Abstract Aliases (A Bodies of Art Mystery Book 3)

by Ritter Ames

  Inside the file were two printed pages. One, a book excerpt referencing when the painting was included in a major museum fundraising exhibit held a month before the work vanished. The other page showed a grainy security photo of two men walking away with framed canvases. The one in the lead carried the likely original of Woman Dressing Her Hair.

  “More than we had before. I’m assuming the repair we already knew about was from a mishap during the exhibit.”

  “I assume the same. That’s going to be my next avenue of investigation when I get time. Find out what other paintings disappeared in the same robbery. We can see from the photo several others left with the thieves.”

  “You never know.” I sighed and secured the pages again in the folder. “Wish this told us who copied the work and when.”

  “Are you thinking the forgery has something to do with what we’re working on?”

  I shook my head. “Probably a coincidence. We didn’t even have an idea this forgery ring was in operation when I saw the Woman Dressing Her Hair.”

  “Why the interest then?”

  “Good question.” I looked away for a moment, trying to recapture the scene of the painting in its place of prominence on the yacht’s wall. “It was something about the brushstrokes, I think. Though there could have been something more hitting my subconscious, but it hasn’t yet come to mind. I thought I recognized the brushstrokes, or the technique. Or the copyist was someone mimicking someone else’s. I don’t know. We have forgers using the marks of other forgers. This may be a continuation of the same puzzle.”

  Cassie sat back in the lovely reproduction Chippendale I’d purchased to create a counterbalance to the modern desk. She asked, “Did you think about the mimicking at the time? Or only after the forgery ring was uncovered?”

  “Everything happened so fast those few days, I’m not completely sure anymore. I think at the time I was interested in why elements of the painting were familiar to me. My subconscious hinted at something. Maybe a previous case. We’re looking at forgeries anyway, and I didn’t think it would take much extra effort. If it does, though, let me know.”

  Returning my attention to the slightly thicker heist data file, I said, “Running along the same lines, what started you thinking you had a fresh angle on the forgeries? Think back. What different elements led you into a new direction?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s a new direction, or a detour,” she said, her hands resting on the chair’s carved arms. “We were at my aunt’s for dinner. She had an art book on the coffee table and pointed it out to me. The copyright date was two years ago, but when I looked through some of the sections I noticed one picture showed what looked like part of a forger’s mark we’ve been watching for.” She pulled back the file and shuffled through the pages, displaying a photo she’d printed off. Pointing to a lower corner, she explained, “I took this shot with my phone. You can see the picture in the book cut off the lower part of the painting, and the mark only shows up as half what we normally see. Yet, since they’re always slightly camouflaged, I couldn’t be sure if this was an abbreviated one, or just an imperfection on the print.”

  I stared at the photo. She was right as far as it went. The impression could be part of one of the forger’s marks. Or something entirely different. We’d spent the intervening months following a myriad of clues, looking for trails leading away from the forgeries Jack and I saw in Florence. After Nico and Cassie’s early research turned up dead forgers, we’d combed all available police files on suspicious deaths and muggings of anyone across Europe rumored to be related to counterfeiting art. Jack worked with U.K. officials highlighting why all the players in this case needed to set off alerts if they tried to cross borders. None of those analyses or safeguards pointed to an absolute or pivotal direction to move into. For the moment we kept with the necessary detail work that was tedious but offered the most likely means of poking a hole in the bubble covering this evolving crime syndicate.

  “Most people at the publishing house are likely gone—”

  “I emailed the Beacham New York office asking them to send a query,” Cassie interrupted. “Figured they’d get answers before we would. Don’t worry. I didn’t say what I wanted to know and why. Simply asked if there was a full print of the painting showing an image out to the edges. If we find it warrants our attention, we can try to talk to the photographer who did this photo shoot. To find out when and where it was displayed for photographing.”

  “Excellent.” I rose from my desk to pace. “New York publishers work pretty slowly on books of this type…especially if it involves a large amount of photographs…The photo could have been shot as much as four years ago.”

  Cassie agreed and swiveled to keep me in sight as I moved. “Exactly what originally got me thinking along these lines. We’ve been looking at this thing as some organization sending forgeries out slowly over the past year or so. Ideas validated by the bills of lading and museum data we quietly collected. If this mark does pan out—”

  “They were making quiet inroads much further back than we’ve imagined.”

  “Like they were test driving their system.” She typed for a second and several articles and art book prints appeared in a stacked checkerboard on the screen. “I’ve been looking for more possible instances, checking out online editions of recent art books to see if I can spot any of the marks, but I haven’t found any.” Cassie bit her lip. “Maybe I’m imagining it.”

  I picked up the print and studied it. “No. This could easily be a forger’s mark. The fact the painting was not shown clear to the edge makes me wonder more about it. Such as who might have cut the mark in the edits to hide its forgery status.”

  “If it is a forgery.”

  “Of course,” I said. She was right. We needed to keep this in perspective until any hypothesis panned out. “Did you notice other pictures in your aunt’s book where the edges were cut off as well?”

