The French Detective's Woman (15 page)

She’d never been a violent person, but right now she truly wanted to kill Beck. With her bare hands. Right after she’d castrated him with a pair of pliers.

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

Sofie nodded, eyes swimming with tears, which she dashed at ineffectually. She wasn’t okay. That was obvious.

Ciara could almost hear the cogs turning, circling some terrible idea in her desperate mind.

“Don’t even think about it, Sofie,” she said, pulling her into a hug, ignoring the rip of pain in her side. “Whatever it is you’re contemplating, don’t. We’ll take care of Beck. I swear to you.”

“I’d rather die than go back to my father,” Sofie whispered. “I couldn’t.”

“That’s not happening. I promise.”

“But Beck—”

“Beck is a horny, greedy animal. He wants you out here on your own, where he can use you and manipulate you with fear. Not hidden away behind your father’s eight foot walls. Trust me, he’s not going to your father.”

Sofie swallowed, more tears cresting. “Oh, Ciara, what are we to do?”

“We’re going home and washing our faces,” she said, somehow mustering up a firm voice from behind the lump lodged in her throat. “And then we’ll figure out who I have to rob to get this scumbag off our backs. Until we can take care of him once and for all.”

♥♥♥

Damn, he needed a drink.

Already. And it was barely lunchtime.

Jean-Marc hadn’t been able to shake the weird feeling he’d had in the pit of his stomach since leaving the café yesterday. The unbidden reminder of Ciara Alexander had not been a welcome addition to his week. He’d dreamt about her last night again. For the hundredth time.

What was it about the fucking woman that had her embedded so firmly under his skin? He’d never reacted this way to a one night—okay three night—stand before. It was making him nuts! Why couldn’t he just forget about her? His male pride had been wounded before—hell, his ex-wife had practically put it through the shredder—and he’d emerged unscathed. Well, relatively unscathed.

He didn’t need this strange obsession. He had enough to worry about.

Another day, and no closer to catching either
le Revenant
or the Picasso thief. Belfort was getting impatient. So was Jean-Marc. He needed a break.

And then there was that weird incident reported by Gerard, the undercover guy he’d had follow Sofie home yesterday. Gerard said she’d been attacked. By a neighbor of some friend she’d been walking with. Actually, the friend had borne the brunt of it, but both women had been bloodied. Jean-Marc had been furious when Gerard admitted he hadn’t done anything about it.

“They refused to let me call for help,” he’d contended. “Insisted they were fine. Besides,
Commissaire
, I found out where the girl lives, which is what you wanted,
non
?”

True. But the incident still bothered him. Men beating up women made him furious. And Sofie had seemed so fragile.

Pierre popped his head into his office. “Delivery for you.”

Jean-Marc shook off his residual distaste, and asked, “What is it?”

“Not a bomb. They checked it.” Pierre grinned and handed him a long cardboard tube.

He glanced over it. No markings or delivery stickers. “Came by messenger?”

Pierre nodded. “No return address, and the kid had no idea where it came from.”

Curious, Jean-Marc used a pen to pop off the plastic end cap.

“What—you think it’s some kind of evidence?” Pierre asked with hiked brows, indicating the precautions Jean-Marc was using not to mar any possible finger prints.

“Never know.” He gingerly slid the contents onto his desk. It was a rolled up piece of cloth. A...canvas?

“Jesus!” Pierre exclaimed as Jean-Marc unrolled it. “It’s the fucking Picasso!”

Shock stuttered through him. It
was
the Picasso. Along with a note, which said, in all its simplicity, in block letters, “IT’S A FAKE.”

He stared for a long moment before tipping the note to Pierre. A laugh escaped him. Then another. And another.
Oh, God, the irony
. He tipped his head to the ceiling as laughter rolled out of him. This was just too fucking weird.

Pierre gaped. “
Tu est fou
?”

Was he crazy? Maybe. Getting there, certainly.

“
Alors
. Guess we’d better let CD Belfort know the case has taken a bit of a bizarre twist,” he finally managed.

“Ho-kay,” Pierre said carefully. “Meanwhile, what should we do with that?” He jerked his thumb at the Picasso.

“Evidence bag. The insurance company will want a good look.”

