The Trouble with Mirrors (An Alix London Mystery Book 4)

by Charlotte Elkins

  OTHER TITLES BY CHARLOTTE AND AARON ELKINS

  The Alix London Series

  A Dangerous Talent

  A Cruise to Die For

  The Art Whisperer

  The Lee Ofsted Series

  A Wicked Slice

  Rotten Lies

  Nasty Breaks

  Where Have All the Birdies Gone?

  On the Fringe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Charlotte and Aaron Elkins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940437

  ISBN-10: 1503940438

  Cover design by Janet Perr

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  CHAPTER 1

  Good afternoon. I am speaking with Ms. London?”

  “Yes, this is Alix London.”

  “This is not a bad time? I am not inconveniencing you?”

  “No, I was just trying . . . no.”

  She was just trying to come up with some way of cramming one more pair of shoes into the carry-on bag that lay open on her bed and thus avoid the necessity of checking luggage on her flight to what Seattleites called “the other Washington.” But both sides of the carry-on were already heaped so high that closing it, even now—assuming that was possible—was going to risk springing the zipper.

  Packing for this particular DC trip had been trickier than usual because it was a mix of business and pleasure. The business part was a consulting assignment with the FBI’s art squad, which desired her counsel on whether a painting being held by Customs was a twentieth-century copy based on an early seventeenth-century Rubens, as its owner had declared when trying to get it into the country from Belgium, or was instead the genuine article. If it was the former, he would get it through with a relatively minimal duty payment. If the latter, he would owe an enormous duty and would be in big trouble to boot—on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The pleasure part involved spending time with the current—and, she was beginning to think, future—man in her life. The problem was that different wardrobes were required. She didn’t want to stand around all day in three-inch heels, but she also wasn’t about to wear flats to the fancy dinner Ted had promised her at Citronelle. Absolutely not. That dinner was the reason she’d splurged so inexcusably (she still couldn’t believe it) on the Bottega Veneta pumps that were taking up all the room in her bag, because you couldn’t put a pair of shoes like that in a suitcase without their box and some protective cushioning. Well, could you?

  It was looking more and more as if the carry-on just wasn’t going to do the job and she’d have to lug the big suitcase instead, and it had made her cross.

  “Forgive me,” the voice on the other end said, “but you sound a little distracted, yes? Perhaps another time, it would be better? If that is the case—”

  “No, this is fine.”

  It wasn’t the grumpiness that had made her more curt than usual. She’d heard only a handful of sentences from whoever this was, but already she didn’t like him. It wasn’t his words per se that got under her skin, it was that he was too smooth for her, too self-assured, his cultured Italian accent urbane and sly to the point of caricature. He called to mind some bewigged, berouged, knee-breeched dandy in the court of the King of Naples.

  This guy, she said to herself, is an art dealer if I ever heard one.

  “My name is Alessandro Ferrante, Ms. London. I am calling from Italy. I am a dealer in fine art—”

  Ha.

  “—and I am calling to you because I have a client who saw a most excellent article about you in the new Art World Insider.”

  That surprised her. “Really? I didn’t think it’d come out yet.”

  “Ah, but it has. He received his copy this morning, as did I. Perhaps it arrives earlier to Europe? I myself found it fascinating, by the way. To read of a person like yourself, so accomplished at so young an age, and if I may say, so beauti—”

  “Uh . . . you wanted . . . ?” The more he talked, the stronger her aversion grew. There was something about the unctuous way he spoke, a subtly nuanced quality that gave you the feeling that what he was talking about wasn’t really what he was talking about.

  “Yes, forgive me,” Ferrante said quickly. “I know your time is valuable. May I come to the point? My client was very much taken by one of the objects on the wall behind you in the photograph. He felt—”

  “The small mirror, yes,” Alix said, hurrying him along. It had been an easy enough guess. Other than the mirror, everything on that wall was poster art. The mirror was a one of a kind.

  “Exactly. And so I was hoping that you might be amenable to parting with it—for a substantial consideration?”

  “No, I wouldn’t be, Mr. Ferrante.”

  “I assure you, the terms would be very—I should say, extremely—”

  “No. I’m sorry.” The guy was as oily as a quarter-pound of butter two weeks past its sell-by date.

  “Ah, that is what I feared. It is indeed a most beautiful piece, and to my knowledge a unique one.”

  “That it is. Well, signor Ferrante—”

  “I wonder, then, if you might happen to know the artist who crafted it and if this person would consider a commission to make a similar one? Not a duplicate of your own, of course, but one employing similar, ah, stylistic conventions.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know who made it, and, truthfully, I doubt if he’d want to do that. It was a personal gift. It was done a very long time ago and he’s pretty fully employed now. Really, I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Ah,” murmured Ferrante despondently, and Alix was hit with a pang of guilt. Was she really being honest, or was it simply that she hated the idea of Tiny making a second beautiful mirror for some other little girl—or big one, for that matter?

