Forger of Light

by Nupur Tustin

  She walked around to where Celine stood and put a reassuring arm around her.

  “Listen, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. Don’t we always?”

  Reynolds regarded them, bemused.

  “Must be nice to have a friend you can count on,” he said wistfully. “I never had anything like that.”

  Yes, he did. Remind him that he did, Sister Mary Catherine urged Celine.

  Celine didn’t have to ask who the nun was referring to. An image had accompanied the words.

  She turned to Reynolds. “What about Sofia?” At Sister Mary Catherine’s prompting, she added: “She never stopped loving you, you know.”

  “Oh yeah?” Reynolds’ smile was cynical. “Why is she working with my killer then?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Celine stood up, chair scraping back across the copper-hued tiles of the restaurant floor to accommodate her rising motion.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go wash up.”

  She caught Julia’s eye as she spoke.

  “Absolutely. Take your time.” The former fed smiled sympathetically at her. “It’s been a long day. I’ll place your order for you if you’re not back in time to do it yourself.”

  Celine smiled her thanks and set off for the restroom, weaving her way past the crowded lunch tables, the plexiglass-enclosed cashier’s desk, and the oil paintings of the Boston coastline hanging on the restaurant’s wine-red walls.

  Stopping at the Copper Plate Grill & Restaurant had been Blake’s idea. The name, when he’d mentioned it, had tugged at Celine’s mind as though it held some kind of significance. Something to do with what Reynolds knew, but she still hadn’t worked out what.

  But Blake had made it clear it was the Turkish restaurant’s location—rather than its Michelin-starred cuisine—that was its main draw that afternoon. It was en route to Cambridge Police Headquarters where Deputy Superintendent Vince Soldi was expecting them.

  “He wants an official statement,” Blake had informed them apologetically. “As well as our help generating a composite for Sofia. We can get a bite to eat on our way,” he’d added before Jonah, who was about to protest, could say a word.

  Celine felt the corners of her mouth twitching at the memory. With his large wire-rimmed glasses and his mouth hanging open, then abruptly closing, Jonah had looked exactly like a startled goldfish.

  The restaurant floor narrowed into a hallway. The restroom doors were blue, the copper female figure on the door in the left wall facing her male counterpart on the door across the hallway.

  She placed her palm on the hand-lettered Women’s inscribed within the copper sign plate, giving the door a tentative push. It yielded to her touch, revealing an exquisitely appointed square powder room.

  White tile rose from the floor to a height of four feet; a marble countertop with an oval mirror above the sink was on the left; a gold-framed still life—half-open red tulips in a crystal vase—decorated the wall across from it.

  It was charming—and restful, Celine thought as she turned the long-handled brass faucet in the sink. A gush of cold water gurgled out. She splashed her eyes and her face, feeling the tension drain out of her.

  Julia was right. It had been a long day. The two hours they’d spent inside Reynolds’ apartment had been especially exhausting. Not to mention, futile.

  She was no closer to knowing what information Tony Reynolds had about the Gardner theft now than she’d been last night when she’d heard he’d been murdered.

  She glanced up at the oval mirror; a white frame bordered it. Within its shiny surface, her face looked paler than usual, starkly white against the red-gold strands of her long hair. There were shadows under her eyes—the same shade of green as Reynolds’.

  A sudden movement caught her eyes. Startled, she was about to snap her head around when the sculptor’s familiar figure materialized behind her. His tall frame shimmered into and out of focus within the mirror’s polished surface.

  “Do you remember what you saw when we met?” he asked.

  “When we met in your apartment?” she faltered. Somehow he’d found a way to get out of his apartment. She’d thought his energy was bound to it.

  “No.” Reynolds sounded impatient. “At the winery.”

  Celine cast her mind back, struggling to remember. Hard to believe it was only two days ago that he’d come out to Paso Robles.

  “You read my mind, didn’t you?” he continued when she remained silent. “When we shook hands? I could tell from the shell-shocked look on your face.”

