Take Me Two Times Read online

  His face fell, but then brightened again. “’Ere—so I’ll just come with you.”

  “No! No, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Then we’ll ’ave us a spot of supper afterward. D’you fancy a stone crab or two? We’ll go to . . .” He pulled his head back into the limo and addressed the driver. “What the fuck’s the name of that place, eh? Bob’s? Ed’s?”

  “Joe’s,” said the driver’s voice.

  “Joe’s! Right, then, we’ll go to Joe’s. Oy’ll bet you look right sexy, me Gwendolyn, with your knockers nestling under a plastic bib.” He leered at her and bit the end off of the celery stalk in his drink, chewing enthusiastically.

  Did they make men more appalling than Sid?

  “Come on, then.” He lodged the Bloody Mary in his crotch and extended both hands out the window, making pincers with his fingers. “Come get crabby with Sid, ya? And we’ll save us some melted butter for later.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “No, thank you,” Gwen said, her level of aggravation rising fast.

  “If ye’re a good girl, now, oy’ll let ye gum Sid’s big banger! ’E’s quite a tasty morsel, ’e is.”

  “Sid, we’ve had this conversation, remember? On your yacht in the south of France. Now, I have to go. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this.” Gwen turned her back on him and opened the door of her Prius.

  “She doesn’t ’ave time for us, if you please!” Sid said, apparently to Pigamuffin. “What d’you think about that? Oy think she’s right cheeky, is what methinks.”

  Gwen got into her car. “Good-bye, Sid. Enjoy your stay in Miami. I think you’ll find plenty of playmates on South Beach.”

  “’Ere!” he said, clearly miffed. “Oy came all this way to play with you, ye ungrateful bit o’ tail.”

  Gwen straightened her shoulders and put her hands on the wheel. Then she opened the door and got out of the Prius again. She stalked over to Sid’s limo, bent over, and poked him in the chest, avoiding his revolting little tuft of hair. “Shame on you, Sid Thresher. I am not a bit of tail. It’s extremely impolite of you to speculate about any part of my anatomy, and I will never, ever gum or otherwise touch what you like to call your big banger. You will respect me, do you hear?”

  Sid blinked his watery blue eyes behind the bug glasses.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, madam, oy do.”

  “Good.” Gwen removed her finger from his bony chest and resisted the urge to wipe it off on her pants.

  “Oy must say, this puts a whole different spin on things, it does. Oy’ve gotten quite the wrong idea about you.”

  “Yes, you have,” she said sternly.

  “Been a bad, bad boy, Siddie has. ’E most humbly begs your pardon, ’e does. Ye’re angry. Got your knickers in quite a twist. So . . .” He squinted up at her hopefully.

  Why did she have a bad feeling about this apology? “Yes?”

  “Oy don’t suppose ye’d care to spank me?”

  “No!” yelled Gwen. “Now, please, for the love of God, go away.”

  But Sid was nothing if not persistent. As Gwen drove south down Brickell, took a left on the Rickenbacker Causeway, and crossed the bridge to Key Biscayne, the limo followed at a discreet distance. She could hardly allow him to tail her to Angeline’s house.

  She couldn’t just shoot him, so she would have to lose him, and that was going to be challenging, with the straight, narrow miles of Crandon Boulevard ahead of them. She coasted for long minutes, lulling his driver into boredom, and then seized her opportunity. She wrenched the wheel to the left, diving down a side street and then peeling around the next right. The limo simply couldn’t keep up. Gwen pulled a few more evasive maneuvers and finally made her way back to where she needed to be. She parked down the block and around the corner from Angeline’s house, just to be safe.

  The house crouched by itself in a charming little inlet. It was an older home that Gwen suspected had been recently remodeled and landscaped, judging by the brand-new roof of barrel tiles and the small size of most of the plants.

  A fountain played softly under the yellow glow of the porch light. Night creatures scraped, hummed, and warbled. Other than that, there were no signs of life in the dark house. Gwen’s dark slacks and blue halter top blended seamlessly into the shadows. She’d taken off all her jewelry so that nothing could catch the light and alert anyone to her presence.

