Authors: Elizabeth Jennings
The astonishment in their voices gave her courage. She turned, trembling, to Matt, the words tumbling out of her. “They said that I was the one who killed my father and I shot a nurse who came in to stop me. Imelda Delgado. I knew her well, we’d become friends while she cared for my father. She was a very sweet woman of Filipino extraction. I couldn’t believe they’d killed her. They said I did it.” She looked at him, a leaden ball of grief and fear pressing against her chest, “I swear to you, I
swear
I had nothing to do with Imelda’s death. And as for the thought that I’d kill my own father—” A harsh sob escaped her, and her throat closed up so tightly, no words could come out. Matt had been sitting holding her hands, and now he moved forward. “Christ,” he said, and folded her in his arms. Charlotte leaned into him so hard she wished she could simply tunnel right into him and absorb his strength through her skin.
“You must believe me,” she said, her voice muffled against his tee shirt. “I didn’t kill anyone, I couldn’t—”
“God, honey, of course you didn’t. There’s no question of that.” Though she wanted to lean her head against his shoulder forever, his hands eased her away from his chest so he could look her in the face. “Right now, I need for you to tell me the rest of the story, and I really need for you to tell me what spooked you so much.” He shook her, just a little, as if to dislodge that huge boulder in her throat.
It worked. Somehow her voice came back. She pushed her hair away from her eyes wearily. “I—I didn’t have much money with me and I knew enough not to use checks or my credit cards. I had barely enough money to get to Chicago, where my Great Aunt Willa lives. Lived. She passed away at the age of 91 during the Christmas holidays. I was her only heir, and I had the keys to her house. My house, now. I kept putting off flying to Chicago to settle the estate because my father was so ill. I knew Aunt Willa always kept a great deal of cash on hand, and I found where she kept it. The Midwest was in the middle of a snowstorm, I was running a terrible fever, and my shoulder hurt like the devil. All I could think about was escaping to some refuge somewhere warm. I didn’t have my passport with me and even if I did, I was sure I’d be on some list at the airport. Wouldn’t I?”
Matt and Tom nodded.
“I thought so. But I had Moira’s brand-new American passport, and I knew I could make it into Mexico. I could even sort of keep my name. Moira’s name is Moira Charlotte Fitzgerald. I often teased her about it. So . . . I drove cross-country and entered into Tijuana and just kept going until I was ready to faint. I think I was a little crazy with pain and fever when I arrived, but God was with me when I stopped at the cantina.” She looked at Matt, so solid, so strong and squeezed his hand. “Three days later I saw you for the first time.”
He folded her hand between his, the grasp warm and strong. “So what spooked you today?”
Charlotte jolted at the thought of Moira. Her chin quivered. “I’ve been following the local Warrenton news. I keep hoping that something will come to light to prove my innocence. I check every day. Today, it was all over the newspapers, and the Web sites of the TV
stations.”
A tear ran down her cheek, and her hands trembled. “What was, honey?” Matt asked, his voice gentle.
“Moira,” Charlotte whispered. “Dead. Tortured to death.”
“So it’s settled,” Tom finally said two hours later, while Matt gritted his teeth and barely refrained from punching his fist through the wall.
Settled, my ass.
But the thing was—Tom was right. His logic was impeccable. Someone needed to go to Warrenton to investigate, and it couldn’t be Matt. Matt wasn’t willing to leave Charlotte’s side, and Charlotte wasn’t willing to go back until there was some evidence proving her innocence. And she was safer here than she would be in a place where there were men willing to torture a woman to death to get to her.
Jesus. Matt could contemplate danger coolly. All soldiers could. But the thought of Charlotte in those fuckers’ hands—Charlotte being tortured—it made him break out in a sweat. No, she was staying right here and he had to, too.
Which left Tom.
“I can get there by this evening. There are people I can call in, and we’ll nose around. I’m sure we can come up with something to prove Charlotte’s innocence. Either the PD there has its head up its ass, or they’re on the take. Because it doesn’t sound like they have much of a case to make against Charlotte. Any halfway competent DA would throw the case out. So let me see what I can get. And then we call in the FBI and have Charlotte put in custody until her name is cleared and Haine is put in a cage.”