  Oh! Memory returned—bringing with it the shock of images that had raced into her mind. Green wallpaper. A gold-framed portrait. A hairy tarantula.

  “You’re remembering.” A smile of relief eased the tension in Reynolds’ mouth. “Now you know where it is. Keep it safe.”

  “Wait!” She turned frantically around. “Keep—” He disappeared before she could complete her question: keep what safe?

  She remained frozen, eyes fixed on the stretch of empty marble between herself and the powder room door.

  The jiggling door handle and a sotto voce “Hello! Anyone in there?” yanked her consciousness back to the present—and to the whoosh of water raining into the marble sink.

  Waste not, want not, Celine, her guardian angel said at the same time as the significance of the sound rushing through her eardrums sunk in.

  Dear God! The faucet was still running.

  She turned in time to avert a crisis.

  Jonah was gone when she returned to their table.

  “He got a call from the nursing home. He needs to check on his mother,” Julia explained as Celine sat down. The former fed took a sip of her coke. “I can’t say I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Celine nodded. “We should go to the Gardner when we’re done at Cambridge PD,” she reminded her friends again. Maybe Reynolds’ installation would hold some clues to what he’d known in life. If nothing else, they’d be able to share what little they’d learned with Penny.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “You think one of his clients did him in?” Vince Soldi asked.

  Blake was aware of the Deputy Superintendent watching him as he flipped through the pages of the Moleskine pocket notebook in which Reynolds stored his clients’ contact information.

  “That’s what it looks like.” He heard Soldi’s door open and the muted tap-tap of high heels enter the office. ADA Mariah Campari, he guessed.

  “Anthony Reynolds had a roster of clients that included some of the wealthiest families in Boston, Special Agent,” the newcomer said. “Are you really going to accuse one of them of murder?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. A slim woman with long legs, a haughty posture, and hair cut shorter than his stared back at him—the glint of challenge hardening her brown eyes.

  With longer hair framing her features, ADA Mariah Campari might have been a reasonably good-looking woman. But the severe haircut exposed the broad planes of her face, and with her flaring nostrils, she was about as appealing as a man in a skirt.

  Ordinarily, he would have risen to greet her. But a diehard feminist like Campari would probably feel the heat of male oppression if he behaved like a gentleman, so Blake kept his rear glued to the chair.

  “ADA Mariah Campari, I presume,” he said with a smile. “Blake Markham, FBI. I’m not planning to accuse anyone. I’m merely exploring a possible avenue of investigation.”

  “That a burglary gone wrong was perpetrated by one of Reynolds’ clients?” Campari strode the few steps toward Soldi’s desk and dumped her leather case on it.

  Blake turned to Soldi. “Don’t tell me you’re buying the burglary angle. Reynolds wasn’t surprised by a burglar. He left his apartment only once that morning to oversee the installation of his works at the Gardner.”

  “He left it a second time with you, special agent,” Campari countered before the Deputy Superintendent could respond. “The killer entered the building through a side door.
So could a burglar.”

  It was an idiotic theory and Blake relished pointing out the gaping hole in it.

  “You think our burglar thoughtfully waited until Reynolds completed his call to the Director of the Gardner Museum before killing him?” Blake exchanged a glance with Soldi.

  He sure hoped Campari was playing devil’s advocate. If not, she was just the type of airhead who gave blondes a bad name.

  But, Jesus Christ, she wasn’t kidding.

  “The place was trashed,” she insisted, leaning across the table aggressively. “I’ve seen the crime scene photos.”

  “Ma’am, I was at the crime scene. The killer—or someone else who came afterward—ransacked the place, looking for whatever work of stolen art Reynolds had stashed away.”

  “You think he had the art?” Soldi cleared his throat. “Not just information about one of the stolen items—but the item itself?”

  “It seems to be what the killer was looking for. By the way,” Blake continued, recalling Celine’s insights, “how many sets of unknown fingerprints did your guys find in their initial walkthrough?”