“
Putain
. This leaves our investigation kinda up in the air.”

Jean-Marc hitched out a breath. “No shit. God knows what the boss will want to do.”

“Drop the case, I’d guess. Looks better for the OCBC to stamp the file, ‘Closed. Goods Recovered and Returned.’”

The phone rang and Jean-Marc snatched it up. “Lacroix.”

“This is Terrance over in Forensics. I found something you’ll want to see.”

It took a moment for him to switch gears. Terrance was the chief of the Forensics Lab, and had spent the past week analyzing everything possible about the forged Picasso. Hell. The
other
forged Picasso.

“You got something on the painting?” he asked Terrance.

“Yep.”

“We’ll be right there.”

His face must have given him away because Pierre looked at him and hopped to his feet. “What?”

“Not sure. Forensics found something.”

“
Merci, Dieu
.” Pierre lifted the two sealed bags containing the cardboard tube and the painting. “What do we do with those?”

“We’ll log them into evidence on the way,” Jean-Marc said, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. “And deal with it later.”

Which they did, then made tracks for the forensics lab. An assistant led them into an ultra-modern glass-enclosed cubicle where Dr. Terrance greeted them and offered them seats. Precisely mounted in a clear frame, the forged Picasso sat in the middle of his desk.

“As you know,” he said matter-of-factly, “we haven’t found anything about the painting that can be used to pinpoint either the specific sources of the materials or the actual artist.”

“So what
did
you find?” Jean-Marc asked when the chief hesitated.

“Even though everything indicates it was painted very recently, using brand new materials, I decided to do an x-ray of the canvas. To see if there was a mark indicating a store, or anything else underneath the paint itself.”

Jean-Marc straightened to attention. “And?”

“And I found a ghost.”

He froze at the unexpected word. “A...what?”

“A ghost. That’s what experts call an image painted over by another. Like when an artist reuses an old canvas, or makes a mistake and covers it up.”

His breath whooshed out. “No shit?”

“Look.” Dr. Terrance reached over to a light frame and switched it on. Two x-ray images were mounted there, side by side. The first was the visible part of the painting, reversed in the confusing black and white way of a typical x-ray, showing the design as it appeared on the canvas. The second film showed the same thing, slightly out of focus. But there was a bright blotch on the bottom right corner. The ghost.

Jean-Marc squinted, but couldn’t make out the design. “A mistake, perhaps?” he suggested.

“Perhaps.” Terrance clipped a third x-ray to the light frame. “This is a deeper close up, better focused.”

Jean-Marc’s whole body clenched in shock. There, staring him right in the face, was an all-too-familiar image.

“I don’t believe it,” he muttered, sinking into a chair. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

“You recognize it?” Terrance said, puzzled.

“What?” Pierre asked sharply. “
Mec
! What is it?”

“It’s a goddamn Hand of Fatima,” Jean-Marc answered through gritted teeth.
To think he’d felt sorry for the duplicitous little urchin
. “And I know exactly who painted it.”

Chapter 11

“I say we slit his throat.”

Ciara glanced at Hugo, who was pacing once again. The kid was cocked tight as a trigger. Back and forth in front of the window he strode, fists clenched and knuckles white. He looked positively murderous. Ricardo watched nervously from the sofa next to Davie, whose arms were around a downcast Sofie.

They had all gathered at the apartment for dinner the day after the Beck incident to discuss what to do about the escalating situation.

“God, don’t even think about it, Hugo,” Ciara said, striving for a level-headedness she didn’t actually feel. “We need to find a way to make Beck spend the rest of
his
life in jail. Not you. He’s not worth throwing away your future.”

Not now that her beautiful, volatile boy finally had one. His job at the garage didn’t pay much, but it was legit. And a start. More than he’d had four years ago when, at CoCo’s pleading, Ciara had practically dragged him off the docks of Marseilles. Cocky as hell and good-looking as sin, he’d been well on his way to a life of violence and addiction. It had taken some fast talking by both of them—and the graphic reminder of Etienne’s death—to convince him, but they’d finally managed to make him see the light. But there were still times he reverted to his old ways of dealing with trouble.

