The Art Of Deception, Book Two, Stolen Hearts series, Romantic Suspense (11 page)

“I know. Don’t we need to put oil or something in this pan?”

“In a minute." He shoved the bowl of eggs to one side. “Does Ciro get money from his father?”

“He used to. I don’t know if the money was from his dad or dividends from a trust fund. Something like that. But they had a falling out. Ciro says his dad’s a hypocrite, and he refuses to take any more of his money." She moved the handle of the frying pan a few inches to the right. “It could be the other way around. His dad maybe cut Ciro off.”

“So, Ciro doesn’t have any money.”

“All he has to do is sell one of his paintings, and he’d be good for a year."

“He’s an artist?” Not according to the information he’d collected on Ciro aka Walter Collins.

“No, a collector. He paints a bit, but nothing serious.”

The phone rang, interrupting his next question.

He watched Sophie’s face brighten, then fall as she listened to the person on the other end of the phone. After a minute, she muttered, “I’m on my way.”

She hung the phone up, then almost knocked him over as she hurled herself into his arms. He cradled her small, trembling body close to him, a bit of the warmth he’d lost in the alley filtering back in.

“It’s Raphael." Her voice shook as she muttered the words into his chest. “They arrested him at the airport. We have to go right now. They’re holding him there.”

Gage moved back far enough to look in her eyes. “Did he say what they arrested him for?”

“They searched his luggage and found a painting. A Matisse. Raphael swears he has no idea where it came from.”

Gage let his arms drop to his side and stepped away from Sophie, the warmth in his gut chilling into cold anger. Had brother and sister worked him; Sophie distracting him while Raphael moved the goods out of the country?

Godammit. “It’s another forgery, isn’t it?”

“No." Her face turned white and she placed her hand over her stomach as if she was going to be sick. “They think it’s a real Matisse."

Gage flashed his badge and checked the name tag above the airport security guard’s breast pocket. “Steve, right? Is Pascotto in there?” He nodded toward the closed office door behind him.

“Yes. Says he’s innocent, of course." The grizzled, gaunt-faced guard looked bored, as if he’d heard it all twice over.

“Anyone with him?”

“Yeah." Steve pulled a small notepad out of his breast pocket and consulted it. “Tippens. FBI. He was here when we collared Pascotto. You going in?”

“It’s my case. Need my name and badge number?” He flipped his badge open again.

“Thanks. When you’re ready to move him, let me know." The older man wrote his name and badge number down, then passed the badge back. “I’m going for a coffee. Want me to bring one back for you?”

“Thanks. Make it two, will you?”

Gage stood with his hand on the doorknob and drew a deep breath. After the ride to the airport with Sophie he needed to collect himself. Her emotions had run from fear, to disbelief, to anger–all aimed specifically at him.

All he’d suggested was she stay home and let him deal with the situation. Suddenly, in her eyes, he truly was the big bad cop about to lock up her brother. Her reaction had lit the fuse to his own smoldering anger, and they’d ended up yelling at each other the last ten minutes of the drive.

Goddammit, he was an FBI agent. This is what he did, who he was. If Sophie didn’t like it, she could damn well stay out of his way. Which at the moment was exactly what she was doing–against her will. He’d ordered the first security guard they encountered to keep her under surveillance in the holding office. God help him if she didn’t cool off in the next thirty minutes or so.

As if he didn’t have a care in the world, Raphael draped back in a black plastic chair. Except Gage knew the tight lines at the corner of Raphael’s mouth were new

"Hey, Gage. This guy yours?” Tippens shoved his chair back and stood. In his white shirt and dark grey suit, the eager, young agent made Gage feel old and faded. It was a Sunday night. They should both be somewhere else, enjoying themselves.

“He’s mine." Gage took his glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on, then pulled the small Matisse across the table to look at it. “What makes you think it’s an original?”

“Come on, man." Tippens shot him a disbelieving look. “Are you willing to take the chance it isn’t? I’m not saying for sure it’s an original, but we should hold this guy until we can get an expert to look at it. Guy’s got nothing to tell me." He inclined his head toward Raphael.

Gage righted the painting so it sat perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the table. “I’m working an art fraud. Want to help me out by signing this out of here and seeing who you can find to look at it? Doc Bellini over at the university will usually make time right away if you lean on him a bit.”

“It’s Sunday night."

“Okay. Lock it up, and tomorrow I’ll see what I can do.”

Tippens chucked his empty soda can in the wastepaper basket. “Airport security isn’t going to like letting an original Matisse go.”

Gage ran his fingertips over the rough surface of the painting. “Like you say, better not take any chances. Take it downtown and lock it up. Tell security I’ll talk to them when I’m done here, okay?”

“It’s your call.”

The security guard, Steve, shoved the door open, a cardboard tray with three cups of coffee in his left hand. He placed the tray on the table and grabbed one cup. “Need anything else?”

With one finger, Gage pushed the painting down the table in the guard’s direction. “Tippens is going to take this downtown. You two figure out the logistics.”

“And I thought I was going to get out of here at a decent time." Steve sighed and picked up the Matisse.

After they left the room, Gage sat at the far end of the table from Raphael, grabbed a coffee and pried its lid off. He took a sip, grimaced as the hot, black liquid scorched the roof of his mouth. “That’s yours." He pushed the tray in Raphael’s direction.

Raphael wrapped his hands around the cup of coffee. “The bag’s not mine."

