Authors: Suzanne Enoch
"Simple Simon," she murmured, shifting a patio chair close to the wall. In one fluid motion she stepped from the seat onto its back, and then pushed off to grab onto the low, overhanging eave with both hands. From there she levered herself onto the roof, walked carefully up the Spanish tiles, and then pulled off the window screen and stepped into the upstairs master bedroom.
The decor was definitely pre-World War Japanese, though it seemed to encompass anything and everything before the twentieth century. The hallway outside the bedroom had been fitted with ebony racks holding more than two dozen daitu swords of various eras and styles, though she didn't see anything as old and rare as the Minamoto blades would be.
She checked another two rooms. The couple did have a very refined taste, and even with the varying ages and styles of the collection, all of the pieces harmonized well with one another. Rick would probably like seeing some of this stuff when they visited legitimately on Sunday.
The shivering buzz of her cell phone actually startled her. She generally went into and got out of places all on her own. With a quick breath she ducked into a bathroom and pulled the phone from her pocket. The incoming number was Katie's. She pushed talk. "What?" she whispered.
"They just pulled through the gates," Katie said in a shaking, excited whisper. "Get out of the house!"
"I'm on my way," Samantha replied tersely, closing the phone and jamming it back into her pocket.
Crap. She hadn't completely eliminated the Picaults, but their security and their decor definitely didn't scream
"thief at her. Darting up the hallway again ahead of a testy discussion coming up the stairs behind her in French about who was allowed to drive the Mercedes, Samantha slipped back into the master bedroom and out the window again. It took only a second to pop the screen back into place.
That done, she edged back down the adobe-style roof, swung by her hands out over the air for a moment, then dropped to the ground. Quickly she moved the patio chair back where it belonged, and ducked behind it as one of the gardeners came around to plug in an extension cord. As soon as he disappeared past the corner again she sprinted for the wall, pushed up it with her toes, and scrambled over the top.
Katie's Lexus was parked just a few feet behind her. Once the way was clear she jumped to the ground, dusted off her blouse and slacks, and strolled to the passenger door, where she climbed in.
"Okay," she said, sitting back and pulling on her seat belt. "What time do the kids get out of school?"
"The, um… two-thirty for Livia, and three-fifteen for Mike."
"Do you want to get a soda, then, or do you need to go grocery shopping?"
"I, um… groceries, I think," Katie said, starting the sedan and pulling a little abruptly into the street.
"Just drop me back off at the restaurant, and I'll get my car." Samantha glanced at her driver, who seemed to be looking everywhere at once. "Everything's fine, Katie," she said in her calmest, easiest-going tone. All she needed was for Donner's wife to get them in a wreck. She'd never be able to explain that. "I'm working for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just doing some research."
"Yes, but you broke and entered, and I helped you." Great. Apparently she'd broken her one female friend, as well. "Technically I was just leaning way in to look through some open windows," she decided. "I didn't touch anything, and I didn't see anything suspicious. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to do this."
"I wouldn't have agreed to come along if I hadn't wanted to." They stopped for a red light, and Katie faced her. "You did this all the time. It would give me a coronary, but you like it. I can tell. Was today because you needed evidence, or because you… wanted to climb over somebody else's walls?"
Pretty astute for a soccer mom, Samantha thought, though she didn't say that out loud. Instead she shrugged. "I picked security and art recovery for a second career, I guess to try and keep what I liked most about my first career. So to answer your question, I could have spent a week looking into any legal investigations on the Picaults, or I could spend twenty minutes and climb over their wall— and I like wall climbing. Fast and practical. And fun."
"Well, 'fun' is a matter of opinion, but I think I understand."
"So if I promise not to take you out for any more B and E's, you won't be afraid to go to lunch with me again?"
"If you don't think I'm too boring to spend your time with."
Samantha snorted. "What I do might be scary to you, but believe me, Katie, what you do every day terrifies me."
Katie laughed, visibly relaxing. "Well, since I did come to one of your B and E's, now you have to come to one of Mike's baseball games. Fair is fair."
"I might just do that." And sooner than Katie realized.
The list consisted of fifth and sixth grade boys, who were all apparently evil except for Lance Miller, who was very hot. She grinned as she settled into a chair at the wide library table. There was also one teacher on the list, the art instructor who came by the school twice weekly. Miss Marina wore very short skirts, it seemed, and always had the cutest boys, including Lance Miller, sit in the front of the class so she could sit on the edge of the teacher's desk and show off her legs.
