Lost Angel

by Louisa Trent

  Emily clung to her tool like a drowning victim clings to a lifeline.

  There was so much to think about. Three years ago, Mr. Fritz had hired her as his personal assistant, her first professional position after graduating from community college. Though she had no experience, he had placed his faith in her-this after admitting during the job interview to a past involving a succession of unsuccessful foster home placements and petty thefts that had finally landed her in juvie hall. Knowing all of it, Mr. Fritz had taken a chance on her, hired her anyway, mentored her ... treated her like a daughter. And because he trusted her abilities, she had loved him like the father she never had. Under his tutelage, she had gained self-confidence, pride, that intangible something all the social workers called self-esteem. But beneath her newfound pride, there beat a large dose of terror. Why had he done it? Why had Mr. Fritz stuck his neck out for her like that?

  An hour ago, all the pieces fell in place.

  Like everyone else who had ever been nice to her, Mr. Fritz had an ulterior motive for his kindness. "She owed him," he said. "And now was her opportunity to reciprocate."

  To owe someone was a concept she understood. He wanted payback from her. Oh, not sex. She could've handled a demand for sex. But Mr. Fritz wanted something other than a BJ from her. Sixty short minutes ago, her job description and duties had radically shifted. Her opinion of her boss had shifted too. He was not the man she thought he was. But because of her affectionate feelings for him, regardless of the unquestionable illegality of his request, refusing him didn't come easily. She had stalled. Put him off. Told him she needed time to think. It was all so sudden...

  That last bit was true. The rest was pure fabrication.

  She had already made up her mind to refuse, but Bernard Fritz's deception had thrown her through a loop. She never saw it coming. Yes, her boss was a perfectionist. Yes, he could be difficult, demanding at times. But there had never been signs of improprieties, of anything unethical in his business practices...

  Until tonight.

  What kind of man was Mr. Fritz really?

  There were guards everywhere, a small army of security all on Bernard Fritz's payroll. Thinking they were simply there to protect her slightly paranoid boss, she had never given them much thought before. Knowing what she knew now, they frightened her. Would they prevent her from leaving when she turned in her resignation?

  Surely, Mr. Fritz wouldn't allow her to skip merrily through the front gates, not after refusing to sneak an undeclared painting through French customs for him. She didn't care that he said it wasn't smuggling. That hiding the painting was merely a convenience. That he certainly didn't intend to defraud anyone of anything. That she owed him...

  She didn't owe him 8-to-10, without the possibility of parole.

  After his last appointment tonight, she would tell Mr. Fritz she wanted no part of carrying undeclared artwork on a flight to Paris. She might have served time as a juvenile delinquent, but she was nobody's patsy.

  Under the hood of the Dusenberg, Emily twisted the wrench faster and faster, her thoughts following suit. Gosh, she was scared.

  * * * *

  "Mr. Fritz?" Emily said, knocking on the paneled office door.

  When her boss didn't answer, she rapped again. "It's Emily, Mr. Fritz. May I come in?"

  Still no answer.

  She turned the doorknob, apologetically entering the room. "I'm sorry to interrupt..."

  It's amazing how quickly the human mind processes information. In the flash of a glance, in the space of one nanosecond, she absorbed the scene before her, swiftly concluding there would be no emotion-charged blowout scene with her employer that evening.

  Bernard Fritz was dead.

  The man she had once loved like a father was now a corpse slumped ignobly behind a mahogany desk; a bent body drooped in a burgundy leather wing-backed chair. Walnut walls showcased an extensive collection of paintings behind him. Emily had always secretly thought the vain Mr. Fritz showed off more than paintings on that dark wall; the polished wood also created the perfect foil for his white mane of hair. A splattering of crimson had forever ruined the paneling, as well as that regal white hair.

  In a concise manner, her mind registered the details:

  A hole-from a bullet?-centered Bernard Fritz's forehead. The impact of the projectile's entry had caused the skull to be driven backwards at an unnatural angle against the chair, the force of its exit, through flesh and bone and burgundy leather, splintering the paneling. A gun dangled from his lifeless right hand.

