A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) (21 page)

“Where’d you get that idea? She was broke.”

“Are you sure? I thought—”

“Nope, she was broke. She was way, way overextended on the gallery thing, and she’d made some terrible investment decisions. She’s been one step ahead of defaulting on her loans for years, and recently she’s even gotten herself in debt, big-time, to a Phoenix loan shark.” He shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

“I see,” Alix said thoughtfully. “No wonder she was drinking.”

“And the drinking had to have affected her judgment. As Mendoza said, why else would she come up with the lamebrain idea that killing you was a good way to solve her problems?”

That really caught Alix by surprise. “Wait, wait, wait. Lieutenant Mendoza thinks she was behind the explosion? But he practically laughed at me when I suggested it.”

“That was then. Now he sees it differently.” He told her what Mendoza had told him about Liz’s phone call to the Hacienda Encantada. “Presumably, she hadn’t been expecting Chris to bring along her own art expert—”

“That’s true; not until a couple of days before I showed up. I didn’t know it myself till then.”

“Okay, so she didn’t have much time. She must have figured you’d know the painting was a fake, which meant she had to get you out of the picture before you nixed the deal with Chris, and what she came up with was murder. Not a great decision, but then clear thinking wouldn’t have been her strong suit at the time.”

“No. Okay, that could explain why Liz tried to kill me the day before yesterday, but who tried to kill me this morning? And why?”

“How do you know it wasn’t Chris they were trying to kill?”

“Do you really think that?”

“Nah, I think it was you, all right. As to the why…well, we’re still working on that.” He trailed off.

“I’ve been giving that some thought myself,” Alix said, “and the main thing I keep coming back to is that it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe everybody involved with this has been drinking too much,” he said with a faint smile.

“Even so. What, they were afraid I’d spot the painting as a fake? So, take it off the market, wait a while, and try again with another buyer somewhere else. Or, if it made them nervous, just burn the thing, forget about it, and get on with the next scam. That’s what I’d do—I wouldn’t go around murdering people.”

“I’m happy to hear that.” He was kidding, but she could see that he was taking her seriously.

“And then,” she continued, encouraged, “there’s Liz. If she was the one behind it all, or one of the ones, why was
she
killed? Given everything else that’s happened, it’s hard to believe she just had the bad luck to show up when someone was in the act of stealing the painting…and while we’re talking about the painting, why was anybody stealing it? I mean, given that it’s a fake…whew, this is giving me a headache.”

“It’s confusing, all right. But I do agree with you on one point for sure. It’s all got to have something to do with the forgery—with your identifying it as a fake.”

“‘With the
forgery
’? Are you saying you think it
is
a forgery now? Boy, things have sure changed in the last day or so.”

“Well, Mendoza says you called him yesterday to tell him there’s not much doubt about it.”

“And you trust my saying so? You didn’t yesterday in the evidence room.”

“No, no, no,” he said, and the smile was back, a playful one this time. “The contemptible Roland de Beauvais didn’t trust you. Special Agent Ellesworth trusts you implicitly. In fact, so much so that there’s something he’d like to ask your assistance with in his continuing pursuit of justice.” The playfulness faded from his face. “I’m serious, Alix. I could use your help with this case in a big way. It would take a couple of days of your time, though.”

Watch out now
, something inside her warned, and yet she already knew that she was going to do it, whatever it was. Ted wasn’t the only one with an interest in the pursuit of justice. Not only had Alix twice barely avoided being murdered, but the career she’d dreamed of was over and done with almost before it had begun, and if there was anything—
anything
—she could do to help Ted and Mendoza find the people responsible, she was game.

And then, of course, there was the little matter of Ted himself. If she didn’t take him up on whatever it was, this would probably be the last time she’d ever see him, and that was something she realized that she didn’t want. Alix was acutely, uncomfortably aware that she found this open, smiling Ted Ellesworth every bit as attractive as she’d found Rollie de Beauvais repulsive. And that was saying something. It was all too weird for words. An hour ago she had despised this man, found him utterly repellent, and now she felt—well, she wasn’t sure what she felt.

“What kind of help?” she asked, her tone painstakingly neutral. “Well, I know you were on your way to Taos for the New Directions conference. Are you still planning to go?”

“I’m not sure. It’s up to Chris, but I know that if we do go, it won’t be today. The hospital wants to keep her overnight.”

“But they won’t. Craig’s bound and determined to fly her back to Seattle tonight, and I suspect he’ll get his way.”

“To Seattle? Why?”

“Because he seems to think that medical care in New Mexico is accomplished by means of rattle-shaking and leeching. He wants her back in civilization. He’s already arranged a room for her at the University of Washington Medical Center for tonight.”

“Oh.” She reflected on this for a moment. “Then I guess I’ll be going back with them.”

“If you want to, but not necessarily.” Ted had a lingering swallow of coffee, making something of a production of it. Alix had the impression he was choosing his words with care. “I’ll be driving directly to Taos from here this afternoon. I’m signed up for the conference—as Roland de Beauvais, of course. It’s Liz’s baby, it’s full of the crowd that she dealt with, and I figure that at this point it’s my best bet to get more of a handle on the scam. And if I can come up with anything on her murder, Mendoza would like to know that as well.”

“That makes sense. Where do I fit in?”

“Well…” He hesitated. “I’ve got a pretty good background in art myself by now, but I’m obviously not in your league, and I’m worried about getting in over my head and blowing it. So I thought that if I could have somebody with real expertise at the conference with me, somebody I could trust, it could turn out to be invaluable.”

Her eyebrows went up. “And that would be me?”

He nodded. “You could drive there with me. You’re already registered for the meetings, and you have a room reserved at the Luhan House—”

“How do you know that?”

