“Yes, all right,” I said flatly, talking to the top button of the vintage velvet waistcoat. Serena had given it to him for Christmas one year and I’d never seen him wear it until now. What else had I been missing? “I’ll join her in a few weeks.”
“Now, before your apartment is out of bounds,” Max said.
“I suppose.”
“She needs you, Phoebe, as in immediately,” Serena added. “She made that clear.”
I shrugged.
“There’s been a death in her circle apparently,” Max added.
I gazed up him. “What does that have to do with me?”
“A good friend, Maria Contini, passed and Nicolina says she needs your moral support and expertise.”
Countess Nicolina Vanvitelli needing my support, moral or otherwise, was hard to get my head around. Needing my expertise was something else again. I didn’t consider myself an expert so much as possessing good instincts. My undergraduate degree in art history combined with a passion for textiles didn’t hurt, but more than anything, I had a good eye with equally good instincts. I’d helped her to locate her family’s stash of Etruscan artifacts, for instance. On the other hand, my half-baked almost-law-degree didn’t count for anything since I quit before taking the bar. Let’s face it: I’d spent most of my years to date as an overeducated and underemployed adult.
“Apparently Maria Contini has passed away suddenly,” I said, standing in the downstairs demolition zone talking to Peaches. Penelope Williams and I had met in Jamaica months before, where together we had successfully brought down our criminal brothers. Hers had been running an art-thieving business that fueled the drug trade while mine was simply lost in space, hoarding a fortune of stolen art. Both were criminals any way you looked at it. That we were on opposite ends of the race spectrum amused us to no end. Maybe that wouldn’t have forged a bond for most people, but it had certainly worked for us.
“Nicolina mentioned her to me once,” I told her. “She has—or had—a fabulous textile collection of Fortuny and Renaissance textiles. Maybe she needs me to help with those?” Technically, Nicolina, Peaches, Max, and I were partners in this ancient lost and found initiative.
“That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean you’re the expert in that fabric stuff.” Peaches was definitely more hardware than soft wear. A curvy, toned, six-foot-one-inch-tall engineer by training, commando by inclination, she never could see the value in anything soft. After achieving her engineering degree in London, she had returned to Jamaica to help keep her brother’s gang from murdering mine. That’s hard to put on a résumé. Her current construction supervisor role with us was as close as she’d come to gainful employment in her field of study.
I gazed up, way up. “Textiles, not ‘fabric,’ Peaches. Anyway, I’m going.”
“Whatever. I get that people collect all kinds of weird shit that would never float my boat. When are you leaving?”
“Tonight.”
“Need a bodyguard?”
“Why would I? Anyway, you have to keep the construction team on track.”
“Well, hell, sure. I’ll keep these dudes whipped into shape.”
She had been managing the contractors whether they liked it or not. After her most recent months in the jungle, she had yet to add finesse to her considerable repertoire and there was nothing she loved more than to be underestimated as a black woman. Nobody ever forgot after the first time.
“I know you will. Just remember that we can’t afford to lose more construction guys.”
“Right, Phoebe. Don’t worry about a ting.” And sometimes she slipped into what I called Jamaicanese. She stood studying me, outfitted in black spandex topped by a leather jacket, an ensemble which would have reduced most women to an ill-packaged mess of athlete-meets-biker-momma. On her, it was simply Amazonian. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re getting away. Probably the sooner, the better. You’ve been acting like a zombie since we got back from Jamaica.” She shook her cornrows and picked up a piece of marble tile from a pile. “See this?”
I mumbled: “I’ve been busy.”
“Translation: uninterested—I get it. So listen up: we’re laying this on the lower level, which will have a modern vibe—clean and antiseptic like a time laboratory instead of this whisper-rich thing you got going on up here. You’re going to miss your colors, I know, and I totally sympathize with you, girl, but you’re going to love it. You’ll see. When you get back, we’ll be that much closer to spectacular.”
“I believe it.” But I didn’t really. Too much change in too short a time. I gazed around the gallery, or what was left of it. I’d seen the drawings for the new space but it was challenging to imagine this gutted shell as anything but what it wasn’t—my beloved carpet and rare textile gallery.
“I know that everyone has the renos in hand.” I turned toward her. “Are you all right here? I mean, are you missing your parents and Jamaica? I feel like I plucked you out of your home and dragged you back here with me.”
Peaches looked at me hard. “Nobody drags me anywhere I don’t want to go. I told Mom and Dad that I’d come see them in a few weeks, anyway—have to get my work visa straightened out.”
I smiled. “Fabulous. I’m so glad you’re part of the team.”
She frowned. “Did you really just say that?”
“Forget I ever uttered the phrase. I think I’m in worse shape than I thought.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
And then the doorbell rang.
“Who’s that? We’re not even open.” Peaches strode though the debris to our paper-covered glass storefront and unlocked the door to Agent Sam Walker, who nodded a greeting and stepped in.
“Sam, what a surprise. We haven’t seen you in, what, two days?” I said.
“I think actually that it was more like one,” Peaches said.
