by Nora Roberts
“A lot of people wouldn’t know the difference. You would.” He nodded at her. “I bet you could spot a forgery just by eyeballing it.”
She wondered if the blood had drained from her face or if it merely seemed that way. He’d gotten so close, and so quickly, while she’d been smugly congratulating herself on playing her part to perfection.
“Not always. A visual study isn’t, can’t be conclusive if the fake is well executed. It takes laboratory tests.”
“Like the ones you run here, the ones you were doing in Florence last month.”
“Yes, exactly like those.” The sweat that ran in a thin trail down her back was ice cold. “If you have an interest, I can arrange a demonstration. But not at the moment,” she said with a glance at her watch. “I really—” She broke off, swamped by a war of relief and nerves when Ryan came through the door.
“Miranda. How nice to see you again. Your assistant said I might find you here.” Butter smooth, he took her hand, brought it to his lips. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit late. Traffic.”
“That’s all right.” She heard the words but couldn’t feel her own mouth move. “I’ve been tied up for a while. Detective Cook—”
“Oh yes, we met, didn’t we?” Ryan offered a hand. “The morning after the burglary here. Has there been any progress?”
“We’re working on it.”
“I’m sure you are. I don’t mean to interrupt. Shall I wait for you in your office, Miranda?”
“Yes. No. Are we finished for now, Detective?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m glad to hear you’re not put off by the theft here, Mr. Boldari. Not everyone would loan a gallery all that art after its security was breached.”
“I have every confidence in Dr. Jones, and the Institute. I’m sure my property will be well protected.”
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to add on a few men.”
“It’s being done,” Miranda told Cook.
“I could give you the names of a couple of good cops who moonlight in private security.”
“That’s very kind of you. You could give the names to my assistant.”
“No problem, Dr. Jones. Mr. Boldari.” There was something between those two, Cook thought as he headed out the door. Maybe it was just sex. And maybe it was something else.
And there was something, a definite something, about Boldari. Maybe everything about him checked out neat as pins in a cushion, but there was something.
“Ryan—”
He cut Miranda off with an almost undetectable shake of the head. “I’m sorry you haven’t recovered your property.”
“We, ah, haven’t given up on it. I’ve arranged for lunch in our VIP lounge. I thought that would give us time to go over some of the plans for the exhibit.”
“Perfect.” He offered her his arm. “I’m anxious to hear your plans in more detail.” He walked her down the hall, up the stairs, keeping up inane chatter until they were safely alone in the small, elegant lounge. “Had he been grilling you for long?”
“It seemed like all my life. He talked about forgeries, wanted to know if I could detect one by just looking.”
“Really.” The table was already set for three, with appetizers of crackers and black olive pâté on hand. He spread one. “He’s a sharp cop, though the Columbo routine wears a little thin.”
“Columbo?”
“Lieutenant Columbo.” Ryan bit into the cracker. “Peter Falk, cheap cigar, rumpled trench coat.” When she only looked blank, he shook his head. “Your education in popular culture is sadly lacking. Doesn’t matter.” He waved it away. “He may actually be some help in all this before it’s over.”
“Ryan, if he makes the connection, if he pursues that angle, it could lead him to you. You’ve got the forgeries.”
“It won’t lead him to me, or to you. And in a month, give or take a few days, I won’t have the forgeries. I’ll have the originals. And we’ll both polish the smear off our reputations.”
She pressed her fingers to her eyes and tried to bring back that momentary sense of satisfaction she’d experienced. It just wasn’t there. “I don’t see how this is going to work.”
“You have to trust me, Dr. Jones. This is my particular field of expertise.” He gestured toward the place settings. “Who’s joining us?”
“Andrew.”
“You can’t tell him, Miranda.”
“I know.” She linked her hands together and came perilously close to wringing them. “He’s trying to get his life back. I’m not going to add to his stress by telling him I’m involved in planning a robbery.”
“If things go according to plan, it’ll be a burglary, and,” he added, taking her hands to soothe her nerves, “all we’re doing is taking back what was stolen. So why don’t we say you’re involved in planning a recovery?”
“That doesn’t make it less of a crime. That doesn’t make me feel less guilty when Cook gives me that hound-on-the-scent look and asks me about forgeries.”
“You handled him.”
“And I was starting to enjoy it,” she muttered. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Every step I’m taking or planning to take is outside the law.”
“Inside, outside.” He gave a slight shrug. “The line shifts more often than you might think.”
“Not my line, Ryan. My line’s always been firmly dug in one place.” She turned away. “There was a message on my phone machine here. From Carlo Rinaldi.”
“Rinaldi?” He set down the cracker he’d just spread. “What did he want?”
