by Ritter Ames
“Different little things—including the reason I came to New York,” Cassie replied.
We’d had a lead based on art books that Cassie continued to pursue from this side of the Atlantic. She found a link over Christmas, then she and Nico followed the informational thread and interviewed one of the photographers whose work was published in the coffee table edition utilizing forged copies no one was yet aware of—until Jack and I visited Florence in October. I held my breath, waiting to see how this conversation played out.
“I would prefer to see Mademoiselle Laurel,” the funder whined.
I’ll just bet you would, I thought, forcing my lips tighter together.
“Cassie would be even better. Trust me on this, François,” Max said. “I have great plans for Miss Dean.”
My assistant shot a quick and worried look my direction. I raised an eyebrow. Yes, this was getting interesting. I knew letting her go to New York was a risk, no matter how logical the plan.
“Max, I really don’t see how either of us can leave at the present time,” she explained. “We’re just a two-person shop here. Let me discuss all of this with Laurel, and I’m sure she’ll get back to you sooner rather than later.”
I knew that last bit was directed at me. The slight shake in Cassie’s hand said she was getting close to her breaking point. I glanced at the door and considered walking over and slamming it, pretending I’d just walked into the room. But before I could go from thought to action, Cassie gave a quick goodbye to Max and a respectful one to the funder, then tapped the screen. The whoosh from the tablet’s external speakers said the connection ended.
“Oh, my nerves are shot.” She slid up to sit on the table. “We are walking such a fine line here telling Max as little as we have.”
“Like there’s a choice? Max already compromised the mission when he told Tony B my schedule, which led to me getting kidnapped. Remember? That’s just one recent instance where he should have kept his mouth shut but didn’t.” I walked around the table, sat, and put an arm around her shoulder. I had longtime experience with Max. Decades more. I was still in elementary school and coming with Grandfather to the foundation office when Max was learning the ropes. I knew his weaknesses and he knew mine. “If he learns anything about the heist, it will be told to other people for dinner party fodder and as a means of making connections. This would be too sexy a secret for him to keep. Trust me on this. And we’re still not sure there isn’t a mole in our or Jack’s ranks.”
“But Simon is no longer a threat,” she said.
“Simon was a rat and the conduit for the bad guys in this scenario, sure. However, we don’t have the luxury to believe he’s the only one. Jack was the first to notice the bad guys had too much information, even before he and I joined forces. He thought the mole was internal to his organization, but I continue to believe it’s in Beacham. Or, at least, we have an active one.”
“Isn’t there anyone you trust?”
“You and Nico. No one else.” I reached around her and scooped up the tablet, then opened the list of Beacham personnel and board members. I highlighted about sixty percent. “These are all of the people who were with the foundation when Daddy Dearest was still alive. Well, when we really knew he was alive and before he faked his death.” I stopped and took a couple of breaths.
“We know Simon was working for him while pretending to also work for Moran—working against all of us in aid to my fath…” I nearly gagged, and corrected, “Ermo Colle. Any of these people could be sleeper cells ready to feed new information to the Colle organization. Their loyalties may have always been to him instead of the foundation. After what happened in Baden-Baden, I have no doubt the stakes have risen higher. If there still is a Beacham onsite mole, we have to work very carefully when it comes to Max.”
“Makes sense,” Cassie said. She jumped down from the table and walked to the coffee station. “Hazelnut okay?”
“Sounds great.” If there was one thing that helped calm my nerves it was coffee. But I had something else to address after inferring what our boss’s tone implied during the end of the conversation. “I get that Max wants you to help him with this funder. The rich old letch prefers blondes and Max knows it. But this is more, isn’t it? Max tried to poach you while you were in New York, didn’t he?”
“Not poach exactly,” Cassie said. She added cream to her coffee and brought both cups back to the table. “But he did drop by a lot to check on my progress and tell me some of the ways it was beneficial I was doing the research in New York.”
“You mean besides the fact the photographs and publishing house were located there?” I said wryly. “Level with me. What perks did he offer you?”
“He suggested I might be better utilized in management than in research.”
“Son of a—” I stopped and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “I will string him up, I surely will.” Then I stopped again and looked at Cassie. “On the other hand, I can’t ethically do anything until I know what you want. It’s your call. Would you prefer a different career track in the foundation? I’m sorry, Cass. I should have asked before I blew my top.”
She was already shaking her head and trying to shush me. “If I wanted a position in New York, I would have never pursued the Victoria and Albert Museum internship that brought me to London originally. I didn’t want to leave the U.K. when the V and A let me go. If I hadn’t wanted the job you offered, I would have turned you down.” She looked at her hands, clasped tightly around her cup, then her gaze met mine. “You’ve given me greater challenges and more scintillating assignments than I could possibly dream of. I can’t say I won’t ever go to Max and say ‘please transfer me to management,’ but just now I wouldn’t take another position if he tripled my salary. My expertise is needed, and I feel a part of the team. Max can’t offer me any equivalent in New York.”
