by M. J. Rose
“No, that’s not necessary. These things happen. I’ll leave you with Bacchus. I’m sure you’ll be in excellent company.”
* * *
Josh’s heart was pounding so loudly he worried Terry might be able to hear it and come running. He took the painting off the stand and turned it around. Some of the energy drained from the room. Now it was just rough canvas and four pieces of wood mitered together.
Rachel had seen the back of the painting when she’d inspected it at the auction house and had explained that removing the painting from its frame would be a simple procedure.
All he had to do was pull out the four clips that secured the canvas to the wood.
He fumbled as he worked out the first clip, but did better with the second, and his speed improved with the third and fourth, so in less than sixty seconds he had the canvas safely put aside and stared at an empty gold baroque frame.
Working more quickly, almost recklessly now, not caring if he chipped the wood or gold leaf, he took the frame apart, remembering how Esme had described this process while Rachel was under hypnosis.
Josh inspected each arm, up and down, prodding, pushing, searching. Nothing on the first arm or second. He was running out of time. Just as he picked up the third, he heard sounds outside. Was that Rachel? Already?
The third arm looked the same as the first two.
Yes, the sound was Rachel, asking for something. Water? It didn’t matter. He picked up the fourth arm and found what he was looking for.
Digging at it with the edge of the smallest of the tools he’d brought with him, he tried to pull it. No. It wouldn’t work like that. He looked closer. Where the grain of the wood ran left to right was a small ridge.
Maybe…
Using the edge of the knife, he unscrewed the threaded wooden pin.
A spring creaked.
A hiding place was revealed.
Josh was afraid to breathe.
The room around him had closed in. There was nothing but the piece of wood and the hollow space inside of it. The glorious painting wasn’t there. There were no people outside. He tipped the wooden arm over and shook it.
Chapter 64
“What are you doing?” Harrison asked. He stood by the door, trying to hold back his anger.
How much had he seen? What was he thinking?
Rachel laughed. The sound of light crystal. Of water splashing. “You know, Barton, you can’t just take apart a painting without asking.”
Josh shrugged. “I can if I’m considering spending this kind of money for it. I always look at paintings out of the frame. Frames are a distraction, to say the least.”
Rachel had schooled him on this just an hour before. Many collectors insisted on seeing the canvas out of the frame to inspect it. If he used this excuse, it would be plausible.
“But you took the frame apart?”
“To judge its authenticity.”
Harrison was kneeling down, inspecting his painting. His eyes swept the surface from right to left and then back again, ignoring Josh and Rachel, and the wooden arms on the ground.
“What were you really doing?” he said as he picked up one of the arms and looked at it.
Josh didn’t know how long Harrison had been standing behind him. Had he seen something? What would Harrison do if Josh tried to leave? Was he in danger? Was Rachel? She’d told Josh that Harrison had a gun. Was he carrying it? Probably. If you are showing a four-million-dollar painting to someone and you own a gun, you probably don’t leave it in a drawer.
“It’s a beautiful painting. But the frame is inappropriate,” Josh said.
Now Harrison looked at him as if he was insane.
“Who cares about the frame? The painting is a Caravaggio.”
“It does appear to be from the school of Caravaggio. But the frame isn’t original.” Josh knew the comment was irrational. That was the point. He needed to convince Harrison he was eccentric and make the disassemblage convincing. He had what he’d come for, and it was time to leave.
“Thank you for showing it to me.” He nodded and walked to the door. Put his fingers on the knob. Turned it. He was about to open the door when—
“You’re not going to want to do that, Mr. Lipper.”
The gun was a snub-nosed revolver, icy-black and compact. And it was trained on Josh.
Chapter 65
“Why don’t you sit down and show me what you put in your pocket when I walked into the room.”
“Harrison, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you realize who you are accusing of—”
“Rachel, please. Now, Mr. Lipper, what did you put into your pocket?” Harrison was trying to keep his eyes on Josh and look around the room at the same time. When he realized he couldn’t, he opted to watch Josh and asked Rachel to take inventory.
“Is the Fabergé letter opener on the desk?”
“Yes, of course. Harrison, there’s no way that Mr. Lipper would take—”
“There should be a small frame next to that, rubies, enamel.”
“It’s here. Put down the gun,” she said. Her voice was shaking and Josh thought that was okay. It would make sense to Harrison that Rachel, with one of her clients being held at gunpoint by her lover, was nervous.
Harrison’s eyes had not left his face, but Josh still couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t get a bead on him. “Mr. Shoals. I can show you what you saw when you walked into the room, but to do so I’m going to need to put my hand back in my pocket.”
He nodded. “Fine. Do it slowly.”
Josh reached into his jacket pocket and found the box of breath mints, wrapped his fingers around it and pulled it out. He was taking a chance, but he’d learned from watching Malachai do his magic tricks that most of the time, people don’t know what they’ve seen because they aren’t looking in the right place.
“This is all it was. I’d be happy to wait while you inspect the rest of the treasures in the room, but honestly, I didn’t take anything of yours.”
