The Collector, Page 25

  “But you don’t think so, and neither do I. HAG—an appropriate term for her—wasn’t worried about the security cameras. So either she doesn’t care if she’s identified, or she’s not in the system anywhere to be identified.”

  “Either way, she didn’t appear particularly worried about police tracking her down on suspicion of multiple murders.”

  “She’s probably done others, don’t you think? God, this is weird, eating chicken parm and talking about multiple murders.”

  “We don’t have to.”

  “No, we do.” She focused on winding some pasta around her fork. “We do. Being weird doesn’t make it less necessary. I thought I could think of it like the plot for a story, and a little removed. But that’s not working for me. Reality is, and you have to deal with it. So. She’s probably killed before.”

  The tidy black hole centered between the body’s eyebrows came to Ash’s mind. “Yeah, I don’t think she’s new at this. And if we’re right, her boss has to have deep pockets. He wouldn’t hire amateurs.”

  “If he hired her to get the egg from Oliver, she hasn’t delivered.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lila wagged her fork at him. “You’re thinking of a way to lure her out, with the egg. If she doesn’t deliver, she could lose her job, or her fee—or maybe even worse since whoever’s paying her doesn’t worry about having people killed to get what he wants.”

  “If it’s the egg she wants—and what else?—she’s run out of options. I don’t know what Vinnie might have told her under that kind of duress. I think, considering who he was, he didn’t tell her anything. But if he did, he knew I’d taken it to the compound, to hide it for safekeeping, but not where in the compound.”

  “If she somehow figures out it’s there somewhere, it still puts her in a bind. It’s a big place. And even if she could get in—”

  “Big if with my father’s security. But if she was smart enough to, say, get hired as staff, or wheedle an invitation, she still wouldn’t know where to start looking. I put it—”

  “Don’t tell me.” Instinctively she covered her ears. “What if—”

  “What if something goes very wrong and she gets to you? If it does, you’re going to tell her the Cherub and Chariot is in the small safe in the office of the stables. We don’t have horses currently, so it’s not being used. It’s a five-digit code. Three-one-eight-nine-zero. That’s Oliver’s birthday, month, day, year. If I’d told Vinnie, maybe he’d be alive.”

  “No.” She reached out to touch his hand. “They meant to kill him all along. If they’d left him alive, he would have told you, told the police. I think, I honestly think, if he’d had the egg himself, given it to them, they still would’ve killed him.”

  “I know that.” He tore a breadstick in two, more for the act of rending than out of a desire for it. Still, he offered her half. “And it’s hard to accept it. But you need to know where it is.”

  “To use as a bargaining chip for myself, or to retrieve it if she gets to you.”

  “Hopefully neither one. Oliver had it. He must have reneged on the deal, or changed the terms of the deal looking for a bigger payoff. He’d never have considered they’d kill him for it, kill his lady—and he must have used her as the contact.”

  “The optimist,” she said quietly. “The optimist always believes the best will happen, not the worst.”

  “He’d have believed it. Give them some grief, sure, so he covered his bases sending me the key. But he’d have figured he’d convince them to pay up—maybe dangled finding other items of particular interest to the client.”

  “That’s a fool’s game.”

  “He was.” Ash looked down into his wineglass. “I could play a variation on it.”

  “What sort of variation?”

  “Oliver had to have a way to contact this woman or her boss, or knew someone who had a way to contact them. I have to find that. Then I contact them and propose a new deal.”

  “What’s to stop them, once they know you have it, from coming after you, the way they did Oliver and Vinnie? Ash.” She laid a hand over his. “I really meant it when I said I didn’t want them to try to kill you.”

  “I’ll make it clear the egg is well secured. Let’s say a location that requires my presence and that of an authorized representative to remove. If anything happens to me—I’m killed, have an accident, go missing—I’ve left instructions with another representative to transfer the box and its contents to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for immediate donation.”

  To her mind, he said it all—especially the words “I’m killed”—too casually. “Maybe it would work. I need to think about it.”

  “Since I have to figure out how to let her or her boss know I’m in the market, there’s time to think.”

  “Or you could donate it now, make that previously suggested splash about it, and they’d have no reason to come after you.”

  “She’d disappear. Either to evade the authorities or to evade them and the man who hired her. Three people are dead, and two of them meant a lot to me. I can’t just step aside.”