“Prove it." Gage tossed his notepad on the table.

“Where’s Sophie? I called her, not you.”

Good shot. Raphael knew enough to attack his weakest point, and Sophie was definitely a weak point–for both of them. “She’s locked up at the moment."

He kept his eye on both cups of coffee as Raphael shot to his feet. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had something thrown at him in an interrogation room.

“You put her in jail? For chrissake Gage, Sophie doesn’t even know how to think bad, let alone actually commit a crime."

“And you do?”

“Yes. No. I mean...no." Raphael shot a bewildered look in his direction, then flopped down in his chair and took a sip of coffee. “Guess you’ve done this before, huh?”

“A time or two." Gage took his glasses off.

“You don’t really have Sophie in jail, do you?”

“No. She insisted on coming to the airport with me." He couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from curling upward. “I handed her over to security when we got here. No predicting what she’d do to bust you out of here.”

Raphael returned his smile down the length of the table. “Man, I wouldn’t want to be you right now.”

Gage shrugged. “I can handle her.”

“Yeah, I believe you can." His smile disappeared. “It’s a set-up, Gage. The bag looks exactly like the one I always travel with. It even has my clothes in it, but they’re not the clothes I packed. Someone switched the bags.”

Gage put his glasses back on and started taking notes. He didn’t know if he wanted to believe Raphael or not. If Raphael was telling the truth, that meant both Raphael and Sophie had been set up to take the fall for a potential crime in the last two weeks. “Where’s your real bag?”

“Home, probably. Unless, whoever did this took it.”

“Why would someone want to set you up?” Gage watched Raphael’s eyes for a telltale sign of evasion.

“I don’t know." Raphael looked down at his coffee, then back to him. “Honestly, I haven’t a clue. That’s not good, is it?”

“It’d be better if you could give me a lead or more information." He wrote a question mark on his pad and circled it. “You can start by explaining why you travel so much and where the money comes from to pay for your trips.”

Gage’s heart sank as a guilty look tightened Raphael’s expression. If Raphael didn’t give him something–anything–soon, he’d have no choice but to arrest him.

“Is it necessary?” Raphael’s voice sounded strained.

“At this point? Yeah. Unless you want to take the rap for attempting to move stolen goods out of the country. And that’s just for starters.”

Raphael shoved his chair back, paced to the corner of the room and back again. He put his hands on the table and leaned toward Gage. “I’m a model. I work for a French modeling agency.”

“A model?”

Raphael sat. “I can give you the name of the agency. They’ll vouch for when I was working.”

“Sophie doesn’t know?” Raphael a model. He hadn’t seen that one coming at him. That’s what he hated about this case; no one was who they appeared to be. Damned flaky artists.

“Nobody knows. I just...I started last year, and I didn’t.... Hell." Raphael wiped a hand over his face. “I didn’t want to tell anyone until I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

“Is it?”

Raphael shrugged. “Modeling’s a good gig. Pays well, too. The trust fund was fine when we were in college, but it’s not enough now. I like fine things, and I like to travel.”

“Trust fund?” Gage scribbled the words on the lined page of his notepad.

“Our father created a trust fund for each of us when we were born, but we can’t touch the capital until we’re thirty. Sophie and I agreed not to tell other people about it.”

Gage tapped the tip of his pen against the table as he tried to ignore his disappointment that Sophie hadn’t told him about the trust fund. What else had she kept from him?

 “Do you know who your father is?” he asked.

“No. All I know is he’s rich, and he must have a bit of a conscience, because Mother got the art gallery, and Sophie and I the trust funds.”

“Sophie thinks he was trying to buy your mother’s silence.”

Raphael shot him a surprised look. “She talked to you about our father?”

“Not voluntarily." Not at all if she’d had her way. For a small woman, she had one hell of a stubborn streak. Under normal circumstances, he’d admire someone so strong willed, but every virtue had a downside. Sophie was so stubbornly loyal to her family and friends, she refused to see what was right under her nose. Someone she knew was trying to hurt her family. Gage stood and picked up his notepad and pen.

“What happens now?”

Play it by the book. As much as he wanted to let Raphael walk, he couldn’t. Not yet. “We’re going to hold you twenty-four hours for questioning. If I’m lucky I may get a preliminary verification of the Matisse sometime tomorrow. Does Sophie have a key to your apartment?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“We’ll go straight there and look for your other bag. Look, I’m sorry, but this is the way we have to do it.”

The corners of Raphael’s mouth pinched tight. “Just take care of Sophie. Something’s up with her these days.”

“I’ll get her in to see you tomorrow morning." Gage stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “You need anything?”

“A truckload of luck." Raphael shot him a dark look. “I have a bad feeling about this, Gage. Find out who’s behind it, okay?”

Gage nodded and left the room. He had a bad feeling, too. It looked like someone was gunning for Sophia and Raphael. Of course, the way they kept secrets from each other, Moira Pascotto could be in trouble, too, but not tell her kids. He’d stop by her place tomorrow to sound her out.

That’s if he survived the night. He stopped outside the door to the holding room where Sophie waited for him, took his glasses off and pressed his fingers against his eyes.

Now that he’d had some time to cool off, he understood why he and Sophie had fought on the way here. The contrast between their lives, her innocence compared to the nastiness of the world he worked in, shouldn’t have surprised either one of them. The difference shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. It mattered enough that they had fought, both understanding the insurmountable rift that stood between them.