Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (4 page)

Luke leaned back in his chair and picked up his water bottle, tossing it back and forth like a ball. He was good-looking in a dark, Mediterranean way—Perry hadn’t told me that, either—thick, curly hair flecked with gray, dark brown eyes, a prominent nose that looked like he might have broken it once, and the kind of intense stare that made me want to look down and check for undone buttons in strategic places or run my tongue over my teeth in case I’d smeared lipstick on them.

I hoped Luke might at least smile or make some lighthearted quip, but all he said was, “So did you singe them off?”

“Not me. A friend. They don’t grow back, either.”

He gave me that double-barrel stare and said, “What happened to you, if it wasn’t your eyebrows?”

“A bullet grazed me in a firefight.”

He unscrewed the cap to his water bottle. “Where’d you get that?”

I presumed he was asking where in the world I had been, not to see the scar under my left breast.

“A highway outside Khartoum. I was traveling with a group from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and the Red Cross to the camps in Darfur. We got held up by bandits,” I said. “Our guards were twenty feet away getting water at a well.”

“This job isn’t going to be that exciting. Not even close.”

“I know that. That’s why I’m applying for it.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t get it. You could work for
National Geographic,
the
Post,
the
Times,
the AP. Write your ticket with stuff like this.” He tapped his finger on a photograph I’d taken of a group of women in brilliant jewel-colored saris, part of a wedding procession in Rajasthan, India. Then he added, and I knew this was strike three and the kiss of death. “Plus you’re Charles Lord’s granddaughter. You’re photographic royalty.”

He was right. My grandfather, one of the legendary post–World War II photojournalists, was an early member of Magnum, the iconic photo cooperative that began in 1947. His friends were its founders, and even bigger legends; people like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger, and David Seymour, whom Granddaddy called “Chim.” Edward Steichen, who put together the world-renowned
Family of Man
exhibition when he was photography director at the New York Museum of Modern Art, had been a neighbor until he passed away in the 1970s.

Growing up, I spent summers at my grandfather’s house in Connecticut because my mother, then a single parent on the verge of living on welfare, couldn’t afford to pay anyone to look after me or send me to camp when school was out. What she didn’t know was that Granddaddy turned me loose in his darkroom, giving a twelve-year-old free rein around toxic chemicals as he taught me about developing film and making prints. All the while he’d recount outrageous, uncensored tales of his exploits and adventures on assignment for
Life
or
National Geographic
and the models he’d worked with for
Vogue
. I knew then that was the life I wanted, but I also learned my craft from a master, and I knew what a gift he was giving me.

“Surely my grandfather’s reputation isn’t a liability, is it?” I asked Luke.

“Of course not. But it does make it harder to understand what you’re doing here.”

It was a fair question and I’d already prepared my answer. “I moved back to Washington because it’s home and I have family and friends here. For the past twelve years I’ve been on the road practically nonstop. I’m looking for a job where I’m not always living out of a suitcase or a backpack,” I said. “I’m done with war zones and wearing flak jackets and sleeping in tents.”

His eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t fit your profile.”

“It does now.”

What I wanted—actually, what I needed—was to do something that gave my life structure and order, work that would keep my mind occupied so I wouldn’t drive myself mad with worry and anxiety about Nick.

“Perry told me about your husband,” Luke said. “It sounds like you’ve been through hell. I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s tough coming back here and starting over.”

I nodded and looked away, staring at the art and photography on the walls. The photos of people caught in the business of everyday living, little vignettes of life, were Luke’s—I knew that instinctively—and he had a knack for making something ordinary seem extraordinary and worth noticing, a keen eye for detail. The original paintings and prints were also his, an extension of his photographic style. I liked the fact that, unlike some photographers I’d worked with, Luke seemed to understand the symbiotic relationship between photography and art. Perry was a journalist: The reason we took photos was to report a story, tell what happened. Luke seemed to subscribe to Ansel Adams’s school of thought, that photography is a creative art, much more than a medium for factually communicating ideas.

