Running Scared (3 page)

“First impression. Celtic, of course. Styles and techniques range from La Tène to Mediterranean. Age could be anywhere from fifth century b.c. to fifth century a.d. If you need dates on individual pieces, it will take several days for detailed stylistic comparisons with artifacts in museums, published papers, auction catalogs, online collections, that sort of thing. Most of my references are in Las Vegas, because you said you only needed a fast look.”

“If a more detailed appraisal is required, would you need the actual artifacts, or would the virtual ones do?” Dana asked.

With intent, narrowed eyes, Risa looked through the collection again. “Did you search for modern machining marks when you had these under the ‘scope?”

“The client assured me there were none,” Dana said. “We checked, of course. Nothing caught our expert’s eye.”

“Right.” Risa let out a breath. “Then I’d start with the virtual and go to the real only if I ran into problems.”

Dana nodded. “So noted.”

“For now,” Risa said, “of the nine real objects in this case, one shows obvious signs of recent repair—the gold alloys simply don’t match. Two of the pieces have repairs that appear much older, but that’s only a preliminary visual examination. Some of the rest certainly could use repair, but that’s to be expected. In all probability they’re two thousand years old.”

“You think they’re genuine?” Dana asked. “Again, this is a nonbinding verbal opinion based solely on a limited visual examination.”

Risa waited while the legal niceties were recorded before she said, “I haven’t seen anything to put me off. Yet.”

Nor had she seen anything that made her heart kick with excitement at being in the presence of a truly fine artifact. A showstopper, as her boss would say.

That was what Shane needed to launch his new gallery on New Year’s Eve. That was what she hadn’t found yet—a centerpiece for his Druid Gold show. She couldn’t help wondering how much more time he would give her. And who else he had looking.

Shane might have made his fortune gambling, but he never left anything to chance.

Los Angeles

Friday, October 31

Morning

“D
id the client agree
to having these objects manually inspected?” Risa asked, frowning.

Dana nodded. “Yes, but we’ve already photographed, x-rayed, and otherwise electronically scanned the pieces, including XRF and SEM.”

Without waiting for Shane to ask, Risa translated. “X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition of the metal alloy and scanning electron microscope for all the fiddly little details.”

“The results are digitized,” Dana continued, “and can be reproduced in three dimensions, so if you would rather not take the risk of handling the objects yourself—”

Risa’s laugh drowned out the rest of Dana’s words. “I live to handle ancient jewelry, gold in particular. High-quality gold doesn’t respond easily to the acids on human skin, which means I don’t have to wear surgical gloves to handle gold for a brief inspection.”

“Why would handling gold matter to you, other than pleasure?” Niall asked.

“No photo, no computer reproduction in 3-D, no hologram, no electronic scanning, no graphs or reports, nothing works for me like actual touch. In humans the only thing more sensitive than the fingertips is the tongue. The delicacy of the work on some of the objects I’ve handled is so fine it defeats human eyes and fingertips.”

“So you lick it?” Niall asked in disbelief.

An amused, sideways glance was her only reply.

Shane’s eyelids lowered almost lazily. It was his only visible reaction to the thought of something being explored by Risa’s sensitive tongue. Certainly the idea was more interesting than any of the gold pieces on the table in front of him. While they had historic value, they left a lot to be desired in terms of pizzazz.

And that was what he needed. Impact. The kind of gold artifacts that could reach through ignorance and twenty-first-century smugness and shake the viewers to the soles of their casually shod feet. It might last only a few moments, but for that time the viewers would
know
that people just like them had lived for thousands of years—laughing, yearning, loving, crying, dying, and creating, always creating.

The fact that such an exhibit would also increase traffic through Tannahill Inc.’s resort casinos was nice, but it wasn’t the reason he was pursuing all that was good and enduring in gold artifacts. Quite simply, he despised the looters and scavengers of ancient cultures. It was a passion and a pursuit that only two other people were aware of—Dana and Niall. Shane worked hard to keep it that way.

The less people thought of him, the easier it was to catch them off guard.

“Did you have anything else to show me?” he asked. “These aren’t what I need. When I open the Druid Gold show, there will be press, media, and cameras until hell won’t have them. Celebrities. Politicians. Socialites. The whole tacky tortilla.”

“What Shane is trying to say,” Risa offered, “is that in Las Vegas there’s downtown, downscale, tasteless, and then there’s uptown, upscale, ostentasteless. Nothing in this lot will make a jaded tourist blink.”

Yet even as she spoke, her fingertips reverently brushed the cool, damaged surface of what could have been a privileged child’s torc or a votive offering to one of the four hundred named deities the Celts had worshipped. To her, even the most awkward artifact deserved respect simply for having survived when so much else had been lost.

