Cross Roads, page 7
A chorus of groans rippled around the table.
“What am I missing?” Lena asked.
Cruz said, “The more notoriety attached to an artwork, the greater its value.”
“When Ava’s mother owned Woman Walking, the painting appraised at $75,000,” Rohan said. “Now it’s worth twenty times that amount.”
“Who had the painting?” Phin asked.
“Unknown. The firm worked through an intermediary. One of the holder’s conditions was to remain anonymous.”
“How did Palmer come into possession of the piece?” Zeke asked.
“In order to pay Gridmore’s fee, Ava had to put her family heirloom up for auction last month.”
“Damn,” Cruz said, verbalizing the sentiment everyone was feeling.
Rohan’s attention shifted to Lena. “Palmer’s $1.2 million bid won.” She stared down at her thumbs, which seemed to be engaged in a Duel of the Nails.
What did she make of Walking Woman’s provenance? Was she aware of the painting’s tragic past? Did she empathize with Ava Sanson’s loss? Or did it all mean absolutely nothing to a woman who made her living off the blood, sweat, and grief of others’ hard labors?
“Good work, Rohan,” Zeke said before turning to Lena. “How did you get involved with Palmer?”
“Someone in the senator’s circle read an article in the Citizen-Times about the town of Maggie Valley’s renovation efforts on Harold House.”
“Is that the historic home that got hit by a tornado?”
Lena nodded. “A painting that hung in Thomas Harold’s study was ripped away by the storm and never found. The foundation raised the funds needed to commission a copy.”
She glanced around the table. “The incident made the senator realize the vulnerability of his new acquisition. He intends to display my copy in his home office and hide away the original Woman Walking in a safe room somewhere in his house.”
“There’s an unlabeled space off the master suite.” Rohan replaced the historical timeline with a schematic of Palmer’s mansion and drew a red circle around the area.
“He wouldn’t be the first millionaire to stare at his trophies while pulling on his underwear,” Phin said.
“Who else knew you had the original?” Zeke asked.
“The only people I know for sure are Palmer, his fiancée, his chief of staff, and the two men who delivered it. But there could be more.”
“Do you have their names?”
“Only his chief of staff—Craig Muller.” She bit the inside of her bottom lip as her eyes took on that faraway look one gets when deep in thought. “Palmer called me earlier today. He’s hosting an engagement party for his fiancée and wants to unveil his newest acquisition—or acquisitions—depending on how you look at it.”
“You don’t care for your client?” Rohan asked.
She gave him a level stare. “Liking a client isn’t a prerequisite to working together.”
Touché.
The clenching sensation around his chest suggested he liked her just fine. He simply didn’t trust her.
Heads on both sides of the table ping-ponged between him and Lena.
Time to move on. He didn’t want to give his relations any fodder for torment.
“Any thoughts on who would want to steal Woman Walking?” he asked.
“None.”
“What can you tell us about Palmer?” Zeke asked.
“Nothing, other than he’s keen on getting what he paid for by the end of the week. I don’t follow politics and we don’t have any mutual acquaintances.”
“How do ensure your client doesn’t resell your copy as an original?” Lynette asked.
“I don’t.” Her answer raised a few brows. “I’m hired to make a high-quality reproduction. What the client does with my work once they take possession is out of my hands.”
“You’re not bothered by a client using your work to dupe an innocent buyer?” Rohan asked.
“No.”
Rohan leaned back, more than a little disappointed in her answer.
“We’re not here to pick apart Miss Kamber’s business,” Zeke said. “We’re here to learn what she knows and track down the painting she hired us to find.”
“Look,” Lena said. “I know my attitude might seem callous, but no one should ever be duped. Not with today’s experts and technology available. Some collectors—professionals as well as amateurs—get caught up in the excitement of owning something rare and go against their better judgment. They trust the seller’s word, even when there’s a giant red flag flapping in their face.”
“I get that it’s a copy,” Phin said, “but how do you deal with the original author’s signature?”
“Depends.”
“On?” Rohan interjected when she didn’t seem willing to elaborate.
“The client.”
“The Caravaggio must look exactly like the original,” Zeke put in. “Exactly.”
“It will,” Lynette said, her gaze on Lena.
“It will to the extent I can use a high-quality photo instead of the original as reference,” Lena said.
“Understood,” Zeke said.
“If it makes y’all feel better,” Lena said, “the back of the canvas will carry my personal stamp as a professional copyist.”
“Not on the Caravaggio,” Zeke said.
“My stamp is nonnegotiable. It is the one thing I can do”—she held Rohan’s gaze—“to ensure the painting isn’t misrepresented.”
The acid slowly filling Rohan’s chest receded.
“Zeke’s right,” Cruz said. “Once you release the copy into our hands, you don’t want to be connected to it.”
“Why?” Everyone remained silent. “Please tell me I’m not taking part in something illegal.”
A ding sounded, and Rohan stopped sharing his screen before switching windows.
