Grave Robber for Hire (22 page)

“You sure.”

“He waited for it to be copied when he was in England.”

“Shit, so we could be hunting for a total fake.”

“No. He had two. The real deal and the forgery. We have to drive back to Clyde’s old house. I think the original is in the roof space.” I yawned again. If Tyreal drove, I could catch a few winks in the car and Vig would make sure Tyreal stayed awake, poke him in the eye or something.

“The Rembrandt?”

“No, my kitchen. Yes, the Rembrandt. It’s hidden in a sealed off panel in a roof space and is still packed in the crating it arrived in from England. I bet your left nut it’s in his house.”

“My left nut?”

“Yeah I don’t have any and I’m sick of betting my boobs. You can spare one.”

“Big of you, but I’m at little attached. They look better in pairs. And it’s late, we aren’t going anywhere. We’ll go back tomorrow.”

I stood and headed for my handbag. Men and their attachment to their balls. “Auction’s tomorrow. Tonight might be our last chance.”

“Chill. It’ll take two to four weeks before the property transfers to the new owners, we can go tomorrow night. Before we hit the horizontal, we need to talk.”

“That sounds ominous.” Crap. He was about to ditch our partnership. I grimaced and looked at Vig, but Vig didn’t look at all disappointed. In fact he had a shit eating grin splitting his face.

At Tyreal’s words, if we’d been dating I’d have expected the,
it’s not you it’s me
, talk. And I’d have believed him and Vig obviously thought the same thing.

“Tomorrow I’m going to bid on Clyde’s house. I have enough cash to cover what I think the place is worth. You have the antiques expertise, so I think we can go into a buy and sell partnership. Fifty-fifty on profits.”

He wasn’t ditching our partnership, he was trying to add to it. I could have kissed him. Vig growled, stood up, smashed into Tyreal and his chair and stormed outside.

Tyreal shifted and glared after Viggo. “Your guardian needs to suck on some ice.”

“Ignore him.”

I sat back down and tapped my nails on the table. I might be a slightly neurotic fake blonde, but I’m no idiot. I knew I could make money out of those antiques if we got the place and its contents cheap enough. “I don’t know what the house is worth in that condition.”

“I do,” Tyreal said. “Real estate I know. That’s how I make money on the side. I buy and sell property.” He rested his elbows on his black cargo pant knees and leaned toward me, watching me closely.

Suddenly the words, “
enough cash to cover what I think it’s worth
,” hit. I blinked a few times, to let that fully compute. “You can pay cash? For a house on half an acre in St. Lucia?” Did my voice sound as incredulous as I thought it did? “Why the hell are you working for me?”

His lopsided grin lit his face. “Lots of reasons. One, I’m not rich. I do need to earn money beyond my real estate buying and selling nest egg. Two, you and your odd life are err … interesting, and much more fun than chasing social security fraudsters, and three”—he ran his gaze over me—“three I’ll explain later.”

I squinted at him. “Is three lewd?”

“No, however, four’s totally lecherous”

Mmmm, interesting. “Don’t worry about four. But to us trying to buy Clyde’s house and selling it, you’ve got a deal. One ask, I get to keep some of the antique clothes, but the rest we can sell to a movie and stage prop place I know of.”

“Fine with me.” He stood and pulled me to my feet. “Now, Princess Angel, as beautiful as you are, you truly look like hell, bed.”

We heard a
pop
and a door slam open. We jumped and Tyreal reached for his pistol. A clatter of hooves on wood came up the hallway. I grabbed Tyreal’s hand. “It’s cool.”

Tina clattered down the hall and into the living area. She eyed the two of us, turned to the kitchen island, nicked an apple out of the fruit basket, crunched into and ate it, then took another into her teeth before spinning around and trotting cautiously back down the hall. The front door slammed shut.

“Oops, I forgot to give the horses apples with their dinner this afternoon.”

“Christ, crazy jealous guardians and animals that can break in.”