  Suicide?

  A scream built inside her, a frenzied wail needing release. Her mouth opened...

  Nothing emerged. Too many years spent holding back, keeping it all inside, prevented an uncontrolled outcry now.

  "Mr. Fritz?" she whispered instead.

  Rushing across the thick royal blue carpet she fell to her knees at his side. Touched his face. Cool. Felt for a pulse. Nothing. And still said softly, "Mr. Fritz?" as though he could hear.

  A million questions crossed her mind, why being the uppermost one. Why had her boss taken his own life during his birthday party?

  Emily assessed her employer's desktop for some clue ... a note ... anything ... to explain.

  A blue velvet box rested on the leather-bound blotter. A small card, bearing her name, was propped beside it. A gift from Mr. Fritz?

  The tears began to well.

  Beating back the sharpness of grief, Emily coolly returned to her examination of the mahogany desktop.

  One of her administrative tasks was to organize her boss' busy schedule. Mr. Fritz had been obsessed about not writing directly on the neatly lined white pages of his calendar, insisting instead that she write the name, address and phone number of each appointment on yellow sticky strips, which she then pressed in place, chronologically, on the still pristine daily page of his journal. It was Mr. Fritz's habit to check off each appointment on the yellow sticky label, still left in place for future reference.

  The yellow strip for his ten PM appointment--his last meeting of the day--was missing. She knew that time slot was filled, having arranged the appointment herself for a Mr. Steve Gallagher, an antique car enthusiast.

  Emily checked her wristwatch.

  Ten-thirty-five.

  The yellow sticky label would confirm whether or not Steve Gallagher had kept the appointment.

  Scrounging around in the wastepaper basket, she found the narrow piece of paper with Steve Gallagher's name on it. There was a checkmark beside it.

  Why had Mr. Fritz discarded the label when he had never done so before?

  For safekeeping, she pocketed the yellow label. She was sliding the small jewelry box and the gift card bearing her name beside it in her pocket when the room was thrown into darkness.

  "Don't turn around!" a grainy voice said. "I've got a gun aimed at the back of your head."

  "There's been an emergency here," she said faced away. "My boss ... Bernard Fritz is..."

  She couldn't say the word. "Please! Switch the lights back on!"

  "Never mind the lights." The door lock made a metal clink in the quiet room as the unseen man turned the catch.

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "The painting. Hand it over. I know you've got it."

  Dazed, her gaze fixed on the gilded frames hanging high above her dead employer's head. Bernard Fritz had so prized his paintings! "Take what you want. Just let me call an ambulance for this man..."

  "Don't play dumb, blondie. You know your boss is deader than a doornail."

  "You killed him!"

  "I didn't have to. He was already dead when I arrived. Now, I ain't here for the paintings on any of the friggin' walls. I want The Cuzin. It's in this house somewhere. You're Fritz's assistant, you gotta know where it is."

  The Cuzin?

  Was that the painting Mr. Fritz had wanted her to sneak past French customs?

  In the darkness, she reached for Mr. Fritz's desk phone. How lon
g could three digits possibly take to punch in? Faster than a speeding bullet?

  In case her fingers weren't quick enough on the buttons, Emily bent her knees and got ready to dive behind the solid mahogany desk.

  He laughed. "Call the cops, girlie, and hang yourself."

  Her reaching hand stilled, her knees straightened. "What do you mean?"

  "Bernard Fritz was head honcho of a thriving art thieving ring. And you're his assistant. Figure it out."

  Stunned, she stammered, "I ... I know not ... nothing about any of that..."

  "Oh, yeah? Your signature appears on all the invoices. You went to Europe all the time for him on business. You carried artwork with you. The cops will think you were heavy into the operation. "

  "I was his courier! I'm no cat-thief!"

  But she did have a juvenile record for theft...

  The man behind her laughed again. "Then, be my guest. Call the cops. You'll only implicate yourself, and I'll go on with impunity. Damn! I just love that word. Impunity. Sort of rolls off the tongue, don't it?" He guffawed. "You've been set up, blondie! Come clean or get dirtied. Your choice."

