Take Me Two Times Read online

  Trudie looked for a few more seconds and then set the photos down. She took off the strange apparatus on her head.

  “So my guess is that this was made by a jeweler who not only knows the very difficult repoussé technique used here, but owns a laser welder.”

  Trudie elaborated after seeing their blank looks. “A laser welder costs about twenty-six thousand dollars. It’s not a tool that a lot of jewelers can afford. And it’s only been around for the last ten or twelve years, which tells you that the mask has been made fairly recently.”

  “And . . . repoussé? Is that what you said? What’s that, exactly?”

  “It’s a very difficult process, and a time-consuming one, in which metal is bulged, or hammered from the back. Basically a sheet of metal is annealed, or heated with a torch to soften and compress the molecular structure. The metal is then laid into what’s called a pitch bowl and hammered in. It’s bulged from the front, and then from the back. It takes a long time and an expert hand to do this.” Trudie drummed her fingers thoughtfully on her tilted drawing table.

  “The art of repoussé is ancient and dates back to antiquity. Very few people can do it competently, much less beautifully.”

  Gwen nodded. “Can you give us a ballpark figure of how many?”

  “I’d say only three or four hundred people in the world.”

  “And out of those, how many do you think might have a laser welder?”

  “Maybe a hundred. And it’s very likely that your mystery jeweler belongs to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.”

  “The what?”

  Trudie laughed. “I know, it sounds like a cult. It’s basically the goldsmith’s guild in England. I’m a member. Every piece of gold jewelry made in the U.K. has to be tested in one of five assay offices. It’s assayed and hallmarked—or crushed in a hydraulic press if it’s not as pure as it’s purported to be.”

  Quinn said, “And what does assaying gold involve?”

  “A groove is filed on the piece with a triangular file,” Trudie explained. “Then acid—nitric acid or aqua regia—is dropped into the groove. The results are compared to a touchstone to see if the color matches. If it doesn’t, the jeweler is in big trouble and the piece is destroyed.”

  “Okay,” Gwen said. “So in order to find the artist behind this mask, we look for a member of this international goldsmith’s guild who knows the repoussé technique, owns a laser welder, and has a name starting with the letter B.”

  “Exactly,” Trudie said. “I can make some inquiries for you, if you’d like.”

  Gwen shook her head, thinking of the dead Carlos. “I think you’d better let us make the inquiries. But thank you.”

  “All righty, then.”

  “Well. Thank you for your help. You’re a talented woman,” Quinn told Trudie.

  “I like him,” Trudie said to Gwen. “Can I have him when you’re done?”

  Gwen flushed. “He’s . . . not mine.”

  Quinn glared at her.

  Trudie snapped her fingers. “Dang. I forgot for a second that I’m married. Sorry, stud; it won’t work out. You don’t want to get sued for loss of consortium.”

  Quinn said to Gwen, “Not yours? What was that in the hot tub?”

  Trudie chuckled. “Sounds divine. Well, kids, I have to get back to work. I’m creating a very special necklace—for Gloria Estefan. And unfortunately, her stylist wants it yesterday, so it’s back to the tree stump for me. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with, okay?”

  They thanked her again warmly, and Gwen said she’d be back to shop.

  “Citrine and smoky topaz,” Trudie said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’d look stunning in a combination of citrine and smoky topaz. Go away and call me in a couple of days. I’ll have a design.”

  Gwen smiled. “Okay. It’s a deal. Well, as long as whatever it is doesn’t cost a million dollars.”

  “Nah. I never gouge people. I should . . . but I can’t.” Trudie escorted them to the studio door, analyzing Gwen’s long, graceful neck. “Definitely some gold leaf and an ornate clasp in the back. Something dangling from the nape . . . Where’s my notebook?” She fumbled in the pockets of her kimono as the door shut behind them.

  chapter 20

  Gwen walked out of the Hayward Gallery deep in thought, not focusing on where they’d left the car. She turned left. Quinn took her arm and steered her in the opposite direction. Even on this late January day the sun exercised brutality, shooting at them from the windows of buildings and from every other reflective surface.