  No, an act of contrition was called for. “But you know, Mr. Ferrante, it’s my father that Tiny works for, so I can certainly pass your message on to him, although not for another few days. I’m sure I’ll see him when I get back, though. How can he reach you if he’d like to take you up on this?”

  “Do you mean it, really?” he said. “To
telephone me would probably be best. You have a pen? Yes? You are ready? Here is the number: 390 10 275 45 06.” He repeated it. “Please tell him my client does not expect it to be inexpensive. Thank you so much, signorina.”

  She hung up with a sense of unease. The oily Italian had left her with the feeling she’d just been conned out of something, but she didn’t know what. She shook her head to brush the feeling aside, picked up the pump she’d had in her hand when the call had come, and put it into its plain and understated shoebox. Only a second later, with a faint, nostalgic smile on her face, she took it again from its tissue paper nest and ran her hand down the creamy black leather of the three-inch heel. She was thinking of her sixteenth birthday, the wonderful day her mother had taken her shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue for her first pair of grownup shoes. Alix had chosen a pair of Bottega Venetas for the then-extravagant price of almost four hundred dollars, and she had come away feeling extravagantly, delightfully decadent and mature—a woman at last.

  These new shoes were the first Bottega Venetas she’d bought since then (at considerably more than four hundred dollars), and they were as much like the old pair as she could find. They revived too many precious memories—no way would she leave them behind. But she wasn’t going to haul that humungous, hard-sided Samsonite monster of hers with her either, not if she could help it.

  Fixing the carry-on with her most intimidating glare, she returned to battle with it.

  CHAPTER 2

  At six-fifteen in the evening, two days after Alix received this call, the creator of the mirror in question, one Beniamino Guglielmi Abbatista, known to one and all as Tiny, effortlessly shoved open the thirty-pound steel door of his place of employment—Venezia Fine Art Imports in South Seattle—and heaved his imposing, six-foot-four, three-hundred-and-five-pound frame out into the parking lot, tired but pleased with his long day’s work and looking forward to tomorrow’s. Foremost on his mind, though, was whether he still had half a bottle of Chianti sitting on the kitchen counter to go with his dinner or if he’d better pick some up on the way home. Better safe than sorry, he thought, besides which, if he stocked up today he wouldn’t have to do his grocery-shopping the next day, which was his usual—

  “Hey, mister, are you Tiny?”

  He glanced up. The question came from a cocky, skinny kid lounging on the hood of a car, trying his best to look like a streetwise young hood (and doing a good job of it). He was wearing shredded jeans, beat-up sneakers, and a grungy T-shirt with a logo that read:

  UNCLE ED’S POT PALACE

  611b Third Avenue South

  Hey, at least it’s not crack.

  Tiny didn’t like his looks but he answered amicably enough. “Yeah, kiddo, I’m Tiny. What can I do for you?”

  The kid jumped down (on the other side of the car that was safely away from Tiny), yelled, “Dude, if you’re tiny, I’d hate like hell to see a big guy!” and took off running. There were only two other cars in the lot and as he passed one of them, a blue Toyota, Tiny thought he saw a quick glance, a single, jerky nod, from the boy toward the car.

  Beniamino Abbatista was not notably big on brain, but he had a well-honed ability to intuit when something wasn’t right, and he sensed that something was off here. How did this kid know his name? The sun was on its way down, but the car was only thirty feet away and he could see the driver clearly. A fleshy guy in a flat tweed cap, an old-fashioned newsboy’s cap. He wasn’t as big as Tiny, but he looked formidable enough. When he saw Tiny looking in his direction he quickly averted his eyes to stare with great interest at the totally blank, two-story concrete-block wall of Gionfriddo & Abrams Machine Works. His lips were pursed as if he was whistling to himself and Tiny was the last possible thing on his mind.

  That, Tiny definitely didn’t like. He considered walking up and asking what was going on, but maybe there was nothing to it. It wouldn’t be the first time his imagination had run away with him. Sensing trouble was one thing, actively looking for it was another. Besides, his bus, the 106, was just pulling up to the corner. With a last look at the car—the driver was still scrutinizing Gionfriddo & Abrams’s wall—he hopped on the bus and headed north.

  When it reached the Pioneer Square area fifteen minutes later he got off and went into Chong’s Kwik Stop Market. From the market’s shadowy interior he searched for the Toyota or the man in the cap, but saw neither. He hadn’t spotted them from the bus either.

  Still, he wasn’t convinced that all was well. He’d seen the Art World Insider yesterday and the cover had come as a shock. Ever since, he’d been half-expecting the appearance of unwelcome callers. The guy in the car certainly looked like one, and what was that business with the kid? It continued to bug him.