  What had she gotten herself into with this job? "Oh my God..."

  "The wheels are turnin', ain't they? You know I'm right. Now quit the theatrics. Tell me where that painting is stashed or you might just get hurt."

  A party was in progress, the house unbearably noisy. A band played downstairs, champagne corks popped at regular intervals. Mr. Fritz had already fired one shot into his brain and no one had heard. Who would distinguish the sound of a second shot from the opening of a bottle of bubbly? A scream from raucous laughter? A frightened woman's high-pitched cry from a trumpet's shrill note?

  And the celebratory fireworks she had ordered to culminate the festivities were scheduled to go off any moment-no one would hear a blessed thing when they began.

  Her innocence had ended long ago. She knew the score. Staying alive--staying out of jail--had nothing to do with facing the music and protesting her innocence to the cops and everything to do with ducking the heat as fireworks fell all around her. She needed a way out of this, an escape route.

  There were two doors in the office: One led to the hallway, now locked, and one would take her to the rooftop garden. The room was pitch-black, she was fast on her feet, and if she crouched low, she would most likely make the patio door before a bullet hit. But that still left a bone-breaking leap from the roof. She could risk it...

  Or, she could shoot the gunman.

  Bernard Fritz's lifeless hand still clutched the suicide weapon. All she need do was move, just an inch, and she would have the gun in her grasp.

  She moved. Half-inch. Three-quarters. At the inch mark, she reached.

  The gun slipped from Bernard Fritz's lifeless fingers and clattered onto the floor before she ever touched it.

  The glancing blow to the back of her head took her by surprise. She stumbled, listed to one side. To prevent herself from falling flat-out across the mahogany desk, her elbows came down on the green blotter, right next to a weighty ashtray. Grabbing it, she spun to face the gunman.

  In the room's spare light, the gunman's face was far from clear, but what she could see appeared disgustingly ordinary. Nondescript. Short blah hair. Eyes of indeterminate color. Average height. He was so normal looking. Your average normal thief/potential killer...

  Adrenaline racing, she raised her arm, aimed, and pitched the ashtray, hitting the average-looking gunman squarely on the bridge of his ordinary-looking nose.

  While he grabbed at the stream of blood, she ran for the patio doors, scrambling out and over the balcony railing, hesitating for only a split second on the edge of the roof, toes pointed at the gutter before leaping out into the air, a free-fall into nothingness.

  The fireworks started on the way down. The dazzling explosions lit up the night sky as she dropped to the ground. She had always been agile, but it was a long fall followed by a hard landing that sent her sprawling into the grass. A jolt of pain shot up her leg, waking her up to the reality of her situation: The Cuzin was a priceless masterpiece while her life wasn't worth the price of a paint-by-number set. And that horrible creep was right-she couldn't go to the police. She knew the ins and outs of The Fritz Art Dealership. She had been to Europe many times as Mr. Fritz's transport, signed all sorts of forms as his courier, spoken to all kinds of art dealers and patrons-or thieves, she didn't know which any more-photographed numerous private art collections...

  Oh, no! Those were wide-angled photos she had taken. Of house interiors. Houses that for all she knew were later robbed. And then Emily knew-Bernard Fritz had hired her specifically because she was alone in the world, had no money, and was weighed down by her juvenile criminal record. Mr. Fritz had handpicked picked her because of her vulnerability, not because of her 4.0 GPA in Art History. How stupid could she get?

  'Trust no one' had always been her mantra. The one time she let down her guards, and look at what happened-she had gotten royally screwed. Well, she had learned her lesson but good. She would never place her faith in anyone else ever again. She would tell no one about The Cuzin, not the cops, not anyone else. That painting was her life insurance policy, her stay-out-of-jail card. And she needed to find it before the gunman and his pack of art thief friends found her. Luckily, she had been on her own most of her life, and when it came to escaping a bad situation, she was an expert.