  The air inside the coupe stifled her breath and immediately dampened the fabric of her blouse. Gwen, knowing it was sacrilegious to feel this way in paradise, prayed for just a couple of days in the forties, sheltered by a thick bank of clouds. What she wouldn’t give right now to be able to snuggle into a coat, wrap herself in a scarf.

  “So what do you want to do next?” Quinn asked, as he started the car’s engine. With clean efficiency, he maneuvered them out of their parking spot in two turns of the wheel.

  Enlist the Nerd Corps’ help in tracking down this jeweler.

  But suddenly Gwen couldn’t get the image of Carlos Velasquez’s dead bluish feet out of her mind, however hard she tried to substitute the awful picture for the beautiful, unusual pieces in Trudie’s gallery.

  She tried to replace the feet with a colorful, wild, abstract coil of glass that reminded her of flame dipped in watercolors. She focused on a hammered silver necklace made of different-size triangles . . . an oil painting of a peaceful forest glen, the trees full of woodland creatures that seemed to look right back at the viewer.

  And still she saw Velasquez’s feet, dirty on the bottom, a jagged edge on one of the big toenails, as if he’d caught it on something. Those vulnerable, naked feet on such a big, strapping, frankly menacing kid.

  Gwen gasped for air once, then twice.

  Quinn’s head turned sharply. “You okay?”

  A man, not a kid. One who knew the business end of a gun himself, and had a rap sheet longer than Quinn’s belt. A man who had committed armed robbery. Why did his death affect her so much? He was a common criminal—and yet he’d deserved more dignity than that . . . shot and left to lie rotting in his own fluids.

  She gasped for air again, and Quinn hit the button that would lower the window. Then he wrenched the car through two lanes of angry traffic to pull it over at the curb and slam it into park.

  “Gwen?”

  She gasped again and turned her head toward him, mute. To her vague surprise, her eyes were dry, as if tears were too insignificant to express the horror that had taken over her body.

  “Gwen, my God. Breathe,” he said urgently.

  How could he be so close, his hands on her shoulders, and yet seem so far away? She felt completely cut off from what was happening, as if she were an observer hovering over the car. She gasped again.

  “Is something lodged in your throat?”

  She shook her head.

  Quinn reached across her, unbuckled her safety belt, and hit the button that would move her seat back. “Put your head down, between your knees,” he ordered.

  She did.

  “Let the air out of your lungs. Force it out, Gwen. Then a slow breath in. Slow. Slow.”

  How could it be so hard to regulate her own respiratory system?

  “And out,” Quinn said. “In . . . and out. In . . .”

  Quinn had always tried to tell her what to do. Now he was telling her how to breathe, as if she were a toddler or a Barbie doll. While she was grateful along with being annoyed, the very idea of it struck her as silly. No, downright funny. A mad, hysterical giggle spiraled within her, circled her stomach, and then shot upward, popping into laughter in her throat.

  Gwen felt crazy as she struggled for breath and battled the awful giggles at the same time. And still she thought about Carlos Velasquez’s dead blue feet. Not funny. Not funny at all.

 
“Gwen, Jesus. Gwen!” Quinn didn’t sound so calm anymore. “Listen to me. Force that air out of your lungs. Then breathe in through your nose. Close your mouth. Slow down.”

  She fought to do it.

  So this is what people feel like when they go insane.

  “And out through your mouth. In through your nose . . .”

  She reversed the order, like an idiot.

  “Focus. Come on, sweetheart. . . .”

  Gradually, she got control over herself, but her embarrassment grew.

  “Good.” Quinn’s voice was still calm, and when she stole a look at him, he didn’t appear disgusted or as if he thought she needed to be carted away to a white padded cell.

  Finally quiet, she remained slumped over her own knees.

  “Hey,” he said, stroking her back and rubbing between her shoulder blades. “What was that all about, hmmmm?”

