Moving Target (10 page)

“What good was just a capital letter?” Niall asked.

“There was a Victorian craze for alphabet books whose letters were made up entirely of elaborate capitals that had been cut out of old manuscripts.”

Dana winced. “You mean they would take something as elegant as this and butcher it for the pretty letter?”

Erik looked at the page she had pointed to. It took a good eye and a better imagination to see the clean, balanced columns of calligraphy that filled the page. The only relief was in a palm-sized capital T made of intertwined dragons whose eyes, claws, and scales were probably picked out in gold foil; the copy showed the color more as a sickly bronze. As was customary in illustrated manuscripts, a heavily decorated and gilded capital letter signaled the beginning of an important passage: The thought that I will see her drives me . . .

The idea that Erik the Learned might have arranged a meeting with his mysterious sorceress/lover/enemy intrigued his modern namesake. The words vibrated with emotion, but there was no hint as to whether such a meeting was in the past, in the future, or only in the scribe’s mind.

“That’s exactly what the forgers did,” Erik said to Dana. “They couldn’t read the old Latin, much less the common language of the day. Few people could, and that included the folks buying the illustrated manuscripts. Even fewer people could read the vulgate commentary between the lines and in the margins.”

“Vulgar comments?” Niall asked, looking interested for the first time.

Dana gave him a black glance that could have left holes in two-inch steel plate.

“Vulgate,” Erik said. “Same root. Much the same meaning. Common or coarse. Latin was the language of education and writing. English was considered a vulgar tongue.”

“Still can be,” Niall said.

“In your mouth, certainly,” Dana said.

“Stop, now, you’re hurting my Fuzzy feelings,” Niall said.

“I’d have to find them, first.”

“Anytime you want to go looking, luv. Any time at all.”

Her lips fought a smile. She lost. One of the things she liked about Niall was that he wasn’t a bit intimidated by her sharp tongue and even sharper mind. Just as she wasn’t intimidated by his intelligence, strength, and lethal skills. From time to time they fought like hell on fire, but they respected each other just as fiercely.

“You were saying . . . ?” Niall invited Erik.

“Alphabet books,” prompted Dana.

Erik didn’t even blink. He was accustomed to the freewheeling conversations that passed for business meetings at Rarities Unlimited. “At the end of the nineteenth century, when self-made men like J. Pierpont Morgan were buying art by the carload to shore up their claim to social legitimacy, illustrated manuscripts in whole or in tiny parts became all the rage. Morgan bought them by the pound. Quite a few of them were compliments of the Spanish Forger.”

“You mean the old robber baron bought a lot of frauds?” Dana asked, smiling at the idea.

“He was buying what was available on the market at the time. The Spanish Forger was a big part of that market. Interesting thing is, today the work of the Spanish Forger is collectible in its own right. He or she was an artist. He couldn’t read Latin—the miniatures didn’t match the sense of whatever words survived on the page—but the images themselves were beautiful.”

“Then it’s hardly something to have a heart attack over, is it?” Niall muttered. “A rose by any other name still has thorns. If Warrick had been suckered by these,” he said, waving at the pages, “then I could understand him popping a vessel over them. But he wasn’t suckered. So what is he really after?”

“Irrelevant,” Dana said immediately. “People lie to themselves, much less to other people. If we had to know all of our clients’ motives before we acted, we would be lip-deep in stink. That’s why I made certain we were hired for a specific job: attempt to buy the pages for the House of Warrick. Why the Warricks want the pages is their problem.”

“Until it becomes our problem,” Niall said.

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. If we get to it.” She gave him the kind of look that had shriveled lesser men. “At the moment, I don’t want your convoluted, paranoid military mind screwing up a simple, profitable assignment.”

“Convoluted,” Niall said, savoring each syllable. “Is that a Fuzzy word for brilliant?”

“What if the pages are real?” Erik asked quickly, heading off one of his bosses’ famous, furious slanging matches. Niall and Dana might consider them invigorating, but everyone else headed for the nearest exit.

Dana swung toward Erik. “Are they?”

