Marked Masters (21 page)

"It costs the same, whichever view I'd
chosen," Jack said. "Figured there would be fewer people heading up
the tower since the dome is the better bargain for the euros."

"Don't mention the extravagance to Cecil. If
he's anything like Max, he'll give you a money monitor like
Cassie."

"That's really bothering you, isn't it?"

"Wouldn't it bug you?" I looked back at him
as the stairs turned.

He nodded, looking skyward as he spoke.
"Probably. I'll speak to him on your behalf if it would help."

"Just the fact you suggest the possibility
increases my distrust of you."

"But—"

"Max is the reason Tony B knew I was in
Miami." My voice dropped to a whisper. "Trust me. That will be one
of the first items discussed when we reach the top. Oh, and what
about the Welshman at Gatwick?"

"Last I heard, he's not talking. But good
catch on your part, spotting him."

"We Beachams have always been a sharp-eyed
bunch. Hopefully he'll spill something on Simon."

I wasn't a virgin at climbing the Florence
fifteenth-century version of a StairMaster, so I knew to pace
myself. I also took advantage of the lovely little rest stops
conveniently placed every couple of stories and remained grateful
the crowds in the piazza hadn't followed us for our tower
escapade.

"Could give one a touch of vertigo," Jack
said at our final rest stop. I saw the way his hand clutched the
railing, and I smiled. Big, tough Jack Hawkes bothered by a tightly
wound staircase a couple of hundred feet high. I could have taken
pity on him. After all, he'd probably had less sleep than I, and it
had to affect the lug. Nah, no pity from me.

I clapped my hands. "Come on, Jack—last one
to the top has to tell a truth the other person doesn't know." Then
I took off like a shot. I wasn't going to lose after suggesting
that kind of wager.

Views of central Florence unfurled from the
windows at the top. Personally, I preferred the panorama of this
tower as opposed to the top of the dome, though a host of visitors
would likely disagree. Both views are awe inspiring; however, here
the sights were not only more spectacular to my mind due to its
closer proximity to the ground, but the vistas included the dome as
well. I stood at one of the openings and just breathed in the
majesty, putting one hand up to the rough wall to help contain the
adrenalin coursing through my veins. I wasn't afraid of heights. On
the contrary, I knew their genius for offering new information from
a previously thwarted angle. We'd had so many things hitting us to
this point, things that seemed to herd us from one exciting end of
Florida to the other, then across the ocean, and now to the most
singular city of Florence. I wanted the disparate parts to make
sense. I wanted to hear what Jack had learned and to put his intel
together with what Cassie sent. We needed to agree on a connection.
The change in altitude couldn't hurt.

I let my gaze sweep again over the
Florentine landscape below, wishing I had X-ray vision to penetrate
the hidden sights under the terra-cotta roofs. I wasn't a voyeur.
Rather, I wanted vindication of how our reasoning for coming here
was sound. Cassie's data not only included the info on the forger
brought back from the grave, but detailed bills of lading furnished
by those whose imitations received the dreaded spotlight when the
fakes were revealed. Each time, the stepping off point for all of
the found frauds began in Florence, regardless of where the works
were ultimately headed.

Jack arrived just before the French couple.
I think he stopped to plan his argument since he knew I couldn't be
beaten. I played the grownup and didn't mention the wager. It
wasn't like I believed he would honestly answer any question I
really wanted to know anyway.

"It is nice," he said softly. He stood
behind me and reached a hand to the stone opening, placing his just
above the one I used to brace myself, so he leaned into me a
little. "Play along. Make sure we look like a couple to anyone
watching. Anyone who might be questioned as they leave."

Damn! He was right. I hadn't thought of
that. After zoning out with Cassie, I should have known sleep was
more important than reconnaissance, yet here I was playing Miss
Scarlet in the bell tower. Or, no, I guessed Mata Hari offered a
better analogy, since Miss Scarlet was a killer, and the only
person I'd thought of killing lately was Max. I pasted on my fake
happy grin and said, "Yes, I knew we needed to come up here to see
the city."

