Heron's Cove (4 page)

Yank turned from the French doors. “Your point?”

“Along the way, Bulgov developed a taste for modern art. Emma found out and we finally had him in the U.S. and arrested him. That’s the only tie I can see between him and the Sharpes. Peter Horner and his two Russian friends aren’t interested in art.” Colin noticed that Yank was all but pacing now. “If you asked Emma for her source, would she tell you?”

“I’m not asking.”

“Because you want to trust her?”

“I do trust her. She’s analytical, intelligent. She’s not a black-and-white thinker. She sees the shades of gray in a situation.”

“She’s not like anyone else on your team.”

“That’s not a negative.”

Colin stood, ignoring a twinge of pain in his lower back. A bruise had blossomed on his forearm, and when he had changed clothes, he had noticed a nick on his right temple. “What’s your best guess, Yank? Did Emma put herself in danger to find me?”

“I don’t like to guess, but I get nervous when emotion enters into a decision. You operate on instinct and experience. You’re good at reading people. Emma…”

“Emma gives people a lot of rope, and she was worried about me.”

“Your whole family was worried.” Yank seemed to give himself a mental shake. “Emma can handle herself. Come on. We have a flight to catch.”

“Where are we going?”

“Washington. The Director wants to see you.”

Colin wasn’t surprised but had no desire to board a flight to Washington. “I’m not finished, Yank.”

“Don’t start second-guessing yourself. We have more than we had a month ago. If you hadn’t gone overboard when you did, you’d be dead now.”

“No kidding.” Colin grinned. “Why do you think I braved the snakes and gators?”

Yank sighed. “What was I thinking? You never second-guess yourself.”

They crossed the bright, elegant living room and went up three steps to a wide front door. “Is Lucy in Washington?” Colin asked.

“Paris. She’s shopping with her sister.”

“You didn’t want to go?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter because I wasn’t invited.” Yank opened the door with more force than was needed. “I don’t see me in Hermès, do you?”

Colin followed him out into the South Florida heat and humidity. “What happens when Lucy and her sister get back from Paris? Is Lucy moving up to Boston with you?”

Yank’s expression was unreadable. “I’m on a need-to-know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know.”

They walked over to a black sedan idling in the driveway. Colin glanced at the lush, professionally landscaped yard, vines curling over a tall fence, a stone fountain bubbling amid colorful flowers. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to be out of there. He would go to D.C. with Yank and talk to the Director of the FBI, but he wanted to be back in Maine. He wanted to enjoy a glass of whiskey with his brothers and Finian Bracken, and he wanted Emma.

Not in that order, he realized.

Emma was first.

3

EMMA BROUGHT HER red sable brush, saturated with cerulean-blue watercolor paint, to the dampened paper she had clipped to the easel on the back porch of the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove. She pulled the brush across the paper, right to left, practicing a simple flat wash and, out of the corner of her eye, watching the woman down on the docks. She had looked up at the house several times. She was small, with long, straight dark hair, and she wore a pumpkin-colored barn jacket that, even at a distance, was obviously too big for her.

A Sharpe Fine Art Recovery client? A sightseer who had wandered down to the waterfront and now was trying to figure out how to get back out to the street with its attractive houses, shops and restaurants?

Emma noticed her cerulean-blue was leaking down the page into her burnt-sienna. Probably should have stuck to one color. Perfecting a flat wash wasn’t as easy as it looked. In the weeks since Colin had gone after his arms traffickers, she had started taking painting lessons with Sister Cecilia, a young novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. She and Emma had become friends since their encounter with a crazed killer in September. The lessons at the sisters’ shop in the village were therapeutic for both of them, and always followed by a walk, tea or just a good chat. Sister Cecilia especially loved hearing the latest about Rock Point and the Donovans.

Yank had called an hour ago. He and Colin had arrived in Boston and were on their way to Maine. Yank would drop Colin off in Rock Point. Then he was on his own.

No handing over the phone to Colin to say hello. Not Yank’s style.

Colin, Emma knew, would want to know about her source. He would have figured out the tip about the Fort Lauderdale house had come from her, or Yank would have told him outright.

She stood back from her painting, her brush in hand. Not her best effort.