  Close neighbors weren’t a problem, fortunately, because of the inlet. She was careful not to attract any attention, though, since people took strolls and walked dogs. Gwen cased the whole house and chose a side window, hidden from a frontal view by a lattice of climbing roses, as her entrance.

  There was an alarm system, but she disconnected it by clipping a couple of wires. There was a surveillance camera, which she also dismantled. She’d have to get the tape from it when she went inside.

  The catch on the window was secure, so she had two alternatives: She could either break the glass or cut a hole in it to reach inside. She pulled a cutting tool from her bag. Avy had taught her how to fix the adhesive to the pane, then cut it in a neat circle and pull the cut glass out without making more than a small scraping noise as it came free.

  Gwen detached the circle of glass and hid it behind the lattice. Then she put her gloved hand inside the hole and unfastened the window catch. She raised the window, hoisted herself up to the sill, and climbed through. It was fortunate that Angeline had no dog.

  She found herself in a sparsely furnished office. Two very fine paintings hung over a spindly eighteenth-century ladies’ writing desk, one a portrait by Vigée le Brun and the other an early Cézanne landscape. An Oriental rug—a Kuba with a Kufic border—covered the cool, beige tiled floor.

  The old-school furnishings looked incongruous in the modern Miami home, which still retained some of its original art deco characteristics.

  Gwen took a moment to listen to both the house and her gut. Nothing appeared to be amiss, so she texted Quinn. Then she moved into a narrow hallway, which contained nothing but a hanging floral tapestry and two wrought-iron architectural pieces.

  The living room housed an entertainment center, a shelf of books on art, a beige sectional sofa scattered with yellow suede pillows, and a large abstract in greens and yellows by a painter that Gwen had never heard of and didn’t care to meet, judging by his work. What caught her eye and froze her in her tracks was a pedestal with a stand on it inside a Lucite case. On the stand was a Venetian mask—though it wasn’t the mask—yellow with blue and green feathers around the eyes and gold bric-a-brac trim. Though of course it had no mouth, it seemed to leer evilly at her.

  Gwen stared right back at it as she walked past.

  The kitchen was small, a basic black-granite-and-stainless-steel design. There were no signs that Angeline cooked; just a cup, half-full of black coffee, and a couple of diet breakfast bars lying on the countertop.

  Angeline’s bedroom was something of a shock. Over an elaborately carved mahogany headboard hung eight Venetian masks of varying designs and colors. Matte gold, glittering silver, flat black, blue brocade, red satin. Some had elaborate, curled ostrich plumes and peacock feathers worked into their designs. Others were studded with jewels or hand-painted motifs.

  All of them had hollow, lifeless, unseeing eyes that sent a shiver down Gwen’s spine. And none was as magnificent as the mask she’d been sent to recover. She hoped none was as deadly, either.

  The presence of the masks reinforced for Gwen that she was on the right trail. But where was the Borgia one? Had Angeline stuffed it into some bank box, or would she have it right here in her home?

  Gwen glanced at Angeline’s bedside clock and saw that it was almost eight thirty in the evening. She needed to work fast—the woman could be home at any moment.

  Gwen started with the dresser drawers, which yielded nothing but clothing, and then checked under the bed, where she found a flat, wheeled, plastic box of shoes. She moved on to the
nightstand drawers, which contained ibuprofen, a broken necklace, condoms, massage oil, and a couple of naughty paperback books.

  The closet was stuffed with clothing and boasted a full-length mirror on the back wall. Angeline had very nice taste; Gwen would give her that. She also had a lot of gorgeous Italian shoes.

  But the mask did not appear to be in her closet. Gwen searched the rest of the house: the bathroom, with its welter of perfume bottles and cosmetics; and the kitchen, which contained no pots or pans of any sort but a large microwave and a lot of disposable plates and cups.

  She searched two bedrooms, the office, the living room, and a linen closet in the hallway opposite the bathroom. Nothing.