“Help.” She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t helping anyone, except possibly herself. What did that make her? “He asked me for help. No one believed him about the bronze. He must have gone to see my mother, because he said she tossed him out of her office. He said I was the only one who could help him prove the bronze was authentic.”
“And that’s what you’re going to do.”
“He’s dead, Ryan. He and Giovanni are dead. There’s nothing I can do to help them.”
“You’re not responsible for what happened to them. You’re not,” he insisted, turning her to face him. “Now ask yourself this . . .” He held her shoulders firmly, kept their gazes locked and on level. “Do you think either of them would want you to stop until you’ve finished? Until you’re able to prove the bronze is genuine? Until by proving that, you’re able to point the finger at whoever killed them?”
“I don’t know. I can’t know.” She drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “But I do know I can’t live with myself unless I do finish. One asked me for help, the other did me a favor. I can’t stop until I’ve finished.”
“The line’s shifted, Miranda. Whoever killed them drew it this time.”
“I want revenge.” She shut her eyes. “I keep waiting to feel ashamed of that, but I don’t. I can’t.”
“Darling, do you always question every human emotion you feel?”
“I suppose I’ve been feeling a lot more of them lately. It makes it difficult to think in a logical pattern.”
“You want to think in a logical pattern? I’ll help you. I want to hear your plans for the exhibition.”
“No you don’t.”
“Of course I do. The Boldari Gallery is lending you some very important pieces.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “I want to know what you intend to do with them. This is business.”
“Ryan—” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, and never had the chance to say it as Andrew opened the door and came in.
“Things are moving fast,” he commented, eyeing the way Ryan nibbled on his sister’s fingers.
“Hello, Andrew.” Ryan lowered Miranda’s hand, but kept it in his.
“Why don’t the two of you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Happy to. We decided to go ahead with our earlier plan for a cooperative loan between my gallery and your organization. Expanded on it. It has the benefit of raising a great deal of money for the NEA, and putting Miranda back where sh
e belongs.”
Ryan turned to the table, lifted a glass pitcher and poured three glasses of water. “Your mother was very enthusiastic about the project.”
“Yeah, I’ve spoken with her.” Which partially explained his sour mood, he supposed. “She told me you called her from New York.”
“Did she?” With a smile, Ryan passed the glasses out. “I imagine she assumed that’s where I was. Why don’t we let her, and everyone else, go on assuming that? So much less complicated. Miranda and I prefer to keep our personal relationship private.”
“Then you shouldn’t stroll through the building holding hands. The gossip mill’s already chewing up the grist.”
“That’s not a problem for me—is that a problem for you?” he asked Miranda, then continued smoothly before she could speak. “Miranda was about to tell me her plans for the exhibit. I have some ideas of my own for that, and the gala. Why don’t we sit down and see what we can come up with?”
Deciding it was best, Miranda stepped between them. “This will be an important event for us, for me personally. I’m grateful that Ryan wants to go ahead with it. It got me back here, Andrew, and I need to be here. All that aside, an exhibit of this scope is something I’ve hoped to do for years. Which is one of the reasons I can move quickly on implementing it. It’s been in my head a long time.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “After what happened in Florence, Mother would never have given me this chance unless Ryan had demanded to work with me.”
“I know. Okay, I know. Maybe it just takes me longer to switch gears these days.”
“But you’re all right?”
“I haven’t had a drink. Day three,” he said with a thin smile. And two nights of sweats and shakes and desperation. “I don’t want to go there with you, Miranda.”
“Okay.” She let her hand drop. It seemed they both had their secrets now. “I’ll tell catering we’re ready for lunch.”
It isn’t fair, it isn’t right. She has no business being back, being in charge again. I won’t have her ruining my plans. I won’t allow it. Years I’ve waited, sacrificed. The Dark Lady is mine. She came to me, and in that sly smile I saw a kindred spirit, a mind that could wait and watch and plan and accumulate power like coins in a jar. And in that smile I saw, finally, the means to destroy all of my enemies. To take what was mine, what was always mine.
I had ruined her. I had done it.
The hand that wrote began to shake, used the pen like a blade to stab at the page in the diary, viciously, until the room was full of ragged breathing. Gradually all movement stopped, and the breathing became slow and deep and even, almost trancelike.
Control was slipping, sliding out of those competent fingers, leaking out of that strong and calculating mind. But it could still be wrenched back. The effort was painful, but it could still be done.
This is only a reprieve, a few weeks in the eye of the storm. I’ll find a way to make her pay, to make them all pay for what was denied me. The Dark Lady is still mine. We’ve killed together.
