la poveretta!”

  “She needs time to grieve,” Blake said. So it was an employee—her name sounded familiar; had he seen it on the website?—who had the tracker. She obviously had no idea what it was. Probably thought it was a watch that one of the bar’s patrons had dropped.

  “The owner’s death must have hit Simon hard as well,” he added on a hunch.

  “Simon? You mean Simon Underwood? Yes, yes, I suppose it does. But Mr. Underwood can sell his paintings wherever he chooses. He only placed them on consignment at the Delft as a favor to Mr. Thins.”

  Ah! So there was a Simon. Had Grayson seen Underwood and realized it was Duarte?

  Ordering a wine basket he neither needed nor wanted—maybe Ella could take it off his hands—Blake hung up.

  Celine braced herself against the wall and closed her eyes, putting off for a few minutes her next call to Lance, Douglass & Durand. Charles Durand had been with the law firm for almost as long as Dirck and John had been its clients. Andrea had put her through her an interrogation that would have put a CIA operative to shame. She wasn’t looking forward to fielding the same questions from Durand.

  What had Dirck been doing so late at the Delft? Why had she herself returned? How could she have forgotten his heart medication?

  You didn’t forget, Celine. It was her guardian angel’s voice.

  Her eyes were instantly wide open. “What?”

  You didn’t forget his medication, Celine. You tried to give him the bottle in the morning, don’t you remember? Dirck put you off.

  The memory surged back. How could she have forgotten? Dirck had pushed the bottle away. “I’ll take it from you at closing,” he’d said. But he never had.

  “That doesn’t make it any less my fault. Dirck was preoccupied. I should’ve reminded him.”

  Guilt is an indulgence, Celine. You have to carry on Dirck’s mission now. Belle needs your help now.

  Belle? Celine straightened up. Who was Belle?

  Before she could voice the question, the shimmering image of the Lady appeared, a pleading expression on her face.

  Seven years ago, you promised her your help. It’s your time now, Sister Mary Catherine said.

  “But what about Dirck?”

  This is what Dirck would have wanted you to do, my dear. Belle’s waited long enough. What belongs to her must be returned.

  The last thing Celine remembered before she collapsed onto the floor was the Lady’s outstretched arms. Was that the Lady’s name . . . Belle? But who was she?

  And how had Dirck known her?

  Chapter Twenty

  It was the one call Special Agent Blake Markham had been dreading. Penny Hoskins, Director of the Gardner Museum, wanted an update on Operation Project Recovery.

  Not that Blake could fault Hoskins’ eagerness; the Gardner had waited nearly thirty long years for a break like this. Still, this wasn’t a call he was especially looking forward to fielding. Not now with the operation going pear-shaped.

  He lifted the receiver reluctantly up to his ear, cursing Ella, his assistant, for putting the Museum Director through.

  “Agent Markham!” Hoskins’ fluty voice greeted him in a breathy trill. She was close to fifty and looked it, but her voice over the phone sounded as sweet and naïve as a young girl’s. “I hope you have good news for me. Although any news would be welcome at this point.”

  Blake winced. Since he’d first informed her of the leads they had—he’d emphasized their tenuous nature—he hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with her.

  “Agent Markham? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” Blake held back a sigh. He had news—plenty of it. None of it good, that was the problem. Certainly nothing he wanted to share with this woman who grasped so eagerly at every straw, disappointment was inevitable.

  She reminded him of his mother. Like Roseanne Markham, Penny Hoskins was the sort of woman whose imagination soared at the slightest promise. Never doubting its fulfillment; never imagining that life might come in the way.

  Until the very moment that her hopes were shattered. Then, the letdown would be brutal, felt as keenly as a dagger to the heart.

  “Nothing . . .” Blake paused, unsure of the wisdom of using the word “good.”

  “Nothing concrete, I’m afraid,” he said. He paused again, as though debating whether to reveal sensitive information. He hated stringing her along. But it had to be done. “Are you familiar with the name Simon Duarte?”

  “He was a gardener at the museum at the time of the heist, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was dead. Isn’t he?” Penny’s voice rose a little, trembling with hope.

  Blake expelled an intentionally audible breath. “It turns out he might not be. Our man in the field may have seen him. Nothing’s been confirmed yet, you understand . . .”