  A few minutes later he emerged with his bag of groceries and walked two blocks to Occidental Mall, the tree-lined, pedestrian-zoned block of Occidental Avenue South, where he had an apartment above one of its several art galleries. Once through the street door he jogged up the stairs and looked through the hallway window, which had a view of the street below and of the entrance to the building. Nothing, just the usual strollers, and diners, and street people. He began, very slightly, to relax.

  Nevertheless, instead of having his dinner in the apartment, he left through the building’s rear door, went down the back alley to the corner, came back around to the mall, and slipped into a wine bar across the street and several doors down from where he lived. There he took a candle-lit window booth from which he could unobtrusively keep an eye on his building.

  Nothing.

  He’d downed a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio to go with his double-order of smoked mussels with cucumbers and he’d gotten to feeling pretty good. His uneasiness seemed silly now, a touch of paranoia. After all, what were the chances of anyone even noticing an insignificant, two-inch-square image in the background of a magazine cover, let alone connecting it to the events of almost thirty years ago? And then connecting all that to him? Zip was about what they were. It was ancient history; there was probably hardly anybody around who even remembered it. He thought about another glass of wine, got a takeout cup of coffee and a hunk of apple cake instead, and went back to his apartment. At ten-thirty he turned off the lights and got into bed. He had taken no extra precautions. Ten minutes later he was snoring away. The night slowly progressed.

  And nothing happened. Not until the next morning when, wearing the pre-work tracksuit he put on to go down the block for his daily breakfast, he was enjoying his usual sixteen-ounce caffè al cacao, two almond croissants, and two brioches at one of Caffè Umbria’s outdoor tables under the trees. With the Umbria being the only place on the street that was open so early, it was particularly pleasant, the only time of day when the café- and gallery-lined block was quiet. It made the air fresher, crisper. He was sitting with a few of his Italian-American cronies, chatting away about nothing in particular, in a convivial patois that was three parts English and one part Italian, when he happened to look up the block. Whatever he’d been about to say flew out of his mind. There he was again, the guy with the newsboy cap, but on foot now, and this time he had someone with him, a near-lookalike; two bulging musclemen who couldn’t have been acting more like a pair of strong-arm thugs if they’d tried. They were at the street door to his building, fumbling with a set of keys. As he watched, they got it open, slipping furtively (they thought) inside and shutting the door behind them.

  He didn’t doubt for a second that there were shoulder holsters under the baggy tweed sport coats they were wearing on this warm September morning. He also had no doubt, not anymore, about what was going on and what he needed to do, and that he needed to do it in a hurry.

  “Devo andare,” he said abruptly. I have to go.

  Frowning, one of his friends pointed wordlessly at his plate. Go? When he’d eaten only a single brioche and had yet to touch a croissant?

  He didn’t answer. They watched in astonishment as he lumbered down the street in a heavy-legged jog that for him pass
ed for running, heading not in his usual direction, toward his apartment, but the opposite way.

  That day, for the first time in five months, he failed to show up for work.

  CHAPTER 3

  One week later.

  Okay,” Chris said, turning the car onto the airport expressway and heading north toward downtown Seattle, “enough mystery. Spill the beans.”

  Alix, in the passenger seat, had been looking out her window. “What beans? What are you talking about?”

  “Well, talk to me. How did things go in DC?”

  “Very well, thanks.”

  “And how’s Ted?”

  “Ted’s fine.”

  “And how are you two getting along?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  Chris laughed. “Well, thanks for all the news. No need to go into all that detail, though.”

  Alix smiled at her and continued to look placidly out the window at the darkened streets. Chris left her to her woolgathering for a while, but five minutes was all she could stand.

  “Oh, please, give me a break. You look like a kid who just found a new puppy under the Christmas tree. So tell me, what really happened back there? Hey, wait . . . you’re not going to tell me that so-called Rubens turned out to be the real thing, a brand-new, previously unknown, honest-to-God Rubens?”

  Alix laughed. “Better.”

  “Better?” She waited, but Alix just continued to smile. “Come on, Alix, you may as well tell me. You know you’re going to.”

  “Yes, but not till we get to my place. Over a cup of tea.”

  “Now you’ve got me really—”

  “What were you doing waiting for me at the airport, anyway? It’s practically the middle of the night. I was all set to catch the shuttle.”

  “Ten-thirty is not the middle of the night, and you know me, the original Vampire Lady. I don’t come fully alive until after dark. Anyway, I just thought you might prefer to ride in comfort in a nice, new, smooth, luxurious, silk-gray BMW 740i, that’s all.”

  Chris’s wealth (from stock options when Sytex, the “health care information technology advisory consultancy” she’d worked for, had gone public) was still so new that, given the right company, she made no bones about showing it off.