Sam grinned in that lopsided way of his that sent his scar chasing his eyebrow halfway up his hairline. It was a singularly arresting face in a bald man that I’d grown to like but not in any romantic sense. “I just dropped in to have a word.”
I stepped forward. “About?”
Peaches swung away to yell at one of the drywallers as Sam led me over to the far wall. “I was talking this morning to my Italian colleague who informs me that a very valuable painting has been stolen from a palazzo in Venice under mysterious circumstances.”
“Are you putting me on the case or something?” The or something bit was critical since so far Interpol had happily allowed us to do the cataloging and database checking of the pieces we’d retrieved but had yet to assign us to a proper case. We were, after all, not trained police officers or even detectives.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“I knew it: always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”
He quirked a smile. “We appreciate your efforts in all respects, Phoebe, but our reason for approaching you now is because you may have an inside lead that could prove valuable. The painting in question belonged to a very good friend of Nicolina Vanvitelli, a friend who died that same night.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be Maria Contini, would it?”
“How do you know that?”
At that moment my cell vibrated. I pulled the phone from my pocket and read the text from Nicolina:
Phoebe, we must change plans. Meet me at the airport in Roma. We must proceed to Venice at once. I have arranged the flight. Nicolina
“Ah,” said Sam, peering over my shoulder. “Ah, so her majesty speaks. Excellent. Go and do what you usually do but keep me informed this time.”
2
I should have asked where exactly in the Rome airport I was to meet Nicolina. Why did I think I could just arrive in a metropolitan hub and suddenly the obvious meeting spot would appear like a mirage? Magical thinking again.
Apparently I was not supposed to do the finding but wait to be found. Once I got that into my head, it took less than five minutes.
“Phoebe!”
&nb
sp; I turned to see Nicolina’s assistant, Seraphina, shoving a man aside in order to commandeer my arm. “Scusa,” she said without giving him a second glance while to me she added: “We must hurry.”
She attempted to take control of both my roller suitcase and my tapestry bag but I refused to relinquish the latter despite its weight. After a moment of tugging, she shot me an irritated look and gripped the roller while jerking her head to follow her. “The plane, it takes off in twenty minutes.”
Small and fierce, Seraphina was not easy to warm up to. In fact, at times I found her unnerving the way one might a small terrier that perpetually bares its teeth.
I followed along, expecting to endure yet another laborious security screening. Instead, we were whisked off to an alternative corridor and through a more streamlined system, emerging several moments later in a private waiting room. I knew without asking that Countess Vanvitelli, aka Nicolina, had pulled the gilded strings again and that we were likely taking her friend’s private plane.
I looked around the small lounge with only time enough to see Nicolina sweeping down to embrace me.
“Phoebe! I missed you, and you would not properly answer my texts. How I worried, but things will be better between us now, yes?” Air kisses followed along with a gracious Italian hug, which I liken to halfway between a bow and a benediction.
I stepped back, admiring her sleek merlot-toned leather pantsuit and the flawless everything of my tall Italian friend. The fact that her reddened eyes almost matched the hue of her assemble hardly spoiled the effect. “I hope so. I’m sorry for being incommunicado, Nicolina, but I’ve been very preoccupied.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You are here now and that is all that matters.”
“But there’s no excuse for leaving you holding the bag.” Actually, I left her holding a planeload of rare art and artifacts, all of which needed to be cataloged and repatriated the same as our share. “So, I understand we’re going to Venice.”
“Oh, Phoebe, such a difficult matter. Maria Contini has died suddenly. We were childhood friends, our families very close. It was only the day before yesterday when we spoke and now she is gone, and robbed, too.” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “I cannot believe it. Something is wrong, very wrong. There are too many odd occurrences that I do not think I can wade through by myself—too emotional. I need your support.”
Since when? I wondered. “And you have it. Was she killed during a robbery?”
“Yes and no. Both events happened on the same night, the last night of Carnevale.”
I planned to wait until she told me about the painting. “How and where exactly did it happen?”
“Nothing make sense. She was a quiet woman—a recluse, you say in English—and no longer even attended the festivities, and yet she left the villa by herself that night and ended up dead the same time that her prized painting was stolen.”
“Really? I’m so sorry, Nicolina,” I said, grasping her hands. “This is horrible. To lose a friend under such traumatic circumstances.”
Her eyes might be swollen but they held such a glint of determination that only a fool would think it was due to grief alone. “Whoever did this will pay. No one harms my friend and gets away with it, no one.”
I nodded. “We’ll find out the truth.”
“Poor Maria, she did not deserve this!” She tugged her hands from mine and began to sob.
“Died in what fashion exactly?”
“I don’t know!”
“Was the painting stolen from her villa?”
Nicolina shook her head and turned away. “We must talk more of this later. For now I must pull myself together.” Then she turned back to me and smiled sadly. “I wish you had known her. You would have loved her. She adored textiles as you do and had gathered many fine pieces over the years, including her late grandmama’s Fortunies.”
“Look, I hate to grill you but could you tell me if the police believe Maria’s death was accidental or if there were signs of violence? Where was she found and who found her?” I never bought into the one-question-at-a-time school of thought and, not surprisingly, my law background was already kicking in.