“I’d like to work with you,” I told him. “We’re different as photographers, but we’d complement each other as a team. Perry pulled out his whole bag of tricks to get me to talk to you and I bet he did the same to you. He knew you were looking for an assistant to set up your lights, and he didn’t tell me the salary was what you’d pay a grad student from the Corcoran.”

One of Luke’s eyebrows went up as he said in a bland voice, “That’s Perry for you. He always was an operator, even back in high school.”

For a long moment the only sound in the room was the quiet whooshing of the air-conditioning. This guy was hard to read.

Finally I said, “So was he wrong and we’re wasting each other’s time here, or do you want to talk about this?”

Luke took a swig from his water bottle. “Are you always this pushy?”

I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. “Let’s put it this way. I always get the shots I need for my assignments. I’m diplomatic when I need to be, but there are times when it’s just best to be direct and say what you mean. I’m also currently unemployed, which is a heck of a motivator.”

I caught the tiny flash of respect in his eyes. “All right, let’s say we could work something out. You have a salary in mind?”

My IPS wages, plus Nick’s income from Crowne Energy and the CIA, had allowed us to take advantage of London’s cosmopolitan cultural life, to enjoy its restaurants, theaters, and art galleries. We knew we were lucky, but we never took those luxuries for granted. After Colin died, the substantial paychecks from Crowne Energy stopped coming, but Perry had given me a small bonus when I left and the CIA was still paying Nick, so I had some income, plus our savings.

I named a figure that I thought was reasonable given my experience and credentials, and Luke’s eyebrow went up again, but this time he looked intrigued.

“Let’s go into my office,” he said. “I need to do some math.”

I followed him across the large, sunny room with its gleaming hardwood floors and whitewashed walls. His office was the only permanent space in the studio; he’d configured the rest of the boxy two-story brick-and-stone warehouse so that a series of interior modular partitions could be moved on rollers to accommodate whatever size room he needed for a photo shoot.

A desk with a supersize Mac and a half dozen external drives probably used to back up photos sat on his desk. He indicated the chair opposite his desk and I took it.

Luke sat down, hit something on a keyboard that made his computer screen flicker to life, and began clicking as he studied various screens. A bloodred folder with
Empire of the Firebird: The Rediscovered Treasures of the Imperial Romanov Dynasty
stamped in gold sat on a corner of his desk next to a framed photo of Luke with his arms around an attractive blonde and a pretty teenager who was the mirror image of the woman. They were standing on what looked like the deck of a cruise ship, all of them relaxed and laughing at something the photographer must have said or done.

“My wife, Leslie, and our daughter, Tara,” he said.

I hadn’t realized he’d stopped working and was watching me. Perry had told me Luke lost his wife to cancer two years ago.

“They’re lovely,” I said. “And I’m sorry for your loss. Perry told me about you, too.”

“Thank you.” For an uncomfortable moment he looked like he wished he could turn that photograph around so I couldn’t see it and I wished I could do it for him.

“How long were you married?”

“Eighteen years. She was eighteen and I was nineteen. We were a couple of kids.” He cleared his throat and went back to his computer screen, but a muscle twitched in his jaw and my heart ached for him.

“Would it be okay if I take a look at that folder on the Fabergé exhibit?” I asked.

“Help yourself,” he said without looking up. “I got the gig to shoot a private party the night before the opening at the National Gallery. The director of public relations is a friend of a friend.”

“Have you seen it yet? The exhibit, I mean?”

“No.” He stopped working again, ran both hands through his curly hair, and leaned back in his chair. “Arkady Vasiliev, the Russian billionaire who’s loaning the two Fabergé eggs and the paintings and icons to the gallery, won’t allow anyone to see it until the night of the party. Nobody from the press got in for a preview, no advance interviews, no photographs, nothing. Moses Rattigan, the PR guy at the National Gallery, said those are Vasiliev’s terms and they have to go along with them.”

“That’s odd. You’d think he’d want the publicity, wouldn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Actually, all the secrecy worked in his favor. The tickets were gone the first week you could get ’em. I heard people are selling them—free tickets—on eBay for a hundred bucks or more. It’s crazier than ‘Bloom Watch’ during cherry blossom week. The press are calling it ‘Egg-Mania.’ ”

“Egg-Mania?” I said. “Seriously?”