The same logic that told her that an adult crook would have taken items more valuable and more easily resalable than Anatomy Man also said that a female teacher might risk her career for an actual teenage boy, but not for a gender- neutral, parent-approved hunk of plastic and latex. No, this had the fingerprints of a kid or kids all over it.
She pulled out the police report. Officer James Kennedy seemed to have come to the same conclusions, noting that nothing was broken, no locks forced, and no other items missing. His final statement, "PRANK," echoed her own.
Both Donner and she had offered to replace Anatomy Man, but she understood the lesson Miss Barlow and Principal Homer were trying to deliver, annoyed by the theft or not: Stealing was bad. Buying a new model might make teaching anatomy easier, but that whole life lessons thing was more complicated than that.
"I have a Diet Coke for you, Miss Sam," Reinaldo said, walking into the library with the can sitting on a tray and accompanied by a chilled glass filled with ice.
"You rock, Reinaldo," she said with a grin, sitting back as he placed the items at her elbow. "And you read minds, don't you?"
"I try," he said, smiling back at her as he tucked the tray beneath his arm and vanished again.
The can was ice cold, so she popped the tab and took a long drink straight. Nothing else in the folder seemed helpful, so she went over to the computer in the corner and logged onto the Internet. Once she'd called up Google, she typed in "Anatomy Man" and the manufacturer. A couple of places offered him for sale, including eBay. When she checked that out, though, the seller was in Nebraska. Probably not Miss Barlow's Clark, then.
She did enlarge the photo, though. Anatomy Man stood six feet tall, had no winkie, but did possess male nipples and washboard abs. His skin peeled off in sections, allowing for the exposure of muscles and arteries and veins, and those were pliable to expose organs and bones and the brain for study and removal. If she squinted she guessed he did look Superman-like—in a vacuous, expressionless kind of way.
At least now she'd recognize him if she ran across him. Checking the time down in the corner of the monitor, she logged off, snagged the folder and her soda, and headed for the garage. The parents of Leonard High School students were mostly upper-middle class, but a Bentley was beyond the reach of most of them. Most of Rick's cars, in fact, would be uber-conspicuous there. Pursing her lips, she decided on the silver '05 Ford Explorer, what Rick called his "'incognito" car.
Driving the SUV felt like driving a bus at first, but she settled into it as she headed across the bridge toward suburbia. Samantha arrived in front of Leonard High just as the final bell rang, and she pulled onto a crowded side street where she had a pretty good view of the whole front of the school.
Katie and her gunmetal blue Lexus were already there, stopped in front of the elementary school across the street. The ensuing tangle of cars—mostly SUVs like hers—and kids gave her a whole new appreciation for soccer moms. She wasn't sure she'd even be able to pick her own offspring out of the crowd, because whole herds of the kids, especially the girls, seemed to be clones of one another. Same hair styles, same clothes, same backpacks, same shoes even. "Yipes," she muttered, adjusting her side-view mirror to keep Katie's Lexus in sight.
After a couple of minutes she spotted towheaded Mike and the same two friends he'd been with on Saturday. The boys jogged to Katie's car and piled in. Once the Lexus pulled into traffic, Samantha moved in two cars behind them. It might have been simpler if she'd known where Mike would be playing ball, but she still couldn't come up with a logical reason for her to be asking that.
The car stopped at a park about a mile from the Donners' house, and the boys climbed out again. After pulling a bag that looked like it held bats and gloves out of the trunk, Mike waved to Katie, and she drove off. Samantha put the Explorer into park and shut it off. The trick would be to talk to Mike without making him look like a snitch in front of his friends—if he did actually know anything and that nervous twitch she'd seen hadn't been just a teenage thing.
Once the Lexus turned the corner, Mike and his friends hefted their backpacks and the bat bag and headed across the park—away from the baseball diamond. Hm. Samantha started the SUV again and kept pace with them on the street.
Two more kids of about the same age waited for them at the far edge of the park. The five of them, talking among themselves and obviously in a hurry, trotted down the street in the direction of a strip mall bordered by a fast food place with a hardware store and a couple of empty-looking warehouse buildings behind them.
Well, this was getting interesting. The boys didn't look like they were heading for the burger joint, but they clearly had something in mind. She pulled the SUV up in front of a dry cleaner's at the near end of the strip mall, waiting to see where they would go.