  “A few. One I recognized as a work known for having been damaged and badly repaired, and I assumed was the reason the photograph was incomplete. The others I noticed may have been cut down for space in the pages, allowing the finer details to be kept as large as possible. I made a list of those works, but I can’t find any record online suggesting they may be forgeries or prints showing a mark of the type we’re following.”

  Our offices were partway below street level, with Cassie’s space enjoying most of the windows. My office made do with a kind of round porthole-inspired affair in a cutaway alcove behind the door. The bottom of the window hit me at shoulder level as I took in the scene outside, lower legs walking along the sidewalk past the iron fencing, car and bus wheels turning. I gazed out as I pondered her words, seething a little over the injustice of it all. When I looked back, Cassie sat squeezing her hands tightly together as she chewed her lower lip. My recent nearly fatal escapes kept her constantly vigilant about my safety. One more reason I wished all our bad guys hadn’t gone to ground and we could halt whatever was on the horizon. I prayed Rollie’s resurface offered a new direction. Not simply a brand new worry.

  “Sorry. I’ll step away from the window,” I said.

  Maybe Cassie’s palpable fear heightened my own senses, or maybe I’d been through too much to not act instinctively. About a minute after I returned to my desk, a tremendous thud pounded the front door. We barely looked at one another before running to exit out the back way through the bathroom.

  Cassie ran with her laptop clasped to her chest. I’d scooped up the papers on my desk and gripped my Fendi. We moved quickly and with such synchronization it was almost as if the hidden door in the back of the bathroom opened of its own accord.

  The latch clicked closed, and I turned the key in the lock. I stopped Cassie as she tried to hurry me out of the janitor’s closet constituting my office’s “back foyer.”

  “Come on, Laurel!”

&nbs
p; “Shh, no,” I whispered as I clicked my phone app to gain eyes on the video feed from the security camera in my office. The audio picked up several additional heavy thumps, then I heard a tremendous crack. Either the solid front door gave way, or they attacked the doorframe and beat the lock. Regardless, the front entry was breached. Light reflected from the outside and into the full image of my office, streaming in as a broad ray into the room and brightening the dark wainscoting that circled the lower walls. I started to switch over to the feed in Cassie’s reception area when I heard the jumble of several unrecognizable voices. Before I had a chance to switch feeds, my phone screen showed the leader striding into my office carrying a cricket bat. His face came into range, and I gasped as the focus sharpened. He swung the bat and the image—and likely the whole camera—disappeared. I choked back a scream.

  “What?”

  “We have to go!” I threw brooms and buckets against our side of the door to add obstructions. The new deadbolt needed a key on either side, making it necessary for them to battle through this door as well. The additional gauntlet we created with cleaning items wouldn’t stop anyone for long, but might slow them down if they tried to leave the office via this route.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling y—”

  “Cassie! It’s Simon!”

  “Oh my god!”

  Between us we quickly blocked the door with everything portable. When she started to leave through the hall entrance I stopped her, shoving the folders and papers into my shoulder bag as I whispered, “Simon knows about this back exit. Someone is probably stationed outside the door to catch us.”

  Footsteps on the bathroom tile behind us echoed through the connecting door. I wanted to panic but didn’t have the time. My gaze traveled over the shelves, and I grabbed a couple of aerosol cans with ingredients particularly irritating to skin and eyes. At the same time, my brilliant assistant began pouring liquid soap onto the floor. As the gallon jug ran empty, she threw it aside and caught the propellant I tossed her way. I used a broom handle and smashed the exposed light bulb in the ceiling center, plunging us into almost total darkness. My hand was on the knob when I heard the pounding start. Simon and crew wanted access into our getaway closet.

  The only light came from the space between the painted door and the marble floor. We couldn’t see anything else. I had to trust Cassie was ready.

  I whipped open the door. And stopped. Blocking the way was a dark-haired thug who towered nearly a foot taller than me and my heels. One hand held a wicked-looking knife. The other curled into a fist the size of a small car. We channeled our sprays into his craggy face. He screamed, scrabbled at his eyes with his free hand, and hulked blindly toward us. My first kick hit him in the groin. Hard.

  He groaned and dropped to his knees. Cassie got a two-handed grip on her can and slammed into his knife hand, knocking the weapon out of reach. He groped for the knife. I jumped over his head to escape. As he moved blindly toward his right, Cassie tried to do a run around on his left. He anticipated the move and caught her ankle.

  I heard a satisfying crunch when I stomped his wrist. He cursed as I grasped Cassie’s hand and pulled her with me down the hall to freedom. My heels slid a bit on the marble tiles, and she helped keep me on my feet as we ran.

  “Any idea where we’re going?” Cassie yelled.

  My legs worked independently of my brain as the adrenalin coursed through me. “Not sure yet, but we’ll know when we get there,” I replied.

  Five

  First, I called Scotland Yard and was relieved to immediately get connected with Superintendent Whatley, who was in charge of Simon’s case. He and his team were working backup along the New Year’s Day parade route and had just returned to the Yard. After I said Simon was back, he covered the phone, but I could hear him yell to a colleague to coordinate with the Met to dispatch units to our office. With typical British courtesy he asked, “Are you safe?”

