Marked Masters (24 page)

My mind was again lost in the movement of
the water when I felt Jack behind me. He didn't say anything.
Didn't touch me. Yet I knew it was he. I didn't want him to know I
was so aware of his presence and pretended to remain captivated by
the view.

"You really shouldn't stand out here in the
open," he finally said.

I made a slow turn to take in the almost
wall-to-wall experience of humans around us. There was no point in
arguing. I knew where his remark came from. I looked at him and
smiled. "Hello, Jack. Ready to put me on display?"

He should have been on display himself. He
was magnificent in a black tie and custom Armani tux. A
silver-tipped ivory rose, matching my wrap, graced his silk
lapel.

"You've been busy." I smiled and tilted my
head.

He held out another ivory rose, this time
long stemmed, and said, "A beautiful rose for a beautiful
woman."

I shockingly felt my skin heat at the
hackneyed phrase and tried to stop the blush, but it came anyway. I
quickly looked down as I took the rose. "You must have spoken to
Cassie."

He held his hands up in a
what can I
say
? gesture. "She told me your colors, but the beautiful part
comes from me."

"A compliment twice in one day. Thank you,
Jack. It's lovely." I sniffed and found the flower smelled equally
terrific. "Do I need to be worried about a tracking device?" I
teased, peeking into the bloom.

I looked up in time to see his freshly
shaved jaw tighten. "No. No tracking, listening, or any other
gadget tonight. I trust you to stay with me. Be my partner." He
took my arm.

Wow! Someone had his knickers in a twist
again. He smelled wonderful, however—clean with a faint
afterthought of a woodsy cologne, Bulgari Man, maybe, that my nose
picked up even over the floral aroma of the rose. Time to lighten
the mood. I pretended to pout as we headed for the cathedral side
of the bridge. "The whole time? What will everyone think?"

"Does it matter? We're trying to set in
motion a series of events that will get us somewhere in this
hurry-up-and-wait investigation. I'm sick of being on the outside
looking in. Don't worry. I'm not going to stop you from talking to
your friends."

We took our time getting to the gallery. I
could tell he was still on edge, but the conversation stayed light,
and he kept any further orders to himself. Since we had no idea
what to expect, there was no way to plan. I decided to just enjoy
the city.

He apparently had other plans. "What's going
on in the Cassie and Nico world?"

"You spoke with Cassie earlier."

"Just for color combinations. She was busy
and said you would fill me in on their work."

In other words, she was letting me pick and
choose what he needed to know. Good girl, but under the
circumstances I figured I'd better play completely fair. First,
however, I needed to think. I delayed by sniffing the rose. Jack
brought a halt to that ploy by placing a hand over mine and pulling
the flower away from my face. "Laurel, spill."

I did a little smoothing move down my dress.
"Not until I have your solemn oath to tell me what you did
today."

"I slept. Tried to find out something more
about the snuffbox without success. Got in touch with a few of my
contacts to discreetly inquire if they had heard anything at all
about forgeries. Your turn."

"Had they heard anything? Information on
Tony B or Moran?"

"No. I'm hoping this little get-together
will bring someone or something out in the open. Nico, Cassie?"

"This might be bigger than we had originally
thought." I quickly ran through the little I'd been told. "Often,
as I'm sure you know, the social world is the first place to start
checking out anything big. Tonight we should work on forming or
re-forming social contacts, play the game, as it were. If Florence
is the key and it's as big as Nico thinks it is, we need to
immediately create a reason for our presence here separately."

"You've read my mind. The tickets indicate
Beacham Foundation, and I'll make sure everyone knows I'm your plus
one. Nothing official, but wherever you go tonight, I go as well.
We need to see what happens. Play up your relationship with Flavia
as the reason for the last-minute decision to show up tonight. Our
joint interest in the art world is our common bond."

Even if I still didn't trust him and he
irritated the heck out of me, Jack, his contacts, and his brawn and
ease with a gun had proven to be helpful a few times already. His
idea didn't seem to be asking too much. After all, it didn't take
much of a stretch for me to catch on to the staked goat analogy, so
my subconscious obviously agreed with the idea. My conscious mind,
of course, kept saying, "Watch it!"

