Finally, in the midst of the shouts and the smoke, the scuffling feet and the yells, I reached a door and pushed through it, regaining my eyesight just in time to catch a glimpse of a waiter’s red bolero jacket. Running after him, I found myself back in the grand ballroom, where people were milling about, chattering excitedly, and trying to figure out what on earth was happening.
I searched for my quarry. If I were Harlan, dashing through this crowd with a stolen Caravaggio tucked under my arm, I would head for the nearest exit and take my chances outside. Using my elbows to shove the gawking glitterati aside, I finally reached the main doors, where several security guards stood, looking bored. Red Bolero obviously hadn’t gone out this way, but I thought Annette and the crowd in the smoke-filled room might need some backup.
“Officer,” I said panting and pointing behind me. “Trouble. The Blue Room.”
The young Latino guard looked as if he didn’t know whether to believe me.
“Smoke!” I cried.
That did it. Pausing long enough to bark orders into his shoulder mike, he plunged into the crowd. I followed suit, but veered off toward the maintenance corridors. Maybe Red Bolero would try the service exit.
Pushing my way through the crowd, I suddenly came face-to-face with Camilla Culpepper, who was wearing a black-and-gold-striped satin gown and an extravagantly feathered turban. There was no sign of a Mr. Culpepper, but Camilla had brought along her assistant, Emily Caulfield, who carried the charming Miss Mopsy in a brocade doggie carrier slung around her shoulders. I could only wonder how much the Culpeppers paid Emily to submit to this kind of humiliation. Since we had not parted on the best of terms, I was not particularly surprised when Emily turned and bolted, dog and all, in the opposite direction.
“Emily!” Camilla squealed.
I grabbed Emily by one arm and swung her around. Miss Mopsy started squirming, trying to lick me.
“Where’s Harlan?” I hissed.
“Harlan?” Camilla echoed.
“Who?” squeaked Emily.
“Don’t play coy, Emily. Now tell me. Where. Is. Harlan.” I was not in the mood for more attitude from Miss Priss here.
“How would I know?”
“Yes, how would she know?” Camilla interjected. “You don’t even know Harlan, do you, Emily?”
“She most certainly does,” I said, then turned back to Emily. “You were supposed to meet him here tonight, remember, Emily?”
Wait a minute. Why
did
Harlan want Emily here tonight? For that matter, why did he want Camilla here tonight? Unless, perhaps, they were part of his plan to smuggle the drawings out?
The doggie sling! It was ridiculous to bring a dog to a ball, something Camilla surely knew. But what was the likelihood that a doggie sling would be carefully searched?
“Give me the dog,” I told Emily.
“She won’t!” cried Camilla.
“Go to hell!” spat Emily.
I grabbed the doggie sling, Miss Mopsy started to bark, and Emily took a swing at me and missed. The upshot of all of this was that the sling ripped, the dog flew, and a quick inspection revealed there were no drawings anywhere. Emily ducked past me, Camilla following her in hot pursuit, while Miss Mopsy landed nose-first in the truffled mousse paté and started mowing her way down the rest of the buffet table.
There were more screams and the clatter of breaking dishes, but still the orchestra played on. Turning to continue the hunt for Harlan, I came nose to nose with Agnes Brock. What luck. Beside her was Sebastian Pitts. Luckier still.
“What in the world is going on here, young lady?” she demanded, livid. “Did you just throw a
dog
in my paté?”
I didn’t know how to answer a question like that, so I didn’t even try, taking aim instead at an easier target. “You know, Sebastian,” I said, “if I were you, I’d be worrying more about the fact that your precious Caravaggio has been stolen. Good thing it was a fake, huh?”
Leaving the two gaping in my wake, I spun around and ran smack into the elegant Quiana, who proved surprisingly strong as she grabbed me by my already bruised arm.
“Where is it?” she demanded.
“Back off!” I snarled, and to my surprise, she let go and disappeared into the crowd.
I turned toward the kitchen, still hoping to find Harlan before he managed to flee the building. However, moving across the great hall was now like swimming upstream against a surging torrent of tuxedos and silk. The smoke-bombed Blue Room was finally attracting the attention it deserved, and security and police officers started flooding the ballroom. Shrieking had begun in earnest, and I had a feeling that the loudest of all was Agnes Brock. Or maybe it was Sebastian Pitts.