I said quietly, “He can offer safety.”
“No one can do that.” She reached out to touch my arm. “I’m safer on this team, and I’m part of keeping each fellow member safe. We all know the risks. And who’s to say leaving wouldn’t increase my vulnerability? New York has no idea what we know. Who and what we’ve uncovered. Max and company aren’t really qualified to deal with any of our personal safety issues. You said it yourself when you pointed out how easily a mole could have been hiding in the foundation as a sleeper for a decade or longer.”
“We truly have no choice,” I said. “If I tell Max who Ermo Colle is, we open a Pandora’s box.” I took a sip of coffee, my stomach knotting up at my indecision.
“But you did tell him.”
I shook my head. “Not who Colle actually is. Just that Simon had double agented Moran and Beacham by pledging an alliance with Ermo Colle. I had to tell the name. Even if I can’t give the full range of ramifications associated with the bastard. Otherwise, Max would have no way of knowing he should be on his guard against any affiliation with Colle and the organization.”
“Is that enough?”
“Good question.” I set the cup on the table beside me and clasped my hands in my lap. “I’ve wrestled with what to do. One part of me worries Colle will surface with a new face and a new name. Moran warned me that would happen.”
“If Colle’s alive.”
“Right.” If I hadn’t killed him. I’d spent practically the whole month, every day since we’d returned from Germany, wondering if I’d killed my father. I didn’t feel guilty. Oh, no. I was past that by the evening after the event. No, I wanted confirmation he was truly out of my life for good.
Something deep inside me said he wasn’t dead though. I hoped the tiny, quietly worried voice was wrong, but instinct said differently.
“Jack said to let him handle it,” I said finally. “He can check out things we couldn’t possibly gain access to. Even with Nico’s hacking superpower.” I rubbed my hands up and down my jacket sleeves. But I
wasn’t cold, just anxious. “If we need to tell Max anything…we should wait until Jack says to do so. At least run the idea by him first.”
She laughed. “We’ve come a long way in a few months. The first time I met Jack you were running from him. Now we’re putting the foundation’s fate in his hands.”
I picked up my coffee and looked at the cloudy dark surface, wishing I could see the future in its depths. “Yeah,” I said. “Funny how circumstances change.” Then I shivered.
SIX
We worked in mostly silence for the next hour or so. I went back over every step I’d used to gain information on the painting we took from France, looking for any possibility I’d overlooked to keep my request quiet or let details slip. Since I didn’t use criminal elements to gain intel—had only heard from my pickpocket source because of conversations we’d had about the painting in the past—I could only assume if the forgery thieves heard about my plan it was through respected links, not criminal ones. I listed everyone I’d asked for data and added names I knew of peripheral people who may have learned too. Nothing set off any alarm bells.
This was all necessary, of course, but more importantly it kept me from dwelling on the new bombshell Jack offered about my mother’s case. And who might truly be my father.
After finishing my lists, checking and rechecking each point, I refamiliarized myself with the files and notes compiled from what Cassie and Nico discovered in New York. Then I reviewed the digital prints.
My team went to the Big Apple looking for leads on paintings photographed for a coffee table art book Cassie saw over the Christmas holidays. They returned with new prints of the paintings featured in the publication, furnished by the photographer to show the full image out to the edges. Edges that revealed the forger’s mark we were following. I’d been mentally reviewing the data ever since.
Though the photographer could help with enhanced prints, he couldn’t offer much supplementary aid. The actual paintings arrived in the publisher’s office via delivery service, and the courier came back after the photo session and retrieved the paintings for return to the owner. Next, my dynamic duo set out to interview the courier who handled the masterpieces, but despite best efforts, they found no trace of the named delivery service recorded in the file, nor could they locate the courier who made the two trips into the building and signed in each time with security personnel.
While interviewing the photographer, the editor, and the managing director, Cassie and Nico uncovered a couple of other unsettling facts. The photo session occurred three years ago, long before the four of us became involved in the job to unravel the rumored heist. This was also a good year and a half before forgers started getting killed who were likely connected with Moran’s and Ermo Colle’s separate criminal groups. From what could be ascertained or assumed, Moran’s organization thought Simon was still a double agent for them at this point, working against the interests of the Beacham Foundation. But since I now knew my father was the public head of Ermo Colle during this time, and Simon was aligned with my father and just picking up an extra paycheck from Moran, the scope of the deception grew substantially. And none of this even counted the crates of forgeries and guns Jack and I stumbled onto when we checked out a rooftop in Florence.
I studied the sheet on Cassie’s interview with the legitimate owner of both paintings in question. “You said the owner, Mrs. Conner, vowed she’d never sent the art via delivery service for any photo session.”
“Right,” Cassie confirmed, turning away from the whiteboard and walking over. “She said the paintings never left her eastside penthouse. Neither have been in for work or cleaning in the last decade either. Just dusted by her maid.”
