Midnight Angels (29 page)

Rumore turned back to Clare, her face and eyes sparkling under the glow of the low-wattage lights and the burning candle at their table, and smiled. “So, tell me,” he said. “Where do I fit into this great plan of yours?”

Clare was quick to return the smile. “Well, Detective,” she said, “I’m awfully glad you asked.”

CHAPTER
5

E
DWARDS RESTED HIS ARMS ACROSS THE STONE ARCHWAY OF
the small bridge and looked down at the angry brown tide of the Arno heading toward the sea. Dusk had descended on Florence, the city streets already lathered in a light, early evening mist. Kate stood next to him, her back to the river, one foot resting over the other, hands buried inside the side pockets of a tan jacket. It had been two days since his meeting with Marco.

“You could have told me you were here,” she said. “You didn’t have to make me guess.”

“This was the safest way,” Edwards said, “for you and me.”

“Why did you have to move them?” she asked, turning her head to gaze at his profile.

“I needed to make sure the Raven couldn’t get to them,” he said. “The spot you chose was good, but too many people knew about it. I had to find a more secure location.”

“Where are they?” she asked.

Edwards looked across at her and turned away from the Arno. “Riddle me this,” he said.

“Oh, not that,” she said, burying her face in her cupped hands. “I wasn’t any good at it as a child and I don’t think I’ve become any better.”

“I’ll start you off with a solid clue,” Edwards said, “and then leave you time to figure it out. Sound fair?”

“Make it a really good clue,” Kate said, lowering her hands. “Not one of your usual, cryptic ones.”

“I will,” he said, “you have my word. But before we get to that, we
need to have a serious talk, one we should have had years ago. I kept putting it off for a number of reasons, all of them having to do with me. I would delay it even further if I could, but since I’m not certain how our little adventure here will conclude, I think it’s best you hear what needs to be said from me.”

“Are you all right, Richard?” Kate asked, resting a hand on his arm. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“No,” he said, “it has very little to do with me. We need to talk about your parents.”

Kate stiffened. “What about them?” she asked.

Edwards took a deep breath and gazed down at the rough current of the Arno, its dark waters agitating against the shoreline, grudgingly moving forward, bringing waste and debris along with it. “Most of what I told you about them was the truth,” he began. “They were two very special people, masters in their field, generous of heart and spirit, madly in love with each other and with you. They were a passionate pair, and what they set out to accomplish changed the art world for the better and ensured their legacy. There will never be another couple quite like them, and for all of that you should be very proud.”

“What haven’t you told me?” Kate asked.

“They didn’t die in any accident,” Edwards said. “They were murdered, killed by a man they once trusted and counted as one of their own.”

Kate took two steps back, the lights of the city beyond the bridge now a whirling blur, the sounds of the passing scooters and cars echoing like drumbeats in her ears. The fingers of her right hand dug into the hard rock of the bridge wall, clutching onto the ancient stone as if it were a soft pillow. “Why did you lie to me?” she managed to say.

“It was a decision made by your parents and passed on to me,” Edwards said. “They were always aware of the risks their work forced them to encounter, the ultimate price they might have to pay. You were so young, they thought losing them would be hard enough without having to know how it was their fault. It was a good lie, Kate, the kind told only by those with the deepest feelings of love in their hearts.”

“Is he still alive?” she asked. “The man who killed my parents?”

“Very much so,” Edwards said. “But maybe not for long.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. At least, I thought I did,” Edwards said. “There was a period of time when I considered him a friend. He was a scholar for whom your parents had the highest of hopes, but he allowed a hunger for riches and the damage caused by a love affair turned sour to force him to abandon the dream Andrea and Frank envisioned. Instead, he devised a more lethal and lucrative approach to securing the world’s missing art treasures. Over time, his goals became the very opposite of ours.”

“And what exactly are our goals?” Kate asked.