  “Yes, but if he isn’t dead, we have a definite hope of recovering the art, don’t we?”

  “I’m cautiously optimistic.” He was. He truly was.

  Someone associated with the Bulger family—Whitey the notorious mobster, his brother William a state senator—had years ago let fall into Penny’s disbelieving ears rumors of Duarte and Bramer’s involvement in the heist.

  The fact that both men had died in a burning car meant, the Bulger associate had hinted, that the stolen works were lost, too. There was no point looking for them.

  The tip had convinced many agents that Whitey Bulger, on the run from the law at the time, was in some way connected to the heist. But Whitey had been arrested and had been killed in prison without ever bringing up the Gardner Museum or the thirteen works it had lost.

  Penny Hoskins had veered predictably from disbelief to despair, but now Grayson’s reports of having sighted Duarte might help to shore up Penny’s flagging hopes long enough for her to leave Blake alone.

  “This still needs to be checked out,” he reminded her. “And nothing may come of it . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “Yes, of course. I understand. But listen, now that you mention it, I’m quite sure our employee files said Duarte had a sister. She was listed as his emergency contact—probably his only relative. From what I understand, they were quite close. If he was still alive—and on the lam, as you’d put it—I think he’d have kept in touch with her, don’t you?”

  This time Blake’s sigh was genuine. “You want us to check it out?”

  “Why not? She’d be just the person to lead us to him.”

  “I’ll discuss it with my colleagues and we’ll see what we can come up with.” He was eager to get off the phone now before she had him committing to doing anything more than that.

  Duarte could wait. The art could wait. He needed to find Grayson Pike first. That was priority number one.

  Much to Blake’s relief, Penny seemed satisfied with his assurance that the FBI would give her suggestion some thought. It was the sort of insincere promise Blake had never been comfortable making. But after years on the job, he had to admit the Communication specialist at Quantico had been right.

  It got people off your back.

  “Wouldn’t you rather spend more time chasing down leads than arguing with outsiders who don’t know how the job’s done?” she’d asked when Blake, a recalcitrant young recruit at the Academy, had questioned her recommendation to substitute a conciliatory—and in his mind phony—“maybe” or “I’ll think about it” for a blanket “no.”

  But as he returned to the sheaf of pap
ers spread out on his desk, his relief was dampened by the memory of his father’s words: Never make promises you can’t keep.

  I might just look into it, he said to himself as he studied the passenger manifests Ella had printed out for him. These weren’t manifests for the early bird flights. Blake had agreed with Ella that there was no point scrutinizing those. Short of a miracle, there was no way Grayson could have made it to San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport in time to board any of those flights.

  But the late morning flights were another matter altogether. And of the three that had made it out of San Luis Obispo that day, two seemed especially promising. The United Airlines flight at 11:50 a.m. and the Alaska Airlines flight at 11:10 a.m. had, between the two of them, a total of ten passengers who’d bought tickets for same-day travel.

  But the two passengers who had paid for their tickets with cash were both women. That ruled out Grayson, unless—

  He held the thought in his mind, scanning the names of the six men on the two flights. The UA flight via San Francisco had a Solomon Elder, Jake Liu, and a Gary Portland. Blake’s gaze lingered on the last name.

  The initials were the same as the real and code names of his target. Could Grayson Pike, Greg Peters, and Gary Portland be the same person?

  Blake tapped his fingers against his desk as his gaze slid to the passenger manifest for the Alaska Airlines flight via Seattle. He passed over Rick Nolte. But his eye caught on Juan Perez. The name was to the Hispanic community what John Doe or John Smith was for your average white guy. A dead giveaway for an alias.

  Was Grayson being cute, assuming a Spanish name? Not likely. He’d need fake ID to go with the name. And the decision to adopt a Hispanic name would draw far more attention than Grayson—too pale to be regarded as anything but Caucasian—would be willing to risk.

  The last name on the Alaska Airlines flight was a Geoff Brandt. After his recent conversation with Penny Hoskins, the name reminded Blake of Rembrandt. Three of the famous artist’s works had been included in the stash the thieves had nabbed from the Gardner. Some people had taken that as hard evidence that Rembrandt van Rijn was the primary target of the looting.