A lobster boat drifted from the open ocean through the channel into the tidal river. It was late on a still, cool autumn afternoon. Several pleasure boats had passed by, heading to the marina and adjacent yacht club, but there were fewer boats now, with the colder weather and the foliage past peak. In midsummer, Heron’s Cove would be bustling with boats and people.

Colin had been a lobsterman in his teens, before joining the Maine state marine patrol. Emma didn’t know why he had decided to become an FBI agent. Boredom? Ambition? A precipitating incident? An unsolved case?

How could she have fallen for a man about whom she ultimately knew so little?

She had showered and changed in Colin’s house that morning, putting on fresh jeans and a sweater she had brought up from Boston. She’d had little sleep, dozing in his bed. When she got word that he was safe, she called Mike Donovan, then Finian Bracken, and let them know all was well and Colin would return to Rock Point later today.

She had stopped at Hurley’s for coffee and a cider doughnut and took them with her to Heron’s Cove. A run on the beach, a visit to a local apple orchard, a stop at her brother Lucas’s house to check on his cats while he was away—it had been a long day. She had known she wouldn’t hear from Colin until he was fully debriefed and back home.

The woman in the pumpkin-colored jacket had circled up to the retaining wall and was squeezing past tall hydrangeas, their white blossoms turned burgundy with autumn, into the Sharpe yard.

Emma set her brush in a jar of water on a small dresser against the back wall of the covered porch and stood at the rail. “Hi, there,” she called down to the woman. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?”

“It is. And it’s a beautiful place.” The woman spoke with an accent that Emma couldn’t immediately place. “You’re Emma Sharpe, yes?”

“That’s right. What’s your name?”

“Tatiana,” she said, crossing the yard to the porch. “Tatiana Pavlova.”

Emma stiffened at the Russian name, what she now realized was a Russian accent with a British undercurrent, as if Tatiana Pavlova had learned English on the streets of London. “What can I do for you, Tatiana?”

She started up the porch steps. “You mind?”

“Just keep your hands where I can see them, okay?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. You’re an FBI agent. You must worry about villains.”

Villains?
“Are you a Sharpe client?” Emma asked.

Tatiana joined her on the small porch of the gray-shingled house where Wendell Sharpe had started Sharpe Fine Art Recovery in a front room. “A friend was,” she said. “I’m a jewelry designer in London. One of my clients once hired your grandfather. But that’s not important. It’s not why I’m here. Your grandfather is retired now, yes?”

“He’s semi-retired.”

“Ah. I can see that. I want to work until I can no longer lift a pencil.” Tatiana tightened her oversize jacket around her slim frame. “It’s colder here than I expected but I’m used to the cold.”

Emma leaned back against the rail. Tatiana wore black leggings and black flats more suited to London than a walk on the docks of Heron’s Cove, but no makeup or jewelry. Her nails were blunt, unpolished. Stylishly unstylish, Emma thought. “You’re Russian?” she asked.

Tatiana nodded. “But I left Russia years ago.”

“Years? You must have been a child. You’re young—”

“Twenty-five. I was twenty when I left the country for good. It’s a long story.” Her dark eyes gleamed with emotion. “Are there any short Russian stories? Some of our fables and folktales, perhaps. Do you know the fable of the cat and the nightingale?”

“I don’t think so,” Emma said.

“It’s very short. Of course, since it’s a fable.” Tatiana stood at the porch rail and watched a great blue heron swoop low to the water. “A cat catches a nightingale and taunts the poor bird to sing for her. The terrified nightingale can only manage pitiful squeaks, which remind the cat of annoying kittens. Disgusted, the cat eats the nightingale.”

“Charming,” Emma said with a smile. “What made you think of this particular fable?”

“My walk, maybe. Seeing all the birds here.” Tatiana sighed as the heron dipped past a sailboat, then out of sight. “The cat and the nightingale remind us that we can’t expect beautiful songs from a bird trapped in the clutches of a creature that can devour it. Their story tells us that fear isn’t always the best instrument to get us what we want.”

“Are you describing yourself, Tatiana?”

She turned, smiling enigmatically. “But am I the scary cat, or am I the terrified nightingale?” She waved a slender hand in dismissal. “It’s just a fable. It’s best in Russian, of course. Do you speak any Russian?”

“A few words,” Emma said truthfully.

“Heron’s Cove is very beautiful. I knew it would be, but I hoped to get here for peak leaves—that’s what you say?”