One of the couples who came ahead of us
chose to leave right then. The other remained to take pictures and
point at landmarks below. The French couple stood close enough to
be conjoined, and I worried they might be a problem as they seemed
more interested in the dark corners of the space than they did the
city view. I inclined my head to the farthest corner from them and
Jack nodded.

I pulled a guidebook out of my purse to use
as a prop as we spoke. I briefed him on what information Cassie
provided, then we walked back to a window and pretended to take
pictures with my phone so we could scan the e-mails together
undercover. When the French couple became the only hangers on, Jack
pulled out his phone and said, "Here, let's get some shots of you
with the view behind. Make a perfect photo for my desk back home,
love."

No way could I keep from raising an eyebrow,
but I did control the laugh bubbling inside me as I moved to look
thoughtfully out at the horizon. There was a lot of activity on the
flat roof of one of the neighboring palazzos, but I couldn't really
get any detail without pulling out binoculars, and I'd left the
mini-but-mighty lenses Cassie thoughtfully added back in my luggage
at the
pension
. Besides, most of the roof was covered with
dark awnings. But I could see busy workmen flitting back and forth
under the canvases. Probably nothing. But still…

I turned and smiled as Jack continued
snapping digital photos. The French couple watched us and giggled,
and I started to get a little nervous about the interest of the
pair. Leaning close to Jack's ear, I whispered, "I'll note the
characteristics of her face. You take his."

"No need." Jack's voice rumbled as he kept
the volume low. "I've never seen them before. It's not likely
they're from either camp."

"How can you be sure?" I shot back, stepping
away to cross my arms.

Jack took two slow steps closer. "I know for
the same reason I could track you on CCTV. I remember faces. It's a
gift. Trust me when I say those two have no previous connection
with Moran or Tony B."

I kept walking toward the other end of the
space. "You've memorized every confederate either of them has?" I
whispered.

"Yes. I've been following the careers of
both men for some time. You're not the only one who knows every
crook in the art world."

I stared into those teal eyes. "Yeah, but am
I the only person right now looking at one?"

He opened his mouth, then shut it again
without speaking. Instead, he started flipping screens in his phone
until he found his own saved e-mails, and we resumed the charade of
oohing and ahhing over e-mails as if they were photos of me and
Florence. The French couple finally chose to leave, kissing and
squeezing until they got to the edge of the first step. I could
hear voices coming from down below and knew there wasn't much time
before the next set of tourists arrived. I took the opportunity to
give him the scoop on Max's role in Tony B kidnapping me.

Jack's face reddened. "Of all the
stupid—"

I shushed him. "Max doesn't see Tony B as a
hood. And we've all been at benefits together. As irritated as I am
with my boss, I can't blame him for answering what he obviously
felt was a simple question. I don't doubt Tony B was very
smooth."

"So Cassie has your back on this?"

"Everything from me goes through her to Max.
And we'll make sure his knowledge of my location is at least a day
late."

"Good."

"What info do you have from your sources?" I
asked.

Jack tensed his shoulders, then let them
drop and pulled me back to one of the openings. He flipped three
screens very fast, but I recognized two sculptures and the painting
as ones Cassie included in my e-mail info dump.

"Are those the real works or the fakes?"

He sighed. "That's just it. These works were
recently deemed frauds but were in place instead of the originals.
And they're brilliantly done. If not for the cursed mark, they
would likely still pass all tests. Which also makes the task of
determining when the switch was made infinitely more
difficult."

"Yet duplicates were forgeries and had the
'new' makers mark of the dead forger from here in Florence," I
mused. The terra-cotta roofs below offered a lovely uniform pattern
to rest my gaze and soothe the challenges to my brain. For the last
twenty-four hours, I'd been thinking about all of the pieces of
this case and how they did and didn't fit together. This new
information simply made it more complex. Or something entirely
new.

"So, are we on track for something?" Jack
asked. "Or is all of this a means of diffusing our attention to the
point where we don't see what we should?"

