ItTakesaThief (30 page)

“Again, all you have is a theory.”

“Your Paris pied a terre is a handsome place, Reynard. It
cost a fortune, much more that an Interpol agent—even one who has served as
long as you—can afford without an outside income source. The Paris police found
the forged passport in your gun safe. The passport you used to access the safe
deposit box as Charles Cartierri.”

Fox snorted. “Next you’ll accuse me of murdering Esmé
Cartierri.”

“No, Charles Cartierri murdered his wife. We have DNA
evidence to prove it.”

“And me? What evidence besides this convenient discovery of
an obviously planted passport do you have against me?”

“Opportunity. You did sign in on Thursday as Cartierri.
Handwriting experts will testify to that. The murder weapon? I doubt we will
ever find the garrote. You are far too clever to keep it. And it is easily
disassembled and tossed away. As to motive… How did you put it? Oh yes, at Eton
he treated you like shit.”

“Nobody holds a grudge that long, Hunter.” Fox sneered.

“Perhaps not, but the chance to split the insurance money
two ways instead of three? When you confronted Cartierri later, you planted the
bank manager’s key in his suit coat pocket, knowing that would point to him as
the Paris murderer. You gambled, knowing the Paris police would believe a
respected Interpol agent over a civilian. Especially a pompous prick like
Charles Cartierri. No doubt you banked on him accusing Tiffany, which would
further deflect suspicion away from you. With all their finger pointing at each
other, Tiffany would probably tell law enforcement about the thefts Charles
forced her to commit. Charles denying any involvement while implicating not
only Tiffany but James Foster’s dead stepson. A veritable circus with everyone performing
to the ringmaster’s whip. Your whip.”

“Not that I’m admitting anything but—”

“Of course not.”

“What makes you think I had anything to do with any of
this?”

“Other than your forged passport?” Reynard glared. “I would
not have thought anything about Charles inspecting the Belt on Thursday, even
though he lied about his whereabouts. But you failed to tell me TC Carter’s
real name is Tiffany Cartierri. I had to wonder why you lied. But that lie was
part of your agreement with Charles. You would do nothing to set Interpol on
his tail. But you got greedy and saw the opportunity to get even richer.
One-hundred-fifty million pounds—even after taxes—would tempt all the saints in
heaven. Especially since you had enough evidence of Emilio Santana’s complicity
in insurance fraud to blackmail him into sharing.” Standing, Damian added,
“Colonel Mendez will escort you back to Bogotá. Nick will accompany you to
Paris.”

Fox gathered up his raincoat. “Fucker. You won’t get out
this with your reputation intact. When Lyons learns you fucked your primary
suspect, your name will be shit as well.”

It gave Damian a sense of satisfaction that Fox had treated
him, threatened him as if he were his brother Michael. His satisfaction grew as
he said, “Lyons already knows, Reynard.” The door opened, revealing Colonel
Mendez and Nick Troy. “Have a pleasant trip home.”

Chapter Nineteen

The dream began as it always did. The dark house. The
eerie, waiting silence. The curse, the sudden flare of light.

Charles lifted her mother’s body, then carried it out the
open French doors, across the dew-damp lawn, to the site where the gazebo-spa
would stand. Like dumping a sack of rotten potatoes, Charles tipped her
mother’s body into the hole above an abandoned well.

Returning to the house, Charles shredded her mother’s
clothes, collected the bottles of exotic perfumes and expensive cosmetics,
dumped shoes, coats, hats into suitcases and garbage bags. All the while he
alternately shrieked and muttered.

TC could hear the shrieks.

“Whore, you’ll never leave me now.”

The words made no sense to the child she’d been that
night, but the woman she’d become understood everything. Her mother hadn’t
deserted her. Charles Cartierri had murdered his wife and buried every trace of
her in the abandoned well.

Tiffany opened her eyes, surprised they weren’t filled with
tears. She felt utterly calm, completely free of guilt for the first time in
more than twenty years.

An arduous task lay before her, but she felt equal to it. If
Damian wouldn’t or couldn’t help her, her papa would. She’d talk to Hunter
first, spare her father—for a time at least—the pain of knowing how his lover
had died. Damian had indicated the evidence against Charles Cartierri in the
Banque de Medellin murders was even more circumstantial than what Interpol had
on her, but the case against him in Esmé’s death was solid. Add to it a
twenty-three-year-old murder and Charles Cartierri would spend the rest of his
life behind colorless prison walls.

* * * * *

“I need to talk to you.”

Damian looked up from the latest e-mails from Interpol,
Lyons. Seeing Tiffany in the doorway to Emilio Santana’s study, he mentally
held his breath. He suspected she had come to rail at him for his betrayal of
her, but he would not quibble over details. That she would talk to him at all
was a miracle.

“Come in. Sit.”