A loudspeaker announced that boarding would begin immediately.
“Maybe just answer the first question,” I called over the announcement.
“Later. We must board now,” she called back. “We go.” She linked arms with mine as we followed Seraphina, who now carried four carry-on bags plus a grudge that I wouldn’t let her make it five. Together we marched up to passport control. “We will speak later on the plane,” Nicolina assured me.
But later was late coming, considering that I was enveloped in an effusive welcome by Fabio, our steward, followed by a hearty handshake from Otty, the pilot. This was the private plane owned by Nicolina’s mysterious friend and we had all been together during the Jamaican incident only months earlier.
Naturally, there was much to catch up on plus many treats to sample along with nonstop service of strong Italian coffee equivalent to jet fuel. I sank back in the plush leather seats and attempted to enjoy the short flight but I was getting very caffeinated very fast.
“So, do we have another priceless artwork to return to its rightful owner?” Fabio asked as he offered us a tray of biscotti. A touch of turbulence caused him to take a step back, pirouette, and quickly regroup. The man had acrobatic grace partnered with an equally showstopping sense of style, today in his uniform of a pale blue vest and matching pants. Apparently he had tried to dress his partner, Otty, in something similar but the captain preferred a more traditional look.
“Another?” I asked, turning to Nicolina.
“Well, there was Naples—” Fabio said before catching Nicolina’s expression.
“We are coming to Venice to discover who murdered my friend,” Nicolina said in her contessa tone.
“Oh, dear. How dreadful. So sorry for your loss,” Fabio said, shooting me a quick look and promptly pivoting around to head back to the galley.
I kept my attention fixed on Nicolina. “Have you returned a painting already, Nicolina, without the necessary arrangements through Interpol?” The question was hardly irrelevant but maybe a tad insensitive given the gravitas of the moment.
She waved her hand. “Just one. This I told Max. It was a private matter, a piece stolen from a friend and returned to him in Naples. The provenance trail was clear. I did explain this to Max.”
“You did?” I knew that I’d been distracted lately but I couldn’t believe that I’d missed something so important. “And does Interpol know?”
“Interpol!” she scoffed. “They are every day in my villa, asking questions, poking around. They will not leave me alone. Forget Interpol. I am more concerned about you, dear friend.” She leaned over to touch my hand. “I have spoken to Max many times while, Phoebe, you have been—” she fished for the perfect word “—unavailable. Yes, you have been unavailable. Did he not say?”
“Perhaps he did.”
“You have not been yourself,” she hurried on. “This I understand. Noel and your brother—all very difficult. I know this after my problems with my family. Do you remember?”
How could I forget? A grandfather who locked her grandmother away, parents killed by the Camorra, a husband who tried to steal her fortune, the overbearing brother who believed being male made him automatically head of the family, possibly the universe… “I remember very well.”
“So, you know that I understand how one must heal by being strong and busy with purpose,” she continued. “You have had two big blows and have been very, very busy.”
“Actually, I counted three,” I said, “not that losing Rupert’s friendship is considered a blow by most.”
“Rupert,” Nicolina said with another note of impatience. “He or his manservant are never far away but stay out of sight like rodents, yes? Back to you: work helps much better than thinking too hard on our losses. I will help you move on,
as they say, and you will help me. Now I have a loss of my dearest friend and I must discover what really happened to heal my grief. Keeping occupied is the only way. Together we help each other. I know you do not shrink from such things. Strong women help each other.”
I sat back. It struck me as odd that she wanted my help in solving Maria’s murder and odder still that Sam Walker had requested that I become involved. Clearly the police didn't trust Nicolina any more than I did. “I will do what I can, of course.”
She nodded and smiled sadly. “We will solve this together now. Dear Maria, I cannot believe that she is gone.”
I took another gulp of coffee. “I’m sorry, Nicolina. Losing a friend is so difficult. Where exactly in Venice we are staying?”
Nicolina gazed out the window, now nothing but a scud of dark as we began to descend. “I had thought at first of the Danieli but then knew that it would be best if we stayed at Maria’s, as much as I will find it unbearable. She would want this and I have much work to do there, though the police will be coming and going. I always stayed with her when I visit Venice so why not now when I have business to attend and the police wish to speak with me? Maria’s housekeeper, Zara, is distraught—she has worked for Maria for decades—but she has readied the rooms at my request.”
“Did Maria have children, maybe a husband or siblings?” I asked.
“No family. Maria was an only child and never married, though she was engaged long ago. I was like her sister. She often called me her sorellina, her little sister.” Nicolina subsided into her thoughts while I tried to muster mine.
I had so many questions but, once again, I was diving blindly into a situation and needed to figure things out on my feet. You’d think I’d get used to this by now but somehow I never could.
Fabio darted into the cabin to remove our cups and check that all the safety boxes where ticked before landing. “Just sit back now and relax,” he said. “Otty says that we are in a holding pattern for a few minutes but as soon as we get clearance we’ll be landing pronto.”
The Carpet Cipher Page 2
