Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (6 page)

Fredrik added, “You told her to call you if
any messages came in, right? Or if anyone calls about the
girl?”

Nick nodded. He’d waited until Annika was in
the elevator, and then he’d introduced himself to the busty
receptionist, flashed his badge, and asked for her cooperation. His
badge was worth squat here in Sweden, but she either didn’t realize
that, or she didn’t care. He had left her his phone number and she
had promised to let him know if anyone inquired about Annika. He
fully expected to hear from her tomorrow, but it would probably be
to ask him to meet her for a drink, not because something had
happened to Annika Holst.

Fredrik was right. Annika was safe, tucked
away up there in her ivory tower, on the second floor of the dainty
Lady Hamilton Hotel.

“I know you think this woman’s innocent,”
Fredrik said, “but I’m not so sure. What happened at the airport
could have been a set-up. You’ve been following her for a while,
right? She could have noticed you. Realized that you were there.
And made sure someone else carried the bag through customs.”

She could have. It made sense, logically.
But it didn’t make sense to him, who’d gotten to know Annika. “She
didn’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Fredrik said. He shot
Nick a disgusted glance. “What’s wrong with you, man? She’s not
even hot. What did she do to make you so sure she isn’t in on it up
to her ears?”

“Nothing.” At least nothing like what
Fredrik insinuated. But Nick had just spent a couple hours with
her, and had listened to her tell him about herself, and her
family, and her relationship with her father. And he’d decided that
she was either the greatest actress the world had never seen, or
she was just what she appeared to be: a shy librarian who spent her
days reading about life instead of living it. “And you didn’t see
her tonight. If you had, you wouldn’t say she wasn’t hot.”

“I did see her,” Fredrik said. “Nice dress.
Not much of a figure.”

Great legs, though. The kind a man couldn’t
help but imagine wrapped around his waist.

“When the receptionist calls me, I’ll give
her your number. She’s more your type than mine.”

“Pretty?”

“Chesty.”

Fredrik quirked a brow. “You have something
against breasts?”

Of course not. Who did? But he didn’t judge
a woman’s worth based on them, either. Or at least he’d stopped
doing that as of right now.

Fredrik shook his head, his face amused.
“Never thought I’d see the day when Dominic Costa got led around by
his—”

Nick cut him off before he could say it.
“I’m not.”

“Sure.”

“I just... feel sorry for her. She came all
this way to honor her father’s last wishes, and then someone walks
off with him. And she’s here, in a place she’s never been before,
with no idea what’s going on. And with you and me breathing down
her neck.”

“I’m not breathing down her neck,” Fredrik
said. “If you’re breathing on her, you’re doing that all on your
own.”

“Funny.” Nick threw another glance over his
shoulder, but the Lady Hamilton Hotel was long out of sight. “If
someone grabbed that bag thinking the treasure was inside, and
she’s telling the truth and all they got was her father’s ashes,
that someone’s gonna be pissed.”

Fredrik nodded. At least they were in
agreement on that point.

“They might think she still has it. Or that
she knows where it is.”

“She’s fine,” Fredrik said again. “She’s
safe in bed. Your girl at the reception desk will call you if
anyone tries to get at her. You need to go get some sleep, Nick. I
doubt you slept on the plane last night, and you spent all day
following her around. You can’t stay up all night again. Better to
sleep while she does so you can come at it fresh in the
morning.”

Nick nodded reluctantly. Annika would be
fine. “You’ll wake me if you hear anything about the bag,
right?”

“You’ll be the first person I call,” Fredrik
said.

It wasn’t until the car had driven away and she turned from the
window that Annika realized that someone had been in her room in
her absence. The black dress she’d worn earlier today, that she had
taken off once she reached the hotel, was still neatly folded on a
corner of the bed. But the black shoes she’d worn with it were not
below, where they should be. She distinctly remembered folding the
dress and putting it down, and lining the shoes up neatly, half
under the bed, with the toes hidden by the bedspread. Now they were
gone.

