Take Me Two Times Page 24

  “What is this woman’s name, signore?”

  He shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “What did she look like? Was she Italian?”

  “She wore a black wig and dark glasses. She spoke in an assumed German accent.”

  “How do you know it was assumed?”

  “It sounded stilted.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “She came only once herself. She asked if I would duplicate the mask. I wished to know her reasons.

  “She told me that she wanted to display the copy but keep the real one in the vault. I didn’t believe her story. I thought she was up to no good. I turned down the job.

  “She offered double the money, which made me even more suspicious. I turned her down again. She told me that I would regret my decision, and left.”

  Gwen leaned forward as Brancato got lost in his own thoughts for a moment. She waited. “And then . . .?”

  “Then a man—if he can call himself that—showed up at my daughter’s shop two days later. A man with a Spanish accent, rough-looking. He had video of my grandchildren at school, playing in the yard. He knew where they took piano lessons, dance lessons. He told my daughter that he could find them anywhere, and that he advised me to make the mask. If we told the police, they were dead.”

  Signor Brancato had tears in his old eyes now. He looked at Gwen and spread his hands wide, palms up. “What was I to do, eh? I told myself that making a copy of a cursed mask was no big deal. And to be frank with you, signorina, to keep my grandchildren safe I would do anything. Wouldn’t you?”

  Gwen’s chest tightened and ached with sympathy. She reached into her purse and pulled out a package of tissues. She handed him one. “Signor Brancato, I am going to find these people. I promise you.”

  She didn’t want to tell him that they would quite probably kill again if she didn’t figure out the motives behind their sick game.

  Gwen took his hands. “I think your grandchildren are safe, signore. You did what these people wanted, and they have no reason to harm your family now.”

  “Si, this is what I tell myself every night before I go to sleep. But I pray to my dead wife, God rest her soul, to be their angel, to keep them safe.”

  A lump rose in Gwen’s throat, and she squeezed his hands in hers. “She will do that, signore. I’m sure of it.” She hesitated. “However, you may want to take a little vacation for a bit, until we solve this mystery. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

  chapter 31

  Quinn stood with his hands in his pockets, chatting with the salesclerk in her broken English. He looked . . . smug. Like he had a secret. But Gwen didn’t pay this much attention, since her head was still spinning with the information she’d gotten from Brancato.

  They got on the train back to Venice and she shared the results of the interview with him. Was the mystery woman Angeline? It seemed all too likely.

  She and Quinn reviewed everything, trying to connect the dots. The mask: stolen in a smash-and-grab job. ARTemis: given the task of recovering it. Gwen had then found a copy, which damaged her reputation. She’d discovered the body of Carlos Velasquez and called the police. Then the police had found the body of his brother . . . and they now wanted to question both Quinn and Gwen.

  What was going on? To all appearances, someone was out to embarrass ARTemis and destroy Gwen. But why? And who? Nothing made sense. All they knew was that a woman was somehow involved.

  “Dante thinks we should go back immediately and talk to the police to clear things up,” Gwen said to Quinn, as the train rocked rhythmically back and forth and the Italian countryside rolled past.

  He frowned. “He’s right, of course, but something’s bothering me. Didn’t you mention that the assignment of recovering the mask originally went to Avy?”

  “Yes . . . why?”

  “But she had to leave the country suddenly and so she gave it to you.”

  “Are you saying that maybe there was a plot afoot to discredit Avy—that it never had anything to do with me?”

  “You have to admit that it’s a possibility.”

  Gwen nodded, lost in thought. “I have to talk to her. Immediately. It was a foregone conclusion that Avy would get the mask as the plum assignment. Nobody could have foretold that she’d squirrel out of it, take off to Europe on a whim, and give it to me. It’s very unlike her.”

  Quinn leaned forward and took her hands. “But now you’re in the middle of it, asking dangerous questions, and whoever’s behind the original plot is tying up all the loose ends to avoid discovery.” His eyes had gone dark and serious. “I don’t want the next dead body that turns up to be yours.”