“Then what do you suggest?” he asked, his young eyes blazing with fury. “I’m supposed to just let him beat you? What kind of a man would I be? And Sofie, what of her, if he takes it in his mind to—” His words cut off with a slash of his hand. “
Encoulé de chien
,” he ground out. “Etienne would have—”

“And that’s why Etienne is dead!” she snapped, lurching to her feet, feeling like a broken record. The boy’s hero worship of his late older cousin was a constant battle between them. Etienne had been cocky and good-looking, too. A man’s man who loved hard and lived harder. In the end his over-confidence had cost him his life, taken down by a cop’s bullet—from the gun of a man he’d been sure was his friend.

CoCo rose from the arm of the easy chair where Ciara had been perched, went over and put her hands on Hugo’s shoulders. “She is right,
mon cher
. We’re smarter than he is. Let’s use our heads.” She pushed a fallen lock off his temple. “We all loved Etienne, but he wasn’t much of a role model, eh? What will happen to us, to Sofie, if you are put in jail for murder?”

Ciara watched the siblings with a hitch in her heart. How she admired CoCo’s ability to tame her tempestuous brother, to set aside her bitchy firecracker façade and unabashedly show him the love and tenderness he so badly craved. The love and tenderness they
all
craved, because those things had been so completely lacking in their lives. CoCo and Hugo were lucky to have each other.

She had used exactly the right words with her brother. No one could miss the gentleness with which he always treated shy Sofie, nor the way he looked at her when he thought no one was watching. Even if he’d made no outward claims on her affections, there was no doubt Hugo considered himself Sofie’s protector.

Ciara tamped down her anxiety, and sat down again.

She had loved Etienne with the fierceness—and utter blindness—of an abandoned, forgotten seventeen-year-old girl for the man who had rescued her and showered her with love. She had married him without hesitation and followed him across the sea, taken up his life of crime without looking back. After all, what had she to lose? She’d shared her body and her dreams, and he’d shared his skills at pick-pocketing and second-story work. A match made in heaven, she’d thought.

His strength had turned her on. His intensity had excited her. His recklessness she’d mistaken for
joi de vivre
, his brutality had been well-hidden and never directed against her. She’d conveniently denied its existence. Until the violence of his life had caught up with him and her eyes were forced open.

Etienne had taught her a difficult lesson. One she was working hard not to forget.

“Valois is helping to find a job that will pay enough to keep Beck away for now,” she said, pushing aside the chaotic memories. “Meanwhile, we need ideas. How can we catch Beck in his own trap? Without implicating or endangering any of us?”

Suddenly, there was a loud knock. Ciara glanced at the mantle clock as everyone else turned to the door. Seven-ten p.m..

“Anyone expecting company?” she asked, already knowing the answer by the uneasy looks on everyone’s faces. Her pulse leapt.

“Beck?” Ricardo whispered, cautiously rising.

The fist banged again. “
Police Nationale
!”

She gasped. Jean-Marc’s voice!

“
Merde
.” Davie leaped up from the couch. “What do we do?”

What the hell was Jean-Marc doing here
? She met Sofie’s panicked eyes and silently questioned her. The girl shook her head, a little desperately, as the pounding continued. No, she hadn’t given him the address.

Now everyone was on their feet. Jean-Marc yelled out again, angrily, like he would bash the door in if someone didn’t come soon.

“Answer it,” Ciara told CoCo in a low murmur. “They’ve got nothing on us.” She turned to Sofie. “Whatever he says, deny any involvement. If he gets specific, you were here, with all the others as witnesses. Right?” She glanced around the circle of worried faces and they all nodded in solidarity. “Hugo, keep your hands in your pockets,
no matter what
,” she ordered as she started for the back bedroom. “I’ll go out through the attic as we planned.”

They’d practiced this a dozen times over the past years, but she’d prayed they’d never have to use their emergency plan. So much for prayers
and
fantasies.

Swiftly, she ran down the hall and into the bedroom, reaching the closet as she heard CoCo open the front door. Her heart quailed at the sound of Jean-Marc’s harsh demand to speak with Sofie.

God
damn
it. Why hadn’t she delivered the Picasso to him a day earlier? The investigation into its theft surely would have been halted by now.