by Nupur Tustin
“Yes, that is good news.” Penny smiled. “I shouldn’t complain.” She squeezed Celine’s arm and gave Julia and Blake a wry smile. “I know you’re doing your best. And you’re getting results. Finally.”
But Belle who was standing behind the long tables at the center of the gallery shook her head. Her eyes bore into the self-portrait behind them.
Belle says you’re missing the mark, Sister Mary Catherine warned her. You’re off-target.
Celine turned around. Lines of Authenticity. The title of Reynolds’ exhibition hovered on her metal screen.
Was there something wrong with the self-portrait? What were they missing?
Blake noticed Celine’s eyes shift toward the Rembrandt self-portrait. Was there a problem with the work? The question entered his mind for no reason he could fathom.
Maybe it was the wrinkle of concern creasing Celine’s forehead. And the fog of bewilderment shrouding her green eyes.
“Is that authentic?” he asked Penny—the question coming out a little more brusquely than he’d intended. She was offended; he could see that by the way her lips pursed tightly together in response.
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Blake shrugged. “It was nearly stolen. It seems, I don’t know”—he spread his hands wide—“too much of a lucky break that it was left behind. Why not steal all the Rembrandts in the room? Why leave one behind?”
“Wonder if that says something about the person who organized the theft,” Celine mused quietly. Penny’s outraged gaze ping-ponged from his face to Celine’s like a tennis ball tossing from racquet to racquet. “It would be such a low blow to steal that self-portrait, knowing how much it meant to Belle.”
“Belle?” Penny’s eyebrows rose, motivated by what emotion Blake couldn’t tell.
Either the Museum Director really had no idea who Belle was. Or she knew perfectly well whom Celine was referring to, and considered the young woman’s use of the nickname over-familiar and presumptuous.
“She’s talking about Mrs. Gardner—Belle Gardner,” Julia calmly explained. How his former colleague could remain so unfazed no matter what the circumstance, Blake had no idea. His own feelings inevitably spilled over into his expression and his words.
And Penny Hoskins was no different.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She expostulated. “It’s that insider job business again, isn’t it?” Her lips compressed into a thin line of irritation. “Mrs. Gardner died long before the theft took place in 1990. Anyone who knew her well enough to care whether or not she’d be hurt by the theft of that portrait was long dead as well.”
“But,” Blake persisted, deeply curious now and unwilling to give up, “the painting was taken down and almost stolen. You didn’t have a psychic back then to tell you why that happened. Did no one wonder whether a fake had been substituted? Wouldn’t it have been natural to have it examined?”
“No, it wouldn’t, Blake,” Penny snapped. “The entire staff was in shock—understandably—when the theft was discovered. We—they—were all just grateful that this one painting had been left behind.”
Blake suppressed a groan of frustration. He’d done it again—put his big foot in it.
His eyes sought Celine’s. She seemed to understand the thread he was pursuing.
“But, Penny,” she began, “can we be sure this painting is a Rembrandt? I’m wondering why Reynolds keeps showing it to me in conjunction with his exhibition. Lines of Authenticity? How does that refer to Rembrandt?”
Yes! Blake clenched his fist, resisting the urge to punch the air with it. That was precisely his point.
But Penny didn’t seem to understand. She closed her eyes wearily and let fall a sigh so loud, Blake was convinced it was audible in the courtyard below.
“Listen, people. The panel has been cleaned since then. Several times, in fact. We schedule cleanings at regular intervals. Trust me, if there’d been the slightest problem with the painting, our restorers would’ve picked up on it instantly.”
“Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?” Julia boomed cheerily making Blake wince. From where he stood, there was nothing cheerful about the situation. It seemed that either Celine had lost her touch or that Reynolds was giving them the runaround.
Why not indicate the specific work he had information about? Why go to such lengths to provide clues in such a roundabout manner?
“I still don’t understand why Reynolds thought it was important for you to see the self-portrait,” he griped to Celine. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just show you the work of art he had in mind?”