  “His feet,” she whispered. “I can’t get Velasquez’s dead feet out of my mind. It’s what I saw first. I’ll never forget them. Not ever.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I know it sounds insane. I’m sorry I lost it like that.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “You don’t sound crazy, and there’s no need to apologize. Okay? You found a body today. Most people don’t react well to things like that.”

  “I’m supposed to be tougher than this,” she said with a shaky laugh.

  “You are tough. You called the cops; then you got grilled by them. You went straight to interview a jeweler with no visible sign of what you’d been through. And, hey, you’ve been under a little stress lately.” Quinn kissed her forehead. “Plus you’ve got your damned ex harassing you. It’s enough to make anyone go hysterical.”

  “I wasn’t hysterical,” Gwen said.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, babe, whatever you say.”

  She scooted back over into her seat and ran a hand through her hair while Quinn started the car and began to drive in the opposite direction from her house.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place,” he said in a tone that would tolerate no argument.

  She was too tired to argue anyway.

  You could take the boy out of Oklahoma, but you couldn’t take Oklahoma out of the boy. Quinn’s condo on South Beach was full of tan and tobacco-colored leather, and a big painting of wild mustangs hung on the wall over the couch. It wasn’t strictly Gwen’s style, but it was a good piece that complemented the rugged Western look of the furniture. On a pedestal between the couch and an oversize leather chair stood a bronze of a bull. It, too, was rough-hewn and yet brilliantly done, with perfect proportions. She guessed that he’d paid a decent sum for both pieces.

  An old trunk took the place of a coffee table. The combined effect was that of a comfortable, luxurious lodge—even if its setting in Miami was a little incongruous. She half expected to see a massive stone fireplace somewhere, and snowcapped mountains outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  But the familiar stretch of sandy beach framed the surging Atlantic, which disappeared into the horizon.

  “Nice place,” Gwen said.

  “Thanks.” He was clearly proud of it. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Can I look around?”

  “Sure. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, walking toward the kitchen.

  Gwen wandered down a tiled hallway, which would have looked better with wide oak plank flooring, but then, this was Miami and not Colorado. Quinn had few family photos, but he’d hung a framed shot of his mother that must have been taken when she was in high school, along with one of a great-uncle wearing overalls in his machine shop. There were none of friends or girlfriends.

  His grandfather was conspicuously absent, too, but that didn’t surprise her. She’d heard the stories. And Quinn had never known his father. It made her sad, though, that he didn’t share his life with more people. What did he do in his spare time? Did he have any?

  Gwen came to a room that held bookshelves and a desk—obviously Quinn’s office. On the wall over the desk was a painting of a storm raging over a field, trees bending almost double and a tornado threatening in the background. It was the sheer aggression in the piece that riveted her, a combination of brushstroke and subject matter and color. The rainstorm rushed at her, sucked her in, almost had her believing that she could feel the angry wind in her face.

  Quinn had chosen very high-quality artwork for his home, despite his lack of fine-arts education. Gwen kept walking down the hall. On her right was a bathroom done in a lot of blue-gray marble with brushed-nickel accents and walls the palest, softest silver. Very masculine.

  And then on the left again, Quinn’s bedroom. Gwen laughed in delight as she looked in. There on the wall over the headboard of his bed was mounted the front grille and headlights of a car, and not just any car. She remembered his favorite: the ’67 Pontiac GTO. On the adjacent wall the side of the car had been painted, a real driver’s-side door mounted in the appropriate place. This was a sign of the old Quinn, the one she used to know.

  “You like it?” His voice came from behind her, along with the subtle tinkle of ice in a heavy glass.

  She turned with a smile. “I love it. Your designer did a great job.”

  He handed her a drink. “The designer thanks you,” he said, taking a bow.

  “You did this?”

  Quinn nodded. “Not like I knew anyone when I moved to Miami,” he said, shrugging. “I had to occupy my evenings and weekends somehow—when I wasn’t working, that is.”

  “I’m impressed. I really am,” Gwen said. But she saw little else of personal significance in the room. Oh, there were three Rolexes, a Cartier tank watch, and a high-end Movado in a silk-lined case, but no photos at all.