“I won’t know until I see the originals, but if I had to put a bet down now, I’d say they’re real. The calligraphy certainly is right for the time. If the images match the text . . .” He shrugged. “Get me the originals. Then I’ll tell you if they’re fake or real.”

“Bloody hell,” Dana said. “That might complicate things on our end. The House of Warrick thinks the pages are fake. They could go sideways on us if we insist the pages are real.”

Then she was silent but for the movement of her fingertips on the conference table’s burnished maple surface. It wasn’t the random drumming of an impatient person but rather the intricate moves of someone who was accustomed to playing the flute.

Erik waited.

So did Niall. He might enjoy jerking Dana’s chain at every opportunity, but he had a profound respect for her intelligence. She was a Fuzzy by choice, not because she lacked the unflinching pragmatism to see the world as it really was.

“If the pages are real, of course we protect them,” she said. “Our allegiance is to the art, not to the client. The House of Warrick knows it as well as we do. It’s in the contract they sign with Rarities Unlimited each year.”

“Good,” Erik said simply.

“Otherwise you were going to freelance this one, is that it?” Niall said.

Erik nodded. “Serena Charters approached me, remember?”

“Were you interested on general principles or personal ones?” Dana asked.

“Both.”

“Do you have a conflict with the client’s request?” she pressed.

“I’d rather buy the pages for myself, but I can’t outbid the House of Warrick and I know it.” He shrugged. “Given that, I have no conflict with carrying out the client’s wishes.”

“All right,” she said. “You’re on.”

“I’ll need a complete background on Serena Charters,” Erik said. “And on the grandmother, too, since that’s where Serena says she got the pages.”

“Grandmother’s name?” Niall asked.

“All I know about Serena is that she lives here”—Erik handed over the cover letter that had come with the copies—“and she doesn’t answer that telephone number often enough to matter.”

Niall’s winged eyebrows twitched but he said only “How long do I have?”

“The usual,” Erik said. “Yesterday.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.” Niall stood and looked at his watch. “Is this one of Factoid’s telecommute days?”

“He’s been coming in more often.” Dana smiled slyly. “He says that telecommuting isn’t as good as being in the flesh, so to speak.”

“I like that boy’s ambition,” Niall said, heading for the door. Then he stopped and winked at Dana. “Good job he’s after Gretchen’s flesh, not yours. I’d hate to break every bone in his Fuzzy body.”

“You break him, you replace him,” Dana said.

“Gretchen isn’t my type. I prefer tiny little brunettes.”

“I’m not tiny!”

“Who said anything about you?”

The door closed behind Niall.

“Some day I’m going to kill that man,” Dana said thoughtfully.

“How?”

“In his bed.”

“I doubt that he sleeps that soundly.”

She smiled like a cat. “Did I mention sleeping?”

Her fingertips began moving again as she stared at the bad color copies spread across the table. The possibility of jewel tones and the suggestion of graceful, intricate Celtic designs made her wish she could see the originals.

“Fake or real, they’re really quite extraordinary,” she said finally. “When will you know?”

“If they’re real?”

She nodded.

“Once I get my hands on them,” Erik said, “I’m going to take a long time deciding if they’re what they seem.”

“Will it be that difficult?”

He grinned. “No, but it will be that much fun.”

T
he Rarities helicopter dropped Erik off at the clean, uncluttered, and mostly uncovered Palm Springs airport. He passed up the dubious delights of airport food and drove to a little roach coach a mile away that served the kind of tacos that had claws in them. The chilies were as real as the tears they drew from his eyes.

No sooner had he taken a bite than the pager vibrated against his waist.

“Now what?” he muttered.

He wiped his hands on a napkin that was smaller than the taco he was eating and almost as greasy, punched a button, and saw a number. He called it and waited. Six rings later, someone picked up.

“McCoy. What do you want.” There was no question in the voice, simply a kind of irritable snarl.

“You tell me,” Erik said. “You called my number.”

“Minute.”

Erik went back to eating. Factoid’s idea of a “minute” was notorious around Rarities. It came from the fact that McCoy wore his computer clipped to his belt, used a palm communications unit called a widget as a keyboard when it would have been impolite to address the computer verbally, and viewed various screens through special windows placed in the glasses he didn’t otherwise need. Factoid could be face-to-face with you and at the same time on the other side of the world having a conversation with one or more mainframes. To him, reality was a virtual construct.