  “We’re on the run. We took out one man, but we’re okay.”

  “Out?”

  “He’s in pain. Not dead.”

  “Leave this mobile on and we’ll track you. Get out of the area as quickly as possible. They may be anticipating you’ll head here to the Yard. I think it might be preferable if you stay on the move.”

  Like I needed him to tell me. I ended the call, and Cassie and I slid across the lobby’s marbled floor as we veered toward the interior entrance of our landlord, the trust company. As our feet hit carpeting, we doubled our speed to exit out the street doors. I’m sure we caught people’s attention. No one usually ran out of a financial institution at the speed we employed unless they wore a mask and carried a big sack of money. Thankfully, the security guard recognized us and hurried to open the glass door to the sidewalk.

  The rain had stopped. Small mercy. Both of us left our coats in the office. But the sky continued to look grumpy. A double-decker bus idled at the corner, nearly loaded. Cassie and I jumped on at the last second.

  “Ohmigod! You don’t have your Oyster card,” I cried, pulling mine from my purse, ready to bribe the driver to wait while she jumped off to get a ticket from the machine outside.

  “Yes, I do.” She pulled a slim wallet from the pocket of her blazer.

  We made our way up top, to gain any kind of view of our assailants and the destruction they may have caused to the front of the office. The bus traveled in a westward direction, and as we passed the corner toward our side of the building, we couldn’t see what must have been a gaping hole where the heavy brass-trimmed black door once stood. The be-bop of police sirens sounded off in the distance. A second later a silver Vauxhall Astra decorated with an orange Metropolitan Police stripe screamed past the bus, screeching as the car slid around the corner as first on the scene.

  I turned back in my seat, face forward again, and relished the sudden feeling of safety and anonymity. Whether I truly was safe or not. Relaxing and swaying with the lumbering gait of the bus, I wanted to pretend there was no need to do what really should be done. In the end, however, my professionalism took over, and I pulled out my phone. I hid the screen for a moment by laying a hand atop the glass. Leaving it active, as the superintendent asked, was one thing. Using it to make the call I knew I should make but didn’t want to was something else entirely.

  “Aren’t you going to call Jack?”

  I shook my head. “He called as I was leaving the National Gallery. He’s in Rome, and his phone is off at the moment.” I explained the current Tony B dilemma. Her eyes got a little bigger with each sentence. In the distance, I could see the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and wished I could go and sit in there for an hour or six.

  “Do you think the murder attempt on Tony B and the break-in by Simon are connected?” she asked.

  “Hard not to believe so.” I tapped a fingernail on my phone, wishing desperately I could talk to Jack and find out if he’d learned anything yet. “We know Simon works for Moran. If it isn’t a coincidence, it has to mean Moran has something in play.”

  “Extending your line of supposition, it means we can assume Tony B wasn’t working for Moran if Moran put a contract out on him in prison,” Cassie replied.

  “Or he was working for Moran, and the attempt was made to silence Tony B from revealing information he was trying to use as leverage for his deal.”

  Cassie frowned. “Oh, yeah. Makes more sense.”

  “No, nothing about this thing makes sense. Another round of whack-a-moles popping up all the time.”

  I couldn’t talk to Jack, but in the interest of the fair-play angle he’d obviously instigated with his call, I needed to give him a heads-up about the current situation here. The connection went immediately to voicemail, as expected, and I told him to call me. I could have left a detailed message of the recent events, but I knew Jack would stop listening three seconds in and phone back. This way I
wouldn’t have to repeat myself.

  “You need to let Max know,” Cassie said as I ended the call.

  “Shh.” Time to make the call I really didn’t want to dial. My boss had two volumes, loud and silent. I knew exactly which one I would get.

  “Laurel—”

  “Give me a minute.” I watched a little girl at the front of the upper deck holding onto the windowsill and ogling the sights and people at street level. Beside her, the patient but careful mother held the child at the shoulder, keeping her safely seated despite her jack-in-the-box impulses. I could see the energy radiating off the young girl and remembered my own first ride on a red double-decker bus, back when they were open to the elements. I wanted that innocence again. I didn’t want to be the adult. But Cassie was playing parent this time and holding me down to do what was necessary.

  As I swept a finger over my call list, I passed Max’s name three times, but eventually the screen stopped at the right spot. Damned smartphone.

  My boss’s long-suffering executive assistant, Doris, answered on the first ring. “I’m sorry, Laurel, but he’s presently in a meeting.” No, she is a secretary, and will not respond to the term executive assistant. I don’t understand the logic, but it was likely one of her self-preservation techniques to tame our bombastic boss. She said, “I’ll slip a note in for him to call you.”

  “Please, just a message. Simon broke into the office, and I’ve called Scotland Yard—”

  “Oh, no, no, no! I must get him right away. Hang on.”

  I put the cell face down in my lap. “Crap!”

  “What’s wrong?”