  Soldi looked as though he was suffering from a bout of indigestion. “Two. We haven’t identified them yet, but neither of them matched the victim. You think the killer had an accomplice?”

  “I didn’t know you’d picked up two sets of fingerprints.” Campari spoke through clenched lips. Blake got the idea the second set of prints was off-putting.

  Why, he wondered. Was a burglar with an accomplice harder to accept than a lone operator?

  “Three, if you count Sofia’s.”

  He had a strong suspicion she hadn’t been informed of that either.

  “Sofia?”

  “The woman Special Agent Markham and his friends caught breaking into the apartment today,” Soldi explained.

  “You know her name?” The ADA’s eyes glittered with barely concealed suspicion—like a cobra preparing to strike. She tossed her head, flicking a straggling lock of hair off her forehead.

  Blake shrugged. “She used it at the Starbucks when she placed her order. Got a cup for herself and the one she drugged Cowan with. Jonah Hibbert, the reporter who was with us, did some asking around. Found out her name and that she was Reynolds’ ex.”

  He was deliberately fudging the details, not wanting to reveal the source of his information. Casually attributing them to Hibbert was the best way to do it. Blake was guessing neither Campari nor Soldi would think to question the reporter too closely, if at all, about these mundane facts.

  Campari swallowed the explanation.

  “If this Sofia was a former girlfriend”—she shrugged—“couldn’t she have been there for personal reasons? To retrieve her effects, a photograph, letters—things like that.”

  “Seems a little strange to wait until after a man’s murdered to do that,” Soldi replied, revealing he did possess a backbone, and it wasn’t entirely made of jello.

  “Not to mention that they’d broken up sometime back.” Blake didn’t feel the need to attribute this tidbit to Hibbert. Logic had led him to that conclusion. Reynolds had a long reputation as a skirt-chaser.

  Based on Celine’s insights, that must have started when Sofia dumped him.

  But even without it, it was well known that none of Reynolds’ affairs lasted long enough for any woman to consider herself his girlfriend. Clearly any woman who could legitimately claim that status was long in the past.

  “And you know this how, Special Agent?” Campari placed her hands on her hips. Standing like that, she appeared menacing, like an Amazon. Her slenderness, Blake realized, was deceptive. She was quite powerfully built, muscular.

  Undeterred, he explained his reasoning.

  “Okay,” she grudgingly conceded. “I see what you mean. Doesn’t mean she was working with the killer.”

  “Would be quite the coincidence if she wasn’t,” Soldi said, exhibiting more gumption. “But,” he scratched his chin. “I still don’t see why the killer has to be one of his clients.”

  Campari favored the Deputy Superintendent with a smile, keeping it plastered on her face as she turned to face Blake.

  “I have to say I don’t either, Special Agent.”

  Her arguments were so easily refuted Blake wondered where—and how—she’d managed to get her law degree.

  “I didn’t say the killer was a client. But logic leads me to believe that’s where we should be looking. Reynolds claimed to have information about the Gardner heist. Most likely he’d discovered the location of one of the stolen works. A recent revelation, I imagine. Which means the information could only have come through a client.”

  The sour expression on Campari’s face intensified as he spoke. But Soldi, at least, was buying the theory. They were looking for a white-collar individual, likely with no priors.

  The Deputy Superintendent rubbed his protruding belly. “And the client kills Reynolds to stop him getting the word out? Makes sense.”

  “Or,” Blake decided to share the other hypothesis Celine’s insights had given them, “Reynolds’ client gives him the object for safekeeping. When Reynolds realizes he’s holding a hot item, he gets nervous—”

  “Yes, but why would anyone give a sculptor he patronized a stolen item to hold onto?” Campari interrupted.

  Blake noted the use of the masculine pronoun. “You’re assuming the killer was a man?”

  “I don’t think a woman would have the strength to pull off a murder like that, do you?” she snapped back. “And my question still stands: why would any man ask someone else to hold onto a supposedly valuable possession?”