“You’re helping to right a wrong,” Zeke said. “For your own safety, it’s best you remain ignorant of the details.”
A brief silence ensued before she said, “Where do we go from here?”
“You replicate a masterpiece,” Zeke said, “and we hunt down another one.”
“Excuse me,” Rohan said, forcing his voice to remain steady, even though his heartbeat hit ten on the Richter scale. He grabbed his laptop and headed toward his office.
“Everything okay?” Zeke asked, concern in his voice.
“Yeah, just something I need to take care of.”
He hoped.
13
A bead of sweat crept through Rohan’s hair before it tickled its way down his right temple.
But Rohan wasn’t laughing. He was on the verge of shitting his drawers.
He analyzed the flow of data on his wall of monitors, even while the content of the email he’d received blared its dangerous intent through his mind.
Over and over and over.
“Hello, Rohan. It’s time to come back. Or else.”
Time to come back.
Come back.
The Collective.
They had truly found him.
He’d expected as much after the attempted breach yesterday and Lynette’s encounter with Miss Kamber, but hadn’t been sure. Hackers shot volleys across his server’s bow on a regular basis. Yet something about yesterday’s attack had felt different.
Personal. Angry. Over the top.
How had they found him? What digital clue had he left behind?
Questions, questions. No answers.
Throwing off his shock and recriminations, he waited for Lucy to give the all-clear. The methodical process slowed his heart rate and, when he swiped the perspiration from his temple, no more followed in its track.
By the time Zeke entered his office ten minutes later, all the security layers had updated to green.
PROTECTED.
Lucy had done her job.
He had done his job.
The knowledge did nothing to disintegrate the knot in his gut.
Zeke waved toward the monitors. “Something going down?”
Rohan swiveled back to his desk and closed the laptop. “Everything’s fine. Just some time-sensitive information I needed to follow-up on.”
Zeke studied him. “You’re not trying to avoid Lena?”
“Why would I?”
“You made your feelings about her clear.”
“And yet here we are.” When Zeke opened his mouth, Rohan waved off whatever company explanation his brother was about to give. “As Lena said, I don’t have to love and admire her to do my job.”
Zeke sent Rohan a knowing smile. “Good thing we didn’t have dry wood lying about with all those sparks flying between the two of you.”
More like flaming daggers.
“I’m not letting down my guard around her. She’s hiding something and I intend to find out what.”
Zeke shook his head. “Your relentlessness is part of what makes BARS successful. But I need you to divert your mental energy toward background checks on Palmer and his associates.”
“Can you have Cruz do the backgrounds? I’m going to be tied up with this for a while.”
“What is this?”
“Follow-up on the Gardner case.” The lie burned all the way down to his gut.
“I thought that case was done.”
“Not quite.”
Zeke knocked a knuckle on his desk. His expression conveyed extreme unhappiness. “I’ll ask Cruz to work on the background checks. You have until tomorrow to finish the Gardner case, then I need you focused on Kamber’s.”
Rohan gritted his teeth, then nodded. No sooner had Zeke disappeared down the hallway, Rohan’s laptop dinged again.
He lifted the display, and an image flashed on screen.
He frowned, not understanding what he was looking at. The orientation was . . . wrong. Then it hit him, and every cell in his body trembled with dread. The camera shot was from high above. A woman sat in a red chair, with her feet buried in a peach Ottoman and a sketch pad propped on her knees. Sheets of discarded paper littered the floor around her. Three easels lined up before her. The middle one empty.
Angelena Kamber.
Someone, or some thing, like a drone, had taken a picture of her through the glass roof.
Last night.
14
“Starting something new?”
Lena looked up from the clerk’s rhythmic scanning of paint tubes, brushes, and various other items she needed for the Blackwell project to meet the older woman’s gaze.
A good four inches taller than Lena’s five-and-a-half-foot frame, the clerk had a quiet, yet helpful, way about her. But Gayle spoke to a lot of people and shared bits of information she gleaned from one customer to the next. Not in a judgy, gossipy way. Just conversational.
Lena didn’t like parts of her life traveling from one stranger to the next. Who knew if word of her would make it to the wrong person.
If Lena answered yes to Gayle’s question, the clerk would want more details. Which would result in Lena delivering a mountain of lies or prevarication. She wasn’t above doing either to protect her privacy, but these days she tried to stick to the truth as much as possible.
As a general rule, she didn’t discuss her clients. But this was a small town, and she figured someone had noticed Rohan coming or going from her building. Which meant Gayle was more likely fishing for information.
“Restocking supplies,” Lena said.
“When are we going to see an original of yours hanging in the Triskelion Gallery?”
Never.
“Hard to say. Right now, I’m concentrating on perfecting my technique,” Lena said, keeping to the story she’d manufactured six months ago, when she’d moved to Steele Ridge. “I figured, if it worked for Picasso, it might work for me.”
“I’ve seen your reproductions. They’re quite extraordinary.”