Edwards shrugged. “We find lost treasures and return them to their owners, whether they be a family or a museum or even a city. That part I think you’ve already figured out. But the lengths we go to in order to achieve our goal gets a bit more complicated.”

“I’ve started to pick up on that, too,” Kate said. “Three people have died. Josephine was one of them. She was tortured and her shop was burned to the ground. Is that part of the lengths we go in order to achieve our higher purpose?”

“Look, I don’t expect you to embrace all of this at once,” Edwards said, “and I wish you had a lot more time to take it in and sort it out. But this is the time the issue put itself on the table, and this is the moment when we need you the most.”

“You mean the Vittoria Society?” she asked. “I’m starting to get the idea it’s more than a group of academics and scholars seeking a common purpose.”

“It’s that and much more,” Edwards said. “It is the very group founded by your parents and now run by me and maybe, someday, you. That is why you were raised as you were, with that very purpose in mind.”

“And what if it’s not something I wish to do?” she asked. “What happens then? Do I no longer serve a purpose?”

“That is your call to make,” Edwards said. “But before you move toward making any decisions, there is something you should read.”

He pulled a thick leather-bound book from under his left arm and handed it to her. “What’s in it?” she asked, taking it from him and cradling the book against her chest.

“The truth about your parents,” Edwards said. “It’s a journal they both kept for you to one day read. You know them now only through their work. This takes you beyond that point and gives you as honest a glimpse
of them as you’ll get. They held nothing back, and while some parts may make for painful reading, I think by the end you’ll come away loving them as much as you do now.”

“So you’ve read it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “several times, in fact. Nothing underhanded, mind you, it was at their request. They felt the man raising their daughter should be allowed entry into their private world as well. I was to pass it on to you when I felt the moment was right, and I can’t think of a better time than right now.”

“Did you find anything in the book that
surprised
you?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” Edwards said. “I’m certain you will, too. But regardless of what you read, come away knowing this—your parents led full lives and loved each other deeply. You’ll find, however, if you haven’t already done so, that life often gets complicated, forcing us to venture down roads we never envisioned entering. That’s as true for your parents as it is for you and me. Please bear that in mind as you read their journal.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Richard?” Kate asked.

“That it’s time for you to think of your parents as people, as flawed as anyone else,” he said. “It is what they would have wanted. What they deserve.”

Edwards leaned over, wrapped his arms around Kate and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Read with an open mind and a forgiving heart,” he whispered.

He released his hold and began a slow walk toward the south end of the Ponte Santa Trinita, a stiff evening breeze blowing against his face.

KATE SAT ON
the stone ledge of the bridge, her back to the Arno, opened the journal and began to read the words her parents left behind. Each passage was written with a clear purpose and a level of sincerity not seen in any of the academic works of theirs she had read and reread countless times. These were the words of a concerned mother fretting over leaving behind her infant daughter to venture off in search of a missing work of art, or the worries of a father too weary to continue a quest he had begun to grow skeptical about but still determined to see it through. She learned, as she moved through page after page, how the two met and fell in love, despite the reluctance of both to settle down to what they initially
presumed would be a stuffy existence on a university campus, battling for tenure and having to endure a series of endless and fruitless arguments at a string of cocktail parties over the value of one painting over another.

As dusk turned to night, she discovered that it was her mother who initially conceived of the idea for the Vittoria Society, but that her father was the one who streamlined its goals and duties, expanding it from a small group of like-minded academics to an all-out force complemented by art hunters, forgers, mercenaries, hired guns, private collectors, insurance investigators, and auction house insiders, all working under the guise of a similar goal: to locate and preserve lost or stolen artistic treasures, not merely for profit—though there was enough of that to help fill Society coffers around the world—but for the sheer joy of the art itself.