  “Well now, Ms. Campari,” Soldi rumbled, “there are several reasons for a man to hide his assets. With the kind of divorce laws we have, you can hardly blame a guy for trying. . .” He spread his hands out, gaze sliding to Blake for support.

  “Divorce!” A light bulb blazed in Blake’s head. He hadn’t thought of that.

  He’d figured the killer—a white-collar individual associated with a mobster—could only be a moneyman. Some kind of accountant, perhaps.

  A man like that could come under financial scrutiny for a variety of reasons.

  But divorce made just as much sense—more, perhaps.

  “You’re definitely onto something, Soldi.” Blake tapped the Moleskine notebook. “We need to pay special attention to anyone going through a divorce.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  How’d it go?” Julia asked Blake as the revolving glass door conveyed them out of Cambridge Police headquarters. “Did they swallow our line of thinking?”

  Celine was only half-listening as she stepped out after them, squinting at the late afternoon sun that suffused the narrow street.

  “I think they bought it. Listen!” Blake scanned both ends of the street lined with parked police cars, fished out a small notebook from his jacket pocket, and slipped it into Julia’s hand. “Do me a favor. When we get in the car, take pictures of every page in that notebook before I realize I accidentally walked off the premises with a piece of evidence.”

  “You filched evidence?” It wasn’t the kind of thing Celine would have expected from a by-the-book kind of guy like Blake Markham. “Couldn’t Soldi have made you a copy?”

  “The problem is”—Blake prodded her elbow, nudging her toward Rogers Street where their armored vehicle was parked—“this is Cambridge PD’s murder, and they—or at any rate, the Assistant DA on the case—don’t want anyone butting in.”

  At five-eight, Celine was only four inches shorter than Blake, but she found herself scurrying to keep up with his long strides.

  They turned the corner onto Rogers, Blake’s watchful eyes continually sweeping their surroundings. “Between you and me, I don’t think Soldi would mind a helping hand. The link to the Gardner theft is a complication he doesn’t need.”

  Reynolds’ murder was a complication she could’ve done without as well, Celine thought ruefully as Blake propelled her to their parked car.
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  Once inside, Blake directed the driver to back out of their parking space and circle the block. Julia, seated beside Celine, flipped the pages of the slim notebook, briskly snapping photos with her iPhone.

  “Getting everything?” Blake tossed the question over his shoulder.

  “Yup.”

  “Is there a Wozniak in there?” Celine leaned over to take a look at the tiny white pages filled with Reynolds’ sprawling writing. The Polish name she’d sensed earlier had begun echoing in her head again while they were at Cambridge PD headquarters.

  There, working with the sketch artist—a police officer who operated the SketchCop software—she’d heard the name as clearly as though someone in the room had voiced it.

  “Doesn’t look like it.” Julia kept her head bent over the notebook. “I’ll let you know if I see it.”

  Sofia Wozniak. The two names had passed fleetingly across Celine’s mental screen as though she were picking up on a thought that had briefly surfaced in the minds of one of the people in the room.

  Apart from herself and Julia, there’d been Vince Soldi, ADA Mariah Campari, the sketch artist, and a couple of other officers.

  “I wonder if Sofia’s last name is Wozniak,” Celine said.

  “What makes you say that?” Blake snapped around to face her. Even Julia looked up.

  “You think that’s the reason you heard the name as we passed the Starbucks near Reynolds’ place?” Julia probed. “You had that strange craving for a peppermint mocha about the same time, didn’t you?”

  She’d told Julia about that while waiting for the crime scene technicians to finish up at Reynolds’ apartment. It had obviously been a psychic message; she’d never been the coffee-guzzling type. The single cup she drank in the morning was all she needed of the stuff.

  “That’s not the reason, I’m afraid. Although it should be.” Celine’s eyes narrowed, following the rabbit hole her hunch was leading her down.

  Outside the tinted car window, traffic streamed slowly past the armored vehicle. They passed a couple of brick buildings, then a nearly empty parking lot.