Lena’s mind drifted back to her meeting with the Blackwells a few hours earlier. She could think of only two reasons why they wouldn’t want an identifying stamp on the back of a reproduction. They either intended to sell it as an original, which she doubted, given the way they’d grilled her, or they were going to use it to replace an original.
Which begged the question—who had a stolen Caravaggio?
She shook her head. None of her business. She had more pressing things to worry about right now.
“Thank you.” Lena paid for the supplies and exited the arts and crafts store.
In the old days, Lena would have spent weeks searching for the exact paints Caravaggio had used to paint the Nativity and roamed antique shops and flea markets, looking for old frames and stretcher boards.
A career forger, with a lot at stake, might even go to the extreme and find a seventeenth-century painting by a lesser-known artist, strip it down, and use the canvas.
Lena didn’t have to worry about her copy passing professional or scientific scrutiny. All she had to do was get the painting’s colors and texture and mood close enough to fool the untrained eye. Something she’d mastered a decade ago.
Next stop, the office supply store. She needed to sweet-talk the printer into doing a rush job for her. She wanted to get started on the Caravaggio as soon as she delivered Palmer’s painting.
Pausing at one of the few stoplights in downtown Steele Ridge, she waited for the walk symbol to light up while eyeing the line of stormy clouds billowing her way. Snow-white clouds morphed into different shades of gray—silver, then steel, then a roiling, angry iron.
A current of electricity that had nothing to do with the oncoming storm fired down her spine, lighting up her senses.
With a casualness she didn’t feel, she surveyed her surroundings, searching for the source of her unease as she drew a small, white-and-black-handled umbrella from her handbag. The weather could turn on a dime in the mountains, so she always had it with her—to keep her dry and to help ward off any unwanted attention.
Someone approached on her left, and her fingers tightened around her makeshift weapon.
She looked up to find a stocky man, wearing dark sunglasses and a long-sleeved T-shirt beneath a flannel overshirt. He stood a little taller than her, with gray hair speckling his sideburns and temples. His cheek bore the telltale signs of once having suffered from severe teenage acne.
He nodded toward her umbrella. “Looks like you came better prepared than me.”
The man seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Unlike most people who lived here, Lena avoided introducing herself to everyone she met. She wasn’t interested in making friends. Friends asked a lot of questions.
“Life in the mountains,” she said.
“At least we’re getting the rain. Folks out west haven’t been so lucky.”
A megadrought was sweeping over the far western states, eating away at crucial water sources for an agriculturally dense region and rising populations who had no access to groundwater. Throw in escalating temperatures, which contributed to even more evaporation and melts snowpacks earlier in the season, and you had a recipe that no one wants to make.
“Guess I should have listened to my husband and worn my raincoat,” a female chuckled on Lena’s right.
The woman’s pale, upturned face watched the darkening sky with concern. Wind whipped her ponytail around, freeing curly wisps of hair.
The walk symbol finally lit, and Lena said, “Be safe, y’all,” and, a little reluctantly, handed the woman her favorite umbrella.
The woman’s eyes widened in surprise, and she darted a look at the man before accepting the gift. “Thank you.”
“Can’t have your husband saying ‘I told you so,’” Lena said before darting across the street.
The first fat raindrop hit her dead center on the crown of her head, but she ignored it, putting everything she had into guiding her body through the normal motions of preparing for a downpour.
Zip up her jacket.
Hunch her shoulders.
Pick up speed.
Look for her stalker.
* * *
The rain beat down on Lena, turning her world into a gray slate of continuous static. All thoughts of visiting the office supply store had washed away.
When the wind whipped another set of tiny liquid knives into her face, she cursed her random act of kindness in giving away her only protection to a stranger.
She ran up the walkway leading to her building, angling her head to the left to keep the rain out of her ear. And nearly barreled into Rohan on her stoop.
“Fine weather,” he said, straightening from his slouched position against her building. His gaze traveled over her as if he were inspecting her for injuries.
Unlike her, not a drop of rain had trampled his clothes.
Damn him.
She brushed a sodden lock of hair out of her eyes. “I told you all I know about the burglary at the debriefing.”
Rather than be irritated by her testy tone, he smiled.
Smiled!
“I brought you a present.”
“No, thank you.” She passed her proximity card over the reader and heard the faint click of the door’s locking mechanism disengaging.
He reached down to pick up a cardboard cylinder resting against the brick building at the same time he opened the door. “You’ll like this one.”
“Right now, the only thing I would like is a hot shower and dry clothes.” She shot him a glare. “And privacy.”
“I’m the soul of discretion.”
She strode inside, not bothering to invite him in. He’d follow. Frankly, she was surprised he’d waited for her at the door rather than in her living room.
Had the situation been different, she might have insisted he come back in an hour. But she could still feel her stalker’s malevolent eyes cutting into her back. Being naked and alone didn’t strike her as the best idea at the moment.
Once they entered her loft, she grabbed a set of dry clothes and flipped on the bathroom light. She paused inside the door and pinned him with a warning look. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked past her shoulder, at the painting peering out from the bathroom’s depths.