At least we were thinking along the same
lines. I threw out the one connection I had. "The snuffbox. You and
I were both after it for vastly different reasons, but it ties to
Simon through Tina, Tony B through Tina, and Florence because the
forgery looks to have been made here because of the mark and the
shipper's bill of lading that Cassie wrangled from Max's original
source. And the mark itself is one of legend. Who has appropriated
the forgery mark of a dead forger? Or is it more than one person?
We know Simon was aligned with Moran, and Tony B was seen with
Rollie at the art fair. So is Tony B working for Moran or just
extra hired muscle? Or is it all nothing more than confidence men
keeping their enemies close? And was Tina a dupe in all of this or
Tony B's latest conquest gone wrong? If the latter, was her murder
to stop her from giving me the snuffbox, or to keep her from also
giving me information at the hand off?"

"All brilliant lines of thought," Jack said,
his face contemplative. "But it still doesn't give us clear
direction. There's also the number in the safe-deposit box assigned
to Simon in Orlando. No one has been able to crack that code
either. Did he put the number into the box, or was it and the map
placed there by someone else for him to pick up when he came to get
the snuffbox from Tina?"

Well, hell! I hadn't thought of that. I knew
this wasn't a competition, but I preferred to have already
processed a possibility before Jack voiced it. There was another
connection to all of these people and artworks. "This is the
country where we first tried to get the snuffbox, and now we're led
to Florence. And the Greek courier who originally was supposed to
give me the snuffbox wasn't just robbed like Tina, he had his
throat slashed just like hers. But his death was in Italy.
Coincidence? I hardly think so."

"You think if we find Tina's killer, we'll
know who killed the Greek?"

I shrugged. "You were the one who said there
was no doubt the man who confessed to the murder had been paid to
be the scapegoat." Something else lay in all of this, but what? An
idea teased my subconscious, but I wasn't sharp enough at the
moment to latch on to the answer. Another missing link that eluded
me. I shook my head. "Jack, I'm tired. I know I should see
something here, some real connection to truly help, but I
can't."

He looked at the time on his phone. "We've
made progress, and you're right. Neither of our brains is rested
enough for this kind of a workout. It's lunchtime, then everything
will be shuttered for
riposo
. Let's follow local
tradition."

Ah,
riposo,
siesta
,
a nap.
Sounded beautiful. But food first. "There's a trattoria just a
block from here."

"What? You don't want to share
bistecca
Fiorentina
?"

The enormous rustic Tuscan T-bone big enough
to serve two. "If I shared a steak with you now, I'd be out before
we hit the dessert course."

"Who said anything about sharing?" Jack
laughed at what I knew was my startled expression, and I joined in
just as a party of four emerged from the staircase. The problem
was, we were both close enough to exhaustion that we couldn't stop
laughing once we'd started. Jack motioned for me to follow him back
down, and we kept our gazes diverted from each other as we made the
return trek. One shared glance and hysteria would start again.

Every table at the trattoria was filled. We
needed an alternative, and Jack knew a stand-up sandwich and wine
place on the way back to cross the Arno River. "It's a hole in the
wall," he said. That was literally the truth. The storefront had an
opening at the top of the counter where orders were taken and
filled. As we finished our sandwiches and wine, our glasses went
onto the shelf along the side wall. Several empties already waited
to be retrieved by the dishwasher. A convenient gelato vendor
finished off our feast with dessert, the creamy chocolate and
hazelnut
giandiau
for me and the decadent dark-chocolate
cioccolato fondente
for Jack. We continued moving out of the
center of the city as we ate. Neither of us seemed to have the
energy to talk, and I was getting too tired to walk, but we were in
the pedestrian only zone. Parking in Florence can be a nightmare,
so buses and cabs must stay beyond the city center. Once vehicular
traffic again shared our space, I searched in vain for an available
taxi so I could return to the
pension
for a nap. I was
tempted to flag down one of the Vespas buzzing by and try my luck
playing femme fatale to any young Italian male driver to escape
Jack. The motor scooters zipped by constantly.