#

The next day, the auction had three registered bidders amidst a small crowd of neighbors. Tyreal and I were one bidder, the second, a hard faced, attractive man in his thirties whose casually expensive clothes said money. His Maserati made my girly lust for vroom vrooms sing an aria. And three, was an unknown phone bidder.

I hadn’t known what real estate moguls dressed like so I’d gone for yuppie with a bit of extra bling and ice-blue silk surrounded cleavage. Tyreal had gone for similar sans the bling and cleavage.

Half an hour later the bidding started, and Viggo must have felt my nerves because he flashed in, his body braced for a fight.

“I’m fine, Vig.” I took his arm and pulled him to stand on the opposite side of me from Tyreal.

All three bidders waited for the other bidders to show their true money. Being a cool sophisticate, I bounced on my stilettoes, fidgeted with my handbag, my blouse, my rings, and made child-like impatient sighing noises.

Tyreal leaned down, “Stay still.”

“I can’t. I want the place, and Maserati guy looks rich.”

“That’s James Olsen, and he is rich, but I doubt this is his sort of development. This place is heritage listed. Olsen likes to bulldoze and rebuild, but if he doesn’t stop ogling your boobs he’ll be holding his nuts not his wallet.”

Viggo swung around and glared at Mr. Rich and
kinda cute guy. I had too many possessive men in my life. I looked over at Olsen and smiled.

“I could date a rich man.” I’d flash more than
boobage to drive his Maserati, and I meant the car. Rich men with benefits would probably have more benefits. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

“He’s married with two
rug-rats and has two ex-wives.”

Vig grinned, and I pulled a face that made my lips crinkle and pucker. God, couldn’t he peel his gaze off my boobs?
Perv
.

Olsen and phone bidder were making small incremental bids. Tyreal was yet to make a move, I gripped his hand. “You bidding?” Vig looked at Tyreal’s and my hand and scowled.

“Patience, Princess.”

“I wasn’t born with any.”

The bidding between Maserati man and the phone bidder dropped in the size of monetary increments then stalled. The auctioneer called, once, twice, and I nearly peed in my white silk lace thong. Tyreal lifted his finger and jumped the bid by a hundred thousand.

Maserati, had his hands stuffed in his pockets, but I saw them fist. His lips thinned. A muscle in his jaw flexed. He shook his head at the auctioneer then spun and walked to his car as if the loss didn’t worry him. But it had.

Phone holder man talked for a minute or two on the line and made a sideways cutting action with his hand at the auctioneer. A murmur started amongst the small throng of onlookers and neighbors. Last bids were called, once, twice, three times.

The auctioneer hit his small gavel on his folder and pointed to Tyreal. “Sold to the highest bidder. If the winning bidders could come with me, we’ll finish the deal.”

I wanted to do a victory shuffle, jump into the air and scream,
score
.

Tyreal took my hand, kissed it, leaned over, peered down my blouse, and sighed. “They are a marvelous pair. I think they put Olsen off his game. We bought ourselves a bargain.” He tugged my hand, and we walked towards the house. The crowd started to disperse. People babbled about the price, falling real estate values, got into cars and drove off.

Near the stairs, Tyreal pulled me close and kissed me, using an indecent amount of tongue and blasting me with a rush of heat, lust, and want. He staggered forward a step, breaking our contact, smashing his shin into the bottom step. “Shit.” He grabbed his leg and glared at Vig. Vig raised his brows feigning innocence.

“Thanks, Vig.” Tyreal had to stop kissing me like that. A girl can only knock back sex with such a man so often. And the numbers were running low.

Inside the parlor of the about to be our house, Tyreal pulled the contract towards himself and signed it with a precise flourish. “Who was the phone bidder?”

“Privacy act means I can’t reveal names, but I can tell you it was a woman from Sydney who said she was an ancestor of the property’s original owner.”

Tyreal’s and my eyes met. “Josey,” we said in unison.

Tyreal slid the contract to me. I signed the documents, thrilled we’d trumped Josey’s plans. Why had she wanted this house? Tyreal handed over a check for a far bigger amount than I’d ever seen.