At long last the waltz music ground to a halt, “Tales of the Vienna Woods” being replaced by the sounds of alarms and hundreds of frantic voices. A few of the hardier souls and leveler heads were shouting instructions for everybody to remain calm, in an attempt to direct the traffic toward the front doors. A mass exodus began, but with all those high heels and swelled heads it was slow going. Mostly people milled about aimlessly, and despite the general atmosphere of catastrophe I noticed that more than a few were still enjoying the buffet table and the open bar, indicating, as far as I was concerned, that there was no real consensus on what the appropriate course of action should be.
Until somebody pulled the fire alarm. Warning sirens screamed, the overhead sprinklers went off, and a recorded message began repeating, over and over, “The fire alarm has sounded. Please do not panic. Proceed calmly toward the clearly marked exits. Please do not panic.”
Immediately the crowd panicked, as water cascaded down like a tropical monsoon. My dress was now officially a disaster. If I got out of here alive, Bryan was going to kill me.
I made my way slowly through the throngs trying to exit, and finally reached the kitchen, where I asked the gaping serving staff if they’d seen a waiter rush through here with a painting in his arms. Surprisingly, three of them pointed to the back door, so I ran into the maintenance corridor once again. Trying to decide which way to go, I saw what appeared to be a hand peeking out from around a corner, and slowly eased toward it and around the turn.
Harlan Coombs lay motionless on the linoleum floor, a pair of strange-looking glasses askew on his face, his white shirt and red bolero jacket stained by a much deeper red. There were three small holes in his chest.
I swore and jumped back, looking around wildly. Which way, which way? If Gordo the Goon or his sidekick the Hulk had just plugged Harlan and grabbed the painting, wouldn’t they head for the nearest exit?
I tore down the hallway until I heard voices coming from an open door about ten feet in front of me. Pressing myself against the wall, I held my breath, and listened. The voices were muffled, but I recognized Suave Gordo’s velvety tones.
“. . . and you weren’t supposed to kill him until he told you which drawer the key fits.” He sounded aggrieved. “Let’s get out of here.”
With dawning horror, I realized they were coming straight toward me. What was wrong with these guys? They were supposed to go the other way! I looked around frantically, but there were no doors except the one I was standing next to, and it was locked. Deciding to run for it, I barreled back the way I had come, knowing I’d never reach the end of the hallway in time but hoping they would be so surprised to see me that they might pause. Or that, at least, they would have to slow down to shoot.
“What the—” Suave Gordo the Goon exclaimed. “Hanks! Thomas! Stop her!”
I bent forward and began swerving, hoping to make a harder target. At the same time, I heard a gun roar and the explosion echoed down the corridor, almost deafening me. My lungs were screaming in protest, and so were the muscles in my thighs, but the adrenaline carried me along. There was another shot, followed by another, this one originating much closer to me, and, unless my ears deceived me, traveling in the opposite direction. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that the Hulk had been hit. As I was looking back, I ran smack into a very solid mass that yanked me around the corner into the side corridor.
Michael.
“I thought you hated guns,” I said, panting.
“I’m not the world’s greatest shot,” he confessed, hunkering down, “so I suggest you keep running. I don’t know how long I can keep them pinned down.”
I hunkered down beside him. “Did you see Harlan?”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Get out of here, Annie. I mean it.”
“I’m not going to leave you here like this.”
“I’d leave you.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“I’ve already left you a couple of times, haven’t I?”
“Not when somebody was shooting at me, you didn’t. Give me your cell phone. I’ll call for help.”
“Lost it in the Blue Room.”
“Yeah, what was all that about?”
Michael peered around the corner and fired another round. “The museum has a smoke security device that’s supposed to blind thieves if they tamper with the artwork. Harlan set it off on purpose, then used a stun gun on the guards,” he said. “He even had special thermal glasses to allow him to see through the smoke. Gutsy bastard.” He paused and shot again. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll fire another shot or two, then we run like hell the other way. Got it?”
He fired and we took off.