Her cell phone vibrated, making her jump. "Christ," she mumbled, pulling it from her pocket and flipping it open. The office number. "Jellicoe," she said, her gaze still on the kids.
"Miss Samantha," Aubrey said, "I have Gwyneth Mallorey on the other line. She says that she wants her whole alarm system removed because she can't stand the sound of the door entry chime."
The boys disappeared around the back of the second warehouse. "Dammit. Doesn't she know she can program the chime for any sound she wants?"
"Apparently not. I tried to tell her that, but she doesn't want to hear it from me."
Still cursing under her breath, Samantha climbed out of the Explorer. "Tell her I'll be at her house in fifteen—no, twenty—minutes, and I'll show her how to program all of the tones."
"Will do." He paused. "Did I interrupt something?"
"No. I was just doing some research." She closed the phone and pocketed it. Before she went anywhere, she needed to make sure Mike wasn't meeting up with drug dealers or anything. Wow. Her, feeling protect tive over other peoples' kids. Shaking off the sensation that this was really weird, she stopped at the corner of the dry cleaner's to watch as the boys passed her. "You do have the camcorder this time," Mike was commenting to the skinny kid beside him.
"I have the camcorder. And it's got this cool fish-eye focus we can try out."
"Whoa, that'll be freaky," a third boy put in as they continued down the alleyway.
"Especially with you on camera, Evan."
"Oh, shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"No, you shut up!"
With a half grin that echoed their laughing, Samantha retreated to the car again. She practically read peoples' faces and voices for a living, and these boys weren't nervous or apprehensive about anything. And even though she hadn't quite figured out where they were going, neither had this been a waste of her time. She knew now that Mike Donner lied. He'd lied about his plans and his whereabouts to his mother, and maybe he was keeping a couple of other secrets, as well.
She headed back to the Explorer and left the strip mall. Back to her other job now. She was working on so many of them that it was getting hard to tell them apart.
Wednesday, 8:01 a.m.
Richard had the taxi drop him off outside the Manhattan police precinct station. Used as he was to being responsible for billions of dollars, for making life-altering decisions, for buying and selling what amounted to his and others' lives on a fairly regular basis, walking alone into a police station made him a little nervous.
It hadn't been that way before Samantha—one place was as good a battlefield as any other. But Samantha had altered his perspective about a great many things—not the least of which was his own vulnerability. His personal safety, his possessions, and most of all his heart, could all be gotten to in ways he would never have previously expected.
Light flashed just to his right. Only years of familiarity enabled him not to flinch and to keep the cool, slightly bored expression on his face. Reporters and bloody tabloid photographers. They crawled around the public areas of police stations like cockroaches.
"Mr. Addison!" one of them called out, starting a rush in his direction. ""Why are you here?'
"Are you here because of Miss Jellicoe's arrest in March?"
"Rick, look this way!"
He ignored all of them as he shouldered his way through the door and into the interior of the station. The cop faces inside were on the whole more difficult to read, but he understood the looks. They were curious, suspicious, and some of them were not happy at all to see him—a sentiment he returned. Five months ago the officers from this precinct had arrested Samantha, and though they'd been following procedure, though they'd been proven wrong and she'd been the one to help them prevent a robbery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he would not forget them driving her away from him in the back of a police car. Ever.
"I have an appointment to see Detective Gorstein this morning," he told the officer at the front desk.
The officer nodded, picking up a phone and putting a hand over his other ear against the considerable noise around him. A second later he hung up again. "He'll be right with you, Mr. Addison. You can wait here, or take a seat on one of the benches over there."
Richard looked where he indicated. "I'll wait here, thank you." He already felt like he needed to check his pockets to make certain he still had his wallet and his phone.
A minute or two later, Sam Gorstein approached through another doorway. "I didn't expect you to be on time," he said, proffering his hand. "Welcome back to New York, Mr. Addison."
"Thank you." Richard shook his hand, taking in the tasteful, understated gray suit and the quality black shoes with the scuffs on the toes as he did so. "And thank you for taking the time to see me."
"Mm hm. Like I wouldn't be directing traffic if I'd turned you down. My desk, or somewhere more private?"
Richard wasn't asking for anything illegal, but neither did he care to have his personal business overheard and speculated about—especially when his business on this occasion was also Samantha's. "Private."
"I thought so. This way."