First her bag and now her shoes? Why?

If someone had stolen her new silver
sandals, she could understand. They were pretty as well as
expensive. But a pair of black, low heeled granny-pumps with round
toes? She’d gotten them at Payless for under twenty bucks. They
weren’t even real leather. Why would anyone want them?

But when she lifted the bedspread, they were
right there, so obviously no one had.

Had she just lost her mind, then? She was
pretty sure she remembered looking at them before she left, with
the heels sticking out and the toes tucked under the bedspread. She
remembered thinking it was an improvement on their usual
appearance, and she remembered wondering what had possessed her to
buy such an ugly pair of shoes in the first place.

Had she accidentally upset the bedspread
later, and unknowingly hidden the shoes under it?

She couldn’t remember doing that, but she
supposed it was possible.

But then there were the other little
details. Her toothbrush didn’t rest with its head over the sink,
the way she always placed it so it could finish drying. Her comb
lay beside her hairbrush instead of standing upright in the
bristles. And the end of the toilet paper wasn’t folded into a
point. It had been that way when she’d walked into her bathroom
earlier. She’d folded it again before she left, just because it
made her happy to see it that way. There was no folded toilet paper
at home.

And now there was no folded toilet paper
here.

Yes, someone had definitely been here while
she was out. But who? And why?

A quick search—she hadn’t brought many
things—made it clear that nothing had been stolen. Maybe that
should have been reassuring, but the truth was that between the
missing bag and this search of her room, she’d much rather have
whoever it was find what they were looking for and go away. If they
hadn’t found it yet, did that mean that they’d be back?

And if they came back, what would they take
next time? Her?

She dragged a chair over to the door and propped it under the knob
before crawling into bed. That way, at least she’d have warning if
someone tried to come in.

Between the break-in and the date with Nick,
she’d expected to lie awake awhile, but the truth was that she was
so exhausted from the travel and the long day that she barely had
time to pull the blankets up to her chin before her eyes closed and
she dropped off. And after that, she was pretty sure, an army could
have walked through her room and she wouldn’t have woken up.

She had intended to be up and out early. But
lack of sleep on the plane the night before, coupled with jetlag
and a six hour time difference, kept her in bed way past her usual
time. She woke up a couple times during the morning, blinked
myopically at the world, and decided it was much too early to get
up, before turning over and going back to sleep. By the time she
finally forced her gluey eyelids open and kept them that way, the
ormolu clock on the antique dresser by the wall said it was almost
ten o’clock. Bright sunlight slanted through the curtains, and she
could hear the sound of traffic and voices from outside the
window.

Ten o’clock? So much for getting up and out
before anyone realized she was gone.

But in a way it was a good thing, she
reflected, as she stood under the stinging spray of the shower—more
to wake up than because she needed to get clean, since she’d taken
a shower before getting dressed for her date with Nick last night,
too.

By now, check-out time was over. Her credit
card would be charged for another night at the Lady Hamilton Hotel
whether she wanted it to or not. And while that wouldn’t do her
bank balance any good, nobody would expect her to pack up and walk
out while she still had her—very expensive—reservation. Nick—or
anyone else—who called to check on her would be told that she’d
kept her room for one more night, and they surely wouldn’t expect
her to never come back to it. That might give her a head start. If
she walked out, looking like she was just going off to do another
round of sightseeing...

The problem would be her suitcase. If she
didn’t bring it along, she’d have nothing to wear, and her savings
account didn’t stretch to a new wardrobe. Not on top of the hotel
room and the dress from yesterday.

A lot of the things in her suitcase were
staid skirts and blouses, the kinds of things she wore to work.
Unfashionable and boring. The same kinds of clothes she had a
closet full of at home. If she ditched some of them, maybe the rest
of her belongings would fit into something else.