  They disembarked at the station and took a vaporetto to the Gritti Palace, entering from the rear. Quinn listened to reason and agreed that she was safe there. She offered a suggestion—not an order—that while she talked privately with her boss, he might round up some costumes for them for later, since Carnevale launched that very night.

  Gwen saw him off with a kiss and then did her best to calm down before confessing to Avy, who would be well within her rights to fire her. Her only hope was that Avy might be able to put herself in Gwen’s shoes . . . and admit that she’d have tried to recoup on her own, too.

  But then there were all the secrets that she’d kept from her best friend. How could she possibly explain those? Again, her only hope was that Avy had a few of her own—which went without saying.

  With shaking hands, Gwen called Avy’s room and asked if she could come up to see her.

  She found Avy in a terry hotel robe with wet hair, again tired and groggy. She yawned. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi. Where’s Liam?”

  “He went out for some pastry that he says I’ve got to try.” She sent Gwen a wry look. “He gets very passionate about food. Camembert, for example. Goes into raptures over stinky cheese.”

  Quinn loved a good beer. He’d once made it his mission to visit almost every pub in London.

  Gwen tossed her bag into an armchair and, like a true chicken, headed for the bathroom. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve had to go since I boarded a train back from Padua. I hate public toilets.”

  Avy yawned again. “Be my guest. I’ll still be here when you get out.” She plopped down on the bed and crawled toward the pillows.

  Gwen went into the sumptuous marble bathroom, still searching for the right words. She was washing her hands when she heard a heavy knock outside, and Avy muttering something about Grand Central Station as she got off the bed to answer it.

  Liam, returning with his pastries? Gwen opened the door as Avy set an ornate, hand-painted box on the bed. It looked vaguely familiar. Avy opened it and stared.

  “My God. Liam had the Borgia mask copied? Just in time for Carnevale tonight. . . . Does he want me to wear it?”

  All the breath left Gwen’s body as Avy reached for a familiar gold, gem-encrusted Columbina mask with green velvet lining.

  Esteban Velasquez, found dead in a poisoned mask. The forged Borgia, now missing from Jaworski Labs. What if . . . ?

  As Avy’s fingers came within inches of it, Gwen launched herself across the room, unaware that she’d even moved. Pure instinct took over. She knocked the mask out of Avy’s hands and sent it flying. It hit the wall with a thud and a soft clatter as the jeweled fringe was knocked askew.

  “Don’t touch it, Ave! It’s poisoned. I’m sure of it. Don’t go near it.”

  Avy stared at her as if she’d sprouted horns. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not! The real mask is missing—unless that’s it. I recovered a fake. Someone is trying to reenact history. The curse of the Borgia cousin, remember? He poisoned the original. Liam didn’t send you that. Who did?” Gwen heard the hoarse urgency in her own voice as if from far away. “Who delivered it to the room?”

  “A porter . . .”

  “Call down to the front desk. Ask them who brought it here.”

  Avy blinked. “You’r
e serious.”

  “Yes, I’m serious! A man in Miami just died from a poisoned mask, Ave. The second Velasquez brother. The first brother was shot.”

  “How . . . what do you mean, you recovered a fake? Does the client know? What’s going on?”

  Gwen took a deep breath. “Wash your hands. Then we need to talk.”

  “Damn right we do.” Grimly, Avy scrubbed her hands, then called the front desk and asked who’d delivered the box. Some kid from a local courier service. She called the courier service. A nameless, nondescript man had paid cash.

  Meanwhile, Gwen turned over the mask with her foot and bent to examine it. Fake. The same fake—she could see the mark where she’d dug out the curl of lead. No wonder the police wanted to talk to her. She wondered if they had surveillance tape of two shadowy figures leaving Jaworski Labs—she and Quinn.

  Avy’s face looked as stern as she’d ever seen it as she turned to face Gwen. “You’d better start from the beginning. Now.”