Charlotte shuddered.
“Yeah.” Tom shook his head at Charlotte. “It’s a tough break. But you won’t have to stay in custody for long.” He reached over to close his fist over her hand. “It’ll be okay. You’ve got us on your side.”
Charlotte smiled wanly at that. Matt just hoped that Tom was right—the trail was cold by now. But Tom had pulled miracles out of his butt before. And so had Matt.
“Here.” Tom tossed him a sleek satiny gray plastic device. Matt caught it one-handed and slid it open. It was a cell phone. Tom had thumbed open his own, identical to the one Matt was holding, and punched in numbers as he walked into Charlotte’s bedroom. The cell phone Matt was holding rang. He pressed the center button and all he heard was static.
“Press the red button on the lower-left-hand side and put it to your ear,” Tom called. He did and the static disappeared. “We’ve got ourselves a secure comm system,” he heard Tom say over the phone.
He was back in the room. “Don’t use that cell phone for anything else. I’ll call you when I have news. It’s got a sixteen-bit encryption system at both ends. Really secure. Maybe the NSA could crack it, but it’d take them a month. In a month, you’ll be busting your ass for me in San Diego, and Charlotte will be organizing a show at the Coronado.” He started for the door.
“Listen, Tom,” Matt said. Tom stopped and looked back at him. “Keep a list of what you’re spending and I’ll pay you back. And pay you for lost days of work.” He said it without wincing. Tom was going to take a private jet to Warrenton, and four days of Tom’s time was probably worth more than his yearly pension, but it didn’t matter.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said, a big wide smile on his face. “I’ll dock it from your pay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
La Paz, Baja Sur
May 5
As a former soldier, Barrett was very familiar with clusterfucks. You plan down to the minutest detail, you don’t put a foot wrong, and yet everything goes south in a heartbeat in a perfect storm of bad luck. A loose bolt in the helicopter, a sudden sandstorm, an unexpected injury—it could be anything, and all that planning and work was worth crap. There were lots of terms for it—SNAFU and FUBAR and goatfuck.
But the opposite can happen, too—an event so rare soldiers didn’t even have a name for it. Pure blind good luck. Barrett was deep in the first when the second exploded right before his eyes.
He’d made his way slowly down the Baja peninsula, stopping at every town, big or small. He was Patrick Van der Elst, art collector from Arizona, and he went to every art gallery in every town until he wanted to vomit if he saw one more painting or sculpture or—God help him—“concept.” He hit every art supply store and discovered that Fabriano was a widely available make of art paper. At the art supply stores he asked in a low-key way about a friend of his who had said she was heading down to Baja and had any
norteamericanas
settled in lately?
It was all done casually,
hey, no prob
because the last thing he needed when a dead Charlotte Court—or whatever the hell she was calling herself—turned up, was the police finding out that a
gringo
had been around asking about her. He started in the morning and ended when the last gallery closed, around midnight most of them. Then he’d get into his rental and drive to the next town. And the clock was ticking. Barrett had made it down to La Paz, a fairly big city on the tip of the peninsula, and he’d ticked off eight of the twelve galleries in town and was thinking sourly that maybe he should have gone straight to San Miguel Allende after all, when
wham
. There it was. A big three-foot-by-two-foot perfect rendering of Moira Fitzgerald, painted by Charlotte Court. Even he could see that.
“Nice, isn’t it?” a voice asked from behind him. “The artist is going to become a big name very soon.”
Barrett turned to see a tall, gray-haired man checking him out.
It was done discreetly, but it was unmistakable. Gays creeped Barrett out, but he could certainly tuck that away on a job. He smiled back and put some sex in the smile. The man blinked and straightened, automatically patting his gray ponytail. “I’m Perry Ensler, the owner of the gallery.”
Barrett stuck out his hand and let the clasp last three seconds too long. “Name’s Van der Elst. Patrick. I’m on vacation here and since my . . . partner has been insisting we start an art collection, I’ve been tooling around, poking my head in a few galleries here and there.”