I wish I could say that I easily kept up, but the truth was that Michael pulled me down the corridor at full throttle. Unfortunately, we were not fast enough. There was another volley of shots, Michael stumbled, I tripped over him, and we both landed on the linoleum with an audible splat. The gun skittered down the hallway, out of reach, and a red flower blossomed on Michael’s left shoulder.
I looked up. The Hulk and the Fonz were upon us. Grinning ominously, the Hulk pointed a gun at my head.
“Not here, idiot!” Gordo intervened, clutching a painting protectively in his arms as he trotted up to us. “This place is going into lockdown soon, if it hasn’t already. Take them into the supply room over there, and
then
shoot them. Get Harlan’s body in there, too.”
Michael’s face had a grayish cast, but he struggled to his feet, with my help, one arm around my shoulder for support. I pressed my hand against his wound to stanch the bleeding and hoped this would be one of those times when the doctor would materialize and say, “Oh, it’s just a flesh wound. You’ll live.” Assuming we survived the next few minutes.
Gordo used Michael’s master key to unlock a door and made an “after you” sweep with his hand. Since I figured this was the aforementioned Supply Room of Doom, I thought it best to stay out of it. Searching for some way to divert Gordo, I focused on the painting he was holding.
“How do you plan to get that out of here, Gordo?” I asked, nodding toward
The Magi.
“Shut up, you stupid twit,” he replied rudely.
“I may be a stupid twit, but at least I’m smart enough not to steal a fake.”
Gordo glared at me. “It’s not a fake.”
“Bad news, pal. It’s as fake as a three-dollar bill. I should know. My grandfather painted it.”
Michael groaned.
“David here swore this was the original,” Gordo announced.
Oops. How was I supposed to know? Anyway, whatever Michael—or “David”—had been trying to accomplish by telling Gordo the painting was real, we were about to be murdered by the bad guys, so his plan wasn’t working.
“If it’s not genuine, then where is the real one?” Gordo demanded, eyes narrowed speculatively.
“Release us and I’ll tell you,” I said, trying to buy us time.
“Tell me and I’ll release you,” he replied.
Hmm. We seemed to have a bit of a standoff here.
Suddenly, a woman screamed. “Harlan!”
Camilla Culpepper staggered around the corner, feather turban askew, tears coursing down her face and mixing with her heavy makeup to create a grotesque mask of grief. An ugly patch of crimson stained the front of her striped dress. More frightening still was the gun in her hand.
“Wh-which one of you murdered my darling, my Harlan?” she demanded in a broken voice.
Duh, Camilla!—how about the guys with the guns? What a dingbat. I started making surreptitious little head nods in the direction of Gordo, the Hulk, and the Fonz. Next to me, Michael was doing the same thing.
Camilla did not seem to notice. “Murderers!” she shrieked just before she started blasting away at random.
Gordo dropped
The Magi
and returned fire while Michael pushed me into the supply room, then grabbed the painting, jamming the doorknob from the inside and wrapping his arms around me and
The Magi.
I pressed my face into his chest, holding his large, warm body tightly and listening to the reassuring sound of his heart beating. True, it would have been more reassuring if his heart hadn’t been beating quite so rapidly, but I wasn’t about to quibble.
After what seemed like an eternity, the shooting and the screaming stopped. Neither Michael nor I moved a muscle for a long time, our breath coming fast and loud in the sudden silence. Finally, Michael relaxed a little.
“Are you badly hurt?” I whispered.
“No.” He brushed a damp curl from my forehead. “You all right? You look like hell.”
I was drenched from the sprinklers, my beautiful evening gown was torn and soaked, and my stockings were ripped and full of runs. My unruly hair had overthrown Paul’s taming, and I was willing to bet that at the moment it was standing on end. I had no idea where my shoes were, I was sweaty, and my nose was running. I didn’t think it was very nice of him to draw attention to my appearance at a time like this.
“Yeah, well, thanks,” I said. “You look like hell, too.” I lied. He looked good enough to nibble. I wondered if I’d ever get the chance.
“You’re all right,” he said again, as if reassuring himself. His hand fell from my disheveled hair to my cheek, which he stroked with the back of his hand. He took a deep breath. “You’re a real pain in the ass,” he said. “You know that?”