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t invent it. Haven’t you been following it in the news?” He made a face. “ ‘D.C. Goes Nuts Over Eggs.’ ‘We’re So Egg-cited and That’s No Yolk.’ ”

I laughed. “I guess I missed those stories.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure there’ll be more.”

“Well, the Fabergé eggs are a big deal,” I said. “In Russia they symbolize the end of the Romanov empire. After that, the Communists took over and life changed forever.”

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m more interested in the paintings and icons than I am in two eggs with rubies and diamonds plastered all over them.”

“You might change your mind after you get a chance to look at them,” I said. “Nick—my husband—saw them. He told me they were fabulous.”

Luke shook his head. “Vasiliev’s people said no one had seen them. That’s why this world premiere is such a big deal, the first time they’re on display anywhere. The Firebird egg was never even mentioned in Fabergé’s records, so nobody knew it existed. The other one was lost after the Bolsheviks assassinated the czar and his family before Fabergé got a chance to give it to them.”

Fabergé’s last known imperial egg, the Blue Tsarevich Constellation Egg. A miniature blue crystal clock with the star constellation from the night Nicholas and Alexandra’s son, Alexis, the heir to the throne, was born. The stars were all rosecut diamonds.

“You mean it’s the first time they’re displayed in public,” I corrected him. “We were invited to a party at Arkady Vasiliev’s home in London. I was away that weekend but Nick went.”

“You’re personal friends with Arkady Vasiliev?”

“Not me, I’ve never met him,” I said. “Nick knew him professionally; they’d met once or twice. The only time he saw Vasiliev that night was in a receiving line in a room made entirely of crystal. Their house was so huge you could drop Buckingham Palace inside and lose it.”

“A room made entirely of crystal? Jesus.” Luke rubbed his chin. “How’d your husband end up seeing the eggs?”

“He asked Tatiana, as simple as that. She took him upstairs in one of the elevators to the wing with their private art gallery.”

“Jesus,” he said again. “Who’s Tatiana?”

“His wife.”

“Must be his ex-wife,” he said. “His girlfriend’s running this show. Lara Gordon. A real knockout, young enough to be Arkady’s daughter. Her mother is Katya Gordon, the Russian art scholar from Columbia. The Gordons are the reason the exhibit is opening in Washington instead of Moscow or London. Lara wanted her mother to be the curator and get the credit for scoring a world art coup and Vasiliev wanted to please his hot new honey.”

A new girlfriend, an American girl. I’d been so preoccupied with my own life and avoiding reading the tabloids that I’d missed the news that Vasiliev and Tatiana had split up.

I said to Luke, “I’d love to photograph that exhibit and I’d really like this job.”

He gave me another assessing look and picked up a black marker, scribbling something on a legal pad. He spun it around and pushed it over to me.

“Here’s my final offer of a salary,” he said. “I’m still getting out of hock for the equipment and the rent on this place is pretty stiff. It’s all I can afford right now.”

I looked down at what he’d written. He’d sweetened the deal, but I’d be making less money than I did in London, significantly less than the household income that had included Nick’s CIA pay and his salary at Crowne Energy.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

4

Luke set things up so I was cleared to work as a second photographer at Arkady Vasiliev’s private party at the National Gallery of Art the following week. The two of us had already stopped by the museum to take test shots and check lighting, so we had done our homework, but Seth MacDonald, the gallery’s director, still wanted us to come by for a final after-hours meeting the night before the event. I have photographed heads of state whose staff didn’t require this amount of hoop jumping and security, but Luke told MacDonald that he, Alicia Jones, and I would be there at six sharp on Tuesday.

The first day I worked at Focus, no one showed up to sit at the receptionist’s desk and I wondered if it was there for show. Then Luke told me he had hired Alicia—Ali—a few weeks before he took me on, agreeing to let her keep odd hours because she occasionally worked nights as a vocalist with a local jazz band. If the salary I made was anything to go by, Luke wasn’t paying Ali much either, so accommodating her schedule must have been part of the quid pro quo for the paltry pay.