Take Me for a Ride (7 page)

“
Non
,” he croaked. He lifted his head. “
No
.”

“Luc, you need medical attention! And the police—”

“No police,” he reiterated. “
Promise
.”

“Why not?” But she knew why not. Deep in the pit of her stomach, she knew. Luc couldn’t afford for his business dealings to be investigated. Luc was involved in things that weren’t aboveboard. It explained the Mercedes. It explained the huge diamond on Giraffe’s hand. It explained his nervous reaction to the man who’d dropped off the necklace for repairs.

He struggled to sit up. “Help . . . me.”

She was afraid to touch him, since she didn’t know where he’d been beaten. But she slid an arm under his shoulders and heaved mightily to get him to a sitting position. Then, using all of her body weight and every ounce of strength she possessed, she dragged him over to the kitchen cabinets so that he had something to lean against.

“
Mer-merci
, Natalie.”

They both sat there, trying to catch their breath. He shouldn’t thank her at all, since she had an awful feeling that she was directly responsible for the beating. Oh, God. How to tell him? Where to start?

And Nonnie
. Fear coiled in her belly, slithered through her gut.
Please God, I can keep Nonnie safe . . . This is all my fault.

“Luc, who did this?” she asked again.

He shook his head. “Better . . . that . . . you do not . . . know,” he said with difficulty.

She jumped up and searched in a drawer for a tea towel, then wet it at the sink and tried to minister to his poor, battered face. “Does this have to do with the necklace?” she asked, though she didn’t really want to.

He winced as she wiped blood away from his swollen, broken nose. Then he nodded.

Fear broke the surface of her emotions and then rushed in like high tide. Tears poured down her cheeks. “Luc . . . oh, God. Listen, I’m the one who borrowed the necklace.”

He jerked back from her hands and hit his head against the cabinet door.
“What?”

“I borrowed it,” she sobbed. The words poured out of her in a tumult. “I wanted to show it to my grandmother—and she’s blind—so I couldn’t take a picture. Our family—we used to have a similar necklace—I meant to return it over the weekend—but she won’t let me have it back . . .”

Luc grabbed her wrist. “You
get it from her
. Today, Natalie.
Comprends-tu? Now.
You bring it to me, or my life is worthless, eh?”

She nodded, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry. I thought it would be harmless and I’d have it back in the safe within twenty-four hours.”

“Go. No, help me to my car first. I cannot have the other employees see me like this . . .”

Natalie mopped up the floor quickly with paper towels.

They left through the back door, which was unlocked. No doubt the men who’d roughed up Luc had entered and exited that way. He directed her to set the alarm and lock up after them.

He wrapped a scarf around his injured face, and they walked outside to his gray Mercedes coupe.

“Do you want me to drive you to your apartment?” Natalie asked, though she didn’t want to be responsible for a $70,000 car. It was the least she could do.

He shook his head. “I want you to get the necklace. Bring it to me at home as soon as you can. And say nothing to anyone, eh? Nobody.”

Natalie nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I assume that I’m fired.”

Luc didn’t reply, but his silence said it all.

 

Natalie took the subway to Grand Central Terminal, and then the Metro-North rail to the Stamford station, where she changed trains and took the New Haven line to the Springdale platform. Springdale was a cozy little neighborhood in Stamford where not much seemed to have changed since the 1950s. Nonnie had lived there in the midst of its working-class charm for more than thirty years.

Natalie exited the train and walked down Hope Street toward her grandmother’s house on Knicker bocker Avenue.

The little Cape Cod was painted slate blue with white shutters and doors and had looked the same for as long as Nat could remember. She climbed the three cement steps to the small enclosed porch and opened the storm door, wiping her feet on an ancient straw mat that needed replacing. As she approached the main door, she noticed that not only were no lights on inside, but no classical music played.

Natalie tried the door, but it was locked. She rang the bell, but Nonnie didn’t come to the door. She knocked repeatedly, hysteria rising in her throat. Of course she had a key, but she hadn’t planned on coming here today, so it was in her apartment in the city.