Dana waved off the explanation and looked at Shane. She had expected his impatience. That was why she had insisted that Rarities pay for Risa’s time and travel. “Down, boy. She’s here for us, not you.” To Niall she said, “Why don’t you take him to the basement and play with guns or something.”

It was an order, not a question.

Shane laughed and held up his hands in mock surrender to the small brunette. “You rise to the bait so beautifully, Dana. Hard to resist.”

“Fight it,” Niall suggested, but the lines at the corners of his eyes gave away his silent laughter.

Dana said something that was either “men” or
“merde.”
No one asked for clarification.

Smiling, Risa picked up the small torc. “From its weight, it’s hollow. This torc—neckring—is most probably grave goods or perhaps an offering to the spirit of a special spring or a marsh or a river. From the color, I might guess that the torc was made from a gold-silver alloy similar to the hoard found in Snettisham, England, which has been dated to mid-first century b.c. Even if that is the case, it wouldn’t be definitive proof of origin for this object, because graves and treasure troves have been dug up and melted down and reworked for as long as people have been burying gold in the ground in the first place.”

“But you would be comfortable with labeling that torc as British Celtic, approximately first century b.c.?” Dana asked.

“If that is consistent with your XRF results—”

“It is,” Dana cut in. “None of the pieces match XRF graphs of modern nine-, fourteen-, or eighteen-karat-gold alloys.”

Risa nodded without glancing away from the torc. “The technique isn’t up to the standards of what has been published from the Snettisham hoards of the first century b.c. These terminals aren’t even engraved. Maybe the torc wasn’t finished. Maybe it was. We’ll never know. We can only judge what we have in our hands, not what might have been.”

“But the torc is similar to the Snettisham goods?” Dana pressed.

“Apparently this torc is made of electrum. So were some of the Snettisham goods. That’s all I’m willing to say at this point.”

Risa held the torc out and turned it so that the overhead camera would have a clear view. The awkwardness of the object leaped into high relief.

“This is a single hollow tube of gold shaped—inelegantly—into a small neckring,” Risa said. “As a golden survivor of the centuries, it has both extrinsic and intrinsic value. As an example of the jeweler’s art of Iron Age Britain . . .” She shrugged. “Ordinary. Very ordinary. Any good museum has something like it in storage in the basement, waiting for a scholar to care.”

Dana’s nod made light shimmer over her short dark hair. The client had doubtless hoped for more, but that was his problem. Her problem was to buy, sell, appraise, and protect the constant stream of cultural artifacts that came through the door of Rarities Unlimited.

“The other pieces are of similar artistic quality.” Deftly Risa replaced the torc in its nest and picked another piece of jewelry at random. “This penannular brooch—think of it as a broken circle—was used to keep robes, cloaks, and the like from falling off your shoulders. Many such brooches were made of iron or bronze. The Vikings preferred silver, because that’s what they had the most of to work with. The Celtic tradition in earlier times and other places is rich in gold.”

Niall looked at the brooch. There wasn’t any way to fasten the piece to cloth. There wasn’t even a sharp point to pierce fabric before coming to rest in the rudely formed clasp. “Don’t see how it could hold up anything.”

“That’s because the pin part of the brooch was broken,” Risa said, replacing it. “The destruction was probably deliberate and happened when the brooch originally was buried or thrown into water.”

Niall opened his mouth to ask why something should be broken before it was buried or offered to a god. Then he caught Dana’s slicing, impatient look and shut his mouth. There was no need to know. Not for him. It was enough that Risa knew.

Besides, he could always ask her later.

“Two of the remaining brooches are similarly broken.” Risa skimmed three pieces with her fingertips. “These small armlets are from a later time, after the Romans began to influence British Celtic styles. They appear to be solid gold.” She picked them up one after another and weighed them in her palm. “Not hollow. Again, the technique is frankly crude. It lacks the polish of the Mediterranean goldsmiths who came with the Romans to Britain. Nor do the pieces have the sheer . . . well,
presence
that the best of the Celtic goldsmiths gave their work.”

“Define ‘presence,’ “ Shane said.

Her first thought was that he should know all about presence. He certainly had more than his share of it. “It isn’t definable. If it’s there, you feel it. If it isn’t . . .” She shrugged.

He started to ask another question, only to be cut off by his employee.

“I’ll discuss it with you later if you wish,” Risa said, “but until then, try looking in the mirror.” At Shane’s surprised expression, her chin came up defiantly. “Men.
Merde.
”

Dana’s laugh was as smoothly tenor as her voice. “Anything else you want to add for the recorders?”