Officially we wouldn’t own the house for two weeks, but since it was an unconditional contract and Tyreal had already paid the full purchase price, Craig handed us the keys. “I hammered a board over the back broken window this morning. Appears someone broke in last night. Nothing is damaged nor stolen from what I can see, but drawer contents were dumped on the floor, cupboards left open. If I was you guys, I’d get a glazier and a locksmith out.”

Tyreal and I shared a scowl laced look. Vig contemplated the hallway.

“Thanks. I have those very people on speed dial,” Tyreal said.

Craig left, and I drifted around, gazing at our collection of rather fabulous antiques, dust and rotted wood. Now we could hunt for the Rembrandt, lawfully. “We need a ladder to get into the roof space.”

Tyreal pulled out his phone. “We do. We’ll hit a hardware store soon and buy one and some cleaning gear and products. I’ll have the power put on hopefully by Monday. Before we leave for the hardware store, I’ll organize a few things.”

“Do you think Josey did a little B and E after us?”

“Could have. Phone bidders can call from anywhere.”

I nodded and started a, this is mine, mine, well half mine, amble through the house. Vig followed, opening cupboards and drawers.

Tyreal called out, “If we make enough money out of this project we can do this full-time. That way there’d be no more Clyde type cases.”

“Yeah, not happening.”

“Might take a few, but you could make enough for your farm.”

“Why the sudden interest in getting me to stop hunting?”

“Your safety.”

“
Umpf.” I kept walking.

In the bedroom I’d discovered the dresses from the 1880’s, I opened the closet and pulled out six beautiful and expensive garments made of embroidered silks and laid them with care on the old dusty bed.

On the closet’s floor and stuffed into the back corner, a bundle of old folded fabric caught my eye. I carried it to the bed and unrolled it hoping to find another fabulous article of yesteryear fashion. It
was
clothing. A moth-eaten wool adolescent’s jacket from about 1900. Tucked inside I found a small, leather sack. I ran my hand over it and felt a hard square. Old leather crumbled and flaked as I eased the sack open and out tumbled a jewelry box. I pried open the stiff little clasp and raised the lid.

Dollar signs danced around the room. My greedy little girly heart started to sing that diamond song in even a worse voice than Marilyn’s if that’s possible. Let’s face it, bodacious babe she might have been, a singer she was not.

I stood rooted to the spot with bejeweled shock for a good minute. I showed Vig and yelled in my finest fish wife’s screech. “Tyreal. Tyreal, you better come and see this.”

He arrived at the door. “Nothing bad. Check this out.” I held out the ring.

His eyes flicked to the ring, then to me. “Marriage already, we barely know each other.” He grinned, took the box, held it to the light and whistled through his teeth. “It’s a monster. Do you think it’s real?”

“I do, and guesstimate it’s at least seven carats of glittering awesome.” It would look so good on my finger, I held up my right hand and imagined it on my middle finger, catching the sun’s white light and turning the spectrum to rainbows.

He wiggled the ring out of its little silk bed. “This is engraved.” He turned the ring. “For my Angel. Huh, could be yours.”

“Marriage already, we barely know each other.”

“Smart ass. I have a safe in my house we’ll keep this little beauty there.” He took the old box, placed the ring into the slot and tucked said box into his shirt pocket. “Find more nuggets like that and we won’t need the Rembrandt.”

“When we get the Rubens back, since we own this house, it is probably ours.”

I wasn’t sure whose grin was greedier.

#

Two hours later, we’d changed into hard wearing jeans and t-shirts. Tyreal had a good sized ladder we’d had delivered, propped against the manhole that led into the house’s roof space.

“Wait till I get into the space so I can see how strong it is. When I call down, follow.” Holding a large flashlight, Tyreal climbed up. A small clawed hammer waited in his back pocket to help pull down any false walls.

Me, I held my breath. Old houses aren’t always solid, and this one was long neglected. Tyreal’s a big man, and the ceiling was at least fourteen feet high. Tyreal disappeared from view, a thud, scraping noises, and his head appeared.