They headed into a small interrogation room, where Richard shrugged out of his overcoat and set it over the back of a chair. His own suit was black with gray pinstriping, worn more in honor of his nine-thirty meeting at his office than because of this little conference. Considering that his attire probably cost four or five times as much as the detective's, however, he wasn't above indulging in a little one-upmanship when the opportunity arose.
"Do you want coffee or something?" Gorstein asked, taking the opposite seat.
If he did, he'd probably have to go get it himself. "No, thank you."
"Okay. What can I do for you then, Mr. Addison? And how's Ms. J? Staying out of trouble?"
Ah, the other reason he was less than fond of Sam Gorstein. Unless he was greatly mistaken, this Sam liked his Sam, and he didn't like that one bloody little bit. "She's well. She's actually the reason I'm here."
The detective cracked a grin. "Why am I not surprised?"
"It's completely aboveboard, I assure you. She's looking into an old theft, one the Met experienced a decade ago and would like to keep quiet. I wondered if you've ever run across the names Gabriel Toombs or August and Yvette Picault while you were investigating any of your higher-profile art or antique thefts. Japanese items in particular." The Met theft had been ten years ago, but as Samantha had pointed out, and demonstrated, crime was a habit. If they'd strayed once, they'd probably done so numerous times. And Gorstein was in the business of solving robberies. "Do I look like Huggy Bear or something?" Richard frowned. "Beg pardon?"
"Right. You're English."
The detective made that sound like an insult. There were some who found his accent sexy. "And?" Richard prompted.
"And I'm not some snitch you two get to go to when you need information."
"I look on it more as an opportunity for mutual benefit. Samantha locates a stolen item, and you perhaps get to stop someone who buys very expensive stolen property. She has assisted you before."
"I still have the feeling that I'd be solving a lot of very expensive crimes if I locked up Ms. J again."
Thanks to a great deal of self-control, Richard kept his hands from clenching. "As I believe we've explained, Samantha's only connection to theft is her father. And you had him in your custody."
"Yeah, until the Feds and Interpol stepped in."
"Since we both have other things to do, let's save the reminiscing for another time, shall we?"
"Fine by me. Anything actually within departmental regulations I can do for you, then?"
Is
People didn't refuse Richard very often, and he didn't like it one bloody bit when it happened. Neither did he make a habit of accepting an answer other than the one he wanted. "So because the statute of limitations has expired, you're not interested. I understand," he said brusquely. "If Samantha doesn't find the things by next Wednesday, the Met—your Met—will lose a very prestigious traveling exhibit to the Smithsonian. Just be sure you understand that." He pushed to his feet, picking up his coat.
"Toombs and Picault," Gorstein said from behind him. "How long will you be in town?"
"I'm leaving at one o'clock today."
The detective sighed heavily. "Spell them out for me, and I'll look into it. Give me your cell number, and I'll call you before you leave."
Richard nodded. Sometimes it was fairly easy to get people to do what he wanted, particularly when what he wanted happened to be the right thing to do. "It was nice to see you again, Detective."
"I'll bet."
When Samantha woke up, she was sprawled across Rick's side of the bed. Apparently her subconscious didn't like having him gone even when her conscious mind thought it was kind of cool to have the run of the place once in a while.
Rubbing a hand across her face, she sat up. Nearly nine o'clock in the morning. Regular-people hours was still proving to be the hardest thing to adjust to in the legit life—in the old days things didn't start to get interesting until after midnight. At times she'd been nearly nocturnal.
Now, though, she had an office where people expected to be able to contact her during daylight hours, and most of the people around her only caught the beginning of Leno or Letterman, and were fast asleep by the end.
Rolling out of bed, she threw on some sweats and went down to the gym in the basement. Working out was more fun when Rick was down there, too, and she could compete with him, but she managed to lift weights and do the stupid StairMaster thing for nearly an hour.
When she went back upstairs to shower, Reinaldo had set out a muffin and a chilled Diet Coke on the coffee table in the master bedroom suite. Ah, it was good to be the queen. After she showered and sat down to eat, she checked her cell phone for messages. Nothing.
"Damm it, Stoney," she muttered, and punched his mobile number. It rang once before the automated operator came on the line to say that the phone she was dialing was unavailable. So much for him being reachable if she wanted to call him. She tried again, this time dialing his house in Pompano Beach. The phone rang six times and then his female, Cuban-accented answering machine picked up.