He grimaced. “Crap, mostly, is what I’ve seen. But what the hell do I know? I sell swimming pools. But my partner, he’s in banking and he’s ambitious and he says we need an art collection so—” Barrett shrugged his shoulders and smiled into the guy’s eyes.
“Here I am.”
“Well, you might not know much about art, but I’d say you have instinctive excellent taste, Patrick. This artist is our new star. I’ve just discovered her, and I’ve already sold half of what I bought from her. She works in several media, what are you looking for?”
Barrett allowed himself a blank look, which was actually genuine.
Ensler laughed. “Medium. What an artist uses. Oils, watercolors, pastels.”
“Oh.” Barrett put a sheepish look on his face. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, except—I mean when you think of a painting you think of an oil painting, don’t you?” He turned and pointed at the portrait of Moira. “I mean, what’s that?”
“Oil.” Ensler walked to the painting and touched the frame. “And I’m letting the painting go relatively cheaply because she’s still unknown, but trust me, this painting will double in price in a year.”
“So, who is she?” Barrett asked casually, leaning forward, ostentatiously reading out the signature in the lower-right-hand corner. “Charlotte Fitzgerald. How much is this one?”
Ensler stroked the frame, smiling. “You can have the portrait for $12,000, and believe me it’s a steal. Would you like to see other works of hers?”
Oh yeah.
Barrett nodded.
Ensler walked him to the back room, where several sketches and watercolors were awaiting framing. “These are all hers,” he said. “Haven’t had a chance to frame them yet, they’ll sell just as soon as I hang them, she’s that good, eh? Excellent balance and composition, wonderful color sense, superb strokes in the oils, I think she’s going to be huge.”
Barrett tuned him out and focused on the work in front of him. He scanned each sketch and watercolor carefully, looking for clues to where she was. But the scenes were generic Mexico—sunrises, quick sketches of Mexicans, the sea at various times of day. Baja was a long, narrow peninsula, the sea was everywhere. There was nothing there that could in any way lead to Charlotte Court.
“Charlotte Fitzgerald, huh?” He injected a casual note of curiosity into his voice. “So where does she live? In Baja?”
“Ah ah ah, you naughty boy.” Ensler gave him a coy look, forefinger wagging. “Bypassing the gallery is the oldest trick in the book. If you want a Charlotte Fitzgerald, you’ll have to buy one from me. No going round the gallery owner.”
You miserable little fuck,
Barrett thought. He’d get the info, but he’d waste time, time he didn’t have.
“Whoa there.” He kept his face and voice pleasant. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that at all, but I guess you get a lot of that. Kind of like someone scouting a book in a bookstore, then buying it on Amazon, huh?”
“Precisely.”
“Well.” Barrett put his hands in his pockets, and jingled some coins. Casual guy thinking things over. His combat knife was in his right hand pocket, and his hand itched to bring it out
now
. One minute with the razor edge against that scrawny neck and he’d have the information he wanted. “I think her stuff is great, but I guess I better check with my partner. He’s off doing some bank thing, and I can’t get in touch with him. Say, do you close over lunch?”
Ensler smiled. “This is Mexico. We close from one to five.”
Perfect.
As far as Barrett could see, the gallery’s security was shit. He had a four-hour window. This was going to be easy. He’d slide in and slide out, with no one the wiser. Ensler was bound to have Charlotte Fitzgerald’s address on file.
“Great.” He smiled. “If I can convince my partner, we’ll come back around six, then, unless he’s made other plans.” His smile turned flirtatious. “Maybe when you close we can all go out for a beer together? My partner, he’s really friendly.”
Ensler’s smile widened. “Oh, yeah.”
Oh yeah.
Tonight Barrett would catch up with Charlotte Court, now Charlotte Fitzgerald. Four hours later, Barrett was outside Calle Verde 37, thoughtfully studying the doors and windows.
The door cracked open and Barrett turned to the side, cell phone open and at his ear.
“Yeah, Bork, you heard me right. Get on the guy’s case and make sure those orders are in by July.” Dumb
gringo
tourist who couldn’t leave the job behind. A woman walked out of the house. Slender, pale blonde, very beautiful. Charlotte Court. Immediately behind her was a big guy who put his arm around her. He had dark, observant eyes that took in every detail.