  The smell of barbecue came wafting in from the water, and from around another bend in the water a party got louder as the guests moved on to what she guessed were their second and third drinks.

  Think. Hurry.

  Gwen went back to Angeline’s bedroom, where she ignored the creepy eyes—or lack thereof—of the masks and opened the closet again. She gauged the distance from the door to the mirror in the back.

  She stepped out of the closet and then eyeballed the distance along the drywall that the closet should run. Her interior-design background had trained her well. There was approximately a foot and a half unaccounted for inside the closet.

  Gwen walked into it again, to the back wall, and ran her hands down the left edge of the mirror, where she found what she sought: hinges.

  She pulled at the right edge and the mirror opened to reveal a shallow hidden space inside with several shelves. On one of those shelves was a hand-painted wooden box that she’d seen before.

  Gwen lifted the lid and the Columbina glittered up at her, a beautiful and menacing piece of family history. An object of intrigue, passion, and murder.

  She knew without needing to test it that this mask was the real deal. She’d find no seams from any kind of welder on the back of it, no curls of lead where there should be only solid gold, no cubic zirconia substituted for diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds.

  She didn’t touch it, even with gloved hands. Angeline could have poisoned this one, too. At any rate, whether it was fresh or hundreds of years old, there was blood on this mask.

  Gwen couldn’t look away from it, even though she wanted to. The thing mesmerized her, evil and seductive and haughty. It was the craftsmanship and the premeditation that got to her. Angeline’s ancestor—and then she herself—had planned murder so meticulously and with obvious pleasure.

  As she stood there, a car door slammed outside. Quinn? Then another. Fudge!

  Gwen quickly snapped a picture of it in Angeline’s hiding place with her phone, then closed the box, tucked it under her arm, and scrambled out of the closet. She ran a blue streak back to the office where she’d entered and backed toward the window.

  A key clicked into the lock at the front entrance, and the door flew open, followed by two sets of footsteps.

  “How dare you follow me home?” Angeline’s voice demanded of her companion.

  “How dare you commit fraud and murder?” Quinn’s voice said.

  Quinn? What are you doing? Well, that one was easy: making a frontal assault so that she could exit fast.

  “You’re crazy,” said Angeline contemptuously. Her heels clicked across the tile in the living room. She unlatched the big patio doors and walked outside. Quinn’s footsteps followed. Gwen heard the click of a lighter.

  “Am I? You set this up from the very beginning, Angeline. You brokered the deal when Jaworski purchased the mask. We have a witness in Padua, Italy, who swears it was a woman who forced him to produce a copy, and I’m sure a good detective can piece together your travels, even if you used a false name.

  “I’ll bet we’ll find the original mask in your possession, possibly here on the premises. Where’s Eric McDougal, Angeline?”

  “Eric? I have no idea.”

  “Was it you or him who sent the last mask to Avy Hunt in Venice?”

  She laughed. “You could not be more mistaken. I barely know Eric McDougal—I had a brief, very brief fling with him. And I haven’t been out of the U.S. for a month.”

  “It’s over, Angeline. McDougal helped you steal the nicotine and the fake mask from the lab, didn’t he?”

  “No. You’re wrong.”

  “But you only did that to distract the police. You already had it. Let me guess—prescriptions for smoking-cessation patches from ten different doctors and ten different pharmacies?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Angeline said. “Get out of my house.” But her voice shook a little.

  “They’ll trace those prescriptions back to you. Where’d you purchase them? Did you use a credit card?”

  “I said leave!”

  “Florida has the death penalty, Angeline. You should cut yourself a deal with the cops right away.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” she shouted.

  Gwen wondered where the hell McDougal was. Had he been the one to take the whole game to the lethal point? She reached behind her in the dark and felt for the windowsill. She turned, threw a leg over it, and then froze. A glint of moonlight reflected off the muzzle of a Glock that was pointed straight at her. A highly illegal silencer was screwed onto the end of the barrel.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “McDougal.”

  chapter 37

  Avy walked down the jetway in Venice without really noticing her legs move. She felt numb. She operated on autopilot. She couldn’t wait to leave one of the world’s most beautiful cities behind.

