Drowning Pool (Miss Henry Mysteries) (2 page)

Juliet sighed, but this was why she had come to Raphael.
He was one of the few people she knew who would share her amazement at Merton’s news. And her displeasure at the shortage of facts, but that was to be expected because Merton’s version of the truth tended to squirm away from firm lines when confronted with bright lights and questions.

“You’ll appreciate this. A Donatello roundel has gone missing.
Virgin and child with angels. In gold.”

Raphael’s eyes opened a little wider.
This would be the equivalent of jumping and shouting in another man.

“In gold?”

“Yes.”

“Is it real?”

Juliet shrugged. It could be a forgery. There were a lot of them out there.

But maybe it wasn’t.

“Someone thinks it is. And I guess someone owes someone a favor, and they want me to keep an eye out for it while we are at
Quatros Cienegas
.”

“I had not heard about any of the museums being robbed.”
Raphael sounded thoughtful as he set his brush in a jar of turpentine. “Nor any word of a private collector suffering a loss. But then I have not heard anything about a gold roundel either.”

The general public
rarely did hear about those kinds of thefts, but Raphael had connections. Juliet took this lack of gossip about the missing artifact as confirmation of her suspicion that it was something in a private collection. Something that may have always been in a private collection.

“I don’t think this
roundel was ever in any museum. At least not since the Second World War. And now it has passed from one thief to another.”

“Indeed.
I wonder if anyone died in the exchange.”

Juliet shrugged.

“It was the Second World War. Somebody probably died. I’m just glad I’m not looking for weapons of mass destruction. And at least this answers any doubts we might have had about Klaus von Hayek’s morals and activities.” Juliet perched on the vacant throne where Raphael sometimes posed models and took a bite of her sandwich.

“Personally, I had no doubts about his guilt. I did not, however, think that he was still actively acquiring. I suppose it could be the son.
Henrik has kept a fairly low profile on the art scene, buying only modern art and always from reputable dealers, but then a successful thief would be careful of his reputation. Especially if they knew they were being watched.”

“I received no specifi
cs about our hosts—or much of anything,” Juliet answered after she swallowed. “Not even pictures. I am supposed to recognize it by its style.”

“They do not actually expect you to retrieve the roundel, do they?”
Raphael unwrapped his sandwich.

“Nope. Just
to find out if it is there and pass the word.”

“I suppose that is a safe enough endeavor since you will be entirely discre
et.” He looked at her straightly.

“Oh
, entirely. I may even be so discreet that I find nothing at all.”

“Juliet, I’m shocked
at your lack of diligence.” He did not sound shocked.

And Juliet didn’t mean it. She very much wanted to see a gold Donatello roundel.

“Well, I’m pissed about this and I hate being blackmailed. They could have just asked without being assholes about my passport.”

“This was David Merton?”

“Yes.”

“Then I do not think that he could help being what he is.”

“I know. And I even see his point. When will he ever have another chance to put an asset into von Hayek’s stronghold? Still he needs a new set of gloves. The iron fist is poking through the holes in the old ones.”

* * *

Esteban looked in on her as she was getting ready to head back to Raphael’s for a crating party. He had stopped at the local Chinese takeout for a selection of edibles. Reminded that she had had nothing since lunch, Juliet broke out her best plates and they tucked in for a feast.

They ate for a bit without talking, but once Juliet had given a contented sigh Esteban decided it was safe to distract her.

“So, you have your passport?”

“Yes. It was delivered by courier this morning.”

“And the cost?”

“Remains to be seen. I hope it isn’t too arduous a task but suspect it may prove to be difficult or even impossible. They are looking for a missing piece of Renaissance art—a roundel by Donatello. Somehow, David Merton has gotten the idea that I should be able to find one piece of art in the castle of a Nazi war criminal who looted some of the finest collections in Europe before taking a powder
and washing up in a fortress in Mexico.”

“Bella!”

“I know. But I have to look. Leaving everything else aside, I want to see the roundel. Esteban, it’s done in gold. Gold. It’s the only one I have ever heard of. Can you imagine how gorgeous this thing is? And I don’t think anyone—well, hardly anyone—knows that it exists. What a find this would be.”

Esteban’s face softened.

“I understand your hunger but, Bella, this sounds like a situation fraught with danger. I have looked around a bit and your war criminal is not a nice man.”

“
He’s very old. And it is only a danger if they know I am retired NSA—and how would they? My records are sewn up tight. Actually, even if they found out somehow, the fact that I am retired should be shield enough. And though they have allowed me only one canvas at this show, it is at least a piece of serious art so they shouldn’t doubt my credentials on that score.” Juliet almost believed her own argument. Almost. If Merton had a good enough reason, he would sell her out to the enemy.

Esteban and Raphael understood
how she felt. They had discussed the matter before. She had not left the NSA because of injury. She had burned out, so tired of sorting out usable material from informants with agendas who brought fragments of truths and outright lies that had to be investigated, however improbable or repugnant the information. And after a friend had died because she had not been able to find the truth fast enough, she had been unable to go on.

Her life now was much simpler with everyone’s motivations understood. And if the price of that freedom was sometimes doing favors for her old employer?

Juliet’s fierce, visceral rejection of any professional ties with her old employer was tempered by realism. She would sometimes be forced to sup with this devil who had legal claim on her body if not her soul. When that happened she would make sure that she used a really long spoon.