“Okay,” McCoy said. “What did you want?”

“To find out why you called me.”

“Oh. Right. I loaded what I’ve found so far under your access code.”

“Usual place?”

“Yeah. Rarities folder, today’s date as the file title.”

“I’m renaming that file Book of the Learned as soon as we stop talking. All future info on this case should go there.”

“Minute.”

Holding the cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, Erik took the last few bites of taco, wiped his hands, and wished that his cell phone/computer could compute and talk at the same time. He had tried it once. The results had been unspeakable, but that hadn’t prevented Factoid from mentioning it endlessly.

“Cool book!” Factoid said.

“You’ve got the Book of the Learned on one of your databases?” Erik asked.

“Just a few rumors. Want ’em?”

Erik smiled. He had never been able to afford a full Rarities search. Dana or Niall would have given him one for free, but he hadn’t wanted to ask. The Book of the Learned was, after all, only a hobby. He wouldn’t admit that it had become an obsession, no matter how riveting and frankly medieval his dreams were. “Hell, yes, I want what you have.”

“So where do I pour the chocolate syrup?”

Erik blinked and said without hesitation, “In her shoe.”

“Her shoe.”

“Um” was all Erik could say without laughing out loud.

“Jesus, it’s a wonder you ever get laid. Her shoe. I’m checking my databases on that one.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

“Shoe. Mother. You’re sick, North.”

“It’s all that chocolate syrup.”

Grinning, Erik punched out and went to the computing/Internet access side of his hand unit’s silicon brain.

A few moments later he knew that Serena’s full name was Serena Lyn Charters, she was thirty-four, self-employed, owned a house in Leucadia, a five-year-old van, no outstanding or recent tickets, had registered a neutered male cat named Mr. Picky with a pet recovery service, never married, and used no computer that was plugged into anything McCoy could tap. Social Security number was still out of reach, but it shouldn’t take long. More information would come when Factoid cracked Serena’s bill-paying habits. The telephone bill was first. As soon as he found her mother’s name—especially her maiden name—he would go after credit and debit cards. Then it would be a piece of cake.

Erik glanced at his watch. Quarter of one. He could read this in comfort at his home computer, or he could keep squinting at the unit’s small display.

He kept squinting, haunted by the faded copies with their hints of a long-ago life written in a man’s slashing hand and introduced by two dragons, intertwined yet hostile. And he had no doubt the beasts were hostile rather than loving; he had managed to decipher a few more words.

The thought that this time, this day . . . I will see her drives me . . . starving wolf to food.

Though I know . . .

God’s teeth, I was foolish. Why didn’t I see?

Erik could fairly feel the rage and acceptance of his long-dead namesake. Then he blinked and saw the tiny readout rather than fragments and phrases that were almost a thousand years old, words that were seared on his memory as though he had once written them, felt them, lived them.

With an impatient movement of his thumb, Erik scrolled down the screen for information that was more modern. A few moments was all it took to see that Serena’s grandmother had offered even less fertile ground for investigation than Serena herself. The grandmother’s full name was Ellis Weaver.

Erik paused, frowning. Odd name for a woman. Must have been an old family name that they stuck on a girl when they ran out of boys.

Ellis Weaver had no Social Security number. No work. No income. No retirement benefits. No pets. Nothing but a piece of land and a house out in the high desert that only Joshua trees cared about, because only Joshua trees were tough enough to survive there. The truck that had burned with the house was registered to Morton Hingham, her lawyer, in Palm Springs. She had no driver’s license. Birth date unknown. No savings account. One safe-deposit box. One dead daughter. One living granddaughter.

One unsolved murder.

Even for a preliminary search, that wasn’t much information. Factoid must be doing laps looking for more. Obviously Serena’s grandmother had led an unplugged, unwired life. Cash only, no credit cards, no checks, no use for any of the multitude of official programs designed to make life easier for the aged while various governments tracked everyone to the grave, giving benefits with one hand and collecting taxes with both.