Kate wanted time to stop and leave her just like this, alone on the ponte, bathed in the glare of an overhead streetlight, getting to know her parents in ways she had never dreamed. She read about their adventures, which took them out of their offices and away from home to explore places far removed from the sealed world of academia—the wild hunts for the missing piece; the daring escapes and the bodies that were left in their wake, both of friend and foe. It was as thrilling a read as anything she could find in the novels by Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo, her parents leaping off the page as modern-day swashbucklers, living life to its fullest.

She read of the private moments Andrea and Frank shared with her as a child: her mother doting over her choice of clothes and hairstyles; her father always on the lookout for some small adventure the two could share, whether a horseback ride through the backwoods of their Maryland summer cottage or a sled ride down the slopes of a sun-drenched New England afternoon.

The most insightful moments in the journal came during the quiet times—often late in the evening, dinner and dishes done, Kate sitting on a thick upholstered couch between her mother and father, laughing along with the two of them as they regaled her with tales of their travels abroad and the wide and eccentric variety of people they encountered.

Kate paused from her reading, resting the book facedown next to her leg, and looked out across the city of Florence. She had just read that it was her parents’ favorite city and the site of many of their exploits, one more breathtaking than the next. She knew now what they had in mind for her, and what Professor Edwards’s mission had been—to prepare her
in every way to be part of the Vittoria Society, regardless of the dangers she might confront, the obstacles she would encounter, or the fierce opposition she would potentially face. Her parents had lived and died for the sake of the Society, and to fail to preserve it and expand its mission would be failing them in the most crucial way. As she sat on that bridge in the middle of a Florentine night, she felt, perhaps for the first time in her life, the full pressure of her destiny. It was an overwhelming realization, and one that left her on the verge of tears.

She picked up the journal and continued reading, now turning the pages with some trepidation, mindful of the professor’s words of warning, and when she finally did come across what he had only dared hint at, it hit her with such force that she lurched forward, nearly dropping the book, clutching onto the light pole for support. She closed her eyes and took several long and deep breaths, choking back the bile building at the base of her throat.

The words were written in her mother’s hand, each sentence clear and concise, offering no excuses, parsing no blame, simply stating the facts as they had occurred. Andrea and Frank had been on the hunt for a stolen Cezanne, and brought along both Professor Edwards and a young scholar they were mentoring to aid in their quest. The trail of clues forced them to separate. Frank and Richard went off to Lyons to search for the supposed thieves, while Andrea and David—described as handsome, filled with boundless energy, and with a superior intellect—trekked back to London to follow the path of the money that was scheduled to change hands. On their third night in England, hiding in a remote cottage in the countryside, waiting out a freezing rain soaking the winding roads of the small town, they built a fire from straw and loose twigs and discarded furniture, and huddled close to it in order to keep warm.

Andrea confessed in the pages of the journal to a silent crush on the remote young man she and her husband had taken under their wings, and before the first light of morning rose above the cottage she succumbed to her secret desires. It was the beginning of a two-year affair, a period in which Andrea felt disjointed and confused, torn between the genuine love she held for Frank and the physical attraction that existed between her and David. From his end, Andrea felt David was not as conflicted, wanting to lay claim to both her and the Society, then still in its infancy, as his own. Andrea knew it could not go on much longer; her relationship with
Frank was beginning to fray at the edges and she sensed that while her husband was aware of the situation, he was not yet prepared to confront her. She also saw how it pitted Professor Edwards and David against one another, turning once close friends into bitter and potentially lethal adversaries.

As Kate read the painful words her mother had so carefully put down on paper, she caught a glimpse of a woman she had never envisioned—torn apart by two men, waging a disturbing tug of war between love and infatuation, fearing the final results of whatever resolution would eventually emerge. Andrea wrote with clarity and sincerity, but could not escape the shackles of the emotional dilemma she was forced to confront. It would take the exposure of David’s unquenchable thirst for power and the ease with which he could betray those closest to him to make Andrea finally aware of the folly of her affair and the risk she had run in chasing away the one man who truly loved her, free of any conditions or assurances.