"Okay, casual but cautious. You point out
your bogeymen, and I'll point out mine."

"Deal."

My mind started fast-forwarding to find any
hitches we might need to anticipate in the plan. "If anyone asks,
where do you want to say we met?"

"We'll stick to the truth as much as
possible. Giovanni Nicoletta's
castillo
is where we met, and
since then we've kept in touch."

Silence lasted about a minute. "I can do
this if you can."

"Shake to seal the deal?" Jack smiled wryly
and held out his hand.

My much smaller hand slid into his smoothly
calloused palm, and we shook on it.

Before he released my hand, he said, "A deal
is a deal, Miss Beacham. I fully expect you to honor your word." He
said
word
like it meant a vow.

I pulled my hand away. "I expect exactly the
same from you, Mr. Hawkes."

The look he shot my way was every bit as
suspicious as the one I sent back at him.

Too busy thinking, I hadn't paid much
attention to where we were going. Jack kept my arm secure in the
crook of his elbow, and my feet followed his lead, but my heart
double-timed its pace as my vision finally filled with our
destination. The entrance had been retooled a bit, huge pots of
shrubs and flowers, probably hired for the event, rested in front,
but the building was the same.

"
La Galleria del Giardino della Vita," I
breathed.

"Not anymore. The new owners renamed
it."

"I thought it had been made into a bank
after Andrea Tessaro died."

"That's true, but several years ago the bank
moved, and the people who purchased the property wanted to bring
back the art. They have big dreams," he finished a bit sardonically
as we climbed the steps, my hand on his proffered arm.

I looked at him questioningly. "I'm not sure
what you mean."

"
Its new name is
La Galleria del Sogno Infinito
."

"The Gallery of the Infinite Dream," I
repeated as we walked into the lobby, and I was transported back in
time. The simplicity of the entry, now filled with a long centrally
placed table and surrounded by people dressed to maximum effect in
a variety of colors and textures, remained exactly as I remembered.
"It hasn't changed."

His very British sarcasm knocked me out of
memory lane. "Whatever changes the bank made, the new owners
apparently restored it to its former glory."

"You know, if I knew you better, I might
think you had a grudge with the new owners," I murmured.

We reached the table, and he handed over the
invitations while I picked up a couple of brochures. A few seconds
later we arrived in the main section of the gallery, moving slowly
but steadily with the rest of the crowd. Again, the place was as I
remembered it.

"That's just it. No one really knows who the
new owners are. They've applied for and received the proper permits
and all, but as far as putting a real name or names to the buyer,
there's nothing to report. A company called Ermo Colle purchased
it, and their front man is an Italian exporter/importer who has
fingers in lots of distant and varied company pies but no real
stake or public connection to any of them."

"Ermo Colle? I think
colle
is hill,
but
ermo
?"

"Solitary, lonely. Actually a Greek word.
Goes back to a nineteenth-century poem by Giocomo Leopardi, and the
gallery's name is taken from the poem's title, 'L'Infinito.'
Leopardi was a gifted student who outpaced his instructor and
resorted to long hours of self-study. Before he even reached age
twenty, however, he had compromised his health from spending so
much time hunched over books. 'L'Infinito,' his best-known work, is
a poem beginning with a solitary or lonely hill the poet can't see
because his sight is blocked by a hedge, so he must use his mind to
open up a vision of the limitless world for himself."

"I had no idea you possessed such an
interest in poetry, Jack."

He grimaced as we moved into the main salon
and took two glasses of Franciacorta, a sparkling wine from the
Lombardy region. One of my favorite Italian wines, but not one I
expected to be served at a Tuscany region event. I hadn't bothered
to check, but the tickets to this party must be pretty steep or the
owners cut a great deal with the winery to be able to serve this
vintage en mass.

"I'm not. When I take on a project, part of
the investigative research I do includes finding out as much as I
can."

"You? Or some kind of team?"

"I'm assuming from your reaction when we
walked in, you visited this gallery during Tessaro's time. You must
have been a kid."