She sidled into the room and his heart clenched at her
diffidence, at her obvious uncertainty of her welcome. In her hands she carried
a pair of wraparound sunglasses, more, he suspected, to hide her eyes than to
shield them from the early morning sun’s glare. Rimmed by pale purple bruises,
her eyes were gray-green and full of shadows. She had scraped her luxuriant
hair back from her face into a severe bun, emphasizing her high, sculpted
cheekbones and the resoluteness of her chin. Dressed in unrelieved black, she
looked like a woman in mourning. Moving as if every bone and muscle in her body
ached, she sank into a chair and gazed out the windows behind his shoulders.
Damian sensed she was unaware of the majestic mountains outside, of the cheery
fire that took the morning chill from the room.

“Would you like some coffee?” he asked when she finally
looked at him.

“No, thank you.” She stood abruptly and headed for the door,
her stride determined. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry for disturbing
you. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Everything about you concerns me,” he said softly.

Her hand on the doorknob, she half turned toward him. “Am I
still a suspect?”

“Of course not.” Feeling as if he was picking his way through
a minefield, he crossed the room, but stopped at the perimeter of her personal
space. With Herculean effort, Damian resisted touching her. “I would like to
help you, if I can.”

Her gaze heated and darted to his face. “Easing your
conscience, Agent Hunter?”

“Probably.” Gesturing toward the chair she had vacated,
refraining from clarifying his non-agent status, he said, “Please, tell me what
I can do.”

She stared at her hands, at the fingers she had clenched
around her sunglasses until her knuckles turned white. At last, just when he
thought she would sweep from the room without saying another word, she sighed
and lifted her haunted gaze to his.

“I want you to help me bury my mother.”

With infinite tenderness he took her hand and led her to the
chair.

It took nearly an hour—an hour of long silences while she
tried to quell her shaking, interspersed with torrents of words—to get the
story from her. When she finished, Damian telephoned his brother’s former
superior at Interpol.

When he hung up, Tiffany lifted her head and looked at him
expectantly. “Well?”

Having gotten the runaround from Michael’s chief, whom
Damian had awakened at three in the morning, he chose his words carefully.
“Domestic violence is out of Interpol’s—”

“This is murder!” Tiffany protested an instant before she
bounded out of the chair and stormed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Damian demanded, grabbing her elbow
and spinning her into his arms. Remembering her threat to emasculate him if he
manhandled her again, he goose-stepped her to the wall. Using his body, he
immobilized her.

“I’m going home. Nobody—not Interpol, not even Charles
Cartierri’s high-priced lawyers—can prevent my digging in my own backyard.”

“You cannot leave Colombia,” he reminded her smugly and
watched the fight drain out of her. “Besides, as usual, you did not let me
finish.”

“So finish already,” she griped, her voice dripping acid.

“Interpol ordinarily does not involve itself in domestic
affairs. In this case, however, my contact will make an exception and contact
the National Central Bureau in your country.”

“How kind of your contact to bother.” She shoved futilely at
his shoulders.

Backing off a half step, he said, “Yes, well… It may take
some time to get the necessary warrants.”

“Damn it, I’m not going to sit here twiddling my thumbs
while Charles Cartierri’s shysters pervert the law and get him off scot-free.”

“You will not have to twiddle your thumbs. I intend to keep
you very busy right here.”

Her eyes blazing with suspicion, she glared up at him. “Oh
yeah? What, exactly, do you have in mind, Agent Hunter?”

Smirking, pleased by the prospect of spending time with her
despite her wishes to the contrary, he said, “Depositions, Tiffany darling.
Depositions.”

* * * * *

The following morning, they convened in Emilio’s office.

“Do you dream often, Señorita Cartierri?” Diego Sanchez
asked in an oily voice that made Damian want to flatten the lawyer’s nose into
his teeth.

“As often as the next person, I suppose.”

“Nightly?”

“I guess. Yes,” she amended when Cartierri’s representative
focused his assessing gaze on her.

“And do you always remember what you dream?”

“‘Always’, Señor Sanchez?” Tiffany asked with matching
casualness. “Dreams being what they are, I doubt anyone can say without
equivocation that they always remember every dream.”

“So, you are saying you do not remember what you dream.”

“I’m saying that I don’t know if I always remember every
dream. I’m saying that my memory of what your client did to my mother returned
to me in a dream.”

“Do you dream in color?”

“Sometimes. Almost always.”

“And do you sometimes have erotic dreams?”

“What has that to do with anything?” Damian demanded,
exploding out of his chair, his hands clenched into fists. He had had enough of
this bastard’s innuendoes. Now he was going to knock the lawyer’s teeth to
Hades and back.

Diego Sanchez turned a pleading, injured expression toward
the Interpol mediator and said, “I am only trying to determine Señorita
Cartierri’s mental state at the time of this convenient return of memory.”

“You are implying, Señor Sanchez,” Sir James Foster said
into the brief silence, “that my daughter is a liar.”

“An allegation easily disproved by exhuming my mother’s
body.” Tiffany sounded calm, but righteous fury built in her eyes.

“The fabrication of an overwrought if not malicious mind,”
Sanchez said in a fulminating voice.

The mediator, a wizened, sharp-eyed man on loan from
Interpol’s Colombian National Central Bureau, steepled his fingers and
considered each of the assembled players with an unwavering gaze. “I agree with
Ms. Cartierri,” he said at last, favoring Tiffany with an avuncular smile.