He could see from Celine’s face that the question had resonated with her. But Julia responded instead. “I think it was a shorthand way of referring to Rembrandt. There was more than one of his works stolen, you know.”
Sure, he knew that. He’d seen the file. But he let it go.
“Okay. And the sculptures in the Hofstetter Gallery. How do those relate?”
“Oh, I can answer that.” Penny’s lips stretched into a beatific smile.
She was in her element—pontificating on the art world, the old masters and their works.
“You see Rembrandt was quite an unusual artist. We know him for his oil paintings. But he also left behind a huge collection of drawings and sketches. In his own day, he was well known for his etchings. They were enormously popular at the time.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Celine said slowly, as though some aspects of Penny’s explanation fit whatever she was seeing in her mind, while others didn’t. Her next remark made it clear she was thinking about the very first sculpture on display—the collection of art equipment. “Rembrandt did experiment in different media.”
“Quite successfully, as I understand it,” Julia put in.
“Oh yes.” Penny nodded.
All right, Blake thought. That still didn’t explain the rest of the pieces on display. The plaster of Paris jack-o’-lanterns, for instance. Blake was no art connoisseur, but he didn’t think Rembrandt had painted any jack-o’-lanterns.
He decided against pursuing it, however. The women were satisfied Reynolds was leading them to a Rembrandt. Blake expected they’d find out soon enough which one.
He felt the subtle vibration of his phone against his hip and pulled the instrument out of its holster.
Ella.
Chapter Forty-Two
Hurriedly excusing himself, Blake stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the museum’s courtyard.
“Hello.” He held the phone firmly to his ear as he stood by the parapet looking down at the clusters of blue and white hydrangea surrounding the stone-and-glass Roman mosaic below him.
“Blake, it’s Ella,” his personal assistant began, rather unnecessarily, he thought. He knew exactly who it was. “Listen, I ran the partial you read out to me, got quite a few names, but no Sofia.”
He digested this. So Sofia had driven someone else’s car to Cambridge. That wasn’t a surprise.
“Blake?” Ella’s voice rose, anxious.
“Still here.” He angled the mouthpiece up as he spoke. “Listen, so none of these cars are rentals, right? She was driving a car registered to someone else?”
“None of the plates I’m looking at are reported stolen. Meaning—”
“Meaning, she may have been driving the killer’s car.” A surge of excitement pulsed through Blake. They were getting closer.
“Or whoever ordered the killing,” Ella said. “Some of the vehicles on the list are registered to women.”
“Or whoever searched the place a second time,” Blake mused. Was Sofia working for the woman who’d slipped into the apartment shortly after Reynolds had been killed and torn the place apart?
“Searched the place a second time?” Ella’s strident tones pierced his ear. “What do you mean searched the place a second time?”
“I thought I’d mentioned it to you.” He explained what Celine had discovered.
“If you want my opinion, w
hoever it was had to be in league with Reynolds’ killer as well,” Ella provided a deft analysis of the situation. “Who else would have a motive to go in there?”
“Anyone who wanted to make a quick buck on a Rembrandt.”
“Rembrandt? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Nope, Reynolds had the goods on a Rembrandt.” He gave her the details. “If only we knew which one.”
“Looks like you’ve made good progress.” Ella hesitated.
That gave Blake pause. His personal assistant had cut herself off so abruptly, it was obvious. That usually meant he’d overlooked something.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” he asked after hearing crickets for several seconds.
“You know that partial you had me track down?”
“Yup. What about it?”
“It may or may not mean anything, Blake, but the SAC wanted me to track down the same plate. He had the tag end of it just like you did.”
“I see.” Blake frowned. He didn’t see at all. And he didn’t like it either. But he needed to probe a little further. “Walsh give you a reason?”
“Just that his golfing partner had caught a suspicious vehicle hanging around his neighborhood and wanted it checked out.”