Red flared briefly on Risa’s wide-set cheekbones as she remembered that every word and gesture was going into digital storage. “The overall crudeness, simplicity, and fragmentary condition of the pieces make me inclined to say that they aren’t forgeries. They’re just not good enough to generate the kind of interest and money that pay forgers for their skill, time, and materials.”

“Would you be willing to put a verbal, nonbinding value on the collection if sold as a whole?”

“Are these being represented as a single trove found at the same place and time?”

“No,” Dana said.

“In that case the value is considerably less.”

“My client is aware of that.”

“At this point, and assuming that the provenance is very good, I don’t see more than seventy-five to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the whole lot. There’s little in these pieces to lure a major museum. If you find a jewelry collector whose interest lies exclusively in Celtic gold work, you might get more money.” Her vivid, dark blue gaze pinned Shane. “Collectors are an unpredictable lot. They pay whatever it’s worth to them.”

Shane’s smile was all hard, gleaming teeth.

Niall coughed as he closed the case, exchanged it for the other spun-aluminum box and returned to the group at the table. The new box was half the size of the first. He opened the lid and turned the case toward Risa.

She sensed the stillness that came over Shane. She glanced at him and saw nothing different in his expression.

Yet she knew he had decided to buy the piece even before he heard his own expert’s opinion of it.

Merde.

She really hated when that happened.

At least this was an artifact she would be proud to have in the Golden Fleece’s collection of gold objects. Always assuming the artifact wasn’t a fraud or had the kind of cobbled-together provenance that screamed of blood and theft. If the provenance was suspect, she and her boss would be in for some yelling matches. Her idea of solid provenance was too rigid, according to Shane. A lot of auction houses would agree with him.

Risa’s childhood and youth were so spotted she required the cleanest of artifacts. Shane’s background was of the driven-snow variety, which made him more tolerant.

He had never been caught red-handed with something he didn’t legally own.

She shoved aside the unhappy memories of her childhood as an Arkansas orphan and concentrated on the artifact in front of her. There was an integrity to the piece that transcended whatever guilty or greedy souls might have owned it in the past.

“Visual only, or may I handle this?” she asked.

“Same as the other lot,” Dana said.

Risa smiled even as she shook her head slowly. “No, this is very different from the other lot. This has presence.”

Shane gave her a sideways look.

She ignored him and concentrated on the torc. To her relief the object felt only of cool gold and weight, none of the disturbing power that she sometimes felt with an artifact—and never more unnervingly than she had in Wales, amid standing stones, even though no artifacts had been there. But she didn’t like thinking about that and the currents of awareness that sometimes reached out to her, telling her she was
different.

With a long breath she forced herself to concentrate on the here and now rather than a lost childhood and an eerie oak grove in Wales.

The torc’s circle was divided into three equal arcs. The outer curve of each arc was decorated by a spoked wheel balanced on the center of the arc. Each wheel was itself divided into thirds by three equally spaced gold knobs.

“Classic three-part design,” Risa said. “The Celts loved their trinity long before Christian times.” Carefully she lifted the torc from its nest. “From the weight, it’s solid. Whether this is pure gold or sheet gold wrapped over iron, I can’t tell visually. If it’s a wrap, it’s a thick one. I see nothing but gold.”

Dana spoke softly into the microphone buttoned to her collar. “Research?”

“Iron core,” said the ceiling grille. “Verified by Rarities.”

“Excellent.” Risa all but purred.

“Wouldn’t it be more valuable as pure gold?” Niall asked.

“As metals go, pure gold is very soft,” she said absently. “You can shape it any way you want without much trouble, but it gets out of shape just as easily. Worse, it might not stop a surprise sword blow from the back, which was probably the original reason torcs were worn. The fact that this is gold wrapped around iron makes it more likely that the torc was a badge of royalty or very high status that was actually worn by a woman or a pencil-necked man. Beautiful. Just beautiful.” With sensitive fingertips she traced the whole of the circle. “Mmm. Yes. Here it is. And here.”

Shane watched her fingertips and thought of her tongue. Irritably he pulled his mind back to the gold object instead of his increasing, damned inconvenient lust for his curator.

Risa looked at Dana. “I will assume a mortise-and-tenon joint at each end of this arc.”

“English, please,” Shane said.

The edge to his voice made Risa’s eyes narrow. “Think of it as innie meets outie.”

Niall snickered.

Risa turned back to Dana. “That kind of joint was known and used in the Iron Age. It would allow one arc in this torc to be removed so that the remaining two-thirds of the ring could slip—or be pushed—around the neck. Then the arc would be replaced, the torc squeezed shut at the joints, and God help whoever wanted to take it off.”

“Sounds uncomfortable,” Shane said.