Esteban did not look convinced
by her arguments, but he bent down to pick up Marley when the curious cat came over to investigate their dinner. After stroking the cat once from fore to aft in their familiar greeting, Esteban presented Marley one of the shrimp plucked from the fried rice with his chopsticks.

Marley considered the offering carefully and then decided that perhaps, just that once, he would be willing to try a bit of seafood.
Seeing him munch so delicately, one would never suspect that he could attack his tuna like a starving wolverine.

“Have you explained to Marley that he will be bunking with me
while you are away?” Esteban asked, changing the subject.

“Yes
, and he says that room and board is a nice offer as long as I leave you with his favorite tuna. I have his supplies laid out on the counter already.”

They finished their dinner
, and by then it was late enough to interrupt Raphael and begin the process of crating the paintings he was taking with him.

“Bella, I am thinking that this might be a
n excellent time for me to visit my cousin, Raoul. He lives in Coahuila. Your beast would be fine staying with Rose or Sheriff Garret instead.”

This
idea, and variations of it, had crossed her mind already.

“You don’t have to do this,” Juliet said, touched by the offer
she had suspected he would make. “But if you wanted to…. Not that there will be anything you can do if we get in trouble. The place is quite literally a fortress. And I don’t plan on doing anything that will get either Raphael or me in discord with the owner. My job is to look, nothing more.”

“Let’s see how Raphael feels about this,” Esteban suggested
diplomatically.

Juliet snorted.

“Raphael will feel fine about this and you know it. Neither of you has much faith in me.”

“No, Bella, it is not that. I have complete faith that you will find your roundel
wherever it is hidden. The trouble is that I am not sure that you will be content to leave it there.”

“I would never steal the roundel,” Juliet said firmly and was fairly sure that she meant it.

“But it wouldn’t be stealing, would it?” he asked. “Not if it is in the hands of a thief and you were returning it to its owner.”

Juliet didn’t answer.

Juliet had just a touch of that irrational and visceral terror that unimaginative non-sufferers dismissed so contemptuously as “fear of flying.” But that was a silly definition of her problem. She didn’t fear flying at all. She feared crashing. In small airports. On badly maintained planes.

She did her best to keep these doubts about their safety hidden. Not from Raphael. There was no point in trying to hide anything from him. But she didn’t feel the need to burden her fellow travelers with her nerves
or force Raphael to comfort her when he was clearly tired. He had been up the better part of the night making sure that his paintings were properly crated. Though Esteban and Juliet had been there to help, he had insisted on doing much of the work himself. He was taking three canvases. One of them he had painted using Juliet as his model. As always, he had succeeded in making her look more radiant and beautiful than she actually was.

“I googled von Hayek last night. There isn’t anything about him beyond the so-called bio put out by the Quatros Cien
egas Sanctuary webpage.” Juliet folder her hands and resisted the urge to check her seatbelt again. It really wouldn’t help if they plummeted toward earth at one hundred twenty-eight miles per hour, or whatever the terminal velocity of a packed airplane might be.

“I am not surprised. He is very jealous of his privacy.”
He spoke as quietly as she had.

“
Those war criminals so often are. There were some interesting pictures of the reserve. The springs have some rather gorgeous water lilies and are as clear as glass. They also have some fish and turtles that live nowhere else on earth, so the whole shutting them off from the public and their beer cans and suntan oil makes sense.” She lowered her voice further since the woman across from her was carrying a rosary and had looked at her with alarm when she mentioned war criminals. “I found another site that gave a legend about the lilies. Supposedly the lakes are the home of one of the Aztecan gods called Smoking Mirror. He has a bunch of handmaidens that are … I guess vampires is the best word for them, though they don’t suck blood.”

“If not blood then what? Energy? Souls?” Raphael asked curiously.

“Brains,” Juliet said and then shuddered. “With a long stinger thing that goes in through the ear.”

“How utterly beastly.”

“Yeah, it causes a kind of brain fever in the victim—usually the deceased’s nearest and dearest. Turning into these brain-suckers is what happens if a woman dies in childbirth when she is near water inhabited by the god, or if it is raining and the god can get to her.”

“It is a creative way to explain a deadly pathogen
, I suppose.”

“
Anyhow, sometimes when gold was running short, or the god seemed displeased with the regular statues and such, they would stop feeding him gold offerings and chuck a pregnant woman in the pond instead. The lilies are supposed to grow out of their bodies.”

“Charming.”

“Yeah, I bet you feel a new painting coming on already.”

“Not exactly. But I do feel that a glass of wine might be in order.”
Raphael turned and looked for the flight attendant. He didn’t have to look far since they were in first class.

Flying first class was nice
, and necessary for Raphael. But as the planes got progressively smaller, the distinctions in allotted space and seating got smaller right along with the airliners until, seven hours later, it disappeared completely. Juliet felt like stacked Tupperware.

From
Mexico City they boarded a small jet and flew to Francisco Sarabia International Airport somewhere in or around Coahuila. There they caught an even smaller private jet belonging to von Hayek. This took them to a very private, in fact hardly visible, airstrip near the never-open-to-the-public sanctuary set up by the von Hayek Foundation.

At no point did Juliet feel
entirely confident that they would live to reach their destination. In fact, her faith eroded every time they had to climb onto a new and smaller plane. Arrangements had been made for Raphael and his wheelchair, but being carried up and down stairs and passing through security multiple times was hardly ideal, and Juliet treated herself to two Motrin with a ginger ale chaser.