“Today?”
“Around noon. That caught my attention. It’s highly unlikely given when you guys saw her vehicle. Walsh tried to check it out himself but didn’t know the DMV codes to access the data.” She giggled. “He was really upset about that.”
“I’ll bet he was.” Blake’s lips twitched as he pictured Walsh, red-faced and irate, bursting into the anteroom where Ella was stationed.
He made a quick decision.
“Do me a favor. Don’t give Walsh any information until I’ve had a chance to look over what you’ve found.”
“Sure. Anything else?”
“See if you can find out who Walsh’s golfing partner is—assuming that isn’t just a cockamamie ruse he came up with. If the guy exists, he could be a man named Wozniak.
“Wozniak?” The faint scratching of Ella’s pen scribbling his instructions ceased. “How do you figure that?”
“Just a hunch. Based on the fact that it might be Sofia’s last name as well. At least that’s what Celine thinks. Check it out, would you?”
Ella was still puzzled. Blake could tell because her pen hadn’t resumed its scribbling.
“So you think Sofia somehow managed to find out you guys are onto her and got who—Dad or her hubby?—to press the SAC for information?”
Put like that, Blake had to admit, it seemed far-fetched. Not to mention troubling. How could Sofia have known she’d been found out? But who else could’ve informed SAC James Patrick Walsh—or his golfing partner—about the partial they were looking into?
Blake gripped the cold parapet. It all came back to the one thing he’d been worried about right from the start. There was a leak within the FBI—a leak that could cost him this investigation.
“Just find out what you can, Ella. And be discreet,” he warned tersely before ending the call. “Looks like someone’s watching us.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Slipping her feet free of her sandals, Celine stretched her legs out with a grateful sigh. Four months ago when she and Julia had visited Boston, they’d stayed at the Revere Garden Inn, a small, comfortable family-owned establishment in Brookline.
This time the FBI had made all the arrangements, and judging by the opulence that surrounded them, the agency had stinted no expense.
The executive suite Ella Rawlins had booked for them in the Boston Plaza Hotel was nothing short of exquisite. Queen-sized rooms faced each other across a large living room furnished in what appeared to be a French rococo style.
Dirck and John would’ve known, Celine thought, quietly taking in the beautiful room.
She was seated in a fauteuil—a Louis XVI-style open armchair upholstered in blue. Julia had commandeered the white-and-blue chaise lounge, and they’d left the more plush armchair—a bergère, if Celine knew her furniture—for Blake.
He was still on his cell phone, talking in a low voice with Ella as he paced the carpeted floor by the window.
The hotel had brought up a light dinner—fluffy omelets, a green salad, and a basket of hot dinner rolls—which waited for them on the mahogany trolley room service had wheeled up. A pot of coffee and another of tea sat on a tray painted with poppies on the gilded glass-topped coffee table.
With another barely stifled sigh, Celine picked up the coffeepot.If only she could sneak in a hot bath. But that indulgence would have to wait until Blake left their suite.
She eyed the special agent as she pushed the cup of coffee she’d poured across the table to Julia. She lifted the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea—white Oolong. At nearly seven o’clock, it was too late for caffeine of any kind.
But it had been such a long day and she was so beat, Celine felt she needed it.
Especially if they were planning to pull an all-nighter on this case.
Taking a sip of her tea, she cast another glance at Blake. If only he’d go. All she wanted to do right now was to slip out of her clothes, into a warm bath, and then into bed.
When she finally turned her head, she caught Julia watching her with an amused smile.
“Don’t worry,” the former fed said with a grin, “rest is definitely on the cards tonight.” She gestured toward Blake with her cup. “If he isn’t out of here in an hour, I’ll shove him out myself. There’s just so much I can take.”
Julia’s eyes—Celine realized with a guilty start—were red-rimmed and swollen with exhaustion. The wrinkles on her weather-beaten face had deepened. Silvery tufts of her hair had escaped their ponytail and framed her face like stiff, matted strands of hay.