This was the truth, and Josh knew his voice presented it as the truth. He knew his face showed it as the truth. The stones had never belonged to Harrison. As Josh suspected, he had not even known they existed.
Harrison picked up the box of mints, shook it and listened to the slight rattle. He returned it to Josh and lowered the gun.
Rachel ran over to Josh’s side as fast as she could, considering she was limping convincingly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lipper.” She’d apologized, but the look in her eyes was gratefulness. That was when Josh realized that she was going to be all right now. She’d come to understand how her past was warning her about her present and what she needed to do with the information.
Josh waved her off, as if to say it was nothing and he didn’t blame her. She was gathering up her bag and her jacket.
“Where are you going?” Harrison asked her.
She looked at him, held his eyes, shook her head. “You pulled a gun on him! You could have shot him. I don’t belong here. This was all a mistake.” She walked to the door, to where Josh was waiting for her.
“What kind of game is this, Rachel? Did your uncle put you up to this? What kind of scheme are the two of you planning with the Bacchus?”
“My uncle? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“You didn’t know he’s the client I mentioned? Oh, please, don’t insult me. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“You have to believe me, I didn’t know…I had no idea. My uncle’s been talking to you about buying the Bacchus?”
“He’s determined to own it. But we’re at an impasse over—No, I’m not falling for this. You must know. I’m the one who’s being played for the fool.”
“Harrison, it doesn’t matter to me whether you believe me or not, but my uncle has no idea I’ve been here today.”
“Rachel?” Josh said in a quietly insistent voice. “We need to go.”
She walked through the door that he was holding open for her. Josh let her pass, then,
just before he walked out, he turned and looked back at Harrison Shoals. “The frame isn’t an original—you should do something about that.”
“The frame is unimportant.” Harrison shook his head, incredulous.
“Not to me. An original frame would have been quite a treasure,” Josh said, and walked out.
Chapter 66
Downstairs, they quickly got into the town car that Rachel had come in and kept waiting so they could leave right away, in case Harrison tried to followed them or harassed them.
“Where to, miss?” the driver asked. “Home?”
She looked at Josh. “Where should we drop you?”
In his left pocket was the box of mints. In his right pocket, the stones pressed against his thigh, teasing him. Shoals had seen him put something in his pocket, but he hadn’t focused on which pocket. Josh had bluffed, and it had worked. That’s the thing about sleight-of-hand that Malachai had taught him. You know there’s a trick happening, but you are rarely looking in the right place to catch it. He wanted to tell Malachai what a good teacher he’d been.
He had to rent a car and get up to New Haven, but first he needed to pick up his photographic equipment. Josh wanted to light the stones so that every mark was perfectly clear and distinct before they e-mailed the pictures to Rollins. He also needed to wrap up the stones carefully before he drove up to see Gabriella; they were too precious to be rolling around in his pocket.
“I’m going to the foundation, but let me drop you off first. Where are you going?”
“I guess back to my uncle’s.”
“Is there somewhere else you can go? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Not yet.”
A veil of worry clouded her eyes. “You don’t think my uncle would—”
“I don’t know, and that’s why I want you to go someplace that is completely neutral. Just for a few days, until we can make sure.”
“I thought this was about me and Harrison, Esme and Blackie.”
“It was—it is—but…isn’t there someplace else you can go, just for a few days? I promise I’ll help you figure all this out as soon as I can. In the meantime, you have to stay safe.”
“It’s not possible that my uncle has anything to do with this. He’s not a violent man.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t want you to take any chances. You’re safe now, Rachel. I want you to stay safe.”
She gave the driver the address of her closest friend and turned back to Josh. “If I am safe it’s because of you. Harrison pulled a gun on you. Over a painting. How could I have been attracted to him?”
“You’re not the first person to be seduced by power.”
She smiled ruefully, “No, I’m not. Esme was, too. That’s why I need to figure all this out. So it doesn’t happen again.”
When the car pulled up in front of Rachel’s friend’s apartment on York Avenue and Eighty-Eighth Street, she leaned forward, threw her arms around Josh and hugged him.
“You’re in danger, aren’t you?” she asked.
“No, this isn’t about me.”
“But you’re the one taking all the chances. Please, be careful. Okay? I just found you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Josh opened the door to the foundation’s basement, which had been turned into a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled library, and where he stored his equipment. He shut the door behind him and was just going to pull the stones out of his pocket when he saw Malachai standing on a ladder, inspecting a row of books on a high shelf. He turned at the noise. “Thank goodness, Josh, I was so worried,” he said, and climbed down. “Where have you been all day? I expected you to come back or at least call after your plane landed.”
On the large table in the middle of the room, Josh noticed a dozen dusty books were open to various pages. They were all titles from the mid 1800s on different methods of inducing past-life regressions.
“How did it go with Rollins? No, first tell me, how is Gabriella?”
“In terrible shape. And all alone. I wish she’d call her father so he could be with her. But she’s stubborn. I don’t know how she’s holding it together. Panicked about her daughter, working with Rollins, trying to come up with the damn mantra.”