  As the fireworks continued uninterrupted behind her, Emily slipped easily past the guard at the gate and ran off into the night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Steve Gallagher's sensitive ear canals shuddered at the grating scrape of stilettos on concrete. With bone-deep reluctance he turned his attention away from the hole he was plugging in the antique's radiator and grimaced as his partner, Ronnie Thomas, strutted her stuff across the garage floor, her needle-thin heels sparking like flint. "I thought our meeting was for tonight, Ron?"

  "It is, sugar. I'm just dropping by to see how you're doing all on your own. I wanted to make sure you didn't starve or anything before you hired on a housekeeper."

  "A man who likes to cook never starves."

  "So cook. But wash dishes and do laundry? Un-un, sugar. You don't want to do that," Ronnie said, her lush body moving in on him, her fingers playing with his earlobe, the humidity from her moist breath making his hair curl tight. "And that's why I'm placing a call to Mollie Maids. They're that temp agency I told you about..."

  "Nothing doing, Ron. I don't want a maid."

  "You might not want one but you surely do need one. And it's my job to make sure you get what you need."

  What he needed was some peace and quiet. Unfortunately, Ronnie was like an exclamation point at an amusement park-appropriate for the roller coaster, not so appropriate when it came to the merry-go-round. These days, Steve considered himself a kiddie-ride, and that's where he wanted his excitement level kept

  Steve moved away, shooting his associate a 'do not follow' glance.

  Ronnie glared right back, a tawny tigress ready to pounce. Too bad she had her sights set on him.

  It wasn't happ'ning. He liked Ron too much, and they had been business partners too long, to louse up their friendship with a day at the fun park. Misguided hormones would not wreck their working relationship, especially not now, when he needed her professional expertise more than ever.

  If he needed some computer hacking done, he went to Ron. Ditto for breaking electronic codes. And if it were only a question of overriding an alarm system, Ronnie Thomas was the girl for the job. She was mighty good at tracing paper trails too. Ron was the best all-round security buster and information gatherer he knew of, bar none, which is why he had put her to work tracing Emily Parker. But man, some days she was just too much to take...

  Like today. She was sneaking up on him again, an attack from the side this time. As if her queen of the jungle perfume didn't give her approach away. When would she pack up her gaming tent and take her lust safari elsewh
ere?

  Dragging himself away from the car, he scrounged around a pile of junk he kept neatly stacked in the far corner of the garage. "Here," he said, handing Ron the "HELP WANTED" sign he had used ten summers back when he needed a jack-of-all trades to do small jobs around the place, like cut the lawn and clean the gutters. "On your way out, stick this in that planter at the end of the drive. A college kid in need of some extra summer cash will see it, and ring my bell. That's as far as I'm wiling to go in terms of hiring on help."

  Ronnie sneered at the sign. "Sometimes, Steve Gallagher, you're as stubborn as a mule." She grabbed the wooden stake from his hand. "Just so you know, if this doesn't work, I'm calling Mollie Maids."

  "It's a deal."

  Steve walked back to the Dusenberg. In a week, maybe less, Ron would forget all about the maid and get on his case about something else.

  "Steve, honey, what's with your fixation on this dirty old car?" Ronnie purred into his ear as she came up behind him.

  He scooted away from her pouty mouth. "This isn't just any old car. This happens to be a 1930 Dusenberg, Model J. The one Franco Perilli, the bootlegger, owned."

  "The one you were so hot for because of the stolen brass angel hood ornament?"

  "One and the same.

  Hazel eyes narrowed. "I still don't get the angel's connection to The Cuzin."

  "That's because the connection is purely circumstantial. When I interviewed our client, Maurice Pentegrine, he mentioned that a brass angel was lifted from his curio cabinet the same night The Cuzin was heisted from his wall."

  "That connection isn't circumstantial, lover, it's non-existent."

  Patience had never been Ron's strong suit, and they had never been lovers. "That's only part of the connection. Here's the remaining fifty-percent: Seeing that the ornament is worthless without the car, its only monetary value being in the eye of a collector, I figured only a die-hard auto buff would've wanted it."