After a quick answering grin, Tiffany turned to Colonel
Mendez and asked, “Now may I go home?”

“No, Señorita Cartierri, you may not.”

Her mouth gaping, Tiffany glared at the Colombian policeman.
Spinning on her heel, she stormed out of Emilio Santana’s study and slammed the
door behind her.

Only the rattling windows voiced a protest.

* * * * *

For a week the entire Santana household tiptoed around
Tiffany. She realized her mood swings bordered on manic-depression. She tried
her hardest to show her confident side instead of the part of her that brooded
on Diego Sanchez’s allegations. Had her mind, overloaded with everything that
had happened to her in a few short weeks, sought vengeance against an innocent
man? Or had she, in fact, remembered and dreamed the truth?

Damian also found the waiting for news from the States
interminable. More than anything in the world, he wanted to take Tiffany in his
arms, dry her tears, tears she had yet to shed, and love away her sorrow. Even
the news that the Long Island police had found her mother’s remains had failed
to dispel her moroseness. It was as if Tiffany thought herself guiltier than
Charles Cartierri was in the murders of her mother and Esmé Cartierri.

Esmeralda and James united against Damian, each urging
patience and time. Damian tried to heed their advice, but he knew time worked
against him. Every minute of every day, he could feel Tiffany slipping farther
and farther away, withdrawing deeper into herself until Damian feared no one
would be able to reach her.

Should he have revealed who really had solved the case? he
wondered while he watched Tiffany sleep in the early spring sun beside the
Santanas’ swimming pool. Would the accolades she so richly deserved have
prevented her slipping into lethargy? He did not believe they would. For too
many years she had endured having her life revealed to total strangers, read
about in newspapers, speculated over by gossip columnists. She had earned the
right to privacy.

What she had not earned was the right to become a
non-person.

“Señorita Tiffany is very sad,” Rogelio Santana said,
sitting on the chaise lounge next to Damian’s.

“You don’t look much happier, m’ijo.” And misery loves
company, Damian thought, feeling a spark of hopefulness. “Why don’t you go talk
to her?”

“She is sleeping.”

“She sleeps too much. Besides, she likes you. I do not think
she would mind if you wakened her.”

A wide smile lit the small face. “¿Verdad?”

“Truth.” He handed his young friend Tiffany’s hat, floppy
fronds around the brim rustling in the gentle breeze. With a grin of his own he
watched Tiffany swat the tickling fronds away from her nose, her cheek, her
lips. He saw her open her eyes and a spurt of joy welled in him when the
dullness faded from those emerald depths.

“Hola, hombre,” she said in her musical contralto. “¿Que
tal?”

“Not so good, TC.”

Damian left them alone.

Tiffany adjusted the back of her chaise so she could sit up,
then opened her arms. Like a fledgling finding its nest, Rogelio settled
against her, his narrow back resting against her chest. She wrapped her arms
around him and waited.

“What mi abuelo did was not very nice.”

“No, it wasn’t very nice,” Tiffany agreed, matching
Rogelio’s solemn tone.

“Does that make Grandfather a bad man?”

Does it
? she wondered, for the first time in days
allowing herself to think, to feel. What Emilio Santana had done was both
legally and morally wrong, but did that make him a bad man? Bad, yes, but not
irredeemable. Not evil, a word that found new depths of meaning in Charles
Cartierri.

“I think,” she said, choosing her words with care, “your
grandfather let temptation get the better of him. Which can happen to anyone.
But I also think he is basically good at heart.”

She felt the small chest heave, heard the soft sigh, sensed
a regret that went deeper than disappointment in his grandfather.

“I think I will not become a gemologist after all.”

“Why not, Rogelio?”

“I think I shall be a medico like mi padre instead. The
temptations do not seem so great. Sometimes, Señorita TC, the stones, the
emeralds, they whisper to me. ‘See how beautiful I am. How beautiful a piece
you could make of me. Take me, Rogelio. Tu abuelo will not miss me’.”

“Medicine holds its own temptations, m’ijo. Drugs, for one.”

Again, her small companion sighed. “I wish Grandfather had
taken me with him when he went to verify—authenticate—the Belt. Had I been
there, he would not have taken it.”

“You’re wrong, Rogelio.” Even to her own ears her tone sounded
sharper than she had intended. Softening her voice, she explained. “Your
presence might have made it more difficult for him to lie, but your grandfather
still would have kept the real Belt. You cannot assume responsibility for
another’s actions. Each of us must do that for himself.” Besides, Emilio hadn’t
stolen anything. He’d simply fashioned a substitute and kept the real Belt for
himself. Fraud was a different issue.

Wondering how much she could tell Rogelio without destroying
his opinion of her, Tiffany sighed. She had to risk it, for the boy’s sake.

“Not so very long ago I, too, took things that did not
belong to me. No, please don’t look at me or I won’t be able to tell you.” The
squirming child quieted once more, but she could feel the questions humming
through his body.

“For a long time I forgave myself. I justified my actions as
showing love and respect for the person I stole for. I knew it was wrong. Knew
that I hurt people, but I didn’t stop. I kept stealing.”