“She showed you the paintings as they hung on the wall?”
“Yes, and no forger’s mark appeared on either of them in the place they appeared in the photographs.”
I brushed the photo and the image of a gilt frame. “What about the frames? Did they look like the ones in the pictures?”
“Yes. I had a copy of the photo with me when we met with Conner, and even she mentioned the similarity.”
“And the publisher said they’d communicated solely with Mrs. Conner’s personal assistant?”
“Affirmative. They showed me copies of the emails in the files. Conner confirmed the email address was one she used for business, but she uses no secretary or assistant for anything related to her art collection. And she never sent or received any communication with the publisher.” Cassie put her hands on her hips. “Any ideas what it means?”
Pulling out both prints of the forgeries again, I studied the almost infamous marks in the corners of the paintings. “She was hacked by someone who used her email as a means of getting those pictures into the published book. But why? How does this con get them the paintings? Unless…” I was getting a brainstorm.
“Unless what?”
I held up a finger for silence. A minute to think. How would this have worked? “One of the things that hit me with the forgery factory in Florence was the audacity of setting up the elaborate scheme in a historic palazzo so close to the tourist area around the Duomo. Almost to prove they were too good to worry about risk. If they used the news of the book as a challenge…To prove they could get the forgeries in anywhere…”
“You said after talking to Rollie you felt strongly the forgery factory was Moran’s deal. Are you saying he did this?”
“Maybe.” I set the pictures into the folder and closed it again, slipping it back into the box we were using as a temporary filing cabinet. “But my gut instinct says this ploy was Ermo Colle’s instead. The audacity of this setup simply made me recall what I felt about the other one.”
“What makes this tip the scales for you that it’s Colle?”
“If I went to Mrs. Conner’s penthouse, I’d bet you anything she knew my grandfather and likely my father too,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the table. “Dear old Daddy with his larcenous mind quite possibly knows every piece of art sitting anywhere in the state of New York.”
“You think he’s going to steal from people your family knew?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s more than that. Learning about the book could have given him an opening for beta testing his plan, because he knew of the two paintings Mrs. Conner owned. He could use the knowledge for a trial run.”
“What did it accomplish?”
“I don’t know yet. But I will. Maybe his original idea was to get the true Conner paintings in a swap somehow, but the plan fell through. Or perhaps it was as simple as getting two forgeries into a published book and have everyone believe the works were authentic.”
“Would Simon have known about Mrs. Conner’s collection too?” Cassie asked.
“Doubtful, but not impossible. He always worked this side of the Atlantic. When he did go to New York, he stayed focused on gala events, rather than meeting old money art collectors. But to be honest, I don’t know what circles he worked before he took on the London office. He was enough older than me that he was over thirty before he hit my personal radar.”
Cassie polished off the bag of rangoons after the conference call, and we each settled down to work our own to-do lists. But by one o’clock, I was ready for a meal. I scooped up my Prada and the key from the table. “Feel like exploring the neighborhood and hunting down some lunch?”
She hugged her torso. “I’ll bet Jack would prefer we ate downstairs.”
I put on my coat and then grabbed hers. “You don’t work for Jack and neither do I.” I tossed her coat and she caught it. “I want a salad, and not one with peanut dressing. A salad with lots of bacon and cheese and goodies atop the lettuce. I say we find someplace close that offers great lunch options. Preferably one with breadsticks too.”
“Breadsticks sound good.”
Less than ten minutes later, we were seated at a picture-perfect Fren
ch-themed corner café, our coats across the back of the spare chair and our menus in hand. Although it was already past noon, a handful of people remained seated in pairs and singles at the round wooden tables. Our waitress returned with baguettes and a bread knife in lieu of breadsticks, took our salad orders, and said she’d return momentarily. Cassie toyed with the small vase in the middle of the table that held silk flowers made to look like lavender. I gazed at the Provence-imaged wallpaper and smiled. It was time to go back to France for a while—a legitimate trip. A few days of R and R at a spa with lavender oils and massages and I’d be ready to face anything.
My phone rang. It was Jack.
“Hello, we’re waiting on salads,” I greeted him. “Want to come and join us? But we won’t share our bread.”
“Believe it or not, I’d jump at the chance,” he returned. “But I can’t. I’m getting sent out of town. I couldn’t talk my way out of the assignment.”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, just bad timing. I need to be someone I was once before. With luck, it will just be for the night, but either way I’ll be back in London by Saturday.”
“Okay…” I let my word hang. When he didn’t respond, I asked, “Are you meeting with Nico and me tonight? Or am I doing the debrief?”
“That’s why I called. I’m being deployed immediately.”
“What? You’re not on some military mission.”
He chuckled through the phone. “It just means I’m getting sent on an assignment. I can’t tell you much about it. I’m going to be undercover.”