Blowing out her breath and muttering to herself, Samantha next dialed her office. "Jellicoe Security, we're here to help," came Aubrey's smooth voice.
"You're a better employee than I am," she said with a half smile, flipping on the plasma TV to catch the morning news.
"I like being here. During the season I don't even get going until nightfall. Daytime is interesting."
"I know what you mean. I'll be there in about an hour."
"No hurry. Daltrey checked in to say he should be finished this afternoon, and Ortiz is bringing in his notes at about the same time."
"Nothing new from the Malloreys?"
"Not a peep. I guess Gwyneth liked whatever you did last night."
"I switched over her entry tone to Westminster Cathedral bells."
"'Very nice."
''Glad to see my business runs better with me just out setting door chimes."
"Nonsense, Miss Samantha. A business is supposed to run well even when the boss is out of the country. At least that's what's supposed to happen when you hire people who know what they're doing."
Those employees knew what they were doing mostly because they'd done time for it previously. That was between her and the guys she hired to do the installations, though. And she and Stoney put them through hell first, to make sure this wasn't their way of getting back into the old business.
"Thanks. I'll bring lunch," she said, and hung up.
Since work didn't need her for anything urgent, Mike Donner was at school, and she had until tomorrow for the Toombs house tour, she spent an hour at the computer looking up everything public or otherwise she could find about old Wild Bill. Then she pulled on her shoes and went to collect the Bentley. Stoney might not be home, but that wouldn't stop her from visiting his place and trying to figure out where he'd gone. In her line of work people vanished for one of two reasons: either they were on the run, or they were caught or killed. If this was a third one, she wanted to know what it was.
Stoney's red '93 Chevy pickup wasn't in his driveway or in his garage, which she took to be a good sign. On the outside his small, slightly shabby house fit right into the
Pompano Beach neighborhood. On the inside, from the sliding-eyes cat clock in the kitchen to the classic 1950s radio console and actual tube television in the living room, it was pure Stoney. His idea of cool antiques ran to the I Love Lucy era.
He'd never given her a key, but they both knew that she'd never needed one. She picked his lock in about eight seconds and walked in. At least he had an answering machine, but the only message on it was the one she'd left last evening. Which could mean either that everybody else he knew was aware that he was out of town, or that he was picking up his messages from somewhere else.
Grumbling, Samantha opened his refrigerator. A couple of beers and two slices of pizza, plus half a head of lettuce and every low-calorie salad dressing known to man. Tomatoes, cauliflower, melon—if he didn't get back soon, his refrigerator was going to turn into a serious hazmat situation.
His toothbrush and stuff were still in the bathroom, but as far as she knew Stoney had an emergency bag just like she did—everything he'd need for a quick, clean getaway neatly packed inside. Just in case.
She hadn't expected to find a clue; after all, they were in the same business, and she wouldn't have left one. But it wasn't like him to vanish without at least a coded message to let her know he was okay. They'd been family since she could remember, and when Martin had proved to be a royal fuckup of a father, Stoney had been the one to step in for her.
His younger brother Delroy lived in New York, but he had a nice bakery business going. Calling him would only make him worry, so she'd delay that for as long as possible.
"Okay, Stoney," she muttered, stacking the pieces of mail from behind his door and setting them on the Formica kitchen table, "this is your gig. But whatever you're trying to shake loose, you'd better check in soon. I have enough things I'm hunting for right now without adding you to the list." Especially since he was supposed to be helping her with information on Toombs.
As she closed and locked his door again, she could admit that with her two main guys both gone, she felt a little off her game. Sure she could manage on her own, and frequently did so, but Stoney was her sounding board for ideas and theories. As for Rick… Well, he was everything else and then some more. And she was just crazy about him.
Once the house was buttoned up again she walked the half block to where she'd parked the Bentley. As she started to pull away from the curb, a metallic blue Volvo 750 passed her heading in the opposite direction. The car looked vaguely familiar, and as it pulled into Stoney's driveway and the petite brunette in the power business suit got out, she frowned. Kim Stacey, real estate agent extraordinaire, and Stoney's squeeze for the last couple of months.
Slowly she backed the Bentley until she was just a house away from Stoney's. As she unrolled the passenger window she could hear Kim pounding on the front door and yelling. "Walter! Are you in there? Walter, if you can hear me and you've had a stroke or something and can't talk, pound twice on the floor and I'll call 911."