Finally she left the porch and went around the side of the little house, toward the rear yard and the garage.

She ran to the back door and banged on it, calling her grandmother’s name. It, too, was locked, and no sign of life came from within the kitchen. At least Nonnie wasn’t lying beaten on the kitchen floor . . .

Just the thought had her recoiling, and she fought to control her growing panic. Where was Nonnie? She never left the house. She hadn’t just gone for a walk around the block or made a run to the bank.

What if the people who’d beaten up Luc had been there? What if Nonnie was stiff, cold, and blue in her bedroom? Dear God. Natalie had to break in and make sure she was all right. She whirled and ran toward the garage, and then stopped in her tracks. The side door to the garage was slightly ajar.

Shaking now, Natalie forced herself toward the building, which held only one car: Nonnie’s ancient Buick Regal. No sounds came from within. Nat put her hand on the cold metal doorknob and pulled.

The garage was empty, except for old garden tools and various odds and ends. The car was gone.

The car was gone . . . but Nonnie was legally blind and couldn’t have driven it. So who had? One of the neighbors? Or had someone broken in, robbed a helpless old lady, and then stolen her car? Oh, God, what if they’d killed her and put her body in the trunk?

Her hands shaking, Nat grabbed a spade from a hook on the wall and started toward the house again. Her cell phone rang and she almost jumped out of her skin, dropping the spade.

She grabbed the phone and flipped it open, half afraid that this was a ransom call. But instead, Eric McDougal’s voice said cheerily, “Breakfast?”

She broke down.

“Natalie,” he said urgently. “What’s wrong?”

The words poured out of her mouth disjointedly.

“Do not go into the house alone,” he instructed her.

“But—”

“Go to a neighbor’s house. Call the police—”

“Luc said no police,” she sobbed.

“I’m coming out there,” he said with grim determination.

“What? But you barely know me . . .”

“I don’t care. I’ll be there in under an hour. Go to a neighbor’s and I’ll call you when I’m close. What’s the address?”

Bewildered but intensely grateful for the support, she told him. After all, he was a security consultant.

“Where could she be? You don’t think they killed her over”—her voice broke—“over the necklace, and then took her body to d-d-dump it?” Natalie sank to her knees on the cold ground and shut her eyes against the possibility.

“No,” Eric said in reassuring tones. “They wouldn’t have known who took the necklace. Luc didn’t, so why would they?”

“They have to know it’s an employee. There was no break-in. It was clearly someone who has the combination to the safe at Ricard and Associates.”

“Natalie, don’t jump to conclusions. And don’t go into that house alone. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

She nodded and then realized that he couldn’t see her. “Okay,” she managed. “Eric? Thank you. I don’t care what you say—you really are a very nice guy.”

A long pause came from his end of the connection. “Yeah. I’m a prince among men. See you soon. Bye.” He hung up.

She rose to her feet, stowed her phone, and left the spade where it was. Unbelievable. The handsome stranger from the bar was riding to her rescue like some kind of knight from a fairy tale. Stuff like that didn’t happen anymore—it just didn’t.

But her parents were hundreds of miles away in Vermont, she knew few people in the city, and she wasn’t going to look a gift knight in the mouth.

McDougal hung up the phone and let out a string of curses. Granny was MIA. Judging by the beaten-up boss, wolves other than himself were closing in, and Little Red Riding Hood was in tears . . . not to mention quite possibly in danger. What if her boss, in order to save his own skin, told his violent visitors who had the necklace?

McDougal reminded himself that the St. George piece was his priority, but in order to track the necklace, he had to get hot on the trail of Natalie’s kooky Nonnie, and what better place to start than her own home?

He headed down to the street and got a cab to take him to a well-known rental-car agency, where he picked up an SUV and was headed out of the city on FDR Drive, taking exit 17 for the Triboro Bridge within twenty minutes. En route, he placed a call to ARTemis in Miami to give an update on his activities.

“Ahtemis, may I help you?” sang Sheila Kofsky in her nasal Brooklyn accent. “Oh, it’s
you,
007. Callin’ to tell me your thingy finally turned black and fell off?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Moneypenny,” he said dryly, “but my thingy is hale and hearty.”