  But she felt as if she were leaving her soul and her happiness in Venice along with Liam. Her BlackBerry buzzed inside her well-worn Dior saddlebag as she filed along the narrow, dingy corridor that led to the gaping rectangular mouth of the plane. It had buzzed two other times as she sat in the waiting area, but it was probably her father, and she couldn’t bring herself to look.

  Finally a stern voice in her head told her to stop being self-indulgent and immature. She had a business to run, and other people depended upon her. This was no time for her to sink her nose into her navel and give in to depression. She had to at least look at the screen.

  There were three e-mails. One was from Gwen, saying that she and Quinn were safely back in Miami. One was from Kelso, simple and to the point: Plot against you has escalated. Possible rogue agent at ARTemis. Be on your guard.

  She responded, typing with her thumbs. Aware of McDougal’s activities and agenda. Gwen will repossess original Borgia mask and then we will involve cops. On my way home now.

  The third message was from an unknown sender. She almost deleted it, but the subject line stopped her cold: Plague doc seeks puppet. Liam. It had to be.

  Her hands shook as she opened the message. Meet me in Moscow, darling. Details to follow.

  Avy stood frozen on the jetway, staring at the words until they blurred and then came into focus again. Moscow? Was he high?

  “Signorina, per favore,” said a businessman behind her. It took her a moment to register that he was talking to her, and that she was holding everyone up. She stared at the words on her BlackBerry again.

  Trust me, he’d said.

  Could she?

  Gwen’s words came back to her. I do think you can trust Liam. More than you can trust your father at this point.

  “Signorina!” said the man behind her, seriously annoyed now.

  “Scusi,” she said, unable to make up her mind. She held the BlackBerry tightly to her chest as she stumbled forward, torn. She’d made it onto the plane and past the flight attendants to her seat in first class when her body rebelled and turned almost of its own accord.

  She stepped back into the aisle and fought her way past the startled, disgruntled boarding passengers. “Scusi, scusi . . .”

  “Signorina!” said the flight attendants.

  Avy pointed at the lavatory, and they allowed her past them. Then she bolted out the door of the plane.

  “S
ignorina! Stop! Signorina!”

  She muscled up the jetway, inconveniencing more people along the way, bumping past them.

  You’re crazy, the sensible part of her said just as she got to the corridor’s entrance. What the hell are you doing?

  I don’t know. All she knew was that she had to get to Liam.

  “Signorina!” The ticket taker grasped her arm. “You cannot get off the flight now—”

  She jerked out of his grasp without thinking and barreled forward.

  You’re crazy to meet him in Moscow. You’ll be an accessory to whatever he might be doing. . . . And what about Gwen? You can’t just leave her alone to handle McDougal.

  Oh, God. Gwen. Avy stopped. Gwen had saved Avy’s life. She’d saved Liam’s freedom. And she was potentially walking back into a lion’s den there in Miami. Avy owed her backup even if her heart lay with Liam.

  Feeling discombobulated and torn on every level, Avy turned around again to head back to the Miami flight—only to have two security guards take her roughly by the arms.

  Belatedly she realized that she wasn’t going anywhere. For all they knew, she’d gotten on that plane to plant a bomb and was now trying to escape.

  “No, no!” She tried to explain that she’d left her wallet at security and had panicked. The guards looked unimpressed, and even more so when one of them opened her Dior bag and produced the wallet she’d supposedly been going to find.

  “I made a mistake. I want to get back on the flight,” she insisted.

  They ignored her, and radioed the pilot. “Evacuate the plane,” they ordered in Italian. “And then remove every bag for screening.” They gazed at Avy sternly. “Signorina, you will come with us.”

  Avy’s heart sank. She knew she’d get out of this eventually, but it might take hours. The guards had now confiscated her BlackBerry, so she couldn’t even e-mail either Gwen or Liam.

  Avy tried to reassure herself. Gwen was a tough cookie. And once she had the mask, she’d get the cops involved. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to face McDougal alone. Quinn, too, would be by her side.