Counterfeit Conspiracies (28 page)

Everything was suddenly absurd, and I walked and laughed, and generally made a fool out of myself on that somber afternoon. Jack plodded patiently beside me, waiting for my lead on what happened next. We finally stopped at
Aurora abducting Cephalus
, which was appropriate since I felt like my life had been pretty much taken away from me.

"Is this how it's always going to be? Do I not have free will anymore?" I asked, finding I actually wasn't bothered by the feeling. Had I truly given up? Which only proved I really did need the vacation Max had once again swindled away from me.

"Laurel, as important as you are in so many ways this isn't about you at all." Jack put his hands on my shoulders. I thought back to how many times he held me semi-captive in the three days we were together. Three days that packed a magnitude of events and emotions one would normally associate with decades. The thought left me staggered to consider it.

Jack continued, "We still have to determine if the micro drive was truth or fiction. We may still have a major heist on the horizon, and making that determination was my job from the beginning. The sword was a slight detour whose timing meant it may or may not have been connected. Like you, I've been pulled in to finish the job I started. And, quite frankly, having you by my side raises the stakes in both good and bad ways. I'm as confused about whether or not we should work as a team as you are."

That wasn't exactly what I was confused about, and looking in those lovely teal eyes, I felt Jack wasn't being entirely forthcoming either.

So what was new? I wouldn't know how to act if he actually told me the whole truth.

I reached up and took his left hand away from my shoulder. "Come on, Jack, I haven't had lunch. And I do like a good fish, don't you? Maybe I'll even try vinegar this time."

 

 

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About the Author

 

Ritter Ames lives in a small town in the middle of America, but spends each day globe trotting the art world from her laptop, with her cat riding shotgun and Pandora blasting from the speakers. She has garnered numerous awards for her nonfiction work, and Counterfeit Conspiracies is her first full-length published fiction. She tries to blog regularly at
http://ritterames.wordpress.com/
and uses her Pinterest boards at
http://www.pinterest.com/ritterames/
to capture great places and ideas she wants to use in her mystery series. Follow her blog and her Pinterest boards to learn more about Ritter and her upcoming books.

 

 

BOOKS BY RITTER AMES

 

Bodies of Art Mysteries:

Counterfeit Conspiracies

Marked Masters (coming in 2014!)

 

Organized Mysteries:

Organized for Murder (coming January 2014!)

 

 

 

of the next

Bodies of Art Mystery

by Ritter Ames:

 

 

MARKED MASTERS

 

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CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Two black-and-whites screamed to the curb, paralleling each other and blocking off any possibility of retreat. Brakes screeched. Sirens blared. My blood pressure ratcheted up a notch. The flashing lights alone set my heart pounding so hard that I could swear the beats showed through my black Lycra.

One step and I bled back into the shadows of the house's side wall.

A simple pick-up on a limited time frame. That's what the job had been.  My objective was a medium-sized nude which had reclined over the headboard of a blackmailer's bed for decades. A painting and headboard currently residing inside the townhouse that was the focal point of this Orlando PD team.

"He's been extorting money from my mother since before I was born," Kat Gleeson had explained that afternoon. "The blackmailer picked up the portrait at a sale after the artist died, playing a hunch it would be worth bigger bucks later. Mother received the first demand as soon as my father started in political life. Laurel, you have to help us."

A longtime friend from my Cornell years, and daughter to Senator Gleeson, R-FL, Kat called me, frantic, to meet for lunch after hearing I was in the city. When I'd said my Miami flight was first thing in the morning she'd turned from frantic to panicked, and I promised to be at her favorite cocktail bar in ten minutes time. I'd met her there. Now, twelve hours later, this new dilemma forced me to contemplate an alternate route inside, for the nude painted when Kat's mother was an ingénue and the artist undiscovered. In his later years, before his final drug overdose, the once up-and-coming artist became best known for his erotic subjects and a penchant for the rock-and-roll lifestyle of the 1970s. Now, a single moment captured in brushstrokes kept Kat's mother chronically worried and perpetually broke.

As political pundit-buzz hummed about Senator Gleeson's prospective run for the presidency, the hush-money stakes had risen sharply. The next installment had hit a price Mrs. Gleeson couldn't deliver without her husband's knowledge and cooperation.

"She's devastated," Kat had said, as she'd toyed with her second mojito. I'd decided that if my friend's ragged expression in any way resembled her mother's, devastated was probably putting it mildly.

My prep time had been limited, but the facts that had come back were solid—the owner was a Luddite who didn't know a silent alarm from a silent movie. An absolute anachronism today, but the attribute served him well as a blackmailer since the practice left little risk of his digital fingerprint getting lifted anywhere.

What had alerted the cops?

The head-to-toe unrelieved black I wore dovetailed into the shadows and afforded me a bit of invisibility. I contemplated the peripheral shrubbery but waited to see the officers' game plan. A peek at my watch, hidden by the hood of my sleeve, showed less than a half-hour to either accomplish what I came to do or cut and run.

Car doors slammed and voices rose as authoritative tones ordered a blue scramble to search for whatever tipped them off to the location.

Another scan of the back wall showed the basement window I'd initially dismissed as too small for a final escape. But it could get me into the house as long as I sucked in my gut and visualized being
very, very small.
I also had to maneuver without being seen or heard across the white ribbon obligatory to so many Sunshine State homes: the oyster shell path that ringed the grounds around the house walls like fluorescence in the moon glow.

They drew their guns and headed for the porch. I made my move, using long-latent childhood gymnastic muscles to clear the wide, crushed path and stick a quiet landing on the tiny strip of grass along the foundation.

