Jayne Ann Krentz

by Eclipse Bay

  “We have a photograph,” he said. “It was found in the museum’s archives.”

  Museum was not the word she would have used to dignify Military World, she thought. What was she doing here? She must have been temporarily out of her mind last night when she took Easton’s call. She was at home in hushed galleries, art research libraries, and the cluttered back rooms of prestigious auction salons. She mingled with connoisseurs and educated collectors.

  Military World, with its low-budget reproductions of arm and armor from various wars was very much as she had envisioned it; tacky. Then again, maybe that was just her personal bias showing. She had never been overly fond of armor. To her it symbolized all that was brutish and primitive in human nature. The fact that the artisans of the past had devoted enormous talent and craftsmanship to its design and decoration struck her as bizarre.

  The office in which they sat belonged to the two owners of Military World, a pair that went by the names of Notch and Dewey. They hovered anxiously in the shadows, having surrendered the single desk to Easton and his laptop computer.

  Mack occupied the space behind the desk as if he owned it. She got the impression that was the way it was with any place he happened to inhabit at any particular moment. Something that just sort of happened to him; something he took for granted.

  She wished that she could get a better look at his eyes but the reflection on his glasses concealed them as effectively as the steel helms hid the features of the armored figures beyond the windows.

  He pushed the photograph toward her across the battered desk and reached out to switch on the small desk lamp. She watched, unwillingly fascinated, as the beam fell on one large, powerful-looking hand. No wedding ring, she noticed. Not that you could be sure a man was unmarried just because he didn’t happen to wear a ring.

  With an effort she tore her gaze away from his hand and focused on the photo. It featured a horse and rider garbed in flamboyantly styled armor that looked as if it had been designed for a video game or dreamed up by an artist for the cover of a science fiction fantasy novel. She recognized it as a fairly accurate reproduction of the elaborately embellished armor crafted during the Renaissance. Such impractical styles had never been intended for the battlefield. They had been created for the sole purpose of making the wearer look good in ceremonies, festivals and parades.

  “Fifteenth century, judging from the helm and breast plate,” she said. “Italian in style.” In style was a polite way of saying reproduction.

  “I’m aware of that, Miss Briggs,” Easton said with icy patience. “But if you look closely, you can see a portion of another display behind the horse’s, uh, rear.”

  She took a closer look. Sure enough, if she looked past the tail of the fake horse she could just make out the dimly lit image of a standing figure garbed in heavily decorated steel.

  “Half-armor,” she murmured. It was always good policy to impress the client, even if you weren’t particularly interested in the job. Word-of-mouth was important. “In the style of the Northern Italian armorers of the sixteenth century. Looks like part of a garniture meant for jousting at the barriers. Suits of armor from this era often consisted of dozens of supplementary and interchangeable pieces that allowed the set to be modified for specific uses. Sort of like a modern all-in-one tool kit.”

  “It’s the helm that we’re interested in here,” Mack said.

  She peered at it. The bad lighting made it difficult to see much detail. “What about it?”

  “It’s the only piece that was stolen.”

  She looked up. “Is there a better photo around?”

  One of the two men who hovered near the far end of the desk, the individual who went by the name Dewey, edged closer with a crablike movement.

  “Lucky to have that one,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  She could only guess at Dewey’s age. His face was a worn and weathered map that could have belonged to a man of fifty or seventy. He was dressed in military surplus complete with camouflage fatigues, battered boots and a wide leather belt. His graying hair was caught in a scruffy ponytail secured with a rubber band. She would not have been surprised to learn that he commuted to and from work on a very large motorcycle.

  It was hard to imagine that he was representative of Lost and Found’s typical clientele. How in the world had he and his partner managed to find the very-hard-to-find Mack Easton? More to the point, why had Mack agreed to help them? Surely he was too expensive for this pair. If he wasn’t, she certainly was.

  “I was going for a shot of the fifteenth-century display,” Dewey explained. “We had just finished setting it up, you see. This was maybe two years back, right Notch?”

  The other man nodded vigorously. “Right.”

  Dewey returned his attention to Cady. “I wanted to get a picture for our album. Lucked out and accidentally got a bit of the other exhibit in the shot.”

  “Never would have guessed that the helmet on the sixteenth-century suit was the real thing.” Notch spread his hands. “Like, who knew, man?”

  Cady cleared her throat. “How did it come into the, uh, museum’s collection?”

  “I found it right after we bought Military World from old man Belford. He had it stashed away in the back room. I polished it up and added it to the rest of the outfit. Seemed to match, y’know?”

  “I see.” She tapped one finger against the photo while she considered her options. As much as she wanted to take on another assignment for Lost and Found, she had a reputation to maintain. One had to draw the line somewhere. She did not trace reproductions.

  Surreptitiously she glanced at her watch. She might be able to catch the one o’clock flight if she left Military World within the next forty-five minutes. She could be home in time for dinner.

  She turned back to Easton. Something in the way he was watching her told her that he had noticed her checking the time. She summoned up what she hoped was an expression of professional interest. “What did the insurance people say when you notified them about the theft?”

  Notch and Dewey exchanged uneasy looks.

  Mack did not move. “There’s a slight problem with the insurance situation.”

  She sighed. “In other words, the helm was uninsured?”

  Notch made an awkward sound deep in his throat. “Things have been a little rough lately, financially speaking. Dewey and me had to economize and make some cutbacks, y’know? Sort of let some of the insurance go.”

  “Not that the insurance company would have covered the helm for anything like its true value, anyway,” Dewey said quickly. “If we’d had coverage, it would have been for a reproduction, not the real thing on account of we didn’t know it was genuine, if you see what I mean.”

  “I don’t want to be rude,” Cady said gently, “but what makes you think the helm is a genuine sixteenth-century piece?”

  Dewey and Notch stared at her, open-mouthed.

  “You’re supposed to be an expert,” Dewey said. “Can’t you tell from looking at it?”

  She made a bid for patience. “This is only a photograph. There is no way I or anyone else can use it to determine whether or not the helm is genuine.”

  Notch looked stricken. “But Mack here said that you knew your stuff.”

  “Old armor is very popular right now,” she explained. “A lot of the well-heeled early retirees in the software industry are collecting it like mad. Guess it reminds them of all those sword-and-sorcery video and computer games they love to play. Prices are going through the roof. Unfortunately, antique armor is fairly easy to fake. Bury a piece of steel in the ground with some acidic substance for a while and, presto, you get aged armor.”

  Notch bristled. “Are you sayin’ our helmet is a forgery?”

  “I’m saying that is an extremely likely possibility.” Cady spread her hands. “Even the experts get burned a lot when it comes to armor. And the business of creating counterfeits isn’t exactly new. A lot of the best reproductions of antique armor were
made in the nineteenth century. By now, the steel has taken on the patina of genuine age and can easily pass for the real thing.”

  “I still say our helmet is the real thing,” Notch declared.

  Cady slanted a quick, searching glance at Mack. He moved his head in the smallest of negatives. He was staying out of the argument; letting her handle the clients.

  Summoning up her best professional expression, she turned back to Notch and Dewey. “Why are you convinced that the helm is genuine when every other piece in your collection is a reproduction?”

  “Simple.” Dewey rocked triumphantly on his heels and looked shrewd. “Someone stole it.”