Sheila was the company’s receptionist/office manager and mistress of disguise. She ruled over the wardrobe room with an iron fist, not to mention her inch-long acrylic talons. She had a cloud of improbably blond hair that crowned a face like a white raisin, and she always wore somewhat astonishing outfits. Her signature was her vast collection of reading glasses, which she customized to match her ensembles.

McDougal dropped his voice an octave and assumed a British accent. “So, tell Bond what you’re wearing today, my lovely.”

“Eat your heart out. You’re missing out on my violet spandex dress, olive platform peep-toes and the olive readers with the tiny bunches of grapes attached.”

Ye gods. “I’m deeply shaken, if not stirred.”

“What d’ya want, you rodent?”

“Moneypenny never called 007 a rodent,” he protested.

“Moneypenny was a ditz. I got another line ringing, so what d’ya want?”

“I’m chasing the St. George piece into Connecticut now. The target says it’s with her grandmother, but Granny’s taken a hike. I’ll check in with you later on further developments.”

“Fine. Now, get lost.”

“Love you, too, you old bag.” He hung up and shook his head. Without Sheila, life at ARTemis would run way too smoothly. He wasn’t sure why she’d been hired, but clearly Kelso, the silent majority owner of the company, liked having her around. It suited his warped sense of humor, McDougal figured.

Nobody had ever seen Kelso, but he pulled all of their strings from the ether as it suited him. He played practical jokes, fed information, and occasionally interfered in cases. McDougal had tried like hell to uncover his identity but had failed, just like the other agents. Kelso found their attempts endlessly amusing.

But McDougal found little to smile about in his current situation. He had a hunch that Natalie’s boss, Luc Ricard, had been working with black-market smugglers—nasty ones.

The fact that he’d told her not to call the police about his beating only confirmed that instinct. Nothing about the black market surprised McDougal, but it was a vast network with many sets and subsets and spinoffs of subsets.

Who were these particular people who’d had the necklace? Where had they gotten it? Were they Italians? Russians? Japanese? Arabs? Did they have a motive besides money? How far were they willing to go in order to get “their” stolen property back? The fact that they’d already resorted to violence was not a good sign.

Unfortunately the black market for art and antiquities had heated up, partially inspired by the utterly insane prices that objects fetched in today’s aboveboard market. When a frankly repulsive Lucien Freud painting brought in $33 million at auction—the most ever paid for a work by a living artist—one could hardly blame criminals for slavering over a piece of the profits pie.

And that price paled in comparison to the $83 million paid by a Japanese conglomerate for van Gogh’s
Irises
. Or the
$103 million
shelled out for a Picasso recently.

Hell, there were times when McDougal himself was tempted to put his rather unusual skill set to use in crime, but most of his tendencies toward dishonesty had been thrashed out of him at an early age, between his three brothers, his four sisters, and the priests at St. Joseph’s.

It was from his siblings that he’d learned to be fast, silent, and some would say stoic, since his brothers had loved to hold the small-for-his-age Eric down and tickle him—or, worse, fart on him—and his sisters had loved to hold him down and dress him up in girls’ clothes. Thank God he’d grown like a weed during puberty.

McDougal, now on the Bruckner, headed north on 95 and exited at Atlantic Street. Then, guided by his GPS, he took a few turns that led him to Leonard Street and the picturesque little neighborhood of Springdale. Soon he was easing the rented SUV to a stop outside an unpretentious little Cape Cod.

Natalie came quickly out the screen porch door, her face drawn, anxious, and pinched with cold. The girl he’d left the bar with had disappeared. Today she wore slim brown corduroys and brown leather boots with an oversize, artsy sweater in a purple, brown, and black abstract pattern.

She’d styled her dark hair in an unruly pile on top of her head. The same black woolen scarf from yesterday kept her neck warm, but she wore no coat. Maybe it was still in the neighbor’s house.

Both her embarrassment of this morning and the playful sexuality of the night before had vanished. Natalie was simply tense and miserable.