“Peak foliage.”

“That’s it.” Tatiana’s smile brightened. “There are still many orange and yellow leaves, but the reds are all on the ground. But I’m not here as tourist.” She spied the easel and frowned at Emma’s attempt at a watercolor wash. “Such a pretty blue, but watercolor is not so easy, yes?”

Emma groaned. “Watercolor isn’t easy at all.”

“A painter and an FBI agent. I suppose that’s not such a surprise since you’re a Sharpe.” Tatiana lifted the brush out of the jar and blotted it on a sheet of paper on the small chest of drawers that held Emma’s painting supplies. “My English is better when I concentrate, have you noticed?”

“Your English is fine. When did you arrive in Heron’s Cove?”

“This afternoon. I have a cottage just on the other side of the yacht club. I have it for a week but the owner said I can stay longer if I wish. It’s very small. Adorable. It’s one room on legs—stilts. We’re neighbors.”

“Why Heron’s Cove?” Emma asked.

Tatiana laid the rinsed brush on the dresser, so that its natural bristles hung over the edge. “You shouldn’t leave your brushes in water. They will last longer.” She picked up the tube of cerulean-blue watercolor paint and screwed the top back on, then set it back on the dresser. “A rare, valuable collection of Russian Art Nouveau jewelry and decorative arts is arriving in Heron’s Cove soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. I’m afraid it’s another long, sad Russian story, but I don’t need to tell it, do I, Emma Sharpe? This one you already know.”

“I’ve learned in my work not to make assumptions.” Emma kept her voice neutral, despite her shock at mention of the collection. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

Tatiana sighed at the practice painting. “You didn’t wait for one color to dry before you tried another color. They bled together, and now you have mud.” She glanced disapprovingly at Emma. “You must not give in to the excitement of creative inspiration at the expense of craft. You must make the tension between the two work for you. That’s true mastery.”

“Tatiana…”

“You grow impatient,” she said lightly. “It’s the Rusakov collection. A dozen works of great beauty and artistry crafted during the last days of the Romanovs. You know it, yes?”

Emma nodded. “I know it, yes.”

“Twenty years ago, Dmitri Rusakov discovered the collection hidden in the walls of his Moscow mansion and hired your grandfather to help him understand it. Its history, its provenance, its value. We were just small girls then, you and I.”

Emma remembered her grandfather coming home from Moscow and reading Russian fairy tales to her and Lucas. Later—four years ago, when she dealt with Dmitri Rusakov herself—she had learned that each of the dozen works in the collection was inspired by some aspect of Russian folk tradition. Dmitri was a former army officer who had made a fortune in oil and gas in post–Soviet Russia.

He was also the trusted friend of the man who had called Emma last night with the Fort Lauderdale address.

“Dmitri Rusakov has never publicized his discovery of the collection,” Emma said. “How do you know about it?”

Tatiana pulled open the top dresser drawer and helped herself to a soft lead pencil, her dark hair hanging in her face as she continued. “Everyone in Russia knows about Dmitri Rusakov. I hear things in my work. Fabergé, Tiffany, Gaillard, Lalique—I study all the great designers of the late nineteenth century. It was a time when art met life, when an object as simple and ordinary as a cane knob, a picture frame or a cigarette case could become an artistic creation.” Tatiana smiled, a dimple showing in her left cheek. “I especially love Art Nouveau.”

“I do, too. Who is bringing the collection to Heron’s Cove?”

“Natalie Warren, the daughter of Rusakov’s American ex-wife.” Tatiana checked the tip of the pencil with her thumb. “Her mother died earlier this year in Tucson. I don’t think Natalie realized her mother had the collection, or perhaps even of its existence. That’s why she’s coming here. She wants to talk to the Sharpes.”

“My brother and grandfather are both in Dublin.”

“Ah. Well. Perhaps Natalie wants to talk to you.”

Emma noticed streaks of pale lavender high in the sky. It was dusk. Colin would be back in Rock Point soon after weeks of dangerous undercover work, after escaping certain death just hours ago. How could she tell him about Dmitri Rusakov?

About his connection to last night’s call?

She turned back to Tatiana. “Do you and Natalie know each other?”

“No, no. We’ve never met. She lives in Phoenix. I’m relatively invisible at my studio. I listen. I hear things. I heard about the collection.”