I pulled the penlight I'd stashed in my bra, and scoped out the basement in two-point-six seconds—or thereabouts. Any longer carried too much risk, but the quickly lighted view told me I'd be dropping about six feet onto bare cement. That was doable.

The extended beam of a Mag Lite flashed from around the corner as I started feet first down the rabbit hole. When my soles hit concrete, I reached up to softly set the window back into a closed position. Then I crouched into a dark ball and held my breath. Even with the locked window, I heard the cop's feet pass by, then stop. He flashed his light through the glass, across the cellar, floor to ceiling. I hugged the wall tighter and hoped he wouldn't try to look straight down.

"Nah," I heard him talking into his radio. "There's a tiny window back here, but it's locked, and I can't imagine anyone getting through it anyway. Over."

Still, it wasn't time to sigh in relief. The mark was due home from a NASA event soon. No need to look at my watch again to know the minutes were flying. I continued to hold my breath until I heard the oyster shells crunch when the cop resumed his recon.

A cursory scan for infrared, trip wires, or motion detectors came up zero. The house was as technology-free as I'd been told. No doubt I was taking a chance going in before the cops left, but if I'd stayed outside I was pretty much guaranteed to get caught. And a ride in the back of a squad car to explain why I was dressed in black in a dark yard near midnight was not on my agenda for the evening.

The open floor plan made it relatively easy to navigate without lights. Moonlight streamed through huge windows dressed in nothing but sheers. I kept to the beige and taupe walls and the larger pieces of furniture as much as possible, using the moving shadows of the cops outside to know where and when to scoot to the next spot. So far the boys in blue only appeared to be doing reconnaissance, leaving me to hope for a rapid departure when they found the house secured. At least I hope it was completely secure. I hadn't had time to do a whole house perimeter before they showed up.

I crept up the stairs, and the landing opened up to a full-wall window that overlooked the front yard. Staying back as far as possible, I watched the blue crew huddle again at the curb.

Please, please, please leave. I don't have much time left.

Just as my limbs started to cramp from standing so still, I saw one give the "move 'em out" swing of the arm, and both teams returned to their respective cars. I didn't start breathing again until I saw the revolving lights stop and the headlights turn back down the boulevard.

It was hammer time!

The master suite was exactly where I expected, and I was probably feeling a bit too cocky as I closed the door behind me and pulled from my pocket the sharp little tool used to extract canvasses from frames. I spun around and approached the bed, and got my next shock of the night. A gorgeous baroque frame hung on the wall over the headboard...but I realized it was empty.

I froze. There was no backup for this. Where else could the portrait be?

A check of the closet and under the bed offered no answers. I started running through rooms, scanning each wall, behind the sofa and chairs.
Nada.

In the study I found bookcases filled with volumes and vases, but no portraits. I circled the desk, hoping for a clue. The ultra-precise Omega chronometer on my left wrist gave one quiet beep, warning me to pull up stakes and run before it was too late.

My gaze fell on a leather bound journal atop the desk. Across the front, embossed in gold, were the words "My Women."

His little black book? Or his blackmail roster? Either way, taking it might give me some ammunition to offer Mrs. Gleeson if the worst happened and the blackmailer came after her again. He'd obviously stashed the portrait some place else. Maybe Kat spoke to someone besides me about this, and he gotten wind of a rescue attempt?

Either way, I needed to fly. The book went down the front of my leotard, and I slipped out the side door I'd originally planned to use for entry to the house.

Vaulting the back wall wasn't even a challenge. I was so pumped I probably could have vaulted the whole house without too much difficulty.

I was behind the steering wheel of my car and digging the book out of my clothes, trying to figure out what I was going to tell Kat, when a voice behind me said, "See anything interesting, love?"

If I could have reached him, Jack Hawkes would have been dead.

"Damn, Jack! Don't do that!" I turned in my seat and instinctively swung backhanded to try to slap the grin from his face. He caught my arm without even trying.

"A bit nervy, aren't you?"

Jack Hawkes was some level of U.K. agent, likely MI-6 by the way he operated, but I couldn't be sure because he tended to keep to his own agenda. He was a perpetual pain in my backside, and, reluctantly at times, my "partner in crime," before I'd gone on this side-mission to help a college friend. Jack and I were currently thrown together as a team on a mission to stop what may be the art heist of the century, and the trail of breadcrumbs pointed to Miami as our next destination.  I hadn't expected to see his face until our flight the following morning, and the sight of his broad-shouldered frame filling my backseat now was just unnerving enough to give my voice an edge.    

"I'm pissed is what I am!" I waved a hand. "It's... over. And I failed. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Oh, a little shopping. Senator Gleeson asked me to pick up an old canvas for him."

"What?" I stared as Jack pulled an item from behind my seat back.

There it was, a gorgeous nude infamous only because of the later-years reputation of the artist. Kat's mother was young and lovely, and the body of art should never have gained its now notorious reputation. "It's beautiful. A true work of genius."

"That it is. Sorry I scooped it out already, and you had to leave empty-handed."

About then a second scream of sirens erupted from somewhere several blocks away.

"I'm guessing you went out the side door," Jack said.

"Yes."

"The neighbor to that side apparently has a predilection for night vision goggles, and very nicely alerted the police to my exit right before you arrived on the scene."

"That explains why they didn't try to get inside. The neighbor saw you leave."

Jack nodded.

I reached between the seats to run a gentle finger along the artist's confident brush strokes. "How did you know I was going to take this?"

"I didn't."

"Then why—"

"The senator's aide was a Rhodes Scholar, and we met when we were at university together."

"So the senator already knows?"