But the former fed was as stoically cheerful as ever.
“Any news?” she asked as Blake finally ended his call and joined them at the coffee table.
“I’m not sure.” The special agent sank into the bergère. Wearily, he rubbed his forefinger and thumb over his eyes. “Ella managed to squeeze out the name of Walsh’s golfing partner. It’s not Wozniak, so that’s a dead end.”
“What is it, did she say?” Julia took a dinner plate off the trolley, handed it to Celine, and took a second plate for herself. “Don’t mind me,” she excused herself to her former colleague. “My stomach’s growling. Want to eat?”
“Sure.” Blake dumped a dinner roll and a generous serving of salad onto the remaining plate and pulled it toward himself. He shoveled a bite of omelet into his mouth before responding to Julia’s question.
“It’s Norton.” He took another bite and chewed. “Not exactly the kind of name anyone would be likely to make up. If Walsh wasn’t lying about the man’s name, it’s unlikely he’d be lying about Norton’s interest in the same partial we’re trying to run down.”
He stuck his fork in another piece of omelet. “Makes one wonder if this isn’t all just a simple coincidence.”
“Norton,” Celine repeated. The omelet—stuffed with ham and oozing with cheese—suddenly felt overly rich. She put her plate down, appetite gone. “Did you say, Norton?”
“Yup,” Blake mumbled through a mouthful of salad. “Norton. Hugh Norton.”
Celine sought Julia’s eyes, troubled. Did Walsh have any idea who he was consorting with? Worse still, why wasn’t Blake more worried?
“It was never officially in the FBI books,” Julia quietly explained. “Bill McCormick made sure of that. I wondered about it at the time. But we’d been chasing so many cock-and-bull theories by that time, I figured he’d decided there was no point adding one more to the file.”
The clink of Blake’s plate as it settled on the glass-topped coffee table startled Celine.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What isn’t in the files? What did Bill McCormick make sure of?”
“You’ve never heard of Hugh Norton?” Julia countered.
“No.”
Blake frowned. “Who is he?”
“A wealthy art collector—” Celine began.
“He’s in the art insurance business,” Julia interrupted her. “We discovered that seven years ago when we were looking into a dicey tip about the Gardner’s gu turning up.”
“Supposedly at his house,” Celine added.
Between herself and Julia, they managed to bring Blake up to speed in about five minutes. Blake listened thoughtfully, asking a few questions here and there.
“Let me get this straight. You never found the gu.”
“What Norton had in his home was clearly an imitation,” Julia responded crisply. “Very well done, but an imitation nonetheless.”
“So . . .” Blake frowned. Hunched in his chair until now, he sat up, eyes narrowed, struggling to understand.
He didn’t agree with their reasoning. That much was clear.
Celine leaned forward.
“If it weren’t for Laurie’s murder—cleverly staged to look like an accidental fall,” she explained, “there wouldn’t have been any reason for suspicion. Why kill Laurie if it could be so easily proven she was mistaken? Why not let the law take its course? Prove her guilty, ruin her reputation in the art world.”
Just like they’d ruined hers, Celine thought.
She couldn’t help feeling bitter and disenchanted about that time of her life. A part of her had died then just as surely as it had several years before when her parents had been killed—and their murderer allowed to go free.
Justice is still worth fighting for Celine, Sister Mary Catherine whispered. You know that, don’t you, my dear?
“And Bill McCormick was one of the most corrupt agents the bureau had at the time,” Julia’s voice threaded in with the nun’s.
Blake smiled. “So we’re looking at guilt by association?”
Celine knew what he was referring to. Julia had been on the team of agents that had taken down Boston mafia underboss Gennaro Anguilo. A rival gangster, Whitey Bulger, had helped in the takedown. But years later it had come out that some of the very agents involved in the Anguilo case had forged a nefarious alliance with Bulger.