  She had to take a moment. She had feelings for him—she’d slept with him—she was involved with him on a number of levels now. And still she wasn’t quite sure how to approach him on this.

  Direct, she told herself, was always best.

  “I think you’re probably right about her disappearing. If that happened, the worry and risk would be over.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Let’s be optimistic ourselves on that, just for now. And still you’d never have justice or closure, or at least the possibility of justice and closure would be out of your hands. And that’s really it, isn’t it? You want them, at least a part of them, in your own hands. You need to deal with her the way you need to deal with an obnoxious drunk in a bar.”

  “I wouldn’t punch her. She’s a woman, and some rules are too ingrained.”

  She sat back, studied his face. He had a way of appearing calm and reasonable, but the underlayment was steely determination. He’d made up his mind, and he’d move forward with or without her help.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I’m in. We’ll need to refine things, work it all out step-by-step because I doubt running a con is in your repertoire.”

  “Maybe we should sleep on it.”

  She picked up her wine, smiled. “Maybe we should.”

  Julie couldn’t sleep. Hardly a wonder given the circumstances. She’d started her day attending a funeral, where her closest friend had stormed off after being insulted by the departed’s father, and ended it with her ex-husband sleeping in her guest room.

  And in between there’d been another murder, which was horrible, especially since she’d met Vincent Tartelli and his wife at one of Ash’s shows.

  But knowing it all generated from the discovery of one of the lost Imperial eggs? That was fascinating.

  She really wished she could see the egg, and knew she shouldn’t be thinking about the thrill of seeing a lost treasure when people were dead.

  But thinking about that was considerably less uncomfortable than thinking about Luke sleeping in the next room.

  She rolled over—again—and finding herself staring at the ceiling, tried to use it as a backdrop, constructed her image of the Cherub with Chariot there.

  But the compass of her thoughts veered right back to her true north, and Luke.

  They’d had dinner together, just two civilized people discussing murder and priceless Russian treasures over Thai food. She hadn’t argued about his staying over. She’d been unnerved, understandably, she told herself. It seemed perfectly clear now that whoever had killed Oliver, and now poor Mr. Tartelli, had broken into her apartment.

  She wouldn’t come back, of course she wouldn’t come back. But if she did . . . Julie could stand for women’s rights and equality, and still feel safer having a man in the house, considering everything.

  But when the man
was Luke, it brought back all those memories—most of them good. A lot of them sexy. Good, sexy memories didn’t encourage sleep.

  Obviously she shouldn’t have gone to bed so early, but it had seemed safer, smarter, to tuck herself into her own room with Luke tucked away elsewhere.

  She could get her iPad, do some work, play some games. She could read. Any of that would serve as a productive distraction. So she’d just go quietly into the kitchen, get the tablet and make herself some of the herbal tea recommended by the nutritionist she’d fired for being completely unreasonable—her body needed regular infusions of caffeine and artificial sweetener. But the tea relaxed her.

  She rose, took the precaution of putting a robe over her chemise. Easing her door open, careful as a thief, she tiptoed into the kitchen.

  Using only the stove light, she put water in the kettle, set it on to boil. Better, much better than tossing and turning and reliving old sexy memories, she decided as she opened a cupboard for the tin of tea. A nice, soothing drink, a little work, then maybe a very dull book.

  She’d sleep like a baby.

  Already more content, she got out her pretty little teapot because the soft green color and the lilac blooms made her happy. The process of heating the pot, measuring the tea, getting her strainer kept her focus on the homey task at hand.

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  She let out a distinct and embarrassing squeal, dropped the tea tin—which fortunately she’d just closed—and stared at Luke.

  He wore nothing but his suit pants—zipped but not buttoned—so it was hardly her fault her first thought was the boy she’d married had filled out really, really well.

  The second was regret she’d taken off her makeup.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you.” He came forward, picked up the tin.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t. I heard you out here, but wanted to make sure it was you.”

  Civilized, she reminded herself. Mature. “I couldn’t turn my brain off. And I don’t know what to think or what to feel having murder so close to home. Then the egg. I can’t get my mind off that either. It’s a major find, a huge discovery in the art world, and my closest friend is involved in all of it.”

  Talking too fast, she told herself. Can’t seem to slow down.

  Why was her kitchen so small? They were all but on top of each other.