  “You’ll probably fire me,” Gwen said, “and I won’t blame you. But here’s what happened. . . .” She left nothing out, not even the secrets of her past.

  Avy listened in absolute silence, her expression growing darker by the minute. “Let me get this straight. We have a week before Jaworski Labs files suit for breach of contract, destroying ARTemis’s reputation?”

  “Yes. But at least Quinn doesn’t think they’ll go to the press. They have a vested interest in keeping this under—”

  “Great. I’m so glad a man I’ve never met—even though my best friend was married to him!—has an opinion on this.”

  Gwen didn’t feel that right now was the best time to bring up the fact that Avy was engaged to Liam, but Gwen had only just met him.

  “ARTemis is my company, Gwen! When were you going to tell me?” Her voice was low with suppressed fury.

  “I—I—I tried to call you more than once. You wouldn’t answer your damn phone, since you were off on some honeymoon with Thief Boy. And then you hung up on me. . . . ”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault. You could have left a message.”

  “Look, the bottom line was that I wanted to take care of this myself. I felt responsible. I was mortified—here it was my first case, and I screwed it up. I just wanted to make it right.”

  Avy said nothing.

  “Ave, you would have done the same thing.”

  “No.” She shook her head violently.

  Gwen met her gaze steadily, without flinching.

  “All right, all right,” she snarled. “I would have done the same thing. That doesn’t excuse your actions.”

  Avy sat propped against the headboard in her white terry bathrobe and socks, clutching a pillow to her stomach. With her damp hair and freshly scrubbed face, she looked exactly like the girl Gwen had warily introduced herself to freshman year, a lifetime ago. The girl who’d unzipped an army green sleeping bag to use as a comforter, while Gwen had brought matching quilted bedspreads and pillow shams to make the room nicer.

  Avy didn’t look like anyone’s boss. She looked like Gwen’s best friend . . . except that Gwen was very afraid that she’d managed to destroy not only their professional relationship, but their personal one as well.

  “Ave, I’m so sorry. It was never my intention to damage the company. I’ll resign if you don’t want to fire me.”

  Avy fingered the Swiss army knife that hung on a cord around her neck. Her hands shook slightly, but she said nothing.

  They both looked at the mask in the corner.

  The silence stretched on, and finally Gwen went to pick up her coat and handbag from the chair. Clearly, she was finished. Clearly, Avy couldn’t forgive her. She shrugged into the coat, her heart heavy, her blood sluggish with shame. She headed for the door.

  “Take that off,” Avy snapped. “You’re not going anywhere, Gwennie. I can’t in good conscience fire someone who just saved my life. And you’re not resigning, either: You’re going to see this thing through.”

  Gwen almost collapsed with relief.

  “But I’m still really, really, really pissed off at you. And if you ever keep information like this from me again—”

  “Understood,” said Gwen. As she peeled off her coat, she spotted a large, rolled canvas emerging from the window treatment. “Hey, Ave? You been buying art while you’re here? What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Avy said too quickly. “Listen, we have to figure out what’s going on. Why would someone send me a poisoned mask?”

  Gwen had a flashback to the original assignments meeting: Sheila popping in. Communiqué from Kelso. The Greek ambassador, out for revenge . . . “Could this be related to Kelso’s warning?”

  Avy sat up straight.

  “Worse, could that guy behind the Sword of Alexander plot be gunning for you? Gautreau?”

  Her friend lost color and passed a hand over her mouth, her fingers creeping up to finger a tiny scar on her cheek, a nasty souvenir of her experience with Gautreau. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll rear his ugly head one day. But I didn’t expect it to be quite this soon.”

  Avy hugged her knees again, while Gwen felt a knot of cold, hard fear deep in her gut.

  Then they both jumped as a key rattled in the lock and Liam came in with a pastry box, humming. “Hi, honey, I’m home!”

  chapter 32

  “Oh, hallo, Gwen. Greetings and salutations and all that rot.” Liam flashed a grin at her, then came over to peck her on the cheek. He smelled of damp wool, expensive soap, and coffee.