Unzipping the black suitcase, she went
through the clothes, making two different stacks: one with things
she was sure she wanted to keep—the blue dress, the blue underwear,
her shorts, and a couple of T-shirts and blouses that weren’t as
boring as the rest. The other stack was clothes she could do
without, clothes that were similar to what she had at home, and
clothes that didn’t—she realized—make her feel good about herself
when she put them on. The blue dress had made her feel good, had
made her feel pretty. The silver sandals made her feel pretty. The
blue underwear and the scarf with the silver threads made her feel
pretty. The jeans made her feel good, too. Young and hip, very
unlike a librarian. Same for the shorts.

The drab olive blouse with the poufy sleeves
and high neck, not so much.

The castoffs she left in the suitcase, in
the closet. Once she got to where she was going, she’d call the
hotel and tell them she wouldn’t be back, and just to discard it.
The rest of her clothes she folded carefully and put them into the
shopping bag she’d gotten at the boutique yesterday. It was
oversized, to accommodate the shoebox as well as dress, scarf and
underthings, and she was able to fit two pairs of shorts and three
shirts into it, along with a half dozen pairs of plain cotton
underwear. She wore her jeans, along with a dull gray blouse and
the silver sandals.

The jeans had been a gift from Astrid last
Christmas, and it was really the first time Annika had worn them.
She’d never imagined herself as the jeans-type. Especially not
Paris-designer jeans. But Astrid said no woman’s wardrobe was
complete without a pair of great jeans, and as she twisted and
turned in front of the mirror, Annika could see her sister’s point.
The jeans did look good on her. Different, but good. For one thing,
they took a few years off her age. She looked twenty seven now,
instead of past thirty. They hugged her butt and rode low on her
hips, which was different from anything she was used to wearing,
but they made her legs look great, and they also made the boring
gray shirt look a whole lot less boring than it usually did.
Instead of twisting her hair up into a bun, she left it loose to
flow over her shoulders, and as the final
piece de
resistance
, she took her glasses off and put them in her purse.
She could no longer see herself in the mirror, but she knew she
looked good.

And she looked different, which was what she
wanted, really. Good was nice, but different was better. She wanted
to be able to walk out of the hotel without anyone realizing who
she was. If Nick was hanging around somewhere keeping an eye on
her—or his friend, the big blond with the gun—she wanted them to
look past her, to think she was someone they’d never seen before.
Just another twenty-something Swedish blonde in Parisian jeans and
sandals, out shopping.

She took the chair from under the doorknob
and put it back against the wall—clearly no one had been in the
room while she was sleeping—and then she took the stairs to the
first floor and headed for the back of the building, where the
loading dock was. It was deserted, save for a delivery van of some
sort, with a balding, middle-aged man behind the wheel. He kept his
eyes on her all the way across the dock and down the stairs, but he
didn’t speak.

And then she was around the corner and away
from the Lady Hamilton Hotel and on her way.

She couldn’t see anyone behind her—not the
driver of the car, not Nick, nor his friend with the gun—but even
so, she wandered in circles for an hour, keeping an eye over her
shoulder. She ducked into a couple of buildings and out through the
back doors—including the red-brick Gothic
Storkyrkan
—site of
the recent royal wedding—and
Tyskakyrkan
, in the first
German parish ever established outside Germany. She crossed the
town square and went down
Köpmangatan
, the oldest street in
Stockholm, dating back to the 14
^th
century, and then
found her way to
Mårten Trotzig’s Gränd
, the narrowest alley
in all of Gamla Stan. It was only ninety centimeter wide at its
narrowest—less than three feet—and she figured if someone was
following her by car, at least they’d be stuck. Someone big, like
Nick’s friend, might have a hard time squeezing through, as well.
His gun might get in the way.

That done, she hopped the nearest subway and
headed for the bus station. It wasn’t until she was on the bus,
with the doors closed for the almost two hour drive to Nynäshamn,
that she allowed herself to take a deep breath. She’d been the last
one onboard, and no one would have been able to follow by car
through the narrow, winding streets of Gamla Stan, let alone go
down to the subway with her. She was safe. For now.