  “Ms. Interior Designer is impressed? That’s something.”

  “I wouldn’t change a thing.” Furniture-wise, she wouldn’t.

  Quinn’s eyes seemed to deepen as they considered her. He reached out and brushed his thumbs gently under her eyes, as if to erase the dark shadows she knew were there. “Me, either,” he said.

  A lump rose in her throat, and the shaky feeling she’d had in the car threatened to return. Gwen moved away and made an innocuous comment about his choice of reading material on the oak nightstand: Time, Newsweek, a biography of Warren Buffett, and a Tim Dorsey novel. He still slept on the right side of the bed, and the nightly glass of water and his antacids stood like sentries next to a digital clock.

  Quinn’s simple platform bed looked all too inviting, made up with soft blue cotton sheets and a navy spread. The pillows looked soft and she wanted nothing more than to sink her head into one and crawl under the covers for about twenty-four hours.

  “Go ahead,” he said. How did he read her mind?

  The bed called to her, and she thought of Quinn sprawling naked on it, Quinn holding her next to his bare skin and making her forget everything she’d seen today and all that she still needed to do.

  Such a bad idea.

  An image of them locked together in the heat of the hot tub didn’t help. The fullness of Quinn buried in her body and the way he took ownership of her senses.

  Gwen took three quick steps backward and slipped out of his bedroom. She took a sip of her drink on her way back out to his living room. “Caipiroska,” she said, unable to repress a smile. He’d remembered her favorite Brazilian drink. “Quinn, I do not need to be drinking vodka in the middle of the afternoon.”

  He checked his watch. “Sun’s on the run, honey. It’s four fifty-nine p.m., so you’re legitimate in one minute, and you need to relax. You’ve gone from hyperventilating to so tense you’re practically in rigor mortis.” He winced. “Sorry.”

  Her mind swept back to Velasquez’s body and she shuddered.

  “Boy, do I have a talent for saying the wrong thing. Gwen, c’mere.” He walked to the leather sofa and sat down, patting the spot next to him.

  Gwen took another sip of the drink and just looked at him. The vodka spre
ad warmth inside her belly and made her extremities seem suddenly light. Slowly, she walked to the couch.

  “Christ.” Quinn looked mildly exasperated. “I’m not going to bite you.”

  She sat down and he took her drink, setting it on the floor. He moved to the edge of the couch and turned her slightly, beginning his magic on the muscles of her neck and shoulders.

  “This is exactly how we got into trouble the other night,” she murmured.

  “I’m not—”

  “I know.” The heat, the skill, the tenderness, and the strength of his hands took over, and she let her head fall forward, relaxing in spite of herself.

  Outside she could hear the surf on the beach and birds calling. She inhaled the leather of the sofa and the male scent of Quinn. No cologne or aftershave today, just clean skin and a fresh white shirt rolled to the elbows.

  She wasn’t drunk on two sips of vodka. She wasn’t freaking out anymore. But nevertheless her emotions took charge. She’d taken this job to make her feel alive . . . and it had brought her into contact with the dead. Now she’d gone somewhere inside herself emotionally and she desperately needed to break out again.

  Without thinking too hard about it, Gwen lifted the hem of her linen shirt. Behind her she heard Quinn suck in a breath and his hands dropped from her shoulders. With very deliberate movements, she pulled the shirt over her head.

  chapter 21

  Quinn didn’t know how to respond as Gwen whipped off her shirt and then unhooked her bra. She clearly wanted more than a back rub from him at this point, but would he be taking advantage of her? She’d discovered a dead body that morning, and she’d had a clear physical and emotional reaction to it just half an hour ago—this didn’t seem right.

  But in the few seconds it took him to process those thoughts, Gwen had stripped completely naked and she’d now undone his fly. He was pretty familiar with his cock, and he couldn’t say it had much of a conscience.

  “Gwen—”

  She sealed his mouth with hers and straddled his knees, her breasts brushing his shirt as she fumbled in his back pocket.