  “Hi,” Gwen said.

  “Liam, you didn’t send me that mask in the corner, did you?” asked Avy.

  “No, my darling. Why?” He walked over to the mask. “Good God, it’s the Borgia.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Gwen and Avy said at the same time.

  His eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Why not?”

  They explained.

  He looked shaken and moved immediately to Avy’s side. “We need to take this to the proper authorities—if it’s actually poisoned.”

  “I’ll bet you any amount of money that it is,” Gwen said. “But I’m not volunteering to be the guinea pig who finds out the hard way.”

  “No, indeed.” Liam seemed lost in thought.

  “Do you think this is Gautreau?” Avy asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “Not his style. He’s not the kind of man who’d operate from a distance. He’d be here firsthand to watch.” He swallowed and drew Avy into his arms, holding her tight.

  “But isn’t he in prison?”

  “Yes. He’d still want firsthand details from anyone he sent. Instinct tells me this isn’t him.”

  “Avy?” Gwen asked. “You agree?”

  A brief nod.

  Gwen cut her gaze back to Liam. “All right. I need to ask you a question. You mentioned a woman from your past whose ancestors were the original owners of that mask. What’s the woman’s name?”

  “Angeline Le Fevre. She works as an art consultant—”

  “She’s the key to all of this,” Gwen said. “I knew it.”

  “Angeline?” Liam thought about it. “But why? She’s a ruthless businesswoman and a first-class bitch, but a murderer?”

  Gwen filled them in on the mystery woman at the jeweler’s. “You said last night at dinner that Angeline was obsessed with the mask. Clearly she had it stolen and then planned to keep it while a copy went back into the collection.”

  Avy said, “Why wouldn’t she have just given the copy to Jaworski in the first place? No need for the smash-and-grab job, or for outsiders who could talk about her involvement.”

  “Because Christie’s would have caught it. And failing that, if the switch were ever discovered, that copy could be traced right back to her. This must have been her way of covering her tracks.”

  “Why send a poisoned mask to Avy, whom she’s never even met?”

  “I do know who she is,” Avy said slowly. “And vice versa. From some ar
t world networking event. Long dark hair, too much gold jewelry, fire-engine red lipstick with darker liner? A chain-smoker?”

  Liam nodded reluctantly.

  “I was on my phone on the terrace and she walked out there. She eyed me, pulled a gold lighter out of her pocket, and lit up. Then she walked past and deliberately blew smoke right into my face. I remember looking at her name tag and thinking, ‘What is that woman’s problem?’ ”

  Liam hesitated. “We didn’t have the friendliest parting, Angeline and I. She made some rather nasty remarks when I ended things.”

  “Nasty remarks, or death threats?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “There may have been a small discussion about feeding parts of me to wild boars.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No.”

  “Did she threaten to turn you in to the police?”

  “No, love. She was under the impression that I was an art dealer, so she simply threatened to ruin my business. I closed it and skipped town before she could do much, but imagine: She began to tell people that I was a con artist and a thief!”

  Gwen blinked. The outrage in his voice was real. “But . . . you are.”

  “I was. But she didn’t know that. She was simply spreading vicious gossip. She has no integrity at all.”

  Gwen stared at him. Then she gave Avy an is-he-for-real look.

  Avy fiddled with the bedspread and sighed. “What can I say? Liam exercises his own twisted logic. It makes sense in his world.”

  “Thank you for explaining my peculiarities as if I weren’t in the room, my love. Now, back to our little problem . . .”

  Gwen rubbed at her eyes and thought about the gaps in their theory. Someone had taken nicotine and the forged mask from the safe at Jaworski Labs. Who else had the capacity and know-how to do a complicated B-and-E job?

  She didn’t like the best answer: someone at ARTemis.

  Like McDougal, who’d been at the scene of Carlos’s murder. “I think we need to look at the possibility that Angeline is working with someone else.”

  “Why?”