Okay, he was obviously changing the subject
to keep from answering, no surprise there, but I decided to play
along. Maybe if we explored his non sequitur for a moment, he would
return the favor and give me a bit of new data. "Yes, I was
here—"

"Jack! I had no idea you were in Italy." A
tall, thin red-haired man, with the same type of public school
accent Jack had when he employed the full Brit, greeted him with a
smile and handshake. "You remember my wife, Milli." Milli and Jack
briefly hugged. "Tell me you haven't been in Florence long, or I
may be offended."

Milli had a friendly, well cared for,
middle-aged Italian vibe and wore a spectacular Valentino that
flattered her figure and her skin. Though well turned out, she
appeared several years older than her husband, who had the English
fuddy-duddy formal thing happening.

"Hamish, I had no idea you were still here.
Continuing to plug away at teaching art students to appreciate
their masterpieces' British counterparts?"

A teacher? No way could a teacher afford
Valentino.

"You know me, Jack. Never say never. Someday
the ungrateful whelps will appreciate quality when they see it.
Besides, I'm saved from teacher purgatory by the two English and
five American transfer students I've got this semester."

We all laughed. University professor. Still
not enough for a designer gown—this year's line, if I wasn't
mistaken. Maybe family money on one side or the other. My guess was
on the wife's.

"Hamish, Milli, please let me introduce my
friend and companion, Laurel Beacham. Laurel, this is Hamish
Ravensdale and his wife, Milli. Hamish and I went to school
together."

"Nice to meet you," I said.

"Went to school together? Modesty doesn't
suit you, Jack." Hamish looked over at me. "He saved my life from
the cruelties of English schoolboys more times that I can count."
He pretended to flex a nonexistent bicep. The loose, expensive
material of his suit didn't tighten. "Never had much bravura or
stamina as a kid. Jack, on the other hand, had enough for all in
our year."

"Hmm, Jack as the overly protective type.
Not hard to see him in that role." I lifted my eyebrow and eyed him
over the rim of my glass as the others laughed.

"See you've come up against his white-knight
side," Hamish said.

I nodded.
White knight, my ass. More like
control freak
. But I judiciously kept my thoughts to
myself.

The resonance of tinkling glass and a
microphone slowed conversation until everyone turned toward the
sound.

"
Mi scusi, mi scusi…"

The rest of the brief introduction gave a
potted history of the gallery, thanked the many people, especially
the donors of special pieces, who had made this venture possible,
hoped everyone had a wonderful time, and explained a bit about what
we would be viewing—the same rhetoric on the brochures as well as
Flavia's e-mail—women artists and women subjects beginning with the
Renaissance through the Baroque period with a few noteworthy
current women painters and paintings.

He turned the microphone over to a woman who
had just entered the room from a side door.

Flavia. From the distance, she didn't appear
to have aged. I hadn't seen her in person in probably five years.
She basically thanked all of us for coming and told everyone to be
on alert for some unexpected and exciting surprises throughout the
gallery, specifying a few of them to whet our appetite. She also
mentioned a private bar for everyone's pleasure—not free of
course—and the very great need to continue to provide revenue for
the important artistic exposure of women artists. Especially in
Florence, considering the historical significance. In other words,
she meant that historically, in Florence, women were used as art
subjects to display their husband's prominence, magnitude, and
wealth. Women were exemplified as representations of their
husband's property. Women artists also were typically not
appreciated, definitely not encouraged, and their art dismissed as
of lesser importance.

She finished speaking to scattered applause
and slipped out again through the same side door. Strange. I would
have thought she would have immediately taken advantage to mingle
with the crowd. Maybe a problem existed elsewhere only she could
handle. People ebbed slowly toward the rooms of displayed art.
Hamish continued talking to Jack. His wife, after a smile to us and
a brief word in her husband's ear, moved to speak to another
couple. I took advantage of the men's conversation to observe other
people. I saw some faces I could put a name to but not as many as I
thought I would. At this point, those whom I recognized were
individuals I considered too unimportant to our current interests.
However, I made a point of speaking to them since the whole
exercise was for me to be noticed.