  “Ash will take care of Lila.”

  “Nobody takes care of Lila, but yes, I know he’ll try.”

  She pushed at her hair, imagined it a wild mess after the tossing and turning in bed.

  Naked face, bad hair. Thank God she hadn’t turned on the overhead light.

  “Do you want some tea? It’s an herbal mix with valerian, skullcap, chamomile and some lavender. Really good for insomnia.”

  “Have a lot of that?”

  “Not really. More your basic stress and restlessness.”

  “You should try meditation.”

  She stared at him. “You meditate?”

  “No. I can’t turn my mind off.”

  It made her laugh as she reached for a second mug. “The couple times I’ve tried it, my ohm turns into: Oh, I should’ve bought that fabulous bag I saw at Barneys. Or should I be marketing this artist this way instead of that way? Or why did I eat that cupcake?”

  “Me, it starts spinning around staff scheduling, health department inspections. And cupcakes.”

  She set the lid on the pot to let the tea steep. “Tonight, it was murder and Fabergé and . . .”

  “And?”

  “Oh, things.”

  “Funny, mine was murder and Fabergé and you.”

  She glanced toward him, then away when that single quick meeting of eyes made her stomach flutter. “Well, considering the circumstances . . .”

  “There’s always been a lot of you in my head.” He trailed a finger from her shoulder to her elbow—an old habit she remembered well. “A lot of wondering with you in the center. What if we’d done this instead of that? What if I’d said this and not that? Asked this instead of not asking?”

  “It’s natural to wonder.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes, of course. Do you want honey? I take it plain, but I have honey if—”

  “Do you ever wonder why we couldn’t make it work? Why both of us did stupid things instead of working toward figuring out how to fix it?”

  “I wanted to be mad at you instead. It seemed easier to be mad at you instead of wishing I’d said this, or you’d done that. We were just kids, Luke.”

  He took her arm, turned her, took her other arm. Held her so they were face-to-face. “We’re not kids anymore.”

  His hands so firm, warming her skin through the thin silk of her robe—and his eyes so fixed on hers. All the wondering, all the thoughts, all the memories simply cut through the line she’d told herself was common sense.

  “No,” she said, “we’re not.”

  With nothing holding her back, she moved to him, moved into him, to take what she wanted.

  And later, with the tea forgotten on the counter, with her body curled to his, she slept like a baby.

  Fifteen

  Knowing she needed to play catch-up, and having nowhere else practical to play it, Lila made coffee, then set up a temporary workstation in Ash’s eating nook.

  And there, pushed herself back into the story—one she knew hadn’t gotten enough of her attention in the last few days.

  Dressed in Ash’s shirt, she blocked everything else out, and went back to high school and werewolf wars.

  She put in a solid two hours before she heard Ash come in. She held up a finger to ask for quiet, then finished off the last thought.

  Keying it to save, she looked up, smiled. “Good morning.”

  “Yeah. What are you doing?”

  “Writing. I really needed to get back on schedule there, and you timed it perfectly. It’s a good place to stop for now.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Oh.” She brushed tears away. “I just killed off a sympathetic character. It had to be done, but I feel really bad about it. I’m going to miss him.”

  “Human or werewolf?”

  She pulled a tissue from the mini pack always kept handy at her workstation. “Werewolves are human except for three nights—in my lore—a month. But werewolf. My main character’s going to be shattered.”

  “Condolences. Do you want more coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve already had two. I thought setting up here would be the most out of your way,” she continued as he tapped his machine for his own cup. “I can’t go to my next job until this afternoon, and I don’t feel like I can go to Julie’s now. Not sure what’s what there.”

  “You’re fine.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Everything’s wrong before coffee.” He took the first gulp of it black. “I could probably scramble some eggs if you want.”

  She looked at him, hair tousled, face scruffy again—and definitely cranky around the eyes. “Scrambled eggs is one of the few things I cook really well. I’ll trade that for a place to hang out until two.”

  “Sold.” He reached in the fridge, found a carton of eggs.

  “Sit down and have your coffee, and I’ll fulfill my part of the deal.”

  He didn’t sit, but watched her go back to the fridge, root around until she found some cheese, the butter. Drinking his coffee, he just leaned against the counter as she poked through the cabinets for his skillet, a little bowl, a whisk—a tool he couldn’t quite remember buying.