He grinned. “Ma’am, we’re the FBI. We know these things. Anyway, the Luhan House is where the movers and shakers will be, so I tried to get in there myself; I’d like to be in on some of the conversation there’s bound to be about Liz, but it’s booked up. I’m at the Casa Benavides just down the road.”

“So you’d like me to do your eavesdropping for you.”

“Yes, that’s pretty much it,” he said, surprising her; she’d expected him to hem and haw around it.

“Oh.” She’d been hoping for something that placed more demands on her expertise than gossip-sifting did, but still—

He mistook her reflection for concern. “If it’s your safety you’re worried about, I think you can put your mind at ease. Mendoza called the media yesterday to let them know the O’Keeffe’s a fake after all and to fill them in on the details. And they loved it; it made a great story. Every one of them ran with it; the five o’clock news last night, the paper this morning.
Three-Million-Dollar Painting in Murder of Prominent Canyon Road Art Dealer a Forgery!
So the word’s out, which means nobody has any reason to want you dead anymore, so if that’s what’s on your mind, you can relax.”

It hadn’t been on her mind at that moment, as a matter of fact, but it was nice to know all the same. “I’d have to talk to Chris first,” she said.

“Of course. You couldn’t just walk away and leave her wondering what happened to you.”

“Well, there’s that, yes, but—” Now it was her turn to hesitate. “But Chris has been picking up the tab for all this, and I can’t afford to stay at the Luhan House on my own. I’m going to need to get an advance on my fee from her.”

“You’re going to—?” With all his skills at duplicity, Ted couldn’t hide his surprise, but he recovered fast. “Oh, I thought you understood,” he said smoothly. “Naturally, the Bureau will pick up your expenses.”

She was puzzled at his reaction. What had he been so shocked about? It took a moment for her to realize what it was: why, he’d imagined she was
rich
. Now that she thought about it, it wasn’t so surprising. She
looked
rich, she knew that; a combination of her looks, her bred-in-the-bone bearing, and her way with her carefully chosen but oh-so-limited wardrobe from Le Frock. Besides that, he probably thought Geoff’s criminal career had set her up for life.

If he only knew.

“Then there’s no problem,” she said simply. “Sure, I’ll go.”

He smiled at her. “Great.” He finished his coffee and began to rise. “Well, you’ll want to talk to Chris, and I’ll—”

“No, wait. I’ve been cooped up inside ever since the accident, Ted. We have time to take a walk and get some fresh air before we leave, don’t we?”

“Sure, it’s only fifty miles or so.”

“Good, let’s walk a little then. There’s something I’d like to ask you too.”

There was fresh air aplenty to be found in the area around the hospital, but no place to walk except in and around the huge parking lot. Nevertheless, the day was sunny and breezy, it felt good to be out in it, and they decided to circle the path that ran around the perimeter.

“So,” Ted said when they’d walked quietly for a minute or two, “what did you want to ask me?”

Alix almost wished he’d forgotten. Still, it was something she needed to know. She took in a breath, slowly let it out—almost a sigh, but not quite—and began: “I assume you’re in the FBI’s art unit or whatever it’s called.”

“That’s right, the Art Crime Team—art squad, for short.”

“How long have you been with them?”

“Oh, about nine years, more or less.”

“With the art squad all that time?”

“Alix, I know what you want to know, and the answer is yes, I know who your father is, and although I wasn’t formally in the unit at the time, I did have some part in the investigation.”

She almost stopped walking but went on. “You helped in his arrest?”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she heard him heave a sigh of his own. He wasn’t any more eager to go into this than she was. “I guess I’d have to say yes, but it was from a distance. I gathered some information on two of the charges. I was in court for one of the trial days too—on the witness list, but they didn’t call me, so I got to watch.”

“I see. So…well, then, I can’t help wondering how you feel about…well, me. I mean, my involvement in all this.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with—” he began a bit stuffily, but then his native honesty interceded. “Okay, I admit it. I guess at first, when I heard that you were involved with Liz, I wondered whether…no, I suppose I
assumed
you were part of the scam.”

Alix nodded. What reasonable person wouldn’t have assumed it?

“And then, when I heard how your father had set you up in so many things, including—
especially
including—this job with Chris LeMay, it just seemed that the two of you must have something—”

It had taken a few seconds for the words to register, and when they did, she stopped him in mid-stride with a hand on his arm. “What are you saying?” She was stunned, hardly able to get the words out. “What do you mean, he got me this job?”

He peered at her. “Are you saying you didn’t know?”

“What do you mean, he got me this job?” she demanded again. She could hear the blood throbbing in her ears.

Ted hesitated. “Look, Alix, maybe it’d be better—”

“Ted. Please.”

“Okay then.” With a shrug, he told her frankly, almost brutally. When Geoff had learned that Alix was in Seattle trying to establish herself, he’d contacted a few of his old friends in the field and asked them to do what they could—

Alix choked out an uneasy laugh. “Am I really supposed to believe this?” But an echo of her last conversation with Geoff was working its way up into her mind.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am for getting you into this
, he’d said, then lapsed into incoherence. My God, it was true.

“Alix, believe me, it’s so. He asked them to see if they had any work they could send your way, or at least if they could recommend you, and one of them was a curator at the museum in Seattle, I forget his name—Renaissance art, I think.”

“Christopher Norgren,” Alix said dully, pulling the name from her memory banks. Chris had said Norgren was the person who’d told her about Alix’s apprenticeship with Santullo.

“Damn!” she said abruptly, then turned in a frustrated little circle. “Damn!” She was filled with…what? Anger at Geoff for meddling around in her life behind her back? At Ted for being the bearer of unwanted news? Disillusionment at finding out that what small success she’d achieved hadn’t been her own doing after all? Embarrassment—