Miranda has the forgery. It’s the only explanation. The police don’t have the weapon. How unlike her, how bold of her to go to Florence, to find a way to steal the bronze. I hadn’t thought such actions were in her nature. So I didn’t anticipate, didn’t add the possibility into the equation.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Did she stand and stare down at Giovanni? Was there horror and fear in her eyes? Oh, I hope so. Is fear dogging her still, like a baying hound snapping at her heels?
It is, I know it is. She ran back to Maine. Does she look nervously over her shoulder even as she strides down the hallowed halls of the Institute? Does she know, somewhere inside, that her time is short?
Let her have her reprieve, let her bask in the power she’s done nothing to earn. It will be all the sweeter when she’s stripped of it once and for all.
I’d never planned to take her life as well. But plans change.
When she’s dead, her reputation devoured by scandal, I’ll weep at her grave. They will be tears of triumph.
twenty-four
T he false moustache itched and was probably unnecessary. As were the contacts that changed his eyes from brown to an indistinct hazel and the long blond wig he’d fashioned into a streaming ponytail. His face and any exposed skin had been carefully lightened, toning down the gold hue to the pale and pasty complexion of a man much happier out of the sun.
Three earrings glittered on his right earlobe, wire-framed glasses with tiny round rosy lenses were perched on his nose. He rather liked the bloom they gave everything.
He’d chosen his wardrobe with care. Tight, pegged red pants, a saffron silk shirt with flowing sleeves, black patent leather boots with small heels.
After all, he didn’t want to be subtle.
He looked like a desperately fashionable, fanatically artsy type just skirting the edge of reasonable taste. He’d seen enough of the breed in his career to know the right moves, the right speech patterns.
He checked his face in the rearview mirror of the mid-sized sedan he’d chosen from Rent-A-Wreck. The car hadn’t been a pleasure to drive, but it had gotten him the sixty-odd miles to Pine State Foundry. He had hopes it would get him back to the coast when he was finished.
He took his cheap, scarred faux-leather portfolio case out of the car with him. Inside were dozens of sketches—most of which he’d borrowed, so to speak, from Miranda.
The forgery of the David had to have been cast somewhere, he thought. Somewhere, due to time constraints, locally. And this was the closest foundry to the Institute. The one, his quick search of records indicated, the staff and students used habitually.
He took out a roll of peppermints and began chewing one as he studied the foundry. The place was a scar on the hillside, he decided. Ugly brick and metal jagging up, spreading out, with towers puffing smoke. He wondered how closely they skirted EPA regulations, then reminded himself that wasn’t his problem, or his mission.
Tossing his ponytail behind his back, he slung the strap of the portfolio over his shoulder and headed in the direction of a low metal building with dusty windows.
In the heeled boots, adding a little swish was a matter of course.
Inside was a long counter with metal shelves behind, stuffed with fat ring binders, plastic tubs filled with hooks and screws, and large metal objects that defied description. At the counter on a high stool, a woman sat paging through a copy of Good Housekeeping.
She glanced up at Ryan. Her eyebrows shot up instantly, her gaze skimmed up and down. The slight smirk wasn’t quite disguised. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m Francis Kowowski, a student at the New England Institute of Art History.”
Her tongue was in her cheek now. She caught the scent of him and thought of poppies. For God’s sake, what kind of man wanted to smell like poppies? “Is that so?”
“Yes.” He moved forward, letting eagerness come into his eyes. “Several of my classmates have had bronzes cast here. That’s my art. I’m a sculptor. I’ve just transferred to the Institute.”
“Aren’t you a little old to be a student?”
He worked up a flush. “I’ve only recently been able to afford to pursue . . . Financially, you see.” He looked miserable, embarrassed, and touched the clerk’s heart.
“Yeah, it’s rough. You got something you want cast?”
“I didn’t bring the model, just sketches. I want to be sure it’s forged just exactly to my specifications.” As if gaining confidence, he briskly opened the portfolio. “One of the other students told me about a small bronze that was done here—but he couldn’t remember who’d done the casting. This is a sketch of the piece. It’s David.”
“Like in Goliath, right?” She tilted her head, turning the sketch around. “This is really good. Did you draw it?”
“Yes.” He beamed at her. “I was hoping to find out who did the casting on this so I could make arrangements for him to do my work. It
was about three years ago, though, according to my friend.”
“Three years?” She pursed her lips. “That’s going back a ways.”
“I know.” He tried the puppy look again. “It’s vitally important to me to find out. My friend said that the piece was beautifully done. The bronze was perfect—and whoever did the foundry work used a Renaissance formula, really knew his craft. The sculpture was like museum quality.”
He took out another sketch, showed her The Dark Lady. “I’ve