“Are they getting the translations done?”
“Rollins is still stumped on a few markings, but he should meet the deadline.”
Using an index card, Malachai marked the page he had been studying in one of the books and shut it. “Imagine what it would be like if the mantra worked. To be able to remember who you’d been before, not just fragments, but the entire story. To push back the curtains of the present and peer into the past. Have you considered the man who will wind up owning the stones? He’ll be one of the most powerful men on earth, Josh. Damn it, we should have had them here.” His eyes narrowed. “We were so close.”
“Haven’t you ever considered that it’s all just a myth, and that the mantra is nothing but a collection of sounds that doesn’t do a thing?”
“Still not a true believer?”
“I need just one thing in black and white. If I could have just photographed one aura, captured it on film…”
“Finding us here at the foundation, where Percy once lived? Knowing about the tunnel into the park? What about the little girl at the site of the excavation in Rome? Those weren’t proof enough for you? What kind of magic was that, then?”
“The story of the tomb was all over the television and in all the papers. Natalie could have heard people discussing it anywhere. As for the tunnel, I had spent hours in your company before that happened—you could have hypnotized me.”
“Without you noticing? I think not. And have you forgotten that you’re not a good subject? As for Natalie, yes, she could have heard that a woman’s body had been found in the tomb, but how would she have found out her name was Sabina? The same name you came up with. A name no one else had even whispered. Pulled it out of thin air?”
Josh shrugged. “I’m sure I was thinking about her name at some point. Maybe it was ESP. Maybe it’s all been ESP.”
“Or maybe it’s reincarnation. Beryl and I believe we’ve heard proof over and over. Living proof. You, Josh, you’re living proof. But if we had the stones in our hands we’d be able to convince even the nonbelievers.” Malachai’s eyes were shining with the possibilities. “People like me, who’ve never been able to remember, would be able to look back and find the answers to help them go forward.”
Until that moment, Josh had planned on taking the stones out of his pocket, showing them to Malachai and telling him about Rachel remembering Esme’s life and death on the ship. But the hunger in his mentor’s eyes worried him. What if he snatched them away and wouldn’t let Josh have them back? What if he was more desperate than the man who was orchestrating all this madness?
No, wouldn’t anyone do the right thing in those circumstances? What were a handful of emeralds and sapphires in exchange for a child’s life? Even that particular handful of stones. But proving reincarnation had been Malachai’s work for much longer than it had been Josh’s distraction. Knowing for sure would explain his life, but for Malachai it would be vindication of a life devoted to that one subject.
Men are monsters all.
Who’d said that? Percy? Yes, Percy, discussing his uncle Davenport Talmage, the man who had poisoned him and sent his sister to her death. Esme…who died as a result of her uncle’s greed. Rachel had an uncle, too…. Was it possible that Alex was just as greedy and more involved in all this than anyone had guessed?
“Have you thought about tomorrow?” Malachai said, interrupting Josh’s conjecturing. “I want to go with you. Follow you and Gabriella. The two of you can’t do this alone. What if something were to go wrong?”
Chapter 67
Josh arrived at Gabriella’s house just after eight that night. He didn’t notice until he’d followed her into the living room and she was in the light, but in the past fourteen hours, so much life had been drained out of her. It wasn�
�t just how pale she was or how deep the hollows were under her eyes. Gabriella seemed to have faded, the way old snapshots do. She tried for a small smile at seeing him, but it turned on itself and wound up being an anguished grimace. Even the room exhibited her anxiety—there was a coffee mug precariously close to the edge of a table; an apple with a single bite taken out of it that had already turned a soggy brown; a sweater that lay trampled on the floor where she must have just dropped it when she took it off and never bothered to pick it up.
Neither of them spoke. She was waiting to see what he’d found, and he was in a hurry to show it to her, believing his discovery would at least offer her a whisper of hope. Her eyes never left his hands as he opened his backpack and pulled out the manila envelope. She held out her palms as if she were a child begging for food, and, one by one, he placed each stone into her cupped palms: an emerald, an emerald, a sapphire, an emerald, a sapphire and a ruby. Clutching the gemstones to her chest as if, together, they made up her baby, she sank down to the floor and wept.
Sitting down beside her, Josh took her in his arms, held her and just let her cry. But in less than five minutes she was back on her feet, determined and again in control.
“We must photograph these…right away, and e-mail them to Rollins. He’s waiting. It’s taken him all this time to get the other six done. I don’t know…if he can do this…it took him twenty hours to do the first half…. What if these are different markings, and he can’t—” She stopped herself, biting her bottom lip, which by now was badly bruised.
“I brought my equipment. I can set up in your dining room and get the shots done in less than ten minutes.” It wasn’t relief Josh saw in her eyes, only a lessening of panic, but at least he could give her that, he thought.
* * *
After Josh shot the stones from several angles and downloaded them onto Gabriella’s computer, she e-mailed the file to Rollins. Within fifteen minutes, he called to let her know he’d gotten them, had been able to open them, and was ready to get to work.
